Sealed With A Death

by James Silvester

  With each word Butcher spoke, Lucie realised all the more clearly that he meant what he was saying, as though he were narrating a delusional fantasy playing out before his own eyes. Had she not seen the fruits of his efforts first hand, she might even have pitied him, but the indignities she and the others had suffered because of him had taken her way beyond that. Instead, she fought through her fatigue and looked him directly in the eye.

  “Maybe it is,” she answered. “But then, some men never could handle their drink.”

  Butcher’s face twisted into hatred and as he levelled his gun at her, Lucie braced herself for the shot.

  It never came. As he poised to fire, arms reached around the MP, knocking the gun from his hand and wrestling him to the floor.

  Butcher heaved and strained, trying to topple the pilot and throw him off balance, Lucie joining the fray to force the politician back down to the floor. At her feet lay the gun, and the desire to break her pledge ignited immediately within her, but instead she kicked it back towards the pilot.

  “Grab it!” she ordered the pilot, who scooped it from the floor and scrambled to his feet, levelling it at Butcher, who raised himself up to his knees, his face twisted with rage.

  “Thanks,” breathed Lucie to the perspiring man.

  “Autopilot?”

  “Yes, but we’re low on fuel, I’ll need to get back there.”

  “Let me get him restrained,” she answered.

  Lucie ducked into the galley, returning with scissors she used to cut through lengths of seatbelt, intending to fashion restraints for the sneering Butcher.

  “Where are we, over the Channel?”

  “Yes, Miss. When you’ve finished up with this one, I’ll turn us around.”

  “Do you think they’ll thank you?” Butcher sneered.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You’ve won the day, you’ve saved your little litter of foreign bitches, you’ve got me bang-to-rights and no-one’s going to be firing any chemicals into Yemen, at least not from our platforms now. Oh, there’ll be some lovely headlines tomorrow for somebody, but not for you. You’re a spy, an operative; there won’t be any headlines for you, no recognition, even though you’re the one responsible. You know, I don’t think I could do anything without having somebody praise me for it…”

  “Like a roomful of women abused and tortured into fawning over you? I don’t need that kind of recognition.”

  “Well that’s good. Because while tomorrow might bring good headlines, the day after is when they’ll start looking at the cost.”

  “What cost?”

  “You know what cost,” Butcher chuckled. “Women rescued, yeah great! But why all the effort to save foreigners, when so many crimes against British people are unsolved. Humanitarian crisis averted, wonderful! But at the cost of one of the most valuable contracts this country has seen in years. Your little victory hasn’t solved anything, and in a few days the papers will be blaming everything on foreigners again and screaming for the heads of federalist traitors like you. We’ll be closer than ever to purging ourselves of your kind for good. And that’s really all we wanted.”

  “Who, Butcher?” Lucie snapped, ignoring his diatribe despite the uncomfortable ring of truth it contained. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  Butcher’s eyes narrowed and his smirk twitched in condescension.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I can’t remember.”

  Lucie stared back at the unrepentant man, both his smugness and his pride in what he had done twisting a knot in her stomach. Her straps were ready, and she pulled them tight in her hands and she stepped closer.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know someone in London who’s particularly good at helping people like you remember. Ordinarily I’d find any reason I could not to make such an introduction, but I admit, in your case it’ll be a pleasure.”

  Crossing towards him, Lucie felt the shudder of turbulence rock the cabin, and she braced herself to keep upright. The pilot’s concentration though was broken, and he turned his head for a second back towards the cockpit, Butcher seizing his chance and twisting to knock the gun from the pilot’s hand. Lucie charged for him, but the politician was already swinging towards her, his fist connecting hard with her temple and sending her sprawling across the cabin, the sound of gunshots ringing in her ears.

  The blow knocked her senses from her. The wail and cry of charging wind filled her ears, bringing her back from the brink of oblivion and she shook the stars from her eyes and scanned the cabin, her eyes falling on the body of the pilot, a fresh bullet wound in his head. Sparks flew from the cockpit, where other bullets had been fired, the jet stuttering in indignant response.

