The Lethal Target Read online

  As he drove he thought about Lauren, and how their lives had brought them to this. They’d met the year before, when Jake had been a trainee press officer at the Department of Science in London, and Lauren was a second-year science student at London University. It was love at first sight, and for six months Jake had been the happiest man in London, thinking their love was for ever. And then he’d ruined it.

  A friend of Lauren’s was getting married, and he and Lauren had gone to the wedding ceremony and the reception. It had seemed to Jake that Lauren spent an awful lot of time talking to some rugby-playing bloke she knew. Too much time. Smiling at him, laughing, touching his arm, even flicking her fingers through his hair as she pretended to examine his scalp for nits. Robert was his name. Robert the rugby player. And Jake had got fed up with it. And he did the unforgivable. He went off and found one of the bridesmaids, who’d already given him the eye earlier during the ceremony, and he’d got off with her in the bushes behind the drinks tent. Where Lauren had discovered them when she’d come looking for him.

  He shuddered even now as he thought about it. He’d tried using the excuse that he was drunk, but it hadn’t washed. It hadn’t deserved to. Because of that one stupid act it was over. Lauren told him she never wanted to see him again. And then, afterwards, he’d found out that Robert wasn’t a former boyfriend of Lauren’s but her cousin. They’d been playmates since they’d been small children.

  It had been the hidden library of Malichea that had brought them back together again, after three months, during which time Lauren had rejected all his attempts to get in touch with her.

  The Order of Malichea. A blessing and a curse. A blessing because, if it hadn’t been for the hidden books, Jake might never have seen Lauren again. But at the same time a curse, because their nightmare experiences after they’d got hold of one of the books — chased by government agents, under threat from mysterious organisations, likely international criminals and terrorists — had led to Lauren stabbing someone to death while defending herself against a deadly attack. And now she was in New Zealand, living under an assumed name, Samantha Adams, and they’d been told that she and Jake must never see one another again. If they attempted to, then Lauren would be charged with murder. The insinuation from Jake’s former boss at the Department of Science was that Lauren would be found guilty, whatever her defence, and put away in jail for life. And Jake would be locked away somewhere secure.

  The hidden library of Malichea was a forbidden topic. The British government had decided that its existence must never be allowed to be made public — the sciences the books contained were considered far too dangerous — and Jake and Lauren had posed a major threat to that secret. To make sure they didn’t pose that threat ever again, they were kept on opposite sides of the globe, their phone calls, letters, emails and Skype talks monitored for any hint of discussion about the hidden books.

  It had been five months since Jake had last seen Lauren face to face, held her in his arms just before she was put on the flight to New Zealand at Heathrow. Since then he’d seen her face on their Skype calls, heard her voice on the phone, but nothing took away the ache he felt for her. They’d been reunited, only to be torn apart again. And now they were further apart than ever.

  The drive to Oban took much longer than Jake had anticipated. The roads twisted and turned round lochs and rivers, in between mountains and high hills. The scenery was amazing. If he hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry to get to Mull, meet this Miss Cooper and find out what had happened to Lauren, the reason for her sudden silence, he would have taken much longer over the journey.

  He made it to Oban in time for the 4 p.m. ferry, and an hour later he was rolling off with the other vehicles into the tiny port of Craignure.

  For the whole drive from Craignure to Craigmount Guest House on the shores of Loch Spelve, Jake was forced to keep a slow speed: the road was single-track, with passing places to allow oncoming vehicles to get past one another. The road twisted and turned as well, so it was impossible to get up any speed, without having to slow for yet another bend.

  Finally he saw a cluster of buildings ahead of him, spread apart. Most were single-storey bungalows and old cottages, but there was one old two-storey house, larger than the rest, with outbuildings and gardens radiating out from it. A large cheerful wooden sign by the side of the road saying Craigmount Guest House 200 metres confirmed his destination.

