The Names of the Dead

by Wignall, Kevin

  They sat for nearly two hours over lunch, and while Wes struggled occasionally to find things to say, Mia engaged like a diplomat or a member of some royal family, asking about the different foodstuffs, where they came from, how they were cooked. Wes noticed the children, and to some extent the women, hanging on her every word, staring at her with such intensity that he wondered if they saw the same thing Patrice had, that had led him to think of her as a demon girl.

  When they were leaving, Emmanuel insisted that Cristiano would take them, even though they assured him they could remember the way back. And the little boy skipped ahead of them the whole way, singing and calling back to them in Portuguese, and only left them once he’d pushed open the door to the store and set the bell ringing.

  Rocco came out to meet them and led them back to the office. Michel wasn’t there, but sitting on the desk were two heavy-duty plastic bags with the name of the store on them. A moment later, Michel came bustling in.

  “So! You saw Emmanuel? A beautiful family, no?”

  “Patrice told me about him, but I didn’t realize he was still alive.”

  “Patrice is a modest man. Emmanuel is alive because of Patrice. Me too, I think.” He pointed at the bags. “You see inside, wrapped in T-shirts, but it’s everything you asked for. You can check if you like.”

  “No, I’m sure it’s all good. How much do I owe?”

  Michel made a look of being stung. “Nothing! Patrice sent you here as a friend. You owe nothing.”

  Wes shook his hand. “I have no contact details at the moment. When I do, I’ll let you have them. If I can ever do a favor for you, it’s yours.”

  “I hope to see you again, that’s all. You too, mademoiselle.”

  They took their leave, getting a taxi back across town. Mia made odd orphaned comments about the episode, suggestive of some internal dialogue to which Wes was granted only random access: “I think one of the trees in the garden was a fig tree,” “It was less spicy than I imagined,” “It must be a very difficult language to learn.”

  It was only as they were sitting back in the sky bar later that afternoon, watching the ultra-stylish staff floating around serving an equally stylish clientele, that Mia finally turned her attention to what they’d actually been doing at Michel’s store. But even then, she came at it from an oblique angle.

  “What will we do with the T-shirts?”

  “Oh, there are only four. I might wear them.”

  She looked astonished. “Like the one with the angry dog!”

  “No, they’re all plain black.”

  “Oh.” She seemed to think about it. “And tomorrow we go to Madrid.”

  “Yeah. But . . . I won’t keep saying it, but any time you want to . . . to leave, you should. I can travel alone.”

  “It will take six hours. I checked. We can leave early and be there in the afternoon.”

  Wes liked those timings. If they made good progress they could be at Grace’s apartment in time for her to come home from the embassy. He knew one thing—word would get around quickly once he was in Madrid, so he’d have to act fast, find out what he could, and get out.

  “So, tomorrow evening I need to visit someone called Grace Burns. My ex-wife and my son, they stayed with her before going to Seville. She was a friend of my wife. I’m hoping she’ll be able to tell me something about what she did with Ethan, maybe even tell me something about what’s happening to me.”

  “Will you kill her?”

  “No. Of course not. I don’t want to kill anyone. But Grace is CIA, so . . .”

  So what? She might try to kill him, she might overreact and force Wes into doing the same? Why did it matter what she did? He had no intention of killing her, not if he could help it.

  “Sometimes soldiers have to kill people.”

  It was no less true than on the other occasions she’d said it. Sometimes soldiers had to kill people. Sometimes they wanted to kill people and didn’t. And sometimes the decision was taken for them.

  Twenty-Six

  He looked in Grace’s fridge. It was well stocked and there was a bottle of white wine in the door, unopened.

  For some reason, he thought of today’s passage from the bible. Without comment, before leaving Lisbon, Mia had handed him the bible, and sure enough the bookmark had been moved, and she had selected a chapter from Proverbs for him.

  Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars . . .

  But a few lines into the passage, a single underlining in pencil showed that Patrice had been there before either of them, in dialogue with himself, but his selections no less meaningful for that.

  Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

  Patrice had achieved that. For his own part, Wes felt maybe he was still a work in progress.

  He took another look in the bedroom and the bathroom, even though he’d been through them once. He looked in the guest bedroom again too, though he didn’t want to linger in there, then strolled back into the living room, where Mia was sitting facing the doorway.

  She glanced from side to side, moving only her eyes, the look of someone who feared they might be reprimanded in some way for breaking the rules.

  “Is this really okay? Won’t she be angry?”

  “Well, I guess she won’t be happy. No one likes strangers breaking into their apartment.”

  “But you said you know her.”

  “I know her a little. She was Rachel’s friend, not mine. You’re a stranger.” He was teasing her, but she didn’t react and then another truth presented itself to him. “Actually, she’d probably be more relaxed about you being here than she would me.” Mia nodded. “I’m just being light-hearted. Really, it’ll all be fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” She glanced down at the gun he was holding casually by his side. “Don’t worry. The gun is just for protection. She’ll probably have a gun herself. But don’t think about that—it’ll be fine.”

