It was the crack of her nail, finally giving way to the increasing ferocity of her typing that drew her attention, hours later, to the time. The plain and soulless office was empty save for her, and looking outside she saw the darkness was enough to match that of her spirit. She cursed at the break, before inhaling deeply and shutting down her workstation. The repressed sob from the morning had gathered its strength and returned to haunt her again, insisting on being released, but still she swallowed it back, before slipping her jacket on and making her way through the main door and out into the empty street. The sound of engines, horns and swearing in the distance defied the emptiness of the streets Ines walked, with only what looked like the same car passing her at regular intervals, the eyes of the driver as vacant as the streets.
Pausing at the small deli across from her apartment, Ines collected and paid for her usual bag of fresh groceries, and crossed the echoing street, her normally pretty and mischievous features growing more agitated with each step. With what seemed an enormous effort, she pushed her way into the flat, but it was there, as she surveyed the empty shelves and pictureless walls, that the sob returned once more, this time a cry which forced itself from her throat and pushed her to her knees as it did so.
She knelt there with her tears in full flow for what seemed an eternity, until a voice, disembodied and quietly imperious sounded in her ears.
“Such a shame,” the voice softly said, “so nearly successful today.”
Ines howled in tearful range at the sound of the voice, her hands clenching tighter and her eyes closed tightly as she rocked back and forth on the floor.
“You were so close,” the voice whispered again in condescending tenderness, “so very close. Go now, eat, sleep and gather your strength. You have one final day to seal the covenant, one final day to save yourself if you can.”
“Fuck your covenant!” Ines screamed through her hysteria. “Fuck you!”
“The covenant will be sealed, my dear,” the softly taunting tones replied, louder than ever over her cries. “It will be sealed with your allegiance, or with your death.”
Ines’ howls ceased as she turned to stare in bitter anger at the source of the voice; a speaker grill beside the light switch next to the door.
“Va te faire foutre,” she spat at the object, her eyes becoming distant and glazed. Standing up, she crossed to the window and looked out onto the earthly hell to which she had been condemned, at the street, the shop and the office all within a stone’s throw of her cold and soulless apartment.
The walls of the flat were of cheap plywood: so too were the walls of the shop, through whose window the unresponsive cashier still stood, plainly visible through the window, its waxwork face devoid of expression. The painted, chipped and staring features were shared by the ‘driver’ of the single car Ines had seen these last few days, a hollow chassis welded to a steel pole, which went round and round the plywood town before her eyes. The noises of traffic, of chatter, of TV, bars and bluster that filled every moment of her normal life were all there but leaking from speakers and grills instead of reality. The night sky she had spent so much of her youth gazing into was now reduced to an image, projected onto the dusty, metallic walls of the enormous warehouse her little cardboard city sat in the middle of; the fluid movements of everyday life now cruelly replicated by automated mannequins which stared up at her in dead-eyed condemnation.
“One day,” the voice said again as the young woman continued to stare. “One more day.”
THREE
Lucie sat cross-legged on the hospital bed, an oversized, baggy t-shirt covering her, oblivious to the arrival of Kasper Algers, the thin and wrinkled man whom to the world was the Independent MP for Camden. In reality he was a fellow agent of the Overlappers – the cloistered branch of the security services responsible for cases where the lines between the remits of MI5 and MI6 were blurred. Her eyes closed, Lucie held her small, silver harmonica to her lips as she played along to the soulful wail of the gospel singer, busily praising The Lord from her phone. On the table alongside the bed was an ancient, leather clad Bible, resplendent with infinitesimally small writing on tissue thin paper. Algers stepped forward to examine the passage, noting that whatever Lucie had been reading came early in the Book of John. The movement broke his young friend from her trance-like state and she sat up with a start, her body coiling as if ready to fight, before relaxing as she recognised her visitor.
“Mahlia Jackson?” Algers asked, his hands held up in apology for the interruption.
“Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” Lucie corrected with a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming.”
She shuffled awkwardly to place her harmonica on the table and stop the flow of gospel music from her phone, shushing away Algers’ apologies at interrupting a private moment. Awkwardly, she gently eased her right leg from under her, stretching the ache from her bad knee, the one injured during her service in Afghanistan. She pulled herself from the bed and stood up to embrace her friend, delighting in the sincerity of his concerned embrace.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Algers snapped the question in the manner of a parent, profanely greeting the return of a missing child with a confused mixture of love and chastisement. “You could have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t,” Lucie replied, somewhat weakly. She knew damn well she had been sloppy, perhaps even stupid in her actions, and she had thought of little else since awaking in Buckland Hospital, Dover.
“You can’t be flippant, Lucie,” Algers warned, softly, “either in your attitude or the way you approach this work. I should never have let you go alone…”
“Hey! Grown woman here, thank you very much!”
Lucie’s indignance was met with another blast of paternal annoyance from the thin, grey haired MP, whose frightening brow creased accusingly at her.
“Then for fuck’s sake, act like one!”