  There were four cars already in the car park, so there were other guests staying here. He wondered if one of them was this Miss Cooper’s. He got out of his car, lifted out his bag, and entered the reception area of the guest house. A man with a big bushy grey beard was behind the desk, sorting through some papers. He looked up and smiled as Jake came in.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ he said.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Jake. ‘I have a reservation. The name’s Wells, Jake Wells.’

  ‘Of course, we’ve been expecting you. You spoke to my wife, Jeannie, yesterday on the phone. I’m Alec MacClain, owner of Craigmount.’

  He held out his hand in greeting, and Jake shook it. It was a good strong handshake, welcoming.

  ‘You live in a beautiful part of the world,’ said Jake admiringly.

  ‘Aye, and we bless ourselves every morning and say the same thing to one another.’ MacClain beamed. ‘I’m sure, after your long journey, you’ll want to get freshened up. Miss Cooper said to send you right up as soon as you arrived.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jake. ‘Where is Miss Cooper?’

  ‘She’s in your room,’ said MacClain. He reached for a key, attached to a wooden marker on a board and handed it to Jake. ‘Room five. Turn right at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jake, and he followed the direction of MacClain’s pointing finger. As he mounted the stairs, his mind was in a whirl. What was she doing waiting for him in his room? Why not in reception? It could only mean she had something private to tell him, something about Lauren she didn’t want anyone else to overhear.

  He moved faster up the carpeted stairs. Whatever news she had for him about Lauren, he needed to know. And he needed to know now.

  He reached room five, put the key in the lock, opened the door, and stepped in. And stopped dead.

  Lauren was there. Standing in front of him, turning towards him, her face lighting up with joy, her arms reaching out to him.

  Chapter 4

  Later, as Jake was making coffee, reality kicked in. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked, astonished.

  ‘I flew.’ Lauren grinned.

  ‘Yes, but . . . you know what I mean. How did you get past passport control in New Zealand? How did you get through immigration control?’

  She smiled and tugged at her hair, which was now short and blonde.

  ‘Notice anything different?’ she asked.

  ‘You can’t get in and out just by cutting and dying your hair!’ exploded Jake. ‘Not when you’re on the Most Wanted list!’

  ‘I did it with this,’ said Lauren, and she reached into the drawer of the bedside table, took out a passport, and tossed it to Jake. Jake opened it, and saw a photo of a girl who might have resembled Lauren, but only just. Yes, this girl had short blonde hair. And there was something similar about the shape of her face. But to fool immigration, and MI5 . . .

  ‘Helen Cooper,’ explained Lauren. ‘She lives in the same apartment block as me, and we became friends. I told her all about Malichea, the hidden science texts, and what had happened to us, and how you and I would never see each other again, and how desperate I was . . .’

  ‘We were,’ corrected Jake. As he carried the coffees towards the small table, he almost stumbled on the old and uneven wooden floor.

  ‘Careful you don’t spill them,’ said Lauren.

  Jake grinned.

  ‘Nagging me already?’ he asked.

  ‘You need it,’ she said. ‘You get in trouble without me to look after you.’

  ‘I get in trouble when we’re togeth
er.’ Jake smiled. ‘So, how did you get to be Helen Cooper?’

  ‘It was Helen who suggested it,’ said Lauren. ‘She commented one day about how similar we looked.’

  Jake looked at the passport photo and shook his head.

  ‘She’s nowhere near as beautiful as you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re only saying that because you’re biased,’ said Lauren. ‘And anyway, passport photographs never show people at their best. She said if I was so desperate to get back to England and see you, why didn’t I try using her passport. They’d be looking to stop Samantha Adams, or Lauren Graham, not Helen Cooper.’

  ‘A woman with three identities,’ commented Jake. ‘Don’t you sometimes forget who you really are?’

  Lauren nodded.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘Sometimes, at work, when people call me Sam, just for the briefest of seconds I look around and wonder who they’re talking to.’ She gave Jake a stern look. ‘That’s why it’s important we don’t have any slip-ups while we’re here. I’m Helen Cooper. Call me Helen all the time, even if we think we’re alone. You never know who may be listening.’

