by J. F. Kirwan
Danton had asked the geek why they couldn’t just make another one. That wasn’t so easy apparently, as the designer was leagues ahead of his researchers, didn’t like to share, and had suddenly copped a bullet while shagging one of his researchers. The Brits were probably frantically trying to replicate it in MI6. The geek reckoned it wasn’t that easy to use, you couldn’t just plug it into a laptop, it needed serious hardware to run, but still. Bad enough if the Russians got hold of it. But if it went missing, the UK and US military would be shit-scared it had gone to Al Qaeda, IS or whoever, and would have to plough billions into new counter-defence ideas. A crap game all round.
He asked the geek why they made it in the first place.
Because they could.
Danton shook his head. And people think I’m dangerous. He took another sip and laid his head back on the soft pillows.
He was just dropping off when Mrs Higgs switched on the television downstairs, its dull drone rising through the floorboards. Not a bad idea; he should follow suit and check if there was any news since his hasty departure from Frankfurt. He sighed, put the flask on the bedside table next to him, eased forward to grab the remote, and switched on the small television in his room. Searching for the news he found BBC World, and realised Mrs Higgs downstairs was watching the same channel.
At first there was nothing much: a flood in some country he couldn’t care less about. Then he saw his home surrounded by police. He froze. A photo of Sammy before, and then a few of him afterwards, grainy images of his mutilated corpse. He held his breath, aware he’d begun to sweat. It’s okay, they don’t have my photo. He’d always been a regular-looking guy, forgettable, invisible. He never let anyone take his photo, nobody had one.
But they did. A newsflash. Breaking news. Right there on the screen. His face. Recent. Must’ve been Adamson, that motherfucker!
Something was dropped downstairs. The TV was switched off down below. He turned off his. Silence. He eased himself off the bed, but a sharp twinge in his leg made him almost lose his balance. Reaching out for support, he knocked over the flask, which clattered to the floor. Silence again. He strained to hear Mrs Higgs, knowing she’d be listening for him… and reaching for the phone. He remembered the back door was dead-bolted and stiff – it would take time to open it. She’d head for the front door.
Snatching up the loaded Luger, he raced out of the room and bolted down the stairs. Mistake. Too late, near the bottom, he saw something shoved through the bannisters, a broom handle maybe. It caught his trailing foot. He flew forwards down the remaining stairs, hands and forearms over his head as he careened into the wall. Mildly stunned, Luger still in his right hand, he craned his neck upwards to see Mrs Higgs towering above him, something in her bony, white-knuckle hands. An antique bed warmer, a wooden rod with a large round brass end. That’s what she’d used to trip him. It gleamed in the ceiling light and he raised his arms again to protect his head.
But she wasn’t aiming for his head.
Pain exploded in his leg, the one that had been shattered, the one she’d seen him massaging earlier. Fucking bitch! He bit down as pain skewered through his body, followed by a wave of nausea. He got off a round, not aiming at anything in particular, just fired it to scare her, prevent her hitting him again. It worked. She ran for the front door, and fled outside.
He rolled off the lower stairs and staggered to his feet. ‘Move yourself!’ he shouted in German. He lurched forwards a few steps then anchored himself in the open doorway. She’d almost reached the street lamp. Thirty metres. He raised the Luger, his hand shaking, his eyes blurry from the pain. She passed the light. He took a breath, steadied his right hand with his left, and lined up the sights on her back. She was running in a straight line. Forty metres. He firmed his wrist, ready for the recoil, but she was moving into the shadows. He held his breath. Lightning flashed, and there she was, lit up in sharp black and white, like Sammy in the photos. Fifty metres.
He pulled the trigger.
Thunder roared in his ears.
Mrs Higgs went down.
He picked up the discarded bed warmer next to him, used it as a crutch, and limped out the door to find Mrs Higgs. It began to rain, then it came down heavy, a cloudburst. She’d crawled a little further, a trail of blood already washing away with the downpour.
