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Copyright
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2014
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com Images
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007398461
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007398478
Version: 2018-08-17
‘We’ve arranged a global civilisation in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We’ve also arranged things so that no one understands science or technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later, this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.’
Carl Sagan, 1995
‘I could set the earth’s crust into such a state of vibration that it would rise and fall hundreds of feet, throwing rivers out of their beds, wrecking buildings, and practically destroying civilisation. The principle cannot fail.’
Nikola Tesla, 1898
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by Scott Mariani
About the Publisher
Prologue
The Altai Mountains Bayan-Ölgii Province Western Mongolia
The biting wind was starting to whip flurries of snow across the barren mountainside, high up in the wilderness where not even the most rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle could reach. Soon, Chuluun knew, the winter snowfalls would be here in earnest and it might be a long time before he could venture out this far again in search of food.
The argali herd that the teenager was tracking had led him almost half a mile across bare rock from where he’d tethered his pony further down the mountain. Wolves were an ever-present concern, but the curly-horned wild sheep could sense the roving packs from a great way off, and having paused on their trek to munch contentedly on a scrubby patch of heather, they seemed calm enough to reassure Chuluun that his pony was safe.
There was one predator too smart to let himself be noticed by the argali. Chuluun had been hunting over these mountains for six years, since the age of eleven, when his father had become too infirm to ride long distances any more, and he prided himself on his ability to sneak up on anything that walked or flew. His parents and seven younger brothers and sisters depended almost entirely on him for meat, and in the harsh environment of Mongolia, meat meant survival.
Staying carefully downwind of the grazing sheep and moving with stealthy ease over the rocks, Chuluun stalked up to within a hundred metres of his quarry. He settled himself down at the top of a rise in a vantage point from which his pick of the herd, a large male he estimated stood a good four feet at the shoulder, was nicely presented side-on.
Very slowly, Chuluun slid the ancient Martini-Henry into aiming position and hunkered down behind it. He opened the rifle’s breech, drew one of the big, long cartridges from his bandolier and slipped it silently inside. Closing the breech, he flipped up the tangent rearsight. At this range he knew exactly how much elevation he needed to compensate for gravity’s pull on the trajectory of the heavy bullet.
The argali remained still, munching away, oblivious. Chuluun honoured his prey, as he honoured the spirit of the mountains. He blinked a snowflake from his eyelashes. Gently, purposefully, he curled his finger around the trigger, controlled his breathing and felt his heart slow as his concentration focused on the all-important shot. If he missed, the herd would be off and he couldn’t hope to catch up with them again today, nor this week. But Chuluun wasn’t going to miss. Tonight, his family were going to eat as they hadn’t eaten in a long while.
At the perfect moment, Chuluun squeezed the trigger.
And in that same moment, everything went insane.
The view through the rifle’s sights disappeared in a massive blurred explosion. His first confused thought was that his gun had burst on firing. But it wasn’t the gun.
Chuluun barely had time to cry out as the ground seemed to lurch away from under him and then heave him with terrifying violence into the air. He was spinning, tumbling, sliding down the mountain. His head was filled with a deafening roar. Something hit him a hard blow and he blacked out.
When Chuluun awoke, the sky seemed to have darkened. He blinked and sat up, shivering with cold and beating the snow and dirt from his clothes, then staggered to his feet. His precious rifle lay half-buried in the landslide that had carried him down from the top of the rise. Still half-stunned, he clambered back up the rocky slope and peered, afraid to look, over the edge.
He gasped at the incredible sight below.
Chuluun was standing on the edge of a vast near-perfect circle of utter devastation that stretched as far as his keen young hunter’s eyes could see. Nothing remained of the patch of ground where the argali herd had been quietly grazing. The mountainside was levelled. Gigantic rocks pulverised. The pine forests completely obliterated. All gone, swept away by some unimaginable force.
His face streaked with dirt and tears and contorted into an expression of disbelief, Chuluun gazed up at the strange glow that permeated the sky, like nothing he’d ever seen before. Blades of lightning knifed through the rolling clouds. There was no thunder. Just a heavy, eerie pall of silence.
