by Simon Jenner
“Maybe, but she’s three hours’ drive in the opposite direction.”
“Do you have her phone number, Susan?”
“Yes, but it might be better if I call her. Tell me what you need.”
“Okay, that would be great. Tell her to promise him anything to stop.”
“She might not be up to this, Herb.”
“I know, but it’s worth a shot. If I don’t make it in time, it might be all we’ve got. Call me if there’s anything I need to know.”
Johnson gave Susan Meredith a number which would divert to his, or rather Wilson’s mobile.
“Keep me informed please, Susan.”
“Will do, Herb. And Herb?”
“Yeah?”
“Mostly Fisher’s in control, especially when in a structured environment like the SAS. Out of these types of surroundings, he’s...”
“Yes?”
“In terms I won’t admit to, this guy is off the wall nuts. He’s psychotic, he’s clever and he’s dangerous. His moral boundary is virtually non-existent.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“How about dinner after this is over? You sound like an interesting man, for a New Yorker that is!”
“Only if I can wear a mask... Protocol you see. We can’t be recognised.”
“Boy, do you need my help. But whatever starts your engine, Herb. As long as you’re not a Yankees fan, I don’t care.”
The call ended. Johnson smiled as he checked the rear view mirror. The Vauxhall Omega was dropping back, but it wouldn’t be long before the helicopters were out and the road blocks began. Still, might get the techies to supe up one of these M3 babies and drop the Mercedes brand when he ordered his new company vehicle - if he still had a job. If he took the back roads, he would waste time but might just avoid detection.
He would take the turnoff onto the A308 which would get him to Twickenham via Hampton. If there wasn’t a road block before then, he might just stand a chance. He veered onto the grass verge to drive around a broken down metallic blue Saab, wondering what Susan Meredith might look like. She certainly had a beautiful voice - for a New Englander.
*
The phone at Justice Investigations began to ring just as Savannah, John and Fisher were about to leave.
“Leave it,” Fisher said. “I want to get the gun now.”
“What is rush?” John said. “We get today. Is soon enough, no?”
Savannah picked up on John’s lead. “It might be Wilson trying to contact me. I should take it.”
Fisher walked around Savannah and whispered in John’s ear. “Are you sure we can trust the girl?”
John nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “Let girl speak. Few minutes only.”
Fisher patted John’s shoulder with force. “If you say so, Vushky baby.” He laughed and headed into the back office. “I need to make a call myself, but let Jones know that I have my eye on her,” he said closing the door to leave just an inch where his eye looked back at John. He obviously didn’t trust Varushkin or Savannah fully, but he had cheered up noticeably.
“Don’t worry,” John called after him. “I’ll stay close to her.” He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight again.
Savannah picked up the phone at her desk and John sidled up next to her. She tilted the receiver towards John so he could listen in.
“Hello, Justice Investigations,” Savannah answered.
“Can you talk?” said Wilson.
“No, Mr Justice is with a client.”
“Is Fisher there?”
“Yes, thank you very much for that,” Savannah said as if she were truly grateful.
“Look, Savannah, I have the gun, and I’m going to use it to get you out of this. Tell Fisher that Smith will take the gun to him.”
“No, we can’t do that.”
John nudged Savannah and mouthed silently, “Tell him yes.” John wanted to grab the phone and tell Wilson that she would do exactly what he suggested, but it would only alert Fisher to their deceit and that could get them all killed.
The voice on the phone sounded incredulous. “Don’t you want to live?”
“Either we are both on the case or both off the case,” Savannah said, raising her eyebrows at John.
John shook his head trying hard to keep Savannah directly between himself and the gap in the back office door. She was damn good at making up ambiguous conversation on the spot, but she was putting herself in harm’s way again when she had an easy escape route. John was sure that Wilson would not hurt Savannah regardless of what his exact plans were.
“You’d risk your own life for that layabout?” the voice said.
“In a heartbeat. Tell me where and how we can collect our fee,” Savannah answered.
“You’re making it hard for me to help you.”
“Are we both on or off the case?”
“All right, have it your own way, Savannah. I have to make one more stop. Meet me in half an hour at the ticket office at Twickenham Rail Station.”
