The Three Most Wanted Page 14

  He unwrapped the dressing, which due to our limited supplies was well overdue changing, and peered at the inexpertly stitched cuts, red and inflamed and oozing pus.

  “Well, it’s infected, all right. Time for the big guns—I’ve some Cortimil which should mend it fast enough. You must finish the other course as well, though.”

  “Of course,” said Bane politely, I’m not stupid barely kept from his tone.

  “Well, you can take the first one with dinner, which is ready when you are, which is now, from the look of you.” He left the room briefly and returned with a clean dressing and a box of antibiotics.

  “Bear got your food, eh?” he said as he finished applying the dressing. “Better to let it have it, you know, even if you are in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?” Bane’s tone was edged this time.

  François just laughed and got to his feet, slipping the box of antibiotics into his pocket. The dog jumped up, following close at his heels. “Well, you’re not dead, so you lived to learn. Let’s eat. Oh, this is Hugo, by the way.”

  Leading us through a door into a small dining room, he disappeared through another door which opened into the hall, opposite the kitchen. Reappeared almost at once with a stack of four plates; glanced at Jon’s arm in mine. “If... er... Jeff... wishes to use his stick inside, I’ve no objection. I’ll try not to leave anything lying around.”

  Jon’s arm stiffened in mine. François did know who we were. Of course he did! If he’d found three genuine hikers in our condition—certainly once he’d seen the state of Bane—skeleton thin, oozing wounds—he’d put all three of us in the old truck parked outside and drive us straight to the hospital, even if it were many kilometers away. But with us? Not a word of it. Just pills and dinner.

  Of course, he’d probably guessed the moment Jon failed to react to the light. Perhaps deliberately caught us in the beam for that very reason.

  “Thanks,” said Jon stiffly. “It does help with my leg.”

  “Yes. With your leg.” The old man smiled knowingly. “I’m sure it does.” He went back through to the kitchen, leaving us exchanging meaningful looks or hand squeezes.

  “He knows,” murmured Jon. “What shall we do? Can we stay?”

  “Surely we can trust him?” I whispered... but that’s what we’d thought about Louis...

  “We can’t trust anyone,” muttered Bane. “But I’m not sure I want to leave without that box of antibiotics.”

  It was official, he felt worse than he’d been letting on.

  “Then we don’t leave,” I said firmly.

  “What if we did stay a bit?” Jon put in. “That venison’s been a lifesaver, don’t get me wrong, but a few proper meals... do us a world of good.”

  “No,” said Bane, “I vote we sneak off with the box in the night, and put as much distance between us and this place as we can by morning.”

  Tears of dismay started in the corners of Jon’s unseeing eyes. The thought of a desperate night march—though the night only affected him indirectly through Bane’s and my tripping and stumbling—clearly brought him near despair.

  “Let’s stay, Bane,” I said softly. “At least a day or so... unless we’ve any reason to suspect it’s not safe. We need to rest.”

  Bane scowled. He’d seen Jon’s face too. “We’d have trouble sneaking past Hugo, anyway.”

  “Damn. Bloody dog, didn’t think of that.”

  The bloody dog licked Bane’s hand and pushed at him again until he stroked it absently. Unlikely to be so friendly if we started sneaking around at the dead of night.

  François shouldered back through the door carrying a steaming pan. “Come on, sit down, you three.” Depositing the pan in the middle of the table, he started to ladle its contents onto the plates. “Big helpings, I assume?”

  “Yes, please…” We moved towards the table like bees to pollen.

  “I won’t try and get you to chat tonight.” Our host pushed a heaped plate in front of each of us. “S’pect you’re exhausted. I didn’t make the beds up either, I confess. Took one look in the airing cupboard and thought better of it. If you don’t mind using your sleeping bags tonight, you can get cleaned up tomorrow, and have clean sheets after.”

  “That’s fine, thank you,” I said, in between mouthfuls of something so gorgeous it came a close second after our first venison meal for the position of most wonderful thing ever tasted. “We wouldn’t want to put you to any extra trouble.”