Suddenly filled with conviction that something unspeakably evil had just happened here, he scrambled away with a terrified moan and started fleeing down the slope towards where he’d left his pony.
Chapter One
Paris Seven months later
The apartment was all in shadow. It wasn’t normal for Claudine Pommier to keep her curtains tightly drawn even on a bright and sunny June afternoon.
But then, it wasn’t normal for someone to be stalking her and trying to kill her, either.
Claudine was tense as she padded barefoot down the gloomy, narrow hallway. She prayed the boards wouldn’t creak and give her away. A moment ago she’d been certain she could hear footsteps outside the triple-locked door. Now she heard them again. Holding her breath, she reached the door and peered through the dirty glass peephole. The aged plasterwork and wrought-iron railing of the old apartment building’s upper landing looked distorted through the fish-eye lens.
Claudine felt a flood of relief as she recognised the tiny figure of her neighbour, Madame Lefort, with whom she shared the top floor. The octogenarian widow locked up her apartment and started heading for the stairs. She was carrying a shopping basket.
Claudine unlatched the security chain, slid back both bolts and the deadlock and rushed out of the door to catch her.
‘Madame Lefort? Hang on – wait!’
The old woman was fit and sprightly from decades of negotiating the five flights of winding stairs each day. She was also as deaf as a tree, and Claudine had to repeat her name three more times before she caught her attention.
‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Pommier,’ the old woman said with a yellowed smile.
‘Madame Lefort, are you going out?’ Claudine said loudly.
‘To do my shopping. Is something wrong, dear? You don’t look well.’
Claudine hadn’t slept for two nights. ‘Migraine,’ she lied. ‘Bad one. Would you post a couple of letters for me?’
Madame Lefort looked at her tenderly. ‘Of course. You poor dear. Shall I get you some aspirin too?’
‘It’s okay, thanks. Hold on a moment.’ Claudine rushed back into the apartment. The two letters were lying on the table in the salon, sealed and ready but for the stamps. Their contents were identical; their addressees half a world apart. She snatched them up and rushed back to the door to give them to Madame Lefort. ‘This one’s for Canada,’ she explained. ‘This one for Sweden.’
‘Where?’ the old woman asked, screwing up her face.
‘Just show the person at the counter,’ Claudine said as patiently as she could. ‘They’ll know. Tell them the letters have to go registered international mail, express delivery. Have you got that?’
‘Say again?’
‘Registered international mail,’ Claudine repeated more firmly. ‘It’s terribly, terribly important.’
The old woman inspected each letter in turn an inch from her nose. ‘Canada? Sweden?’ she repeated, as though they were addressed to Jupiter and Saturn.
‘That’s right.’ Claudine held out a handful of euros. ‘This should cover the postage. Keep the change. You won’t forget, will you?’
As the old woman headed off down the stairs, Claudine hurried back to her apartment and locked herself in. All she could do now was pray that Madame Lefort wouldn’t forget, or manage to lose the letters halfway to the post office. There was no other way to get word out to the only people she could trust. Two allies she knew would come to her aid.
If it wasn’t too late already.
Claudine ventured to the window. She reached out nervously and pulled the edge of the curtain back a crack. The afternoon sunlight streamed in, making her blink. Five floors below, the traffic was filtering along the narrow street. But that wasn’t what Claudine was watching.
She swallowed. The car was still there, in the same parking space at the kerbside right beneath her windows where it had been sitting since yesterday. She was completely certain it was the same black Audi with dark-tinted glass that had followed her from Fabien’s family country home two days ago.
And, before that, the same car that had tried to run her down in the street and only narrowly missed her. It still made her tremble to think of it.
She quickly drew the curtain shut again, hoping that the men inside the car hadn’t spotted her at the window. She was pretty sure there were three of them. Her instinct told her they were sitting inside it, just waiting.
