Fit For Purpose

by Julian D. Parrott

  Tom ran holding the Browning down by his side. The Russian’s boat had been poorly moored. Tom jumped up and on to the bow on the run. He kicked open the cabin’s front doors. They gave easily, wood splintered and glass smashed. The SVR agent, the driver, was in the cabin and registered surprise but was well trained enough to swing the Skorpian machine pistol into a firing position. He was a breath too slow as Tom fired twice. Both bullets caught the Russian around the heart, and he was thrown back onto one of the cabin’s bench seats. Tom was down on the cabin floor and fired five times through the thin plywood bulkhead that separated the lounge and kitchen from the bathroom and bedroom at the boat’s rear. Tom had fired knowing his nine-millimetre bullets would move through the thin cabin wall into the bathroom and on into the rear cabin with ease. He heard a grunt and the sound of a man folding in on himself. Tom changed his magazine and chambered a fresh round. He worked his way quickly through the narrow passageway and saw the crumpled Russian, the watcher, Tom recognised him from the White Swan, in the bathroom doorway. Tom squatted and checked the Russian’s pulse. Ropey, but he’d survive if he received medical attention. Tom picked up the man’s Makarov pistol and went up the stern steps. Kamenev wasn’t there, he wasn’t on the boat at all. Tom threw the Makarov into the dark canal.

  “Fuck,” he thought. He jumped down to the towpath and sprinted back towards the Periwinkle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He knew that Kamenev had outflanked him.

  The Periwinkle was moving at walking pace and had entered the narrow channel of the aqueduct. There wasn’t anyone at the tiller and the boat gently bounced into the canal’s sides but kept its slow forward momentum. Kamenev stepped out from the undergrowth and made his way to the Periwinkle. He kept his gun hand close by his side. As Kamenev approached the Periwinkle, Jack bounded off the narrowboat’s stern and, sensing the Russian’s evil intent, leapt up at him. She grabbed his left arm between her powerful jaws and bit down hard. The Russian shouted in pain and brought the butt of the heavy Makarov down on her skull. Jack bit deeper before Kamenev brought the butt down again. The terrier fell on to the towpath. The Russian thought about shooting the dog but instead kicked her with a curse. He made his way up on the stern and into the cabin. Nia emerged from the front cabin, she saw Kamenev and her face went white with fear. Kamenev took a quick step towards her and kicked her viciously in her stomach. Nia collapsed in shock and pain. She felt immediately sick as the pain burned and radiated through her body. Kamenev knelt down with one knee on her back and grabbed her by her thick hair pulling her head back painfully. Nia gasped for breath with a fresh trauma that was devastatingly familiar.

  ***

  Cottage Hospital, West Coast of Scotland, Eighteen Years Previously

  The pain was unbearable. Nia felt her insides stretch to a breaking point. She gasped for breath as an elderly nurse placed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. The strong plastic smell of the mask made her want to throw up. Then her insides were on fire. She felt her blood and life fluids coursing out of her body; warm, wet and sticky already pooling underneath her and across her thighs.

  “Please, stop it,” Nia screamed.

  It didn’t help. They all knew what was happening, she and the nurses, and the old doctor. The doctor shook his head sullenly.

  “There’s no foetal heartbeat,” he said.

  Nia’s physical pain was heightened by the emotional pain. The sense of loss was already overwhelming her.

  “Please no,” she wept to herself. She could taste the oxygen and then something metallic. She was drifting off into chemical fuzziness. Pitocin coursed through an IV into her veins. She was being induced but wasn’t ready to let go. She tried to grab her large tummy bump, but stronger hands held her back. The pain burned again. Nia heard the doctor tell the elderly, grey haired nurse that Nia was going to need some blood. Some disembodied voice told Nia to push while the doctor assisted with forceps. Nia was lost in a miasma of pain where she didn’t know where she ended and where it began.

