They walked through the glass doors into the two story building, a windowless second floor, at exactly the time when everyone else was on the way out and they were harshly jostled by people evidently in a hurry to be leaving. It looked like an emergency evacuation but it was something that happened every day with the same intensity, people desperate to distance themselves from an unpleasant environment. The well furnished reception area was empty except for a security guard in a drab olive uniform, complete with military belt and covered holster. He punched Abelard’s name into the computer and activated his security card to give him access to the entire facility. Had he not been so intensely focussed on retrieving the sample he may have been alerted that all was not right when the guard raised no objection to Oliver and Elizabetta accompanying him through the steel barrier and into the high security area.
The door had barely clicked shut when, as one, they recoiled at the Doctor Mengele type who greeted them. He was older, gimp eyed and with a caricaturally hard face. Oliver and Elizabetta were primed to flee. It wasn’t only the Doctor Mengele type who kept them alert, all the people behind the steel door, without exception, seemed to have deliberately made an effort to appear unsavoury. A little like a horror show. For a moment, even Abelard wondered whether they should be taking them seriously. Having been here before he was only a little less flummoxed than the others.
"Herr Büush," the man who greeted him said, the umlaut almost visible in the harsh accent breaking Abelard’s name into two distinct syllables, “nice to see you again. You had so little time to look over this facility when you were here last, would you like to finish your tour?”
“That is very kind of you Herr Doctor Gruber, but I am again in somewhat of a hurry. I require that you to give me access to the cryogenics laboratory. I have left something there and would now need to reclaim it.”
When Gruber insisted he should accompany him into the lab Abelard pulled rank and went in alone. He was still, after all, the boss at VBI Pharma. In the cryogenics lab there was a bank of small freezers against one wall, each with an attached tag on which was scrawled a do-not-disturb-until-after date. Fortuitously the telephone on the small desk in the corner kept up an insistent ring, which the technician had tried to ignore, but felt eventually compelled to answer. Abelard used the distraction to quickly retrieve the small vial and put it into a portable freezer. During his brief earlier visit he had quietly placed the sample into the freezer with the longest remaining time to open date. No one but Abelard knew it was there.
"It is late Doctor Gruber," he said, as he came out of the lab, "we must be going. Thank you for your help and keep up the good work. I’m watching you and your excellent progress." Gruber carefully pulled the door to the lab shut until he heard the reassuring snap and then led them back to the exit. After a flurry of handshakes, and always with that annoying smug and, it seemed, knowing smile, he opened the steel door to the reception area. There, casually dressed in deep purple polo shirt and dark slacks, leaning on the high reception counter, was Milly.
"Abe, Oliver, and you must be Ms Trebella," he said, looking up from the small, ornate bronze sculpture of a hound gripping a fox in its jaws, which he had been admiring. He wasn't smiling. His face was at once severe and sad, as though prepared to do what he must, unpleasant as that may be. Short, quick tremors visibly convulsed Elizabetta’s shoulders.
"I won't keep you very long, it’s late in the evening and you are surely hungry and tired. But there is something I need to talk to you about." He was looking only at Abelard, as though the others had suddenly disappeared. "You will probably think me terribly silly to have come all this way just to tell you how disappointed I am, no, more than disappointed, actually very, very distressed with how you have turned against me. We had a bond between us, no different than if you had taken an oath of personal loyalty to me, as I now believe you had done with others before we met." His voice was still quite low, building slowly to an inevitable climax, so that only Abelard caught the last bit.
He paused for a moment as though trying to keep his emotions in check. The pressures inside him to release long pent up volatile anger were building into a massive explosion. He continued, his words growing louder as he spoke. He was now practically shouting. "I kept my end of the bargain. I gave you power, prestige, wealth, made you a law unto yourself. And how do you repay me? You disavow me. You ignominiously tell me I am no longer fit to be your protector. You, whose life I made, remade as you were before falling into your deep sleep; there it was again but unnoticed by Oliver and Elizabetta, too surprised to pay any attention to such small details. You had the temerity to repudiate me. I can never forgive you because, Abe, I can never again trust you to be loyal to me. Loyalty, personal loyalty, Abe, is the measure of a man. You have been appraised and found wanting. Goodbye Abe. You will of course never tell anyone about our little talk."
Then he stopped and Elizabetta really began worrying. He hadn't even warned her and Oliver to keep quiet. In fact, he didn't even seem to be asking or, for that matter, warning Abelard to keep his secret. Ominously, he appeared to be making a statement of fact that Abelard would never tell anyone, in spite of his harangue against Abelard's apparent lack of loyalty and his own capacity to trust him. Then he turned away.
“Oh, before you go,” he said, his voice now controlled and icy, “please give me the sample.” Abelard was aware there were cameras everywhere in the facility but felt he could milk the moment for a bit of extra time by showing some surprise that Milly would know about the sample.
“How did you know about it?”
Milly turned back towards him. “I suppose you must still neglect the ordinary precautions that anyone who imbibed common technologies with their mother’s milk would instinctively keep in mind,” his tone now laced with some pity and a little regret at the outcome. He didn’t bother to tell him that listening devices had been placed in his telephones. He then again turned away from them to dial a number on his phone. “Dona Maria,” he snapped, and then waited a moment, before resuming, “I have a Bush in hand,” this time with an arrogant self-confidence that seemed his due, under the circumstances.
But serendipity had that evening chosen Abelard as its favourite. The security guard created the circumstances for which Abelard had been searching since first seeing Milly. He had been a little too quick to unlock the glass doors. For Abelard, always attuned to even the tiniest opportunity, this was sufficient. He still had the portable freezer slung at his side. He suddenly took two strides forward, smashed his great fist against Milly’s jaw and the hapless guard, holding open the door, did not have time to be surprised as he was rendered unconscious by a blow from Oliver. They rushed through the exit into the damp, cool night air.
