All Fall Down. Mark Edwards
stepped towards him. ‘Get on the bed,’ she said.
He froze. ‘Miss Tyler,’ he said with a shaking voice. ‘I’m only a scientist … I don’t have any money …’
‘I said, get on the bed. I have no interest in your fucking money.’
He let out a weird noise, like a squeak, and half-turned. She moved quickly, aiming a kick at his back, sending him crashing into the bedside table, the phone and lamp tumbling to the floor. She grabbed him by his jacket and pushed him on to the bed, straddling him and holding the gun to his temple.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, trying to stay calm. But his terror and shock were making him shake.
‘Take off your jacket and shirt,’ she commanded.
‘What?’
Confusion flitted across his face, but he obeyed, pulling off his jacket, then unbuttoning his shirt. It was almost funny. Did he think she wanted his body? He had no idea how much he disgusted her, how nauseous his pale, flabby body made her feel.
‘Now lie on the bed, and don’t move. If you do, I’ll shoot you in the balls. Understand?’
He nodded. There were tears in his eyes. Pathetic, how some people crumbled at the first sign of pressure. It astounded her sometimes how weak most people were. If they had been through what she had experienced in her life, they would end up killing themselves or going insane.
She really hoped he didn’t soil himself. That would be highly inconvenient. She decided she needed to calm him down.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Dr Larter. So try to relax. Close your eyes, OK?’
He did as she asked, his eyelids flickering like they were resisting his attempts to keep them shut.
She straddled him on the bed, ignoring the smell of alcohol that wafted off him – wondering if, despite his fear, he would grow hard from the feeling of her warm, leather-clad body against his crotch. It had been known to happen. Other men had died with an erection and a smile on their lips. That wasn’t going to be Larter’s fate, though.
She reached behind her and pulled off her backpack, unzipping the front pocket and producing a syringe that she had already prepared with a colourless, odourless liquid. GHB. She took hold of Isaac’s arm and slipped the needle in, injecting the drug directly into a vein before he could pull his arm away.
‘What was that?’ he asked, alarmed, opening his eyes.
She pointed the gun at his face. ‘Close your eyes. It was just something to help you relax. Now, keep quiet.’
She checked her watch. The drug would take effect in fifteen to twenty minutes, leaving Dr Larter intensely drowsy and disorientated. The fact he had already consumed several glasses of alcohol helped. After a while, he stopped trying to open his eyes. He wasn’t unconscious but was relaxed, probably feeling as if he was in a dream. His heart rate would have slowed, and beneath the drowsiness he would be experiencing a mild euphoria. He was in the perfect state for what she needed to do.
‘Don’t go to sleep, Dr Larter,’ she whispered.
A smile appeared on his lips.
‘I need you to sit up, OK?’
Again, he obeyed. ‘Good boy,’ she said. Then she unzipped the main compartment of her backpack.
A little while later, Angelica led Isaac out of the room. She had put his shirt and jacket back on, buttoning the jacket across his belly. She held him by the crook of his arm, leading him slowly down the corridor towards the elevator. To anyone who might pass, he would look like a drunk being helped along by, well, she probably looked like a call girl.
They took the elevator back to the ground floor and she walked him over to the ballroom. Isaac barely seemed to register where he was or what was happening. But he was still smiling faintly.
She took him inside. The drinks reception was in full swing, lots of middle-aged men and women standing around in groups of three or four, chatting, pontificating, exchanging views and business cards. She looked around for Kate Maddox, whose photo she had found online, but there was no sign of her. No matter.
She sat Isaac down on a chair near the centre of the room.
A heavyset man standing nearby grinned at them.
‘He’s had too much to drink,’ she said. ‘But he insists he doesn’t want to go to bed … again.’
The man guffawed at that and she winked at him. It didn’t matter that he’d had a very good look at her face.
‘Do you mind keeping an eye on him while I go to the ladies’ room?’ she asked. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘No problem, sweetcheeks,’ the man said, clearly wondering if he could take a turn at hiring her.
She walked out of the reception and all the way out of the hotel, back out through the revolving doors. Striding briskly away, she covered three blocks until she found her car, the sleek white Maserati, where she had parked it. She brushed aside the two Hispanic men who had stopped to admire it, whistling as they watched her climb inside.
She pulled the cellphone out of her pocket.
While Isaac had been in a semi-conscious state, she had taped three pounds of Semtex around his midriff, then covered it with a bandage. Three pounds of the plastic explosive was enough to destroy a two-storey building. Certainly sufficient to decimate the reception room at the hotel and kill everyone in it.
She thought of Dr Larter, sitting in his chair, the heavyset man probably wondering where she had got to. Larter, in his delirious state, would have no idea that beneath his shirt was the Semtex and a detonator that she could trigger by calling it from her cellphone.
She dialled the magic number now.
And heard the explosion from three blocks away, saw smoke shoot up above the rooftops. She closed her eyes and pictured the flying body parts, the carnage, the balls of flame. She could almost smell it. It made her feel hungry.
Angelica put the car into drive and headed out of the city, thinking about the end of the world.
5
Kate would never forget the sound of Shelley screaming, the sight of her sobbing in the kitchen, clinging to the worktop, her face scrunched up with shock and grief, a policewoman hovering awkwardly beside her. As Kate ran into the kitchen Shelley launched herself at her, pressing her wet face against Kate’s neck.
‘What is it? Tell me!’
‘It’s Isaac. There’s been a huge terrorist attack, on the hotel he was in! Oh, Kate! My sweet, clever Isaac – he’s dead. Oh, how am I going to tell Callum?’
Over the next five minutes, Kate learned that Isaac, her friend and colleague, the man she spent more time with than anyone else, had been blown to bits by an unknown assassin who’d planted Semtex in the hotel ballroom where the post-conference drinks party had been taking place. Thirty-two other eminent virologists and immunologists had also been killed, but further details were sketchy, and the death toll was still rising.
She joined Shelley in an outpouring of grief that made the policewoman and her colleagues step back as if they’d never seen such a raw display of emotion before. And when the boys came in from the field at the back of the house, still brandishing their toy swords, Kate had held Jack whilst Shelley sobbed out the news to Callum that his daddy had died. Shelley had tried so hard to regain her composure, but to no avail. Tears welled in Kate’s eyes every time she thought of it.
A growing horror combined with her grief over Isaac: someone had targeted the immunology conference. They were trying to kill people like her. Had it not been for Jack’s chickenpox, she would have been in that room with Isaac.
Kate offered to stay the night with Shelley and Callum, but Shelley refused. ‘I