Algers wheeled away for a moment, his hand to his mouth as though regretting the outburst. Lucie understood. The pair had grown close in their relatively brief association and it was obvious he felt more than a degree of responsibility towards her, something that had required considerable negotiation on Lucie’s part when persuading him to let her take the Calais job alone. It was because of the sincerity of his feelings that Lucie tolerated his sometimes archaic attitudes towards her, and he wore his worry openly on his face.
“I’m alright, Kasper,” she softly reassured him. “I lost a lot of blood, but they’ve pumped me full again. I’m a bit sore but another couple of days and I’ll be good to go.”
Algers nodded and turned back to her, his wrinkled features cracking back into a smile at last.
“Aye, I know you are. But Lake won’t be as easy to convince as me, you know.”
Lucie grimaced at the mention of Mr Lake, their enigmatic Head of Department. Algers was right, he would doubtless be furious, and Lucie was far from eager to find out the depth of his anger just yet.
“I know… I suppose I’ll just have to take it on the chin when I see him.”
“There’ll be a lot to take,” Algers warned. “He’s likely to blame you for the trail going cold on the ring, not to mention one or two uncomfortable headlines he’s had to deal with.”
Algers pulled a crumpled tabloid from the ancient brown briefcase he carried and held it out to Lucie, who unfolded it and winced. There was the face of her target – a man named Delauney, the hitherto head of an influential NGO – alongside a sensationalised report of his apparent suicide in France, peppered with an array of tributes from colleagues and industry figures - though curiously few, Lucie thought, from across the political spectrum.
“So, what’s the problem?” Lucie asked, a little petulantly. “Lake wanted him splashed across the papers; he’s got his wish.”
“He’s also got a dead body he could have done without, and he’s had to go in hock to the French to get you transferred back to Dover, incognito, and have your own name kept out of the pr
ess. At this precise moment, he’s not a happy bunny.”
“He wants to fire me?” Lucie quizzed.
“We’ve all made fuck ups in our time, even him. I could tell you one or two tales about my early days that’d make your hair curl, but I got through it and nowadays he trusts me to do the job. You’re in for a hell of a bollocking, that’s for sure, but I don’t think you’ll be out the door this time anyway.”
Lucie shrugged.
“A pity,” she finally sighed, Algers raising a mighty eyebrow in surprise.
“I thought you’d made your peace with all this?”
“So did I,” she nodded, “but now I’m not too sure. Before, I killed in the course of duty, Kasper, when there was no other choice. I learned to justify killing in self-defence to myself and to God… but this time I wanted to kill him. Lake hadn’t ordered me to take a life - in fact he’d ordered me not to - but I didn’t care. I saw what he was going to do that poor little girl, what he’d maybe done to dozens of others, and I just wanted him dead.”
“You’ve felt that kind of anger before though, right? You’ve told me as much anyway.”
Yes, I have,” Lucie readily agreed. “But before I was always able to snap out of it. This time, it feels like I’ve actually committed murder.”
Lucie’s eyes dropped to the floor and for a moment there was no response to her introspection from Algers, until she felt his bony hand beneath her chin, gently raising her head up to meet his stare.
“Maybe in the circumstances it was the right thing to do,” he said. “If you hadn’t, chances are you wouldn’t have been able to save that wee girl, who by the way won’t have to sleep in forests at the mercy of any kiddie fiddler ring, anymore.”
“Really?” Lucie’s heart lifted at Kasper’s mention of the youngster. “Where is she?”
“She’s safe,” Kasper answered, smiling. “The authorities took her in and she’s warm and well fed, at least.”
“But for how long?”
“Well, apparently the young couple you got mixed up in everything took quite a shine to her and when they found out about her background, they got interested in caring for her. If they decide to go ahead, Lake has apparently said he’ll cut through the red tape and help facilitate something.”
“That’s wonderful,” she grinned.
“Yeah, so just bear in mind when you’re busy self-flagellating, that maybe you did take a life in anger, but you’ve saved one too.”
“I’m not sure there’s a tally system for it,” Lucie laughed, appreciating both the news and her friend’s efforts to ascribe the success to her.
“Well, there should be. Anyway, I should be getting back up to London; we’re voting later on the Prime Minister’s latest attempt to defy reality and introduce a Brexit plan that’s already been rejected by the EU. I might as well enjoy using the motorway before it turns into a car park in a couple of months.”
Lucie would have laughed were it not so serious.
“Is it just me, or does every day feel like a new chapter in a Kafka novel?”
“It’s not just you,” he reassured her, “but unfortunately hardly anyone else who sees it has their hands anywhere near the levers of power. Anyway, I have to be off, lots on…”
“A case?” she quizzed.
“Nothing to worry about,” Algers answered, “just need to keep my eye on something.”
“I can help, I can…”
Lucie stopped short, as her injury once more reminded her who was presently in charge, and she breathed deeply, a wry smile breaking onto her face.
“It’ll wait until your fit and well,” Algers reassured her as he headed towards the door of the private room. “Take another few days to conserve your strength; the mood Lake’s been in lately you’re going to need it.”
