Pandora Red

Chapter 4

Chapter 2

Frank was running across the underground concourse, weaving over the charred bodies, victims of some kind of fire. Their dark shapes seemed to melt into the polished marble floor and the inky black liquid congealed around his feet, making it more and more difficult to run. His pursuer’s heavy breathing was close behind, yet he dared not look.

The lift service hatch was just ahead, yellow and black stripes beckoning – his escape route clearly marked. And now, worse still, the arms of the dead, constrained by the dark liquid, seemed to move and reach for him, their bony blackened hands gripping at his legs and feet. Frank’s heart pumped hard in his chest and it was difficult to breathe as if air was been sucked right out of his lungs.

To his horror, the service door began to slowly close with an eerie scraping sound, like the echo of train tracks in a distant tunnel.

Five feet away.

He had to get there. Kicking away the clinging hands, Frank accidently stood on a body, the sickening crunch of brittle bones sounded underfoot but he ignored it, striving on through the sticky residue.

Four feet away.

The doors ground closer together like a slowly snapping jaw. With a leap, Frank threw himself forward with all his energy, hands clambering to hold them open so he could lever his body forward. Somehow, he found strength again and hauled himself forward over the slippery floor and into the lift. As the doors closed behind him, he caught a glimpse of the bodies of the dead crawling after him and that of his pursuer, who had now become one of them. Burnt black and red, the skin falling away from flesh. Staring right at him through sunken sockets was the unmistakeable bloodied face of Chiu Wah On, the assassin he had thrown out of a train eight years earlier.

The sheets, soaked from sweat, were wrapped tightly around him as Frank fought to free himself, breathing hard and disorientated. He knocked the side table, pushing a glass of water to the floor, which cracked and rolled, soaking the carpet and his unread books.

“Jesus,” he muttered, untangling himself. The bed looked like he had been wrestling with an army of demons. Pillows were strewn over the floor, the sheet lay twisted across the mattress. He rubbed his eyes and slowed his breathing, relieved that the nightmare was over. Every now and then, it would re-appear and he wondered why. It had been so long since Hong Kong and there had been many other demons to fight afterwards.

Frank switched on the radio and padded his naked frame over to the en-suite bathroom before turning on the shower, hesitating at the door until the water had a chance to heat up.

After a quick blast and scrub, he dried himself, checked his unshaven face and dark hair in the mirror, and threw on a T-shirt and jeans. He headed down the hallway to the kitchen and opened the fridge, glancing into the bare interior. Had Maria asked him to get the shopping in? She had been talking to him when he was half asleep that morning, which was always a bad idea. Where was she anyway? Then he remembered that she had taken the boys to see a friend and then get shopping.

A dull pain throbbed in the back of his skull but he still didn’t hesitate to grab the last can of beer.

It had been a difficult reunion after Hong Kong and the horrific suicide of her father. They had been sitting in a café on Amsterdam’s Raadhuisstraat two months after her father’s funeral, watching the rain hammer the streets and trams trundle by the window. Maria had avoided his eyes as he uttered sympathetic words and he knew they weren’t getting through. They had something, hadn’t they? They’d been together under the threat of death and helped each other through those terrifying weeks that neither would easily forget.

Then it had happened. The gunshot in the living room. The sight of her dad lying on the Chinese rug, the blood and brain tissue marking it like a chaotic map.

“You blame me, don’t you?” he had said. “If I had never come into your life, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out like that. Is that what you think?” She shook her head, brushed a hand through her curly blonde hair, but said nothing and continued to stare at the rain, or was it his reflection in the window? He couldn’t be sure.

“Of course I don’t blame you, Frank. I just don’t know where I am right now. I’m all lost,” she said without looking at him, her green eyes seemed duller than he remembered. He tried to take her hand but she moved it too soon and they sat in silence for a while as the coffee machine growled out another customer’s Americano.

He gave her his new contact card, carefully placing it on the table. When she didn’t acknowledge it, he stood up, scraping the chair on the stone floor.

“Just call when you’re ready,” he said quietly as he followed her gaze out into the rain. “If you need to,” he added.

It was too soon for her to pick up any thread they’d had in Asia. That much was obvious. She needed more time but he feared losing her. The chance of never seeing her bright green eyes and freckled face again cast a shadow over his thoughts.

Frank left the café, running for the tram in the hacking downpour, convinced he would never see her again. He certainly didn’t envisage that Maria would contact him only a week later with the news that would change his life forever. The news that she was pregnant.

Adventure. Breaking up the boredom. The fact that he was certain the relationship with Maria was over. There were many reasons Frank agreed to join Carl at MI6 after he had returned from Asia.

The dark truth was he had also experienced a real adrenaline buzz throwing the Chinese assassin from that train in Thailand. And with his death, knowing the killer would never try to kill him or Maria again, just put the icing on the cake. He got the job done. Dead was dead. There was no coming back from death. Except in your dreams. Frank smiled at the irony.

Death. Once you let it pervade your life, it took a hold, became ‘normal’, a way of dealing with things. Something changed in Frank after that killing. He had become a different beast and knew it. A beast capable of darker acts. Kill or be killed.

No more office job BS. No more being the hamster in a wheel, a wage slave just existing to work. No, he was going to grab this chance and run with it. Run bloody fast.

Adventure, excitement, travel. That was what had driven him before. Now? Now, he had responsibilities. He needed to build a safety net. A home.

Frank nursed his beer in the stark living room and flicked to the news where footage of Riot police and demonstrators clashed in Seattle. He watched impassively as police charged the line, petrol bombs stinging the air as batons pounded heads and limbs before the newsreader moved the story quickly on, his mind still wandering.

Maria did love him now, he knew that, more than words could ever describe. When she said she was pregnant, everything had changed. Then Joe had come along, and now they had Zak as well. As the news continued, Frank wondered what kind of world he had brought his children into.