Ultimate Weapon (22 page)

‘I’m Sarah’s dad,’ he continued.

‘Nick?’

He nodded. ‘She’s mentioned me, then.’

Beston took a step closer. His friend nodded to them both, then walked away to join another group of young guys who had just walked into the pub. Whatever was happening here, it wasn’t any of his business. ‘What’s happened?’

Nick looked at the barman, then back at Beston. ‘What makes you think something’s happened to her?’

Beston shrugged. ‘She hasn’t been into the lab for a couple of weeks,’ he replied. ‘That’s not like her.’

Nick nodded. Most of his life he’d worked on instinct,
and had learnt to trust it over the years. His instincts told him that Beston was young and naive and probably telling the truth. As Lana said, he probably had a bit of a crush on Sarah, but he wasn’t her type: she liked the action man, butch hero, just like Jed, rather than the slightly dweeby type like the boy standing next to him. None of that mattered. He cared about Sarah, and he could trust him.
More than I can trust anyone else she works with in that lab, anyway
.

‘I’m trying to find her,’ said Nick.

‘Shit,’ said Beston. Suddenly he looked worried. ‘I mean, I thought she was at home or something. I did text her last week, though, and didn’t hear back from her. That was pretty weird. Sarah always texts you straight back.’

The words tumbled out of him, as if a tap had just been turned on. Nerves, thought Nick. They make some people talk too much. ‘I need to find out what she was working on in the lab,’ said Nick.

Beston took a gulp on his beer. ‘You really think something’s happened to her, don’t you? Christ, it couldn’t be anything to do with her work, could it?’

‘I’m just trying to find out, that’s all,’ Nick said. ‘I need to know everything she was up to in the last few weeks. It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant it is. I just need to build up a picture of what she was doing.’

Beston laughed, but the sound was hollow and dry. ‘Just working,’ he said. ‘Working really hard.’

‘On what?’

‘Do you know much about the labs?’

Nick shook his head. ‘I spent most of my life in the army. I’m not a scientist.’

‘We all work pretty much by ourselves,’ said Beston. ‘Most of us are doing our doctorates, a few have junior lectureships. The professors and the more senior fellows all have their own areas of interest. So it’s not like we’re all working together in a team or anything. Still, most of us have some idea of what the others are working on. We talk about things we’ve wrestled with, swap ideas around, share different skills. It’s helpful.’

‘And Sarah?’

Beston shook his head. ‘Not her,’ he said. ‘Sarah didn’t like to discuss her work with anyone. Said it ruined her concentration. She kept it all to herself. The only person she talked to about it was the professor.’

‘Wilmington?’

Beston nodded. ‘He was always fussing over her. Taking her aside, spending time going through her equations.’

Right, thought Nick.
And the bastard told me he didn’t know what she was working on
.

‘More than the other students?’

‘Much more,’ said Beston. ‘Some of the guys reckoned he fancied her, but not me.’ He paused, looking straight at Nick. ‘Sarah’s bloody clever, you know. I mean, we’re all clever down in the labs. We’ve all got firsts in physics, and Cambridge isn’t exactly a crap university. But Sarah is really the dog’s bollocks. Much smarter than the rest of us. That’s why the professor’s always fussing over her. He knows she’s smart. If anyone’s going to
come up with anything really startling then it’s going to be her.’

Nick drained the rest of his Diet Coke and ordered another for himself and a pint for Beston. He was gasping for a drink himself, but knew he couldn’t. He had to concentrate. And once he had a drink inside him, he was useless to everyone.

‘She must have given you some clues as to what she was working on.’

‘Only once.’

Nick pushed the pint across the bar. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘It’s funny, we were in this very pub,’ said Beston. ‘About a month ago. We were all just standing around at about six in the evening, talking about what was happening at the weekend, that kind of thing. And Sarah was about to get a round in, and everyone was complaining about the cost, and she suddenly said: “I’ll buy this pub soon. Then maybe I’ll make it a free bar.” ’

Nick thought for a moment. A month ago. That could have been just before the hundred grand arrived in her account.
She knew it was coming
.