  At some point the fog cleared and Nia was aware of her stillborn baby being placed on her chest. Nia looked at the baby and then turned away. Her visions of motherhood, of nursing and nurturing, of loving and being loved had been terribly wrenched from her. She sobbed for the lost baby, the lost husband, and for all the loss that had been distilled to this point. She cried with the pain. She cried with the knowledge her life would never be the same again. She cried with an understanding that her grief would be constant. A nurse took the baby away while another gave Nia yet another drug through her IV and then the darkness moved in like a shadow to fill all her empty spaces.

  ***

  Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, The Present

  The Periwinkle was moving slowly through the narrow iron trough of the aqueduct. Tom approached his boat at a run and saw Jack lying prone on the towpath. He could see the shallow fall and rise of her chest. He stopped running only when he saw Nia move onto the stern deck. Behind her, Kamenev emerged from the cabin holding the heavy Makarov at Nia’s back. Tom continued to walk towards the boat just yards in front of him. He could see the fear in Nia’s eyes.

  “My dear Major Price,” Kamenev said in his impeccable Oxbridge English. “I am so pleased you could join our little coterie. Please do absent yourself from the nasty weapon you’re holding.”

  Tom placed his pistol down on the towpath. He continued to walk very slowly at the side of the boat. Tom’s eyes, unblinking, drilled into Kamenev’s skull. The SVR man continued.

  “We have come across each other twice now, Major Price. There won’t be a third time.”

  He raised the Makarov towards the general area of Tom’s chest and smiled. He then slowly swung the gun to point to Nia.

  “Would it be more painful for you to catch a couple of bullets or for you to lose your actress whore?” the Russian smiled evilly.

  Tom dived backwards towards the Browning. Kamenev was fast and fired twice. Startled crows took to the air from the trees on the valley floor below the aqueduct. The first shot had splintered harmlessly off the towpath but the second went through Tom’s left shoulder blade. Still, the prone Tom continued to inch forward, his right arm reaching for his gun. Kamenev smiled as he took careful aim. Nia was paralyzed with fear as she watched Tom belly crawl along the towpath with the expanding bloom of blood on his back.

  “Major Price has cost me everything,” Kamenev said to Nia. He looked over his left shoulder at her with a smile that sickened her. “I’d be too generous to give him a quick death. This man caused this.” Kamenev waved the heavy pistol in front of his face. “He deserves a painful end.”

  Kamenev fired at Tom catching him high in the left arm. Tom stopped moving. He lay on the towpath and Nia didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. A police siren sounded somewhere in the middle distance. Kamenev turned to face Nia.

  “Ah well, my dear, unfortunately events conspire to prematurely bring my bit of fun to an end.” He smiled, “Him first, you second okay?”

  Kamenev swung around to face Tom, now some distance back down the towpath, just as the drifting Periwinkle banged heavily into the canal’s iron side. The boat appeared to shudder and the Russian wobbled off balance and lowered his gun. Nia’s paralysis of fear finally broke. Instinctually she screamed and punched out at Kamenev catching him heavily in the throat. He gagged and reached for his neck with both hands. In a move practiced hundreds of times in her cardio-boxing class, Nia shifted her weight and kicked him in the groin. Kamenev doubled over, stumbled, stepped backwards on to the stern deck’s low gunwale and tripped off the boat, off the aqueduct and into thin air.

  The valley floor lay calm and quiet one hundred and twenty feet below. The annoyed crows settled back onto their perches even as sirens grew louder and closer.

  ***

  The aqueduct’s towpath was full of people. Tom, still on his stomach, drifted in and out of consciousness. Police were everywhere. He knew he was being worked on by a pair of paramedics. He was awa
re of Nia kneeling next to him holding his right hand. The old towpath walker was at Nia’s side.

  “Nia,” Tom said weakly. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  Nia smiled wanly and squeezed his hand. “Oh Tom,” she said through tears.

  “You going to be okay?” asked the walker.

  “I think so,” Tom grunted in reply. He felt Nia squeeze his hand.

  Tom heard the unmistakable sound of rotor blades and was aware of an air ambulance landing somewhere nearby as the paramedics continued to work on him.

