Ultimate Weapon (27 page)

Nick held on to his Coke, briefly wishing it was something stronger. For a guy who’s trying to stay on the wagon, I’m spending a lot of time in pubs, he thought.

He looked down at his mobile. No messages, no texts, nothing. He was still checking his phone a dozen times a day, but Sarah hadn’t been in touch, and he’d stopped calling her. He didn’t expect to get a message any more. He knew she hadn’t just taken off for a few days. Something had happened to her. That much was certain. The only question was whether he could find her.
Or whether it was too late.

He looked around the pub again. No sign of Horton.
It was now ten past seven. Late, he said to himself, rolling the word around in his mind. He’s Regiment. He’s never late. Lateness is beaten out of the men in the first weeks of training.

‘Still off the juice, I see.’

Nick looked up. Horton was standing right next to him. Somehow he hadn’t seen him come in. Slowing down, he wondered to himself. Horton sat down next to him at the small table. He was wearing black jeans and a blue sweatshirt, with a brown leather jacket over it. He had a whisky and soda with a generous helping of ice. He looked at Nick. ‘You sure you’re not drinking?’

Nick shook his head.

‘You should be.’

Nick leant forward on the table. He could smell the alcohol on Horton’s lips. ‘What the fuck have you found out?’ he muttered.

Horton drained his glass, sinking the whisky in one gulp. He glanced around the pub, scanning the faces of the men lining the bar. ‘Let’s go outside.’

Nick stood and followed him out of the pub, towards the car park. He could see the strain on Horton’s face. His skin was drawn tight, and his eyes were narrowing. He was studying the car park, examining the shadows, checking the thin spaces between the cars. As if he was looking for something. Or somebody.

This is a tough guy, thought Nick grimly. He’s been in plenty of fights. He feeds bodies and munitions into half the world’s wars.
And something has just made him very frightened.

Horton leant against the bonnet of an Audi A3. He looked at Nick. ‘You’re mixed up in some heavy shit,’ he said.

‘Just give it to me straight.’

Horton glanced around the car park. He pulled out a Hamlet miniature cigar from his pocket, torching it from a greasy, oil-fuelled lighter. ‘I checked that account number you gave me,’ he started. ‘We do a bit of work for the banks, and one of the security officers owes me a favour or two. All the banks have informal networks of information, because they all want to stay away from the dodgy customers – or at least the ones who won’t pay off their overdraft in time. It took him a couple of hours, but he came back with the info. The money was paid into Wilmington’s bank account from a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. That was registered in his own name. The money from that came from an account in Hong Kong. It had been through three separate accounts, but started out in a bank in Switzerland. Basic money-laundering stuff. It might fool the police, and give you some protection, but it doesn’t fool the bankers. They know this game, because they invented it.’ Horton relit his cigar, drew deeply on it, then blew a puff of smoke into the air. It caught on the chilly breeze, blowing past Nick’s face. ‘It was linked to a consortium of oil traders registered in the name of Salek al-Fayadh. We traced that back as well. Took another couple of hours. Eventually, my pal at the bank comes on to me and says I shouldn’t touch that money with a bargepole. It comes out of the United Nations oil-for-food programme.’

‘Meaning what?’ said Nick.

‘Oil for food, man,’ said Horton. ‘Jesus, where have you been hiding? For the past decade there have been sanctions on Iraq. They are allowed to sell a limited amount of oil through the UN to pay for food and medical supplies. It’s corrupt as hell. Everyone knows the money is used by Saddam Hussein.’ He took another puff on his cigar. ‘Your professor is being paid by the Iraqis.’

It took a moment for the information to sink in. It was as if a bullet had just struck him: he was numbed by the information. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered eventually. In his mind, he was still unpacking the consequences of what Horton had just told him. If Wilmington was being paid by the Iraqis, then they would know all about the work Sarah was doing in the lab. They would know about any breakthroughs she had made.

Could she possibly have been lifted by the Iraqis?

What the hell would they want from her? The cold-fusion technology?

‘They’ve got Sarah,’ he said out loud.

Horton looked up at him. ‘Your girl?’

‘Someone’s taken her, that’s for sure. If Wilmington is working for the Iraqis then I reckon it’s those bastards. I’ve just got to find out where.’

Horton puffed on his cigar again. In the darkness, the pale orange glow of its tip illuminated his lined, weather-beaten face. ‘They’re mad fuckers,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of bad people in the world. You and I have had to deal with more than our fair share of them.
But Saddam and his boys take everything to extremes. Nobody messes with them, and nobody should.’

‘It’s my daughter,’ snapped Nick.

Horton nodded. The smoke was curling up around his face. Neither man needed to say anything else. They both understood that when family was at stake, all the usual calculations of risk turned into dust. You would do whatever was necessary. If it cost you life, that was just the tab you had to pick up.

He reached out with his right hand, and took hold of Nick’s shoulder. ‘You need help, you just ask for it,’ he said.

‘Thanks, but this is my battle,’ said Nick, turning away. ‘I’ll fight it myself.’

A few lights were shining from the building, but Nick reckoned the laboratory would be empty at this time of night. From Chelmsford, he’d got the train straight back to Cambridge, then walked from the station to here. Along the way, there had been plenty of time to think.

Cold fusion would change the geography of the global energy industry completely, and nobody had more of a stake in that than Saddam Hussein. If he could control cold fusion, he would stop it ever coming on to the market, because it would destroy the oil industry overnight. But he could also hold all his enemies in the Middle East to ransom. Because the secret of cold fusion threatened to destroy all their economies.

I know why the bastards wanted to lift her. But where
would they have taken her? To Iraq?
I hope to God she’s not there.

