by Will Jordan
‘Ryan…’
He stopped, struck by her sudden change of tone. She sounded hesitant and afraid now. What could she possibly say that was worse than today’s events?
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said. ‘But I’m scared. I don’t know what you’ll think of me.’
‘Jess, you almost got killed today because of me. Why would I be angry with you?’
Jessica sighed and looked down at her hands, searching for the right words. He didn’t press her, just gave her the time she needed.
‘You came back here because you were looking for something,’ she said at length. ‘Something I told you was lost.’
Drake could feel his heartrate rising. ‘That’s right.’
When she looked up again, he could see the pain and guilt etched on her face. ‘I lied to you, Ryan. The letter wasn’t destroyed. I know exactly where it is.’
* * *
Having made her way to the extraction point by hiking through several miles of rough terrain, Riley had eventually been picked up and brought to a nearby safe house.
She was just lighting up a cigarette when the door opened and the menacing form of Hawkins entered.
‘Give us the room, please,’ he instructed the other operative keeping watch.
The man knew better than to argue, quickly departing and closing the door behind him. Riley avoided eye contact as the big man paced slowly and thoughtfully across the room. She could practically feel the anger radiating from him and, despite herself, she was afraid.
She had good reason to be.
‘Talk to me,’ he said gently.
Riley took a drag. ‘There’s not much to say. We picked up his sister as instructed. Drake laid an ambush for us. My team died.’
‘And you’re sure it was Drake,’ Hawkins coaxed. ‘You saw his face.’
Riley frowned, thinking back to the chaotic firefight. ‘He was wearing a mask, but it had to be him. Who else could have pulled off shit like this?’
‘That’s a good question.’
She felt his hands on her shoulders, gentle and soothing. Then suddenly they clamped around her throat in a vice-like grip, lifting her right out of the chair and shoving her backward. She let out a startled gasp as Hawkins pinned her against the wall.
‘Seems to me, you don’t know much of anything tonight.’ His cold blue eyes flashed dangerously. ‘So tell me, what am I to do with you?’
To try to fight back would be suicidal. Hawkins was twice her size and many times her strength. Likewise, begging for mercy and forgiveness would only engender disgust.
Instead she took a different path, allowing her body to relax, to become soft and malleable in his hands. Her lips parted a little, her eyes widening. She tilted her face up towards his, moving her hips closer to him as she let out a soft moan. In a matter of seconds her whole demeanour seemed to have changed, becoming subtly enticing, alluring, arousing.
‘I think you know what you want to do with me,’ she whispered.
She saw a smile flicker across that rugged, cruel face. He knew the dangerous game she was playing, but he didn’t reject it. Danger was something that had always appealed to him.
Riley closed her eyes as she pressed herself against him, feeling his sudden need, feeling his grip on her neck slacken a little. Hawkins was like a gun with a hair trigger – one had to handle him with great care.
Yes, she knew what he wanted to do with her all right.
Chapter 12
‘Say that again,’ Drake prompted his sister. He needed to hear it from her again. Needed to be sure.
‘I lied to you,’ she said, practically forcing the words out. ‘I told you I’d destroyed the letter, but I didn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ she echoed, giving a bitter, sardonic laugh. ‘Because I’ve seen you risk your life time and again, Ryan. I’ve seen you gamble and lose everything and everyone you cared about. And for what? Where has it all gotten you?’
Drake had no answer for her, and she didn’t expect one.
‘I knew you’d risk everything to get to the truth, no matter where it led you. I wanted you to give it up, leave it all behind. The whole fucking horrible mess. Just for once, I wanted you to think of yourself. So I lied, thinking it was… better for you.’ She looked down, her shoulders slumped miserably. ‘But it wasn’t for you. Not really. I suppose I lied to myself about that as well. It was for me. Because I couldn’t stand to see you leave again, knowing you might never come back.’ She sniffed, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Ryan. I really am.’
Drake sighed and sat down beside her. He supposed another man might have been furious that she’d deceived him and wasted his time. But no such emotion stirred in him, because he understood why she’d done it.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, putting an arm around her. ‘I understand. It wasn’t fair to put you in that position.’
He felt some of the tension leave her then, knowing he at least forgave her. But she didn’t look any happier. ‘But it doesn’t change anything, does it? You’re still going after it.’
She knew the answer as well as he did.
‘I don’t have much choice. This could be my last chance.’ Pulling away a little, he gripped his sister by the arms and looked her in the eye. ‘Where’s the letter?’
Liverpool, UK – April 26th
The docklands area of Liverpool was one of the biggest in the country, handling tens of millions of tonnes of shipping every year, from oil tankers and mighty Supermax cargo haulers to luxury cruise liners.
Stepping out of the car, Drake paused to stare in awe at the towering hull of a massive cargo hauler, its decks stacked high with multi-coloured containers that resembled enormous Lego bricks. Floodlit cranes worked tirelessly to offload them along the dockside, waiting for trucks and trains to haul them off.
However, their errand here tonight had nothing to do with shipping.
