Ultimate Weapon (7 page)

They started walking around the perimeter of the lab. There was a bicycle stand at its front, with around thirty bikes chained up to it. Around the back, there was a small car park with a collection of Hondas, Renaults and Volkswagens. A back door led into what looked like a canteen. Jed pushed the door open and stepped inside. The smell of the food hit him in the face: a mixture of overboiled potatoes, fried onions and stewed beef. Jesus, he thought.
The grub in this place must be even worse than in the army
.

Apart from two people sharing a coffee, the canteen was empty at this time of the morning. It was just after eleven, and most of the scientists were working in their labs. Jed paused to ask for directions, and was told to take the second corridor on the left. He’d find Professor Wilmington’s office there. Jed and Nick walked quickly through the building. They passed two people on the way, but nobody paid any attention to them. Jed hesitated for just a second outside the door, then knocked twice. Without waiting for a reply, he turned the handle. Seize the moment, he reminded himself.
It might not come again
.

‘It won’t matter soon …’

Jed caught just the tail end of the sentence of the shorter of the two men standing in front of him. This must be Wilmington, he decided. The professor was a slender man of fifty or so. His dark hair was combed back, and his glasses were perched on the end of his long, raking nose. His skin was tanned, but his face was pitted with pockmarks, and his eyes were capped by a
pair of thick eyebrows that crawled out over his forehead like ivy crawling across a building. Next to him stood a taller, younger man. An Arab, Jed judged, but it was impossible to tell from a brief glance which country he might come from. He was about six foot, with a thin, wiry face, but strong shoulders and a thick neck. His hair looked like it could use a trim, and he had a thick black moustache.

‘Who are you?’ said the Professor.

‘My name is Nick Scott,’ said Nick firmly. ‘And this is Jed Bradley. We’re sorry for bursting in on you like this, but we need to speak to you right away.’

‘I told reception –’

The second man tapped him on the arm. ‘Let them speak,’ he said softly.

‘It will just take a few minutes,’ said Jed.

Wilmington nodded. ‘OK,’ he said cautiously. ‘I guess you’re Sarah’s father.’ He looked from Nick to Jed. ‘But who are you?’

‘I’m a friend of Sarah’s.’ He glanced at the taller man. ‘And you are … ?’

Jed could feel the hostility in the man’s eyes as the question was posed. It was like having a snake looking straight at you, deciding whether to shoot its venom into your veins. ‘My name is Salek al-Fayadh. I’m a scientist, from the Lebanon.’

‘So, since you’re here,’ said the professor, ‘what do you want?’

Nick glanced edgily at Salek. ‘We should speak to you alone.’

‘There’s nothing that you can’t say in front of Salek,’ replied Wilmington. ‘He’s an old friend.’

Salek moved closer to Nick. The room measured fifteen feet by ten, with a window that looked out on to the street. A light drizzle was falling outside. Three of the walls were covered with bookshelves, each bulging with thick-looking scientific works. A stack of papers was balanced in one corner. On the far wall there was a desk, with a computer on it. Next to that a blackboard, with a set of equations drawn on it. Jed knew enough physics to know they related to nuclear reactions of some sort, but he couldn’t identify which kind. The professor was probably just preparing for a tutorial.

‘Are you soldiers?’ said Salek, looking at both Nick and Jed.

‘What makes you say that?’ said Nick.

Salek smiled, his moustache creasing up as he did so. ‘I’ve been around military men, I recognise their manner,’ he replied. ‘Which regiment?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nick.

‘So you are soldiers, then …’

There was a slight chuckle in his voice that grated on Jed’s nerves as if he was laughing at them.

‘I told you, it doesn’t matter,’ snapped Nick. He looked back at Wilmington. ‘Sarah’s gone missing,’ he said. ‘We’re both worried about her. Very worried. I wanted to check when she was last in the lab?’

Wilmington rubbed his hand against his cheek. ‘I might have spoken to her last Friday,’ he said. ‘But I’m not here every day myself, so I can’t be certain.’

‘Do you know if she’s contacted anyone here in the past couple of days?’ said Jed.

‘Not that I know of,’ he said, ‘but I can put out a general email. One of her colleagues might have spoken to her.’

‘There’s been no sign of her for at least four days,’ said Nick. ‘Do you have any idea where she might be?’

Wilmington shook his head.

‘Maybe she had to go to a conference?’ said Jed.

The professor shrugged. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘Nothing to do with her work that could take her out of Cambridge?’

Again, Wilmington shook his head. ‘Sarah is a very brilliant young woman,’ he said. ‘Quite possibly the most brilliant young physicist in Cambridge, which means she is probably the best in Europe. You should be very proud of her.’ He smiled at Nick, then turned round, walking towards the window. The rain was starting to fall more heavily now, splattering up against the glass. ‘But she is erratic. She is unstable. That’s true of many great scientists, although in Sarah’s case she’s had incidents in her past that may have made her prone to mild depression, and perhaps even schizophrenia.’ He turned back to Nick, his expression accusing. ‘I suppose you know all about that. She regularly disappears for several days at a time. But she has always turned up again in the past, and I suppose she will again.’

He stepped away from the window, standing right in front of Nick and Jed. ‘So I’m sorry not to be more helpful, and I understand your concern,’ he said, ‘but
I’m sure she’s fine. Now, I’m afraid, I have a tutorial to give.’

‘She’s never disappeared for this long before,’ snapped Nick, his tone exasperated.

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ said Wilmington.

‘What kind of work was she doing recently?’ asked Jed.

Wilmington shrugged. ‘Nuclear physics,’ he said. ‘Even I had trouble understanding some of the concepts she was exploring. I imagine they’d be way beyond you.’

Nick ignored the insult. ‘Anything to do with weapons research?’

‘A soldier’s natural question,’ said Salek.

‘Well, what’s the answer?’ said Nick, ignoring Salek. The professor chuckled. ‘When you say nuclear physics, the average person always thinks it’s something to do with weapons. But of course, just about all physics is nuclear physics, since our work revolves around what laws govern the subatomic world. Nothing that Sarah is working on is ever likely to make a big bang, of that much I’m certain. We don’t do that kind of work here.’

‘Can you be sure of that?’ said Jed. ‘You saw her work?’

‘I can be quite sure,’ said Wilmington. ‘There’s actually very little interesting theoretical work being done in nuclear weaponry any more. It’s just engineering and computing. All the conceptual work was done fifty years ago.’ He looked hard at Nick and Jed. ‘Now, much as I’m enjoying this conversation, that tutorial is going to start in one minute. So you really must excuse me.’

Salek smiled at Jed. ‘I hope we meet again one day,’ he said, with exaggerated courtesy.

Jed nodded but remained silent.

‘In fact, I feel sure we will …’

Jed walked briskly along the road, his jacket pulled up high around his neck to protect himself from the rain. ‘Maybe the professor is right,’ he said. ‘Maybe Sarah is just on another of her benders. It’s happened often enough in the past.’

‘This time is different,’ said Nick

‘I don’t know,’ said Jed. ‘You’re always away, so you don’t see as much of her as I do. Or the people in the lab.’

‘I’m her father,’ snarled Nick. ‘I know her better than anyone.

‘Fathers always think that.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jed, turning away.

Nick looked at him. He was thinking about the money deposited in the joint account. It didn’t matter what anyone said: nobody made a hundred grand without doing anything. If they disappeared right afterwards, it meant something had happened to them. And he would find out what. Just him.
Nobody else
.

‘This is my business, you hear,’ he said. His voice was raised, and a woman walking down the street with a baby in a buggy started to cross the road to get away from them. ‘So you just keep out of it.’

‘Right, because you’ve made such a great job of
looking after her in the past,’ said Jed. ‘Maybe that’s why she goes on drinking benders all the time. Maybe that’s why she pops pills, and doesn’t believe she can ever commit to another man.’

