The Nemesis Program. Scott Mariani

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       Chapter Two

      ‘I wish we didn’t have to do this,’ Jude said.

      It was a hazy, warm late Saturday morning in the peaceful village of Little Denton in rural Oxfordshire. Fat bumblebees were humming around the flowerbeds, birds were chirruping happily overhead. Once in a while, a car hissed by the gates of the former vicarage.

      A sharp-eyed observer might have spotted the signs that the old house nestling among the trees behind the high stone wall was no longer lived in: the unclipped ivy spreading over the windowpanes; the rather unkempt state of the lawn that stretched far down towards the river; the remnants of last winter’s fallen leaves still lying about the grounds; and it wouldn’t have taken much asking around to discover that the local community was still recovering from the shocking deaths, just six months earlier, of the vicar and his wife in a car crash. Simeon and Michaela Arundel had been much loved and were sadly missed by everyone who’d known them.

      The vicarage had been in the Arundel family for generations and now it had passed to twenty-year-old Jude. From time to time the young man drove up from Portsmouth, where he was still half-heartedly studying Marine Biology while considering his future options now that his life had changed so dramatically, to get on with the painful, drawn-out task of sorting out Simeon and Michaela’s possessions and take care of the place as best he could.

      Today the task at hand had taken Jude right down to the bottom of the long garden, where he was gazing sadly up at an ancient beech tree. He wasn’t alone. The same astute observer might also have noticed the physical similarity between him and the older blond-haired man, about twice Jude’s age, who was standing next to him: a little taller at just under six feet, a little more muscular though still lithe and athletic-looking, and a good deal more battle-scarred.

      That man was called Ben Hope. He’d been and done many things in his time, most of them involving danger and secrecy. Danger he could handle – God knew he’d handled enough of it both during his time with the SAS and since – but one secret even he hadn’t known about for many years, and which had hit him like a high-velocity rifle round, was the stunning revelation that Jude was his own son. He was the product of a short-lived romance back in the distant days when Ben, Michaela and Simeon had all been students together in nearby Oxford and Ben had been set on a career in the Church.

      The discovery of who his real father was had come as just as big a shock to Jude. It had taken them both months to even begin to get used to the idea.

      ‘I seriously wish we didn’t have to do this,’ Jude said again, looking up at the old beech tree. ‘Is it such a problem? Couldn’t we just leave it?’

      Ben pointed up at the thick, leafless dead branch that overhung the glass roof of the nearby summer house. ‘We could just leave it,’ he said. ‘But come the next high wind, that branch is going to break off and crash straight through that roof. You don’t want anyone to be underneath it when it happens. Or to have to fork out for the glazier’s bill even if no one is.’

      At that moment Scruffy, a wiry-haired terrier of uncertain breed who’d once belonged to the Arundels and now had been more or less adopted by Ben and his fiancée Brooke, burst out of the bushes in pursuit of a darting squirrel. The dog raced across the unmown lawn, ploughed destructively through some roses and disappeared at full pelt into the shrubs on the far side.

      Jude rolled his eyes in exasperation at the dog’s antics, then turned back to the tree and shrugged. ‘Then it looks like we don’t have much choice.’

      Ben had found all he needed for the job in Simeon’s woodshed behind the house. He grabbed the coil of rope, propped the ladder against the tree and shinnied up twenty feet to the level of the branch. Hanging precariously off the side of the ladder as Jude stabilised the bottom, he looped the rope around the branch’s gnarly tip. Once he was confident that it was securely attached to the sound limb above it, he climbed back down and picked up the chainsaw. ‘Now for the fun part,’ he muttered.

      ‘Aren’t you supposed to wear protective clothing to handle one of those things?’ Jude asked, frowning.

      ‘Yup,’ Ben said. He primed the carb, applied just enough choke.

      ‘So aren’t you going to wear any?’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘You’re a mad bastard, you know that?’

      ‘So people keep telling me.’ Ben yanked the start cord. The noisy snorting buzz of the two-stroke engine shattered the serenity of the morning.

      It took some time to remove the large branch in sections, each one carefully secured by the rope so that it didn’t plunge through the glass roof and defeat the purpose of the whole delicate operation. Eventually, all that remained of the offending branch was a pile of pieces on the ground and a big raw circle on the side of the tree.

      ‘I hate to see it mutilated like that,’ Jude said when Ben had come down and killed the chainsaw engine. ‘This was Dad’s favourite tree. Told me about how he used to climb right up it when he was a kid …’ Jude suddenly went quiet.

      Ben could see the discomfort in his expression, more than just sadness. He laid a hand on Jude’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, you can call him Dad. We’ve talked about this. That’s how you knew him, all your life.’

      ‘Except that he wasn’t,’ Jude said glumly.

      ‘Maybe, but he was still a better father to you than I would’ve been,’ Ben replied. Even though he was being completely sincere, his words seemed surreal to him. The truth was still hard to accept after six months. It weighed heavily on his mind that he hadn’t yet drummed up the courage to reveal to Brooke the real identity of the young man she thought was just the son of a close friend. He wanted to tell her, but the ‘right time’ he kept waiting for just never seemed to materialise.

      ‘Anyway, it’s a shame,’ Jude said, changing the subject and gazing wistfully up at the tree, shielding his eyes from the bright sun.

      ‘If it’s any consolation to your green sensibilities, once it’s seasoned that’ll make for pretty good firewood,’ Ben said with a smile. ‘Carbon neutral fuel, negligible environmental impact. Let’s gather it up and stick it in the woodshed.’

      Once that warm work was taken care of, it was midday and they were both ready for one of the beers that Jude had chilling to wash down a ham sandwich or two. In the airy cool of the kitchen they slouched on chairs at the long pine table, munched and sipped from their bottles. Ben was quiet, as he often was these days, deep in thought. Jude wasn’t the only one whose situation had changed in a big way over the last few months. Sometimes, when Ben thought about the radical steps he’d taken towards a completely new direction in life, it made his heart thump.

      ‘Are you nervous about it?’ Jude asked suddenly, as if he’d been able СКАЧАТЬ