They crashed through the door onto a stairwell and heard shouts from the first level of the car park as they tore up the stairs. The entry door on the floor below slammed against the wall.
Kate risked a glance back and saw three men in black balaclavas rush through the doorway and into the stairwell. Two of them were carrying assault rifles, the third a pistol.
‘Stop!’ the leader hollered.
Kate and Lou ignored them, yanked on the handrail and tore up two more flights of stairs. Reaching another door directly above the ground floor opening, Lou tore at the handle and they tumbled out into a level of the car park.
A cloying voice in Kate’s head was telling her it was all futile. She shoved it aside. They had to keep going. There was no plan, but there was also no alternative but to run and run until they could run no further.
There were only a few cars on this level… not many places to hide. They darted across the concrete, gasping for air, sweat running into their eyes.
The men emerged from the stairwell and fanned out. ‘Stop!’ The man leading the group yelled again. ‘This is your last warning.’
Lou pulled Kate down behind a car and a spray of bullets stuttered along the parapet, the sound reverberating across the cavernous space.
They heard the men come closer.
Kate touched her face and saw blood on her fingertips and felt a sharp sting run along her cheek. Her damaged rib was screaming at her. She and Lou rose together slowly, hands raised. They stepped back unsteadily until they reached the parapet. The three men regrouped, guns poised. Through the gaps in the balaclavas, Kate and Lou could make out their eyes, their mouths.
‘So what was the point of that?’ the leader said.
They stared back like startled rabbits in the headlights of an approaching car, knowing there was nowhere left to run.
‘I want the papers.’
‘What papers?’ Lou stuttered.
The leader took a step forward. ‘Don’t be fucking cute.’
‘If you mean the photocopies, they were destroyed in the car,’ Kate said shakily. ‘Search us if you don’t—’
The shattering noise came a second before Kate and Lou expected it and the vibration of the air reached them a second later. Bullets exploded around them and they heard a series of dull thuds as they found flesh.
20
The three men lay in a broken heap on the floor of the multi-storey car park, their blood rippling out across the concrete, black in the dim fluorescence.
Kate heard Lou gasp and they both glimpsed Jerry Derham slipping between two cars, a US Navy-issue M110 semi-automatic rifle in his hands. He ran forward, checked the men were dead, plucked his cell phone from his pocket and snapped an order into it. Flicking it off, he reached Kate and Lou. Lou had his arm around Kate’s shoulder. A line of blood ran down her neck; it had stained her blouse.
‘You both OK?’ Derham asked as he checked Kate’s wound and pulled back. ‘A scratch.’
Kate couldn’t take her eyes from the three corpses. When she did speak, her voice came as a rasp. ‘How… How did you know?’
‘I circled the block; wanted to make sure you got to the lab in one piece. I’ve learned I can’t let you out of my sight without something terrible happening,’ Derham retorted.
‘Who were…?’ Lou nodded towards the dead men.
‘I would guess they’re the men who killed the Campions or drove you off the road. They obviously have a problem with anyone knowing about the contents of Egbert Fortescue’s papers.’
Kate closed her eyes for a second and brought a hand to her forehead.
‘Come on,’ Derham said, reaching for her elbow. ‘You’ve had enough for one evening.’
‘But…’
‘No more “buts”… and that’s an order.’
‘I’m not under your command.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, you are.’
Kate gently pulled her arm back. ‘OK, OK, but I need to get some papers from the lab. I know I won’t sleep a wink — but whatever you command!’
Jerry glanced at Lou, who shrugged his shoulders.
They took the stairs down to ground level. Derham’s cell phone rang.
‘Yeah… OK.’ He looked up. ‘Clean-up team should be here in a couple of minutes.’
‘Makes it sound so horribly clinical,’ Kate responded.
They heard the rumble of heavy vehicles approaching. Two navy trucks and a military police car were heading along the road to the institute.
Derham indicated the door to the lab building. ‘I’ll come up with you.’
They took the lift to the fourth floor. It opened onto a silent, dimly lit corridor. Kate led the way, right, then left. The door to the lab stood ajar, lights ablaze. They ran towards it and stopped in the doorway looking on in disbelief.
‘Fuck…’ Kate said resignedly.
The place was a wreck. It looked like nothing remained where it should have been. The floor was covered with broken glassware, papers had been scattered randomly, their desks upturned, chairs smashed. Two Macs lay shattered on the floor.
‘The scanner has been destroyed,’ Lou said, pointing up to a metal box about the size of a desktop printer dangling from the ceiling by a few wires. Its front screen was smashed in.
He looked over to the sealed analysis chamber in the far corner. This was where they had studied and photocopied the delicate papers from Fortescue’s briefcase. He ran over to it, Kate close behind. The front panel had been staved in; glass pellets lay scattered across the floor. The briefcase and the papers had gone.
‘Oh, God… No!’ Lou yelled, the pain of the past few hours finally getting to him.
They picked their way around the vandalized glass unit. Lou leaned in and using a length of metal he gingerly pushed aside piles of glass inside the box.
‘What was in there?’ Derham asked, pointing to the chamber.
‘The original documents from Fortescue’s briefcase.’
Derham closed his eyes for a second, tipped his head back, and took a deep breath. ‘Please tell me there are copies.’
‘There were. We gave one set to Newman, remember? The other is now ash.’
21
Dr Egbert Fortescue turned up the collar of his overcoat. At 6.45 a.m., the sky was afresh and radiant blue, casting the cranes and dock winches into sharp relief.
Last night he had stayed at the South Western Hotel in Southampton. The place had been packed with other passengers ready to embark on the Titanic and there was an atmosphere of excitement in the smoking room after dinner.
The porter had come at six o’clock to take his luggage and he had been free to make his way over to the nearby docks with plenty of time before the ship was due to depart at noon.
Two pieces of luggage he would not hand over, but kept close by him: a pair of metal cases, one about the size of a Gladstone bag contained his briefcase of papers; the other, approximately six inches square, carried the ibnium isotope. Both were latched and locked and he kept a firm grip on their leather handles. On the train down to Southampton he had shut himself away in a private compartment and worked on his papers, trying to perfect and extend the work he and Rutherford had forged ahead with after the success of the experiment three months earlier.
He was excited. He had been chosen to make what the small cadre of insiders in their project knew would be a historic voyage across the Atlantic. He knew, Rutherford knew, and a select few within the British and American governments knew that time was running out, that war with Germany could not be far away. Diplomats persisted in denying the possibility, but war was inevitable, and with the contents of his boxes, Fortescue had the key to victory.