The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

“Good thinking,” King said. He hadn’t worked with Marnie before, but he knew she worked with Ramsay and Rashid searching for Caroline last summer, and he liked what he saw in her. “Let’s have a look,” he said.

Caroline and Rashid bunched up towards the screen. King stood back to allow them a better view. Ramsay had seen them once and didn’t look keen to see them again. Marnie clicked through, settled on the video. It was unsteady, but they saw enough. The room was quiet for a good while.

Rashid broke the silence first. “I’m glad I bleached myself now.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said King. “You haven’t got to look at it…”

Caroline smiled. “He’s got a point. I mean, you couldn’t look much worse with blisters, boils and a hunger for flesh.”

“Are humans and apes Halal?” Marnie chimed in.

Rashid shrugged and walked to the door. “Great. I’ll take my chances with minus thirty and Russian mercenaries over you bloody idiots…”

They watched him leave and smiled. Gallows humour. Tougher times ahead.

“What shall I do?” said Caroline. “Before you say anything; I’m not sitting this out.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said King. “You wouldn’t listen anyway. Go with Neil and find out who this character is that could have stolen the laptop. I don’t buy that it was a casual theft. If he took it, then he’s a player. And if he’s a player, then he has what we have and that’s not good. Find out who he is and if he poses a threat, put him down.”

65

“You did well to make it,” King said. “It’s an extremely hostile environment.”

Natalia nodded. “There were times when I didn’t think that I would make it,” she paused. “Times when I wished I hadn’t seen what I had seen.”

Natalia was perched on the end of the bed. King took up the chair next to the window. The gloom outside was lifting, daybreak only an hour away. Sunset three hours after that. Natalia nursed a steaming cup of coffee, discarded dishes from the hotel’s room service menu lay strewn on the table. The ubiquitous club sandwich and fries with a six-euro surcharge to carry a tray one floor and thirty paces further than the restaurant.

“And what are your thoughts on that?”

“What? The secret bunker with unspeakable crimes against humanity?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“Dumb question.”

“Dumb answer,” King paused. “At the moment, we have a phone and a USB. We have thousands of square miles of snow and ice and the worst storm on record heading this way. Not to mention a team of security contractors with military weapons hunting you down. There are no written contracts here, no guarantee of your safety. Want to know the best way for my team to avoid bloodshed?” She said nothing but shrugged. “Leave your ass on the steps outside,” King paused and sipped from his cup of tea. The room curtesy tray was better stocked than the restaurant for his choice of brew. “Now, I’m a man of my word, and I took on a job to meet you and hand you over to my government. I’ll try my utmost to do that, but if I feel you’re not worth it, I’ll put my team before my orders. Every time.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“Good. So, let me rephrase that. Did you suspect something like this was going on there?”

“No.”

“Does anything make sense of your work and the location now that you know there was more to the facility than hydroelectricity?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, some people disappeared without trace. Not a word on social media. Two of them were in the cells in the bunker…” she trailed off, a distant look in her eyes.

King nodded. “And the security?”

“I suppose, now that I think of it, they were heavily armed and patrolled constantly. I mean, we convert the flow of water to electricity. Short of copper piping and wiring, the machinery itself, there’s nothing worth taking. Nothing that requires four men and Kalashnikovs on rotating shifts. They were all ex-military as well.”

“And no visitors?”

“Sami tribespeople trying to sell reindeer meat and skins. Our cook did deals for fresh meat.”

“But only occasionally?”

“When they pass through. Twice a year. Maybe a couple of tribes.”

“Who runs the plant?”

“A director. He’s a Swede named Ben Jorgenson. He is a hydroelectric specialist and has worked all over the world. Then the rest of the top tier. A woman called Casey Daniels. She’s Canadian. The other two are Russian men. Mikhail Soltanovich and Gregor Vavilov.”

“And they would know?”

“I can’t see how they could not.”

“But conversely, someone tipped you off.”

“Yes.”

“Were you worried it was a set-up.”

“Completely. I was paranoid for months.”

“And how did you contact London?”

She smiled. “I wasn’t aware it was London until now. I knew it was an intelligence agency. I hoped British,” she shrugged. “Everybody wants to come to Britain, don’t they?”

“So, how did you make contact?” King asked, undeterred.

“Letter drops. The first was in my bed. It creeped me out. Over the months I studied the rotas, the shift patterns to see if there was a pattern. Like holidays, night shifts, that sort of thing.”

“And?”

“No connection that I could make. Other than the orders from outside always happened on a resupply. I figured it came via a sailor or sailors in merchant vessels. The supplies come south from the Arctic shipping route. But I always thought it would have to be one of the top tier who made initial contact. And to pass the communications on, for sure.”

King had jotted down the names. He did not know why, but he had circled the Canadian woman’s name. He circled the Swede’s name too. Now he drew a line connecting them.