On her return from Fabien’s place, after the scare and the realisation she was being followed, she hadn’t intended to remain here in the apartment any longer than it took to pack a few things into a bag and get the hell out. But the car had appeared before she’d been able to escape – and now she was trapped.
Were these the men that Daniel had warned her about? If that was the case, they knew everything. Every detail of her research. And if so, they must know what she’d learned about their terrible plans. If they caught her, they wouldn’t let her live. Couldn’t let her live. Not after what she’d uncovered.
Under siege in her own apartment. How long could she hold out? She had enough tinned provisions to last about a week if she rationed her meals. And enough brandy left to stop her terror from driving her crazy.
Claudine spent the next half hour pacing anxiously up and down the darkened room, fretting over whether the old lady had sent her letters. ‘I can’t stand this,’ she said out loud. ‘I need a drink.’
Walking into the tiny kitchen, she grabbed a tumbler and the brandy bottle and sloshed out a stiff measure. She downed it in a couple of gulps and poured another. It wasn’t long before the alcohol had combined with her fatigue to make her head swirl. She wandered back through into the salon, lay on the couch and closed her eyes. Almost instantly, she began to drift.
When Claudine awoke with a start and opened her eyes, the room was completely dark. She must have slept for hours. Something had woken her. A sound. Her heart began to race.
That was when the bright flash from outside lit up the narrow gap between the curtains, followed a moment later by another rumble of thunder. She relaxed. It was just a storm. The howling wind was lashing the rain against the windows.
She got up from the couch and groped for the switch of the table lamp nearby. The light came on with a flicker. The ancient wiring of the apartment building threatened to black the place out every time there was a storm. The clock on the mantelpiece read 10.25. Too late to go and ask Madame Lefort if she’d posted the letters, as the old woman was always in bed by half past nine. It would have to wait until morning.
Claudine stepped back over to the window and peered out of the crack in the curtains. With a gasp she saw that the car was gone.
Gone! Just an empty pool of light, glistening with rainwater, under the streetlamp where it had been parked.
She blinked. Had she just imagined the whole thing? Was nobody following her after all? Had the near-miss in the street two days ago just been a coincidence, some careless asshole not looking where he was going?
The rush of relief she felt was soon overtaken by a feeling of self-blame. If this whole thing had been just her paranoia getting the better of her, then she should never have sent those letters. She’d made a fool of herself.
Suddenly she was hoping that the old woman hadn’t posted them after all.
The storm continued outside. Claudine knew she wouldn’t get any more sleep that night. She wandered into her little bedroom, flipped on the side light and picked up her violin. One of the upsides to sharing the top floor with a deaf old woman was that she could play whenever she liked. Madame Lefort wouldn’t even have heard the thunder.
Thankful that she had something to occupy her mind, Claudine cradled the instrument under her chin, touched the bow to the strings and went into the opening bar of the Bach sonata she’d been trying to master for the last couple of months.
Another bright flash outside and at that moment the lights went out. She cursed and went on playing by the red glow from the neon sign of the hotel across the street.
Then she paused, frowning. There’d been a noise. Before the roll of thunder. Like a thump. It seemed to have come from above. There was nothing above her apartment but the roof. Maybe the wind had knocked something down, she thought, or sent a piece of debris bouncing over the tiles. She went on playing.
But she hadn’t produced more than a few notes before her bow groaned to a dissonant halt on the strings. She’d heard the noise again.
There was someone inside the apartment.
A cold sweat broke out over her brow. Her knees began to shake. She needed to arm herself with something. Thinking of the knife block on the kitchen worktop, she tossed her violin and bow down on the bed and hurried towards the doorway – then skidded to a halt on the bare boards as another violent lightning flash lit up the room and she saw the figure standing in the doorway, blocking her exit.
Too terrified to speak, Claudine retreated into the bedroom.
The intruder stepped into the room after her. She could see him outlined in the red glow from the hotel sign. He was tall, very tall. Shoulders like an ox. Black boots, black trousers, black jacket and gloves. His hair was silver, cropped to a stubble. He had a hard, angular face. Pale eyes narrowed to slits. Around his waist was some kind of utility belt, like builders and carpenters wore.
