And,’ Mike laughed, ‘I also know how bloody awful your aim is. Lower your gun or I’m afraid I’m going to have to put most of your brains out on the road.’
Andy suspected the other two men were aiming at him as well. He lowered his gun.
Mike addressed the other two sharply. ‘Get him inside.’
They disarmed him, grabbed him forcefully by the arms and dragged him across the narrow street, through the gate of a small front garden and into a house that had clearly been ransacked and looted by someone in the last few days. They dropped him unceremoniously into an armchair.
He could see nothing, it was so dark. He felt someone brush past his legs, and then a moment later a small lantern popped on - a handheld sodium arc strip light, that glowed a dim, pallid cyan. Mike was kneeling before him, his gun still held in one hand, not aimed at him, but not exactly put away either.
‘Andy,’ he said, ‘you ever seen that film with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne . . . The Matrix?’
Andy nodded silently.
‘You remember the blue pill?’
He nodded - the moment in the movie when one character, the one played by Keanu Reeves, was being asked to forget everything he knows and prepare himself for a new reality. The blue pill had been the visual metaphor.
‘Yeah, okay . . . the blue pill, so?’
‘Well, I guess this is going to be your blue pill moment.’
Jenny heard it distinctly; in the dark, somewhere downstairs in the hall, the unmistakable rasp of cloth against cloth, the faintest whiff of friction, someone or something moving.
She held her breath, and listened.
A moment later she heard another faint rasp, followed by the slightest creak of one of the parquet slats in the hallway.
She reached for the gun in her lap and aimed it down at the bottom of the stairs.
‘I can hear you,’ she said quietly, almost a whisper, yet sounding so loud in the absolute stillness of the night.
The creaking, the rasping, stopped instantly. Even more frightening for Jenny, it was confirmation that someone was down there, and not just a phantom of her imagination.
‘I-I’ve got a gun, and I’m aiming it right now,’ she whispered again.
That was met with silence, again.
Then she sensed something on the bottom step. ‘Stop!’ she hissed, ‘or I’ll shoot.’
‘Mrs Sutherland?’ a soft voice, a man’s voice.
Hearing her name emerging from the darkness like that rattled her.
‘Who’s that? Who are you?’
‘Who I am really doesn’t matter,’ the voice replied. ‘I’m here for a reason. I’m here because a hundred yards away are men who have come to kill your daughter.’
‘What?’ she gasped.
‘They’re coming for her, you know, we’ve only got a few seconds before they arrive.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Like I’ve said, who I am doesn’t matter. I have to get your daughter out of here before it’s too late.’
‘I think you suspect some of this already, Andy,’ said Mike. ‘The things that are going on in the world, hmm?’
Andy nodded. ‘My work, it’s based on my work.’
Mike smiled, ‘Yes, your report. And you must have been wondering who it was you handed it over to all those years ago. You were doing a lot of thinking in the back of that truck in Iraq, Andy, weren’t you?’
Andy stared at the gun, only a few inches away from him. Was he fast enough?
‘Well, you gave that report to the right sort of people. What did they tell you when you were first approached? That they were security experts working for several anonymous clients in the oil industry?’
Andy nodded, ‘Yes, pretty much those words.’
‘It never occurred to you that they might have been terrorists? Or middle-men for some rogue foreign power?’
‘I wouldn’t have handed it over if I did.’
Mike nodded. ‘No, I suspect you wouldn’t, despite the money. It was quite a lot, wasn’t it?’
Andy shrugged.
‘These people value their anonymity. That’s very important to them, particularly now that they’ve done this thing; brought the world to its knees. You know, millions will starve. There will be hundreds of small-scale wars in which many more will die. Old scores settled, old rivalries emerging, whilst the world deals with this temporary instability. Now is really not a good time for them to be publicly named. And here’s the problem they have,’ Mike said, ‘your daughter could do just that.’
Andy looked at Mike. ‘You’re with Them aren’t you?’
‘Come on Mrs Sutherland, put the gun down. We don’t have time for this.’
‘So wh-who’s out there?’