by Mark Dawson
“I still don’t understand. Get rid—”
“Bachman is a hit man. He kidnapped her brother. I found him and got him out. There was a firefight. Bachman’s wife was killed. He thinks it was me, and now he wants me dead.”
“But it wasn’t you?”
“No,” Milton said. “He shot her. There was a ricochet. I’ve tried to tell him, but it’s the last thing he wants to hear. He’s angry and someone has to pay. He thinks it has to be me.”
“And he’s dangerous?”
“Very.” The most dangerous man I ever met, he thought. A psychopath, a killer who kills because he likes it. It would be difficult to pick a worse man with whom to have a feud.
She paused and bit her lip. “The Mossad. You said they had a lot of blood on their hands?”
Milton knew that they were coming to a crossroads. He knew where the conversation was going, and, knowing that it was about to become difficult for him, he answered quietly, “Yes.”
“And him?”
“Yes.”
“Like you?”
There was a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous: they said that you were only as sick as your secrets. Milton determined that he would have no secrets with her. She didn’t deserve dishonesty. He would tell her the truth and whatever happened, happened.
He took a breath. “Yes,” he said. “Like me.”
“What he said was true?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand…”
“After the SAS, after I met your brother, I was recruited to join an organisation in London. We called it the Firm. The part of that I worked for was called Group Fifteen. Some people in the Firm called us headhunters. I suppose you could say Group Fifteen was similar to the Mossad in that regard.”
“You killed people?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How many people?”
Milton looked out of the window.
“How many, John?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How many?”
“A lot.”
He could remember them all.
She stood, a look of disgust and terror on her face.
“Please, Matty. Sit down. Let me explain.”
She backed away.
Outside their compartment, a conductor opened the door to the car. They heard him call out that he was going to need to inspect tickets, and then heard him knock on the door of the compartment next to theirs.
“Please, Matty,” Milton said. “Sit down.”
“No!”
She flung the door wide. The conductor was standing there. She hurried out.
“You all right, miss?”
“What’s the next stop?”
“Adelaide in five minutes.”
“Thank you.” She took out her ticket and showed it to him.
The conductor took the ticket, stamped it and handed it back. “Is everything okay?” he asked, looking into the compartment at Milton.
“Thank you,” Matty said again, hurrying away down the corridor.
The man stepped into the compartment, bracing himself against the doorway to anchor himself against the swing of the train.
“I don’t want any nonsense on my train.”
“It’s fine,” Milton said, handing the man his ticket.
The conductor looked at it dubiously, as if there had to be something wrong with it. Unable to find a fault, he stamped it and gave it back.
Milton stood and the conductor put out his arm and rested his hand on Milton’s shoulder.
“Like I was saying, no trouble.”
Milton clenched his fists, but took a breath to stay his temper. “There won’t be any. Now, please—get out of my way.”
The conductor held his hand there for a moment before he looked up into Milton’s eyes. The authority of his position melted away; he stared into Milton’s cold, implacable gaze, and decided that if there was going to be any trouble, he didn’t want any part of it. He stepped back out into the corridor. Milton thanked him and walked quickly to the next carriage.
Matilda was ahead of him. He made his way as quickly as he could. He caught up to her just as she opened the door to the carriage with the café.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Then just listen.”
“Does Harry know? About what you did?”
“Not as much as you do.”
She turned, ready to walk away again. Milton reached out and took her shoulder.
“Let go of me!”
“I can understand why you’re angry with me.”
“It’s not just anger, John. I’m scared.”
“You don’t need to worry about Bachman.”
“I’m not just scared of Bachman. I’m scared of you.”
He stopped. “You don’t have anything to be frightened of from me, Matty.”
“You’re a killer, John.”
“No,” he said. “Not any more. Not for a long time. That’s why I came here. I’ve been running from my past ever since I got out. I’ve been trying to do the right thing. Help people, rather than hurting them.”
“Helping people?”
“Putting things right. That’s why I was in New Orleans.”
“You call this helping? Because of you, I’ve been abducted. Because of you, they threatened to kill me. And now, because of you, I’m on a train running away from my brother. If this is your idea of help, I can manage on my own.”
The train started to slow. They were approaching Adelaide. Milton knew he had only a few minutes to persuade her.
“Hear me out,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Just give me until we get to Perth. If you still feel the same way, fine. Go your own way.”
He knew that abandoning his protection would be a terrible option for her, but he couldn’t say that now. That battle could wait until later. He had to win this one, first.
“I’m not going to Perth, John.”
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll get off here.”
“I’m getting off. I don’t care what you do, but you’re not coming with me.”
Adelaide station came into view as the train rounded a corner and drew alongside the platform.
“Please, Matty.”
The train slowed to a halt and the door opened, a blast of heat washing inside. A male passenger stepped down onto the platform. There was a woman waiting with a young girl, and, as Matilda made for the exit, the child ran down the platform and threw herself into the man’s embrace.
