Felicity looked Bio in the eyes. ‘Get out of my way,’ she growled.
Bio held her ground.
‘What do you want? Just let me burn the thing!’ demanded Felicity.
Bio smiled. ‘I thought we might get closer, and watch it burn together.’
Felicity shook her head. ‘This isn’t the sodding Brownies camp fire. Tel me what “black slip” means.’
‘You honestly don’t know?’
Felicity was silent, waiting. When Bio didn’t respond, she cuffed her, and yelled, ‘Tell me!’
Bio laughed. ‘Dr Oxberry has been horribly lax in his training, or you don’t bother to listen.’
‘Laugh it up,’ said Felicity.
Bio grinned expectantly. ‘Go ahead. What’s the punch line?’
‘I didn’t stay for the last part of the training,’ admitted Felicity. ‘I was bored in Paris.’
This time Bio roared with laughter.
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‘You were bored in Paris? Oh dear! Perhaps we should have made Nearby the OhZone.’
Felicity roughly pinned Bio’s arms to the bench.
‘Don’t make me hurt you,’ she hissed between her teeth.
Bio nodded her head at the tin box. ‘The Iceni will be expecting a blue-slip hit. The longer they think that, the better for you.’
Felicity took a blue-slip in her other hand, and squeezed herself closer to Bio, until their chests pressed against each other, their lips just inches apart. She put her lips to Bio’s ear and whispered.
‘Tel me, then. What can I do with a black slip?’
Bio looked at her hands, which were turning dark in color.
‘It’s no holds barred,’ she said. ‘But let go now, there’s a dear, before you do me a mischief.’
She struggled to reach Felicity’s face with her lips, and started kissing her neck. Felicity let go her grip.
Bio massaged her hands. ‘Black slip means col ateral damage permitted. You don’t seem to mind col ateral damage in your personal life. Now you can mix business with pleasure.’
Once again, she moved her lips to Felicity’s mouth, but Felicity turned away. Now able to reach the Bunsen burner, she held the black envelope in the flame. It ignited in the centre and burned outwards. She watched flames engulf it as it curled up; red, orange, flickering yellow, and incinerating.
‘Does col ateral damage permitted include killing Blanka?’
she calmly asked, as she watched the charred paper disintegrate.
The answer was sharp. ‘Kill Blanka, and you go to prison.
Women’s prison! Like Orange,’ she said, stroking Felicity’s cheek.
Felicity raised a hand to hit her but, anticipating it, Bio caught it.
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‘Posh totty! All your purple-blood, extra ATP and bio-engineered muscle won’t help you. You’l be drugged, and they’l just use you harder.’
Felicity ripped her hand free and slapped Bio. The power of the strike knocked the smal er woman clean off her stool, and onto the floor.
Bio (a former Navy petty officer) picked herself up, wiped the red blood from her nose, and continued.
‘They’l drug your food; make you their bitch, and ruin your pussy. Your new powers won’t be worth zip. Blanka has friends everywhere, so before long you’l be dead bitchmeat. Bitch food?
Dog food? Which do you prefer? Besides, I wouldn’t take on Queen Boudica if I were you. That “I rescue wild animals” stuff is a front. She’s a ruthless killer, just like you. But a lot more experienced.’
Felicity looked down at Bio, and then took the older woman’s hand.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rough. But you get under my skin.’‘Even your new extra-strength OhZone skin?’ Bio joked.
Felicity lifted Bio’s hand to her mouth, and kissed it. Then she licked the blood off it. She got a tissue for Bio’s nose, and gently cleaned that.
‘I can see through your clothes,’ Felicity said. ‘Just how aroused you are.’
‘Can you indeed?’ said Bio. ‘By the way, I’ve got the laboratories working Saturday. And I’m meeting the Nanny tonight.’
Felicity kissed her, hungrily. Then she started to pul off Bio’s scrubs.
‘I’m listening,’ the OhZone whispered. ‘I’m al ears.’
