Vortex

Chapter Eleven

As Joseph spoke, the door opened again. The flight lieutenant walked in, gun at the ready, followed by two of his colleagues. They each carried rough strips of cloth that looked as if they had just been hurriedly ripped from one of the soldier's articles of clothing.

'Blindfold them,' the flight lieutenant said.

'Don't you dare,' Annie started to say with fire in her voice. 'Give me my rucksack. I want my phone — I demand to make a phone call.'

'Shut up,' the flight lieutenant growled, just as Ben felt himself being grabbed by one of the soldiers. He struggled, kicking his heel hard into the man's shin. His captor shouted out, but didn't let go. With his hands restrained by the cuffs and the fact that the RAF man was too strong for him, Ben soon had the rough cloth firmly tied around his eyes. As the blackness engulfed him, he sensed Annie scuffling ineffectually; Joseph, however, seemed to accept what was happening and was blindfolded without complaint.

Once the blindfolds had been applied, Ben was hustled out of the shack and felt himself being pushed up into the truck yet again. The doors slammed shut and the vehicle started to move. It was difficult to tell in the darkness who else was in the truck with them, but he could only assume that the same three soldiers who had accompanied them before were there, so he knew he could not discuss escape plans or other theories in front of them. And so the trio kept quiet, disorientated by the blindfolds and the constant bumping of the truck over difficult roads. Before long it became clear to Ben that even if they managed to get away, it wouldn't make any difference: they would be totally lost.

All sense of time seemed to be confused, so Ben had no idea how long they drove for. Finally, however, they came to an abrupt stop and once more they were manhandled off the truck.

'Get them down there,' the voice of the leader said curtly.

Someone pushed Ben from behind. 'Hey,' he complained as he stumbled forward. The moment he spoke, however, he felt someone deal him a crushing blow in the stomach. He doubled over, winded, falling to the ground, where he felt his knees rustle in a patch of fallen leaves.

'Get up,' someone told him, and he was pulled gasping to his feet before being dragged through another door. 'Steps,' his aggressive companion murmured to him, and sure enough Ben found himself walking down a flight of stairs. For some reason — he didn't know why — he found himself counting them. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, twenty-six — they were going some way underground. He found himself praying that they wouldn't see any more rats down here.

'Where are you taking us?' he demanded; but he was not favoured with a reply. Just another push that forced him down a narrow corridor — his uneven gait meant he occasionally brushed against the wall on either side, and he could tell that those walls were closer together than made him entirely comfortable. The corridor seemed to wind round erratically; occasionally they would take a left or a right turn. Ben felt as though he was in some kind of fiendish underground maze, and he knew he had no chance of getting back to the entrance unless he had a great deal of luck.

Abruptly they came to a stop. There was the sound of somebody knocking on a door, and then of the door opening. They were pushed inside. 'Johnson,' a quiet voice said, 'you stay here. The rest of you, leave us.' There was a shuffling of feet as the soldiers left the room.

Silence. A thick, meaningful silence that seemed to stick to them. And then the quiet voice spoke again.

'You really should have stayed away, Joseph.'

Ben heard Joseph take a deep breath. When he spoke, it was with a clarity that might not have been expected of him. 'Stayed away, Lucian? I rather think you should not have sent me away in the first place.'

'It was for your own good,' Lucian replied sharply.

A pause. 'My own good?' Joseph asked him, his voice calm. 'Or yours?'

Lucian breathed out with a heavy snort. 'I wouldn't expect you to understand. Science requires a clear mind — not something you were ever blessed with.'

Ben waited for a response from Joseph, but there was none.

When Lucian spoke again, his voice had calmed. 'How convenient,' he almost purred, 'that you should turn up now of all times.'

Ben sensed him walking thoughtfully among the silent trio.

'All I need to know, Joseph, is what you have heard and who you have heard it from.'

'You're as mistaken as you ever were, Lucian,' Joseph said, his voice cracking a bit. 'I don't know what it is that you've got going on here, and frankly I don't care. I came to Spadeadam to reassure myself that I've not been deceiving myself these last fifty years. I've done that beyond question, so why don't you just let us all go?'

Lucian seemed to contemplate that for a moment. 'You never were a good liar, Joseph,' he commented finally. 'Who are your two friends? They're a little young for heroics, aren't they? It was stupid of you to bring them.'

'He didn't!' Ben interrupted defiantly. 'We came here by ourselves.'

He had barely finished speaking when he felt a hand at his face. With a sudden yank, the blindfold was ripped roughly from around his head, and Ben was face to face with Joseph's brother, able to look at him properly. He still wore the same thin brown suit as when they had first seen him, but it was his bespectacled face that interested Ben. Now he knew that Lucian and Joseph were brothers, he could see the resemblance. There was not the same hooked nose or floppy hair, but something around the mouth was similar, as were the eyes — now half closed in an expression of the deepest mistrust. 'You must think I'm stupid, you idiot child,' he hissed. 'But let me tell you this. I've been working on Vortex for nearly as long as you've been alive, and if you think I'm going to let you three interfere with it now, then you've got another think coming. It will be delivered tomorrow, there will be no trace of its development here and the few of us who know about it will be on a plane out of the country with enough money to fade into obscurity.'