“Goodbye, John.”
“It’s not safe.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
She started for the open door. Milton thought about trying to stop her, but he didn’t. It would cause a scene, and the last thing he needed was that. She climbed down the three steps to the platform. Milton couldn’t just leave her here. She had no money. And she was far from safe. He climbed down and followed her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ADELAIDE PARKLANDS TERMINAL was three kilometres from the city centre. Milton had read about it in a corporate magazine he had flicked through on the train. It was adjacent to the suburb of Keswick and had been developed as a dedicated long-haul station. It was the only station in the world where passengers could catch trains for three distinct transcontinental routes: the Ghan ran to Alice Springs and Darwin; the Overland went to Melbourne; and the Indian Pacific, their train, between Sydney and Perth.
Matilda was on the platform, making her way to the exit.
“Matty!”
She turned, her face livid with anger. “What are you doing?”
“Please, Matty. Don’t.”
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t. It’s not safe. I know you’re angry with me—that’s fine, but you have to trust me. They’re looking for both of us.”
“Not here, though,” she said.
She broke into a trot and he matched it, keeping pace with her. “
You don’t know that. Matty, please.”
“Leave me alone, John.”
A flight of stairs ascended from the platform, offering access to a bridge. She climbed them quickly, Milton just behind her.
She reached the top and turned to face him again. “I’m serious. Leave me alone.”
“I can’t.”
She turned and nodded towards the gate line. A guard was checking tickets.
“If you don’t, I’m going to tell him that you’re stalking me. How do you think that’s going to look? If you follow me, I’m going to have you arrested.”
She headed away from him.
Milton believed her. He held his ground, watched her go through the gate, but then followed fifty feet behind. He gave his ticket to the guard and then angled away so that he could skirt the edge of the building and stay out of sight. She walked straight through the terminal and out through the doors into the brightness outside. He kept the same pace, slowing in the lobby to allow his eyes to adjust to the glare from the open doors so that he could fix her position in his mind. As he came to a stop, he realised that he couldn’t see her. He opened the tinted glass door and stepped outside into the broiling heat. The building was new. It was a single-storey construction opening out onto a parking lot and then, beyond that, Wikaparntu Wirra park.
Milton stayed in the shelter of the doorway and scanned left and right.
Matilda was a hundred feet away, waiting to cross the road that would take her to a taxi rank. There was a line of cars, a truck waiting to turn at a red light, and a handful of passengers milling about outside the station.
He didn’t know what to do. He could try to persuade her again, but she was stubborn and it was difficult to deal with her once she had made up her mind. But if he didn’t do that, what was he going to do? Leave her? Could he really do that? He mused on that, wondering whether there might be a measure of safety for her after all. He saw a bank of telephones and thought that perhaps he could call Harry, tell him what had happened. Matilda would go back to Boolanga. He would tell Harry that he needed to keep his sister safe.
Milton had almost persuaded himself when he heard a scream.
He had taken his eye off Matilda for a moment, and, in that time, one of the group of passengers had disengaged from the others and approached her. It was a man; Milton was too far away to get a good look at him, and he was facing away, but he looked as if he was of average height and build. He was wearing a ball cap, a red T-shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and sneakers. There was nothing about him that looked unusual for a place like this. Milton hadn’t registered him when he had seen him before. Now he had his hand around Matilda’s wrist. She was trying to jerk her arm away, but it looked as if his grip was too strong.
Milton’s urge was to run, but he stalled. Haste would be dangerous. The guy would be armed, and he knew that the Mossad often sent their katsas out in pairs. They were looking for him, and, while this might be an opportunistic snatch of one of the targets, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that she was being used to bait a trap. He could blunder into the middle of it and make things worse. Instead, he took a step back into the lobby. There was another door farther along the building that offered access at a point adjacent to the taxi rank. Milton sprinted for the door.
He covered the distance in twenty seconds.
He arrived at the door as a car raced along the road that adjoined the station. A red Mazda CX-5. It came to a sudden stop and, before Milton could do anything, the man hauled Matilda to the rear door, bundled her inside and got in after her.
Now Milton moved.
The Mazda had set off to the east, along Greenhill Road in the direction of Veale Gardens. The road outside the station was busy, with two lines of traffic halted there by a red light. Milton ran. There was a Toyota Corolla at the back of the queue, and he made for it. He slowed to a fast walk, careful not to draw attention to himself if the agents in the Mazda were looking behind themselves, as was very likely. The Toyota was in the outside lane, next to a metro stop where a clutch of people were waiting for their tram while trying to shelter from the sun. He approached it from behind a parked Land Rover, using the bulk of the four-by-four to hide him from the Mazda.
The light changed to green. The Mazda pulled away.
