Armageddon Heights (a thriller) Page 4

  Wade rose up in his seat to adjust the air nozzles above his head, but used the action to scan the remainder of the coach’s occupants.

  Up front, sitting tapping his fingers on the armrest, a business man by the looks of it, wearing what looked like a suit judging from the white shirt and cufflinks decorating a white shirtsleeve poking from the sleeve of a black jacket that rested on the armrest; a young woman beside him staring out the window, blonde hair that looked like it had had taken plenty of time and hair lacquer getting it into shape, both the man and woman in their mid-thirties perhaps; behind them a glimpse of the top of a head – a smallish man, sitting alone, balding on top, grey hair starting to come through – forties, perhaps; behind Wade the newspaper-reading young woman and her partner, and another woman sitting on her own, little evidence of makeup, wearing a casual Aran jumper and reading Country Life magazine – maybe in her forties, too, but he wasn’t so sure.

  Ten passengers, he mused as he slumped back into his seat again. He tried to recall those that had gotten off the coach, but he found the task difficult, his eyes once again feeling hot and sticky. The hour’s sleep hadn’t done him much good, he thought, in fact, it had made him feel worse, if it were possible to feel any worse. He craved sleep so badly it was burning him up.

  You’ve gotta relax, he told himself. There’s nothing suspicious going on here. The passengers all look like your average Joe. Try and get some rest otherwise you’ll be good for nothing when the time comes. You’ve got to keep your wits about you and sleep is vital for that.

  The storm threw its weight against the coach, a fresh squall of rain hitting it with a fury Wade had rarely experienced. Even he flinched a little and backed away from the window. Jesus, it was getting bad out there. They’d certainly not predicted this on the weather forecast that morning as he watched the news in his hotel room. And black – Christ it was as black as hell out there.

  He looked forward to the large front windows. The windscreen wipers were flinging themselves madly across it in a vain effort to swipe away the torrent of water. How on earth could the coach driver see where he was going?

  His heart raced when he thought that the driver might have to make an unscheduled stop till the storm passed. That couldn’t happen. He had to get to Scotland fast, while the trail was still hot. He couldn’t afford any delays.

  Samuel Wade forced himself to calm down, releasing a pent-up breath in a deliberately slow emptying of his lungs. Try to sleep. The coach isn’t going to stop. The driver was doing just fine.

  He rested his head against the padded headrest and closed his eyes, listening to the gentle bickering of the couple headed to Northampton, the tearing sound of the rain that whipped the windows, and the insect-buzz of the young man’s music.

  Sleep began to creep up on him as he surrendered his exhausted body to its warm embrace.

  Once upon a time there was a boy named Jack…

  Got to rest. Got to keep focussed. Keep to the task ahead, he thought.

  Jack was going on a long journey.

  You’ll be fine, so long as you don’t lose control, so long as you keep your head.

  Jack had to find John Travers, because Jack wanted to kill him…

  5

  All in a Day’s Work

  The Power Tower.

  The unofficial nickname given to the huge finger of concrete and glass that poked its finger many hundreds of feet into the grey London sky, the building’s three sides reflecting the tumbling clouds as if it put on a majestic slideshow for the benefit of the lowly matchstick figures that scurried beneath it.

  Lindegaard’s operational headquarters. The beating heart of the corporation. Its soul. Except, thought Robert Napier stepping out of the taxi and gripping his coat collar tight about his neck against the withering winter wind – he’d almost forgotten how much he hated this country’s weather – a building so cold, so austere in its design, so thoroughly associated with the corporation’s making of money and market domination could never be said to have either a heart or a soul.

  As he entered the lobby, all marble and glass and chrome, he shuddered. He blamed the cold, but he knew other forces were at play here. Busy executives hurried about their business, a strange reverential hush hanging over the place broken only by the occasional low-pitched voice and the urgent chatter of shoes clicking on the marble floor getting to somewhere fast.

  He was greeted with great respect. Everyone knew Robert Napier, even if they’d never met him. His image had been burned into every employees’ consciousness. As had his predecessor’s, until he’d simply disappeared one day in a yachting accident, his body never to be found. The unfortunate man’s image had been wiped from everyone’s memory like someone wipes a computer hard drive. The king is dead – long live the king!

