Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [28]
Ryman stood up and entered the building, taking the elevator to the top floor. Then he walked the final flight of stairs to the roof. There, in a pale moonlight, he could see two InterCom guards holding a young man against the railings that separated him from a 300-foot drop to a rather messy death.
A third man wearing the InterCom uniform moved towards Ryman. Robert Chebb, one of his most trusted deputies.
‘We found him in Compton,’ said Chebb, indicating the captive with his thumb. ‘He’s one of them all right.’
Ryman nodded and moved towards the little group at the railings. He signalled to the guards to release their prisoner. Ryman looked into the boy’s terrified eyes and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He offered one to the boy who took it with shaking hands and gratefully accepted the light that Ryman gave him.
‘Smells like you’ve had a bit of an accident,’ said Ryman.
‘They held me over the edge,’ pleaded the boy, ashamed. ‘I got scared.’
‘That’s nothing to what I’ll do if you lie to me. I’ll hang you from a meat hook, upside down by your manhood, and make sure you take a week to die.
Capisce? ’
The boy nodded.
‘What’ve you got?’ asked Ryman.
‘I’m not in the inner sanctum. I’m with one of the active units. The others in my cell are an English guy called Carlysle. Ex-SAS. Mad as the moon. And 53
two baseheads from Inglewood.’
‘And you are?’
‘Vince Burkman. I’m just a bagman. I run errands –’
Chebb snarled and grabbed a handful of the boy’s curly hair. ‘Involving Semtex and nails,’ he screamed, pushing him back against the railing. ‘You sick freak.’
‘Yes! Yes!’ cried the boy in pain and terror. ‘Whatever you want, man.’
‘Where does Newton’s group meet?’ asked Ryman.
‘It’s need to know,’ said Vince quickly. ‘Half the time the brothers themselves don’t know where the meets are goin’ down till Newton tells them. He’s got venues right across this city. Never uses the same place more than once. He’s like a rat, you never get close.’
‘Names. Dates. Places,’ said Ryman, grabbing Vince by the neck and pushing him backwards until the scaffolding prevented him going any further.
Vince told him. A rambling five-minute list of exactly what Ryman wanted to know. Every name, every date, every place. At last the boy stopped.
‘You got everything?’ Chebb asked.
‘Too much,’ said Ryman suspiciously. He turned to Vince and gave him an apologetic look. ‘Look at it this way, at least you’ll never need a clean pair of pants now.’ Then he pushed the startled boy over the railings and watched as he plummeted, screaming, to his death.
‘He was lying,’ noted Ryman. ‘He’d have told me he killed the Kennedys if he thought that was what I wanted to hear.’ He looked over the railing to the blood-splattered pavement beneath and grimaced. ‘That was a waste of time,’
he said after a moment. ‘So, anyway, have you guys eaten yet?’
‘I’ll put the videolink through now,’ said Michelle Stonebringer as Chung Sen’s blurred features crossed the thousands of miles of cyberspace and flickered to life on Sanger’s laptop.
‘This had better be important,’ Sanger told Chung. ‘I’ve got the Mexican ambassador waiting downstairs.’
‘I think you’ll agree this is a worrying development.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘Kyla O’Shaugnessy,’ said Chung simply.
‘Whom?’
‘My assistant.’
Sanger remembered her. A pretty-faced Australian girl with tied-back hair and deep ocean-blue eyes. Early twenties. He’d met her during a visit to the Okenawa site in the spring. They’d had a conversation during which she’d told him she was a champion swimmer in her homeland, but that she didn’t 54
like Australia and much preferred Japan, which she described as ‘stimulating’.
Chung Sen, Sanger recalled, had been very fond of her.
‘What have you done, got her pregnant?’ he asked.
‘Nothing so trivial,’ replied Chung. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean,