The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Fifty-Five

Catalina felt her knees go weak and her stomach flip.

‘Drop it. Or you die.’

She opened her fingers and the gun fell from her hand. One of the two armed guards who’d come up behind her quickly stooped to pick it up, while the other kept his weapon pointed against her temple.

She bowed her head in defeat and closed her eyes as they grabbed her and yanked her arms forcefully behind her back. Opening her eyes, the room Grant had been in was suddenly empty.

The guard who’d taken her weapon produced steel handcuffs and used them to fasten her wrists behind her. He squeezed the bracelets tight. ‘Move it,’ he commanded, shoving her. The whole time, the second guard’s pistol was still trained right on her.

They marched her along the outside of the villa until they came to a side entrance. Catalina was shoved through it, and into the house. It was cool inside. The furnishings were of the same palatial ilk as those with which Austin Keller filled all his homes. The walls were lined with fine silk and hung everywhere with old oil paintings in grand gilt frames. Their footsteps echoed off mosaic floors of black and white marble. The guards yanked her roughly to a halt outside a door. The first guard rapped on it.

A voice — the voice — said from inside, ‘Come in.’

The first guard opened the door. The second pressed a strong hand against her back and pushed her through it.

The room was a large, magnificent salon. Maxwell Grant was leaning nonchalantly against a tall fireplace. He broke into a generous smile as Catalina entered. ‘Miss Fuentes. I must say, this was an unexpected pleasure.’ He waved a discreet signal to the guard who’d handcuffed her. The guard unlocked and removed the cuffs, then he and his colleague turned and smartly left the room, shutting the door behind them.

Catalina glanced all around the room. Her eyes locked onto the wall-mounted display of crossed sabres that hung over the fireplace. For an instant, her imagination clouded over with the mental image of her making a rush for one of them, pulling it down and sticking it through Grant’s guts before the guards came bursting in and gunned her down.

Grant greeted her like an old family friend. ‘Welcome to my humble home. I’d ask to what I owe this surprise visit, but I think we already know the answer to that one, don’t we?’

Catalina rubbed her wrists and said nothing. The blood was still seeping through the material wrapped around her injured hand.

‘Satellite dish, indeed,’ Grant chuckled. ‘A worthy effort. Although I’m sorry to say I’m a little disappointed by your lack of knowledge of basic security. You don’t imagine the villa would be so vulnerable to intruders, do you? I was watching you from the moment you climbed the wall. How’s the hand? I can have it seen to, if you like.’

‘Why, does the sight of a little blood bother you?’ she fired back at him. ‘I didn’t realise murderers were so squeamish.’

He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Murderer? Says the intruder who invaded my property carrying a loaded pistol, with the obvious intention of shooting an unarmed man in the back.’

‘Kinder treatment than you deserve. It would have been far too quick and easy a death for you.’

‘Please,’ he said, motioning to the luxurious armchairs and settees that filled the room. ‘Won’t you take a seat? You must be tired after your journey. I won’t ask where it is you’ve been keeping yourself hidden away all this time.’

Catalina didn’t budge from where she stood, looking him fiercely in the eye. ‘Somewhere you and your paid scumbags would never have found me,’ she said. ‘Not in a hundred years of trying.’

‘Then it would seem that you’ve saved me an awful lot of time and trouble, haven’t you?’ Smiling, Grant walked over to an antique sideboard and flipped open a lid to reveal a hi-fi system inside. ‘Some music, I think,’ he said, putting on a CD. ‘Ana Vidovic performing Albéniz’s Asturias. I listen to it often, and think of you. Although, as wonderful as she is, I don’t think she’s half the player you could have become, if you’d wanted to.’ As the opening notes of the classical guitar piece sounded over hidden speakers, slow and melodious at first, Grant walked over to an armchair and stretched out in it with a contented sigh.

‘You look more radiant than ever, by the way,’ he said, gazing at her the way he might have gazed at one of the expensive oil paintings on his walls. ‘You’ve evidently been taking good care of yourself. Or someone has. I admit it, I’m jealous. Who’s the lucky man?’

‘What makes you so sure there has to be a man involved?’

‘A woman like you? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t have been your only secret admirer. Which I have to confess to having been for quite some time. In fact, if I hadn’t been so foolishly bedazzled by your presence that evening we met, I might have watched my tongue, instead of blabbing like a schoolboy and letting you realise that I knew a little too much about you, and that our meeting was anything but a chance encounter. What can I say? I’m sure you have that effect on most men.’

‘Please. You’re making me sick.’

‘We’re all human. Even murderers have feelings.’

‘So you’re admitting it now,’ she said.

‘What I am is a businessman. A strategist, a pragmatist. Like you. We’re not so different, you and I.’