‘Lead the way,’ he said, following Jessica towards the self-storage facility ahead; a warehouse nestled amongst the silos, office blocks and container yards that crowded the dock facility. A sign on the front proudly proclaimed that it was fully secured and open 24/7. Access was via a numeric key panel.
‘Why here?’ Drake asked as Jessica punched in the code. Fortunately it was late at night and, although the docks themselves were still a hive of activity, the industrial parks around them would be quiet for several hours yet.
‘I always had a feeling something like this might happen,’ she explained. ‘The house was too exposed. I needed a place no one else knew about. So I hired a locker under a fake name, and hid most of Mum’s stuff there. Including the letter.’
‘Smart,’ he acknowledged.
She glanced up at her brother. ‘I have my moments.’
The door buzzed open. A night watchman in the nearby security booth glanced up, nodding at them without much interest. Drake was careful to keep his head down and his face away from the security cameras overhead.
Making their way down the rows of identical roller doors, Jessica came to a stop outside one and went to work on the key panel. Drake was impressed by her foresight of using a facility with access codes rather than physical keys that could be lost or misplaced.
With a single crisp beep, the magnetic lock disengaged, allowing Drake to haul the steel shutter up.
The space beyond was about three metres deep and perhaps two metres wide. The walls were plain cinderblock, unpainted and unadorned save for a single light fixture. Jessica flicked it on, illuminating piles of dusty cardboard boxes of varying shapes and sizes, neatly stacked against the far wall. There must have been a couple of dozen at least, containing the personal effects and paperwork their mother had accumulated over a span of decades.
‘This could take a while,’ Drake said as he surveyed the formidable horde. The chances of making a quick getaway seemed to be fading rapidly.
‘Not if you put some thought into it,’ Jessica replied, moving forward and sca
nning the labels on top of each box, selecting one in particular. In a matter of seconds, she’d found what she was looking for, and held up the handwritten letter.
Drake eyed her suspiciously. ‘You are far too organised to be my sister.’
‘Someone in the family had to be. Anyway, I had a lot of time on my hands.’
Letting that one go, Drake took the letter from her and unfolded it.
‘So what happens now?’ Jessica asked as she closed the steel shutter behind them, giving them a measure of privacy.
‘Now we find out if my hunch pays off,’ Drake replied, laying the letter on top of the piled-up boxes. Its paper was creased and slightly yellowed now, but the writing was still clearly legible.
Drake laid the key down beside it. The two pieces of the puzzle finally reunited.
Both of them paused for a moment to read the short message.
Ryan,
If you’re reading this, then I pray it’s because Jessica brought you here. It saddens
me greatly that I was never able to do it myself, and that was my failing. I let you
down, Ryan. In many ways.
I wasn’t the mother you deserved. I couldn’t be there for you the way I wanted to
be, or tell you the things I wanted to, but never for a moment blame yourself. It
was my fault – all of it. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but perhaps in the end,
you might understand.
I wish there was a way for me to explain everything that’s happened, everything I
did and everything I tried to do, but this isn’t something I can tell you. The only
way is to show you, and let you judge for yourself.
Always yours,
Freya
‘She loved you, Ryan,’ Jessica said quietly. ‘Even if she didn’t always say it.’
Drake didn’t meet her gaze. ‘Let’s just get it done, yeah?’
He produced a pen and began noting down the numbers etched into the side of the key. In all, there were four sets of three, forming a grouping of sorts. Clearly it was some kind of code, though the meaning and intent were lost on her.
‘Are you going to tell me what I’m looking at?’
‘Ever heard of a grille cipher?’ he asked as he finished up.
‘Do I look like a cryptographer to you?’
Drake grunted. ‘It was invented in the sixteenth century by some Italian bloke named Cardano, who came up with a way to hide coded messages inside chunks of plain text. The grille was just a piece of paper with holes punched in it. All you had to do was hold the grille over the original message and make a note of the letters in the holes. So simple even I can do it.’
‘But we don’t have a grille,’ Jessica pointed out.
‘No, but we’ve got the next best thing.’ He indicated the first stream of numbers – 1, 2, 1, 1. ‘Each number group represents a letter placement in the message. Paragraph, line, word, letter.’
Frowning, Jessica followed this guide on their mother’s letter, arriving on the letter M.
‘M,’ she repeated. ‘Okay, what about the others?’
1, 2, 2, 2 – R
1, 2, 11, 6 – F
2, 1, 11, 1 – F
‘What the hell is MRFF?’ Jessica asked, perplexed and disappointed. She had expected something more explicit. ‘Maybe we made a mistake?’
Drake shook his head. ‘There’s no mistake. I checked it twice.’
‘But this doesn’t tell us anything. What’s the point in leaving us a coded message if we don’t understand the bloody thing?’ She was quiet for a few seconds. ‘Give me your phone, Ryan.’
Bringing up a Google search on the device, she went to work. Amongst the thousands of search results, she found a medical research fund established by the Australian government, a civil liberties group advocating for religious freedom in the military, and a materials recovery firm to name but a few. None of them relevant to them or their mother.
