Spiral (14 page)

Feuchter groaned. He closed his eyes.

A cold breeze blew in from the black ocean.

He reached out inside himself, searching his bloodstream, searching his tissue; he found the rogue pieces of metal and despite carrying them in his shell, he knew they were doing him no harm; he could feel his body working, repairing itself, his veins buzzing with blood and
something else.
Feuchter smiled; he could feel the strange chemical within him, nestling in his veins and organs, in his brain, in his spinal column. It took away his pain.

He thought back, Feuchter thought back—

Across the long hard years.

Pain lanced him.

He concentrated again on the wound; he felt the ebb and flow of chemicals in his system. He could feel himself getting stronger; could feel his body repairing the damage wrought by the bullet.

He floated for a while on waves of agony.

He listened to the sea.

Voices.

— Give him another ten mils of morphine; there, that should soothe his suffering for a while; or at least stave off death for another couple of days. Nurse, has he spoken?

— Yes, he cried out in his sleep.

— What did he say?

— He cried out for Maria. Who is Maria?

— The woman who was found dead and burned up in the castle at Schwalenberg; they brought in her corpse - what a fucking mess. She’s bagged up down in the mortuary awaiting an autopsy, although I’m not sure what remaining part of her they would like to fuck with... there’s not much left.

— Were they close?

— I believe so; it was his niece, but she had lived with him, treated her like a daughter.

Feuchter felt a rage well within him.

He remembered: remembered Carter - remembered the bullet ... and he remembered the gun, black eye focusing on Maria, blowing her backwards across the chamber, her small silver gun clattering on the floor, her face slapping to the stone, her tooth cracking, blood pooling from her smashed lips ...

Maria; ahhhh, sweet Maria.

He remembered a time, from years earlier: sitting at the broad untreated-timber farm table. The sun was gleaming outside, casting strips of bright light over the tiled floor. He could smell rosemary, and the trees from the cherry orchard. Maria had only been young then; eight, maybe nine. She sat on his knee, a bowl of cherries on her lap fresh-picked only an hour before - both of them standing precariously on the small ladder and giggling as they reached out, plucking the ripe fruit from the branches. Now Maria ate the harvest of their daring, her fingers and lips stained red with juice, her eyes wide and gleaming and beautiful, her face a picture of delight.

Feuchter closed the door on the memory.

There was a bitter taste in his mouth.

Anger and... something more.

Cold and clinical.

He knew; knew he should feel something incredible for Maria; he knew that his emotions should flow thick and fast, and his anger was there, and a hatred for Carter that spoke of long hours of torture to come ... but he knew he should be weeping at her death. Weeping uncontrollably. His intelligence told him that much.

But something strange had happened.

Feuchter could not bring himself to cry.

His face turned to a grimace now; the bullet wound was healing and acid ate his flesh as it knitted together; in this dream state it seemed to be happening so quickly, almost instantaneously, strands of skin and muscle joining together, cells growing and repairing and replicating.

It hurt. It burned him
bad.

Hans: a shame he’d had to kill the man. Feuchter remembered the indecision; and the orders typed on the white sheet before him. To murder his own brother, to murder a man he loved knowing full well that he would leave an orphaned girl with nobody to care for her—

He had carried out the orders. A single shot to the head.

And he had cried afterwards; Maria had come to him, asking what the matter was, and she had cuddled him and sat on his knee and accidentally smeared the speckles of her father’s blood on his face in her innocence and ignorance; and Feuchter had cried, cried long and hard and told himself to be strong and then on that dark bloody evening of murder he had risked everything to get Maria away from there, to get her away to safety and save her life—

Things had changed, he realised.

And then, bitterly:
I
have changed.

Now; now there were no tears. And he understood why - he understood the chemical processes that had altered his body but it still haunted him. He had thought that he would be strong; he had thought that he would be able to make the sacrifice for the good of the future; for the good of all things.

I am doing the right thing, he told himself.

The sacrifice
will
be worth it in the end.

The sea crashed against the dark shore; and Feuchter realised that the surf, the rolling sound of the surf and the hiss of the spray were voices once more, distant voices drifting from the infinite dark horizon:

— ... Will stabilise him in the event of an... hey, who are you, you can’t come in here, you’ve—

— Check him; are they using the right drugs? OK, substitute it for Methylperdazone, 15 mils, and make sure you inject it straight into the wound, through the healing tissue.

— Good; and for fuck’s sake, put your guns away.

Feuchter awoke. His eyes were gummed shut, and he waited for a while, listening to his own gentle calm breathing. His senses were alert, though; he could hear breathing, from another three men in the room. He could smell sweat, a hint of old aftershave, whisky, and somebody’s odorous feet. Feuchter did a system scan on his own body: it felt weak, the muscles tightened, taut with cramps, burned with fatigue. And his stomach: it was now nothing more than a dull throb where the wound had been.

He forced open his eyes, sticky and filled with crusts of sleep; he could see a fire-retardant tiled ceiling in the gloom. Yellow light cast spiral patterns across the tiles, which were quite new; a private ward, then?

Feuchter’s hand moved down his body; he felt the fresh scar where the bullet had recently smashed into him; he probed it gently but there was no pain. He smiled to himself, then propped himself up on one elbow.

There were three men; they were all watching him. Two were heavy-set bruisers, carrying Sterling submachine guns concealed badly within their long coats; they were unshaven and looked weary. The third was a tall thin man, with a hawk face and a crooked, hooked nose. His hair was shaved close to the scalp, his hands heavy with rings. He wore a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. A small case was by his side and Feuchter knew exactly what items were in it.

