28/10/07
10:10 AM
The Truro Centre

Jo hung up. Adam shifted. He'd dozed a bit in the chair overnight. He hadn't wanted to leave Zaf in case he woke up. He'd spoken to one of the doctors, a man called Seymore, about tapering down Zaf's medication to let him wake up, the doctor had agreed, on the condition that if Zaf complained of pain, they'd take the dose back up. Doctor Seymore had said that a surgeon was coming in later to have a serious think about fixing Zaf's mangled hands and feet.

The door opened. Adam looked up. A man wearing a white coat walked in.

"Who are you?" Adam asked, stretching.

"Doctor Meeson." The man replied in a deep, slow American accent, putting a gloved hand in to his pocket.

"Where's your ID tag?" Adam asked.

"In my locker, I forgot it."

"Then how did you get through the door?" Adam stood up.

"One of the nurses let me in." He drew out a bottle, a syringe and a needle and started assembling things.

"Hold on." Adam placed himself between the man and Zaf. "Forgive me for being paranoid, it's my job. I want to see some ID before you touch him."

"I'm a doctor, Sir, please let me do my job."

"Show me some ID."

"You show me some. Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Adam Carter, you show me -"

The man moved very suddenly. Years of field work had made Adam sharp. He saw the man's hand move, go for the inside of his coat. Before he could see what it was grasping, Adam threw his weight against the man. The man managed a pace back before he fell, metal glinted in his left hand. Gun or knife? Either was bad.

"Help!" Adam shouted, grabbing for the man's left hand with his right. The hand moved away downwards. He missed. He shifted away from the metal. The man pushed him off and pulled away. Knife. It was a knife. Adam grabbed for the knife hand again. "Help me!" This time he caught it. The man got his legs under himself, Adam pulled down and in to overbalance him. Suddenly the man came with him and fell towards Adam. Sharp pain burst along his side. He cried out. The door opened again. He'd let go of the man's knife hand. The man yelled in shock and jumped to his feet, almost pulling Adam with him. There were two people there, the doctor from earlier and the day nurse. The man broke free of Adam and ran past them.

"Call security!" Somebody shouted. Adam sprinted after the man. Blood was seeping down his side. Every stride pulled at the injury. It wasn't bad. He was still standing. The man dashed back through the corridors, then suddenly turned out of a fire exit. He knew exactly where he was going. Adam didn't. And Adam was already bleeding. This was a bad idea. But he couldn't just let the man go. The man jumped a low hedge and kept running out towards the car park. Through the car park, he kept running, past two people crouched beside a third person on the ground, down towards the checkpoint at the gate. Adam was struggling now.

"Stop him!" He bellowed. The gate guard didn't react fast enough, he came stumbling out of his booth, but the man was already at the barrier, dropping to roll under it. The guard started running. The man disappeared from sight. Adam reached the barrier and looked up and down the road. The man was disappearing up the road on a bicycle.

"Get a car-" Adam started, then stopped himself. There were dozens of little roads and tracks round here that that man would be able to get up on a bike. He'd have needed thirty men to catch him, at least. He didn't have three. He'd got away. Adam swore.

"Mate, you're bleeding." The guard said.

"Thank you, I had noticed." Adam pressed an arm to his throbbing side and limped back up the track. He took out his phone. It was picked up within fifteen seconds.

"Hello?"

"Malcolm, can you get in to the CCTV footage for the Truro Centre?"

"Should be able to, it's a level four government facility. Why?"

"Look at the footage for the last fifteen minutes for room… ACTU 4, that's Zaf's room. You should – ow - see a man with a white coat walk in. Try to ID him. If you can, put a police alert out for him."

"May I ask why?"

"Because he just knifed me and ran off."

"Adam! Are you alright?"

"It's not deep Malcolm, I'm fine. Just get a tag on this guy, he was after Zaf." He hung up.

On his way back through the car park, Adam had a better look at the nurses and the collapsed man. There was a lot of blood on the collapsed man. One of the nurses was speaking to him.

"-ambulance will be here in a few minutes. I've seen you fix worse wounds than this, Doctor Meeson, you're going to be fine." So this was Doctor Meeson. Bits of the last few minutes began to click together in Adam's head. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his side. The man who'd attacked him had stabbed Doctor Meeson in the car park, taken his coat and his ID card and got in to the building that way. He'd known where to look for Zaf and come in with something to put in his drip. Adam was betting it wasn't antibiotics. And he'd jumped as soon as he'd heard Adam's name. That had been the moment he'd decided to drop the subterfuge. Presumably Zaf had given his name up; Adam Carter, section head, blond man, six foot, blue eyes, thirty-eight years old. That was probably enough to make a would-be assassin cut and run. Adam gritted his teeth and kept walking.

The fire escape he'd come out of was still open. He made his way back to Zaf's room. This was blown. If you'd tortured a man in the UK and lost track of him, Truro was a sensible place to search, but that man hadn't been searching. He'd known. He'd known exactly where Zaf was. How many people knew Zaf was here? The staff here, of course, but if one of them had snitched surely it was simpler to get them to do the wetwork, and they were all vetted nearly as thoroughly as Thames House staff. Section D knew; Harry, Ros, Jo, Malcolm… it wouldn't have been them. That was so unlikely it wasn't worth mentioning. Who'd sent Zaf here? It had been the staff at that hospital in Kent, there were probably a dozen people there who knew, plus the drivers who'd actually delivered Zaf here. That was the most likely source of the leak.

Adam reminded himself sharply that he couldn't necessarily blame the snitch for snitching, given what these men had done to Zaf.

The doctor and the nurse were still in Zaf's room.

"There's a man in the car park who's been stabbed." Adam said, making a bee-line for the chair. "I suggest you go and see to him." He sat down

"We've heard." Doctor Seymore said. "It came through on the intercom, Doctor Lee is already there. And is that blood yours?" Adam nodded once. "Show me." He pulled Adam's arm away from the wound.

Adam winced. "I don't think it's that deep."

"Neither do I. I may not be a surgeon, but I'm confident I can deal with this. Strip off." Adam started to. "Emily," The doctor said to the nurse. "Could you go and ask Sasha if he'd be willing to give a shirt over to this man? He looks about Sasha's size."

"You okay here?"

"It's only going to be Steristrips. I'm sure I can manage that." The nurse walked out. "What happened exactly?" Adam told him as briefly as he could manage, the doctor numbed, cleaned and strapped up the wound.

"As you thought, it isn't deep." The doctor said as he finished. "Keep it clean and dry for three days, then go and get this re-checked. I can't imagine it will cause a problem." Adam picked up the shirt the nurse had left and put it on. He still couldn't feel the injury.

"What did you do?" Adam asked

"Sorry?"

"I can't feel it at all, what did you do?"

"Stop poking it. I knocked out the nerves to the area, they'll come back in a couple of hours." Adam looked at the man, somewhere between amazement and alarm. "I'm an anaesthiologist. Divinum sedare dolorem. Our job is to relieve pain."

"Well you're good at it."

"Thank you. As for him," The doctor indicated Zaf. "We stopped his ketamine nearly half an hour ago. He should be waking up soon."

"Good."

"If he seems in pain, call us and we'll up his doses again."

"I will." Adam said. He wouldn't. He needed Zaf lucid enough to talk to. Zaf would understand that. If that meant half an hour more of pain unfortunately that price had to be paid.

Note: 'Divinum sedare dolorem' is the maxim of the national college of anaesthesiologists. It translates to 'it is divine to relieve pain'