  Butcher stood by the cabin door his features twisted into unbreakable mania. The politician had thrown open the door of the falling craft, letting the sky rush furiously inside to claim it as its own, scattering papers and folders throughout the cabin. Scrambling to her feet and struggling for balance in the unstable jet, Lucie found Butcher’s gun training steadily on her. Adjusting his balance, the MP reached above himself and opened the storage locker, fishing out the five parachutes it contained, and throwing the first four towards the open door, where they began their descent into the Channel below. The last chute, he retained, his perpetual sneer twitching as he hooked the strap over his gun arm and slid it over his shoulder.

  “The Twitter mob used to laugh at me when I told them I was in the TA,” he smugly recounted. “But it wasn’t only picnics in the woods we got up to; we did parachute training too.”

  “Ooh,” Lucie mocked, “I hope you got a badge for it.”

  “Funny, funny bitch. I’m sorry I won’t get to see how funny you find it when you land.”

  “Where do you think you can go, Butcher?” Lucie shouted over the rushing wind.

  “It’s a big world out there,” he sneered. “Time for me to global! Whereas for you, it’s just time to go.”

  Panic began to rise in Lucie’s gut as she looked around for an exit, some way out of this which refused to reveal itself to her. Her passions once more threatened to cloud her judgement, and she could feel her heart beat rapidly in fear.

  “There’s no getting out of this one for you,” smirked Butcher as he pulled the harness tight around him. “You’d better say those prayers you’re so fond of.”

  The clouds of emotion pushed back, Lucie had waited patiently for her moment, for the mistake her mind had told her would come, and now it did. The harness sat unclipped on Butcher’s back, waiting to be fastened into place.

  “I’ve prayed enough for the both of us already today,” she grimly replied. “You might want to try one of your own; it’s best to go with a clear conscience.”

  “Go?” he snorted with derision. “Oh, I plan on hanging around for a good while yet, so forgive me if I don’t take up your offer quite now.”

  “No rush,” she answered, her eyes narrowing in determination as Butcher lowered his gun to clip the harness together. “It’s a long way down.”

  The weapon no longer on her, Lucie pushed away from the desk and with every last ounce of energy she could muster, charged herself headlong into the shocked Butcher, knocking the gun from his hand and him through the beckoning cabin door. His protestations were drowned at once by the rush of wind assaulting them as they tumbled from the rapidly falling jet that began to dip into its death spiral. She locked her arms and legs intransigently around the shocked and struggling politician.

  A screaming Butcher tried to shake her loose, and she gripped all the more tightly as they tumbled, her knuckles whitening and her muscles straining as she held them together into a mutually assured fate.

  Lucie had jumped before, in her RAF days, and the barked lessons of her instructors sounded once more in her mind, berating her for not controlling the descent ahead of deployment. They were falling too quickly for her to comply with the orders of memory, there was no way she could release her grip to settle them into a glide and free-fall, and
Butcher himself was clawing and biting too feverishly to do it himself, his writhing and squirming bestial in its ferocity.

  Wrenching her head back from his chest Lucie looked into cruel, wild eyes, devoid of any trace of reason or sanity, the howling wind lending him a monstrous quality as though he were some undead wraith, scratching and tearing at his prey. Thrusting forward, her forehead smashed against Butcher’s nose, bespattering them both with his blood and sending it spritzing into the air pockets they tumbled through. The blow’s effects were exactly as Lucie had hoped, Butcher’s hands releasing her and clutching his face, giving her the precious seconds she needed to act. Squeezing her legs tighter still around him and digging her fingers into the flesh of his shoulder, she let her other hand slip free just long enough to pull down on the ripcord, the canopy unfurling in a tumultuous second, pushing them back up with such force that Lucie was shaken from her precarious clutch and she scrambled and snatched to reclaim it. Jarred by the canopy’s release, Butcher clung onto the risers in panic, kicking out at the displaced Lucie, who clenched her arms unyieldingly around him while her legs were blown and buffeted in the air.

