Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

Maggie hit Chat . you again! are you rabbit boys hitting on me?

‘Maggie, what are you doing?’

‘Letting them know we know.’

She carried on typing, now using the Second Life search function. The search word: Guttman . Maybe there was an obvious way into the island, something they were both overlooking.

‘I’m going to get something,’ Uri said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’

The Guttman search was still chugging through, taking much longer than before. No entries were coming up. ‘Come on, come on,’ Maggie murmured. Then, as if hearing her command, there was a whooshing sound and everything went blank.

Suddenly the screen was loading with a landscape Maggie did not recognize. She had been teleported somewhere else within Second Life, even though she had clicked no button. Had she fumbled the keyboard without realizing it?

But then she saw them. Not two rabbit-heads but four now, surrounding her. She pressed the forward arrow and moved a few paces, then froze. Then, jerkily, she regained movement again, turning rapidly into a side alley. The four rabbit-men were behind her, gaining ground. She froze again.

Maggie could feel her own, real-life, breath coming short and fast. Whoever was behind the rabbit-heads was paralysing her avatar. Now she wouldn’t be able to return to the island in Lake Geneva. Whatever message Shimon Guttman had locked there would be out of reach.

Maggie heard the sound of the lift ping open. She turned around to see the room empty behind her. Where was Uri? She could hear footsteps coming closer and now, through the glass, she could see a man approaching. In the dark it was impossible to make out his face.

The door opened and Maggie saw the figure in full: it was Uri, clutching a neat pile of brown clothes. Without explanation he began unbuckling his trousers and removing his shirt, before stashing them under one of the desks, out of view. That done, he started putting on the items he’d brought in, an outfit that seemed to be made entirely of a noisy polyester material in a sickly shade of beige. The trousers were too short, which required some strenuous downward tugging to make contact with his shoes, but soon the transformation was complete. He was wearing the uniform of a hotel bellboy.

‘How on earth-’

‘Anyone who’s ever worked night shifts in a hotel, as I have, knows one thing: they all have a laundry room somewhere. You just have to find it and break in.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t you see? These people have been bugging us and following us, so that we would lead them to the tablet. And now they have what they want. They know the answer is on that island and they’ll get it. They don’t need us any more, Maggie. We’re in the way.’

Her heart hammering, she turned back to the screen, where Lola was now surrounded by six rabbit-headed men. She hit the Fly button, to escape. It didn’t work. She began stabbing, dumbly, at all the buttons, but nothing would happen. The avatars in black were closing in.

And now something else was happening. The face on Lola Hepburn, the fresh-faced Valley girl with the ponytail, was starting to change. The eyes began to droop, as if they were about to dissolve into tears. Now the nose began to descend too, the face of this electronic creature no longer perky but increasingly hideous.

Maggie could only watch as the deterioration spread down Lola’s body, the breasts melting into a swirl of red, white and blue like a sundae on a summer’s day. Now the torso slid down into the legs, until the entire body was a pool of sludge on this side street, the rabbit-headed avatars still circling, like gulls about to feast on dead flesh. Maggie’s only chance to find out what Shimon Guttman knew had gone.

‘Maggie.’ It was Uri, at the door, about to leave. ‘In three minutes’ time, go down the fire escape. The entrance is there.’ He pointed. ‘Don’t take the elevator. Walk down the stairs as far as you can. Don’t stop at the lobby, but one level lower. You’ll come out in the kitchens. As quickly as you can, turn left out of the elevator, and head for the refrigeration area.’

‘How the hell-’

‘Just follow the cold. At the back will be a loading bay. Get out there and I’ll be in a car.’

‘How are you going to get-’

‘Just do it.’

And then he vanished, for all the world a member of the night team of the David’s Citadel Hotel.

Maggie collected the few things she had. Uri was right: their every move was being watched and their pursuers were serious. She had seen that for herself this morning and seen it again now, as they had locked on to and destroyed the avatar lent to her by Liz. Maggie shut down the program and moved towards the fire escape.

As she stepped into the blackness of the staircase, she realized that she had not a clue where she was going or what she was going to do next. Their best hope had been taken from them, reduced to a few computer pixels that had simply melted away.

PSAGOT ,THE WEST BANK , FRIDAY , 4.07AM

His wife heard it before he did. He had always been a heavy sleeper, but now that he was carrying perhaps twenty or thirty pounds in excess weight, his descent into slumber was positively leaden. His wife was shaking him vigorously when he finally awoke.

‘Akiva, come on. Akiva!’

Akiva Shapira groaned before squinting at the clock on the nightstand. One of his proudest possessions, that clock. A mechanical, digital relic of the early 1970s, lodged inside its workings was a bullet, fired by a Palestinian sniper directly into his office. Typical of the Palestinians: it missed him-and couldn’t even take out the clock. A joke he had cracked to more than one visiting US delegation.

It was gone four in the morning, yet his wife was not mistaken. The same light tapping on the door was repeated. Who on earth could be calling here so late?

He grabbed a robe, tying the cord across his girth as he shuffled to the front door of the modest red-roofed house that had been his home since this settlement was founded, decades ago now. He only had to open it a crack to see the face of Ra’anan, the aide to the Defence Minister who had been at the meeting the previous afternoon.

‘What the hell-’

‘I am sorry to call so late. Can I come in?’

Shapira widened the door to let in this man who seemed like some kind of alien, fully dressed in this house of sleep. ‘Can I get you something to drink. Water, maybe?’

‘No. I can’t stay very long. We have very little time.’

Shapira turned back from the sink, where he had been filling a glass, to face his guest. ‘OK. What is it?’

Ra’anan’s eyes darted towards the bedroom. ‘Can we speak freely here?’

‘Of course! This is my home.’

Ra’anan nodded towards the bedroom again. ‘Your wife?’ he whispered.

Shapira moved towards the door which separated the kitchen from the hallway and bedrooms and closed it. ‘You happy now?’

‘Akiva, in the last hour I have spoken to the other members of our group, seeking permission for a specific action which has just become possible. If we all agree, we have to act at once.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘The subject we discussed. She is now in our sights. We can strike.’

‘Risks?’

‘Arrest and capture, minimal. We have the best possible personnel, as you saw today.’

Shapira remembered the demonstration in the field, the watermelons exploded with pinpoint accuracy by snipers he barely glimpsed. Ra’anan was right. The risks for such skilled professionals were no obstacle.

‘OK,’ said Shapira, finally. ‘Do it.’