He’d already checked the front of the lab. The night guard was on duty in the lobby, but it was just a university building, and didn’t have any special security. The back door he and Jed had used a few days earlier had just a simple latchkey lock on it, and it gave way easily enough when Nick wrenched at it with a penknife. Once inside, he couldn’t see anybody in the corridors. One or two of the students might be working late, but it was unlikely they would pay him much attention. One good thing about students, he thought as he walked purposefully down the hallway. Most of them were so dopey, they could be relied upon not to notice anything that was happening around them.

The door to Wilmington’s office wasn’t locked. Nick pushed it open, and stepped quickly inside. He left the lights turned off: there was no point in drawing attention to himself. A street lamp was casting a soft glow in through the window, enough for Nick to see by once his vision had adjusted. He glanced around the room. The same pile of papers. Same faint equations on the board. Some book open on the desk. Nick started to search the drawers. A diary, maybe? he wondered. A map, some notes, perhaps a passport with some visa stamps in it.
Anything that might contain some lead on where they have taken Sarah.

He pulled out a yellow folder, riffling through the pages. Some interdepartmental university memos. He pushed those aside. Notes on university admissions
proceedings. A grid showing next term’s lecture schedule. Bugger it, thought Nick. Where does he keep the stuff that tells me what the bastard is really doing? Maybe I’m just going to have to beat it out of him. Take him hostage, and get him to speak to the bastards who’ve lifted Sarah. Tell them that if they don’t release her in the next twenty-four hours, then the professor is a dead man. Maximum speed, and maximum aggression. That’s what we learnt in the Regiment.
It worked then, and it will work now.

He glanced at the computer. It had been left on, and as soon as he touched the mouse, the screen jumped back into life. His hands were sweaty. The tension was getting to him, he could tell that. He stared at the screen, examining the files. Using the mouse, he started to point and click. He opened up ‘My Documents’, clicking first on ‘History’. More memos, a couple of them written today. A reference for a postgrad applying to Harvard. A note to the college about a collaborative project with Hamburg University.

Nothing, thought Nick.
Whatever the bugger’s hiding, it’s not here.

Nick sat back in the chair. He scanned the shelves on the cupboard wall. Science books, mostly. A couple of histories of the Second World War, a biography of Churchill, and one of Einstein, a pictorial book about Kurdistan. Three books by the professor himself, all on particle physics, and each of them translated into both German and Japanese.

Why would a man such as this be taking money from
Iraq, he wondered. Good job, distinguished career, he had everything to lose. Maybe he needs the money. Gambling debts?
Perhaps they’ve got something bad on him.

A noise.

The door was creaking.

Nick spun round in the chair. The door was ajar, a hand gripping the handle. Through the murky light, he could see a pair of shoulders. He whipped himself up from the chair, steadying himself for the fight. Wilmington was not a big man, and he was in his fifties. There won’t be much punch in him, Nick told himself grimly. Knock him out cold, then take him somewhere I can deal with him slowly.
Make the bugger talk.

Nick stood behind the door, his knuckles poised to strike the first blow. A clean blow to the windpipe, he told himself. Then another to the centre of his jaw. Put him straight out before he knows what’s happened to him.

One person was entering the room.
Then another.

Nick threw a punch. It flew into the air, then was caught in the palm of a hand. A young hand. A strong one. In the next instant, a blow smashed into his stomach. Then another one into the back of his neck. It felt as if iron rods were crashing into his bones, splintering and chewing them as they crashed into his body. A sharp pain was ripping up through his spine, and his vision was blurring. His knees buckled, and he could feel himself starting to fall to the floor. Another punch. This time it was back to the stomach, knocking the air from his lungs and numbing his ribcage. Nick had taken a
fair share of punches in his time, but this was different: the pain was searing, intense, as if his nerves were being burnt up, and it was impossible for him to react quickly enough to respond. In the next instant, two men were pressing down hard on him. One man was pinning down his chest, and another was gripping his legs: they were clearly trained to subdue a man no matter how hard he might fight back. He could smell processed cheese sandwiches on their breath, and the cologne on their necks. He looked up. A woman was peering into his face. Elegant, blonde, but with eyes that were as cold as they were blue. ‘My name is Laura Strangar,’ she said, her tone clipped and formal. ‘You’re under arrest.’

‘What the fuck for?’

He could feel some blood spitting from his torn lip as he spoke the words.

Laura glanced around the room. ‘Is this your office?’ she said sharply. ‘No. Well then, breaking and entering will do for a start. I’m sure we can find a few more things to charge you with once we get you down to the office.’

The streets looked darker than the last time Jed had walked along them. The people were moving faster. Nobody was stopping to talk. The pavement cafés were emptied of the men who usually spent half the day sitting around talking. The shops were sold out, a few even boarded up. Everywhere you looked, the faces of the people were strained and tired. Only the children were still playing in the streets.

They’re afraid, thought Jed. And right to be.
This city is about to hammered into dust.

It was early afternoon, and Jed and Matt had just driven back across Baghdad towards the plant. The journey had been completed without incident. Jed couldn’t say for certain, but there seemed to be fewer soldiers on the streets today. Maybe they’d all returned to their barracks, getting in some training before the battle kicked off. Maybe they’ve already started abandoning their posts. There was no way of knowing. He was just grateful to get to the right district without meeting any roadblocks.

‘You think it’s safe to approach the plant?’ he whispered to Matt.

Matt glanced down the street, then nodded. ‘So long as we don’t draw any attention to ourselves.’

They walked in silence, keeping a couple of yards apart and never breaking stride. One or two men glanced in their direction, but the more time they spent in Baghdad, Jed noticed, the more they started to blend in with the locals. The skin on their faces was tanned, and lined with the grime and dust that seemed to cling to every surface of the city. Their clothes were unwashed, and their beards growing. If we start looking much worse, Jed thought, they’ll arrest us as tramps, not as enemy soldiers.