Power Games (43 page)

The coordinates had led him here. He had been tracking the man, moving from rock to rock in pursuit of the ripening scent and shadowing his target from afar.

Now he would follow him to the final frontier—whatever or wherever that was.

The man loaded a fishing boat, climbed in and gunned the engine, which after a guttural start began to chug. He stooped to roll and spark a cigarette, an act that was deftly completed in twenty seconds. Noah knew the man’s habits. He had observed him long enough.

The man blew out smoke. He scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tic of increasing regularity, and unsurprising given the messages that had come in. VC was not happy. The cell phone had received two more communications, equally brief and cryptic:
You know what this means
, read the first. Then:
It’s over for you.

After that, the contact had dried up.

As usual, upon grinding out his smoke, the man knelt to check his supplies. Noah seized his chance. He slipped from the leaf-shield and down to the water, where, unseen, he ducked into the stern of the boat.

A khaki tarpaulin was heaped in a nest—the ready-made cover he had anticipated—and Noah crawled beneath, managing to conceal himself.

It was hot under here. The tarpaulin blistered after hours cooking in the sun, thick as the skin on an overdone baked potato. It smelled funny, of must and cloves. Parts were ridged where the salt water had dried, stiff and crumpled as a dried chamois cloth. Noah did not know how long he could stay down.

He fingered the switchblade in his waistband, flinching as he did against the pain in his side. Only when the boat began to move and Noah’s eyes adjusted to the dim could he see the reason for the hefty tarpaulin—and it put his own blade to shame. A flash in the dark and his elbow struck against it: a box of weapons, knives and guns, ropes and, holy fuck, a crossbow.

Stay calm. Think of the facts.

This man was hunting the crash site. Why bring this arsenal if all he expected to find was a bunch of bodies?

Fear evaporated. Noah was consumed by hope; a rush that wasn’t born of desperation or denial, it was real, valid, firm enough to hold on to.

Angela.

Noah understood what this man intended to do.

But not if he got there first.

Time passed. He did not know how much. If only for a glimpse of sky or sea, a crack in the tarpaulin through which he could breathe. The cloying heat held him in a vacant state, tolerable if he remained absolutely still, a kind of half-consciousness. Noah could feel the shuddering engine, punctuated by the slop beneath his left ear, where a pocket of water seeped in.

His head throbbed with thirst.

He had seen the man stack a box of water and he imagined the bottles, became possessed by their proximity. He counted the number of cigarettes lit, could smell the smoke beneath his cover. Typically the man sparked up every ten or fifteen minutes: by that logic they had been on the water two hours.

He envisaged the map, all the islands in this great azure expanse, and their tiny boat dropped somewhere in the middle. Their destination was drawing closer.

Noah licked his lip in the hope a bead of moisture might swim across his tongue. The movement drenched him in sweat and before he could stop himself he shifted position, revealing a sliver of light, through which he could detect the man’s boots, heavy and black. He dared widen the aperture, drinking in new air. The man was sitting on the rim of the boat. He sucked dry a bottle of water and chucked the plastic onto the deck, where it rolled towards Noah, tantalisingly close but not close enough. Silver droplets shivered on the bottleneck.

He had to choose his moment. Wait until the man’s back was turned, his attention drawn, his defences down—because, despite the man’s extensive armoury, Noah had the best missile of all: ambush.

The man dropped his cigarette. He swore, and bent to retrieve it.

Now.

Noah sprang, quick as a cobra. The man was startled. He reeled backwards, his mouth an O of surprise.

He was quick to recover, but it was already too late. Noah propelled him onto the deck. He punched him hard, again and again, scarlet blood spilling, teeth cracking, a series of brutal pummels to the jaw. The boat tipped.

Noah was slammed. Stumbling, he put his hands out to
break his fall and landed against the tarpaulin. The men rolled and writhed, hands round each other’s necks, locked in combat. The man grinned, engaged now in the sport, and grabbed him and flipped him round so that Noah’s head was thrust directly above the churning motor. Lethal blades whirred inches from his throat, chopping slices of air, juddering closer, and a knee descended on his back and forced him down. Noah pushed, blood raging, filling his head with grit and fury.
No. Not yet.

