The Burning (15 page)

“Like hypnosis?” Adam said.

“Call it what you like: suggestion, hypnotism, programming. It’s probably the most useful tool we have.
Practise
it,” Gabriel said. “
Use
it—”

He was cut off as an automated voice came over the speaker in English, then in French: “The next station is Ashford International…”

Gabriel stood up. “Change of plan,” he said. “We’re getting off here.”

The five kids were the only passengers to leave the train at Ashford and, as it pulled away from the station, the man in the biker jacket opened his eyes. He watched the children cross the platform and climb the footbridge.

He removed his earphones, took the phone from his pocket and dialled.

T
he ferry was the size of a small town, with gift shops, restaurants, bars and even a cinema. Rachel’s eyes darted about. She checked out her fellow passengers, fixing on any person wearing earphones, of which there were many. She and Adam had become hypersensitive to any movement, any stray glances that were cast their way.

Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed relaxed and settled back in the big plush seat, whistling through his teeth and watching through a panoramic window as the white cliffs of the English Coast receded into the distance and finally melted into the grey-brown sea.

The slow train from Ashford had taken an hour or so to arrive at Dover. On reaching the docks, they had quickly assimilated themselves into a group of returning French students. They had disappeared easily among the high-spirited jostling school party; the stressed teacher somehow failing to register them every time she’d
attempted a head count. They had been treated as schoolfellows by the other kids as they had sat on the coach and been driven on to the cavernous car deck of the ferry.

At first the gabble of the French schoolchildren had sounded like gobbledygook to Rachel, then gradually the odd disconnected word in English had sounded familiar to her ear: “weekend … super … rock…”

As she had concentrated, Rachel had begun to comprehend more and more of their chatter.

“Can you understand what they’re saying?” she had asked, turning to her brother.

“Oui, un peu,”
Adam had said, his eyes widening in surprise at the words that had come from his mouth. “I … I mean, yeah … a bit.”

Rachel insisted that they all stay close together on the ferry. Morag and Duncan were restless, but Rachel knew that they were safest among the gaggle of French kids. She watched them as they sat playing an elaborate game of cards.

It was the first time that they had really had a chance to talk to Gabriel, and Rachel and Adam sat on either side of him in an attempt to pin him down.

“How did they know we were on that train?” Adam asked.

Gabriel shrugged.

“Listen,” Rachel said. “We doubled back from Harwich. No one could have known we got a ride on that fish truck. No one saw us, I swear.”

“Unless, for some reason,
you
told them?” Adam said, trying to provoke a reaction.

“You think I’d tell them?” Gabriel asked. He turned to Adam and stared at him with such an intensity that Adam had to turn away. “With everything you know about me, with everything you know about
us
.”

“I’m just saying…”

“Listen, Adam, there’s part of you that is very … human. Part of you that still hasn’t seen the bigger picture. It’s like you only see this in terms of yourself.”

“You think I’ve got an ego problem?”

“Whatever you want to call it. It’s not something I really understand. You need to see where you fit in the bigger scheme of things, like the bees in one of Honeyman’s hives. We’re all part of that whole. Bees in a hive do not let each other down;
we
do not let each other down. Understand?”

Adam was not really sure he did, but knew he’d been given a harsh lecture and nodded.

“We still have no idea how they knew we were on that train,” Rachel said.

“‘How’ doesn’t really matter,” Gabriel said. “These are powerful people, and there are a lot of them. We know how to evade them up to a point, but in the long term, there’s nowhere to hide. We’ve got to keep moving, got to keep one step ahead of them.”

It was a little over twelve hours since their breakout from
Hope, but it seemed to Rachel that they hadn’t stopped moving in that time.

“Can me and Duncan go to the shops now?” Morag piped. “We’re bored.”

“No, we’re nearly there,” Rachel said, sounding like her mother. “Stay close to us.”

You could lose someone on a ferry this size, she thought, and the English Channel that rose and fell behind them looked very cold and deep…

Clay Van der Zee turned away from the huge map of Europe on a screen above the fireplace and looked again at the message on his PDA. The report from their agent in the field. He grunted and shook his head. “Strange.”

Laura Sullivan studied Van der Zee’s expression. There was annoyance there, of course, but also a degree of amusement, as though he was relishing the challenge that Adam and Rachel Newman had set him. She’d seen it too the night before, when the sirens had been ringing through the building and the guards had been sent out to search the surrounding countryside.

A search that had never been meant to succeed.

“These kids are good,” he’d said to her. He’d walked in from the woods, where the guards were still searching, taking off his thick coat and rubbing his hands together, relieved to be back in the warmth of the research facility.

Laura had stared out of her office window into the
blackness of the pine forest, the torchbeams dancing in the darkness. “I told you they were special.”

“Still, it’s impressive, and they do keep surprising me.” Van der Zee had nodded, almost pleased. “I certainly hadn’t expected them to escape quite this quickly. Almost caught me off guard…”

Laura had been learning a lot about Clay Van der Zee, and those he worked for, in the hours since the children had escaped from the Hope Project. She had known that the escape had been expected; that it had been allowed to happen. She had argued that they could learn more by setting the kids free, to see where they went, how they behaved. The long arms of the Hope organization could keep track of them. She had argued passionately against the surgical “intervention” that Van der Zee and his superiors favoured a little further down the line.