  François waved this away with his fork. “S’no trouble. Living out here in the middle of nowhere, s’quite a treat to have some hapless hikers fetch up on my doorstep.”

  Actually, you fetched us to your doorstep at gunpoint… I just smiled politely.

  He did know who we were. Why the gun, if he wanted to help us? Hmm. Perhaps because he did want to help us. Tough love. He’d never actually threatened us: the gun had simply been there and we’d assumed the threat.

  We just about managed to gobble seconds and thirds before beginning to nod at the table.

  “All right, bed time,” smiled François.

  “Oh, let us help you clear…” I muttered.

  “Leave them, leave them. Upstairs with you. Oh, here’s your pill, Brad, better take it.”

  Bane washed the pill down with his last swig of tea, but stopped at the hall door. “I don’t suppose we could have a glass of water each to take up with us?”

  I smiled hopefully in support of his request, secretly mystified. Glass of water? When our heads hit the pillows we weren’t going to know a thing until sometime tomorrow. Keeping watch had definitely passed from difficult to impossible.

  Trudging up the stairs behind the old man, a worm of unease turned in my belly. Were we making a huge mistake? We needed to rest, yes, but did we need it badly enough to trust a stranger to this degree? He’d a phone, he could have the EuroArmy here in less than an hour…

  “There you go.” François waved me through a doorway.

  A nice little room with bright blue curtains over the window and two unmade, coverleted beds. Shelves on the wall held a few books and a clutter of boyish treasures—birds’ nests, glittery rocks, a—bat?—skeleton. Of course. His sons’ bedroom. Surely if we could rest safely under anyone’s roof it was his?

  “Thank you.” I took the tray of glasses from him and went all the way in.

  “Drink the water now if you want it,” directed Bane, as soon as François had gone.

  I obeyed, too sleepy to stop and ask questions. As soon as we’d each popped out to the bathroom Bane placed a chair behind the closed door and balanced two of the emptied glasses right on the edge. The slightest movement of the door would make them fall. For good measure, he placed the metal tray underneath for them to land on. The third glass he balanced on the windowsill. Burglar alarms set.

  Spreading out my sleeping bag, I climbed in, any lingering doubts fast swept away by approaching sleep. Jon was already asleep on the other bed; he’d almost made it all the way into his bag.

  Bane flopped his sleeping bag onto my bed, top to tail, and climbed in. I raised a leaden eyebrow at him as he settled his feet beside my head.

  “Doesn’t make sense for the two largest people to share, does it?” he retorted.

  And you don’t want to be on the other side of the room if the EuroGov burst the door down. Selfish coward that I am, I’m not sure I want you to be, either…

  My head touched the pillow...

  ***+***

  13

  THE MAJOR’S CONFESSION

  Smash-Crash-Clatter!

  I jerked upright… What? Where? My eyes came to rest on a metal tray on which a single glass still spun amid a litter of broken shards.

  Burglar alarm.

  François peered around the door, lips pursed ruefully as he looked at the damage. “Easy to see how you three have come so far,” he remarked, almost under his breath, albeit politely in Esperanto.

  Daylight p
oured around the curtains. Just François peeping in at us. No soldiers piling past him. Gratias Domine.

  “You can put the pig-sticker away, Brad, I’ve just brought your next pill.”

  No need to look at Bane to know what he held. It’d gone back wherever he’d had it by the time the old hunter had crossed the room. Bane accepted both pill and glass of water, and downed both.

  “Thank you,” he said with exquisite politeness, perhaps conscious of both broken glass and rudely brandished knife. “Ah… I have a phone—if you just give me the box I can set an alarm to make sure I don’t forget. Less trouble for you…”

  “S’no trouble,” said François, with a smile I interpreted as “nice try.” “More sleep… or food?”

  “Ooh, that’s a hard one,” murmured Jon.

  My stomach grumbled.

  “Food?” I ventured.

  “Food,” agreed Bane.

  “Oh, good,” said Jon.

  “Come on down when you’re ready, then. You can have baths afterwards,” said François over his shoulder as he picked up the tray of broken glass and ducked back through the low doorway. “S’more stew. Just needs to go on a plate. Hugo, back downstairs, bad dog…” A disappointed whine and a patter of paws as the dog preceded him.

