CHAPTER 21
Pickford shifted his gaze onto the plasma Tablet that Luca handed to him. He held the thin, flat screen and looked at the sharp image of a man dressed in a light grey trench coat, standing in the alley behind his building. He’d seen the man before – in almost the exact same spot as he was now – but the polymer cast around the man’s left leg and the adhesive plaster on his forehead were new.
A trio of Pickford’s Asian door “guards” stood facing the injured man, blocking his access to the door which Daniel had taken five days ago. This time, though, his men were armed with automatic pistols.
‘How long’s he been there?’ Pickford asked.
‘A little over an hour,’ Luca said.
‘He cause another fight?’
Luca shook his head. ‘Nah, not this time. He’s just been standing there lookin’ up at the camera.’
‘Almost as if he wants an invite,’ Pickford muttered.
‘You want me to tell them to get rid of him?’
‘No. No sense in drawing any more attention than we need to. Let’s see if he’s still there this afternoon and then decide what to do about him.’
‘What d’you think he wants?’
‘Who can say?’ Pickford replied, handing the plasma Tablet back to Luca. ‘But I’d put short odds on it being somethin’ to do with the kid.’
During his hour-and-a-half taxi ride out of London towards Buckingham, Daniel accessed the same schematic display system Pickford had used to show him Brinkley House’s layout. This time, though, the holographic image coming from Daniel’s mobile phone was of the PathGen labs six miles north-east of Bicester. Daniel paused as the building plans were displayed before him: This was the place where he was born.
Somewhere in those labs he took his first breath. And it was in that same building where he would have taken his last if Alan Cuthberts hadn’t faked both their deaths.
The large, eight-storey building covered over twenty-thousand square metres of floor space and sat in its own isolated grounds on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border. A guard-post flanked either side of the entrance and access was secured by a three-metre-high metal gate which led onto a single, sweeping lane that cut its way through fields and woodland. The rest of the perimeter consisted of a high brick wall that wouldn’t have looked out of place surrounding a maximum-security prison.
The advertising material on the PathGen website stated that, as well as manufacturing a number of proprietary pharmaceuticals, its main purpose was to conduct research into finding cures for the more resilient cancers. In addition to developing cures for some of the world’s most infectious diseases – including the Ebola and Tunguska haemorrhagic fevers – PathGen also cited close links to USAMRIID; the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
PathGen claimed that it had made significant breakthroughs into finding cures for Alzheimer’s as well as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – the degenerative brain disorder which was once called Mad Cow Disease – and was the world-leader in its field.
It was all a grand façade.
Daniel dipped his thumb and forefinger into the holograph and expanded the display ratio to get a clearer, more distinct view of each floor of the T-shaped building: the reception hall; meeting rooms; canteen; offices; research and development labs; the manufacturing suites; and, finally, the isolated top-floor rooms. The most recent addition to the building, according to the website, were the dual aspect Professor Alan Cuthberts wings – forming the cross piece of the building’s “T” – in honour of the lead Director who died in the tragic accident of 2012.
The more he studied PathGen’s security infrastructure the more it seemed to him that getting into Brinkley House was child’s play in comparison: armed guards patrolled the entrance 24-hours a day; cameras watched every centimetre of perimeter wall and state-of-the-art measures were in place to prevent unauthorised access to the main building.
It took him half-an-hour to identify what appeared to be the weakest link in PathGen’s security chain – such as it was – and less than another ten minutes to work out how he might exploit it. It was risky but that pretty much seemed to sum up his life this last week.
‘I’ve got a change of destination,’ Daniel called to the taxi driver. ‘I need you to go to London-Oxford airport. Do you know it?’
The driver nodded. ‘Just north of Kidlington, yeah? By the motorway?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Sure.’ The driver changed the details on his SatNav and the amended route displayed on the small screen in the centre of the car’s dashboard. Daniel contracted the holographic display on his phone, and smiled at what he saw: the PathGen labs lay on a direct line between Buckingham and the airport at Kidlington. Perfect.
He closed the display and called the number listed for the airport.