  “What’s that for?” Tom asked one of the paramedics.

  “That’s for you mate.”

  “Really? I hate those fucking things,” Tom said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Hospital Room, Wrexham

  Tom was coming out of the anaesthetic from his surgery. His vision was cloudy and his thinking fuzzy. He began to focus; Nia was sitting next to his bed. He smiled at her. She had been crying and she looked pallid, tired and drawn.

  “Nia,” he said. “Thank God you’re here. You look beautiful.”

  “Tom,” she said simply. She smiled.

  Tom began to focus and noticed a doctor at the foot of the bed and behind her a high-ranking police officer and a middle-aged woman with a severe hairstyle and a well-cut business suit. The deputy director from Thames House. Tom thought he had smelled MI5 even before his eyes opened. The doctor, a young south Asian Muslim woman wearing a hijab, turned and told the visitors that they could now talk to Tom. The police officer asked Nia to leave the room and he nodded towards the doctor who left as well.

  The DD sat in the chair that Nia had just vacated.

  “How’s my dog?” Tom asked quickly.

  “Err…” the DD turned to the police officer.

  “At a local vet. Concussion and requiring some stiches I understand,” said the police officer. “But a full recovery expected,” he added.

  Tom smiled and relaxed with the news.

  “Now then,” the DD began. “Tell me what the hell just went on.”

  Outside Tom’s room, Nia sat in the waiting lounge with the doctor who again confirmed that Tom should now make a full and complete recovery from the bullet wounds. Tom had lost a considerable amount of blood, his left lung had collapsed, his scapula had been broken, and there was a fair amount of tissue damage to back, chest, and arm. It would be just a matter of rest and time, the doctor told Nia reassuringly. Nia was relieved but a fear continued to gnaw at her.

  For nearly twenty years Nia had shut herself down emotionally, never allowing herself to feel content, denying herself deep and meaningful personal connection. The loss of her almost full-term baby had left her with a void that she had refused to fill in an act of self-flagellation, an act of displaced penance. Once, she had retreated into work, into her empty house, into herself. There, she had avoided hurt and pain but had sacrificed what it meant to feel, what it meant to be whole. Then Tom had blundered and stammered into her life and had brought her joy. He brought a love that she had never experienced. But then, she considered, he’d brought deceit, pain and he had brought death. He had lied to her. She didn’t know how to deal with the maelstrom of conflicted emotions that were spinning in her head. She only knew how to retreat from them. Nia knew how to walk away, it was what she always did.

  Nia went into the small bathroom that was adjacent to the lounge. She washed her face and ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at herself in the bathroom’s mirror. She was pale and her dark eyes were red rimmed. She took deep breaths, determined to get into character. It began to feel natural, muscle memory took over, the moments before stepping on stage or in front of a camera she was able to disassociate her thinking and her body from her real self. She watched her face in the mirror change subtly, but enough. Her eyes appeared to darken, as if the light that had so recently burnt there for Tom was extinguished. He lied to her. She shook her hair so it fell in an unfamiliar style, she let curls fall over her face. She straightened her body almost unnaturally and held the position, she smoothed her sweater over her hips. She stepped out of the toilet in character.

  Nia waited in the lounge for the MI5 women to leave Tom’s room. She sat, straight backed with her hands folded in her lap. The DD, her assistant and the high-ranking police officer emerged and walked quickly past Nia. The DD slowed momentarily, turned and told Nia that MI5 would contact her soon for an interview back in London at Thames House. Nia nodded but then looked down at her hand and missed the DD’s return nod and slight smile. The police constable on station outside of Tom’s room nodded to Nia as she entered the hospital room. She smiled weakly and took the seat on the left side of Tom’s bed. It was still warm. Tom’s left arm, chest and shoulder were heavily bandaged, and tubes and wires appeared to link him to a number of beeping and flashing machines. He brightened visibly when Nia came in. He was glad to have some alone time with her, to catch up. To move on together.

