Resonance (16 page)

Had it all been a ruse? She'd delivered him to ParaDim and now she was being congratulated?

Graham drew back inside the room. He had to get out. He had to get out now. This wasn't a hospital, this was a trap.

He knelt down and quickly tied his shoes. His mind raced. There was no window in the room. The only way out was back through the corridor.

He pressed up against the door and opened it a crack. The two of them were still there—his mother and the man with the eyes—still talking amiably. Someone else—a nurse by her uniform—was waiting by the lift.

He opened the door further. There was a door to the stairs opposite. Ten feet away. He could be through it before anyone could react.

He hesitated, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. To go or not to go? Fear on both sides. He had to decide. He had to decide quickly.

He threw himself across the corridor, his right hand outstretched, praying that the door was a push and not a pull. The door gave way, swinging back behind him. He was on the stairs and running, his ears closed to any possible pursuit. He didn't want to know if he'd been seen. He just wanted out.

The stairs took him to the ground floor. He pushed through, slowing to a brisk walk, trying to look as though he belonged. The corridor was wide and empty, his shoes squeaked faintly on the polished black marble.

He kept walking. Double swing doors came off to his left and right. None of them looked like potential exits. He could see the entrance lobby, the fountain, the lift. Everything empty. Maybe he could slip out unnoticed? Thirty yards, twenty. Still no one had seen him.

A phone rang in reception. A male voice answered.

"No, Mr. Cross, no one has left the building in the last ten minutes."

Graham hung back out of sight. The reception desk was set back against the wall opposite the entrance. Whoever sat there couldn't see down the corridor.

A light above the lift doors flashed. The lift had left the first floor. It was on its way down.

Graham ran for the exit, his footsteps echoing on the marble.

"Excuse me!" shouted a voice from reception. Graham kept going, across the lobby towards the doors.

"Stop!" A shout this time, the scrape of a chair pushed back against the hard marble floor. The lift bell rang.

Graham continued, his hand outstretched towards the door, a silent world, just him and a glass door, everything else pushed far away into a peripheral world of slow-motion inconsequence.

The revolving door gave way with a stutter. Graham pushed harder, the doors began to fly, Graham chased after them, his feet dancing in small staccato steps.

He lurched through onto the pavement, almost toppling over. Everything quiet, just the groaning of the doors and his feet bouncing off the paving stones. He skidded into a turn and ran blindly towards the corner. The pavement empty, the—

"Stop!"

A shout from behind. Graham kept going. A strange whine split the air, increasing in volume and then . . . an explosion. A few yards above his head. Shards of stone and brick dust fell like rain, hitting his head and shoulders. He flinched and ducked but kept running, blinking through the cloud of dust. There was a left turn, a side street up ahead. He was almost there. A few yards to go. Another whine, he could feel the air crackle, his hair felt like it was standing on end.

He ducked and threw himself into the side street, lost his footing and tumbled onto the trunk of a car parked on the corner.

An explosion rent the air. Masonry tumbled from the first floor of the building opposite. And glass. He looked up. Two windows had blown out. There was a hole in the building the size of a football.

He pushed himself off the car trunk. The car was damaged too. The roof was crumpled and the rear window stoved in. But not from the explosion. This was old damage.

He glanced around. The whole street was damaged—debris everywhere, buildings pock-marked, windows missing, blinds sucked through shattered panes.

"Stop!"

That voice again, nearer this time. He ran, his feet crunching over glass and chips of stone and brick. Everything so empty—no people, no traffic—nothing moving except him and his pursuer.

And there was a burning smell in the air. Why hadn't he smelled it before? And a distant roar—like passing within a mile of a football stadium on a Saturday afternoon.

And a whine.

That whine.

The one that split the air, shrill and growing in volume.

There was a doorway on his left—recessed into the building. An office. He leapt sideways. He could feel the air burn as he did so. A car ten feet away exploded. Its roof jumped fifteen feet in the air. A cloud of black smoke, the sound of debris falling like hail on the pavement.

The office door was locked. He rattled the handle. The sound of running feet was coming closer. There was a slab of masonry on the floor. He picked it up, heaved it through the glass door, kicked the remaining shards free and climbed through. If there was only one man he could lose him in the building. There'd be a fire exit, a back door, a place he could hide.

He raced up the stairs, swung around the landing, glanced back to the door, no one there.

Yet.

He took the next flight. Everything was dark but no hint of the carnage that had wrecked the street. He cut across the first floor, following a corridor that snaked between rooms. White walls, blue carpet, natural wood doors. He reached the end, not the lobby and back staircase he'd been hoping for but a large open-plan office with windows on three sides.

"Where are ya, ya bastard!"

The words came—fast and angry—from the stairs behind him. Graham slipped away from the door, looking left and right, desperately searching for somewhere to hide, a fire exit, a back door, anything!

Crash!
Graham jumped. It sounded like a door being kicked in back down the corridor. Graham wove in and out of the clusters of desks towards the back of the building. There were some screens in the near corner, he squeezed through. There was a desk and a large array of filing cabinets. He found a gap between them and the wall and wedged himself into it.

Another door flew back against its hinges.

"Bastard!"

It was more a scream than a shout. A man losing control. Graham pressed himself further back against the wall.

More doors, more shouts, the man sounded close to tears.

Crash!
Another door, much closer this time. Maybe too close. The man might be in the same room as Graham.

"Andy? Are you in here?" A second voice—male, authoritative, further away.

"Come on out, ya bastard! I can smell you." The first voice again, getting higher and higher pitched.

A click. A low whine. That weapon, it must be charging again. Graham squeezed his eyes shut and tried to dissolve into the fabric of the wall.

Footsteps along the corridor, fast and heavy.

"Andy!"

The whining continued, building up.