  He sat down and placed the gun on the coffee table next to the cuffs. Mia looked at them, frowning, but whichever puzzle was occupying her mind, she didn’t share it.

  They sat in silence for about fifteen minutes, and then Wes heard the faint sound of someone talking and ascending the steps to this floor. He took the gun and jumped up, holding his finger to his lips for Mia’s benefit.

  He moved quickly through the apartment and stood to the side of the front door. He could hear clearly enough now to be pretty certain it was Grace; another moment and he could tell that she was talking on the phone. He heard her say, “I’ve got a bottle in the fridge,” the suggestion that the person on the other end was coming over at some point in the evening.

  She ended the call before opening the door, used her foot to kick it shut behind her, and headed through to the living room. Wes fell in behind her and noticed her body language shift violently as she saw Mia sitting facing her.

  Mia said, “Hello.”

  Grace didn’t respond directly, reaching into her purse instead, fumbling, presumably going for her gun, her phone clattering to the floor in the process. Grace’s role at the embassy probably didn’t require her to be armed on a daily basis. There was a good chance she was carrying now only in response to the perceived threat from Wes. If that was the case it was inexcusable that she’d been so complacent when she’d first come into the apartment, and that her gun was in her purse rather than on her person.

  “Keep your hand in the purse, Grace.” She twitched in reaction to his voice behind her, but stopped herself from turning. He nudged the silencer into her back and reached with his other hand to take the purse from her. “Slowly, take your hand out. If there’s anything in it, anything at all, I’ll drop you right here.”

  “Okay, Wes, don’t do anything stupid.”

  He felt like shooting her for that comment alone, but he watched as she eased her hand free and splayed the fingers to show that it was empty. He held on to the purse, nudged her in the
back.

  “Sit in the armchair.”

  As she moved forward he looked into the purse. The gun was in a holster buried among the clutter of her daily life. He guessed she’d been told to carry it, told of the risk, but maybe the last couple of days had been enough for her to drop her guard, convince herself that he wouldn’t show up here after all.

  She moved over and sat as Wes put the purse down in the corner.

  “What are the cuffs for?”

  “I wasn’t sure if I’d need them or not. Maybe I don’t.”

  He sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Mia, enough room for an extra person between them. Grace was facing them, no longer looking like the person he remembered. She had always had an austere look about her, and an attitude that he could best describe as pinched, whereas Rachel had been more passionate, more joyous, despite the rigors of the job she’d done. That’s why he’d found it so hard to imagine them as friends.

  But Madrid appeared to agree with Grace Burns. Her skin was a little tanned, her hair a shade lighter and more relaxed in style, her figure a little fuller. He could picture her with Rachel now, though that only caused a tight ball of anger to lodge in his stomach.

  “Are you going to kill me, Wes?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  For a moment, she looked as if she feared she might have made a mistake, but then she developed a look of resolve and said, “It’s what you do, isn’t it—why you went to prison? The way I heard it, you were pretty much out of control by the end.”

  So this was the narrative Sam Garvey had written for him.

  “No, I wasn’t out of control. In retrospect, it looks like I lost control of my team, in more ways than one, but I was always focused on the job.”

  “Focused—that’s what you call it?”

  He appreciated her determination to come out fighting, but he still didn’t like her tone.

  “What have you heard, Grace?”

  “More than I’d like. How about four years ago? Three Turkish border guards, killed by an ISIL car bomb, but it wasn’t ISIL, it was you. The same week, the local police chief was shot dead and apparently that was you too. In fact, I’m told in that particular instance it was actually you who pulled the trigger. So, do you call that being in control, doing ISIL’s work for them, killing NATO allies?”

  “Nice try, Dr. Leclerc.” Understandably, she looked confused and even a little rattled by his private joke. Maybe Wes was rattled, too, because Sam had been smart to focus on real events, simply casting them in a sinister light. “I’m sure nothing I say will change the view that’s been spread through the Agency, but I feel honor bound to correct you in this particular case. See, for months we’d had a problem with ISIL fighters crossing and recrossing the Turkish border with impunity, costing a lot of lives in the process, particularly among our Kurdish colleagues. Our sources pointed to the police chief, as you refer to him, and to a small unit of border guards working with him. We eliminated all four of them and the problem ceased almost overnight. More importantly, under my watch, nobody outside of George Frater and the members of my gray team knew anything about our involvement. Do you call that out of control?”

  “It’s not the only story.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Who replaced George Frater?”

  “Aaron Schalk. I don’t know if he took responsibility for George’s gray teams, but he replaced him.” She glanced across the room to the spot where her cellphone had settled on the floor. “If you wanna hand yourself in, he’s probably the man.”

  “Hand myself in? For what? Why am I an Agency target?”

  “Do you need to ask? Wes, you killed the detail that was sent to collect you from prison.”

  “You really think they were sent to collect me?” She didn’t answer. But that also suggested the hit against Wes had been entirely Sam’s doing rather than something sanctioned at a higher level—though as Grace had pointed out, that was academic now that he’d killed three CIA officers. “Where’s Sam Garvey?”

