The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (41 page)

The hospital grounds were heaving with a greater intensity of activity than Ben had ever before seen concentrated in one location. As the truck threaded its way into the gates and though a floodlit pandemonium of vehicles and jostling crowds to the emergency wards, it was immediately obvious that the medical staff were overwhelmed far past breaking point. They were every bit as confused and shocked as the hordes of limping, bloodied, bandaged, screaming, dying or near-dead, panic-stricken, terrorised humanity that kept pouring relentlessly into the place in makeshift ambulances, cars, trucks, on foot or even in wheelbarrows. TV crews were already on the scene to capture the mayhem on camera. Choppers rattled in and out every few seconds, their downdraught tearing at the sheets on the gurneys the paramedics were wheeling in in droves.

Inside the hospital, every inch of stifling space was filled with patients, while harried doctors and nurses ran to and fro to attend to as many as they could. Men, women and children huddled miserably in corners waiting to be seen. Broken bodies, not all of them alive, were wheeled about under bloody sheets. Doors were constantly banging open and shut with the traffic passing through. Pools and trails of blood on the floor went unmopped by orderlies too rushed to keep up. Those who’d lost someone in the confusion were hunting through the tightly packed throng for their missing loved ones, calling their names, showing pictures to anyone who would spare a moment to look before just shaking their heads. The corridors rang with screams and weeping and the calls of the doctors and nurses just a step away from losing control. Sights, sounds, smells. A swirling, dizzying cacophony of pain.

Through the middle of it, Ben carried Roberta in his arms. Eventually, he managed to find a nurse who had a few free seconds between attending to a dying man and a lost, howling child, and escorted them through teeming corridors to a ward where a bed had just been freed up by a patient being rushed into surgery.

Ben laid Roberta carefully down on the bed and covered her with the single sheet. The nurse hurried off with the promise of returning in five minutes; she vanished into the mayhem and it was twenty minutes before Ben saw her again, accompanied by a young Indonesian doctor wearing a name badge that said ‘Dr Rahardjo’ and who looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

‘Please,’ Ben said. ‘She’s been unconscious a long time.’

The doctor examined Roberta’s head injury, looked concerned at the deep gash in her scalp, peeled back one eyelid at a time and shone a light in her pupils, asked Ben a few questions about her symptoms and quickly diagnosed acute concussion. He spoke in rapid broken English and Ben caught alarming words like ‘subdural hematoma’ and ‘subarachnoid bleeding’. How serious was it, he wanted to know. Dr Rahardjo wouldn’t commit to a prognosis. It was potentially a good sign that for the few moments she’d been conscious, she’d recognised Ben and remembered his name. But they couldn’t ignore the fact that the trauma was quite severe. He could say no more until they’d X-rayed and knew what they were dealing with.

Ben was reluctant to leave her side, but allowed himself to be shooed from the ward as the staff whipped a curtain around Roberta’s bed and began the job of cutting off her clothes so they could bathe and treat her other wounds while preparing the X-ray. She was in good hands now, the nurse assured him.

Ben could barely stand up and was only now becoming aware of the pain from the scores of cuts and bruises that covered his arms, legs, back and chest. ‘I’m fine,’ he protested, but the nurse insisted on sitting him down to examine his injuries before jabbing a syringeful of antibiotics into him, followed by another of painkillers. Then she had to rush off as a fresh crisis demanded her attention, another in an endless line that would keep her rushing all night and into the dawn.

Ben found a corner in a hallway outside Roberta’s ward and slumped, exhausted, on the floor with his back to the wall. All he could do now was rest, and wait, and hope, and trust in Dr Rahardjo and the nurses.

And pray. Bowing his head, he tried to mutter a few lines to appeal to God’s mercy and ask for Roberta to come through this safely. But the words wouldn’t come and it just made him feel awkward and stupid that he couldn’t even muster up a prayer. Some future clergyman he was.

He closed his eyes and sat motionless for a long time, but he wasn’t asleep. Out of the worry and the pain and the confusion in his mind about his feelings whenever he thought about Brooke, or Roberta, came a new emotion. Cold and hard and searingly sharp, like a steel blade forged and tempered in ice and fire. It was pure murderous explosive rage that made his fists clench and the blood pump faster through his veins.

