The Boathouse (24 page)

The gates slammed shut and the powerful twelve-cylinder car sped off inside the dark estate. Archer felt the adrenalin surging through his body. He looked at Forsyth as she checked her own gun, a sturdy Glock 9 mm. She had been an unexpectedly good partner, but he couldn't let her risk her life for him, not now, not here.

“Let's go,” she said.

“No. I can't allow you to take the risk.”

“What are you talking about? It's my choice.”

“Look, Sarah, I can't put anyone else's life at risk. Not for my own personal crusade.”

“What about saving Becky and Louise?”

“There's more to it than that. It's about me and Sinclair and you know it.”

“Okay. I know that. But those stupid sisters both knew what they were up against too. They're a pair of deadbeats, and I wouldn't risk my life for them, but you can't do this alone. I'm choosing to help you. So I'm coming with you whether you like it or not.”

“No. Look, I'm touched. You've been amazing, but I'm sorry. I can't let you do it. I can't let anything happen to you like it did to Alex. Stay on this side of the wall. Walk the perimeter and see what's happening across the other side over there where the lights are coming from. But stay hidden and don't get caught. You may need to call the cavalry if anything goes wrong.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Just recon, so don't worry. We'll meet back at the car, in exactly one hour.”

“Okay, one hour. Keep me posted by text and be careful.”

She kissed him on the lips and gave him a spontaneous hug, squeezing him tight like she didn't want to let him go. He climbed back up the old log and stood on top of it as the moon broke through the clouds. He took his leather jacket off and threw it over the spirals of shiny razor wire. He looked down and saw her watching him. There was no one else around inside or out and no cameras. The estate looked completely deserted except for a sodium glow about a mile away in the far corner.

He slowly pulled himself up, shimmied over the jacket on top of the wall, threw his feet over the edge and jumped onto the soft grass below, landing in a squat position. He took a breath and stood up slowly. He was on his own now. Inside the grounds without any proper backup or support, but he couldn't involve Forsyth any further. His jacket snagged on the razor wire and ripped as he pulled it down by a dangling arm. He cursed and put it back on but it was badly torn in the front. He didn't worry about material things and normally he would have just left it there, but it was special. It was his last present from Alex.

In the distance he could see the outline of an old country house. It looked to be in monumental disrepair. Between him and the house he could make out a wire security fence. He walked towards the fence, constantly looking around in all directions. There were no lights to be seen in this dark corner of the estate. It was cloudy, but the moonlight enabled him to see where he was going.

He tried to make sense of the situation, but couldn't focus on anything except Sinclair and the Boathouse. He headed for the old building across the long grass, avoiding thick clumps of tall spiky thistles. The ground was uneven with molehills and rabbit holes making it slow going. He could feel the wind on his face and hear the sea crashing against the rocks in the distance. The air was fresh and he could taste the salt from the sea.

He couldn't stop thinking about the Audi S8. Who had been in it just now? Why had they come here tonight? Archer's head was still spinning at the thought that Sinclair was the person he had spent fourteen months looking for.

The Boathouse had to be here somewhere. The reason Alex had been killed. The clandestine location about which people he had pursued were too afraid to talk.

The wire fence was six feet high with four parallel strands of barbed wire running above it. He took a small pair of snips from his bag. There was no sign of it being electrified. He touched it quickly to check it. No shock.

He cut the diamond shaped wires next to a galvanised metal post from the ground to about half way up and put the snips back in his bag. He crouched and crawled on all fours through the loosened corner of the fence. It must have rained earlier as the grass was still damp.

Once inside the first fence he had no idea about who or what to expect next. He looked around, but there was nobody in sight, so he kept walking towards the large ruined building.

A dog barked in the distance, from near the cliff edge. It barked again. The sound was getting louder.

He grabbed his razor-sharp survival knife from its ankle holder. It felt familiar and comforting. His grandmother's ex-Mossad friend had spent days teaching him how to use it.

He crouched down on one knee and looked towards the approaching sound. The wind picked up, the cloud broke. A charging Rottweiler leapt towards his head, slobbering jaws wide open, ready to sink its sharp teeth into his neck.

Archer ducked to one side and drove the sharp serrated knife deep into its throat, still in mid-air. He twisted it ninety degrees and pulled it straight back out. The dog yelped at the initial impact of the blade before crashing into a dead heap on the ground with a dull lifeless thud. Archer wiped the knife on his thigh and slid it back into its holder. Normally he liked dogs, but not killer dogs, and especially not killer Rottweilers.