  Eight years ago. Eight years, almost to the month since Robert Napier got the unexpected call. Eight years since he was headhunted by Lindegaard’s staff, made an offer he simply couldn’t refuse and first set foot inside Lindegaard Tower, and now he was here, walking in the ghostly footsteps of his predecessor. A man, incidentally, who was always referred to as his predecessor, never by name. His name wasn’t important anymore.

  Napier wasn’t so naïve as to think the same wouldn’t happen to him one day, when his usefulness had been drained. When Dale Lindegaard grew bored of him, cast him aside like a defunct toy in a world stuffed with toys. He heard whispers that his predecessor’s death wasn’t an accident. But that was all malicious conjecture. At least that’s what he initially believed. But his subsequent investigations into his predecessor, which uncovered a trail of corruption and underhand activities designed to fleece Lindegaard and line his own already substantially lined pockets, coupled with Lindegaard’s uncompromising aggressively autocratic business methods, had left him in no doubt – secretly, of course – that the man had been murdered.

  But he was paid too much to bother about such a trifling thing. His place within the corporation had been steadily strengthened by his unscrupulous honesty and transparency in all his financial dealings, his intense dedication never once wavering, and over the years enamouring him to Lindegaard so that his star rose gradually into the highest reaches of the corporation heavens, till he sat, in Lindegaard’s own words, as his Number Two, a great honour indeed. And not without its significant financial and other attendant rewards. Napier could not foresee a reason why Lindegaard would want to get rid of him, but that never stopped him from searching for the reason, or doing all he could to prevent Lindegaard finding one. Nothing and no one was sacred in Napier’s ambition to hold onto his position, and, perhaps, one day – one day – to take over the helm as head of the corporation. There was too much at stake to let loose his grip on his career.

  Which is why he was worried as he barely registered the man at the desk who phoned through to Lindegaard’s office that Napier had arrived. Worried because of the unauthorised incursion into the heights. Into Sector 10225. Lindegaard had spent a fortune putting security barriers in place since the last incursion, and Napier had assured Lindegaard that they would suffice, at least for the next two years until they strengthened them even further, making the security of their operations all but impregnable.

  Just like the Titanic was unsinkable, he thought as he entered the lift and spoke tiredly into the brushed-steel square on the wall. ‘Robert Napier. Lindegaard Suite.’ He closed his eyes. He was whacked, the hurry to get to London taking its toll.

  A split second that appeared to take a lot longer and then the lift began its swift rise. He stared out through the plate glass to the city beyond, many landmarks of Central London clearly visible, and slicing through it all the Thames glistening like wet lead as the lift took him higher and higher, racing up to the frothing clouds, shooting up to heaven. Higher than the Shard by twenty floors, till the city was reduced to a haphazard scattering of a child’s building blocks, with toy cars running along toy roads, and the inconsequential specks of humanity like
so much black pepper sprinkled on a grey, concrete-topped pizza.

  The lift stopped and he emerged into a wide, red-carpeted corridor. Two burly security guards in familiar Lindegaard-cream uniforms nodded at his arrival, one of them speaking into the tiny flesh-coloured microphone at his mouth and asking Napier to accompany him, as if Napier had never ever been here before and had to be shown the way. But that was the way it had to be so Napier followed in the man’s wake, silently taking in the many works of art that lined the corridor’s walls. There were paintings here that were so rare, so valuable, that by rights they should be under close security in museums and art galleries not decorating a mere corridor, Napier thought. He thought the same thing every time he came here. But he knew it was Lindegaard’s way. Doing something outrageous simply because he could. Conversely – tellingly – he reserved the walls of his office for framed cels from famous cartoon films like Snow White and The Jungle Book.

  Rather appropriate, all things considered, mused Napier.

  They paused before another lift door. The guard spoke into the plate on the wall and the door slid open with an ecstatic, almost orgasmic sigh. Napier stepped inside, knowing full well that his every movement was being scrutinised by security cameras, perhaps even by Lindegaard himself. It didn’t make him feel uneasy. After all, he employed similar methods. It was understood. It was the way it was. In a business worth billions annually it was to be expected.