  ‘Even now?’ asked Jake.

  Lauren thought it over.

  ‘It might be a good idea,’ she said. ‘To get used to it.’

  Jake looked doubtful.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it,’ he said. ‘To me, you’ll always be Lauren.’

  ‘And I’ll be Lauren again, once we get past this,’ she assured him. ‘Anyway, back to the passport. The more I thought about it, the stronger the appeal to try it became. I couldn’t tell you, or even drop a hint, because, well . . .’

  ‘They’re listening.’ Jake nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lauren. ‘So I decided to give it a try. Helen and I agreed that, if I was stopped and caught anywhere along the way, I’d say I’d stolen her passport from her, so she wouldn’t get in trouble.’

  ‘I phoned your work because I was worried I hadn’t heard from you,’ said Jake.

  ‘I didn’t dare tell anyone, apart from Helen,’ said Lauren. ‘For all we know they’ve got someone at my work, reporting back. Anyway, I booked the flights in Helen’s name, and on the day I did my hair, set off, and just kept my fingers crossed.’

  ‘You could have told me once you were back in England,’ said Jake. ‘We could have travelled up here together.’

  Lauren shook her head.

  ‘There were two reasons for that,’ she said. ‘One, I had this idea it might be easier to fly in from somewhere other than New Zealand. I hoped they’d be less vigilant about watching for me than if I went straight to London. So, I flew to Ireland first, and then from Ireland to Glasgow. The second was what the Russians are up to.’

  ‘The Russians?’ queried Jake.

  ‘A party of them are here, on Mull! They’re looking for one of the hidden books! And they’ve got a good idea where it is.’

  Jake frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Mull’s a bit of a trek from Glastonbury, especially in medieval times,’ he commented.

  ‘Ah, that’s because this book isn’t from the secret library at Glastonbury!’ said Lauren. ‘There was another branch of the Order of Malichea set up on Iona!’

  ‘That’s the small island to the west of Mull.’ Jake nodded.

  ‘It was set up at the same time as the Order on Lindisfarne, in the eighth century.’

  ‘I’m guessing this other branch of the Order of Malichea on Iona had a library as well?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Yes. The same as at Lindisfarne — scientific texts. In the case of the monastery on Iona, most of the writings came from Ireland, and the Celtic countries. But in addition there were texts from the Americas! Sciences from Native Americans, both north and south. Mayan. Aztec. Inca.’

  Jake stared at her, stunned.

  ‘But . . . how did they get them?’ he asked. ‘I can see travellers coming from the Continent, even the Mediterranean. But across the Atlantic?’

  ‘Don’t you know about the early sailors? The Brendan boat crossing the Atlantic?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Jake.

  ‘I’ll tell you about that later,’ said Lauren. ‘The main thing is, the science books were on Iona. And, just the same as the monks did at Lindisfarne, when they realised the Vikings were on their way to attack their monastery, they made sure their books were protected. But unlike at Lindisfarne, where they moved the library to another abbey for safe keeping, the monks on Iona hid their books at different places around the Highlands and islands. Travel from Iona wasn’t as easy as it was from Lindisfarne and the north-east of England in those days.’

  ‘It still isn’t,’ said Jake. ‘Once you get past Glasgow, it still takes for ever!’

  He sat there, letting all this sink in. The Order of Malichea was an ancient order, set up in the seventh century, devoted to building a library of scientific discoveries. In England the Order had run into trouble because the scientific texts they collected included topics such as invisibility, astronomy, time travel, as well as proposed cures for different diseases. Many of the theories in the texts were seen by the kings and the Church at the time as heretical, and so the library from the Order of Malichea based first at Lindisfarne, then at Glastonbury, had been hidden to protect them. To make sure that no one found the individual books, they had been hidden by the monks of the Order at sites said to be sacred, cursed or haunted, so they wouldn’t be disturbed accidentally. That had been in 1497.