The doors to Dryden’s private lift opened and Brennan stepped out onto Brinkley House’s marble concourse. An adhesive pad covered the cuts to his nose and a brace, secured across his left knee, kept the leg straight. An egg-like lump bulged out of the side of his forehead. He held his right arm cupped against his chest, protecting what felt to him like broken ribs. A paramedic followed him out of the lift, trying to finish administering the pad over the Taser burn marks on Brennan’s neck.
Brennan pushed the man away and limped the final few steps towards the E-M Pod. Even though the building’s alarms had been silenced the amber, emergency lights continued to flash. Through the half-open doors he could hear voices – two of them the security guard and Tech Services engineer. Brennan eased himself through the Pod and stepped into the entrance hall. The security guard didn’t even try to hide his grin upon seeing the state Brennan was in.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked. ‘Fall down the stairs?’
‘Hope you’re still smiling when Control asks to see you,’ Brennan replied.
The security guard’s smile disappeared, replaced with a scowl. The Tech Service engineer turned his face to hide a smirk.
Brennan slapped his bio-reader pass-card over the digital scanner in the barrier and a turnstile clicked open. He shuffled through it and down the short flight of stairs heading towards the entrance doors, grunting with each step. He took out his phone.
‘It’s me,’ he said, moving out onto the pavement. ‘Bring the chopper back to the front.’
Brennan paused to hear Davis’ reply.
‘I don’t give a toss about the traffic. Just come and pick me up.’
The Cessna T305 Crusader III’s twin propeller engines powered up to full and the plane eased off the runway at London-Oxford airport, heading north. The late-afternoon sun glinted off its silver wings as it banked gently to the right and locked onto its heading co-ordinates. The plane quickly reached its cruising height of 2,500 metres.
Daniel sat in the seat next to the pilot; the strapping around his shoulders and waist secured with a central, circular disc on his chest. He wore a set of stylish headphones which had a thin microphone curling around to his mouth.
‘So, have you been taking aerial pictures long?’ the pilot turned to ask Daniel. He wore a similar pair of headphones. ‘Only …’ the pilot frowned, ‘only you look kinda young, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘It’s for the school website,’ Daniel smiled. ‘This’ll be my first.’
‘Well I hope you’ve got a decent lens in that rucksack of yours, otherwise you might just as well have taken something off Google.’
‘Trust me,’ Daniel said glancing back into the cabin area of the plane and the small, black backpack that was supposed to have been used by the professor, ‘I’ve got everything I need in there.’
Daniel took the phone out of his jacket and activated the GPS application. A small, moving red dot pulsed over a detailed display of the Oxfordshire countryside, and a counter at the bottom of the screen showed the decreasing distance between Daniel’s current location and the PathGen labs. He glanced at the plane’s air speed readout;
it was holding steady at 165 knots. A quick mental calculation of the distance left, the speed and altitude of the plane gave him less than two minutes before he needed to act.
He released the clips holding him in place and took off the headphones.
‘There’s no hurry,’ the pilot said. ‘We won’t be over Buckingham for at least five minutes. And I’ll need to circle around to get in position for the University.’
Daniel picked the headphones back up and held the microphone to his mouth. ‘Just need to make sure that I’ve got everything ready,’ Daniel replied. ‘I don’t think I’d be very popular with the headmaster if I messed this up, considering how much it’s costing.’
The pilot nodded. ‘I guess not.’
Daniel rested the headphones on a hook next to the passenger seat, climbed through the gap between the seats and steadied himself in the cabin area. He’d spent a lot of time over the last week in airplanes but wasn’t used to being in such a small one, particularly one that seemed to buck and rock with every suggestion of turbulence. He slipped the backpack on, clipped its buckle around his waist and tightened the shoulder straps. The display on his phone showed he had about thirty seconds. He pulled on the same fingerless leather gloves and sepia-tinted goggles that he wore on his jump from Brinkley House, and tucked his phone securely away inside his jacket.
The pilot turned in his seat. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘Sorry about this,’ Daniel said. He maneuvered the side door’s release catch up and felt the first change in pressure.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the pilot yelled. ‘You can’t open that.’