As he arrived next to her, she stopped moving, waiting. He had an urge to smash her head in with the bed warmer, but didn’t. Instead he flicked her over onto her back with the boot of his good leg. She grimaced with pain, her eyes wet from the rain or crying, he couldn’t tell, and didn’t care.
She looked up at him with contempt. ‘I won’t scream.’
He respected that, and so aimed the Luger at her heart instead of her face. Neither of them spoke. Lightning struck one more time, and Mrs Higgs was gone.
Danton’s pain vanished.
He dumped her body in a coal shed in the back garden, covered her with coal and a tarpaulin, and padlocked the door. It would be a few days before the corpse would start to rot, and by then he’d be long gone. The garden was almost a junkyard and fenced off, so nobody would notice for a while. The pain had reasserted itself with a vengeance, and this time he’d taken a morphine cap to get him through the night. He took a shower, then sat back on the sofa where he’d been two hours earlier, and found the news channel again. His plan was screwed, his mugshot everywhere, which meant two things. First, he couldn’t operate in public in daylight, and couldn’t confront Adamson, certainly not go to his hotel to waste the bastard. Second, Lazarus would see it too, and assume that Danton had changed from an asset to a liability.
He needed a serious drink, but his flask had emptied onto the floor; besides, he needed to clear his head. He made coffee. How to turn this around? Nadia. She was the key. She would retrieve the device, but then Adamson would get it, so he had to get to her before she retrieved it. An idea came into his mind. He locked up Mrs Higgs’ place and began walking into town, the Luger in his pocket. At least it had stopped raining so hard.
Arriving in Hugh Town, he passed a few lager louts singing in the streets, though mostly the town was asleep. As he neared the inn, he saw someone he recognised, walking out late, alone. The blonde.
Bait.
He followed her until she reached the end of the quay, where she gripped the railings and stared out into the darkness. Waves sploshed noisily against the harbour wall. Making sure there was no one around, he spotted a battered old car he could steal, then silently approached the girl from behind. He raised the handle of the Luger, and aimed at the exact point on the base of her neck that would knock her out cold.
Chapter Fourteen
Nadia awoke early, took one look at the rain pelting the skylight, and cursed. She slipped on some clothes and her anorak, and headed downstairs. Wind and rain lashed the frosted glass panels on the door. She took a breath and ventured into the deserted cobbled street. A few people cowered under a shop awning, smoking while waiting for the bad weather to ease off, which didn’t look like it was going to happen any time soon. At first she thought it wasn’t so bad, that maybe further out to sea there would be swells, not breakers, but as she reached the harbour wall her worst fears were confirmed. The waves were like trenches, white-topped with spray and foam. No boats out, not even sturdy fishing vessels. The white and blue Scillonian Ferry was making its way slowly back towards the safety of the harbour walls.
Already soaked, she decided to walk anyway. At least it wasn’t too cold. As she neared the end of the shops, she spied Jake next to the promenade railing, staring out to sea. He hadn’t seen her. She thought about turning around, but kept going. He was still her best shot if the weather changed. If he didn’t turn her in. Maybe the Tsuba tomorrow. That was past the deadline, but until the device was retrieved or she was killed, she was still in play, and Katya was still breathing.
‘Hello,’ she said.
He turned his head. ‘Hi.’ He held her gaze.
She sto
od next to him, surveying the chaos.
‘Force six,’ he added. ‘No diving today.’
He said it like it was no big deal, just part of the diver’s lot.
‘I thought you might be wrapped up warm in Elise,’ she said.
He turned to see her face. ‘Would you care if I was?’
‘No,’ she said, then realised it was a lie.
He turned back to the sea. ‘We talked till one in the morning, then she went back to her room.’
It was her turn to study his face. Truth, as far as she could tell. It made her feel better, and then that realisation made her feel worse. We’re not on the same side.
She decided to try and lighten the mood, and spoke in a mocking tone. ‘You never talked to me for three hours.’
He turned to her again, this time a smile on his face. ‘Women. Why are you all so impossible?’
‘Men,’ she said, as if it covered everything. Mostly it did.