‘It’s good to see you, Tremont. How long have I been out?’ he asked.

‘Three days, sir. A little longer than we expected, but you were nearly dead when we got to you. And you have to appreciate that in controlled laboratory conditions we do not replicate real-world random activities with such precision as when these incidents occur naturally.’

Feuchter nodded. ‘Can you get me a coffee? And a cigar? I am gasping - I feel like I’ve been unconscious for months!’

‘That is a side effect of the accelerated processes, sir.’ Tremont waved away one of the bruisers, who slid from the room. Outside the self-closing green door Feuchter caught a glimpse of a sterile corridor, with several waiting trolleys and distant lights.

‘Does Durell know that I am OK?’

‘He does, sir.’

‘Am I in a private facility?’

‘Yes. We had to work quickly; you had lost a lot of blood and although your body was already regenerating we had to give it a slight boost. This will stay in your system for the next two weeks, or thereabouts.’

‘Side effects?’

‘Exhaustion; but we have new drugs to combat this also.’

‘Good.’

Feuchter sat up. ‘There are still bits of metal inside me.’

‘Yes, we know; they are benign and can be removed at a later date; Durell said speed of recovery was of the utmost importance because of the developments with the QIII. He said to tell you that we have had advances with the location of the stolen schematics.’

‘And...’ A pause. ‘Carter?’

‘After the incidents in Germany, he has been traced.’

‘Tell me.’

‘He evaded several Nex operatives; nearly killed
you
.’

‘He’s better than I thought - much better. Could almost be a fucking Nex himself!’

There was laughter; cold laughter; it contained little humour.

‘Units have been dispatched to remove him.’

Feuchter nodded. The bruiser returned and Feuchter lit his cigar. ‘Out of interest, my niece, Maria Balashev: she died, did she not?’

‘She did, sir. Nobody seems to know quite what happened in that room ... we were waiting for you to awake. The Nex got you out just before the explosion designed to remove the QIII development team and mask your disappearance, but Maria ... well, the bullet had clipped one of her lungs - she choked to death on her own blood. There was nothing they could do for her and didn’t have time to make snap decisions ... you were the priority.’

‘Priority?’ said Feuchter coldly, a dark intelligent twinkle in his eyes. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘One other thing, sir.’

‘Yes?’ His eyes glittered.

‘Spiral_H had set up a task force to remove Spiral_Q from operation.’

‘And?’

‘It had been successfully dealt with, sir. Spiral_H no longer exists, and many of their operatives and networks are dead.’

‘A downward spiral, you could say?’ chuckled Feuchter nastily, and closed his dark eyes and allowed the pain to wash over him and take him away to dark obsidian shores.

Natasha lay, broken and torn and smashed on the ground.

‘No!’ hissed Carter. His own Browning started to bark as he leaped from the ridge, both hands clasping the weapon. The man who had shot Natasha was slammed from his feet, bullets eating him whole like tiny metal parasites, and blood exploded from his mouth, staining his beard and nose in a crimson shower. Carter landed, rolling across the ice, grunting, his Browning on empty and his body sliding against the buckled BMW with a
thud.
He swiftly changed mags - checked inside the Mercedes.

On the ice, two men were still standing, retreating towards the woods; one was dead in the back seat of the vehicle from Carter’s sniper round; another had been shot by Natasha, and one lay on the ice with his face blown apart, Carter’s bullet in his brain.

Carter popped his head around the car’s protective shell; bullets screamed from the edge of the woods, eating into the stone and metal behind him with showers of dust. Carter dropped to his belly and slid along to the edge of the Mercedes which clicked and hissed with the sighs of cooling, stressed steel—

Legs, sticking out from behind a tree.

He opened fire, heard screams, saw blood erupt from feet and shins.

One last man—

Carter squinted but could not see the assassin. Where had he gone? He had been by the side of the trees, down near the low stone wall that needed serious repairs which Carter kept putting off until the eternal ‘next summer’...

Boots thudded on the Mercedes bodywork and Carter looked up - too late - as the man leaped on top of him with a growl. Carter caught a glimpse of tanned features and a bushy black moustache. He smelled garlic before he was grabbed, his Browning knocked easily aside. He brought up his knee, but missed - the large attacker rained down blows on Carter’s head and face and he was momentarily stunned, blinded by multiple impacts—

The weight lifted. Carter lay on his back, on the ice, tasting blood and a sliver of tooth. He glanced up—

Into a boot.

Stars flashed across his vision and he was smashed backwards against the Mercedes, grunting, blood flowing down his chin, his nose broken. He might have screamed, he wasn’t sure—

His fingers slipped on the ice beneath him as he tried to push himself up.

‘Now, I kill you,’ came the heavily accented voice.

Carter’s eyes flickered open - everything seemed to be in slow motion,

‘Let me take his fucking soul,’
whispered Kade.

Carter dodged left as the boot connected where - a split second before - his face had been. Carter’s fist smashed a heavy curling hook against the man’s groin and then—

The man screamed.

Carter dragged himself to his feet, suddenly aware of the snarling; the man was on the ground, Samson’s teeth clamped on and through the attacker’s collarbone, tearing at his neck and throat. He was squirming, trying to punch the dog but the compression and snapping and tearing was making him wail, there was a
crack
of collarbone, and the man struggled manically to get away from that awesome crushing bite—

Carter staggered against the Mercedes. He gave a quick glance to Natasha - she was down and out of the game. He scanned for the Browning but could not see the weapon through the blood in his eyes; he felt a warm stream down the back of his throat and he spat stark red against the snow.