Milton opened the driver’s door of the Toyota. It was being driven by a middle-aged man in a business suit. Milton didn’t waste time with negotiation. He reached over to unclip the safety belt and then hauled the man out. The people waiting for the tram were right alongside. None of them was brave enough to intervene, but Milton knew that they would all have got a very good look at his face. He didn’t have time to worry about that now.
He got into the car, put it into drive, and hit the gas.
* * *
THE MAZDA stayed on Greenhill Road. Milton stayed a safe distance behind. He was aware that this could be a ruse: taking Matilda to draw him away from the people at the station, perhaps lure him to a location where they could muster reinforcements. The other possibility was that they hadn’t seen him. He guessed that it was a two-man team: one carrying out surveillance on the station and the other standing by with transport. They had seen Matilda and taken their chance. The most likely explanation was that this was an opportunistic snatch. They would interrogate Matilda for his location and, if she didn’t know where he was, they would use her to flush him out.
The Mazda merged onto Glen Osmond Road and picked up speed. It settled at sixty-five and followed the route to the southeast. They passed through Frewville and Glen Osmond. Milton stayed ten car lengths behind them, hiding in a moderate flow of traffic. He looked up at the signs as he flashed beneath them, looking for anything that might give him a clue as to their destination. If they broke out of Adelaide and continued to Mount Barker or Murray Bridge, at some point the traffic would thin out and an agent with even the most rudimentary grasp of counter-surveillance would be able to make him. He decided that if it looked as if they were heading out into the open country, then he would go on the offensive before he lost the element of surprise, assuming, of course, that he had ever enjoyed it at all.
The Mazda continued through Glen Osmond and then, at Urrbrae, it followed the majority of the traffic onto the M1. It was scorching hot, and, even though Milton had the air conditioning pushed all the way up to maximum, he still found that he was damp with sweat. He closed in a little, leaving six cars between the Mazda and his Toyota. A sign reported that Mount Osmond was ahead. Milton knew about the town from a previous visit to the area when he was operational with Group Fifteen. It was a suburb of Adelaide, located in the foothills that marked its eastern boundary. There was a golf club there, he recalled, a high-end one that attracted a lot of money to the area and had ameliorated the reputation for roughness that had been generated by the town’s previous reliance on mining.
The Mazda took the exit that was signed to the town. The road executed a sharp switchback and then, as it straightened out, it began a steep ascent.
There was only one car between them now, and Milton had no choice but to drop all the way back.
He hoped that he would still be close enough to see them if they turned.
They continued to follow the road, the golf club passing by on the right-hand side and then, as he passed onto a stretch of clear road, Milton looked to the left and saw Adelaide spread out in a spectacular view. The Mazda passed a sign that welcomed drivers to Mount Osmond and then took a sharp left, turning onto Sherwood Terrace. Milton stopped at the end of the road, leaving the engine to idle, and watched. The road was residential and, as he observed, he saw the Mazda’s brake lights glow as the car decelerated, and then the indicator flashed as it turned off the road and onto a driveway.
Milton waited, wiping the sweat from his eyes. The driveway was steep and shielded by a hedge and a telegraph pole. Only half of the Mazda was visible. The rear door opened and the man who had taken Matilda stepped out. Milton was too far away to see whether he was armed,
but, as he saw Matilda’s arms half raised as she slid out of the car after him, he knew it was safe to assume that he was.
The man took Matilda’s wrist and led her up the drive and out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Five
MILTON WAITED for five minutes. He saw the driver get out. It was another man. He made some assumptions. He guessed that these two were sayanim, the sleeper agents that the Mossad had in every city of every country around the world. He guessed that they had been activated when he and Matilda had escaped from Bachman. There would have been assets waiting for them if they had gone to Sydney and, most likely, Canberra, too. He wondered whether they would have had people waiting as far away as Perth. Maybe. Probably.
But there was no point in worrying about that now.
Milton got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. He looked up and down the street. It was residential, with a number of single-storey properties arranged in generous grounds. The nearest had a smart whitewashed wall with metal bars between each pillar, and a gate made of similar bars between two gateposts. The property beyond was set into the sloping hill, its neighbours perhaps fifteen feet higher and lower than it was. The sidewalk was swept clean and the recycling bins that were pushed to the kerb looked fresh and new. A female jogger with her phone strapped to her arm strode alongside, quickly overtaking him. Another woman walked a Labrador. The cars parked in the driveways were expensive, and the only vehicles on the road belonged to tradesmen. This was an affluent area where people could afford to hire in their help.
The road descended sharply. Milton approached the house with the red Mazda in the driveway. There were no hedges or walls that he could shelter behind. If he was going to surveil the front of the property, he was going to have to go and get the car and drive by.
He was about to do that when he heard the sound of a scream from inside the house. It was loud, but quickly muffled; if anyone else had heard it, the silence that followed would have persuaded them that they must have imagined it.
But Milton heard it.
It was Matilda.
Then there came a crash, and the sound of something heavy falling to the floor.