‘Now you’re really going to upset me.’

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of; far from it. We do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals. Mine is primarily to make money, while yours is to pursue scientific truth. But essentially, it’s all much of a muchness. I don’t take it at all personally that you came here today to kill me. You tried to do what you felt was required, under the circumstances. Just as you engineered that little piece of theatre of yours in July. Which was a neat bit of work, by the way. You certainly fooled the world at large, even if you didn’t succeed in pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.’ He paused. ‘The problem with faking your own death is that nobody will notice when it happens for real.’

‘If you’re going to kill me, then do it now. If you’ve got the balls.’

‘Perish the thought. I wouldn’t dream of curtailing my chance to spend some time with such a beautiful and brilliant woman. It’s just you and me, until our visitor arrives.’

He saw the flash of puzzlement in her expression, and looked pleased by it. ‘That’s who I was speaking to on the phone before, to inform them you were here,’ he explained. ‘He’s en route from London even as we speak, and very much looking forward to meeting you in person.’

Catalina said nothing. She darted another glance at the crossed sabres over the fireplace. They suddenly seemed very far away and out of reach. Her hand began to throb painfully as the blood pulsed faster with the racing of her heart.

‘You surely didn’t think I was alone in this, did you?’ Grant said with a grin. ‘You and your friends drew the attention of far more powerful and influential people than I. I’m only the middleman, the errand boy, who simply does what he’s told. The sanctions come from above.’

‘Just obeying orders,’ she said mockingly. ‘Of course. I should have guessed that you didn’t have the brains to do anything like this on your own.’

‘Oh, I have my ways and means, and muddle along not too badly in general,’ he said. ‘They don’t place their confidence in just anybody, you know. Though I’ll admit, between you and me, that you had us all rattled there for a while. My associates were less than impressed with me for allowing you to slip through our fingers as carelessly as I did. Now you’re back, you’ve done wonders to restore their faith in me. I should thank you. They’re not the kind of people one wishes to make a habit of disappointing.’

‘And naturally, you let them think it was you who found me, rather than the other way round.’

Grant shrugged. ‘It doesn’t always pay to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Sometimes it’s wiser to keep your mouth shut. A lesson you and your friends would have benefited from.’

‘We’re scientists. We tell the truth. That’s what we do, come what may.’

‘What, you don’t think there are plenty of your fellow scientists who keep the “truth” to themselves and say what they’re paid to say? That’s how it works in the real world, my dear girl. Even Galileo realised that, eventually. And I would be very, very surprised to think you didn’t already know it perfectly well.’

‘So what did these high-powered employers of yours pay you to kill my team, Maxwell?’

‘Not a penny. Let’s just say we came to an arrangement that serves our mutual business interests. But you shouldn’t do yourself down, my dear. This wasn’t about the others. You were always the star attraction, from the beginning. You were the one the world would have listened to, if we’d allowed that to happen. The others were just collateral damage. Their fates were sealed the moment you involved them. Moths to a candle.’

His words shook her deeply, but she refused to let him see it. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Maxwell,’ she said in a strong voice. ‘It’s not just about me at all. Killing me won’t end this. You’re forgetting that Steve Ellis is still out there. He’s the candle, still burning away where you can’t hope to get to it to snuff it out. There isn’t anyone who knows more about our research than Steve does. He was doing this ten years before I was even born. And when he broadcasts the truth to the millions of people who follow him, there won’t be a hole in the ground you and your sick little associates will be able to hide in, or a rock that you can crawl under. He’ll bury you all.’

Maxwell Grant listened pensively as she talked, and when she’d finished he gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Funny you should have mentioned deliveries here to the villa,’ he said. ‘As it happens, I received one earlier this morning. Not a satellite dish,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘Something much more interesting, I think you’ll agree. Here, let me show you.’

He stood, walked past her to the door and opened it. The two guards who had caught her were still standing outside in the corridor, along with two others. Grant had a quick, quiet word with them, and one of them hurried off. Catalina heard his footsteps ringing on the marble floor. The guard returned a few moments later, holding something square and brown. It was a cardboard box, cubic in dimensions, about eighteen inches tall and wide, wrapped with packaging tape that had been neatly slit along the top flaps. Grant took the box from him and carried it into the room, setting it down on a table.

‘Come,’ he said pleasantly to Catalina, beckoning her over. ‘Go ahead. Take a look inside.’

She hesitantly approached the table, and he stepped back to let her get closer. She reached out her good hand and tentatively grasped the edge of one of the box’s flaps and pulled it back so she could peer inside.

Inside the box was Steve Ellis’s severed head. His eyes stared glassily into hers, like a dead mackerel’s.

Catalina screamed.