  “I don’t know. I know the name, obviously, but I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about his operations.”

  “Where’s Scottie Peters?”

  “No, I don’t know that name at all.” She was lying. Most people would have missed it, but Wes could tell she was lying about Scottie Peters, which meant he was probably in Madrid. “What is it you want, Wes?”

  “How long till your friend arrives?”

  “Excuse me?” He didn’t respond and she looked at her watch. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Where’s my son?” She shook her head. “Did you know they planned to kill Rachel?”

  “No! How . . . how could I? Of course I didn’t know.”

  “So why didn’t she trust you? She stayed here, what, two days, three days? She didn’t tell you she was trying to clear my name, she didn’t tell you she feared for her life, she didn’t entrust you with the safety of our son?”

  He’d been guessing at some of that, but Grace’s lack of an answer told him enough, and then she came back combatively. “What makes you think he’s your son anyway?”

  “I’m on the birth certificate.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  She had a point, but in a moment of clarity, he saw a more obvious truth.

  “She wouldn’t want to claim me as the boy’s father if it weren’t true.”

  She yielded in silence, and for a while it looked like she might not reply at all, but then she shook her head—what appeared to be a genuine response to the situation she’d found herself in.

  “I suspected she might be in danger. I knew she was looking into your case, and that it wasn’t wise. I didn’t know they’d kill her, I still don’t know for sure that’s what happened, but I’ll admit, it seems too much of a coincidence that someone asking awkward questions should . . . well, should die like that.”

  “She wasn’t asking questions that were awkward for the Agency, she was asking questions that were awkward for Sam Garvey, and the silence of the rest of you has allowed him to kill Rachel and a dozen other people—and Rachel’s son would have been one of them if it hadn’t been for her foresight. I want you to think about that, Grace, the little boy who was here in this apartment just a few weeks back. He would’ve been blown to pieces like the rest of them. I’m amazed that you think I was out of control but Ethan’s murder would have been acceptable to you.”

  “I didn’t say that! I wouldn’t have . . . I wouldn’t . . .” He could see, somehow, that she was thinking of Ethan now, becoming emotional. “I wouldn’t have let anything happen to Ethan.”

  “Yes, you would. Just like you let it happen to Rachel.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” As if realizing Wes was playing her, she visibly regrouped. “Look, Wes, if Sam Garvey broke the rules—”

  “If?” She looked nervous about responding. “I had an idea someone in my team was rotten. Sam would’ve been the last person I suspected at the time, what with being one of my best friends and all, but it was him. He was selling us out. He feared I was closing in on him, so he made sure I got false information about that helicopter, set me up for a fall. Rachel started looking into it, got too close, she gets killed. She’d tracked down a GRU colonel I worked with and guess what, he dies a week later, suspected heart attack. I get released from prison and three people come to kill me. Sam Garvey didn’t just break the rules, he broke the rulebook.”

  “May I use your bathroom?”

  Wes and Grace both turned to look at Mia, and Grace said, “Sure, like I have a choice.”

  Mia smiled and left the room, then Grace turned back to Wes.

  “Your new girlfriend? You took a real step down from Rachel, didn’t you, Wes.”

  “Is Sam Garvey still in the Middle East?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. I wouldn’t tell you if I did and you wouldn’t expect me to, but I don’t know anyway.”

  “Scottie Peters persuaded a vulnerable young Muslim ma
n to carry a backpack, thinking he was on a mission for the CIA, which he was, in a way. Scottie killed that young man and a dozen other people, including three children and my wife—your friend.”

  She looked exasperated.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Wes. I told you before, I’ve never heard of anyone named Scottie Peters.”

  Wes shot her in the leg, just below the knee.

  Twenty-Seven

  She cried out, but it was muted, a determination not to look defeated—he admired her for that. He waited for her to recover from the shock, to deal with the pain.

  “I meant what I said, Grace, I don’t want to kill you. Let’s go back to something easy: did Rachel give any indication to you that she had plans for Ethan?”

  Grace shook her head, then looked down at her leg and stifled a cry.

  “Wes, I need . . . My leg . . .”

  He looked down at it himself. He’d hit the top of the calf muscle, but he’d missed the bone, and given that the wound wasn’t bleeding too heavily, he guessed he’d missed the artery too.

  “Your leg’s okay. What about Rachel?”

  She shook her head. “I had no idea.”

  “And the Agency really has no clue where he is?”

  “None. Whatever she did, she did it well. It’s been the talk of the office since the attack. Apparently they had a tracker on her suitcase and a lock on her cellphone, but she never diverted from her itinerary.”

  Wes thought of the case sitting in Rachel’s Seville hotel room, the phone left on charge. She’d have known to leave the cellphone behind. Whether leaving the suitcase had been entirely an intentional ploy or whether she’d just wanted to travel light, that decision had masked her movements perfectly.

  “So she fooled you all. Still got killed.”

  “I swear I didn’t know.” She closed her eyes, looking faint with a wave of pain, then opened them again as Mia walked back in.

  “You have a very nice bathroom.”

  “Thanks, I guess. It was like that when I moved in.”