He strode up to Annie, removed her blindfold, and then did the same to Joseph. It was to his brother that he spoke next. 'History will not remember the name of the person who bestowed this gift upon it,' he said, 'but that does not matter. I am willing to sacrifice my own fame for the greater good.'

Joseph looked flatly at him. 'For the greater good, Lucian? It strikes me that I've heard you say that once before, a long time ago.'

Lucian's lip curled. 'You never did understand, Joseph.' He turned to the flight lieutenant. 'We need to keep them out of the way until tomorrow and make sure that none of our colleagues' — he spoke the word with a certain amount of distaste — 'above ground start asking questions about them. You're sure we picked them up before their presence was noticed? And no one saw you move them in or out of the truck earlier?'

'We're sure,' Johnson replied.

'Good,' Lucian replied. He turned to look back at the trio. 'Flight Lieutenant Johnson will accompany you to a secure unit while I decide exactly what to do with you.' He stared directly at Joseph. 'Take a good look at my face, brother,' he said quietly. 'It's the last time you'll ever see it.'

Joseph stared back at him, gazing into his brother's eyes, his own face unreadable. 'Shall we go, Flight Lieutenant?' he asked gently. He did not see Lucian nod his approval, because he was resolutely looking the other way.

Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Kasparov of the Russian army watched the sun setting over the Spadeadam marshland. The insects had descended in force as dusk arrived, and a bite on his left hand irritated him, but he neither scratched it nor complained. Beside him in the back of the car was his host for the duration of his visit, a pleasant and enthusiastic wing commander by the name of Stevens who had no idea that Kasparov's official visit to Spadeadam was nothing more than a front for some very un official business. And now that his two aides had been dismissed, he could get on with that business.

'It's great to have you here, Lieutenant Colonel,' he was saying politely. 'Good to be able to show you guys round what we do here after so many years of cold war.'

Kasparov nodded abruptly. 'The Russian army is grateful to you for your hospitality.' He did his best to hide a rare smile. This enthusiastic British officer could never guess that the gratitude of the Russian military was the furthest thing from his mind. He had a new paymaster now, and an ulterior motive for being at the RAF base at that time. If he made sure everything ran smoothly, the Russian oligarch from whom he now took his orders would make him rich — rich enough to leave the army and never work again.

The car pulled to a halt outside a row of modern brick buildings. 'These will be your lodgings,' Stevens said as the driver walked round and opened the door for Kasparov. 'I trust you'll find them comfortable.'

'I'm sure I will,' Kasparov replied, shaking Stevens's outstretched hand, then hauling his large-framed body out of the car and picking up the bag that the driver had fetched from the boot. 'Until tomorrow morning, Wing Commander.'

'Tomorrow morning,' Stevens replied, and the car drove off.

Kasparov walked up to the door of his lodgings and stepped inside. He barely noticed the clean, comfortable surroundings; he simply dropped the bag in the hallway and pulled his mobile phone from the pocket of his military jacket, then dialled the number he had been given.

'It is Kasparov,' he said curtly when his call was answered. 'I am ready to be collected.' He flicked the phone shut and walked into the front room.

It was dark in there, but he didn't bother to switch the light on. Instead he stood at the window and looked out over the wide expanse of countryside ahead of him, silently contemplating what he had to do. A group of renegade North Korean politicians were furious that their leader appeared to be losing his ambition for military supremacy. They had won his boss's little auction for the weapon this scientist had been developing without the knowledge of his RAF employers. It was Kasparov's job to check that everything was as it should be before the Vortex device was finally delivered. Once that happened, he could return to Russia, resign his commission and head straight to the little dacha in the countryside where he could allow himself time to decide how to spend his life and his money.

Gradually he became aware of headlamps in the distance. They grew hypnotically closer as Kasparov watched them impassively. Only when they were really quite near did he move. He walked out of the front door and waited for the car to stop.

When it did, another RAF soldier stepped out of it.

'Lieutenant Colonel Kasparov?'

'Flight Lieutenant Johnson?'

Johnson nodded. 'You have a coat?'

Kasparov shook his head. 'I am used to the Russian winter,' he said scornfully. 'I will not need a coat.'

Johnson shrugged. 'Whatever,' he said. 'Shall we go?'

'Yes,' Kasparov replied. 'We shall. I wish to see the Vortex device as soon as possible. Take me there now.'

And without a further word, he stepped into the back of the car, waiting impatiently for Flight Lieutenant Johnson to do as he had instructed.