‘You know bloody nothing about it,’ said Nick.

Jed could see the fury in his eyes. The pupils were glinting with anger, and there was a bead of sweat running down the side of his face. Jed had been in enough fights in his life to know when a punch was about to be thrown: there was a moment between two men when a point could only be settled with fists, not words, and they had reached that point now. ‘Just give it to me, grandad,’ he snapped. ‘Let’s see how tough you really are.’

Nick took a step forward. His shoulder muscles were tensed, and his arm was starting to draw backwards. Jed steadied himself, ready to use his arms to deflect the force of the first blow.

‘Never talk about Sarah like that again,’ growled Nick.

The mobile in Jed’s pocket was ringing. He was about to ignore it, then he wondered if it might be Sarah answering one of the many messages he had left for her. ‘Yes,’ he said into the receiver.

He listened for a minute, then snapped the phone shut. He looked back at Nick. The man was standing right next to him, his legs apart, his fist ready: the stance of a trained fighter. ‘I’ve been recalled to base,’ said Jed. ‘Immediately.’

Jed turned round and started walking towards the station. It didn’t matter where you were or what you were doing. When the Regiment said it needed you,
you did as you were told. Those were the rules, and they were unbreakable. ‘We’ll fight another day,’ he said, looking back at Nick.

‘Trust me, we will,’ said Nick. ‘And next time, there will be nothing to save you.’

Daniel Sutton looked at Jed coldly. He was only a couple of years older than him, and hadn’t been to such a good university, but he’d been to the right school, and had the right accent, so that made him a Rupert. ‘I hear there was a bit of a dust-up down in London,’ he said.

Jed nodded. ‘I voiced some reservations about whether I wanted to take the mission,’ he said. ‘It’s off the books, so I have a choice.’

They were sitting in a bare concrete briefing room. There was one simple wooden table, with Sutton behind it, and Jed opposite him. In the corner, there was a single lamp bulb, spreading a pale light up into the room. ‘Technically, you have a choice,’ said Sutton. ‘Just like technically you can appeal against a parking ticket. But it won’t do you any good, because no one gives a sod. You can refuse the mission if you want to, but the Regiment has no place for men who refuse to do what their country needs. That understood?’

‘How long do I have to make up my mind?’

‘About five minutes.’

There was a silence. A minute went by without either
man speaking. If you’ve got five minutes, you might as well use it, Jed decided. He knew the risks of going into Iraq. He’d been there only two weeks ago. The whole country was wound up like a crowd of football fans minutes before a Cup Final kicked off: it was tense with anticipation, trigger-happy, and looking for a fight. That made it dangerous. Without backup, they’d be exposed to dangers that he probably couldn’t even imagine.

But that wasn’t it. If he wasn’t able to handle danger he wouldn’t have joined the Regiment in the first place. The real reason he wanted to turn down the mission was because he wanted to stay here.
To find Sarah
.

Three minutes ticked by on his watch. Jed was still thinking.

‘Listen,’ said Sutton, his expression softening. ‘You’re a good man, Jed. You’ve got a great future in this outfit. With your academic qualifications and your skills in the field, you could go all the way. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but let me tell you this, if you blow out of the Regiment now, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’

Jed looked back at him. He thought about the way he’d felt when he’d walked back into the regimental headquarters a few minutes ago after getting back from Cambridge. He thought about the trophies on the wall of the mess, marking the different battles the Regiment had fought throughout the world. He thought about the mates he had made since he signed up: men who would lay down their lives for him, and for whom he
would gladly do the same. I belong here, he told himself.
I sure as hell don’t belong anywhere else. Never did
.

‘When do we start?’ he said.

Laura was standing at the front of the room. She glanced down at Jed, and a brief smile flickered across her lips. Obvious enough that I will know what she means, he thought to himself. But subtle enough so that no one else will.