The motel clerk, a skinny brunette with her hair piled up on her head and a tattoo of a panther on her upper arm, checked them in to three rooms.
‘Y’all from England?’ she asked on hearing Harley and Paul’s accents. ‘Do you know Radiohead?’
‘Not personally,’ Harley replied drily.
Paul caught her eye, shooting her a look that said, ‘Yeah, this guy’s a jerk,’ and she smiled at him, revealing a gap in her teeth you could drive a motorbike through. She handed each of them a key and told them their room numbers. Paul and Harley were in adjacent rooms; DiFranco a few doors down.
‘Cellphone reception is lousy in the rooms,’ she said, ‘but we got wi-fi if you need it.’
‘Great,’ said Paul, drawing another smile from the receptionist. She reminded him a little of poor Amy Winehouse.
‘I don’t think we’ll be needing that,’ Harley said. DiFranco snickered, for no good reason Paul could tell. When the receptionist turned to get their keys, Paul saw DiFranco take a good, long look at her behind, actually tilting his head to one side. Creep.
As Paul unlocked his room, he heard DiFranco say to Harley, ‘Hey, we should have a talk.’ He kept the door open a crack and listened, hoping he might catch something they said, but they had moved out of earshot.
He stripped and showered, then took a clean T-shirt and pair of boxers out of his suitcase. The room was like the inside of a car that had been parked in the sun all day; dog-killing weather. He examined the air-con unit and concluded that it was a piece of junk. A great weariness washed over him. He didn’t have the energy to complain or ask for another room.
Instead, he opened the window, which gave a view of a row of cars and the freeway beyond, and lay down on the creaky bed. He picked up his iPhone, wanting to call or at least text Kate. The receptionist was right: he had half a bar of signal that flickered on and off; he sent a text telling Kate he loved her, was sorry about earlier and would call her in the morning. He added four kisses.
He closed his eyes. He’d slept in worse places – prison, for one.
When he next opened his eyes it was dark. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. A crap motel,
a long way from home. Alone.
He could hear someone talking outside the window. He rolled on to his side and groped for his phone to check the time. Half past midnight. He crept to the window and stood behind the curtain. The voice outside belonged to Harley. After a moment, when he couldn’t hear another voice, Paul realised Harley was on the phone, obviously forced outside by the poor mobile reception.
He pressed his face to the glass. Harley was standing by their car, his back to Paul, who could make out the odd word. ‘Report … spreading fast … Bakersfield …’
Paul quickly pulled a chair across the room and stood on it so he could listen through the open window, his body concealed by the curtain and the darkness inside the room. If he really strained he found he could hear almost everything.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ Harley went on. ‘No, I’m heading back to San Francisco in the morning. I’ve
got Paul Wilson with me. Yeah, yeah … I know.’ He laughed. Paul didn’t think the person on the other end of the phone was praising his good qualities. What was that expression about people who eavesdrop never hearing good things about themselves? ‘Thankfully, Kate Maddox is a lot more cooperative. Yeah, I know – I had to tell her a white lie to get her to agree.’
Paul got that feeling you get in your stomach when you go over a bump in the road. His suspicions were right: Harley couldn’t be trusted.
The MI6 man went on: ‘Yeah, Wilson is obsessed with what happened to his brother, Stephen. The guy that Gaunt was …’
To Paul’s great frustration, Harley began to wander away, his voice growing quieter until he couldn’t hear it any more. He slapped the wall with frustration.
Hearing Harley talk about Stephen in such a dismissive fashion enraged him, especially when Harley knew all too well what had happened, and why Paul found it hard to let go. There were still people out there who had been involved in Stephen’s death. Or rather, one man. Charles Mangold.
And then it came to Paul what he should do.
He wasn’t going to allow Harley to take him to San Francisco. Because now, for the first time, he had a chance to avenge his brother’s death – and maybe find the inner peace he craved.
11
There were six people already round the long refectory-style table when Kate and Junko came down for breakfast, including McCarthy, who proceeded to introduce Kate to everybody as though he’d been there for weeks. He seemed perfectly at ease in the situation, laughing and gesticulating – Kate would have assumed he was slightly drunk had it not been 6.30 a.m. It helped, though, having him there. He certainly broke the ice.
There was an epidemiologist, William, who was about her age with sandy thinning hair. His body was so slight that he looked as though a strong puff of mountain breeze would be enough to bear him away, but his features were strong, and he looked like a man on a mission. Then there were three lab technicians – two young men, one fat, and one very tall, whose names Kate instantly forgot, and one very pretty woman, small, busty and pouty, whose name was Annie. Kate and Junko were the only non-Americans.
The sixth person was the third virologist, Chip Oakley. He had the narrowest face Kate had ever seen, topped by an enormous pair of tortoiseshell-framed spectacles, and his welcome smile looked more like a frown. His eyes, magnified through the thick lenses of his glasses, seemed to pop out at her. He was wearing a knitted tanktop the likes of which Kate hadn’t seen since about 1978. No wonder we need the FBI and all this security, she thought; this lot wouldn’t have the strength to take the skin off a rice pudding. Although, even if they were all built like Marines, it wouldn’t be much good if someone set off another bomb.
‘He looks a bit weird,’ Kate whispered to Junko, trying to distract herself from thoughts of bombs and Isaac, as they took two seats at the end of the table furthest from Chip.
Junko grinned. ‘He’s all right, actually. Bit of an uber-geek, but knows his stuff. I worked with him on H1N1 at Berkeley a few years ago.’
‘Where’s Kolosine?’ She felt a slight flutter in her ribcage at the mere thought of the man.
Junko rolled her eyes. ‘He likes to make an entrance, if I remember rightly.’ She poured them both a glass of water from the jug on the table.
‘I’d kill for a cup of coffee,’ Kate said. ‘Is there any?’
Annie, who had been busily applying more lipgloss at the table, piped up: ‘Plenty of coffee, day and night. Nothing stronger, though, so don’t go expecting wine with your dinner tonight. This place is dry.’
‘Are you serious?’ Kate was aghast. Did they really expect her to be holed up here indefinitely, without even a relaxing glass of wine at the end of a long day? Outrageous!
‘’Fraid so. Prof. Kolosine’s orders. No alcohol on the premises for the duration of the project.’
‘That’s tantamount to cruelty,’ Kate said miserably, picking at a croissant from the basket on the table and suddenly missing Paul with a fierce longing.
‘You tell him that, honey,’ said Annie, snapping shut her compact. ‘No cellphone reception here, either, and no landline ’cept the one in Professor Kolosine’s locked office, which is for emergency use only, so we were told last night.’
‘What?’ Kate felt sick. How was she supposed to call Paul, or Jack?
‘More