The Saint Of Baghdad

by Michael Woodman

  Where’s Benjie?

  Benjie was the night nurse, and he was late.

  CJ got off the bed and opened the door. Benjie’s medication cart was tucked against the wall outside his door. But there was no sign of Benjie. Maybe he’d forgotten something and gone back for it. CJ left the door open and sat on the bed to wait for him. He’d be back soon enough to serve up CJ’s late-night supper of three pills. Then they would reenact the same routine they went through every day. He’d give them to CJ and turn away to check his handheld computer while CJ faked taking them. Benjie was responsible for ensuring that all patients took their medication, but after several confrontations with CJ, they’d worked up this box-checking charade. CJ’s room was at the end of the corridor on the second floor. So he was the last stop on Benjie’s nightly round, and after he palmed the pills and slugged back a mouthful of water, they would hang out and talk soccer.

  CJ heard wheels grinding in the corridor.

  That was odd. The medication cart was already there. He got up to check it out but stopped when a face appeared in the doorway. A face he’d never seen before.

  “Mr. Brink?”

  CJ nodded.

  Who else?

  The man was British. That was even more odd. A British male night nurse. They had to exist theoretically, but CJ had never met one before. Benjie was a Filipino and like all the other nurses he came from an agency staffed exclusively by Eastern Europeans or Filipinos. Plus, this guy wheeled the cart in, then shut the door. Why? Benjie just brought in a paper cup with the pills.

  The man rolled the cart up to the bed and broke out a cheesy grin.

  “Where’s Benjie?” CJ wanted it to sound like friendly interest—not a challenge, but the way the guy looked at him, he knew he’d gotten that part wrong.

  “Flu.” The man picked up a computer. “The agency sent me instead.” He poked the screen with his finger. “Your usual.” He passed CJ a paper cup.

  CJ checked its contents.

  The usual alright. Three pills. Pink, white and green.

  The man was still fingering his computer.

  “I’ve got to give you a shot too.”

  “I never have shots.” CJ set the pills aside on the nightstand.

  The guy noticed, but he said nothing. He just popped out that cheesy grin again. “Another war hero who’s afraid of needles.” He smirked, pulling out a tray with a syringe in it. “It’s all been prepared by your doctor. I’ve just got to pop it in.” He ducked down and pulled out something else from a lower shelf, a folded white cloth, stiff like a starched napkin. He laid it on top of the cart, picked up the syringe and flipped an air bubble out of it. All very professional.

  “Right or left?” He swung himself around the cart and towered over CJ.

  “I don’t care.” CJ rolled up his sleeve. It wasn’t the needle that concerned him. It was the queasy feeling in his belly. This was all wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on the why of that.

  “I promise,” the man said. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  Amen.

  And that was another thing. Here was a nurse with his medical record in front of him who didn’t know he had no sense of touch.

  CJ straightened his arm and the man checked his veins.

  Here we go.

  “Do you know what cytotoxic means?” It came out of nowhere. Totally random. A challenge question like a sentry in an old-time war movie. CJ had no idea what the answer was. But surely a real nurse would know.

  The man jerked back and his cheesy grin blanked over. His head spun down, eyes on the cart. The starchy napkin. His hand went for it. And that was where it all fell into place. The profile. That stern mask of a face. CJ had seen it before, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. This was the driver who stayed put in the delivery van while his partner sorted out the paperwork. The man drove the needle at CJ’s throat and grabbed the napkin with his other hand. CJ batted away the needle and kicked up between his legs, slamming his shin into the man’s groin. He dropped the needle and arched over, and CJ thumbed him. Both hands. Thumbs like spikes right up into his eye sockets. The napkin and something heavy clattered to the floor, and the man stumbled back. CJ tackled him, his shoulder colliding with the man’s hips and crashing him into the wall. There was no follow-up, other than the crunching sound of the man’s head against the wall.

  CJ stepped back, panting, pleased with himself. He was still out of shape, but he was getting it back. He looked around the room. The unused syringe was lying on the floor, and there was a pry bar close by the fallen napkin. He checked the guy for a pulse. It was strong. He’d be back on his feet in minutes. Groggy, but still dangerous. CJ fetched the syringe and crouched next to him. He cleared the air bubble again. He didn’t want the man to die of a stroke brought on by a gas embolism. Whatever was in that syringe, he wanted to see a live performance of its effect. He straightened the man’s arm and slapped the elbow joint to bring up a vein. It was easy. The guy’s heart was thumping, and CJ soon had a fat vein pulsing. He snicked it with the needle and emptied the syringe. Then he went back to the bed and waited. One minute. Nothing. But two minutes never came. Halfway through that second minute, the man kicked out with one leg like he was shooing away an inquisitive animal. Then his body stiffened and went limp. CJ checked his pulse again.

  It was gone.

  Wow!

