by Ian Rankin
There was little conversation during the drive. For one thing, the engine was too noisy, the whole interior of the car seeming to vibrate, and for another, no one seemed in the mood for speaking. Miles could feel his back cloying with sweat, his hair prickling. Yes, this was a foreign country, everything out of kilter, just as Chesterton had said. So, as though he really were on a roller coaster, Miles gritted his teeth and sat back, determination replacing the fear in his stomach, his eyes narrowed so that he would have to take in only very little of what was happening and what was about to happen.
Although he could not be said to be an expert on the scale and geography of Northern Ireland, it did seem to him that they had traveled a good long way south. Of course, there might have been several twistings and turnings toward east and west. They could be anywhere. All the same, their destination was supposed to be due south of Belfast, and now that he thought about it, “south of Belfast” had come with ominous vagueness from Six’s mouth. How far south exactly? He had heard of border raids, but only rumors. Of course mistakes had been made by patrols in the past. But this was different, wasn’t it?
“Nearly there,” roared Six. He rolled down his window and waved with his hand, signaling this information to the van. One of the slices of bread sandwiching Miles slipped the pistol out of his jacket and gave it a quick check.
“Browning,” he explained, weighing the gun in his palm and smiling. Why did they all smile? Miles remembered that monkeys smiled when afraid, but there was no fear in these men. They were about to enjoy themselves. They had been built with this operation in mind, and now they were about to be made very happy indeed. Yes, these were knowing smiles, and Miles, despite his every effort, could not make himself smile back.
It was as cold as a tomb, a deep freeze, a mortuary: as cold as all the images of stasis and lifelessness that were conjured in Miles Flint’s head. It was dark, too, but his fevered mind hadn’t got round to cataloging similes for darkness yet. The six men walked slightly ahead of him, though they glanced back often to make sure that he was still with them and had not glided off into the night.
The factory was a small, self-contained unit within a cluster of about a dozen, the site itself seeming new, doubtless part of some regeneration program for the economy. There was a light on in the small office. Six had explained the layout to them in enormous detail. A front door led directly into the office. There was a larger warehouse entrance, but it would be locked at night. Entrance to the factory could be gained only through the office. If they made a run for it, they would run into the factory, a small hangar of a place, equipped with two fire exits. Three would cover one of these exits, Four the other. They branched off now, at the entrance to the site, and made their way around to the back of the buildings. Only one of the factory units was lit.
“That’s our baby,” said Six, breathing good deep breaths. He looked ready to swim the channel. Then he drew out his pistol, some huge, anonymous, nonregulation model. It glinted metal-blue in the faint light from the office window. He didn’t look like a swimmer anymore. He looked ready to club some seals.
“Let’s go, gentlemen,” he whispered.
They did not rush the door, not until they were one step away from it. Six knocked once, and opened the door with split- second force. One was right behind him, gun trained, and the two RUC men stepped in afterward, leaving Miles to walk through the door last, last and unarmed, as though he were in charge. Three men stood behind a desk, gawping at him. Their hands were above their heads, and on the table lay some plans. To Miles they looked like the blueprints of some piece of circuitry.
“We’d better have those,” snarled Six, and one of the rather timid-looking RUC men lifted the plans and began to roll them up.
“Who the hell are you?” shouted one of the men behind the desk. Miles recognized him as the more handsome of the two men in the photographs. He was wearing the clothes in his description, but his tie hung loosely around his neck. He looked every inch the harassed businessman, with orders to be dispatched and deadlines to meet.
“Never mind that,” said Six in an even more Irish accent than he had used with Miles and the others. He pointed toward the third man with his finger, his gun hand steadily trained upon the handsome businessman. “Who the hell are you?”
This third man was somewhat older than the others. He looked ready to expire at any moment. Innocence was written on his face in pale, trembling letters.
“I’m Macdonald,” he managed to say at last. “Dicky Macdonald. I ordered some circuit boards. I just . . .I mean, this hasn’t got anything to do with me, whatever it is. Jesus, I’ve a wife and kids. Have the lads not been paying their protection money, is that it? I’ve not—”
“Mr. Macdonald,” said Six, “will you please go outside. Two, look after Mr. Macdonald. Get him into his car and get him away from here.”
Two nodded, relieved to be going back outside. The office, despite the cold coming in through the open door, was stuffy with fumes. A portable gas fire burned away furiously in one corner.
“Cozy,” said Six, his voice almost a whisper. “I mean, the whole setup’s cozy.”
“Look, pal, what’s this all about?” This came from the other man, his voice quieter than that of his partner, but his eyes infinitely wilder.
“This is about bomb-making, this is about the murder of innocents and of Her Majesty’s forces, this is about the two of you.”
“You’re right out of order,” said the handsome one.
“You’re over the damned border!” shouted the other one, confirming Miles’s worst fears. His eyes were burning, but those of Six burned right back at him. “The bloody English army! I don’t believe it. You’re way out of your territory. You better get the hell out of here. This is an international incident!”
“Listen to it, would you?” said One, speaking for the first time, and in a voice as cold as his gun. “A terrorist calling this an outrage.”