‘Thanks for the lift,’ Daniel replied, ‘but here’s where I get off.’ The wind rushing past the fuselage yanked the open door out of Daniel’s hand and nearly pulled him out before he was ready.
Daniel gripped either side of the doorway and, as he dived through it into the air rushing passed, he was sure he heard the pilot say something about “the school hearing about this.” He counted to three before pulling the backpack’s red rip-cord, releasing an identical semi-rigid polymer chute, as before.
The kick he’d had from the Terry Llewellyn look-a-like in the New York dojo was nothing compared to the snap his body took as the chute caught in the air, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. Even with the chute slowing his descent, he could feel his cheeks rippling as the air pushed against his face.
Above him the plane wheeled around and looked as if it was heading back towards Kidlington – its side door flapped on broken hinges, and Daniel hoped that it wouldn’t make it difficult for the pilot to land. Daniel looked down – surprised that he didn’t feel the same nausea he’d experienced when standing on the window ledge in Brinkley House – and saw that the countryside rushed up at him faster than he would have liked. He realised that he no longer needed the display on his phone to show him where to go: the PathGen labs were unmistakeable as there were no other buildings within two miles of the place. Besides, the large fountain outside the main entrance courtyard acted like a beacon as it sent a glistening jet of water ten metres into the air.
He adjusted the chute’s toggles and veered himself towards PathGen’s wide, flat roof, and its silver, vented air ducts set at ten metre intervals. At the northern tip of the roof – the far point of the “T” – lay a circular Heli-pad with an entrance porch and was the flattest, safest landing spot.
He was about a thousand metres from the Heli-pad when he noticed a truck driving along the entrance lane heading towards the building. This was always going to a risky approach – he was hardly inconspicuous and anyone glancing up from the building would easily spot him – but he was certain that anyone in the truck couldn’t miss him.
He expected the vehicle to stop any moment with the driver getting out, pointing up at him, but it continued on its journey towards the labs. The lane looped around to the rear of the building – where the schematic programme had shown delivery loading bays – and if the vehicle followed it all the way then Daniel was sure, if he landed on the Heli-pad as planned, he’d be seen. He’d have to choose somewhere else.
So much for a safe landing.
Spotted or not there was nothing he could do about it and the most important thing for him to worry about, right at that moment, was getting his feet on solid ground without being hurt. He’d landed heavily in the jump from Brinkley House and if he messed this up then he was in no doubt he could be killed.
As the roof rushed towards him he tried to recall programmes he’d seen about parachuting – he had to slow his fall in the last hundred metres or so then pull down hard on both toggles about ten metres up to slow the rate of descent as much as possible. He should land with his legs together; absorbing the impact with his knees. And roll to the side, he remembered, not forward; knees together.
He was surprised how easy he found the toggle controls of the chute and the polymer responded to the slightest of his movements. Jumping from over two-thousand metres was a world away from leaping out of building at a little over twenty floors; the polymer chute obviously reacted best when having plenty of air beneath its canopy. He lost sight of the truck as he got to within fifty metres of the roof and despite his fear of being seen the space stayed empty, no committee waiting for him with guns raised, so perhaps his luck was still holding. Or maybe his adrenalin-fuelled body just hoped that it was.
Each of the central air duct vents looked like an inverted “J”, with a slatted screen protecting their open end and stood proud of the roof by a metre-and-a-half. They shimmered as the sun glinted off their silver panelling. The schematic programme showed them each as being 0.75 metre square – wide enough for him to squeeze himself into – and led down into the heart of the building. He angled his approach to the left of them and the front edge of the roof – giving him a landing area of eight metres. At what he thought was about the right distance from the gravel of the roof he pulled hard on both toggles and, as the polymer chute trapped the maximum amount of air it could, Daniel felt as if he was almost lifted higher rather than still descending.
His boots hit the gravel with the lightest of touches, and he only needed three steps before coming to a halt. He removed his goggles, pulled the line and chute in before it could catch on one of the vents, and shucked off the backpack.
