Fourth Day (21 page)

The loose cigarette had a small hole pierced through it, and a piece of thread inserted at that point, almost exactly two inches from the tip.

Suggestive on its own, but hardly conclusive. Carefully, I held the pack in position and lifted the lid of the desk. Inside, I found several wooden clothes pegs, a small reel of thin copper wire, and a familiar-looking slim buff-coloured book. A reprint of an old 1960s US Army training manual called the
Improvised Munitions Handbook
.

I didn’t need to leaf through the pages to find where the oddments from the desk fitted in.

A cigarette, in still air, burns at a rate of roughly seven minutes per inch, depending on the brand and conditions. What I was looking at here was the bare bones of a rudimentary time-delay fuse.

It was a simple enough improvised device. Wrap the copper wire around the jaws of the clothes peg and secure the thread around the legs to hold the jaws open. In this case, the ends of the peg had even been notched slightly, to
ensure the thread sat firmly in place without slipping. Then all you have to do is light the cigarette and walk away. The cigarette burns until it reaches the thread, releases the peg, the jaws close, the copper wire completes the circuit and…

And what? Boom?

Was
that
what Bane was doing here? Sagar had seemed certain of it and now, it seemed, I had proof. The radical eco-group, Debacle, I recalled, had been disturbed setting an IED in Alaska on the night Liam Witney was killed. There had been nothing in the report about the type of device, but had bomb-making been one of the skills he’d acquired in Fourth Day?

I thought again of Ann’s finesse with electronics, her delicate touch on a printed circuit board. I was pretty sure that she had the expertise to put together a much more sophisticated type of timer, so why this crude device?

As I carefully replaced the items, I noticed the folded newspaper had the lower right-hand quarter of the page on view. One story had been circled several times in pen.

I scanned it quickly, catching the gist. A visiting delegation from the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries was due to tour the Long Beach refineries the following week. A total protest by environmentalists was expected. Naturally, security was going to be tight.

That would explain the primitive approach…but to what end?

I shivered. Something just didn’t feel right about this that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe, I admitted to myself, I just didn’t
want
it to be true.

And suddenly, all I felt was an anger, that Bane was throwing away the genuine good he could do here. While
there was no denying that former Fourth Day members had sought out organisations like Debacle, many others left the cult to join nothing more daring than a gym.

And now, a number of them are dead
.

I had a brief snapshot of the damning list of crossed-out names tucked inside my waistband. It could have just been a note of back pay no longer due.

Or it could have been a kill sheet.

Cautiously, I opened the door a crack, reassured myself I was alone, and headed back across the dining hall.

Just off it was a kitchen area, shut down and squared away for the night. There was a bug zapper high on the far wall, illuminating the space with an eerie blue glow.

By its light, I padded across the scrubbed tiles, noting the array of professional-looking cook’s knives on display. Briefly, I considered taking one, rejecting the idea just as fast. Decent chefs tend to notice if the tools of their trade go missing.

Under the workstations at one side of the kitchen were rows of drawers. I pulled the first one open. It ran smooth on its runners, no squeaks or rattles, and I quickly found what I was after. Odds and ends of cutlery used for preparation rather than service. Quietly, I dug to the bottom of the tray for an old, cheap-looking table fork, flexed it experimentally in my hands. It bent easily. Perfect.

I slipped the fork into my pocket and paused in the doorway to check the kitchen appeared undisturbed, then moved back through the dining hall, out into the corridor again.

As I passed the admin office, I ducked inside, moving straight for the phone on the nearest desk. But, when I
picked up the receiver there was no dialling tone, only silence. I cursed under my breath. Was Bane so paranoid that he cut the phones at night?

It occurred to me that, still out there apparently undiscovered, was a backup emergency kit containing a second cellphone. I hurried for the lobby, got as far as crossing to the outside door to grip the handle, then wavered.

Not because of concern about more guards. I’d passed my Escape and Evasion courses, and Fourth Day didn’t have dedicated trackers or dogs. And not because, after this evening’s discovery, I was worried that they might have found the second plastic box I’d buried and booby-trapped it, just for an eventuality like this.

But because, once I’d reported what I’d seen, I knew Epps would take over and set in motion a train of events over which I had no control. And whatever I might think about Bane’s possible motives, he had shown a level of compassion, where Conrad Epps had none.

‘
You don’t like letting go of control – on any level,’
Bane had said.
‘That scares you, doesn’t it?
’

Was that it?