‘Go on,’ he said softly.

‘We all laughed, and one of the guys was ribbing her, but Sarah said: “I’ll buy it with the money from my Nobel Prize.” And the way she said it, I wasn’t sure she was joking.’ Beston paused, taking a gulp of his drink. ‘Well, we all laughed. Guys in the labs are always saying stuff like that. Nobel this, Nobel that. Most of them don’t even know how to change a light bulb. It’s just
students bragging. But Sarah wasn’t like that. She never even talked about her work, let alone bragged about it.’

‘You think she meant it?’ asked Nick.

‘I followed her to the bar, and started helping her get the drinks in. She looked at me with those big eyes of hers, and pushed her hair out of her face, and said. “Unlimited clean energy. That would be worth a prize or two, wouldn’t it?” ’

Beston put his pint down on the bar. He pulled up a stool that had just come free, and propped himself against it. ‘Sarah didn’t kid around, not about her science. “Cold fusion,” I said to her. “If you think you’ve cracked that, forget it. It’s just a pipe dream.” And all she would say was “Wait and see”. I asked her to tell me some more, but she just said we had to get the drinks back to the rest of the guys.’

Nick looked at Beston. ‘I don’t even know what the hell cold fusion is?’

‘Only the holy grail of applied nuclear physics,’ said Beston. ‘It’s a nuclear reaction, but one where atoms are fused together rather than split up. So, just as in a conventional nuclear reaction, tremendous quantities of energy are released, but it is completely safe. A single cup of water could be used to power the whole of Britain for a year.’

‘Christ,’ said Nick.

‘Well, it’s great in theory,’ said Beston. ‘But nobody has ever been able to make it work in practice. Every few years someone comes along and says they’ve cracked it, but it always turns out to be a hoax. The technology is just about impossible to construct. So most people
reckon that although the theory is fine, nobody will ever be able to make a reactor that actually works.’

Nick leant forward, propping his elbows up on the bar. A couple of guys were within earshot, but seemed engrossed in their own conversation. ‘But if they could, what then?’

‘Unlimited clean energy, at virtually no cost,’ said Beston. He paused, taking another swig of his beer. ‘I don’t know where you would start. It would finish off the oil and gas industries for a start. That would wipe out at least a dozen of the world’s biggest companies. Most of the countries in the Middle East would be buggered, and so would the Russians. The economics of the Third World would be transformed. I guess most of the existing power structures in the world would be overturned.’ He smiled to himself. ‘But like I said, it’s just a pipe dream. It’s not really going to happen.’

The oil industry would be wiped out, thought Nick. He turned the phrase over in his mind, once, then twice. The Lubbock Group – whoever the hell they
really
were – were following Sarah’s work. Beston is wrong. It is really happening. And Sarah was on to it.

That’s why they wanted her.

‘And she didn’t tell you anything else?’

Beston shook his head. ‘Like I said, she didn’t like to talk about her work. She’d only discuss it with Wilmington, and I’m not certain she even told him everything.’

He finished the drink and looked at Nick. ‘Do you really think something has happened to her?’

‘It’s probably nothing, said Nick. ‘I’m her dad, so I’m worried about her, that’s all.’

He pushed a mobile number across the bar. ‘You hear anything, you give me a call, OK?’

Beston nodded. Nick shook his hand, and started to walk away. From the corner of his eye, he could see Beston returning to talk to his pals. He looked nervous. And so you should be, thought Nick. You don’t know much, but you know something.
And my gut is telling me that anyone who knows anything at all about what was going on in that lab is in trouble.

He stepped into the street. The rain had stopped, but the wind had picked up force. He pulled up the collar of his leather jacket to protect himself from the weather. Cold fusion, thought Nick. If it really worked, and if it really had the power to wipe out the oil and gas industries and redraw the political map of the world, then it was just the kind of science that would attract Sarah. And it was just the kind of science that some big and powerful people would do whatever was necessary to stop from ever coming out of the laboratory and into the real world. Fortunes and nations were at stake here.