For one crazy, irrational moment, Claudine thought he was a workman come to carry out the much-needed repairs to the bathroom. But that idea vanished as he drew the claw hammer from his utility belt and came towards her.
She snatched the violin from the bed. Lashing wildly out with it, she caught him across the brow with such force that the instrument broke apart. The splintering wood raked his flesh, drawing blood that looked as dark as treacle in the red light. He barely seemed to have felt the blow. He swung the hammer and knocked the shattered violin from her hand. She cowered away from him. ‘Please—’
He struck out again with the hammer. Claudine’s vision exploded, white and blinding pain flashing through her head. She fell onto the bed, dazed.
The big man stood over her, clutching the hammer in his muscular fist. Strands of bloody hair dangled from the steel claw. Unhurriedly, calmly, he wiped the tool clean on the bedcover and then slipped it back into his utility belt. From another long pouch he drew out a cylindrical tube with some kind of plunger and transparent plastic nozzle attached.
He bent over her. Through the fog of pain, she saw him smile. His eyes and teeth were red in the hotel neon.
The man spoke in English. ‘Now it’s time for that pretty mouth of yours to be plugged up.’
A hoarse cry of terror burst from Claudine’s lips as she realised what he was holding. She tried desperately to wriggle away from him but he reached out with a quick and powerful hand, grabbed her hair and pinned her thrashing head to the bed, ignoring the wild blows she flailed out at his face and arms.
With his other hand he jammed the nozzle of the tube into her screaming mouth. She cried out and bit down on the hard plastic and tried to spit it out, gagging as it was forced deep inside.
The man pressed the plunger. Instantly, something foul-tasting, warm and soft filled her mouth. It was coming out under pressure and there was nothing Claudine could do to stop it flowing down her throat. She tried to cough it out, but all of a sudden no air would come. There was an awful sensation of pressure building up inside her as the substance swelled and expanded, filling every cavity of her throat and nasal passages.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t open or shut her jaws a millimetre. She stopped trying to lash out at him, and in a crazed, agonised panic she clamped her hands to her mouth and felt the hardening foam bulging out from between her lips like some grotesque tongue.
The man dropped the empty canister on the bed and used both hands to hold her bucking, convulsing body down. After a minute or so, as her brain was becoming starved of oxygen, her movements began to slacken. The man let her go and stood up.
The darkness was rising fast as Claudine’s vision faded. For a few seconds longer she could still dimly register the man’s shape standing over her in the red-lit room, watching her impassively with his head slightly cocked to one side.
Soon she could see nothing at all.
The man waited a few more moments before he checked her pulse. Once he was satisfied that she was dead, he left the bedroom. He unlocked the apartment door and left it ajar as he made his silent way towards the stairs.
Chapter Two
‘I wish we didn’t have to do this,’ Jude said.
It was a hazy, warm late Saturday morning in the peaceful village of Little Denton in rural Oxfordshire. Fat bumblebees were humming around the flowerbeds, birds were chirruping happily overhead. Once in a while, a car hissed by the gates of the former vicarage.
A sharp-eyed observer might have spotted the signs that the old house nestling among the trees behind the high stone wall was no longer lived in: the unclipped ivy spreading over the windowpanes; the rather unkempt state of the lawn that stretched far down towards the river; the remnants of last winter’s fallen leaves still lying about the grounds; and it wouldn’t have taken much asking around to discover that the local community was still recovering from the shocking deaths, just six months earlier, of the vicar and his wife in a car crash. Simeon and Michaela Arundel had been much loved and were sadly missed by everyone who’d known them.
The vicarage had been in the Arundel family for generations and now it had passed to twenty-year-old Jude. From time to time the young man drove up from Portsmouth, where he was still half-heartedly studying Marine Biology while considering his future options now that his life had changed so dramatically, to get on with the painful, drawn-out task of sorting out Simeon and Michaela’s possessions and take care of the place as best he could.