Terminal (37 page)

‘You don't know her. She's not a bad person.' Captain Franz dragged appreciatively on the cigarette he was holding in his free hand, while the other was handcuffed to the end of the table.

Parry and Danforth were both scrutinising him, and Parry's expression was unsympathetic. ‘Are you having a laugh, laddie? The Rebecca twin isn't
bad
, after everything she and her sister have done? After all the lives that have been ruined by the Styx, the death and destruction spread by the Armagi as they gut our country? Not a bad person? You can't be serious. Because if you are, you're more stupid than you look,' Parry barked at the New Germanian officer.

‘She's nothing like the others,' Captain Franz insisted.

Danforth had picked up one of his Purgers from where he'd
left it on the table and was repeatedly flicking the purple light on and off. ‘Maybe this one is a dud, which is why I've failed to deprogramme our friend here?' he suggested sarcastically.

Captain Franz was indignant. ‘I know what I'm saying. And I've told you as much as I can remember and, yes, I witnessed some terrible things. Maybe I was walking around in a cloud because of the Darklighting, but I saw her good side too. She has to go along with what's expected of her. She's only following orders.'

‘Pah!' Parry exploded. ‘That old chestnut.
I was only following orders.
No, your little Styx girl is as evil and driven as any of them.'

‘You've got my Rebecca all wrong,' Captain Franz said indignantly. ‘And anyway, she's more than a girl. The Styx grow up faster th—'

Parry held up a hand. ‘For God's sake, man, I've heard enough.' He noticed that Eddie and one of his men were waiting in the entrance of the tent.

‘Stay there,' Parry said unnecessarily to Captain Franz, then rose from his chair, putting more weight than usual on his walking stick due to his fatigue. Danforth followed him to where the two men were waiting.

‘Pretty boy's all yours. See if you can get anything useful out of him,' Parry said in a low voice to Eddie, glancing over his shoulder at the blond New Germanian who was contemplating the burning tip of his cigarette.

‘So he hasn't said anything useful?' Eddie asked.

‘No, unless you're interested in ladies' fashion or the Styx's predilection for luxury cars,' Danforth chimed in.

Parry shook his head ‘He's not at all clear about where he's been, and all the places he has pointed us to are historic. The
Styx have long since vacated them. He's also completely deluded about that Rebecca twin. I don't know how much of it's because of the neural damage from being over-Darklit, or from his infatuation for her.'

‘The infatuation is genuine?' Eddie asked.

‘Seems to be,' Parry replied, his grey brows hiking with incredulity.

‘So you want me to use more extreme methods on him,' Eddie offered.

Parry nodded. ‘But don't rough him up too much, because he might come in handy if we need some leverage on the Rebecca twin,' Parry replied, and he and Danforth left the tent.

Danforth stopped with surprise as he noticed the row of black helicopters in the field beside their temporary camp. ‘When did they show up?' he asked.

‘While we were in with Captain Franz,' Parry replied. ‘Five of the very latest US Sikorsky UH-60 gunships – a generous peace offering from my friend Bob. The Americans have been moving more of their fleet over to our side of the Atlantic, and these have just been delivered to us straight from one of their carriers.'

‘I didn't hear them arrive,' Danforth said.

Parry rubbed his hands together in anticipation. ‘That's rather the point. They're the latest word in stealth, with highly damped engines and filtered exhaust manifolds, so the heat trace is minimal. I reckon Bob has only been so generous because he wants to see if the Armagi can hear them.'

Danforth's eyes flashed with interest. ‘Maybe I can suggest a use for them right away.' They saw a soldier emerging from one of the many tents with a small device in his hands. ‘If my
apprentice over there has built me the scanner I asked for to track the signal from that VLF beacon I picked up before, maybe we should find out who's at the end of it.'

Parry was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Yes, if it's one of our team back from the inner world, then maybe – just maybe – they'll have something that can help us.' He looked up at the ominous clouds collecting in the sky. ‘Right now, I'd settle for even a minor miracle.'

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

E
lliott seemed to have no hesitation when it came to choosing which way they needed to go, although there was the odd occasion when she simply stood there, as if listening to a voice that Will couldn't hear. Then she was off again, always keeping him right at her side, as they both ducked from doorway to doorway along the street, scouring the darkness ahead for Limiters or Armagi.

‘I recognise this,' Will told her as they came to Euston Road, and began across it using the vehicles as cover. And then later, as they continued in their painstakingly slow stop-start way, they came to a place that triggered a flood of memories for him.

‘Russell Square,' he told Elliott, as they turned into it. Then they saw something that halted them in their tracks. Right in front of them, in the middle of the road, was the tail section of a passenger aircraft. From the way the piece of fuselage had crashed down on top of the traffic, with many twisted and scorched cars underneath, it had happened when the troubles had only just started and people were trying to leave London as quickly as they could. And leave the country
itself, if they could find a seat on an aeroplane.

Will gazed at the burnt and peeling paint on the blue-and-white tail fins, and was only stirred into action when Elliott nudged him on. They went diagonally across the square, moving through what had been an area of grass where people once ate their sandwiches on the benches at lunchtime. It was very different now; the burning aviation fuel had scorched every inch of the ground, and the trees were reduced to severe black spikes of charcoal.

There were more sections of the aircraft to negotiate at the far corner of the square, then, as they entered the road that led from it, a change came over Elliott. She seemed to throw caution to the wind, pulling ahead of Will without taking the usual care to shield him. He didn't complain but went with it, quite relieved that they were no longer moving at a snail's pace.

