The Last Enemy (21 page)

‘Do you know Lauren? Is she all right?’

The soldier opposite him shook his head.

‘Don’t know who you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘But . . .’ appealed Jake.

‘No questions,’ snapped one of the soldiers beside him.

Jake shut up.

They rescued me, so they must be all right, he told himself.

But where was Lauren? Was she safe?

The journey took over an hour, the van shaking the whole while as it raced along. During that time the soldiers didn’t exchange a word with Jake, or with one another.

Finally, the van pulled up. The rear doors opened and a tall man in a dark suit looked in.

‘Welcome, Mr Wells,’ he said in friendly tones. ‘You can get out now.’

Bewildered, Jake stumbled out of the van. He looked around and saw he was in an underground car park. The man shut the rear door, and the van raced off, heading for the exit.

‘Who are you?’ asked Jake.

‘You may call me Gerald. Think of me as a friend,’ said the man.

‘Where’s Lauren?’ demanded Jake desperately.

Gerald nodded. ‘She’s fine. You’ll see her in a moment. Please follow me.’

Jake followed Gerald to a lift, the door of which was already open. Jake hesitated.

‘You’re quite safe,’ the man reassured him.

Gerald stepped into the lift, and Jake followed.

‘Second floor,’ said Gerald, and a mechanised electronic voice repeated: ‘Second floor.’

Then the door closed and the lift rose.

Jake stepped out of the lift, and found himself face to face with a uniformed police officer, holding an automatic rifle.

‘Pig seven,’ said Gerald calmly, and the police officer stepped to one side and took up a position beside the lift.

Jake followed his escort along a corridor lined with numbered doors. I’m in an apartment block, he realised.

Gerald stopped by a door and rang the bell. The door opened, and Lauren looked out, apprehensive and nervous, until she saw Jake, and then her face broke into a huge smile of relief.

‘Jake!’ she burst out.

‘I’ll leave you two,’ said the man who called himself Gerald. ‘I’m sure you’ve got some catching up to do. If you need anything, just use the phone.’

With that, he turned and headed back along the corridor towards the lift. Jake stepped into the flat, and into Lauren’s arms, and they hugged as if their lives had unexpectedly come back to them.

‘So, what is this place?’ asked Jake.

‘It’s an MI5 safe house,’ said Lauren.

Lauren had patched up Jake’s cuts and bruises, and now they were sitting in the very comfortable living room, drinking coffee.

‘How did you get here?’ asked Jake. ‘How did you and Gareth and Dan get out of there?’

‘Special forces,’ said Lauren. She shook her head. ‘I still don’t know how they found us, and I don’t think Gareth does, either. Although I didn’t see much of him afterwards. They took him off to hospital.’

‘But how did they know where to find you?’ persisted Jake. ‘They’d smashed our mobile phones. No one knew where Gareth was, or you, or me.’

‘I don’t know,’ Lauren admitted. ‘All I do know is that we were in that dungeon, and I was thinking of you at Laker Heath, and terrified about what was going to happen to you, and then suddenly we heard an explosion and gunfire from upstairs, and then these special forces types came down into the dungeon and released us.’

‘The kids?’

‘Locked up. But not before the explosion we heard freaked them all out. It was some kind of stun grenade going off.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I was brought here. I asked everyone what had happened to you, but no one would tell me.’

‘Oh, I was OK,’ said Jake.

‘No you weren’t!’ burst out Lauren angrily. ‘You went off with Guy to a place where you knew they didn’t have The Index. You nearly got killed!’

‘The Index was there,’ said Jake.

Lauren stared at him.

‘What?’ she said, surprised.

‘It’s true,’ said Jake. ‘I held it in my hand.’

Lauren continued to stare, awed.

‘The Index?’ she stressed. ‘The actual book itself?’

‘Yes.’

Lauren grabbed him tightly to her.

‘I was sure you were dead!’ she said. ‘I was certain he’d kill you when he found out you were just guessing, and there was no Index!’

