The Deadly Game
Jim Eldridge
Chapter 1
Jake Wells sat in front of his computer and smiled into his webcam, beaming at the face looking back at him from his screen. Lauren Graham. Fugitive, exile, killer; his girlfriend.
He looked at the clock. 11 p.m. here in the UK. 11 a.m. in Wellington, New Zealand. In the old days people had to content themselves with intercontinental phone calls and echoing time delays. But now, with Skype, they could see one another, even though they were on opposite sides of the globe.
It was three months ago that Lauren had boarded a plane for New Zealand to start a new life with a new identity. Samantha Adams. That was what it said on her passport, her birth certificate and all the other documents MI5 had provided for her. But to Jake, she would always be Lauren.
‘I went on a trip to South Island the other week,’ she said. ‘We went to the Franz Josef Glacier. It’s amazing. It runs down to rainforest — two totally contrasting climates right next to each other . . .’
‘We?’ Jake said, his heart sinking. Had she met someone else?
Lauren laughed.
‘Me and a girl from work,’ she reassured him, sensing his discomfort. ‘She’s really nice. Her name’s Anna. She works with me at the research centre.’
The Antarctic Survey Research Centre, where Lauren — or rather, Sam Adams — had found a job studying environmental information from the base stations all over Antarctica.
Jake smiled.
‘I’ve been doing some exploring, too,’ he told her. ‘Last week I went for a stroll at a place called Firle Beacon . . .’
There was a pinging sound from the screen, and suddenly the image of Lauren vanished. In its place a message appeared: An error has occurred. This programme will close. And then, as Jake watched, one by one the logos on the screen disappeared and finally the screen went blank. His computer had shut down.
He pressed the keys to reboot it. While it was starting up, he picked up his landline phone and dialled Lauren’s mobile number. He got an automated message telling him: ‘The mobile you are trying to call is unavailable. Please try later.’
He cursed. Lauren’s mobile wasn’t switched off. They’d been cut off deliberately. It had happened a lot when she had first been in New Zealand, but they’d learned that it was always when they started talking about Malichea and the hidden books. So they’d been more careful, and for quite a while they’d only discussed day-to-day things, where they’d been, what movies they’d seen.
Sometimes he’d be silly and romantic, holding up a single red rose towards the camera and then feeling happiness pour through him as she blew him a kiss and told him how much she wished they could be together again.
‘We will be,’ he promised her.
He didn’t know how, there were so many obstacles to overcome, but he knew they were destined to be together. He needed her properly in his life — not just a moving image of her on a computer screen.
He tried phoning her again, but the connection was still broken.
He sighed and sent her an email, and hoped they’d at least allow this through to her . . .
Chapter 2
Next morning, Jake arrived at the Department of Science building in London’s Whitehall district; the heart of government. As a working-class young man of nineteen, Jake was an anomaly in this place. Everyone else here, especially in the Press Office where he worked, seemed to have come through the same route: public school, then university, mostly Oxford or Cambridge. Jake was different. Eighteen months before a national newspaper had pointed out how elitist this was, and the department had acted to prove them wrong: a competition had been launched to offer an opportunity for a trainee press officer from what was termed ‘the disadvantaged’. Jake had entered. He fitted the bill perfectly: abandoned at birth, brought up in a children’s home and then a string of foster homes, and left school at sixteen because he couldn’t afford to go on to further education. After he left school he worked in a series of dead-end jobs. But he always had one burning ambition: to be a journalist. He wanted to write witty and biting articles about the issues of the day, expose corrupt politicians. But getting into journalism wasn’t that easy; he discovered that he needed a degree.
It was while he had been wondering how to get over this problem that he’d read about the Department of Science competition, entered it, and won his place. That had been a year ago. At that time everything had seemed exciting, a life and a career full of possibilities.
And then the hidden books of Malichea had come into his life, and everything had been turned upside down.