There were other … interests that could be served first.

She had not known that Van der Zee had
allowed
the children to take the Triskellion. He had guessed, correctly – thanks to the research that Laura herself had helped conduct – that Rachel and Adam would never leave without it. Now Laura was beginning to understand that Van der Zee saw its loss as a small sacrifice. He was confident that he would get the Triskellion back. That, and plenty more besides…

“What is it?” Laura asked now.

Van der Zee looked up from his PDA. “It’s … interesting.
They’re heading for France, but they got off the train before it went into the Tunnel.”

Laura felt a wave of relief pass over her but tried not to let it show. The children were being clever; they were not making it easy.

“And something else,” Van der Zee said. “A couple more surprises.”

“Yeah?”

Van der Zee was almost smiling again. Laura felt the temperature in his den drop a couple of degrees. “Our operative swears there were five of them.”

“Five?”

“The Newman twins, Morag and Duncan, and a boy. About the same age as Rachel and Adam. Foreign looking, according to the report.”

Something clicked in Laura’s brain; a memory she couldn’t quite get hold of. Slippery and half-remembered. Had Rachel and Adam mentioned a boy they’d known back in the village? The idea twisted away as she tried to bring it into focus. “A
couple
of surprises, you said.”

Van der Zee looked at her. “When the train arrived in Paris, they found a man locked in the train toilet. He was half dead by all accounts; blinded in one eye with three broken ribs.” The doctor leant back in his chair and stared up at the map. “And he wasn’t one of ours…”

A
fter the ferry had docked at Calais, they spent a few hours tramping around the grey streets, weaving among the afternoon shoppers intent on their business in spite of the drizzle. “Probably best to keep moving for a while, after what happened on the train,” Gabriel said. “It’s easier to disappear in a town.”

They walked past bakeries and butcher’s shops, past windows filled with hanging sausages, and cafes with old men gathered smoking outside. There was plenty to look at, and in the market square, where stalls were packing up for the day, the tempting smell from a caravan dispensing steaming paper cones of “frites” caused Adam to hang back for a moment. But Gabriel would let no one dawdle. He told them that this was what the future held for the time being. That theirs were now the lives of fugitives; they needed to think fast, stay alert and be ready to leave wherever they were at a minute’s notice.

“It’s harder to hit a moving target,” Rachel said.

Morag inched closer to Adam. “Target?”

Adam threw Rachel a look, then laid a hand on the young girl’s shoulder. “It’s just an expression.”

“Right,” Gabriel said, “we need supplies.”

They walked out of the town centre towards a huge, spiky bell tower with a yellow clock face that loomed over the otherwise featureless horizon like a reject from Disneyland. They headed out on a busy ring road and found a hypermarket – a vast store the size of three football pitches – that sold everything from marshmallows to motorbikes.

“We can get everything we want in here,” Gabriel said. “Let’s be as quick as we can though.” He watched as Morag eyed up the children’s clothes and Duncan began edging towards the section of the shop that sold toys and games. “And try not to get lost.”

Rachel pushed a trolley up and down the wide aisles, while the others stacked it high with those urgent supplies they would be able to carry: bottled water, fruit, chocolate bars, crisps and peanuts. Adam grumbled when Rachel told him there would be no room for fizzy drinks, then stared at her as she dropped in gloves and woolly hats and finally, a multi-pack of toilet roll.

“Somebody’s got to be practical,” she said. “We might have to spend the night outdoors.”

Adam pulled a face. “I thought we were fugitives,” he said. “Not Boy Scouts.”

Approaching the checkout, Adam noticed that most of
the other trolleys were piled high with alcohol: cases of wine, boxes of beer, bottle after bottle of lethal-looking spirits. “Do people in France have, you know … some kind of problem?”

“English tourists, I think,” Rachel said. “I guess shopping must be cheaper on this side of the Channel.”

“Not as cheap as this,” Gabriel said. He smiled as he took control of the trolley and wheeled it straight through the line of tills, past the checkout staff who looked but saw nothing, and out into the car park.

They quickly loaded their purchases into cases and backpacks. Rachel saw Morag whispering to her brother and asked her what the matter was. “It’s wrong,” Morag said. “Not paying for things.”

Adam moved across and helped her load the things faster. “We haven’t got a lot of choice,” he said. “And it’s not like we’ve really paid for anything since we escaped.”

“I know, but this feels like … stealing.”

Adam looked at Rachel and shrugged. She glanced across at Gabriel and knew at once what he was thinking. They hadn’t talked about what he had done to the man on the train; it had just been accepted. It had been necessary, Rachel knew that, but it did not mean she was completely comfortable with it.

Gabriel scanned the horizon, as he had done every few minutes since they’d been reunited with him, as though he knew something was coming. “We might have to do a lot worse than steal, before this is over,” he said.

It was getting dark quickly and, although the rain had stopped, it was starting to get very cold. Toilet roll or not, Rachel decided that they needed to get the younger twins indoors and, after walking back towards town for a few minutes, they turned into a quiet side street and stopped in front of a small hotel.