Double Deal

by John M. Green

  He pulled away, his hand on his side-arm, sizing her up. He pointed to Akono’s pass on her chest. ‘Senyora, we placing you under arrest. Many charges … assault police, impersonate police, steal vehicle. But most big,’ he added severely at the same time as he snapped the cuffs on her wrists behind her back, ‘for assassinate the—’

  She stopped listening and moved her cuffed hands to her side so the back of one managed to make contact with the pocket where she’d put the phone to muzzle Frank’s dying moments. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the floor either, so she imagined she’d dropped it when she leapt out of the window. Her heart was tearing, rip by rip, and she fell back down, a blubbering mess.

  She pictured the moment early last night when Frank arranged to have breakfast with her. His last touch of her wrist in the cafe. His fingers brushing over her neck when he found the tracker. All of it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  A hand gripped her shoulder and brought her out of her daze. ‘Senyora,’ said the cop, ‘we must go now.’

  He was helping her up when his partner, holding up the tablet, called out ‘Cardona!’ and started running towards them. Instead of the screen displaying the frozen red 2, Tori saw a text message, in a font big enough for her to read even as the cop approached.

  Wow, girl. I didn’t think you had a do-or-die leap in you.

  First the good news … you’re alive.

  Next, the bad news … sorry, but it won’t be for long.

  That building that you and Mutt and Jeff are lolling around in is about to BLOW, baby.

  Cheers,

  Your friend in crime (for another 15 seconds),

  Hermes

  It was going to be Bar Canona all over again, Hermes aiming to destroy every shred of evidence that would corroborate Tori’s story and prove her innocence.

  She knocked the device out of Virella’s hands and scrambled to her feet so fast that Cardona fell backwards. ‘Run … now!’

  126

  Soon after the hundreds of huddled, terrified people flooded out of the Sagrada Familia, Hermes watched Spanish President Santiago Rubio take to national TV.

  Rubio stood on the steps in the shadow of Gaudí’s distorted Gothic edifice, the smashed stained-glass windows as lifeless as the four SWAT commandoes being wheeled away on gurneys in black body bags.

  Unscripted, speaking from the heart – or as much heart as a politician possessed – and with tears welling in his eyes, he hailed the late Casals as ‘a great Catalan and a great Spaniard’, and committed Madrid to working with Catalonia ‘to bring the despicable killers, enemies of our people, to justice’.

  ‘Inside this hallowed church, Tushkin and his cronies committed a treason against all humanity …’ Rubio let the sentence trail off and shed his first tear. ‘Like Montse, the wonderful woman whose life we all came here to celebrate, Oriol proved himself a hero.’

  It was the first time Rubio had ever used Casals’ first name and he went on to promise he’d dedicate the rest of his term to making Spain the kind of respectful, united nation that Casals would have embraced.

  Hermes gave the grubby opportunist a slow clap and switched off the broadcast.

  Isabel Diaz allowed no time for recovery. With Davey sedated, courtesy of the White House physician who always travelled with her, she took a chance and set Air Force One on a north-westerly flight path even before she dialled Greenland’s acting prime minister.

  This was her third call to him that day, her first straight after the news of Nivikka Petersen’s death, her second to tell him Project Gusher was a hoax – the call when he ‘took note’ of her assurance and hung up on her.

  ‘I can be in Greenland tonight,’ she said this time. ‘Your nation is in mourning, I understand that, but I’d like to come and personally express my country’s deepest sympathy and show, by my presence, that the American people will always stand with our friends in Greenland.’

  This time his voice was warm, his tone genuinely compassionate. ‘Madam President, you’ve suffered an extraordinary ordeal yourself today. Shouldn’t you be flying home with your boy, not—?’

  ‘Sharing Greenland’s grief is my priority, to put my hand on my heart in front of your people and assure you that Gusher—’

  ‘Ma’am, I don’t wish to be indelicate by raising state business at a time like this,’ which, of course, was a lie, ‘but I assume you will be bringing in your … back pocket, is that the expression? … the bones of a proposal for us to compare against China’s.’

  ‘I was about to—’

  ‘Good. We’ve been speaking to our adviser, Axel Schönberg, and—’

  ‘Schönberg? How could you, after Tushkin so specifically named one of his people as the assassin? The same woman Schönberg employed to work for Greenland was the one who murdered your prime—’

  ‘Madam President, the Schönberg family’s history with Greenland goes way beyond politics and party. It began when the current Axel’s grandfather started visiting us in the 1920s. Their friendship with this nation has lasted longer and, might I say, is even more trusted than America’s. Axel has shared evidence with us that categorically refutes Dr Swyft’s involvement. It may not have come to your attention yet but, be assured, his people are making it available to your State Department as we speak. One last thing you should know, ma’am, before you arrive, and in the spirit of full disclosure. We owe you that. When you land, you will find President Hou Tao will be here too.’

  Isabel was not expecting that. She kept listening in case, in the same spirit of full disclosure, the acting prime minister had any more surprises up his sleeve.

  ‘Ma’am, I hope you will join me and President Hou at a banquet tonight. Your presence will give even greater gravitas to marking Nivikka Petersen’s short but inspirational contribution to public life. I do hope you like fermented seal.’

  Russia’s ambassador to the US, Dmitry Avdonin, arrived at the White House and was immediately escorted to the secure videoconference room. Inside, Vice-President Prentice and Secretary of State Linden stood to greet him. Isabel was online. She could just as easily have placed a call from Air Force One to Avdonin while he was at his embassy but she wanted to make a point.

  ‘Madam President, on behalf of—’

  ‘Mr Ambassador, I offer the Russian people our condolences on the death of their president. I can’t say anything good about Mr Tushkin so I will simply get to the purpose of this call. I expect Russia is investigating Tushkin’s collaboration with Endz of the Earth, his conspiracy against the United States—’

  ‘Madam President, the Russian government is as stunned as—’

  ‘Hold that for another day, Dmitry. I have two demands for you to take back to whoever is in charge in Moscow. First, Russia will issue an official, public and unconditional retraction and apology for Tushkin’s malicious and criminal defamations of the United States.’

  ‘Ma’am, with respect—’

  ‘Second,’ said Isabel, cutting him off, ‘within seventy-two hours you will deliver to us the names of every person involved in Tushkin’s conspiracy together with the punishments Russia proposes to mete out to them.’

  ‘Madam President, I understand how you feel—’

  ‘Mr Ambassador, you’ll understand America’s position even more clearly once you read the text of this sheet of paper I’m holding.’ She waited while Secretary Linden pushed a copy across to Avdonin and for the ambassador’s eyes to scan down the page. ‘As you can see it’s a facsimile of the Executive Order I have in front of me and which I am about to sign with this pen.’ She held it up.

  ‘Ma’am, surely not. Please let me speak to Moscow first and—’

  ‘Watch me put my signature on it, Dmitry.’ She uncapped the pen and wrote her name. ‘These sanctions against Russia take immediate effect. I will lift them only after Moscow complies with both my demands. In full. That is all.’ She clicked off the call.

  127

  The prison cell was cold and dank
and Tori, in dirty brown fatigues, a wreck physically and emotionally, huddled on the hard metal bunk. When the cops brought her in to the station, the guards strip-searched her, tossed her the jumpsuit and led her naked, no shower permitted and with shards of glass and splinters of wood still strewn through her hair, into an interrogation room.

  It was standing room only when she entered, six men and two women, two with rifles at the ready, sneering and sniggering – even the women – as they leered while Spain’s most wanted stepped herself into the regulation brown outfit.

  One of the women shackled Tori’s hands and legs to the table – they were taking no chances – and when she snapped on the last cuff she brought her face up to Tori’s, spat in her eye and called her La Bèstia de Barcelona.

  The Beast of Barcelona.

  Tori was weak but she wasn’t stupid. Justice was going to be a nuisance in this room, her audience obviously angry that the arresting cops wimped out, didn’t shoot her when they had the chance.

  She’d been kept manacled in that room for hours, first with Spanish police interrogating her, then security officers in grey suits, after them three American consular officials and, eventually, the US ambassador, who’d flown in from Madrid that morning to greet the president when she disembarked from Air Force One.

  Whatever wheels were turning – justice or vengeance – Tori had no more to give. She’d recited her story nine times so far, and for seven, maybe eight of them the eyes looking back at her were a cold fury of disbelief and disgust.

  In her cell she no longer had to talk, to answer the same questions over and over. Here in solitary, curled into this tight ball on her bunk, her arms wrapped around her legs, her head pressed against her thighs, she at least got some kind of respite.

  She raised her eyes, red from exhaustion as much as crying and looked up to the camera. She wanted to scream out her innocence again, to bang her fists against the walls, but protest was pointless when even the police were calling you the Beast of Barcelona.

  If I was guilty, why would I leap out of a window to save five hundred people and your landmark? she’d asked them. Repeatedly.

  ‘The Russian said you were in on it. Prove that you weren’t.’

  The evidence is under the rubble of the fucking building that I got your two officers out of. And it’s with Frank. Who’s dead. Probably. With Hermes’ DNA on the polka dot dress he’d stuffed down the back of his pants.

  ‘Chaudry? If that man stayed in the hotel like he was told, if he kept away from you, he’d still be alive. You kill whoever you touch, Swyft.’

  If Frank really was killed. Tori couldn’t help wondering, wanting to believe that Hermes had pulled one last sleight of hand, one last deepfake, and that Frank was still alive. But if he was alive, where was he?

  Whatever had happened to him, she blamed herself. She slammed her fist against the bunk. It’s all my fault.

  She pounded the bed, smashed her fists into her legs.

  Hermes, you despicable fuck.

  For the past hour, two, three – she didn’t know how long she’d been in here – she’d been replaying her time with Hermes, trying to work out what she could have, should have, done to save Frank. If it was Frank. But if she’d shot the witch when she first saw her, would that have made a difference? What if she hadn’t reached for the gun when she did?

  She ran through scenario after scenario, but in no version did the Frank on the phone screen end up alive. Hermes always intended to kill him. Yet that was no consolation.

  The police hadn’t found his body, didn’t know where to look for it. The thought of him rotting in some basement chilled her.

  The shrieking inside her head was so loud she almost didn’t hear the cell door creaking open, but when the glare of the hall light spilled onto the concrete floor she looked up. A warder reached into the room, quickly slid a phone across the floor – cordless, so she couldn’t suicide – mumbled two words, ‘Una call,’ then slammed the door like he was bolting before the Beast of Barcelona had a chance to strangle him.

  She unfurled herself and sat on the side of the bunk, a lattice of tarnished steel mesh framed by black angle iron that was bolted into the bare cold wall, and waited for the pins and needles to drop out of her legs. She tramped over to the phone and flopped down beside it cross-legged, the floor as chill and unforgiving as the excuse for a bed.

  She didn’t call a lawyer. The US ambassador already promised her he’d do that. She didn’t call Axel. He’d probably been the ambassador’s second call.

  It was Thatcher she needed to call.

  Frank was Thatcher’s oldest and dearest friend, possibly his only friend. If Frank was truly dead, the news would devastate Thatcher. She owed it to Frank’s memory that Thatcher heard it directly from her, the last person to see him alive, to hear him die. On the other hand, if Frank had somehow survived, Thatcher might know.

  She dialled Thatcher’s ‘crisis number’, aware it would route around the globe, bouncing off mirror sites until it finally chimed its arrival in SoHo. The cops would probably be tracing the call. Good luck to them. They’d find out who she was talking to, his name at least, since his idiosyncratic third-person mannerism would guarantee that. But they’d never learn his location.

  ‘Tori, you’re safe! Thank goodness. Thatcher’s been worried sick. He read they arrested you in that building but you got out in the nick of …’

  She wasn’t listening. She was trying to work out how to begin. ‘Thatcher.’ He’d already given his name so it didn’t matter if she repeated it. He kept talking. ‘Thatcher.’ She had to repeat it three times before he stopped.

  ‘Have you heard from Frank?’ This was her last, desperate hope, that Phone Frank was not Real Frank, and that Real Frank had made contact with his trusted friend.

  ‘You don’t know where he is?’

  Searching for the right words after that, and giving air to them, was hard. With each syllable she felt more and more certain that Frank was dead, and that she was the one who had drawn the blade across his throat.