“They never learn, do they?” the handsome one said to the wild-eyed. “They think they can do whatever they like.”
Miles knew for the first time that he was about to witness an execution. Reason demanded it. They could not cross the border and take these men back: there would be too many questions at the trial, accusations, witnesses (Macdonald for one), and the shit would hit the fan all around the world. Nobody had any intention of letting that happen. This was an assassination run, and he was right here in the middle of it. He wanted to speak, but his jaw muscles would not move. He felt paralyzed, like the prey of some insidious and poisonous insect.
“Seven?” said Six, and it took Miles fully a second to realize that he was being addressed.
“Yes?”
“Come here, would you?”
“Are you in charge here?” said wild-eyed. Then, to Six, “Is he in charge?”
It was only when One laughed, a low, heartless chuckle, that Miles knew for certain that he was in trouble, though really he supposed that he had had some inkling all along. They were about to incriminate him in the act. They were going to make him fire the shots.
But I’m a watchman, he wanted to shout. That’s all, I just watch, I don’t do. Someone else always does the doing, not me, never me.
Instead of which he shuffled forward, his legs full of sand and water, noticing several things as he moved: the girlie calendar on the wall, the fact that one window and one door of the office led inward, right into the factory itself, the sheen of animal fear on the faces of everyone, and the facts of his isolation and his unfitness to be here at all. Throughout his adult life, he had trained himself to blend in, to be anonymous and invisible, and now these men were destroying his life’s work. They were turning him into the main attraction.
And then the pistol was pointing at him.
While the look on Six’s face said everything there was to say about domination and betrayal.
“Will you go and stand with these gentlemen, please?”
“What the h
ell is this?” Miles tried to sound amused, realizing deep within himself that this was no joke.
“Will you go and stand with these gentlemen, please?”
“Do what you’re told, prick!” This came from One, who was laughing again, clearly a man upon whom no trick had ever been played. He had the look of a machine, preprogrammed for this moment.
Miles’s head was spinning.
“There’s been some terrible—” But the words seemed far too vague and inadequate.
“Some terrible mistake?” mimicked Six. “No, there’s been no mistake. The orders were unambiguous. Orders always are. These two”—waving his gun at the terrorists—“and you.”
“Whose orders?” Miles was trying to think fast, while half his mind tried to control his suddenly aching bladder.
“There’s no mistake, Mr. Scott, honestly.” Six was speaking very gently.
“My name’s not Scott. It’s Miles Flint. You can check that.”
Again, very quietly, “There’s been no mistake.”
Three of them in front of the desk. Three behind.
“Get it over with,” said handsome.
“Patience, Collins,” said Six. “It’s not every day we get to execute someone.”
One was about to laugh again, his stomach distending and his head arching back, and Miles was opening his arms to make another attempt at explanation, when the wild-eyed man heaved the desk with sudden fierceness onto its side, sending Six and One off balance. The handsome man opened the door into the factory, while his counterpart made a spectacularly clumsy dive through the window. After an almost fatal second’s hesitation, Miles followed them, and the first shot flew an inch above his head.
In the darkness of the factory, there was nothing to do but survive for the moment. Every second he stayed alive now was a bonus. He slipped behind some machinery, ran through a maze of what appeared to be lathes, then crouched. He breathed hard, summoning up all the adrenaline he could, and shook his head to clear it of dizziness and any lingering indecision. That pause back there had nearly cost him his life. For the moment he could think of no way out, but he was not dead: that was a start.
He heard One, Six, and the spare RUC man come into the darkness, quite close to him but not too close. There were two fire exits, but both were covered from outside. The shot would have alerted the two men keeping watch. He was as trapped as a baited badger.
A shot rang out suddenly from the other end of the building, and Miles heard One screech, “They’ve got guns!”
Good for them.
“Find a light switch,” hissed Six. “Must be around here.”
“Or maybe back in the office,” whispered One. “We want to kill the lights in there anyway. We’re sitting targets while they’re on.”
“Right, Five, slip back into the office.”
“Why me?” Five sounded in some distress. Miles judged that if he were going to move farther away, then this confusion was offering him his best cover. The problem, of course, was that in moving farther away from the assassins, he was moving closer to the enemy, who might mistake him for their foe. A badger had never been so baited.
His eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, he moved silently forward, bent double, watching the floor so that he did not bang his feet against anything metallic. Noise would travel far in here.
Rather than traveling in a straight line toward the opposite wall, he moved around the edge of the interior, staying well out of any stray bullet’s way. Perhaps there was another means of exit, but he thought not: the planning had been immaculate, well, almost immaculate. His pounding heart was proof of a slipup. Six would be hoping that the slipup was temporary. So would One. Miles did not fancy having to tackle either of them on the issue.
And then, coming around one corner, he found the mouth of a pistol staring him in the face.
“I think I’m on your side,” he whispered. The handsome one put his finger to his lips and motioned for him to follow.
Wild-eyed was crouching behind a bench. He ignored Miles.