He looked around. No more dogs. No more sounds except the sea crashing tirelessly into the rocks, the wind lashing the coast and his heart pounding inside his ribcage. He took a deep breath to steel himself and carried on walking towards the large building until he heard shouting in the distance.

It was either the dog handler or a roving guard out looking for the dog on foot. Archer crouched down next to a tall thistle and waited. The shouts came closer. He fell flat on his stomach as the clouds broke and the direct moonlight threatened to expose him. He could hear the guard heading straight for him.

He sprang up and tackled the guard from the side, knocking him over and landing on top of his muscular thigh. The guard was quick. He had a gun out, pointed at Archer's head. It was a fight for survival. He moved and placed his boot against Archer's neck and told him to get up. Archer moved back slightly, putting both his hands up head high.

“It's not me you need to worry about, it's him,” he said.

The guard flinched and looked sideways with his eyes. Archer kicked the gun out of the guard's hand and pulled out his survival knife. In one swift move he threw it quickly and confidently into the guard's neck. It pierced straight through the cartilage of his Adam's apple. Archer pulled his knife out, causing the guard's neck wound to gurgle with blood as the man's last breath escaped. He wiped the warm blood off the knife onto his thigh and put it back in the ankle holder. He'd killed before, but never an innocent man. His senses sharpened, but he felt no remorse. It was too late to turn back now and he had no intention of doing so.

He explored the external wall of the old ruined building, which was boarded up. He put his ear to one of the boards and listened. No sound, not even bats. He walked towards the back and found a large metal tank next to a brick outbuilding with yellow warning signs: high voltage electricity. It reeked of diesel. It was the fuel tank for an emergency generator. He took out a plastic explosive charge and detonator from the bag on his back. It looked like a small tin of shoe polish and was magnetic. He stuck it on the tank next to the outlet manifold.

The outbuilding was a sub-station with a sturdy grey metal door which was locked. Next to it was a green metal fence surrounding heavy-duty electrical equipment. Inside the fence was a transformer the size of a garden shed. Humming away with a low-frequency electrical buzz.

He ripped a branch off one of the bushes planted to hide the fence. Wedged another charge into the branch, held it over the fence and lowered it gently onto the transformer, next to one of three large antennae sticking out of the top. He then went around the back of the building and saw bright lights and a dozen or more buildings four hundred yards away towards the west, next to the coast.

The buildings were a mixture of old green hangars and portable grey cabins inside a high-security fence, similar to the ones used at power stations. Archer noticed there were several cars and Land Rovers parked inside. The Audi S8 was there too. Off to the left just inside the compound was a track and a path that crossed it leading down towards the sea.

He stayed in the shadows away from the lights, which meant keeping close to the cliff edge. He hated walking near sheer drops in case his demons tempted him. As he got closer to the fence he could see that it was electric and well lit with cameras on tall metal posts.

He peered over the edge of the cliff and saw a ledge ten feet down. The ledge was narrow but constant. He climbed down and braced himself as he edged his way along with his back pressed hard against the rock face. He seemed to be moving in slow motion. His heart rate increased and his breathing became shallow. His vision narrowed and went black and white. He fought it. Now was not a good time to have a panic attack. If he blacked out now he was a dead man. If the fall didn't kill him then the waves would smash him to pieces. He took a deep breath and focused on staying alive.

Facing out to sea there was nothing to break the wind that hit him full in his face, which was starting to go numb. His lips tasted salty from the sea. The south-west wind was straight off the Atlantic. Only sea, wind and rain for thousands of miles until America.

The bay on his right-hand side had a deep scoop out of the high cliffs with a concrete road leading somewhere out of sight. He looked down and saw the surf crash and surge all around craggy black arms of volcanic rock. He felt himself being pulled towards the hypnotic draw of the sea. He caught himself just in time – instinctively pushing his shoulder bag and his back hard into the cliff.

He continued until he was past the electric fence. As he looked up he could see it overhanging the top of the cliff above him. He edged his way around a sharp rock and saw the steep rocky bay into which the sea was rolling and foaming. He climbed down to a narrow path and followed it around a slow bend. A Land Rover Defender was parked next to an old grey building. Archer headed towards it with purpose. Drawn to it like steel to a magnet.

This was it. A disused lifeboat station with a steep rusty-looking slipway going down into the stormy sea. He'd finally found the Boathouse.

All kinds of thoughts rushed around inside his head as he walked towards it, but all he wanted to do was break down and weep. This rusty old building housed the reason why Alex had been killed.