  The abbey on Iona hadn’t had the chance to build up a library to match the one at Glastonbury. The Vikings had attacked and destroyed Lindisfarne in 793. They swept into southern Scotland a year later, continuing their path of destruction. So the scientific texts from the abbey at Iona must have been buried 700 years before those from Glastonbury.

  ‘We are talking about really old books,’ said Jake.

  ‘Not even books, at that time,’ said Lauren. ‘Not as we know them. Scrolls. Parchment.’ She gave Jake a small smile of triumph. ‘And what’s more, I know which particular text the Russians are looking for.’

  Jake stared at her.

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘Chatter on the web,’ said Lauren.

  ‘How could you follow all this on the web without MI5 closing down your computer?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Cybercafés, you idiot,’ said Lauren. ‘And using Helen’s computer. Anyway, the book they’re after is De Materia Medica Continuum by Dioscorides. It was written in AD 53, and is about spontaneous human combustion.’ She shrugged. ‘Why it went to Iona and not to Lindisfarne, no one seems to know. Maybe the person who brought it had a personal connection with someone at the monastery on Iona. But the fact is that this is the book they’re looking for. They’re using the cover of pretending to dig for Neolithic remains at the site.’ She gave a snort. ‘Very clever.’

  ‘But how do the Russians know what this particular book is called, and where it is?’ asked Jake, puzzled.

  ‘That’s the really important thing!’ said Lauren excitedly. ‘Don’t you see, Jake? It means they’ve got hold of The Index!’

  ‘The Index?’

  ‘The journal that lists every book that was in the library at the monastery on Iona, and where it was buried!’

  Chapter 5

  Jake sat, stunned. So much information, and raising so many questions.

  ‘Actually, the Russians must have only got hold of part of The Index, otherwise they’d be all over the Highlands and islands, digging everywhere.’

  ‘But why would the Russians be interested in . . . what was it again?’

  ‘Spontaneous human combustion. Where a human being just bursts into flames from the inside, and gets burnt to ashes.’

  Jake shuddered.

  ‘Weird,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s not weird,’ said Lauren. ‘It’s some sort of chemical reaction inside the body, triggered by something. There are lots of instances of it recorded, but no one knows why it happens. It may be that Diosc
orides had the answer.’

  ‘OK, but back to my original question: why would the Russians be interested in it?’

  ‘The Russians have always been interested in what you used to call “weird science”,’ said Lauren. ‘In the Soviet era they had whole government science departments carrying out experiments on things like telepathy, telekinesis, levitation.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One, to get an understanding of how and why things work. And, two, to see if any of them could be used as weapons. Just think, if you had a telepath inside the White House, you wouldn’t need electronic surveillance — very expensive and easy to discover.’

  ‘And spontaneous human combustion? People bursting into flames?’

  ‘Can you think of a better weapon?’ asked Lauren.

  ‘No,’ admitted Jake. ‘So, what are we going to do here?’

  ‘We’re going to wait until the Russians find the book, and then get it back off them. And we’re going to see if we can get whatever part of The Index they have off them as well. There are bound to be other books listed in it. They’re going to be our bargaining chips.’

  ‘To get you back here?’

  Lauren nodded. ‘Back properly, under my own name, so we can be together openly. And prove that the secret library of Malichea exists.’

  ‘That the library on Iona existed,’ stressed Jake.

  ‘It’s a start,’ said Lauren. ‘First we prove that there was an Order of Malichea on Iona who buried their library; then that gets the whole business of the Order and their secret library out into the open.’

  Jake nodded.

  ‘Sounds like a good plan,’ he said. ‘How are we going to get the book off the Russians once they find it?’

  ‘That’s what we’ve got to work out,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll take you along to the site where they’re digging, and then we’ll have a look at the cottage where the Russians are staying, and we can work out how we’re going to do it.’