When he opened his eyes again, sensing a presence, Jack Quigley was standing over him. ‘Hey,’ the American said.

‘Wasn’t sure we’d see you again,’ Ben said.

‘I’ve nowhere much else to go. How is she?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Mind if I join you? They pumped me up with codeine but my ankle still hurts like a sonofabitch.’

‘Be my guest,’ Ben said, and Quigley slumped on the tiled floor next to him. ‘I’d offer you a smoke, if I had any,’ Quigley said.

‘How about a shot of surgical spirit?’ Ben said. ‘I could do with one.’

‘She’ll be okay,’ the American muttered after a silence. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Thanks, Quigley. I’m trying.’

‘Jack.’

‘Okay, Jack.’

‘How long you two been together?’

The question took Ben by surprise. ‘It’s not – that is, we’re not—’ He sighed. ‘She and I are friends, that’s all.’

‘I assumed … I mean, you seem pretty close.’

Ben said nothing.

Quigley’s expression tightened and he gazed at the floor for a few moments, obviously deep in memories. ‘Like Mandy and me,’ he added in a whisper. ‘We were going to get married.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said.

‘Yeah.’ Quigley gave a grim smile and fell silent, staring into space for a while.

‘I was getting married, too,’ Ben said. ‘It would have been two days ago.’

Quigley glanced at him. ‘But I thought you said—’

‘It’s a hell of a long story,’ Ben said.

‘It’s going to be a hell of a long night.’

‘Some other time,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s pick another subject.’

‘Like what?’

‘You said something about being a Marine.’

‘Uh-huh. Semper Fi. Got the marks to show for it.’ Quigley pulled up the sleeve of his grimy, bloodied shirt to show a tattoo on his upper arm. The faded blue ink depicted an American eagle perched atop the globe, with an anchor behind it and the letters USMC together with the Marine Corps motto
Semper Fidelis
. ‘Eight years,’ he said.

‘Still got the chops?’ Ben asked.

Quigley shrugged. ‘Feels like a past life sometimes. But you don’t forget. You?’

‘British Army, 22 Special Air Service,’ Ben said. ‘I haven’t forgotten everything either.’

‘You trying to say something, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I think I get the idea.’

‘The minute she pulls through this and I get her somewhere safe.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’ Quigley said, looking at Ben levelly.

‘The same. Only worse. Either way, this ends.’

‘I read you.’

‘I can’t do it alone,’ Ben said.

‘You won’t be alone,’ Quigley told him.

‘We might not get out.’

‘Like I give a shit. I only care about one thing now.’

Ben nodded. ‘Then we understand each other. Tell me everything Herbie Blumenthal told you about Mandrake Holdings and Triton.’

Chapter Sixty

Quigley had been right: it was a hell of a long night. But while the American finally passed out from fatigue, Ben had to suffer every minute of it wide awake. The first time he tried to check on Roberta, he was sternly denied access by the doctor and backed off. The second time, he was told by an orderly that she’d been moved. Dr Rahardjo would know where to – except Dr Rahardjo was nowhere to be seen either.

Ben was reduced to pacing up and down to keep himself from going insane with worry. But then, he wasn’t the only one for whom sleep was impossible. As the hours went by, the influx of injured disaster survivors showed little sign of abating and the hospital staff were given no rest. Sometime after three in the morning Ben caught sight of the nurse who’d helped him earlier, weeping in a corner as the strain finally got to her. He went to fetch her a drink of water. As she sipped it gratefully and wiped her tears, he gently asked if she had any news of Roberta. She said she’d try and find out more.

It wasn’t until four-thirty that the nurse returned, grey and worn out, and said in an expressionless voice, ‘Please follow.’

She led Ben through the corridors, which if anything had grown even more chaotic and depressing in the last few hours. As he followed, his mind was reeling from the knowledge that this could be bad news. Where was she taking him? To some office where he’d be shown her personal effects – watch, shoes, tattered clothing – and made to sign her off as dead?

The nurse opened a door and waved him through.

And gave an exhausted smile.

That smile sent shockwaves through Ben’s whole body. It meant Roberta was all right. He suddenly wanted to hug the poor weary Indonesian woman. ‘Thank you,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘I really thank you.’