He grabbed the edge of the boat, coarse with sand; the wood caked and cracked. His knuckles were white, holding him up, staying him from certain execution.

Instinct saved him. His other fist remembered. It dived to his waistband and wrapped around the handle of his blade. Pulling it out, in the same motion he blasted back against his assailant and launched them both into the air. Winded, the man bent double. He looked up, met Noah’s weapon, realised his own were trapped behind his adversary and his face leached of colour. The knife glinted in the tropical sun as the men circled each other.

Noah tasted blood.

The man pounced but Noah switched his dagger and then it happened: he felt it flick into the man’s soft, yielding gut.

The man choked, a splurge of red gushing from his mouth.

Soundlessly, holding Noah’s shoulders, eyes wide with fear and shock, he crumpled to the deck.

Noah killed the engine.

The boat sighed and slowed.

Above, a bird cawed.

It didn’t take much to push the man over the side. His body plopped into the water, face to the sky, amid a cloud of leaking crimson.

Noah drank two bottles of water and re-started the motor.

81

San Francisco

I
n a coffee shop on 7
^th
Street, Leith Friedman unplugged his computer, removed the buds from his ears and wiped his glasses on his T-shirt.

It was no good. He couldn’t focus, and he couldn’t work. He had not slept in forty-eight hours and his appetite was shot to shit. Things were falling apart.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ asked a smiling waitress. He had been nursing the same cup of coffee all afternoon. ‘No, thanks.’

‘Shout if you need me.’ She winked.

The wink made Leith paranoid. Did she know him? Over the years Leith had taken pains to be the invisible one: let Jacob do the talking and the deal-breaking; let him be the face. Not any more.

Leith felt sick.

He had never wanted in with the Russians in the first place. Now Jacob had gone and bitten it, it was him who was left to pick up the pieces.

He had
told
him no. He had said it was too much of a risk. Had Jacob listened? Had he hell.

Selfishly, the first thought that had occurred to Leith in
the hangover of the crash wasn’t how much he would mourn his business ally, rather it was how in Holy Mother’s name he was going to extricate himself from the MoveFriends surveillance deal. Jacob had been the one who pushed for these advances, pushed until he got his way, and Leith realised now he was gone that the car they had piloted had lost its engine. Leith was cowering in the back seat, just like always, just as he had three years ago before Jacob deigned to pull over and pick him up. The years of commerce might have taught him code, but they hadn’t taught him courage.

Heads in the coffee shop turned. Eyes swept across him. The heat of their examination made him sweat. Leith was ever more detectable as the Challenger coverage limped on. As Jacob Lyle’s professional partner, he had been approached for myriad interviews to discuss his loss. Leith had declined them all. Recently he had begun fantasising about being sixteen again, returning to his childhood home in Maine and sitting upstairs playing computer games in a darkened room all day long. That was the real Leith, not this one. The Maine kid was an ordinary, scrawny virgin, and Leith liked him. He preferred him. This Leith was an asshole. He was a man who sold his soul for money—to the Russian government.

Leith slotted his tablet into his satchel and pulled on his sweater, flicking up the hood.

Behind the bar, his waitress cashed up. The screen was on, playing out its usual carousel: a smiling Angela Silvers at her father’s side; Tawny Lascelles on the Paris runway; a weedy Kevin Chase performing for his fans; and Jacob, that cocksure friend who had maddened Leith but also saved him, shaking hands with the president. It had become the default picture-track to summer 2014. Not a day passed when those missing faces did not appear.

Of course he had gone to call it off with the Russians, as much as Leith’s limp approach to proceedings ever could. That made it sound so incidental, like cancelling a movie date, but five seconds in their company told him they were not backing down.

There was nobody else to help, nobody in whom they had confided.

We’re on our own
, Jacob had said, just a matter of weeks ago as he had brandished his glass for a toast, a lover of life and luck,
just the way I like it.

Leith exited the shop. He started walking, with no idea where he was going.