  She had deployed in time, but Lucie knew it was insufficient to totally soften the rough landing ahead. The choppy sea was still settling from the jet’s entry a distance away, and as their glide took them closer to the foam, Lucie could have sworn the waters were reaching out to claim them. With seconds to go, she swung her legs upwards and closed them around Butcher’s calves, leaving his ankles to strike the hard water and break their fall. The politician had barely opened his mouth to scream before they plunged into the depths, salt water filling their mouths and stinging their eyes.

  Lucie pulled herself away from the struggling man and surfaced, heaving air into her lungs and trying to shake the disorientation from her brain. Neither the fall nor the water had diluted her anger and she watched the struggling man as he fought to free himself of the canopy and tread water with battered ankles, bellowing at the wind as he flailed. They were both dead now, she knew it. The waters were freezing and demanded their submission, and she knew she would relent soon enough. She may not be able to bring Ines back, but she could at least ensure her killer went out knowing who had sent him on his way and why.

  Butcher surfaced and heaved air desperately into his lungs, but as he struggled with the spent chute, he was unprepared for the tug of cords against his throat. Lucie pulled on the lines, twisting them around the soft flesh, Butcher grasping fruitlessly to free himself.

  “I hope you’ve made your peace with The Lord,” Lucie spat into his ear as she tugged harder, “because we’ve been invited round to see Him, and I wouldn’t want us to be late.”

  She pulled Butcher under the waves with her, pulling with all her strength until his struggles faded, and his thrashing limbs grew limp. At once she despised herself and she whispered unheard apologies to her victim as she surfaced, surrendering him to the water. She should have found a better way, but once more she had given in to the emotions that raged within her, and now there was so little time to repent.

  The sea was pushing its way into her lungs, her mouth filled with the overpowering taste of salt and her voice powerless against the water. There was no point in shouting; there was nobody even to shout to, only the damning voice inside her head that she, a supposed woman of God, had made murder the final act of her life. Her arms and legs began to fall limp, ceasing their unwinnable struggle against the might of the waves, and allowing themselves to instead be rocked to their rest in their watery embrace. She was struggling to think any more and had almost forgotten why she was there. Her memory of why she had murdered was fading, but so was her guilt for it. Yes, she had killed, but that wasn’t her final act. She had saved people too, people who would now have pains and sorrows and loves and joys they would have been robbed of without her. Where they had death, they now had life, and if the price of their freedom was the loss of her life then fair enough, she could think of worse ways to go. The damning voice had gone, replaced by a sense of peace and reassurance that things would be okay. She was sorry that she had killed, sorry that she hadn’t found some other way to save the killer from himself, but violence would not be her final thought. Instead, as she gave in to the flirtations of the sea, her final thoughts would be of love.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The vaulted, octagonal grandeur of Parliament’s central lobby was filled as much with ego as with people; esteemed Members of all Parties quick to catch a brief exchange with the influential and the powerful, while scurrying twice as fast from those constituents who prowled the hall with spleens to vent and axes to grind. Lucie’s eyes were drawn through the puffing and preening figures and past the huddled groups of whispering plotters, towards the tall, grey haired figure of Kasper Algers, who stood apart from the horde.

  The fall from the plane and the battering of the sea had left her in a stupor, her senses addled before finally giving in to the engulfing waves and her own unconsciousness, fully expecting her next breath to be drawn in eternity. Instead, it had been on a fishing trawler, wondering why she had responded by vomiting sea water onto herself and him. It had taken several days of hospital observation before she had been deemed recovered, during which time she had received a parcel from Algers, containing a brand-new black overcoat, and a stack of newspapers. Following an accident at WaterWhyte Defence, the papers informed her, and allegations of chemical misuse appearing in the foreign press, the Red Mako project had been suspended pending review, while the Saudi government refused to comment. Adam Butcher himself had died in tragic circumstances when his private jet had crashed into the English Channel leaving no survivors. Butcher’s estate denied in full all ‘spurious allegations’ of involvement on his part of the abduction of six women, now receiving professional care and expected to make full recoveries.