Then she proceeded to lick Bio’s ears like one cat grooming another.
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C scorned Military Intelligence Section 5 and had his staff refer to ‘5’ as the Other Firm.
At MI5’s headquarters, Thames House 12 Mil bank SW1, the Director General Capability (‘DGC’) stood at his window engaged in the British custom of sipping afternoon tea and trying to escape his troubles.
He viewed the fog swirling on the river, and the little waves lapping against the ancient stones of the Palace of Westminster with consternation.
Sitting down, he stared and stared at a silver tray and sugar bowl, and then at the woman sitting opposite him, MI5’s head of C.C.S.P. (covert counter surveil ance and protection).
‘Sweet enough?’ he asked her.
‘Quite,’ she replied.
He offered her a McVities Milk Chocolate Digestive cookie from a plate. She shook her head, sipped the tea and glanced back down at another manila folder (color: buff). It contained a family photograph of Grinin, Diana and their daughters, Emma and Olga.
‘Guarding him from whom?’ she asked.
‘Red Russians? White Russians? Non-Russians? Hard to say real y. …C?’ He sighed as he took a cookie. ‘We need to up security.’
‘We can’t up it, we don’t have any.’
The DGC bit into his Digestive, and pul ed a face.
‘No. That is my concern.’
‘Grinin is Wonderland’s man, they brought him in. And
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OhZone and their AIs have been guarding him since he was—
shot,’ she said. ‘As you know.’
‘Possibly the worst own-goal by Wonderland since Dr Kel y.’
The woman picked up the manila folder of the Grinin family.
‘I think I’m beginning to see the similarity.’
‘There wasn’t a general election six weeks away then.’
‘But there is now.’
‘Precisely.’
The DGC swal owed the cookie, and shook his head sadly.
‘Something’s just not right.’ He held out the plate again. ‘I’d value your professional opinion.’
The woman took a Digestive, and broke it in half. ‘Yes, something’s amiss. Same old story.’
‘He telephoned me himself, Prime Minister Corduroy.
Described Grinin as, “a modern-day Da Vinci. Gunned down like a common gangster.” In a Westminster street.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ the woman said, sarcastical y. ‘ Westminster street, it’l be Kensington next. Wel , this Russian scientist must be important! Can he read?’
‘Grigori Grinin?’
‘Mr Corduroy,’ she said tersely, tapping the folder. ‘The file clearly shows that “6” is in charge of security. And that OhZone are deployed.’
The DGC poked the cookies around on the plate some more, then held it up to his nose and sniffed them.
‘Either there’s a whiff of river water, or they’re stale. I made a distinct point of asking Mrs Hodges to use a new packet.’
He noticed the woman drumming her fingers on his desk.
‘Wel , as for that, C has a brand new AI. Some trumped-up tart from the mailroom there that he’s shagging* [* fucking].
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Got her married to an Australian agent, and then somehow into OhZone. We know she’s not loyal to Blanka—C may very wel give her the Grinin wet job.’
The woman blew air out between her lips, and looked at her watch.
‘Fabulous. So now we possibly have a bil ion pounds of lethal kit, disg
uised as a tart, on the attacking side—as we try and protect Major Grinin. Does the Prime Minister understand what’s going on?’
The DGC laughed. ‘Hardly. He’s a politician!’
‘Budget and time scale, please?’
‘Throw resources at it, leave no stone unturned! Remember, in covering their backs, we are covering our own.’
‘I’l have an Op file on your desk within the hour. Green light it and we’l be there this evening. Do we cooperate with OhZone?’
‘Amicable coexistence… friendly exchange of low value information.’
The woman nodded. ‘What do we cal it?’
The DGC opened a drawer, took out a gray operations name book, and thumbed through it.
‘Cornish Pasty. I had one for lunch. Cornish Pasty 2? No, that’s gone. Cal it, Cornish Bunker.’