  For what seemed like minutes she sat on the floor, waiting for Thatcher’s response, the phone a dead weight in her hand, the cold creeping up into her spine, numbing her legs.

  The breaths over the line were hollow. Then a sniff, a whimper, before finally a whisper came over the phone. ‘Thatcher loved him, Tori. No, that’s not right … Tori, I … I loved him.’

  128

  Two weeks later – the Oval Office

  Isabel lifted her eyes from yet another NSA report, leant back in her chair and buttoned up her cardigan, suitably black. From across her desk, she sized up her Director of National Intelligence and spoke before he did. ‘Swyft’s been in custody two weeks. With the treasure trove that she and her people in Boston gave us on Hermes she’s clearly innocent. Why the hell is that woman, a US citizen, still locked up in a Spanish prison?’

  DNI Hirsty bent over her desk, his hands wide on the wood, a familiarity she did not welcome as she leant even further away from him. ‘I keep tellin’ you, ma’am. That woman cannot be trusted. We still got that video of Tushkin confirmin’ she was in on it.’

  Either Hirsty was an idiot or he thought his president was. ‘The suicide video was bogus,’ she said. ‘The NSA confirmed that was a deepfake, as was the earlier one, the video supposedly revealing her as a crazed killer.’

  ‘That’s right about the videos, ma’am, but we ain’t got nothin’ that proves she still wasn’t Tushkin’s proxy.’

  Actually, that wasn’t correct. Russia’s Ambassador Avdonin had called on Diaz privately twenty minutes ago. He’d given her a heads-up that while Moscow’s investigations weren’t complete, it was as good as certain that Swyft was not a Russian agent. He could have been lying, but he had no reason to, and Diaz chose to believe him.

  ‘Listen, Robert, this vendetta our agencies seem to have against Swyft, it ends now.’ She tapped her finger on the phone to buzz her secretary. ‘Get Madrid on
the line. President Rubio.’ As she said his name, Hirsty’s face turned a shade of beetroot.

  129

  Six weeks later – Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal

  Tori flew straight to Portugal after the dedication ceremony at Oxford University, Frank’s alma mater. His parents were there, of course, relatives and friends too, colleagues whose trench coats and furtive looks suggested they’d worked with him at MI6. Either that or they were subsequently defrocked priests who’d attended the seminary with him. Axel and Ron flew in from Boston and brought half the SIS office with them. Tori wasn’t sure Thatcher would come until a black cab showed up and she watched a rotund man in a black coat, sunglasses and grey broad-brimmed hat shuffle out. He’d flown to the UK on a false passport.

  It was over two months since she’d seen Frank, since anyone had. His body hadn’t turned up and, under pressure from the White House, and Axel, the Spanish authorities hadn’t given up on finding him. There couldn’t be a funeral, of course, or even a memorial since no one who knew Frank, who respected him, was yet willing to acknowledge what the local police were already suggesting was the truth. At the same time, his relatives, friends and colleagues wanted – needed – to celebrate Frank. His loyalty. His bravery. His friendship. So, in Frank’s name, Axel funded a massive scholarship program at Oxford.

  Tori had known Frank less than a year, yet there was so much she desperately wanted to say – to his parents, his friends, to him. She stepped to the front of the crowd to speak and stood there, looking at his photo on the stand, at all the faces looking back at her. Kind, warm faces. But every time she opened her mouth, her body heaved and nothing but deep, mournful sobs came out.

  Axel eventually came forwards, took her shoulders and hugged her, led her back to Thatcher, where she stayed, the pair comforting each other, their arms entwined.

  Axel returned to the front, his speech unscripted yet eloquent, sympathetic, generous. He spoke, as if he’d known them as friends, of the struggle of Frank’s immigrant parents, how they came from Pakistan to a new country, how they’d worked two, sometimes three jobs each yet managed to bring up a model child, their beautiful boy winning a King’s Scholarship to Eton where he made ‘a lifelong friend’, a phrase that got Thatcher wailing into Tori’s shoulder, how Frank had come to Oxford to do a double-first in theology and mathematics, then joined a seminary, later leaving the Church, though not God, to work ‘in government’, which was as close a descriptor to Frank’s nine years in MI6 as Axel could say out loud.