That was Sarah, thought Nick as he walked round the corner, heading back to the B&B where he was staying for the night. Just like me, she was always fighting for something. And just like me, she ended up paying the price for it.

The corpse was starting to rot. Jed glanced nervously up and down the river, checking that no one could see them. It was four in the morning, and although there were some lights shining down on them from the bridge five hundred yards away, he felt certain they couldn’t be seen. Rob’s corpse was among the rushes where they had left it last night, yet the water had filled his lungs, and his skin was already starting to peel away from his body. A stench of soggy flesh was drifting up from him: if anyone happened to be standing by the riverbank they’d probably find the poor sod just from the smell.

‘Is it there?’ hissed Matt.

Jed nodded. ‘It’s here,’ he said.

After escaping from the plant, they had moved as quickly as they could through the bodies fleeing the scene. There were people screaming and running, but within minutes the Republican Guard had arrived in force. Jed had seen five trucks pull up, with heavily armed Iraqis pouring out of them. They were beating men and women with their rifle butts to restore order, and Jed saw at least one man get shot in the head for daring to question his orders. He and Matt stayed right in the
centre of the crowd. That was always going to be the best place to lose yourself. There were several hundred people thronging the tiny streets: it was easy enough for a man dressed in civilian clothes to vanish into the crowds.

As the streets started to calm down, they headed due north. They blended in well enough with the locals to walk through a crowd, but if either of them was stopped by a soldier, they were done for. The damage to the plant was probably a lot less than the locals reckoned, Jed decided as he glanced back once or twice. The grenades had created a lot of smoke, and some loud bangs, but probably not much real damage. It could be patched up, within a few hours, he thought.

They walked until the crowds started to thin out and the noise to abate. When they found a narrow alley, they ducked down it and tried to check in with the Firm. That’s when they realised the satphone was in Steve’s kitbag. And now he was dead.

There was another satphone in Rob’s kitbag, but that was in the river. There was no choice but to hike back, and hope he and it were still there. The walk took them another forty minutes: fortunately, the streets were empty, and by keeping their ears open for patrols, they managed to stay out of trouble.

Jed took the kitbag out of the water, and looked around for the equipment. The Iridium 9505 satphone, looking something like one of the old-style brick mobiles, weighed just two pounds and fitted neatly into the side of Rob’s bag. It connected directly to the
Iridium satellite, and from there it could put you through to any phone in the world. The Firm had fitted it with a scrambler, so even if the Iraqis could intercept the signals, which was unlikely, they wouldn’t be able to decipher what was being said. Jed checked his watch. It was six-thirty here in Baghdad. That made it one-thirty back in London.
Might as well wake the buggers up
.

He knelt down in front of the river wall, and switched the machine on. ‘Jed Bradley, here,’ he said, as soon as the phone was answered. ‘Get me Laura Strangar.’

The Firm had kitted out a special hotline for its units operating inside Iraq. How many of them there might be, Jed had no idea. Maybe a dozen. Maybe only us. Either way, they weren’t going to risk losing any information because nobody got around to taking the call.

‘Jed, you OK?’ said Laura.

Jed paused. Her voice sounded as clear and as pure as if she was lying right next to him in bed. He glanced along the river. Rob’s corpse was now clearly visible through the rushes, and if they didn’t cover him up again, he was going to be easy to spot. ‘Steve and Rob are dead,’ he said flatly. ‘Matt and I are still operational.’

Another pause. He could hear the sharp intake of breath. Like most desk jockeys, Laura was uncertain how to deal with casualties in the field. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘You got inside the plant?’

‘Last night,’ said Jed. ‘We got the pictures. Then there was a dust-up. We used a few grenades but I’m not sure how much damage we did.’