Johnny O'Brien - Day of the Assassins

“To protect you. Knowledge of the Taurus, and the people involved with it, is strictly controlled. Carole, your mother, is aware, she has to be… but she is on our side. Your father pleaded with her desperately for you both to join him when he left. But Carole was determined that she should try to give you a normal life… not to have you caught up in all… this. And anyway…”

“Anyway what?”

The Rector turned away again, rubbing his hands by the fire. “Sorry Jack… your father could be… difficult.”

“So, this explains the message we received from Jack’s mother on the time phone in the balloon,” the professor said.

“We managed to send a temporary signal from our Taurus to your time phone. We told Carole immediately what had happened, and we sent the message from her, we thought you would trust her, to try to warn you that we would be bringing you in. Not to resist. We would have tried to get you back right then — but there was no signal.”

“So why send a couple of thugs?” Jack said crossly.

“MacFarlane and Smith?” the Rector raised his eyebrows, “This is not a game, Jack. The fight you witnessed at the school was… unfortunate. But we were desperate — we had to act very, very fast.”

“But on Dreadnought … they were going to inject me with some stuff, then Gordon shot at me with that weird rifle thing when I managed to get on the balloon.”

“No. It might have appeared like that to you. You were under intense stress. They had strict orders to sedate you if necessary, but to bring you home, safely, as soon as we had a signal. I understand that Mr Macfarlane’s shot at the balloon was an attempt to free it from its moorings before you boarded it. It was the shot of a marksman… He was certainly not aiming for you. Those two are utterly trustworthy.” He added under his breath, “Although sometimes they become a little over enthusiastic.”

“But you still have not explained why this young man is so important to you — why he needs to be mixed up in all of this?” the professor said, glancing across at Jack sympathetically. “Surely it is Jack’s father you want, not Jack?”

The Rector sighed, “Don’t you see? I’m afraid, Jack, in a way, you are a kind of hostage. If we have you, then the Benefactor, your father, has his hands tied… You are the only person in the world that he cares about. He even thinks Carole has betrayed him now. The only way we can stop him using the Taurus is by threatening to harm you if he does.”

Jack suddenly realised the terrible logic of his predicament and thought back to the email from his father that he and Angus had read in Pendelshape’s store cupboard: I fear that when they find out, they may take Orion… we must protect Orion.

Orion. At last he knew who that was. Orion was himself. His father had wanted Pendelshape to make sure that Jack was safe, so that his father would be free to use his own Taurus, without the Rector and VIGIL stopping him by threatening to harm his son. It explained, too, why Pendelshape had taken them into his confidence so suddenly and taken such a risk in showing them the Taurus and its control room. Pendelshape had been working secretly with his father all along. Before the Rector had arrived with Tony and Gordon in the control room, Pendelshape was about to take Jack somewhere so that the Rector could never find them. In fact, as he had guessed, Pendelshape had been planning to use the Taurus to hide Jack in time. In 1914. Then, his father could use his second Taurus to locate them and rescue them — so they would be permanently free from the clutches of the Rector and VIGIL. But the Rector had arrived too soon and had upset the plan. Ironically, Jack had been so frightened by the sudden arrival of the Rector and the VIGIL guards, he had panicked and used the Taurus to escape anyway.

But the email had also mentioned someone else: Lynx.

There is nothing we can do about Lynx now — she has gone over to the other side.

Jack looked at the Rector, “So if I am ‘Orion’, who is ‘Lynx’?”

“Carole — your mother.”

Of course. “So, what you’re saying is that I’m a kind of pawn in a battle between you and my dad?”

“I’m afraid so, Jack.”

“And while you have me… you can threaten my dad that you might kill me… or… or torture me… then you know he won’t do anything. Anything silly — with the second Taurus — to change things in the past. To change the course of history…”

“Yes. But you are more than a pawn. You are much, much more important than that. In fact, I would say, right now, until we can track down your father, and bring him under control, you are possibly the most important person in the world. It’s only the threat to harm you that prevents your father from acting. We are all involved in a deadly high-wire balancing act… It’s not how we want it to be. But it’s the way it is.”

Jack felt confused at first… then he started to feel angry. Angry that these men, with their intellects and ambitions had created a technology so powerful and so potentially lethal that it could scarcely be discussed, let alone used. Angry that, for some reason, it was in him that the precarious balance of power between these two enemies was maintained. Angry, that his mum had not found it possible to explain any of this to him before. Angry that it was the battle to control this great power that had torn his own family apart.

Later, with the night upon them, they were led through a series of spiral staircases and passageways to their rooms. Separate rooms. Jack’s seemed to have been cut straight from the massive stonework of the castle walls. The door closed behind him and he heard a key turn in its lock and a dull clunk as two bolts on the outside were slid into place. It was like being in an underground bunker. The air was completely still and there was no sound. Although it was small, some attempt had been made to make the place comfortable. On the floor, a thick rug covered the grey flagstones. There was some simple dark-oak furniture and a pair of maroon curtains. There was a made-up bed with pillows, sheets, blankets and a richly embroidered gold and red bedspread. It looked like it must have taken months to hand sew. It was nothing like his blue-and-white striped duvet at home that had probably spun off a textile machine in China in five seconds.

Jack peered through the small window. It was getting late and the ragged outline of the mountains was darkening against an indigo sky. The window was set solidly into the one-metre thick castle wall and could not be opened. For the time being, he was caged. Of course he now knew why. He was being held hostage from his own father, the Benefactor, in case he was, in some way, able to find out where his son was located and was then able to mount a daring rescue mission.

He remembered the awe he had felt when he discovered that the extraordinary workshop beneath Cairnfield actually belonged to his own father. He had been proud to be associated with somebody so brilliant — his own flesh and blood. Now, he realised just how powerful his father was, and therefore how important he himself was, his feelings were agonisingly mixed. There was pride in feeling ‘special’ but at the same time he was scared and confused. He didn’t know who to trust — the Rector, VIGIL and his mum, or Pendelshape and his dad. He didn’t know who was really right and who was really wrong and he didn’t want to have to choose.

It was still dark outside. Jack had been dreaming again of the visit to the First World War graves — the endless sea of white crosses, the grassed-over outline of old trench networks, then running along for shelter from the storm and opening the door and seeing his mum and dad… crying… and then his mum whisking him back to his bedroom. He was relieved when gradually the curtains lightened with the arrival of a bright mountain dawn.