‘Well, I’m here!’ Jake reminded her.

‘Yes, but . . .’ Lauren shook her head. ‘I still don’t understand how that happened.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Jake. ‘But hopefully someone will tell us.’

Chapter 29

The flat was well stocked, and the next morning they were able to prepare breakfast for themselves. No sooner had they finished than there was a ring at the door. Jake opened it. His escort from the previous night, Gerald, was standing there.

‘I hope you had a good night’s rest,’ he said. ‘Mr Findlay-Weston would like to see you. When you’re ready, I’ll take you to him.’

‘We’re ready now,’ said Jake. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better, he thought.

Jake and Lauren followed Gerald back down to the underground car park, passing the armed police officer on duty at the lift. A car was waiting for them, a Merc.

‘A bit more luxurious than the last vehicle I was here in,’ observed Jake.

They drove through parts of London Jake didn’t recognise, until they neared an area he did.

‘We’re in Greenwich,’ he said. He pointed out through the window. ‘There’s the Royal Observatory. And the park.’

The car zigzagged through some quiet side streets, until it pulled into the car park outside a small building, with a sign that read: ‘Lansdowne Medical Centre’.

‘Gareth?’ asked Jake.

‘He’s been undergoing some treatment,’ said Gerald.

‘Is he all right?’ asked Lauren.

‘I’ll let Mr Findlay-Weston tell you that himself,’ he replied.

He opened the doors for them, then headed towards the main entrance. As they followed him, Jake noticed that, as at the safe house, there was an armed police officer on duty.

Gerald flashed an ID card at the officer, who stepped aside and let them enter.

Inside, the building was like a small cottage hospital, but very high-tech. Lots of medical apparatus and staff, but no sign of the usual waiting areas.

It’s a hospital for top-level security cases, realised Jake. People like Gareth.

They walked along a narrow corridor until they came to a door marked ‘5’. Gerald tapped at the door, and then opened it.

Jake and Lauren saw Gareth lying in a hospital bed, attached to a monitor. The big surprise was seeing Sue Clark sitting on a chair beside Gareth’s bed. She got up as she saw them, and headed for the door.

‘Hi,’ said Jake.

Clark nodded briefly in greeting, unsmiling, then brushed past them and walked away, towards the exit.

‘I’ll leave you together,’ said Gerald, pushing the door shut.

‘How are you?’ asked Jake.

Gareth gave a smile.

‘Take no notice of all this paraphernalia,’ he said, gesturing at the medical equipment. ‘I’m perfectly fine, but the powers-that-be won’t believe me until the medics tell them I am. Please, sit down.’

‘We haven’t bought any grapes or anything,’ said Jake. ‘We didn’t know where we were going.’ Then, anxiously, he asked, ‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘According to the doctors, a few days’ rest and I’ll be fine.’ He looked at his bandaged hand and sighed. ‘Of course, I shall always be missing a finger, but that’s a small price to pay for being alive.’

‘What was Sue Clark doing here?’ asked Lauren.

‘I asked her to come and see me,’ said Gareth.

‘She didn’t seem very friendly today,’ observed Lauren.

‘Don’t be too condemning of her,’ said Gareth. ‘She saved your lives. And mine.’

Jake and Lauren looked at Gareth, puzzled.

‘How?’ asked Jake. ‘Guy smashed our phones. There was no way to trace us.’

‘Dan’s sister, Gemma,’ said Gareth.

Suddenly Jake realised. ‘Gemma went to see Sue Clark!’

‘And Sue Clark offered her money if she would keep an eye on you and report back to her what was going on.’

‘Gemma would be good at that,’ said Lauren. ‘Dan told us she is always eavesdropping.’ She smiled. ‘I think she’d make a good spy.’

Gareth didn’t smile at the suggestion.