He clearly wasn’t going to raise the issue, so she did. ‘How’d the phone call go?’
‘The diner over there is open,’ he said. ‘Want a coffee, or should we just stand here and catch pneumonia?’
She took a deep breath of the salty air, droplets of rain forming on the tip of her fringe before leaping down to land on her nose. The odds stacking up against her – a rogue CIA agent, a sadistic torturer, a dangerously deep dive, and MI6 perhaps to arrive at any moment and hustle her into the back of a white van as Jake watched – were like the waves: relentless, implacable. She was actually a little envious of Elise, who’d be around long after she was gone – to a cell or a grave – and could claim Jake.
But something was clearly eating away at him. Nadia wanted some closure, to know who she’d slept with.
‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘If you tell me about Sean. Full disclosure.’
He didn’t reply, but headed to the café.
She followed.
She watched him stir his macchiato, while she nursed an espresso. He downed his in four seconds, then wiped his lips. The place was deserted except for a trendy young waitress, Pop music played low, a video screen flickered above the bar. They were sitting at the back, in a corner, less likely to be disturbed. Jake watched the waitress go to set up some chairs at the front of the shop, then he bent down beneath the table as if to tie a shoelace. When he reappeared he placed down a knife on the table between them.
‘Okay, you’ve got my attention,’ she said.
‘Close your eyes,’ he said.
Her pulse quickened. Her Beretta was back in her room. She’d only intended to come out for five minutes. All kinds of scenarios flashed through her mind: Jake had decided to kill her here and now; he was working with Bill, or Danton; Kadinsky had sent him. The list was endless. But in a beachside cafeteria?
‘Why?’ she asked.
He looked troubled. ‘I can’t tell it if you’re looking at me. I’ve never told anyone the whole story.’
Truth again, she decided.
She closed her eyes, but listened intently to his breathing, for any tell-tale rustle of clothes, or the knife scraping off the table as he snatched it up, ready to stab her. But there was only his voice.
‘It was three years ago, almost to the day – next Wednesday in fact. My marriage to my school-time sweetheart was already on the rocks. An affair. Not mine. Anne – my ex – had a fling that developed into an affair that grew into a relationship. We separated. But we had a fourteen-year-old son, Sean. He’d be seventeen now.’
He paused. She’d assumed Sean was a close friend. But a son? She thought about reaching out to touch his hand, but didn’t.
‘I got to see him every other weekend, and holidays. In any case, since he’d been twelve, we’d learned to dive together – his idea actually – and then each year we’d go somewhere. Malta, Cyprus… we’d been planning to dive Sipadan, Borneo…’
He paused again, this time so long she took a peek. He was rigid, tense, marble about to crack. His breathing became laboured, and when he did speak, his usually strong tenor voice quavered.
‘I let Sean down… I let my son drown.’
This time she took his hand. ‘Continue, Jake,’ she said.
His voice was shaky. ‘There’s a place in North Wales, a remote limestone quarry called Dorothea. I used to drive Sean there early in the morning, when there’s no sound, no birds, no wind, no people, just the morning mist on chill waters tinged green at the outer edges, blue fading to black as the water descends to just over a hundred metres. Of course you don’t have to dive deep. There’s an old stone cottage above twenty.’
He took a sip of water. She kept her eyes closed, willing him to continue.
‘The day it happened, the accident, I was working. I had a ton of work to do, something big at the office, didn’t matter that it was Sunday.’
‘Sean was being picked up early, six in the morning. He forgot to pack his dive knife. We used to pack together, but I was already online to work… so he didn’t have it with him. He went with some good friends of mine, Tom and Rachael. They were experienced. Still, I told them all twenty metres, no more. You see, the water’s very clear there. It’s easy to slip much deeper if you’re not paying attention.’
She heard him make an effort to swallow, as if his throat had gone dry. His voice became taut. ‘I was emptying the rubbish when I heard it on the local radio. A diving emergency at Dorothea. I was out the door so fast I forgot to lock up the place, classified documents littering the kitchen table. While driving I tried Sean’s number – no reply – so then I called Mark, from another dive club, I knew he was going to be there that day.’