‘Right you are,’ she said, making a note, throwing her paper-work in a brief case, and leaving the room.
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8:30 p.m.
The City of London. Liverpool Street Station.
During the afternoon, at just short of Mach 1, Dr Oxberry’s Citation X+ jet zipped Blanka the length of England, landing selected agents at Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle, and depositing four in Scotland for Edinburgh and Glasgow airports. Others rushed to Luton, East Midlands and Bristol airports. Heathrow and Gatwick were watched by one at each terminal. Drox’s jet deposited Blanka back at City Airport, before returning to Paris.
As night fel , Nearby, who had returned from Stockholm, stepped off the shuttle train from Stansted airport on to its dedicated platform, 7. Without missing a beat, she switched from ‘decoy duty’ to ‘surveil ance’ and checked her bag. The CIA-Blue and two burners were safely there. As she wasn’t on CCSP she had happily left her Sig at the spy hostel. First, she was to meet Blanka who would arrive on the subway wearing a beard and disguised as a man. In a brief encounter, she would return Blanka’s Scanner and cel phone to her—putting the real Blanka back on the grid in London—and start her surveil ance of the passengers arriving from Stansted.
As Nearby passed platform 7 on the station concourse, she came face to face with a six-feet tal metal sculpture. It was of two children from 1939: bronze refugees from the Kindertransport. Nearby stared at one of the bronze figures—
an eight-year-old girl.
The thought—Was I like that?—suddenly came into her head. An image flooded her whole being.
She quickly came to her senses and hurried upstairs to Foxes
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bookshop; but the image remained stubbornly in her head.
It was a quite irrational scene.
She could hear a steam train whistling… its brown smoke mixing with snow. Was it the Kindertransport train to London?
Or was it going somewhere else?
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Suddenly, Nearby saw herself as a
nine-year-old in a 1940s photograph…
standing shoulder-to-shoulder
with a twin sister.
Nearby felt that she and her sister had died –
in the Holocaust.
And that the two girls had reincarnated –
as herself and Blanka’s mother,
Kitty Maguire.
C H A P T E R 8 ≥
The Prophecy
— 27 YEARS EARLIER —
Wednesday, December 7, 1988.
10 p.m. London time.
A Boeing 747 aircraft:
the doomed Clipper Maid of the Seas.
Pan Am Flight 103.
T he American captain, James MacQuarrie, emerged from the rest room on to the upper deck. He exchanged smiles with the green-eyed young woman in Clipper Class seat 10B, and passed through the doorway to the flight deck. He glanced at the EPR gauges of the Pratt and Witney engines (1.32 each), exchanged a word with his co-pilots and slid behind the left-hand controls for the rest of the ride.
The Jumbo was midway between Lockerbie, Scotland, and Gander, Newfoundland, on course for oceanic waypoint,
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59 north 30 west, given it by Shanwick Control.
The woman with green eyes leaned over the empty seat next to her, and looked down at the ocean, cramping her neck to see the last remains of the sunset, ahead over Canadian waters. She wore headphones, connected to a CD Walkman, and nodded her head in time to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven .
The young woman was Kitty Maguire, now in her twenties.
Kitty lifted her Bloody Mary from the blue and white Pan Am coaster. She’d never forgotten the old priest’s words, and she raised her glass now.
‘To glorious destiny,’ she said, necking the drink.
From that moment in 1976, her life had re-routed to an even stranger course. She’d waited tables many a time as a runaway, slept in cars, empty properties, on the street. But her wildest notions and dreams could never have predicted that she would return to flying first class—as the fourth richest woman in the world.
Kitty pinched herself.
It had only been three weeks, and she still couldn’t real y believe that fortune had favoured her so wildly. The song lyrics ended: she’s buying a stairway to heaven.
Kitty looked up at the stewardess, as she took her glass and asked if she’d like another.
‘Thank you, yes please,’ Kitty answered.