  No other word. CJ sat on the floor and thought back to the morning’s theater on the terrace. He’d wanted a reaction, but he’d been thinking more along the lines of an urgent summons delivered by four large men in tight suits who stumbled across him late one night on a dark street. That would lead to a meeting in a country house with some old boy right out of a John Le Carré book, someone way up the food chain from Ashford and Colby. He’d offer CJ a glass of fine malt, and they’d talk about its peaty heritage before playing a cat-and-mouse game of who knows what.

  But this?

  It was inconceivable that this dead assassin was linked to his provocative lies. There was no way it could be connected, for a host of reasons. Timing, for one. The cytotoxic van would have needed to be parked outside the hospice while they were talking on the terrace. Ashford’s coincidentally timed call was suspicious. But the idea that they had assassins waiting in a van outside the gates was ridiculous. Those lies were a bushwhack. They couldn’t possibly have foreseen them. Besides, Ashford or Colby might have been in Iraq at the time, but it was most improbable that they were part of a conspiracy back then and also spearheading a debrief ten years later. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the sheer gall of it. This was not MI6’s style, and certainly not their operational area. This was England, not some anything-goes foreign place like Baghdad, or France.

  CJ stood up and checked the corridor.

  Nobody. Silence. Just the usual buzz of late-night TV shows coming through doors down the way. There was only one oddity—a wheelchair right outside his door. He looked back into the room, piecing it together. Plan A was the needle. CJ would be found dead in the morning. No sign of foul play and not too many questions. He was, after all, a guy with brain damage who’d spent years in a coma. The pry bar and the wheelchair had to be plan B. If CJ refused the shot, he’d get whacked on the head before getting the shot. But that crack on the head would need too much explaining. So he’d get poked in the wheelchair and stuffed into a cytotoxic bin. If plan A worked, the next morning, the hospital staff would find CJ’s dead body and a missing Benjie. If CJ’s death was found to be natural, then they’d think that Benjie had panicked and done a runner. Or if they suspected foul play, then they’d blame him and the cops would go looking for him. CJ thought back to the exchange between the receptionist and the van driver. Something about an email. They must have hacked into the hospice’s mailbox and posted an official-looking delivery notice. Hardly rocket science. Half the hospitals in the UK had had their computer systems hijacked by ransomware earlier in the year. Dumping a fake email into a mailbox would be simple for t
hese guys.

  He went back to the man and checked his pockets. He found a phone, but he couldn’t get past the PIN. Grateful for all the catching-up studies he’d done, he grabbed the man’s hand and stuck his thumb on the Start button, and he was soon combing through his messages. Today’s job was being done for a client identified as the Duke. He checked back through previous messaging cycles and flashed on the call sign Tang0, the military code for a target, written with a zero at the end instead of the letter O. That had to be the signal for mission accomplished. The target has been zeroed.

  He took the chance and sent the word in reply. After that, he took his time. And it was way into the night when he pushed the wheelchair down the corridor to the elevator. The TVs were silent, the corridor in darkness, with motion detectors popping lights on and off as he passed. The world was sleeping. There was no overnight medical staff other than the night nurse, and the CCTV in the dormitory corridors had long since been disconnected, following incidents linked to big-brother paranoia in disturbed patients.

  In the basement, he wheeled the night nurse along an avenue of gurgling pipes and boilers. He’d never been to the basement before, but the geography of the place was obvious. The hospice was built on a hill and at one end, as the gradient fell away, the basement squeezed out from under the building and was used as a delivery and loading zone. CJ pushed open its access door and stepped onto the loading platform, where he found the two cytotoxic waste bins. They had small wheels at the back and handles at the top so they could be wheeled like a dolly.

  CJ checked the first one. No surprises. Benjie’s eyes were wide open, looking up at him through the dim light. He’d been folded up like a contortionist and jammed butt first into the bin. He’d been strangled. Some sort of bloodless garrote. And there was a chemical smell drifting up out of the bin. Chloroform or something similar. CJ closed the dead man’s eyes. The poor bastard had a wife and kids in Manila living off his paycheck, and now he was about to disappear. CJ closed his bin and locked the seal. Nobody would find him. It was a beautiful plan. He had to give them that. No one was going to look in those bins. That was the awesome power of cytotoxic. No one knew what the hell it meant, and no one but CJ Brink wanted to find out. He dragged the fake night nurse from the wheelchair and stuffed him unceremoniously into the second bin. He dropped the spent syringe in after him and sealed it shut. Heading back to the second floor, he left the wheelchair at the night nurse station, returned the medications cart, then went back to his room. It was a mess. So he tidied it up and lay on the bed.

  One thing was clear. His days at the hospice were over. Someone had tried to kill him. Not good. But they’d failed, and their failure was a blessing. The adrenaline rush of combat had left him surging with energy. He’d done good. He’d been slow and labored about it. But somehow the right action at the right time had bubbled up through layers of busted brain.

  He slept fitfully and was waiting by the window when the first staff arrived in the morning, the catering crew, braving the last of the winter’s night to get the kitchens fired up for breakfast. Then came the admin and medical staff, arriving in dribs and drabs. It was all as per usual until shortly after the late-rising sun appeared, when the routine was broken by the cytotoxic van collecting the bins.