“They’ve got both fire exits covered,” Miles told handsome, “and they’re trying to turn on the lights in here.” He felt a shiver in his abdomen: he was betraying his country, and it felt good. He remembered fights he had been in, drunken half brawls at university. He had to relearn that old aggression, and fast.
“Then we’d better get out before that happens,” said handsome, “otherwise they’ll pick us off no trouble at all.”
“Give it a few more seconds,” said wild-eyed, “give the bastards outside time to relax again. If they heard the shots, they’ll be as jumpy as a bitch in heat.”
Looking behind him, Miles saw the faint outline of one fire exit. There was a bar halfway up the door that had to be pushed, and the door would open easily. It was a godsend, really, for the quickness with which it could be opened would, with a little luck, surprise those waiting outside.
Wild-eyed looked at Miles. “There’s no time for questions now,” he spat, “but there’ll be plenty for you to answer afterward. You come with us, or you stay behind. Suit yourself. I couldn’t give a monkey’s.”
And with that he leaped to his feet and threw himself at the door, beginning to fire off shots as he went.
“Keep low when you run,” called handsome, running after his friend, and Miles, still crouching, followed like a circus monkey out into the cool fresh air.
Where no RUC men awaited him. A shot came from their left, and wild-eyed and handsome returned the fire, still running. The RUC men were covering the wrong exits. They had gone to the adjoining unit!
There is a God, Miles screamed to himself as he ran through the long grass, there is a sweet Jesus Christ and he loves me, he loves me, he loves me!
But another shot, whinnying past him from the factory, brought wild-eyed down onto his face.
Leave him, thought Miles, watching handsome run on, never glancing back. Then he stopped thinking altogether and concentrated on running for his life.
They crossed a landscaped border of soil and small trees, and then a road. And after that a field, the soil heavy underfoot, trying to suck his weary feet down. Hide here, it said, hide under me. But Miles kept on running. There was an explosion behind him: the factory. Flames lit the sky.
Over the fence, trousers snagged and torn, then a pasture, and finally a clump of trees with a glade, a lovely spot for a picnic. He had gone past the collapsed figure of his fellow runner before he noticed him. He brought his legs to a juddering halt and fell to his knees. His lungs felt like the stoked boiler of a steam train, and his mouth was full of a sticky saliva which, when he attempted to spit it out, clung to his lips and his tongue, so that in the end he had to wipe it away with his sleeve. He rubbed his hands over the wet grass and licked the palms, feeling the moisture refresh him.
And seemed to pass out for a time, lying on his back, while the trees and the sky whirled above him, restless, never stopping, like some automated children’s kaleidoscope . . .
TWENTY
THE GUN WAS POINTING AT his pineal eye, and perhaps this was what had brought him awake, his back chilled with damp, his lungs still fiery and raw. Above the gun, Miles could just about focus on the milky face of Collins. That was what they had called him, Collins.
“There are some questions need answering.”
Miles nodded slowly, aware of the barrel of the gun, its explosive potential. Fire away, he almost said, but swallowed instead.
“Why did they want you dead?”
“I don’t know,” said Miles, his mouth thick.
“Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Miles Flint. I live and work in London. I work for Military Intelligence.” Collins seemed unimpressed. “I am a surveillance officer,” Miles continued slowly, aware that his answers meant a great deal. “I was supposed to be witnessing the arrest of two suspected terrorists. That’s all.”
Collins smiled wryly. His hair stuck to his forehead like great leeches
at feeding time. There was a considerable intelligence behind the large, deep eyes, but also an amount of fear. Miles knew that his life was still in danger. He very much did not want to die, not yet, not without knowing why.
“You thought you were going to see us arrested, eh?”
“That’s right.”
Collins laughed quietly. “There aren’t any arrests these days, not here. This is no-man’s-land. Shoot to kill. They’d crossed the border. It’s easier to kill than to take us alive. Don’t you know that?”
“I know it now. What was that explosion?”
“Just a little something I left for your friends. Which brings us back to you. You could be a plant. You could be anything or anyone. This whole thing could be a setup. So why don’t you persuade me otherwise, eh?”
The gun was as steady as the trees around them. Miles swallowed, feeling hunger and thirst and a whole welter of emotions within him.
“I’ll need to take off my trousers,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll need to take off my trousers,” he repeated, “because back there, I was so scared that I wet myself.”
They were running again, together, through the fine drizzle blowing across the fields. It had grown light, and so they moved with caution, though the only sounds around them were those of the waking birds. Miles felt more tired than he had ever been, and yet he moved easily enough, as though in a dream. He did not even feel the constant chafing of his damp trousers against his legs.
Collins moved ahead of him, the pistol out of sight beneath his shirt. He had discarded his tie altogether, burying it in loam, and he moved now like some wild species, quite at home in both terrain and situation. I’m on the run with a terrorist, thought Miles. In a strange land, not knowing quite what I should be doing. He replayed the events of the previous hours, trying to answer his own questions. Had there been a mistake? No, there had been no mistake. The notion of Six making that sort of error was unthinkable. The truth was that someone somewhere, someone in authority, wanted him dead and buried as privately as possible. He had been sent into this nightmare without a weapon and without any means of identification. He carried only his money and a handkerchief.