It began to rain. The Atlantic Ocean made its formidable presence known. The wind and rain lashed him as he continued to descend a succession of steep pathways until he reached the gun-metal grey Land Rover. There was not much room to pass between the cliff face on one side and the sheer drop on the other. The sea crashed against the rocks below and he decided to pass it on the safer side next to the rock. He squeezed through the gap and stood between the vehicle and the Boathouse. The door was ten feet in front of him. It opened slowly with the sound of rusty hinges creaking and a guard filling the doorframe.

For a moment that seemed to last for an age they simply stared at each other. Trying to figure out the next move. Tactically waiting for the other one to move first.

“Who are you?”

“I do spot checks for Mr Sinclair,” Archer said confidently, despite feeling tense.

“Nobody told me.”

“It's a test.”

“I'll have to radio this in.”

“I can't let you do that, I'm afraid.”

As the guard walked up to him he pulled out his radio. Archer snatched it from his hand and threw it over the edge. The guard rushed at him and threw a slow punch, but Archer ducked and hit him in the stomach. The guard reeled at first, but then he bent forward and charged at Archer, headbutting him in the stomach and knocking the wind out of him.

He was pressed against the front of the solid Land Rover. The guard grabbed Archer around the neck and pushed him towards the cliff edge. Archer managed to turn, but the guard slipped. He grabbed at Archer, causing them both to fall to the ground. They wrestled and grappled at the edge of the cliff. Archer headbutted him and kicked him in the knee. The guard fell back and his legs dangled over the edge. He grabbed Archer's legs to save himself, but his momentum took the rest of his body over. Archer tried to kick him off, but the guard's grip was too strong. Archer felt himself falling forward as the man's whole bodyweight pulled him over the edge. Archer fell feet first and they both slid towards the sea over loose rocks.

The guard fell over fifty feet to the foaming sea and jagged rocks below. Archer fell ten feet and his shoulder landed hard on the narrow rocky ledge, then his head hit the rock.

He woke up on the ledge with the sea crashing hard against the black rocks below. He felt as cold as death, as cold as the icy wind battering him and fuelling the damp that had crawled inside his bones. A deep chill had crept along the back of his skull and down his spine. His ribs hurt. His ears rang. Even his eyelids ached. They felt as if they were made of lead. They opened slightly, but then clanked shut again from the sting of the salty sea air. For a moment he didn't know where he was or what had happened, but as the rain lashed into his face it all slowly came back to him like a bad dream.

The noise in his head still resonated like thunder, echoing around his brain. A dull ache throbbed inside his jaw. He clenched his teeth together to try and stop the pain, then tried to open his mouth, but it was too painful. His left cheek and his top lip were sore. He touched his face and felt a sliver of skin that had been ripped right off. The scar being washed clean by the rain.

His predicament threatened to crush him into submission. He was balancing precariously on the edge of a vertical cliff face. Teetering on a ledge with a sheer death drop beneath him. Down on the black ragged rocks below, the livid sea was frothing away like a boiling cauldron. Battering the dark cliffs with a thunderous fanfare that was already pounding a dead man into a bloody pulp.

But he had no urge to jump. He refused to give in. Breathing in slowly and calmly, he summoned up sufficient courage from somewhere deep inside. He consciously took a moment to find a reason to survive. Conscious of his past and what he still had to do. He dug deep and felt a powerful will to live – he wasn't going to give in now that he was so close. His adrenalin kicked in and gave him added strength.

He looked up and saw a sheer wet rock face. There was no doubt that it would be a perilous climb. His heart sank briefly, but he fought the dread and self-doubt.

With effort, he straightened back up and ignored the pain. He was physically shaken and his skin was scratched, but he was not seriously injured. Everything still worked well enough to climb. There was an abseiling rope dangling from the old Boathouse, but he couldn't get to it. The cliff face between the ledge and the rope looked like a sheet of glass.

The only way to survive was to climb straight back up. Flashes of lightning lit the bay like a strobe light and thunder rumbled overhead.

Archer found a foothold in a crevice that seemed to run all the way to the top. He grabbed inside it and pushed himself up with one leg and pulled with one arm, then found another hold for his left leg on a nub of rock sticking out.

He fought and struggled for hand- and footholds, but slowly made progress with either a foot or a hand slipping occasionally, but managing to save himself with the other. Somehow he clawed his way back up the rock face to reach the edge. Once he pulled himself over the top he lay on his front for a moment of sheer relief before he got up and found his bag.

He was completely drenched to the skin. The rain was stinging his bruised and scarred face. He opened the creaky Boathouse door and went inside. His joints ached as he walked, but he fought back the only way he knew how: he simply kept moving forward.