82

Day 50

‘I
’m getting off this island,’ said Jacob, dragging the raft down to the shore. ‘We’ve waited long enough. We stay here, we die.’

He had been toiling on the float for days, dragging armfuls of wood from the forest and sweating in the high heat of the day. Finally, it was ready to go.

‘You’re crazy,’ Angela told him. ‘We should wait for rescue. Keep the fire going. Hope the SOS gets picked up.’

But the claims were hollow, even to her ears: the SOS was a silent scream.

Jacob surveyed the group. ‘Who’s with me?’

Eve shook her head. ‘It’s suicide.’

‘Are you forgetting what happened to Tawny?’ Jacob got behind the logs. They rolled forward, gouging a scar in the sand. A gentle lift as the shallows took some of the weight. ‘Out there, at least we’ve got a shot.’

‘We don’t even know where we are.’

Jacob threw down his tools. He came so close that Eve could see herself reflected in his pupils.

‘But somebody does, right? Somebody out there knows we’re here
because they fixed us up
.’

‘Sabotage,’ said Kevin. ‘Except they failed.’

‘Damn right they failed. And I’m fucked if I’m letting them win now.’

‘You go out there, it’s guaranteed,’ said Angela. ‘It’s a dumb idea, Jacob.’

Jacob rounded on his companions. It was a sorry sight. The island was killing them, slowly but surely. Mosquito craters pimpled their chapped, peeled skin, leaking itchy sap that caked in the heat. Burn had turned to dark, indigenous tan, and clothes were worn at whim, sometimes not at all. Jacob didn’t recognise them as the people they had been, and that in turn made him fear for his own estrangement. He, too, was transformed. Meat and fish rotted in the heat, stinking and gathering flies. Fruit flushed their systems. Bacteria made it hard to hold on to nutrients long enough to have any benefit. Their bodies were telling them they had done all they could. This place wasn’t and never would be survivable.

He came to rest on Celeste. Gently he claimed her hand; he had to make her see that getting away was their only option. Jacob wanted to live—and, for the first time, for all the right reasons. He wanted it because now there was someone he wanted to live for. His life up until now had been hedonistic and selfish, gunning for the next screw or the next deal, maybe both at once. Celeste had shown him another path. He could not see this end.

Losing his vision, the miracle of its return, made him realise. True power could only be understood when one had been powerless.

‘The island isn’t safe,’ he said. ‘I’m not talking about the obvious; I’m talking about …
it
. You know what it is. Everyone does. There’s something here with us.’

The forest behind them shivered.

‘Can we be sure the person who did this isn’t already here?’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Angela.

‘Is it?’

‘What if Jacob’s right?’ Celeste whispered. ‘Whoever sabotaged that plane could have been watching all along.’

The group fell quiet. Since Eve had extracted the timer from Tawny’s appliance, they had run through every possibility—lovers they had jilted, co-stars they had snubbed, acquaintances from long ago they might have wounded—anything and everything from each of their pasts that might account for the vendetta.

And what a vendetta it was. Attempting to bump off a list of names like that …

It wasn’t just high profile; it was stratospheric.

This person had to have money: check. They had to have resources: check. They had to have ambition: check. Above all, they had to have hatred.

Who? Who despised them to such unimaginable lengths?

Was it a grudge against one person, or all seven? They sought a reason to connect them, the thread that had bound them to the same star-crossed fate.

‘We have to stay rational,’ said Angela. ‘That isn’t an option.’

‘Why not?’

‘What are we going on? Shadows at our backs, noises in the trees? It’s ridiculous.’

‘That flight attendant’s still out there,’ said Celeste. ‘Why couldn’t
they
be?’

‘She isn’t,’ said Angela flatly. Looking round the circle, she continued: ‘Show me evidence, hard evidence that this isn’t based on nightmares or paranoia or hysteria and I’ll consider it.’ She folded her arms. ‘There’s nothing to support this
theory. So forget about it, all right? Or else we’ll drive ourselves mad.’

‘We’re already there,’ said Jacob.

‘It isn’t big enough,’ said Kevin from the shore. ‘You won’t be able to carry us all.’