Genesis had come at last.
The doors behind Charles and me were kicked violently open. A woman at a nearby table screamed in terror. I turned to see three bearded men silhouetted against the hallway lights that were still shining bright. The three men half stepped over the banqueting hall’s threshold. Everything was happening so fast that I was still pushing myself upright from where I had been leaning idly against the wall. Then the three men hurled missiles deep into the darkened room and I twisted awkwardly and frantically aside. I saw smoke trails fluttering behind the objects. Christ! I thought, the bastards are using grenades! and I was instinctively shrinking into a groin-protecting crouch as the first missile cracked apart in a foul-smelling gout of chemical stench. The “grenades” were stink bombs.
“Come on, Tim! Come on!” Charles had recovered more quickly than me, and was already pursuing the fleeing men.
I followed, only to be crushed in the sudden crowd of choking, screaming, and panicked delegates, who fought toward the cleaner air of the hallway. A fire alarm had begun to shrill, its bell filling the hotel’s vast spaces with a terrible urgency. The stink bombs were pumping a noxious, gagging smoke that overwhelmed the air conditioner ducts. I heard a crash as a table was overturned. A woman in a sari tripped and fell in front of me. I dragged her upright, shoved her out of my way, then drove my shoulder hard into the press of fleeing people to make a path through them.
“This way, Tim!” Charles was free of the panic and running toward the hotel gardens. The men who had attacked the conference were fleeing through those gardens toward the sea, scattering leaflets in their wake. I could just see the three running figures in the eerie light of the flickering flames that illuminated the hotel grounds.
I tore myself free of the crowd and sprinted after Charles. He had already rammed through a door and jumped off the terrace where the tables were set for breakfast. I leaped after him. Palm trees were burning at the edge of the beach, and I realized it had been their ignition that had sheeted the sky with red flame. The night air stank of burning and of the gasoline I guessed had been used to set the trees alight. The thatched roof of a beach bar had also caught the fire and was furiously spewing sparks into the night wind.
Charles was overtaking the fugitives who ran toward the sea which lay just beyond the burning trees. The three men were wearing green overalls and had ninjalike scarves round their heads, and I realized, with a sudden excitement, that it was the same pale green in which Caspar von Rellsteb had uniformed Nicole when she sailed away on Erebus. One of the fugitives, slower than his companions, dodged between the empty lounges beside the hotel’s swimming pool, and Charles leaped onto the man’s back with a flying tackle that would have made an international rugby player proud. There was a terrible crash as the two men fell into the wooden furniture and I heard the Genesis fugitive cry aloud in pain. “Hold him!” I shouted at Charles in unnecessary encouragement.
The other two men turned back to help their comrade. I reached the pool’s apron, ran past Charles and his struggling prisoner, and charged the two men. I shoulder butted the nearest one, who toppled, shouted in fear, then fell backward into the black pool. The second man tried to swerve past me, but I grabbed his arm, turned him, and thumped a fist into his belly. I followed that blow with a wild swing at his face that was cushioned by the man’s vast and springy beard into which I tried to hook my fingers, but the man managed to find his balance and tear himself free, leaving a handful of wiry hairs in my right fist. Abandoning his two companions the man sprinted toward the beach.
The man I had pushed into the water was already climbing out of the pool’s far side, and I saw that his green overalls were discolored by black streaks which, together with the thick stench that polluted the night air, made me realize that the swimming pool had been deliberately fouled with gallons of black and stinking oil. Behind me Charles suddenly grunted, and I turned to see his captive still desperately struggling. I ran over and thumped a boot into the man’s midriff. “Get him into the bushes!” I said.
Conference delegates were flooding into the gardens. I did not want to share my captive with anyone, but instead wanted to force some swift information from the man. Charles dragged the bearded figure into the deep shadows behind the small hut where the hotel’s bathing towels were kept. The prisoner made one last frantic effort to twist out of Charles’s grip, but only received a smashing punch in the stomach for his pains. He doubled over, but I grabbed his beard and rammed his head back so that his skull thumped painfully against the hut’s wall. “Do you want me to give you to the police?” I asked him.
The man said nothing. I could barely see his face, so dark were the shadows, but I could see that our captive was not Caspar von Rellsteb. “Do you speak English?” I asked him.
Still he said nothing. I sensed Charles moving beside me, and the prisoner suddenly gave a small cry of pain. “I speak English,” the man said hastily. He had an American accent and breath that smelled rotten.
“Are you from Genesis?” I asked, and, in my excitement, I pronounced it the English way. “Genesis?” I corrected myself.
“Yes!” he said, but with difficulty, for I was holding him by the throat.
“Listen,” I said, and slightly released the pressure of my hooked fingers as I spoke. “My name is Tim Blackburn. My daughter is Nicole Blackburn. Do you know Nicole?”
He nodded frantically. I could see the whites of his eyes as he glanced in panic toward the urgent voices of the conference delegates who were milling excitedly by the fouled pool. I could smell the fear in our captive. He had been hurt by Charles and now feared that I was about to add to his pain or, worse, was about to hand him over to a vengeful mob.
“Is Nicole here tonight?” I asked urgently.
He whimpered something that I did not catch.
“Is she?” I insisted.
“No! No!”
“So where is she?” I demanded.
“I don’t know!”
“But she’s with Genesis?”
“Yes!” he said.
“Where is Genesis!” I hissed at him. “Where’s your base?”
He said nothing.
“Answer me!” I said too loudly.
Still the man said nothing, so I rammed a fist into his belly. “Where the fuck is my daughter?” I shouted at him, suddenly not caring if we were overheard. The man stubbornly shook his bearded face. He had evidently decided to act the heroic prisoner; he would give me his name, rank, and number, but he was determined not to reveal where the Genesis community lived. “Where?” I gripped him by the throat and shook him like a dog shakes a rat.
“Hurry!” Charles urged me. Flashlight beams were raking the nearby bushes, and it could only be minutes or even seconds before we were seen. “Hurry!” Charles said again.
“Was von Rellsteb here tonight?” I asked our prisoner.
“Yes!”
“I want to meet him. Tell him that. Tell him I’ve got some important news for Nicole. Ask him to give her this letter, but tell him I’d like to talk with him first.” I took the letter from my jacket pocket, then borrowed a pen from Charles and wrote the guest-house telephone number on the back of the envelope. Afterward I fumbled about our captive’s overalls until I found a pocket into which I stuffed the precious letter. “Tell von Rellsteb to telephone me at the number on that envelope. Tell him there’s no trap. I just want to meet him. Do you understand?”
The man whimpered his assent. Behind us a flashlight beam slashed through the bushes, and a burning frond of palm whipped over our heads. The hotel’s fire alarm was at last silenced, though somewhere in the night’s distance I could hear the visceral wail of approaching sirens.