The nurse led him through a dimly-lit ward filled with male patients and pointed out the bed at the end of the row, screened off behind a curtain. ‘She very weak,’ she whispered firmly. ‘Must rest. You not wake her.’

‘And the X-rays?’

‘She be okay. Must rest. Plenty rest. I go now. You not disturb her, okay?’

Left alone, Ben self-consciously walked by the other patients in their beds, some sleeping, some peering at him in the semi-darkness of the ward. He stopped at the curtain. Drew back one edge and peered anxiously through.

She was sleeping. There was a thick dressing over the cut on her forehead and the bruises were livid in places, but some of the colour seemed to have returned to her cheeks and as he stood there, almost too afraid to breathe himself, he saw that her breathing was steady and calm. He stepped closer to the bed, let the curtain swish shut behind him, and kneeled at her side. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said in a whisper. ‘You’re going to be all right. That’s all that matters.’

He wanted to hold her. Kiss her. He was so confused. But happy, happier in that moment than he’d been in a long time. Victor Craine, the Nemesis Program: all that stuff seemed suddenly very far away.

‘None of this should have happened to you,’ he whispered as she slept. ‘You’ll be safe now. I’ll get you taken where nobody can touch you.’ In a surge of tenderness he reached out and delicately brushed away a dark red lock of hair that had fallen across her face.

Her eyelids parted slightly, then opened wide. ‘Ben,’ she murmured, trying to focus on him. ‘Is that you?’

‘I’m here,’ he said.

She gripped his arm. Her hand felt warm, but she was feeble. ‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he whispered, breaking into a smile. He caressed her hair. ‘I’m staying right here with you until you’re better.’

‘Promise?’

‘Let them try and stop me.’

They did try, but he was true to his word. All of the next day, the next night and the day after that, he camped resolutely by her side, eating only when he had to, sleeping in fits in a chair brought to him by the nurse he’d befriended, only leaving the ward when the medical team needed to attend to her. The hospital and its routines became like its own little world. The sole contact with outside were the news reports that leaked into the ward from some of the more mobile inpatients who had been catching up with hourly TV bulletins. The word was that the tsunami had been the worst ever recorded. The death toll was in the tens of thousands and offers of aid were pouring in from all the member states of the United Nations. The disaster had rekindled media buzz about climate anomalies, global warming, solar flares.

Ben listened to the reports and felt sick.

All that time he watched Roberta become stronger. Dr Rahardjo visited her bedside now and again, and with each visit his concerns about possible effects of the concussion such as headaches, blurred vision, memory loss, nausea, became less pronounced. By the second evening, he took Ben aside and told him she could soon leave hospital; in any case, he admitted, they badly needed to free up the bed.

Another occasional visitor was Jack Quigley, who seemed genuinely pleased that Roberta was recovering so fast. While Ben had been at her bedside, Quigley had been busy. The third time he came to the ward he was accompanied by a grave young man who introduced himself as Joe Mulligan from the US Embassy in Jakarta, in charge of ensuring the return passage of all American citizens caught up in the disaster. Mulligan was intelligent and affable, and Ben trusted him. Roberta would be flown to Chicago, where her medical care would resume until she was fully recovered and she could go home to Canada.

Whether or not Quigley had been pulling strings, Ben would never know and preferred not to ask – but things moved quickly after that, and by the morning of the third day, the arrangements were in place and a jet was on standby at Jakarta airport. Joe Mulligan and a female assistant brought clothes for her to wear. The nurses helped her out of bed and Ben was herded away as she changed. She was getting stronger all the time, but still too weak to walk unaided, and Dr Rahardjo thought it best to restrict her to a wheelchair.

Then it was time to say goodbye.

It was Ben who wheeled her from the ward. The hospital was a different place now that the initial crisis of the disaster had been contained. Joe Mulligan and some of his colleagues in dark suits were waiting across the lobby.

‘I don’t want to leave,’ Roberta said.

Ben crouched in front of her chair and clasped her hands. ‘Joe’s people will be with you all the way to the airport and there’ll be someone there to hand you over to the officials at the other end. You’ll be safe there. Nobody can touch you. Then you can go home to Ottawa and get on with your life.’