"Andy!" The second man was in the room now. "Are you mad? Andy? Listen to me! Put that weapon down."

There was no reply. Graham swallowed hard.

"Come on, Andy. Don't be stupid. Put the gun down." The voice calm and authoritative.

"That's an order, constable. Put the gun on the desk. Now!"

There was a click and the whining stopped.

Then there was a crash. Graham could feel the internal wall at his back vibrate. One of the men must have been thrown against it.

"What are you playing at, lad? Are you stupid? You could get put away for using one of those. Where'd you get it?"

Another crash, another vibration in the wall.

"Answer me! Where'd you get it?"

"From one of the smellies," Andy said, his voice quiet and subdued at first, then becoming more animated. "You saw what it was like out there, Sarge. They're better armed than we are."

"That's as maybe but . . ."

"They were killing us out there. And laughing at us. That looter must have been one of them. I couldn't let him get away. I couldn't."

There was a burst of static followed by a metallic voice. "All units report to Brompton Road immediately. Repeat. All units fall back to Brompton Road."

"Come on, we'd better go," said the sergeant.

"What about the looter?"

"He'll keep."

Graham listened to them leave, following their feet along the corridor and trying to catch the sound of their boots crunching on the broken glass in the foyer. Only then did he feel safe to come out of hiding and brush himself off.

His hands hit an unexpected pocket. He looked down. His jacket was different—more pockets, lots of zips. He hadn't noticed before. Though he should have expected something like it. He must have unravelled leaving the clinic.

He checked his pockets, searching for his note. He found a computer disk in an inside pocket and stared at it—surprised—why would he carry a computer disk? He flipped it over, but there was nothing written on either side. He put it back and continued his search. He found his note in the next pocket.

Graham Smith
Home Address: 47 Wealdstone Lane (but
staying at 12 Westminster Street until it's safe) 

He reread the last line.
Staying at 12 Westminster Street until it's safe.
He was sleeping at work? What could have happened to make his home unsafe?

Graham looked out the window on his left, hanging back so that he couldn't be seen from the street. The buildings opposite looked undamaged—no pockmarked facade, no broken panes. Had the street at the back of the building somehow escaped? He leaned a little closer. The parked cars looked undamaged too. And there was no debris on the street. Everything looked normal.

Except there were no people and no traffic.

And it was the middle of the morning rush hour.

Where was everybody? Had there been a riot? Was there some kind of curfew in place and he'd been mistaken for a looter?

And what kind of weapon had that been?

He noticed a newspaper in a waste bin by the desk and retrieved it. It was dated Tuesday, June 20, 2000. Yesterday.

He glanced at the headline. Monopolies row spills over into trade talks.

He read further.

The proposed breakup of ParaDim and Sylvestrus Industries took another turn yesterday when Adam Sylvestrus, CEO of ParaDim, confirmed that plans to relocate all their operations to "friendly" countries were in an advanced stage.
 

"ParaDim and Sylvestrus Industries will not be broken up," he asserted. "We will move all our operations to countries that still believe in a free market economy."
 

Only North America, Europe and Australasia still back the antitrust legislation that, if ratified, will break ParaDim into thirty separate companies and Sylvestrus Industries—the manufacturing arm of ParaDim—into five.
 

The most controversial aspect of the proposed breakup is the placement of ParaDim Defense under American military control. A Pentagon spokesman reiterated yesterday that the catastrophic weapons proliferation of the past two years had to be brought to an end."
 

Sylvestrus, addressing a meeting of the Latin American and Asian trade delegations in London last night, declared the antitrust legislation to be politically motivated. "The Pentagon has wanted to get their hands on ParaDim from its inception. Not to share information as we have, but to keep the information for themselves."
 

Trade delegates had earlier been told that America would use sanctions against any country that worked to undermine the antitrust legislation. "ParaDim has to be broken up. It's too big and too powerful. Power has to reside with the people and their elected governments, not big business."
The London trade talks were further hit by threats from the Japanese and ASEAN delegations to walk out. "The new tariffs are biased against New Technology products and particularly ParaDim-generated New Technology."
 

The one piece of good news for the trade talks came late last night. After protracted talks with the police, antiglobalization protestors have agreed to move this afternoon's rally from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park. Organizers expect thirty thousand people to attend. Police are confident they can now keep protestors away from the trade talks. 

Graham looked up. Hyde Park was just to the north, less than half a mile away. Had yesterday afternoon's rally turned into a riot?

He walked over to the windows along the northern wall. Smoke rose between gaps in the buildings, the horizon dotted by fire and columns of thick black smoke. The building opposite was pitted with damage, there was a car slewed sideways in the middle of the street.

And yet some buildings were untouched. In fact, looking to the left, the whole street seemed untouched. It was like throwing open a window after a tornado had passed. Some buildings, some streets, were unaffected. Others were wrecked. Destruction at its most random.

Lights suddenly flickered on. The whole room awash with light. Graham turned towards the door. Had someone flicked a switch?

No one was there.

Screens flashed into life, computers hummed, printers clicked. The power had come back on. Had it been turned on at the mains? Was someone downstairs?

And was that a voice? He could hear someone talking nearby. He dropped down behind a desk. Was it the police? Looters? The owners of the building?

Music played. A snatch of a song, more voices. A television?

He moved towards the door, listening intently. No sound of footsteps on the stairs. Everything quiet except for that one voice, calm and matter-of-fact—a woman.

" . . . thirty-six people dead and another eighty-seven critically injured. Eleven policemen lost their lives. Two looters shot dead."

Graham followed the voice along the corridor, listening to the tale of destruction, the individual acts of heroism, the unthinking acts of violence, the statistics.

Another voice took over by the time he reached the room and looked inside. A television was hanging on the wall like a picture. A terrifying picture of London at night—ablaze with fear and hatred.