“You didn’t bring any grapes!” Lucie shouted after him in faux irritation.
“Didn’t want to have to explain the expenses,” came the answer from down the corridor, as his footsteps began to recede, “Lake’s pissed off with you enough already.”
Lucie pulled herself back onto the bed and picked up the newspaper Algers had left, quickly flicking past the offending headline, and wondering idly what new mission her friend was working on, as her eyes drifted across the print. In a small column, sat a biting attack on an MP for tabling a parliamentary question about something called ‘The Red Mako’, a new defence project claimed by the Hard Right to be the salvation of the aerospace industry and proof that Britain could flourish after Brexit. No details were offered on the project itself, only angry condemnation of the one who dared to question it, and Lucie grimaced at the object of the abuse: none other than her friend and mentor, Kasper Algers himself.
FOUR
“Well then, if it isn’t the Return of the Saint. I remind you that the Calais job was intended to be conducted in secrecy.”
Several days had passed since Lucie’s release from the hospital and her journey back to London, to the flat above the chippy she had been moved to upon being recruited by Lake; she had spent much of that time contemplating how he would respond to the situation. Though she was not exactly scared of Lake, there was something undeniably intimidating about his manner, and Lucie knew that he could make life very difficult her. He also habitually, she had learned, recruited people over whom he could exercise at least some degree of control; he had done so with her when he saved her from certain imprisonment with his offer of employment. And while he had assured her that particular threat no longer hung over her, she knew very well he was a dangerous man to cross, which made his lack of contact in that time all the more unsettling.
When the text had finally come to meet with him, it had directed Lucy not to his office, but to the British Library. Lucie mused on her way there that she had never actually seen Lake’s office, or even knew precisely where it was, and she reasoned that this was another method employed to retain control of his underlings.
Dressed in her usual attire of flared jeans, paisley shirt and black overcoat. Lucie stepped through the entrance and towards the domed grandeur of the reading room, scanning the imperious magnificence for Lake. She spotted him, sitting alone at one of the many desks which all pointed towards the centre. She swallowed and moved to sit at the desk alongside him.
“I know.”
Lake began the meeting without either eye contact or pleasantry, instinct alone apparently telling him that it was Lucie who was sitting alongside him at the green bench he occupied in the cycloidal magnificence of the British Library. His eyes instead moved without interruption across the thin pages of an ancient tome, his words soft and measured in the otherwise echoey chamber.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“So why instead do I find the front page of every newspaper in the land adorned with headlines of the Target’s murder, a hitherto fruitful trail gone cold and myself owing favours to my counterpart in the DGSE for covering up your involvement and getting you back into the country undetected? And that’s before we go into the mechanics of creating a cover for why an MP’s Parliamentary assistant found herself in a Dover hospital being treated for a gunshot wound.”
Lake’s every syllable was invested with an obvious effort to contain a boiling and righteous anger and though Lucie bristled with resentment, she knew that he was right.
“A kiddie fiddler is dead; that’s something, isn’t it?”
“Oh, he very much is,” Lake nodded, “along with our leads on the rest of the ring. These people don’t operate alone, I made that very clear to you. And while it’s safe to say that the Calais orphans should be safe from these particular predators for a while, I doubt they’ll remain so forever. Had we been able to expose the whole trail then not only could we have brought them all down, the resultant publicity might well have provoked our various governments to do something about it. As it is, the children will remain in the forests to be picked off by whichever perverted opportunist is next on the list. I do hope you’r
e proud of yourself. Your actions may very well have condemned those children to death or worse. And what’s more, there’s a good chance that whoever was behind the kiddie trail was also connected to the Parliament Square bomb, a trail that has likewise now gone cold.”
Lake’s eyes continued to move across the ancient words inked onto the pages before him, as though his absorption of their detail was in no way diminished by the chastising of his agent alongside him.
Lucie could feel herself growing paler with each word the spy master spoke, guilt setting in. She hated Lake right now, but she knew there was at least some truth in his censure, and that her usual brand of sarcasm would in no way make up for her error in judgement, and so instead, she offered an apologetic, conciliatory tone.
“So, what do I do to make it right?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I mean nothing. There is nothing you, or anyone can do to correct your misjudgement. You erred, and people who have caused immense suffering will go unpunished because of it. How you learn to live with that is your own affair, but you must hope at least that no others will suffer or die because of your stupidity, although I would suggest that’s an unreasonable prospect.”
A blankness took hold of Lucie’s eyes, as though each word he spoke detached her a little further from reality, and she stared at him in silence, willing her voice to engage.
“There must…” her voice cracked, and she began her words again. “There must be something I can do.”
“Not on this case,” came the immediate, blithely delivered response. “Nor on any case in the field for that matter, at least until I can determine whether I made a mistake with you or not and whether your particular talents are so buried behind your own morality to be of any further use to me.”
“So, what? I’m on gardening leave or something? I want to help Algers look into Red Mako…”
Sealed With A Death Page 2