Flint took a step back from the verbal onslaught. Some of the women stopped what they were doing in the background and turned to watch. Max noticed they were smiling. Obviously no one had challenged Orsino Flint, plant thief and pretend pirate, like this before.
Flint seemed duly chastened. He nodded and walked away. Max ground his teeth in frustration and, after a moment, strode after him. “Look, Flint, all I want is to find the truth behind my mother’s death. Help me. Why did you hate my mother? What did she ever do to you?”
Flint stopped at the top of the track that led down to the river and gazed at the flowing water for a few seconds before answering. “My father was Tyrone Hickey Flint. An outcast from Ireland. The greatest exponent of the Bard there ever was. He trod every termite-ridden board from Patagonia to the Mexican border for nearly fifty years. Not once was his name put up in lights. Not once. He craved the fame of recognition, but he ended up going from village to jungle town to share his love of Shakespeare for a meal and a bed. And my mother, a Creole woman, went with him. Never complaining, fetching and carrying, making him feel like a great man. I could never be my father’s son-but I could be my mother’s. He beat the words into me, and she lovingly taught me every flower and plant in the jungle. I’m the greatest plant thief there is, and your mother found out about me and destroyed my life. Now I survive on a fraction of the money I used to get-I’m too notorious to do business with. Your mother and her tree-hugging friends saw to that.”
“Then do you know how she died?”
“No. But I think I know where.”
18
Sayid watched Keegan skirt the building. Heavy steel doors barred his way, but then he made his way down the ramp to where the van had taken Maguire’s body. There was a keypad there, and Sayid watched as Keegan, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that no one was around, swiped a card and then stepped back as the door moved upward. Keegan ducked under quickly when it was only a meter off the ground, and then Sayid saw it roll back down to its original position. He quickly fingered the keys to select another CCTV camera from the dozen or so others on his screen. By the way the man acted, inspecting the building first and then finding a way in, Sayid realized that this man had to be from MI5 and that they were responding to the surveillance files that had been sent to them.
Sayid manipulated the lens of the camera inside the first area. No natural light found its way into the tomblike building. Sayid watched as the man turned on a small but powerful torch, searching the walls for a light switch. That was going to be very helpful to Sayid, but he thought that maybe it wasn’t a great idea for the man himself. How did the man know that the torch was not going to set off a light-sensitive alarm? Maybe he was inexperienced. Or scared. Did MI5 people get scared? Sayid felt nervous enough being a fly on the wall as the camera lens tracked the man down the corridor.
All the walls inside the building seemed to be made of brushed stainless steel or thick opaque glass, and Keegan edged along warily, hands moving across the walls, trying to find a doorway or an opening of any kind, because where there were frames within the glass, there seemed to be no handles to indicate that a door or entrance of any description could be there.
There was an uncanny silence in the corridor and a chill that reminded Keegan of a mortuary. It was not his imagination-even the walls felt cold. There was an elevator at the end of the corridor. He pressed the button and the doors opened; there were only two floors to choose from. First floor and work up? Second floor and work down? He pressed the first-floor button, noticed that his breathing had become more ragged, more fearful, but could not deny the thrill of danger that squirmed in his stomach. The doors closed on him.
He would never see daylight again.
Sayid was as edgy as Keegan. He watched a dozen cameras on-screen, but they all seemed to be focused on corridors, empty and cold-looking, bare and unwelcoming. He could see the MI5 man standing in the lift, gazing up at the camera lens-right at him. Sayid suddenly felt a tremor in his hands as he manipulated the camera. It was as if the man knew he was there, but then he glanced back down. Obviously this camera was behind a panel and not directly in view.
It was like being a ghost, standing right next to someone, almost able to touch them, going with them on their journey but being invisible. Sayid thought he seemed very young to be a spy and looked to be in his early twenties. As if he had not been out of university for long. He looked cool. Jeans, shirt hanging loosely, black jacket and canvas trainers. His hair was chopped in a modern style. Just an ordinary-looking bloke you wouldn’t glance at twice in the street. Exactly what a spy should be, Sayid reasoned.
The lift doors opened.
The low-lit area Keegan had stepped into was ultramodern. A number of small screens were strategically located along the wall, evenly spaced, as if there were rooms behind those thick, dull panels. Fingerprints were required to access whatever lay behind these opaque glass screens. As he stood at the end of the corridor and gazed along it, he realized it was wide enough for him to reach out both arms and almost touch the walls on each side. Wide enough for what? A hospital trolley maybe? A full-sized wheeled bed? Was this some kind of private hospital or clinic? It smelled like it.
He remembered when he had gone round the building outside how the narrow alleyways had run far back. This building had a lot of depth, and the internal space must be used to store something, but what? It had to be really important, because only a privileged few gained access to this second stage of security-you had to have the correct fingerprint. How could he get round that?
Sayid watched the man move back toward the lift. He stood in front of the doors for a moment and studied the framework next to where the call button was located. His fingers seemed to trace the area around the stainless steel, and then he took something from his pocket. Sayid changed camera angles, choosing one that sat high in the corner of the corridor and included the lift doors. He used his mouse to pinpoint the camera’s control panel that sat on his screen and tweaked the direction of the lens. Sayid zoomed in. Now he could see that the man had a square of what looked like acetate in his hands. He peeled the back off it and pressed it against the frame, then lifted it off carefully. Keegan turned and moved back down the corridor.
Sayid changed camera angles again. He was just to one side, and high up, but he could look down at what the man was doing-placing the sheet on a small screen. It was a fingerprint swipe. Clever. He had lifted a fingerprint to gain access. These guys were good, Sayid thought. No wonder they were MI5.
The opaque wall panel slid back, exposing a broad, tiled room. Immediately to one side were stainless-steel coat stands, purpose-designed to hang a biohazard suit on-and there were four of them suspended now, just like the ones Sayid had seen worn in the Underground tunnel.
But the man had barely glanced at the suits, because set square in the middle of this room was a glass cage with a stainless-steel table in the middle. Like a postmortem examination room. The glass cage was a completely sealed unit, and if Sayid could have viewed the room from another angle, he would have seen that there was a special entrance built through an air lock at the back of this cage, where a medical team could enter and exit safely once they had hooked up the oxygen line for their biohazard suits.
Sayid watched as the man pressed some console buttons on one wall. A series of screens appeared, half a dozen individual frames, as if they were an integral part of the wall, just as a hospital examination room would display images from a scanning machine. Sayid could not see what the images were, but he watched as the man put a hand to his face in horror and then staggered back a few paces, banging into one of the biohazard suits. He spun round, completely disoriented, and then bent over and vomited on the cold tile floor. Whatever was on those screens must have been horrific.
Sayid saw movement on his monitor. Someone else was in the building. He quickly keyed in different camera