  There was no sensation that the lift had stopped. The door glided open and Napier found himself facing Dale Lindegaard’s massive office cum apartment.

  Ahead of him was a spectacularly high wall of glass, reaching up like the windows in a cathedral, at the base of which stood the silhouetted figure of Dale Lindegaard facing the city below him, his back to Napier, his hands clasped behind him. The remaining walls were clad in oak and teak, with gold lamps burning beside his precious film cels. There was a long, plush sofa in cream leather, a similar armchair, a coffee table in glass and chrome, a large battleship of a desk at the far end of the room, but precious little furniture besides that. Music was playing faintly. Choral, thought Napier. Something by Palestrina, he surmised.

  ‘So glad you could come,’ said Lindegaard without turning. His voice warm, mellow, unhurried.

  As if I had a choice, thought Napier. ‘I got here as soon as I could.’

  Lindegaard wagged a few fingers for Napier to come stand beside him. Napier approached cautiously. Lindegaard was standing on a glass floor that jutted out some way over the edge of the building, and Napier had never liked the sensation of hanging precariously in the air, of seeing the world so dizzyingly far below his feet. But he did as he was told.

  Dale Lindegaard wore a cream-coloured suit – his favourite colour – cream jacket, cream trousers, cream waistcoat, the only concession to real colour being his scarlet shirt and sky-blue tie. No one knew Lindegaard’s true age for sure, but Napier guessed it was around sixty-five to seventy. He still had a full head of white hair, and a full white moustache and beard, not unlike those in the photos of Buffalo Bill Cody that Napier had seen. Not unlike his late brother, Jeremy. Dale Lindegaard’s face denied the tanning process and remained forever pink or red, but never brown, and his eyes were pale-green and sitting in fluffy cushions of baggy skin. Lines fanned off from them like skyrocket trails at a spectacular fireworks show. He was portly, to put it politely, like someone’s favourite uncle, but Napier wasn’t fooled by his benign appearance. There was the Lindegaard that the outside knew, and then there was the other, far more brutal Lindegaard that the world suspected but never proved.

  Napier looked down and felt the contents of his stomach cream at the sight of the ground directly beneath him, many hundreds of feet below.

  ‘Was it CSL?’ Lindegaard asked.

  ‘I have to say yes, I believe it was,’ Napier returned. ‘I know I – ‘

  Lindegaard held up a finger for silence. ‘They used to irritate me, Robert,’ he said. ‘I used to think of them as flies, quickly swatted, crushed out of existence, but like flies they keep coming. They have moved beyond irritation to pain. They cause me pain.’

  ‘I have people already looking into our security…’

  ‘I know what you are doing,’ said Lindegaard, at last turning to look at Napier. His green eyes gave nothing away. ‘I know everything that anyone does. But it is not enough.’

  Napier’s insides twisted at the words. ‘I’m certain, given time and a little more investment…’

  ‘My ancestors started in business with a carnival and freak-show,’ Lindegaard interrupted. ‘Have I told you that?’

  Many times, thought Napier. ‘I believe so,’ he said.

  ‘They travelled Europe and then the American Midwest, pedalling the delights of the extraordinary, bringing colour and difference into grey lives filled with similitude. The Lindegaard family was a dominant force in the industry, if you could call it an industry. Their name was legend.’

  And let’s say they diversified to give those poor uninspired people a little more of what made them feel good, thought Napier – opium in the nineteenth century, alcohol during prohibition in the twentieth – whatever the sensation-hungry people desired, legal or otherwise, the Lindegaards were known to have supplied it. An empire built on the foundations of the illicit and the profitable. It was known, of course, but never voiced. The Lindegaards had tried to rewrite history in that regard, airbrushing certain aspects out of the family’s humble and somewhat dodgy beginnings. But now of course it was the drug tremethelene that was fast becoming the new opiate of the people. A drug that Lindegaard’s corporation had developed, and as a consequence enjoyed worldwide monopoly over its supply and use. Sure, there’d been attempts by others to replicate it, synthesise it, but they had largely been failures. The secrets closely guarded. Even should anyone successfully duplicate it, the drug was of no use without the other two vital components to ensure it worked its wonders. But then CSL had come from left-of-field, taking Lindegaard by surprise. They had the drug and they made ever bolder incursions into the Heights, thus far being under the sole control of Lindegaard. They’d gradually muscled-in on his operations till Napier could plainly see it caused him physical discomfort just thinking about it.