Jake’s voice turned scratchy. ‘Mark said they hadn’t surfaced. They were overdue by an hour. Two professional divers with rebreathers had gone down to investigate.’
His breathing sped up. She squeezed his hand.
‘I couldn’t drive any more, so I pulled over, still half an hour from the site. I couldn’t fucking breathe. They were dead. No way they were still alive. I was so mad, I got out of the car, kicked the damned thing, punched it, then saw my reflection in the mirror.’
He stopped, still breathing heavily. She knew he needed to say it, whatever it was, the part he’d never told anybody. ‘What did you do, Jake?’
He squeezed her hand hard, hurting her. She ignored it.
‘I punched myself, right in the face. It was just work, not even that important that time. Jesus fucking Christ!’ His voice was raised. For sure the waitress could hear him, but Nadia kept quiet. ‘I kept imagining Sean down there, all three of them drowning, icy water pouring into their lungs, choking…’ He let go of her hand. ‘I still dream about it. Nightmares, always the same, Sean’s falling away from me, drifting deeper, drowning, and I’m reaching but I can’t catch him.’
Guilt. But it hadn’t been his fault. She needed to haul him back out. Emotions are best countered by facts. ‘What happened? Why did they drown?’
His voice and breathing steadied. ‘Fishing line. Tom and Rachael got tangled up in some, and they fell deeper, one or both of them probably panicked due to narcosis until oxygen poisoning set in. Sean… he wouldn’t leave them to die.’ His voice quietened. ‘Wouldn’t leave them.’
‘Like you with those two divers trapped in the wreck.’ Like father like son. She traced a forefinger along the blade. It had a net-cutter hook in it, located near the hilt. Sean would have needed it to cut the fishing line. She removed her hand from the knife, and didn’t touch it again.
He stopped talking. Nadia waited a moment then opened her eyes, in time to see the waitress, who’d clearly been listening, appear with two more coffees though they hadn’t asked for them, then disappear again. Jake had gone very pale. Nadia thought of all the useless things she could say, the things others would have already tried, top of the list being it wasn’t your fault or an even more banal automatism such as sorry for your loss. Besides, there was something she’d been wondering since his rescue stunt insi
de the destroyer.
‘Do you have a death wish?’
Jake met her eyes. ‘Did for a while. Maybe I still do. I don’t want to have one. Sean wouldn’t want me to. But Sean… it’s like it happened last week, not three years ago. No matter what I do, it doesn’t go away. I can be happy for a short time, but then it comes back.’ He took a sip. ‘This is my shit, my problem, I only told you because… Well, things are closing in on us Nadia.’
‘Is there still an “us”?’
He told her about the phone call, and while she listened and colour slowly returned to his cheeks, she felt her own blood was draining out of her body. The more Jake talked, the more convinced she was that he was never going to allow her to hand over the Rose to Kadinsky. The big money was on major governments, but there was always a remote chance it was a more minor player – an outlier, he called it – who actually wanted to use it. And Jake was analytical, he couldn’t ignore miniscule probabilities with massive fatalities, especially as he thought London might be the target, the MI6 cyber-attack a forewarning. She understood, but that didn’t help her or Katya. She’d thought him opening up about Sean would bring them closer together, maybe to an understanding, but they were now further apart than ever.
There was no ‘us’. She was on her own.
The rain and wind were worse than before. They stood under the awning, waiting for any kind of lull so they could make a dash for it. Then Nadia spied a grey dinghy crossing the harbour, with two men kitted up in wetsuits. Jake followed her gaze.
‘I’ll see you later, Jake, I want to check something out.’
He grabbed her hands. ‘Thanks for listening back there.’
She didn’t know what to say, so she said ‘Later,’ and he released her.
He let go and she ran, dodging the larger puddles, using her hand to shade her eyes from the driving rain in order to see where the boat would alight. She checked once to see if Jake was following. He wasn’t.