  Tang0 had worked.

  He watched the van leave the grounds and disappear beyond the trees. With no car, he didn’t have much choice about letting it go, and until he got out of the hospice, he didn’t have much choice about being an easy target either. Whoever set this up had huge resources, and this failure wouldn’t faze them. They’d just try again. Rinse and repeat until he was cleaned. And the next time, they wouldn’t underestimate him. They’d make sure they got it right.

  Six

  “Nice color.” CJ squeezed himself into Enya’s Mini and hunted around for the safety belt.

  “Volcanic orange,” she said. “Like me.”

  She dropped the clutch and they zoomed out of the parking lot and onto a blacktop cut between banks of green. CJ shoved aside the shopping bag at his feet, containing his laptop and all his worldly goods, and made himself as comfortable as a big man can get in a small car.

  “So, a free man at last,” she said. “That was rather sudden. What happened?”

  “A miracle. An unexplainable medical event. I just woke up today normal.”

  “That would be a miracle. So what did Doctor Sam have to say about it?”

  The answer was “a lot.” But the good doctor had been more concerned about maintaining his treatment and setting up outpatient services than keeping him in the hospice.

  “She thinks I’m ready.”

  “Is the hypnotherapy working?” She reached across and squeezed his thigh. “Feel that?”

  “I’m getting there. Bit by bit.”

  “If it doesn’t work, you’ll have a hell of a life.”

  “I’ll never feel pain again.”

  “And you’ll never know if you left the stove on until you burn your arse leaning on it. And what are you going to do with your hands when you slide off your girlfriend’s pants? Not to mention the other bits. It’ll be like making out with a blow-up doll. Only you’ll be the doll. Not her.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “I’m just trying to be helpful.” Enya pulled out of country lanes and onto city streets. “So where are we going?”

  CJ shrugged. He had big plans. But this wasn’t a day for big plans. This was a day for small pleasures. He was out of the hospice at last, with a set of wheels rolling under him.

  “How about the next pub?”

  “Out of the question. You’re still on medication.”

  “I’ve switched to organic. Real ale. It’s full of bio-organisms.”

  “It’s full of something. And so are you.”

  “Come on, Freckles. I need a beer.”

  “I’m responsible for you.”

  “You are not my sister.”

  “So who else have you got?”

  She had a point. But he ignored it, downing the window and flicking his eyes at the passing traffic.

  “And don’t sulk. Be a man.”

  “A what?”

  “I’ll take you to that place in Acton you told me about.” She fiddled with the satnav. “What’s the address?”

  “It’ll be a dump. I need to get it cleaned.”

  “Then my place it is.”

  “Just one drink on the way.”

  “Enough with the pub. I need to see how you react to alcohol before we go out in public. I’m not having you go apeshit on me in a pub.” She checked him out with a sidelong glance. “And cheer up. This is a great day. We’ll pick up some pizzas. I’ve got some wine at home. It’ll be just the two of us. Very civilized.”

  “Is that what you think? I need civilizing? I’ll go apeshit?”

  “Correct on both counts,” she said, holding on to her straight face long enough to check out his reaction before laughing and punching his thigh. “Lighten up, CJ. Let’s have a party. I bought you a present.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  And so it was. Not the present. That was yet to come. But Enya’s place. She worked in IT. Or so she said. But she’d always painted herself as a digital grunt, unlike her brother, the digerati prince. So CJ was expecting something modest, a cramped bedsit, or a scruffy apartment shared with a few roommates. But after threading through the suburban streets around Richmond Park, they ended up in a penthouse with views of London through floor-to-ceiling glass. CJ stood by the windows, his eyes drifting back and forth between the tumbling bundles of gray above and the swaths of green below that fell away to a broad valley nurturing the serpentine Thames and its great city. Enya was at his side, her arm snaked around his waist.

  “At night, it’s even more magical,” she said.

  He laid his arm across her shoulders, and they stood like that for the longest while, bodies oozing into each other like two cells
in a petri dish becoming one. CJ was feeling it all and going with the flow. But the thought seed planted by those cynical spooks was starting to sprout. Ashford had rubbed him up the wrong way from the get-go, dismissing him as a brain-damaged grunt. But Colby had impressed him. She knew what he’d been through. She’d taken one look at him and decided to skip the bull. That showed good judgment. And so it was her verdict on Enya that was troubling him.

  A woman with an agenda.

  The pizzas were cold by the time they dragged themselves away from the window and sat at a smoky-glass table cluttered with pizza boxes, glasses, and bottles of wine. His was red. Hers was white. All sourced from a temperature-controlled cabinet running along the wall. CJ wondered about that cabinet too. Most of his friends were dead, but the ones he could remember had beer in the fridge, not liquor vaults stuffed with auction-grade wine.

  “Ashford and Colby say you’re going to kill me,” he said.

  Enya flopped back in her chair, white-knuckling the armrests.

  “You’re not even joking.”

  CJ poured her more Chablis and waited while she guzzled it, shaking her head in disgust.