  ‘That’s how we started out, Napier,’ Lindegaard continued. ‘Bringing joy and, dare I say, even spiritual fulfilment to the world. Without my ancestors’ entrepreneurship my little empire would not exist. But as is the way of the world, for every empire there are barbarians pounding at the gates looking to wreak havoc and destroy it. Intruders coming into our territory, our empire – Vandals, Goths, seeking to cream off a little of the vast fortune we’ve succeeded in making. Like leeches, like parasites.’ He turned his body to face Napier. ‘My ancestors dealt with such behaviour appropriately in the past. They did not baulk, they were not afraid and they did not stutter into inactivity and passivity. They took action where action was needed. It’s what is needed now. Drastic action. Do you understand what I am saying?’

  ‘I estimate we should have security measures put in place –‘

  ‘I’m not talking of simple security measures, Robert.’

  ‘No?’ They were hardly simple, he thought.

  ‘CSL are my own personal leeches and parasites. You know our operations are worth billions worldwide. So naturally parasites attach themselves to me and attempt to suck my lifeblood. Well, I’m not having it, Robert, it has to end and end now. The time has come to stamp them out once and for all.’

  ‘Meaning, Mr Lindegaard?’

  Lindegaard studied Napier closely. There was no humour in his face. It was as if below his skin he was turning rotten with hatred and this putrefaction seeped out through his green eyes. It took Napier aback. Dale Lindegaard had changed since he took over the organisation from his brother. What was driving that change? He made out it was anger and hatred generated at the time of his brother’s murder? But Napier suspected something else entirely.

  ‘
They killed my brother!’ Lindegaard burst vehemently, as if reading Napier’s mind, his finger pointing to a large painted portrait hanging in a prominent position on the wall facing Napier; Jeremy Lindegaard was portrayed in a rather severe-looking black suit, quite out of character with his memories of the real man, thought Napier. But the brotherly similarity to Dale Lindegaard was striking, the two men in reality so like polar opposites, he mused; one in black, the other in cream…

  ‘I can’t ever forget that day, Mr Lindegaard,’ Napier said.

  ‘Three years ago they blew his brains out. My brother, Robert! My own dear brother!’ His eyes bled tears. ‘And my poor, poor niece Melissa – that should never have had to happen to anyone. And especially someone like her. Consigned to a living death, Robert…’

  A living death. Yes, Napier remembered thinking that as he looked upon Melissa’s still, bandaged form in the hospital after the frenzied ambush, tubes stuck into her, frail-looking body attached to drips and wires, machines making frantic bleeping noises. He recalled the hurried confusion of bodies wreathing round her like white smoke, working like mad in their efforts to save her life, his own life having been for so long hurtling along like a freight train, unfettered, and now without warning coming to a sudden halt that day outside the gates at Dale Lindegaard’s house. He felt it hadn’t really got started since.

  Someone – a doctor, maybe, for it was all a blur, told him that she was alive but only just. That they didn’t think she’d make it through the night. But she did. She kept hanging in there, and for days hung between life and death. They warned him that she would never be the same woman again, and don't expect miracles. Told him straight that her spine had been shot clean through in two places, her brain taking a bullet also; told him she’d never walk again, possibly never talk again, or pretty much be able to do anything for herself. She would be living close to a vegetative state, hardly able to recognise people let alone converse with them. But he refused to believe their prognosis or predictions. He knew Melissa, he told them; she was a fighter. She’d come through. But they just shook their heads solemnly and left him to his delusions. They were right, of course. Melissa Lindegaard – beautiful, intelligent, the world at her feet, his Melissa – was trapped in a helpless body and would be so for the remainder of her life.