At 25, she thought, understandably, that she had her whole life ahead of her. But death stalked her, and two others, on the aircraft that day. Kitty had a decade more to live before MI6 would put an end to her glorious destiny, but, at 55 and 51 respectively, the captain and the Swedish stewardess, Siv Engstrom, had only two weeks before they were murdered—in the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
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Kitty looked down at the sea, vaguely sensing the impending doom, but she was mostly preoccupied with a dream she’d had the last time she had flown. It was not the first time she had dreamed of the Second World War, and her cousin Valentina’s sisters, Katya and Elsa.
The family’s history chronicled that they’d been captured in western Russia, and shipped to Auschwitz. Valentina’s parents were two of the fortunate few who survived the Holocaust; and went on after the War to have Valentina, and Lara’s father. But Katya and Elsa were identical twins, and singled out for special treatment.
At nine years old, they were consigned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau science division: in Block 32 of the Gypsy Camp.
A Gypsy camp sounds nice, and the doctor in charge there—
an expert in dissembling, obsessed with eye color and twins—set up a kindergarten and playground, and had the children call him ‘Uncle.’
The deepest burning inferno of hell was a walk in the park, compared to Block 32.
Armed with a cloak of invisibility, a winning smile, absolute power, and bags of candy, Dr Joseph Mengele abused Katya and Elsa—and other identical twins and Gypsy and Jewish children (as young as two), as wel as pregnant women near term—toying with his victims, and performing grotesque experiments and organ transplants on them, while they were ful y conscious.
Without nursing or anaesthesia, his victims were tortured to their deaths.
He also pickled and kept the pregnant women’s foetuses.
Then Mengele removed his victim’s eyes, and pinned them to his wal .
Those who survived—he murdered by a painful injection into their hearts, or sent to the Auschwitz gas chambers.
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Mengele presented himself as a charming man and, after the end of the war, his winning smile helped him escape justice and move to Brazil, where he lived happily into old age.
Kitty’s mother, Jane, had told her how their family had been blooded by this man—the world’s worst escaped child serial killer. The black tattoo had inked out one generation, and al that fo
l owed.
Kitty fought back the tears—as a child, just a mention of Auschwitz had made her blood boil—she was convinced that the story of Katya and Elsa remained unfinished. She’d have to put that to rights. Now she was wealthy beyond belief, she could make films telling the truth. The whole truth.
She took a book from her bag and, with a tortured look on her face, opened the hardback near the beginning and removed her bookmark—a Polaroid of her daughter, Blanka, at her tenth birthday party:
Boudica in a swimsuit—a Mexican beach at sunset—Kitty’s mother Jane (image of an adoring grandmother)—a pair of Carmelite nuns (holding Scuba diving gear in child’s size)—
Boudica proudly strumming a guitar.
Kitty flipped over the Polaroid to reveal her father’s handwriting. Characteristical y, he hadn’t signed Dad but his formal William V. Maguire.
Caba Teresa.
September 28th 1988.
Boudica’s 10th birthday.
I hear congratulations are in order over the Goldheart. Not sure what you did exactly,
but Hart says you played a crucial role.
Here’s Boudica – she’s taking after you already.
Hope London’s not too cold.
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Kitty wiped her tears.
‘God help her if she is,’ she said.
Since Blanka was three-months-old, Kitty had only seen her child a few times.
She wanted a cigarette.
Obsessed with teaching herself magic tricks, in one move Kitty flicked a soft pack of Marlboro Red from her breast pocket, caught it in her hand, flipped a cigarette out, and caught it between her lips.
This deck was no smoking, she’d have to go downstairs to light it. Her boyfriend, Max Hart, was always on to her about cutting down.
She took the cigarette from her mouth, and tapped it on the tray table; yawned, and gazed out the window at the indigo sea far below. The weight of her head slowly sank into the headrest, and her eyes closed.
Kitty’s sleep was interrupted by the stewardess.
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 11