The rain lashed hard against the metal walls and roof. Its volume grew louder until it sounded like a water cannon. Archer cleared his wet eyes with his fingers and saw a grey lifeboat facing a steep incline down to the sea below. It looked as if someone had been working on the boat as there were red tool chests on wheels and an assortment of spanners sprawled over the floor.

He walked to the back and found a sliding grey steel door. He pulled the metal lever towards him and slowly pulled the rusty door open just enough to look inside. It revealed a wide corridor carved into the rock and lit only by dim safety lighting at ground level. The corridor went deep into the cliff in the direction of the hangars. It felt cold and smelt of mouldy decay and damp. Archer guessed it must be the entrance to a tunnel that linked the Boathouse with the compound above. He went inside and the sprung door startled him as it slammed shut behind him.

The tunnel hummed with high-voltage electricity. He followed it for over a hundred yards and found another grey steel door with a long lever. He pushed the lever down, opening the door on to a dimly lit but even wider corridor. It looked empty so he continued. The corridor had dark murky holding cells on the right-hand side. Ten foot by ten foot squares with thick glass fronts. Each cell had an LED screen and a glass tank of coiled-up snakes.

The last cell had a light above it which created a mirror effect in the glass. Archer looked at himself in the reflection. He looked like hell. His face was dark, puffed with scars and sore with bruises. Dark dried blood was smeared all over the remains of the camouflage paint. He'd lost his beanie in the fall. His hair was thoroughly messed up. He looked away. However bad he looked it wasn't as bad as he felt.

At the end of the corridor there was another grey steel door with a vertical steel ladder fixed to the wall next to it. The door was locked. A small sign on it said Equipment Room. The ladder accessed a metal catwalk overhead. It seemed to provide maintenance access to all the exposed pipes and cables up above.

He climbed the ladder and walked along the catwalk towards a large air duct. He was directly above the equipment room. There was a grille in the ceiling beneath the catwalk. He lay flat on his stomach and could see inside. It was full of electronic equipment in tall racks: communications hardware, network servers and CCTV recorders. He dislodged the grille enough to get his hand through and dropped another shoe-polish-sized charge on top of the nearest rack.

He heard the faint sound of people talking. He got back up and walked towards a large air vent in the wall with slats angled away from him at forty-five degrees.

Somewhere on the other side of the wall a door slammed. The muffled voices grew louder. He looked through the slats into the space below. A droplet of sweat ran down his forehead and stung his left eye. He wiped it and took a deep breath.

There was a much larger room on the other side of the wall. It was like a warehouse with a ramp up to ground level inside what appeared to be one of the hangars. A dozen people were talking in one area and moving equipment on pallet trucks in another. There were cameras on tripods and huge portable lighting rigs on hydraulic arms and wheels.

A stocky bald man in a dark suit dished out orders like a sergeant major on parade.

“Five minutes, everybody out except the medics,” he shouted.

Objects were wheeled around frantically. Lights flashed on and off and the area was chaotic until all but three of the men in sight went up the ramp and a noisy roller shutter door at the top descended slowly, shutting them all out.

As the area was being prepared Archer found he had a mobile phone signal and managed an exchange of texts with Forsyth. She was now inside the perimeter and more determined than ever to help him. He wasn't sure if she could manage it. But she had climbed and abseiled; he remembered the photo behind her desk of her climbing a glacier. The area suddenly went quiet. The lights were dimmed down to darkness. A large fan whirred somewhere on the other side of the air vent. There was a high-voltage hum and a pulsating vibration through the structure.

Archer felt hot and agitated. His mouth was dry and he sucked a lungful of air down fast as he'd subconsciously been holding his breath. It was the familiar onset of a panic attack. But what had triggered it? He thought about sitting in his steam room, meditating, controlling his breathing. It was helping. He closed his eyes and focused, taking long deep breaths and then breathing out slowly. It was working.

“Ready,” the sergeant major shouted. “Three, two, one.”

Spotlights lit up more glass-fronted cells. Each appeared to have different types of equipment inside. An old grey-haired man in a white coat walked into one of the cells. Inside was a large cylindrical metal tank painted grey. Archer watched him press a large red button on the side of the tank. The top lifted slowly to one side on hydraulic pistons. Two men in white coats appeared next to him. He whispered something and they leaned over the tank and reached down into it.

Becky Sinclair was pulled from inside the main body of the tank. Archer realised that it was a Sensory Deprivation Chamber. She wore an orange tracksuit without shoes and she was soaking wet. Her body was limp and she was beginning to regain consciousness. The men placed her in a wheelchair and walked out. The older man in the white coat wheeled her out of the cell. Her hair and tracksuit dripped a trail of water as he wheeled her to a large ugly-looking wooden chair beneath a bright spotlight, and then walked away. Two men in white coats lifted her from the wheelchair to the wooden chair and strapped her waist, ankles and wrists to the chair.