She shook her head, handing back the device in defeat. ‘No joy there.’
Drake, however, had not been idle during her search. He’d been quietly mulling over everything he knew about his mother, her situation and her possible thought process when encoding her message.
‘She would have to assume this letter could fall into the wrong hands. People with resources and decryption skills. Sooner or later they could make the same connection I did and decipher the message.’
‘So?’
‘So… whatever this means, it was intended for me alone.’ He frowned. ‘Something only I would recognise.’
‘Great. Like what?’
Suddenly Drake snatched up the letter and the key, opened the box on which they were resting and started rifling through the contents. It contained a vast assortment of printed stationery – old legal documents, property deeds, invoices and countless other bits of bureaucratic paraphernalia that a person accumulates in their life. It had all belonged to their mother and, by the looks of things, had remained undisturbed since her death.
‘Care to explain what you’re looking for?’ Jessica asked as Drake pulled off another lid, tossed it aside and rifled through the contents.
‘You were still young when Dad died,’ he said absently as he searched. ‘No, this stuff’s too recent.’
‘I was. Continue.’
‘So you probably don’t remember who handled all the legal stuff. Wills, inheritance, that kind of thing?’
His sister frowned. ‘Mum dealt with that. I suppose she had her own lawyer handle the paperwork.’
Their parents had long since divorced by the time their father passed away, but as the legal guardian of his children, Freya had stepped in to settle his affairs.
‘She did,’ he agreed, opening another box. ‘A family lawyer, in fact. Been with us for as long as I can remember. His name was… Fitzgibbons. Frederick Fitzgibbons.’
‘Quite a mouthful.’
‘You’re not kidding.’ Drake’s eyes lit up as he found what he was looking for. ‘Imagine being a lawyer and having to sign that fucking name a hundred times a day. So he didn’t. He abbreviated it.’
Snatching up an old piece of legal correspondence, he held it up for inspection. Beneath the paragraphs of boilerplate legalese, a simple signature had been hastily scrawled.
Sincerely,
FF
‘FF.’ Jessica’s eyes snapped up from the document to the man holding it. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Mr Frederick Fitzgibbons,’ Drake announced. ‘That’s where she wanted me to go. That’s where I’ll find my answers.’
His sister looked at him, surprised and impressed. ‘And to think, you were always shit at puzzles.’
‘You’re not the only one in the family with brains,’ he replied, quickly scanning the letter heading for a reply address. ‘Looks like Fitzgibbons’ office is in central London.’
Already he was computing the journey that lay ahead, considering the risks and possibilities. Getting to Fitzgibbons’ office would be easy. Getting there undetected would prove more challenging.
Jessica glanced up at him, a smile forming. ‘What are we waiting for?’
Chapter 13
Camp Peary Training Facility, Virginia – October 19th, 1989
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…
Arms straining with the effort, fingers closed around the overhead bar in a white-knuckle grip, Anya hauled her body up, forcing her burning, weary muscles to comply. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades as she repeated the demanding movement, the freshly healed scar tissue across her back still a little raw and sensitive.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…
The US Marine Corps considered twenty pulls-ups to be the ideal standard in their combat fitness tests, but the unit in which Anya served expected even more than that. No allowances had been made because of her sex, and while it had certainly made life difficult for her, she understood the simple, pragmatic logic of it. No leniency was asked for
or given.
So she had fought and trained even harder than the others, forcing herself to exceed her physical limitations through sheer willpower and stubborn determination.
Twenty-three, twenty-four…
Her arms were trembling now, the muscles aching as acids began to build up inside the fibres, her body warning her it was approaching the limits of what it could do. Like a car engine pushed to the redline.
Twenty-five…
Her pulse was pounding in her ears as she gritted her teeth, willing her arms to raise the rest of her body up. She made it about halfway before her strength gave out, hanging there for a second or so through sheer resilience, before finally conceding defeat and allowing herself to drop to the floor.
Trying to settle her breathing, she looked down at her hands, slowly clenching and unclenching the fingers, watching as the tendons and ligaments in her forearms grew as taut as steel wires before easing off.
There was no question that she still possessed a lean and robust physique. She imagined she would even be considered physically powerful by many. But she felt the difference, the subtle yet inescapable reality that she was not quite what she’d once been. She was diminished somehow, reduced.
And of course, there was the change she couldn’t see, confirmed during a terse and perfunctory doctor’s visit a few months earlier. The knowledge that she would never be able to carry life within her, that she would never have children of her own.
She had tried to tell herself it was a blessing, that the life she’d chosen left no room for such fantasies. But it had been cold comfort, both then and now. The knowledge that something had been taken away from her. Something no amount of training could never get back. A doorway that might have led her down a new path in life had been slammed shut forever.
She closed her eyes and exhaled, carefully considering whether she ought to act on the sudden upwelling of anger and injustice that seethed inside her.
‘Damn it!’ she shouted in her native Lithuanian as she drew back her fist and slammed it into the plasterboard wall before her. The brittle material gave way under the blow, leaving a crumbling, fist-sized dent.