Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [68]
‘So, you know the way the Faction’s people operate. They’re Time Lord voodoo cultists, that’s what I’m saying. Now bear with me here, because this is where it gets interesting…’
* * *
The telephone was ringing again. Llewis responded by sitting on the end of the bed and staring at it.
He couldn’t answer it. He couldn’t. He’d spent the whole afternoon in the hotel room, reading and rereading the brochures, and there was nothing in his head now except the Cold, the bubbling faces and the snapping mouths. What could he say on the phone, for God’s sake? He’d just start gibbering. Screaming, maybe.
But the phone kept ringing.
Llewis stood. Turned his back on the thing. Started pacing the room. The brochures lay scattered across the bed, and he tried his best not to notice them, not to look at the big, glossy pictures. He remembered what had happened in the hallway, Guest standing there with his gun, the Cold eating away the door. So who’d been staying in the room? Had it really been Ms Bland? And if so why had Guest been attacking her?
Perhaps, thought Llewis, that was the way Guest’s company dealt with business partners it didn’t approve of. Ms Bland had probably disappeared now, gone for ever, never to be brought back. Llewis wondered if they’d notice her missing at the offices of IPS. They’d never guess. They’d never know. Ever.
God, he’d thought the Chinese would have loved the Cold, but who in the world wouldn’t? Word had it that the police in Zaire liked to use electric‐shock equipment because shock weapons didn’t leave marks, didn’t leave evidence their victims could show to the civil‐rights people. But the Cold took things to a whole new level. No scars, no victims. And Europe? Now the left‐wingers were taking away all the old toys, now the governments were scrapping the nerve‐gas agents and talking about getting rid of the old Salamander missiles, the military had to have something new to play with.
Would they notice Llewis gone, back at the office? Probably not. He doubted Peter bloody Morgan would give a toss what happened to him. Maybe one day, in the canteen, someone might say, ‘Oh, whatever happened to old Alan?’, but that’d be it. If Guest didn’t approve of him –
The phone stopped ringing.
This was stupid. Stupid. You couldn’t just make your business partners vanish, Cold or no Cold. It wasn’t professional. Guest must have had some other reason for what he’d done. Maybe it had been another demonstration. So he’d made a door vanish. So what? He’d probably already paid the hotel for a new one.
So why had Llewis spent the whole day in this stinking bloody hotel room, when he should have been back at the office by now? Why had he been scared to even stick his head out of the door?
Llewis glanced back at the telephone. He contemplated calling reception, asking them if Ms Bland had been seen today. But he decided against it. He’d sound like a basket case. Besides, he didn’t know if the Cold could move along telephone wires. He imagined it creeping along the phone line, crawling into his ear…
Stop it, for God’s sake. Stop it. Peter bloody Morgan wouldn’t panic, not even if the biggest leap forward in the history of security hardware landed in his lap. Peter bloody Morgan would have taken it all in his stride. This is a business deal, Alan James Llewis, so get a grip on yourself. Calm down, then walk straight out of the door and go down to reception. Ask if Mr Guest is still around. Conclude the deal. Forget the horror stories. Nothing strange is going on.
‘– need just a hundred and one runs to complete their victory,’ said a woman’s voice.
Llewis screamed, turned, and knocked over the table by the side of the bed. The woman kept talking, describing the details of some cricket match or other.
The television. The television had switched Itself on. Llewis bent down and put the table back on its legs, carefully resting the telephone on top of the Formica. The newsreader was still talking, but something was wrong with the sound, and the voice was crackling, hissing, sometimes cutting out altogether. Llewis