  Her strength returning, Lucie had checked herself out and headed back to London in time for the ‘Urgent Question’ about the fiasco, tabled by the Opposition, the word being that Jarvis Whyte, devastated both by his company’s involvement and his own blindness, was to intercede to ensure the matter was not swept under the carpet. Having spotted her friend and mentor, Lucie pushed past some of the Commons’ more lethargic Members and raced up to meet him, unaware at first that her own smile was every bit as wide as the one that appeared on his wrinkled face as he spotted her.

  Their embrace was swift but sincere, earning the tuts of some of the more priggish passers-by, whom Lucie imagined were not so superior on their visits to the trial ‘Establishments’ now also under review.

  “You’re looking well,” Algers smiled.

  “I could say the same,” she answered. “Thanks for the coat, by the way.”

  “No problem, can’t have you catching cold when we’re hunkered down looking for bad guys.”

  She looked away, the memory of her promise to Ismail to give up this work tugging at her gut.

  “I suppose not,” she said. “What happened?”

  “After your impromptu sky dive, you mean?” he asked, winking at her. “I wish I could say I rode in to save the day, but quite honestly the answer is luck. The trawler that picked you up was in the area and witnessed the crash, but by the time they made it over, Butcher was already dead.”

  “Wish I could say I was sorry,” Lucie muttered.

  “The pilot’s body was recovered with a bullet hole in his head.”

  “That was Butcher.”

  “I didn’t doubt it,” Algers answered, his voice low and grave, “but don’t expect to see that in the papers.”

  “And Butcher?”

  “At the moment people think he died in the crash, whether that changes will be up to Lake, I suppose. He’s had the autopsy done in secret; the poor bugger got tangled up in his parachute cables apparently. Is that what really happened?”

  “If that’s what the autopsy says,” Lucie answered, her face making clear she had no wish to discuss the matter any further. “He wasn’t
the only one, though. Al-Khatani was up to his neck in it too, it’s not fair he gets away with it.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Algers smiled. “Our friend Mr Whyte is so racked with guilt by all this that he had a quiet word with his good friend, the Saudi Ambassador, who it seems is very keen on deflecting attention from his country’s human rights record. He swears that his government had no knowledge of or involvement with any chemical weapons programme, and that any such allegations should be laid solely at the door of Al-Khatani himself.”

  “And?”

  “And, I understand that he will shortly be taking a trip to explain his actions face to face with the people of Yemen; I’m told that several people there are very anxious to meet him.”

  “Ah,” Lucie acknowledged in perverse satisfaction. “Bon voyage.”

  As she spoke, a brief but profound hush came over the hall, marking the arrival of Jarvis Whyte, himself. Ignoring the clamber of the journalists who badgered him for comment, Whyte strode with purpose across the lobby towards the Commons, pausing as he reached Lucie and Algers. Turning his head briefly towards her, he offered an understated and silent nod of the head; a gesture which seemed curiously anachronistic now but which in the past would have been considered the act of a gentleman. Without waiting for a response, he continued his journey into the Commons, politicians of all hues following in his wake as he drank deeply from the bottle of water he always carried before speaking in the House.

  “Funny,” Algers mused as they watched him go. “Reading out his political suicide note might just be the most effective and honourable thing he’s ever done as an MP.”

  “At least he’ll be remembered for trying to set the record straight.”

  “Maybe…”

  He grinned widely at her, then began to pull away to join the trail of Parliamentarians heading into the chamber. “Catch you after the statement, yeah?”

  “Kasper!” Lucie shouted after him as turned away.