Wanted by Emlyn Rees Page B

torturer lied to him about when he could meet up with Glinka? Had he snatched the last laugh by sending Danny here just too late?
    ‘How many others were there?’ he said. ‘Not including the two men upstairs.’
    ‘Six.’
    ‘Any women?’
    ‘One.’
    ‘What colour was her hair?’
    The man looked confused, as if the question might be a trick.
    ‘You heard.’
    ‘Blonde.’
    ‘Her name?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ The man’s face tensed. Clearly he was sensing that this failure might lead Danny to let Spartak off his leash.
    Danny pictured the blonde as he’d last seen her, walking with Glinka to that Cessna light aircraft, leaving Danny in the English farmhouse with those men whose job it had been to torture him and his daughter to death.
    ‘What about the hacker?’ he said, his dark eyes angling towards the L-shaped desk. ‘The Englishman. The one who set up that computer.’
    The researcher seemed shocked that he knew such details at all. ‘I did not know he was English. He spoke . . . many languages . . .’
    Many?
Could they be talking about the same person? If it were true, then it confirmed just how deep the Kid’s act had gone. It also begged the question, what other secret skills did he possess? And how might he now deploy them to prevent Danny hunting him down?
    ‘His name in English,’ the scientist was saying, ‘I think it was . . .’
    Two words followed, in mangled English, but clear enough for Danny to translate, and to confirm his suspicions one hundred per cent.
    The Kid.
    He still didn’t know why the Kid had betrayed him to Glinka. For money? For power? Or because he’d had no choice? Had Glinka been blackmailing him in some way?
    He no longer cared. He just wanted to get his hands on the Kid. He wanted to make him confess to everything he’d done. To force him to tell the authorities the truth and, that way, to give Danny and his daughter back their lives.
    Danny shoved the researcher hard into Spartak, who snatched him up in his arms. ‘Bring him,’ he ordered, crossing to the L-shaped desk.
    Spartak obeyed, visibly shaking, a volcano about to erupt.
    ‘Sit him down,’ Danny said.
    Spartak rammed the researcher into the seat, as if he wanted to push him right through it. He kept him gripped by the back of his neck.
    ‘Is the computer rigged?’ Danny said. ‘Is it alarmed or wired in any way?’
    ‘No.’ The researcher frantically shook his head. ‘We use it continually for our – for our work.’
    Work
. That word again. The neutral catch-all that could somehow excuse all
this.
    Danny watched for ‘tells’, for any sign he might be lying.
    ‘I swear it,’ the man said, starting to weep again. ‘We use it to control their environment – the lighting, the heating, their water supply . . .’
    Their.
Danny felt a shiver run down his spine, as he peered through the glass, past the infected soldier, who was still hovering, like a distorted reflection in a tarnished mirror, into the gloom beyond.
    ‘And each subject – each patient,’ the researcher hurriedly corrected himself, ‘this computer is monitoring them also.’
    Patient.
Spartak’s fist had clenched so tight at the word that the veins on the backs of his hand had stood out as taut as iron wires and the researcher’s air supply had once more been cut off.
    Danny glared at Spartak, a warning not to hurt the researcher any more. His hand slowly relaxed, releasing another series of gasps as the man gulped more air into his lungs.
    ‘Each of them also,’ the researcher said, in a hurry now to please Danny, ‘has been fitted with a diagnostic collar to relay physiological changes – their temperature, heart rate, their sickness . . . the extent of the disease . . .’
    A collar, like a chimp in a vivisection lab.
    A movement to the left. Vasyl, Danny saw, was talking into his radio. And moving. Fast. He’d dragged the other researcher to his feet, and was now marching him forward to the glass barrier, the