Or was it just that I was nowhere near uncovering the truth about Billy’s parentage? Without proof that he
was
Lorna Witney’s grandson, we had no justification for taking him out of there before Epps descended on the place.

Maybe that threat alone would be enough to convince her to take the risk, but I’d seen first hand the state Maria was in. I’d lost a child I’d never had the chance to know. How much worse would it be for her?

I tightened my grip on the door handle, and slipped out into the blood-warm night.

A little before eight the following morning, I sat on the bench under the old juniper tree, surrounded by a small group of children. They ranged in age from probably about two or three, to around five. As I’d told Lorna Witney back in Scotland, I never was very good at judging ages.

Beside me was Ann. She’d told me over breakfast that she’d taken over Thomas Witney’s teaching duties and asked, apparently without guile, if I’d help her with her class.

I agreed, although not without trepidation. It was a good opportunity to observe Maria’s son and have a
semi-legitimate
reason to ask about him, but I was not entirely comfortable with kids. Like horses, they could instinctively tell if you were uneasy around them, enough to take gleeful advantage wherever possible.

Ann was telling the children a story, something about pirates and a treasure trove. She had a wonderful storyteller’s voice, soft and rhythmic, as if reciting an old poem rather than making it up as she went along. Completely unselfconscious, she put all of herself into the tale, her manner easy and unforced.

The children obviously adored her. She seemed to know immediately how much free rein to allow the more boisterous without them getting out of hand, and how much gentle coaxing was needed for the shy to blossom.

My input was minimal at best. I caught the odd little sideways glance, when they thought I wasn’t looking, wary curiosity in their faces. Maybe my fading black eye had something to do with that, or maybe they’d seen too many bruises for it to make any difference.

Billy sat cross-legged on the ground, front and centre. I kept covert watch, trying to detect Liam’s bone structure behind Maria’s Latin influence, largely without success.

Sipping from my bottle of water, I stared across the dusty compound, where a pair of Fourth Day guards returned from another patrol. One was the Brit ex-Para, Nu. As he and the other man ambled past, Nu raised a hand from the stock of his M16, formed a gun with his forefinger and thumb, and shot me with it, a cheery grin on his face.

There was something far too knowing about the gesture and I realised, in that instant, they’d been waiting for me to venture out last night.

So, it had been another test, after all.

I’d only made it as far as the open doorway before my doubts got the better of me. It had all been too easy, moving through the darkened building. The deserted rooms, the unlocked doors. The conveniently placed pack of cigarettes with that telltale thread so casually displayed, the helpfully folded newspaper, the list of names.

I’d stood for a minute or so, staring up at a clear skyful of stars glittering above me. And then I’d turned around and walked inside, locking the door to my room behind me and
slipping the key back between the pages of the Salinger.

But just before I climbed into bed, I’d taken my stolen table fork and used one of the sturdy legs of the bed as a makeshift vice to bend it until the handle fitted snugly over my fist and the tines splayed outwards like claws. Knowing I had it, hidden within easy reach under my pillow, made me feel a little less vulnerable. Makeshift as a prison shank, it would open up someone’s face, if the need arose, but be hard even for an expert to take away from me.

And there seemed to be no shortage of experts in Fourth Day. This morning’s t’ai chi ch’uan class was now being followed by straightforward self-defence, with Yancy in charge.

He was good, I saw. Knew the moves and how best to instil them, even if he did like to hold his ‘victims’ a little too tightly, a little too long. Maybe he just liked showing off his bulging biceps as he demonstrated a rear chokehold on one woman, clasping her body hard against his. I mentally ran through the ways I could have disabled him in the time he took to explain the principle.

Yancy caught my stare and released her. The woman stumbled away from him, flushed, rubbing her neck.

‘Hey, Charlie,’ he called across. ‘Wanna come show us how you Brits do it?’

I gave a non-committal smile, indicating the class. ‘Maybe next time.’

He didn’t answer, but his face called me chicken.

Now, Ann finished her story and sent the children off to find some small object from the compound that had featured in it. ‘Back here in fifteen minutes,’ she said with mock sternness, watching them scatter with an indulgent smile.
Good job she didn’t set me the same task, because I hadn’t been paying enough attention to be sure of completing it.

‘You’re very good with them,’ I said. ‘Were you a teacher?’