  “Aw fuck, Nia,” he began. “I had no idea all this would happen. I’m so sorry that you had to go through all that. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you about that bastard Zalkind/Kamenev and about what happened in London. But I thought it was all over and done with. I never expected any of this kind of thing to happen.”

  Nia turned to him and with as much steely determination she could muster. Tom watched her face and felt his stomach hollow.

  “Yes, Tom,” Nia said through clenched teeth. “You bloody well should have told me. You’ve lied to me. Something you said you would never do. It was the only thing I asked of you Tom, not to lie to me.”

  A horrible fear gripped him.

  Nia knew she was playing a part and she wanted to transform herself into a character to temporarily divorce herself from the very real emotions, the crushing emptiness that was beginning to envelope her. Nia needed to imagine that those icy tendrils of pain and loss and heartbreak that were already enfolding her were not actually hers.

  “Tom, I don’t feel that I know you. What you did to the muggers in London and to the Russians on the canal, it’s like you are some kind of terminator.” Nia paused and stared down at her hands resting on her lap knowing she needed to avoid looking into Tom’s eyes. “Look, I think things have moved so quickly for us. Maybe too fast,” her voice was flat, devoid of warmth and intonation.

  “No wait, Nia,” Tom reached over with his right hand for her hand but Nia didn’t take it. Pain shot through the left side of his body. “Please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I think we need to take a break. We got too serious before I could feel that I really know you. And, after all this, I don’t really know who you are. You never told me about your parents’ death, you lied to me about the Russians you ran into in London. You kept a gun on your boat Tom. You killed a man and shot another one. You’re some kind of hunter killer. I saw that side of you, Tom, a different side of you, and I can’t get my head around that. It scared me. You scared me, damn it. I know you’re hurting but you have hurt me, Tom.”

  Tom saw the pain on her face and stopped himself pointing out that she, too, had killed someone.

  “I never, ever meant to hurt you. That was the last thing I ever, ever wanted to do, Nia,” Tom said his voice cracking. “I was trying to protect you. I love you.”

  “I thought I loved you,” Nia lied. “But now I’m not sure and I need to take some time. I need some time for myself.”

  “Nia, you can’t mean any of this. We have something, you and I, and, and… I know you love me. Don’t do this.”

  “Tom, you’re a nice guy. I told you some time ago that I’m not a nice person that I’m selfish, that I have no time for other people. That I burn through people, Tom. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is. That’s the way I am.” Her eyes welled but she struggled to maintain control as she got up to go.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Tom pleaded.

  Nia felt she had to leave, or she’d break down and take it all back. Her voi
ce wavered, she wanted to take it back but then she summed up some steely determination from the depth of her actor’s training.

  “Look, give me some time to get my head around all this and I’ll get back in touch,” she said. “We’ll talk more then.”

  Tom stared at Nia, but she lowered her head and avoided his eyes. “You once told me that no one can hurt you like the people you love,” Tom said, the pain obvious in his faltering voice.

  Nia turned at the door.

  “I love you Nia. I always will,” Tom said and then she was gone.

  Nia walked quickly down the hospital corridor with tears rolling down her face. What have I done? she thought, and the thought reverberated in her head.

  Tom laid back on the hard hospital bed. He was shocked and confused. What the bloody hell had just happened?

  Before Nia, Tom had been emotionally spent, full to the brim with pain and sadness and sorrow with no space left for anything else. Then Nia had wafted elegantly into his life and had taken the broken pieces of him and rebuilt him as strong and resilient as a dry-stone wall. She had shown him that his capacity for emotional connectivity was infinite. Or at least it was until Nia walked out of his hospital room and out of his life. He felt utterly incapacitated.

  ***

  London, February 28th

  Nia had returned from the hospital to her London home and retreated to her bed and then her study. She couldn’t bear to look at the painting of the Periwinkle and removed it from her study’s wall. She ignored calls and texts from her friends, even from Jane. Nia cried frequently. She regretted what she said in the hospital and how she had said it. She called the hospital for updates on Tom’s recovery. She drafted a desperate apologetic text to Tom but deleted it.