  Bane beat me out of bed. Much livelier than yesterday, good …huh. Could’ve sworn Bane and I were top to tail last night. Oh. My cheeks heated slightly—it was me who’d somehow got myself turned around, sleeping bag and all. Ah well. Our sleeping bags kept us nicely separate.

  We weren’t far behind François. Most of the meat in this stew was surely venison, not rabbit—the former hunter-gamekeepers had to live on something. Not a meal to serve to a government inspector.

  François still didn’t try to make us chat, and afterwards Bane and Jon went up to make a start on the rather daunting undertaking of “getting clean.”

  I followed them out into the hall to hiss, “Don’t you dare shave off the beards. Either of you! Best disguise any of us could hope for!”

  Jon groaned and Bane rolled his eyes, but neither contradicted me, so I went back into the kitchen to help François wash up.

  “Take it you lot haven’t seen a bath for a while, eh?” he said when we’d finished.

  Quite embarrassing just how smelly we’d let ourselves get. “We were so short of food. You get so cold washing in streams. We didn’t have the time or energy.”

  “Oh, you did the sensible thing. No good catching your death when you’re starving.” Opening the fire box of the wood-fired boiler, he packed it full of wood; clapped it shut again. “I’ll just keep the hot water coming, eh?”

  ...Bane was shaking my shoulder gently. Oh. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. I sat up and stared at him. Shockingly clean and wearing unfamiliar clothes. François’s sons’s things, no doubt. He’d tidied up the thing growing on his face, but not cut it off, and he looked about ten years older than when I’d last looked at him. Last really looked at him.

  “You look wonderful.”

  “So do you.” He leant in to kiss me and I fended him off with a grimy hand.

  “Careful! You just got clean!” I processed what he’d said. “Liar. I look like something the cat dragged in during a famine.”

  “A very wonderful something.” He made another attempt at my lips—I continued to hold him at arm’s length.

  “Back off, I reek and I know it.”

  “Hurry up and have your bath, then.”

  “Has Jo… Jeff finished?”

  “Yeah. I made him go first in case he fell asleep and drowned or something. He’s now safely asleep on his bed again.”

  “Not back in that filthy sleeping bag?”

  “No chance. François’s carried them off for a date with destiny. With his washing machine, anyway.”

  “That is nice of him. Right, I’m for a soak. I’ve completely forgotten what color my skin is.”

  “I haven’t,” smirked Bane. I threw a cushion at him as I left. I wasn’t the only one feeling better.

  Lovely to be clean. Less lovely to be dressed in what must be some of our host’s dead wife’s clothes, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. When I went back into the bedroom to tie a scarf around my head, bandanna style, to hide my roots and scar, Jon woke up, and came downstairs with me. François, wonderful man, immediately produced coffee and biscuits, on which we gorged shamelessly.

  “So,” I said, when the biscuit plate was empty, “we’ve… er… been away from civilization for a bit. What’s been going on in the world?”

  François shrugged. “Not much. The EuroGov are still turning the bloc upside down looking for… certain persons, mostly.”

  “Have any of these… persons… reached their destination?”

  “There were rumors soon after the escape that the majority had reached the Vatican Free State. The EuroGov denied it completely and nothing more’s been heard, so who knows?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Something you might find interesting, though. As of Tuesday last week, the postSort prize novel was placed on the list of banned books. Category one.”

  Owning a copy of I Am Margaret in any shape or form was now considered on par with owning a copy of the Scriptures, the Koran, or one of a whole host of other books the EuroGov judged unsuitable for general readership. It must’ve been selling extremely well.

  Jon groaned. “That’s a shame.”

  “Category one?” A grin spread over Bane’s face. “Brilliant!”

  Jon looked startled. “Brilliant? What’s brilliant about it? Now people can’t read it!”

  “Silly.” I patted his knee. “How many banned books have you read?”

  Jon looked taken aback. “Well, I’ve heard a fair few.”