‘It seems that Gemma stayed in a Pierce Randall flat in London overnight, and then returned to Sevenoaks. She got Dan’s message telling her you were all going to Platt Castle, so she went along in the hope of seeing what you were up to. She arrived in time to find Guy’s crew burying three bodies.

‘Then she phoned Sue Clark to tell her what was happening, and where. She told Ms Clark there was no sign of any of you at the place, but she’d found Dan’s motorbike.’

‘She thought the bodies were us!’ exclaimed Lauren.

‘At first.’ Gareth nodded. ‘But, after the kids had gone back to the castle, she scraped the earth off the faces of the bodies.’

‘Wow!’ said Lauren. ‘That took some guts.’

‘Young Ms Hayward is a very brave person,’ agreed Gareth. ‘When she saw it wasn’t you, she phoned Sue Clark again and said she thought you must be locked up somewhere in there. She is someone it would be useful to have on our side. I think there’s a future for her in our organisation.’

‘And, after the phone calls, I assume Sue Clark swung into action,’ said Lauren. ‘Those special forces soldiers who turned up to rescue us.’

‘Pierce Randall have some expert resources at their disposal, including their own private SWAT teams,’ said Gareth. ‘It was a Pierce Randall team who rescued us. And, as I’m sure you realised, once we were free I got them to alert our own people and told them to go to Laker Heath and deal with Guy.’

‘They arrived just in time,’ said Jake. He added, ‘They killed him.’

‘What would you have preferred?’ asked Gareth. ‘We could have locked him up, but sooner or later some smart lawyer would have got him released, and then he would have been a very serious and dangerous problem once more.’

‘I saw The Index,’ said Jake. ‘It was in the hangar at Laker Heath.’

‘Really?’ said Gareth in a dry tone.

‘How long has it been there?’

‘I’m not really able to disclose any information regarding The Index,’ said Gareth, ‘but let’s just say our people were ahead of you.’

‘So why didn’t you take the
Journal
at the same time? That was at the chapel as well.’

‘The
Journal of the Order of Malichea
is of little interest. The Index is what people are after.’

‘If you’ve had The Index all this time, then you know where all the books are hidden,’ said Lauren accusingly. ‘So why all that business, for so long, of following us around and seeing if we found any of the books?’

‘To stop you, of course,’ said Gareth. ‘And, if you did find any, to take them off you. The books have to stay hidden for the common good.’

‘You haven’t thought of recovering them all and stashing them in that hangar at Laker Heath, along with the others you’ve got there?’ asked Jake.

‘Jake, there are hundreds and hundreds of them!’ said Gareth. ‘Many of them are safe where they are, spread far and wide, hidden, and protected by the Watchers. That way they stay safe. And with a helping hand from MI5.’

Chapter 30

Jake and Lauren were driven back to their flat by Gerald. As they arrived, he told them, ‘Don’t worry, your flat is quite safe.’

‘You’ve been inside it?’ queried Lauren.

‘Some of our people did a scan of it,’ said Gerald. ‘They haven’t interfered with anything, I can assure you, we were just making sure no one had left any nasty surprises for you.’

With that he drove off. Jake looked towards their flat.

‘Think we can take his word for it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Lauren. ‘With Guy dead and those kids locked up, I think we can say we’re safe.’

‘We’ve thought that before, and were wrong,’ pointed out Jake.

‘But The Index and the
Journal
have been found and are in a secure facility. Once everyone knows that, the game’s over.’

‘No it’s not,’ said Jake. ‘The books are out there, still hidden. And now that Pierce Randall know where The Index is . . .’

‘You think Gareth told Sue Clark?’ asked Lauren.

‘No, but it’s a lead, isn’t it? And the only one that we’ve got,’ said Jake. ‘Which means Pierce Randall will be pulling every string and pushing every button they can to get their hands on it.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not over. It’ll never be over.’

As they walked along the pathway towards the block of flats, Jake’s gaze caught their parked Mini Cooper. The side panel in the bodywork was still dented, the headlight was still broken. Lauren saw the gloomy expression on his face.