‘Me? Oh no, I never finished high school.’ She laughed, wry. ‘Too busy having kids of my own by then. So, I guess you could say I’ve had a lot of practice. But I’m a poor substitute for Thomas – he had the gift.’ Her voice apparently held no reproof. ‘They miss him.’

‘Well, he was a teacher by profession,’ I said, neutral.

‘He was the best of us,’ she said, fierce now, covering her sadness. ‘He didn’t deserve any of it.’

I couldn’t quite tell if she meant his life, abduction, or death. ‘Very few people get what they deserve.’

She turned, head on one side. ‘So, what do
you
deserve, Charlie?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s one of the things I was hoping to find out here.’

Her focus left me and ranged out across the compound, watching the children as they ran haphazardly about the place in their quest.

‘Randall Bane won’t give you answers,’ she said at last. ‘He’ll just help you ask yourself the right questions. Help you see what’s important to you.’

‘Is that why Thomas stayed?’

Was it my imagination, or did she glance towards Billy? She smiled. ‘When you’ve been here long enough,’ she said, ‘you’ll understand.’

I would have pushed, but Billy came sidling back then, with a chubby little girl of a similar age. He tugged at Ann’s skirt.

‘Hello,’ Ann said gently. ‘And what have you found?’

The children whispered together for a moment, then Billy solemnly presented her with a flat grey pebble, which she took carefully and examined in the sun. ‘Hmm, is this the pirate’s buried treasure?’

The boy stopped trying to cram what appeared to be his entire grubby fist into his mouth and nodded. The girl was flapping her skirt up and down, exposing cotton knickers covered in cartoon seahorses.

To my consternation, Ann turned to me. ‘What do you think, Charlie?’ she asked, handing over the pebble. ‘Is it treasure?’

For a moment, I floundered, smoothing my thumb across the surface. My hands were damp with condensation from the water bottle, leaving a bright smear across the surface of the stone.

I uncapped the bottle and splashed water onto the pebble. At once, the drab grey flourished into a host of colours. I handed the wet stone back to Billy. He and the girl stared at it, apparently dumbfounded by the transformation.

‘Now
it looks like treasure.’

Billy looked up at the sound of my voice, squinting into the light, and then his face slowly crumpled with disappointment. He let the pebble drop into the dust at my feet. Then he and his silent companion turned and ran away on stumpy little legs. I’d taken beatings that hurt less.

‘O…K,’ I said, rueful. ‘I guess
that
was the wrong answer.’

Ann leant across, put her hand on mine. Her skin was thin and dry, like an old lady’s. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said placidly. ‘Billy can be a strange child. His mother, well, she’s been through difficult times.’

I watched the boy, squatting in the dust, searching for another stone that was as perfectly dull as the first, before I’d gone and ruined it for him.

‘What happened to Billy’s father?’ I asked, as casually as I could manage.

Ann didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice was guarded. ‘He’s gone,’ she said, which could have meant anything from no longer with Fourth Day, to six feet under.

‘He walked out on them?’ I pressed.

Ann quietly folded in on herself. ‘Not quite, honey,’ she said. ‘Some things are just not meant to be, that’s all.’

The silence yawned like a cat. I picked up the rapidly drying stone, turned it in my hands. ‘I guess this proves I’m not cut out for parenthood.’

‘You would have managed fine,’ Ann said. When I glanced at her sharply, she added, ‘Motherhood isn’t something they measure you up for. It just arrives, and you make it fit, best you can.’

I opened my mouth to ask how she could tell, then closed it again. She was just one of those women who
knew
. ‘Well, looks like I won’t be finding that one out.’

‘You’re young,’ she said, with irritating complacency. ‘There’s still time.’

‘Not for me.’

Before she could refute that, if she’d a mind to, Maria stepped out of the main building. She headed towards us, nervous as a fat rabbit in hawk country, halting a metre or so away.

‘Hello, Maria,’ Ann said easily. ‘Billy’s over there, see? Searching for hidden treasure.’

Maria shook her head. ‘I know he’s safe with you.’ Her gaze met mine, the first deliberate direct eye contact she’d made with me. ‘I came for Charlie,’ she mumbled. ‘He says it’s time.’

Ann flicked a quick look in my direction and nodded, almost to herself.

‘Time for what?’ I queried.

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Ann said. ‘Go, child, and don’t look so anxious.’

It was difficult to tell which of us she was speaking to.