“I'll take it from here,” a man out of view said. “You're sitting on an exact replica of Old Sparky.”

Archer's hackles rose. He recognised the sinister tones before the speaker wandered into view. Peter Sinclair was inside the Boathouse.

One of the medics in white coats fastened a metal dome to Becky's head and another wheeled over a trolley with some sort of transformer unit on it. Another medic attached cables to the unit and then to the chair. He pulled a lever and the unit buzzed and lit up, revealing a large round dial and an analogue meter.

“So, my dear, you've experienced some of our facilities first-hand. A relaxing spell in the isolation chamber. Plenty of time to think, as it were. But before I ask you if you've made your decision, I want to show you something.” He turned around and yelled. “Where's the bloody hangman?”

Muffled shouts. Then a man dressed in black with a sub-zero balaclava over his head appeared holding a wired-up winch control unit. Another spotlight went up left of the cells and the others slowly dimmed. A large mechanical rig appeared with two orange figures standing beneath it.

Louise and Amanda Palmer stood six feet apart with their heads bowed. Both wore orange tracksuits and white trainers. Their hands were tied behind their backs with rope. Dazed looks on their pale faces showed that they were not fully registering the situation.

Their raven hair still in tight ponytails. Slumped lifeless shoulders and weak legs bent at the knees. The pinstriped sergeant major stood next to them, unarmed, but there were now two men with guns standing four feet behind him.

Louise and Amanda each had a thick hangman's noose tied around their necks. The other end of the thick rope was tied to a yellow steel hook attached to a mechanical winch on a large yellow steel beam above. Archer couldn't believe what he was seeing. He felt sick.

“Pull the ropes tighter. One at a time,” Sinclair barked.

The hangman operated the winch control. He pressed a button and the electric motor whirred as the noose slowly tightened around Louise's neck until she was on her tiptoes. Then the second winch did the same until Amanda was straining to stop from swinging.

“Shall we rape them first or simply hang them?” Sinclair said.

He laughed mockingly at Becky. His laughter echoed around the huge room.

“Let's hang them and be done with it,” he said, with a harder edge.

Both winches tightened simultaneously. Both bodies left the ground until they started swinging from their necks, wriggling human pendulums. After several seconds he signalled to the hangman. The winches were reversed and the bodies dropped to the ground where they slumped into lifeless heaps.

Archer didn't like Louise, but she didn't deserve to be tortured, and her innocent daughter was only seventeen. The thought that people were being tortured on UK soil was hard to imagine, let alone believe, but here was the proof. It was disgusting.

Another yellow gantry rig moved into place above Becky and the hangman stood next to the wooden electric chair, taunting her with his noose. She spat in his face.

“Now, now,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

“Calm down, you old slag.”

“Fuck off. You fucking twat.”

Sinclair nodded and a medic slowly turned the electric dial. Becky started to shake and then convulse uncontrollably with a low guttural scream. When it stopped she slumped to one side. The medic unfastened the dome and straps and threw a bucket of water over her.

The hangman dropped the noose on the end of the winch. He carefully tightened the noose around her neck and pressed the winch controls until it took up all the slack in the rope. Sinclair nodded at him and he continued to raise the rope. Becky stood up as the rope slowly tightened until she was on tiptoes and it stopped abruptly with a loud clunk.

“Now then, my dear, what's your final answer? Yes or no?”

He looked at her like she was a piece of rotten meat.

“All right, you impotent prick. Yes.”

Sinclair beamed.

“Let her down and bring her with me.”

Sinclair casually strolled up the ramp like he was perusing around a museum on a Saturday afternoon, with Becky being dragged after him by two medics, a few paces behind.

“Put them back in the cell. You know what to do with them,” Sergeant major said.

Louise and Amanda were untied, picked up and carried away, coughing and spluttering over the shoulders of two guards. Archer let out his breath. The steel door beneath him opened and he saw them being carried fireman-style towards the empty cells. They were both dumped in one and the glass door was locked. The guards smoked cigarettes and stared at them like morons at a zoo. They sounded like they were from Atlanta.

“What's happening with these two folks?” one said.

“We keep them down here for a couple days, do some psychological experiments on them, and then dump them at sea,” the other replied, unfazed, as if completely bored by it all.

“How do you know all that?”

“Seen it all hundreds of times. You'll get used to it.”

A deafening buzzer sounded around the public address system.