As they advanced further down the road, it struck Will why the area was so familiar – he'd walked this very same route on many occasions with Dr Burrows, and the large building Will could see was where his father had often taken him at weekends. Sure enough, on the railings were several posters advertising the latest exhibitions, and confirming that Will was right.

He tapped Elliott on the shoulder. ‘So this is where we've been heading all the time?' he asked her, to which she nodded. ‘You do realise it's the British Museum,' he told her excitedly, pointing at the three-storey wing set back around twenty feet behind the railings.

She'd been staring fixedly at the building, but now turned her attention to the railings, taking hold of them as if she was considering scaling them. ‘How do we get in?' she asked.

‘Let's go round to the front,' he replied.

Elliott began to run and Will had a job to keep up with her.

‘Wait a moment,' he said to her as they reached the corner. ‘What's the big hurry? And are you really sure this is where you need to be?'

‘It is,' she replied immediately.

Will took her to the main gates. Although they were closed, there was a smaller pedestrian entrance to the side, which allowed them to enter the museum grounds. Despite the fact that everything was in pitch darkness, Will had Drake's lens over his eye, which rendered the scene as clearly as if it was daylight.

As Will followed Elliott onto the forecourt, the strong connection with his past buoyed him up. This museum, with its impressive Greek-temple facade, was something he knew so well, and was so dear to him.

For a moment Will was transported back to happier and more certain times. Many of his earliest memories were from excursions to museums, particularly this one, although Dr Burrows had had his own agenda for each visit and made little or no provision for his son, rarely stopping to explain any of the exhibits to him. But as Will had grown older and more independent, he'd left his father to go off and do his own thing, only meeting up with Dr Burrows again by the entrance when it was time for them to return to Highfield.

But as the wind blew and all the rubbish on the museum forecourt was whipped into chaotic animation, it looked so desolate. No more was the place bustling with tourists as he remembered it from sunny Sunday mornings, with the constant squeal of London cabs pulling up to drop off or pick up people.

‘They're like the lights in the Colony,' Elliott said
abruptly, pointing at the lampposts dotted around the grounds. Other than the fact that they didn't have the glowing luminescent orbs atop their iron posts, she was right; Will could see the similarity. He was about to agree with her when Elliott came to a stop, holding her head as if she was listening to her inaudible voice again.

She began to run towards the middle of the three doors at the main entrance. As she reached it, she was pulling on it and rattling it with such force that the sound was reverberating all around the forecourt. She was wasting her time because it was firmly locked. Then she tried the other glass doors, making just as much noise.

‘Hey!' Will hissed. ‘Are you
trying
to draw attention to us or something?'

He could see that she was frantic to get inside, her eyes darting back and forth over the entrance as if she couldn't believe that one of the doors wasn't open.

‘Are you sure this is where you want to go?' he asked.

‘We've got to break in,' she babbled, kicking the glass panel at the bottom of the door. ‘Or blow our way in.'

‘Stop it. For God's sake calm down, Elliott,' he urged her, shaking her by the arm. ‘We can't do that. Let's try over there.' He pointed to the side wing of the museum at the far end of the forecourt.

She began to race where he'd indicated, to a building that was set back from the front of the museum but constructed of the same pale Portland stone.

Someone had used a car to ram the doors open, abandoning it on the steps once they were in. Will and Elliott climbed over it to reach the black painted door, which creaked open on a single hinge.

A little way inside sheets of grimy-looking cardboard had been laid on the marble floor, with some old blankets left in a heap. Judging by the empty sweet wrappers and food packets, someone had been living there, although there was no sign that they were still around.

Will made sure the door was shut behind them. He'd never been in this part of the museum before, and quickly deduced from the signs on the doors that they were administrative offices. Then he caught up with Elliott who was already heading in the direction of the public galleries. Whether or not she was following whatever was driving her on, they didn't need to employ any detective work to find the way through because of the scuff marks on the floor and the trail of items left there, including more sweet wrappers and empty drink cans.

They went through some doors which, from the splintered wood around the locks, Will could see had been forced, and then into the Ancient Greek and Roman galleries. Will was taking in the Minoan and Mycenae items in the display cases, many of them old friends, on the way.

And then they found themselves in the museum quadrangle, a large space that had formerly been open to the elements but which was now enclosed by a modern tessellated glass roof. In the middle of the quadrangle sat the circular building called the Reading Room. Their boots echoed through the massive space as they headed towards it.

Will noticed that Elliott wasn't making the slightest effort to check around them. ‘S'pose we're pretty safe in here,' Will said, more to assure himself than trying to make a point to her. ‘And whoever was here seems to have gone now. I guess a museum isn't the first place you'd think of for food,' he said. His stomach had other ideas, rumbling loudly as he wondered
if all the supplies of sweets and Coke had been plundered by the ramraiders in the car.

Elliott came to an abrupt halt, her head cocked to one side, as if she was listening out again.

‘Where to now?' Will whispered.

Holding her hand up, she shushed him, then closed her eyes.

‘Well, you have the choice of African, Middle Eastern, or Eur—' he began, trying to impress her with his knowledge of the various departments, when she began to talk over him.

‘No … up there,' she said slowly, blinking her eyes open and edging further around until the walkway extending between the reading room and the back wall of the quadrangle came into sight.