  “And so have most people. Ba… Brad’s right, this is the best thing that could’ve happened. I mean, how many copies have they sold by now? And the electronic copies? It’s too late!”

  “Practically everyone will read it now,” said Bane smugly. “It’s really incredibly stupid of them.”

  “Hasn’t stopped them banning goodness knows whatever else, has it?” said François. “They don’t seem to learn. I thought that might be of interest, anyway.”

  A slightly awkward silence. Insane to out and tell him who we were—just on the minute off chance he hadn’t realized.

  “Now, let’s see… where’s that newspaper I had a few weeks ago?” François flipped through a pile lying beside his armchair. “Ah, here’s the one.” He handed it to me.

  Uh oh. The paper version of the FrenchDaily article. A front page. Bane glanced over my shoulder; we both eyed François warily.

  “You do look more like your photos now you’re clean, I must say,” he said. “Did you really text the DailyNewsCorp?”

  I moistened my lips slightly. The pretending was over. “Um, yeah. Didn’t know if they’d really print it when I sent it.”

  “Oh, they were delighted enough with its exclusivity that they dared. They were very careful not to say they wanted you to go on being alive and well, you’ll notice.”

  “Yeah,” snorted Bane.

  “Has there been anything on the news,” I asked, “about the New Adults who helped us? In the last… um… month?” Exactly how long had we been trekking through that wilderness?

  The smile left François’s face. “Yeah,” he said grimly. “Brave kids. Shame.”

  “Have they set a trial date?” asked Jon quietly.

  “No. I imagine what they most want to get them for is aiding and abetting you three, but they can’t prove either of the charges concerning that until the other boy is fit to testify. If he ever is.”

  “If he ever is?” I echoed.

  “The Louis boy woke up a week ago but clearly isn’t making much sense as yet.”

  “Certainly didn’t look like Juwan held back with the treacherous rat.” From Bane’s tone, he wouldn’t have held back much either.

  “The EuroGov are dragging their heels setting
up any trial, because they’ll only be able to do Juwan for hitting the other boy, though they’ve got the girl stone cold for making and setting off that little squib.”

  “Didn’t think they worried about evidence,” I muttered uneasily.

  “Depends,” said François. “Two New Adults—well, they’ve got to be seen to have a hundred percent fair trial, haven’t they? Public sympathy’s on their side. Not like an EGD Security Major, say. No one cares about one of those.”

  “Any news about Major Everington, then?”

  “Dead man walking, he is. Still... took them almost three months to make him plead guilty.” Grudging respect in François’s voice. “Stubborn bugger. That is, I’ve been assuming he’s not?”

  I shrugged. “Oh, not guilty. He’s a scapegoat, all right.”

  “Well, he’s singing their tune now.” No trace of sympathy in François’s voice. Yet really the whole of society was just as guilty as the EGD staff… Bane caught my eye and glared… François’s dead sons… I kept my mouth shut.

  “Wonder how it went...” François muttered, and switched on the TV, navigating to a saved program. A large courtroom came on screen, expensively furnished, every curtain and bit of upholstery either yellow or blue.

  “They’ve tried him already?” I said, startled. Three months... he could’ve only given in in the last week or two...

  “This morning. Be over by now, I expect. Since he confessed.”

  Or maybe not. Timer numbers showed in the corner of the screen. Still recording. “Where is that? Doesn’t look like London...”

  “Looks fancy, doesn’t it?” said Bane, and gave a quick description of the opulence for Jon’s benefit.

  The voice of the newscaster answered our question. “For anyone just joining us, I’m here at the High Courtroom in Brussels for the trial of Major Lucas Everington, former Commandant in EGD security.”

  “Brussels!” I murmured.

  “Oh boy, that guy’s had it.” Very pleased Bane sounded too.

  “As you can see, the jury are entering…” Twelve decidedly uncomfortable looking people filed into the jury stand. “And now they will bring in the defendant. This will be the first time Major Everington has been seen in public since his arrest at the beginning of July. Reports suggest he has been an uncooperative prisoner, suffering considerable ill-health during his detention due to repeated hunger strikes.”