It was by now quite dark and the few dim sodium lamps illuminating the large, virtually empty parking area cast little light. The lot had been full when they first arrived, the only empty space being at the farthest corner. They were already a good way across the vast vacant expanse when they heard an engine roar and tires squealing for traction. The large black automobile stopped some ten metres from where they were standing. Then they heard the grating of the facility’s glass door as it swung open in the distance. The slightly dazed security guard moved unsteadily down the stairs and walked swiftly in their direction, Milly hard on his heels. Abelard quickly concluded that their pursuers were positioning to surround them. He looked back and forth between the security guard on one side and the black car on the other.
"Oliver," Abelard whispered, "there is a park across the road with a small heavily wooded area in one corner, we are going run for that shelter and try to lose them in the dark." Upon arriving, with a cunning wisdom rooted in the stalking predator, before doing battle, he had instinctively reconnoitred the area to plan his escape route, in the event the battle went against him.
The enemy was in position, the security guard was approaching, his right hand primed to draw the pistol. He stopped a few paces from where they stood, smi
led and gestured towards the big car saying, in heavily accented English, "please, we will drive you; your car does not work,” astoundingly, as though he expected to be believed.
"That’s very kind of you," Abelard muttered through a thin smile. He turned towards the black car, taking Elizabetta with one hand and Oliver with the other. But he didn't move, just waiting, as though unsure of where to go, all the while hearing the guard's footsteps approaching, closing the gap so as to goad them on towards the car. Swiftly and suddenly Abelard swung around and struck the guard hard enough to daze him, grabbed his gun and hissed at Oliver and Elizabetta to run. They made it into the thicket of trees just ahead of their pursuers.
"As soon as they enter the wood," Abelard shouted to Oliver, "you and Elizabetta make for the road down this side,” while he fled in the other direction.
"Now!" Abelard gave his clipped order just as several men slipped past the outer trees, and they bolted off in their respective directions. Oliver and Elizabetta had to move slowly at first, the trees were practically invisible in the dark and hitting one at high speed would surely have knocked them out. Once beyond the last tree they broke into a dead run, heading towards the road at the dark spot between two street lamps.
The hunters spotted them but could not quickly enough decide who to follow and so gave them the precious moments they needed to get away. Oliver and Elizabetta had reached the bridge over the railway tracks and were across in an instant. That's when they heard several gunshots from the general direction in which Abelard had run. They did not know what was happening; only that Abelard did have a gun.
They ran across the Piazza della Liberta and at Via San Gallo they spotted a sign indicating a police station further down the street. They were by this time breathing heavily from exertion. They turned to see headlights moving quickly towards the piazza from the other side. Their pursuers had seen them, tires screeching as they accelerated to come around the small square. They ran towards the police station, only two blocks ahead. But they weren’t fast enough, not more than a few seconds from the stairs leading up into the station the big black car was already slowing beside them and the door swinging open.
"Arresto," was all they heard the fallen officer say as they continued running after knocking him to the ground. He had, very fortuitously, appeared out of nowhere, stepping into their path. Seeing him the black car closed its door and drove a few feet more, stopping at the stairs leading up into the station.
They bounded up those stairs and through the glass doors. They were exhausted, falling to the floor. Anyone who had not been on their feet when they burst in was now standing and everyone who was carrying a gun now had it drawn and cocked. The hapless policeman whom they had collided with was just stepping through the doors and wham, he was bowled forward by one of the pursuers. A colleague kept him from falling, easing him over to lean against a high counter, guessing it might not be safe for anyone to just yet sit down.
As though on cue, dozens of people all began jabbering at once. Then Milly walks in, waves his hands and in the silence that follows oozes solicitously, "Oliver, Oliver, you poor man. What you've been through. So much. It is time to rest. Come, let me take you back to the hotel."
From where he had collapsed onto the hardwood floor Oliver stared up at him in open disbelief at what he was hearing. Milly didn't actually think that Oliver would just get up and accompany him because he asked so nicely. He expected the police to believe him. He was talking for their benefit, not Oliver’s. And they were warming to him. One of his men was busily explaining something to someone who looked to be in charge and judging from his gestures, pointing to his head with a knowing squint, he was obviously telling him that Oliver was not of sound mind. This would not have been an outlandish conclusion given Oliver’s decrepit condition; muddy, unkempt and like a cornered animal quickly moving his wide eyes in all directions.
"No, no," Oliver’s screaming had by now become quite frantic, reinforcing first impressions, as the two policemen who had picked him up began leading him toward the doors. They were helping Milly take him away. "He's the one that's insane, not me," Oliver shouted, pulling away from the two holding him and making for the door, only to be pounced on by the entire crowd. Now even the doubters must have been convinced he was surely mad.
"Basta, basta," Elizabetta, who had plastered herself against the wall for safety, was now yelling, the sound of her voice seeping through the crush of bodies holding Oliver down. Then they were all gone and there were Elizabetta’s large, lovely, pale green eyes, broad round forehead and those lips made entirely of sweet empathy. There was also a man, the captain of the station he guessed, who seemed to be in charge, waving everyone back with one arm and helping Oliver up with the other. He said a few words to a uniformed cop and suddenly Milly and his men were surrounded by the mob. He then spoke briefly to Elizabetta, smiled and gestured towards the door.
“We are free to go,” she said, with considerable disbelief. “They will be holding Milly for questioning.”
As they left they did not see the captain, back in his office, showing a man in a gaudy chequered jacket out the rear door.
*