He let out a loud laugh. ‘That was brilliant!’
He caught himself – aware of the noise he made and paused; listening, but the roof was still quiet. He carried the bundled chute back down to the first vent of the new wing. The holograph of the building hadn’t provided any information about the top floor of the wing and Daniel knew that that lack of detail meant it was most likely home to Dryden’s secret – and undoubtedly illegal – research. He also knew that if there were others like him then that was where they’d be.
He pulled out his phone and checked his position on the schematic programme. The screen showed that he’d had three missed calls from Eleanor. His finger hovered over the “return call” option, but decided that he needed his mind clear for what was about to happen. Besides, if it all went wrong then maybe it was better she didn’t know exactly what he’d tried to do. Dryden clearly still saw her as a viable target and too many people close to him had already been hurt. And it was stupid really, he told himself; she was American and he’d only just met her. What did he think was going to happen between them?
His dad’s words came back to him once more, Better safe than sorry. He deleted the message and activated the holograph.
Brennan limped down the metal steps from the roof, followed by Davis, and made his way along the corridor to his office. Lithgow appeared from one of the doorways, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, saw Brennan and let out a small laugh.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Brennan growled.
‘What happened?’
‘It seems the kid kicked his arse,’ Davis muttered to him after Brennan had disappeared into his office, slamming the door.
‘What
? Where?’
‘Brinkley House. Tiberius broke in. He—’ Davis nodded towards Brennan’s closed door ‘—went in by himself, trying to be the hero I guess. Seems that they had a fight; the kid beat him up then Tasered him.’
Lithgow laughed again. ‘Suddenly I’m glad that I’m a mushroom.’
Daniel removed the last of the screws holding the slatted grille from the vent and prised the panel away.
The vent curved away a short distance before dropping vertically into the building. The inner panelling meshed together with little overlap and it gave the surface a mirror-like smoothness. He’d have to wedge his back against one side and his boots against the opposite panel, lowering himself centimetre by centimetre. One slip though and he’d plummet all the way down to the sub-basement levels. Daniel pulled the back of his fingerless glove across his lips and climbed feet-first into the vent.
He was three metres down when he realised that he’d left the slatted grille by the base of the vent. He glanced up to the daylight above – he could go back to replace it, but what were the chances of anyone spotting it? He decided that it was worth the risk. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and carried on down, pressing his hands against the side wall of the vent and pushing with his feet to keep his back tight against the metal.
He could see a break in the venting a short way below – the silver panelling continued to go down but also branched off, horizontally, in four ways.
Oscar Kent’s phone bleeped a warning alarm. He tucked the Tablet he carried under one arm, checked the phone’s screen and gave a dismayed frown as he read the message it displayed. His pace quickened along the sterile eighth-floor corridor of the southern section of the Professor Alan Cuthberts wing as he headed towards his office.
He sat at his desk, activated the computer screen and watched the image of a cut-away section of the air vent as Daniel edged his way down. Beams of grey light cut diagonally across the vent at quarter-metre intervals, hidden in the eyes of the panelling rivets, invisible to Daniel in the half-light. The breaks in the security light created a composite 3-dimensional image of a person making their way down from the roof. Oscar picked up a phone and dialled the only number it could.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Oscar Kent, sir. I’m sorry to bother you but we have an incident at PathGen.’
Dryden gave the slightest of pauses before continuing. ‘Go on.’
‘A short while ago one of our delivery drivers reported someone parachuting over the grounds here, and security has found a discarded chute on the roof.’ The irritated sigh prompted him to carry on. ‘Two minutes ago the silent alarm in one of the air vents was activated. I’m watching someone climbing down towards the Claudius suite. It … it looks like a child, sir.’
There was a change in Dryden’s voice. ‘Seal the area and stand security down. Do nothing to alert him we know he’s there. Carry on as you normally would. Track him, but tell no one else. I’m on my way.’
‘Shouldn’t I notify D-section?’
‘No,’ Dryden said. ‘Keep them out of this. I’ll deal with him personally.’
The line went dead before he could reply. ‘Yes sir.’