The line went dead. John and Savannah looked at each other as she put down the phone. John was desperate to speak and turned to the crack in the door to see if he could risk it. To his surprise, the door had been fully shut. There could be useful knowledge to be had. John crept over and pressed his ear to the partition wall. Fisher’s voice was raised.
“Sasha, I’m not like that anymore. I told you, I’ve had help. We can make it work.”
Savannah made her way to join John and eavesdrop, positioning herself so that they faced each other as they listened in.
*
I circle the table of surveillance equipment, searching for the right words. Life with Sasha is only a day away. I can’t blow it now. My heart is racing.
“I’ve booked our tickets for tomorrow evening, first class all the way.”
“First class? Can you afford it?”
She’s impressed. “Yes, of course I can. Only the best for my sister.”
“Okay, Gregory, let’s do it.”
I’ve done it. I’ve really done it. Once Whitehall is a pile of rubble and dead bodies, I can start my new life. After twenty-five years, I finally get my sister back.
“You’re sure? You mean it?”
“Yes.”
Images of sunny days, a garden and a pool play in my head. Sasha strolls around the pool in a neon green bikini and calls to me to join her in the cooling water. We swim for a while before taking a shower together. She reaches between my legs. The thought makes me gasp, my heart pumps even harder and my body tingles.
“Tell me what to do with my hand.”
“No.”
“Come on, my darling Sasha. I’ll never really touch you. It’s just a game.” I’m playing with fire but I need relief. The feeling is too strong to control. Lust is in charge of me, and I can’t stop it. Once she is mine, she will learn to love me as her husband. She will be as eager as I was when we were young and we were forced to perform for our father. “Just talk to me, Sasha. Help me relax.”
“You promise that nobody will get hurt?”
Where the hell did that come from? “What are you talking about?”
“I mean that you’ll come straight here, right now, and we’ll plan our move together.”
Alarm bells ring in my head. “Who have you been talking to?”
“Nobody.” Silence. Then, “You want to be inside me?”
The tingle returns, my breath quickens and my penis stirs. Desire tugs at my will like an unquenchable thirst, but a nagging doubt hovers between me and my surrender to the moment. Sasha is too keen. She has never been keen. She has betrayed me. My dream had been so close I could have touched it, and now it is in tatters.
“What’s going on?” I demand. “Who’s got to you?”
“Please ... please don’t kill anyone, Gregory. It’s wrong, just like you and I are wrong.”
All thoughts of sex evaporate and my heart’s pounding is now fuelled solely by anger. My world has been destroye
d, and somebody has to pay. A faint and pleading voice passes by my ear as I draw the phone back. I launch the phone against the wall next to the window with such force that it bursts open as if it has exploded from within, showering the room and table with shards of plastic and broken electronic components. Those responsible must die.
*
Savannah and John jumped back from the partition wall, their gazes locked together in astonishment. Another deeper crash sounded which John guessed was the monitoring equipment on the table being swept onto the floor. The psychopath was pissed off.
John grabbed Savannah by the hand and pulled her over to her previous position by the desk and handed her the phone. Savannah’s gaping mouth snapped shut the second the adjoining door clicked open and a red faced Fisher burst through. She was smart and quick.
“So you won’t be there when we collect it?” Savannah said into the phone. John could hear the dialling tone but Fisher was too far away - he hoped. “We’ll meet soon. You can take me for a night out. Okay. Bye now, Sweetie.” Savannah finished, returning the handset to its home.
Fisher’s face trembled and twitched like the muscles had a life of their own. John sensed real danger. Fisher was fuelled with anger, and like a fizzling firework, he was in danger of going off at any moment.
“Savannah say now we get gun,” John said, a lump of trepidation rising in his throat, threatening to sabotage his accent. “It is near to lunch, I am hungry.”
“Were you listening to my conversation?” Fisher asked, hand reaching behind him.
John resisted a glance at Savannah. It was clear that Fisher was itching for confrontation. Any knowing looks between them could be fatal. “No. Only heard smashing of things. Good job gun pay for damage.”
In the blink of an eye Fisher had pulled out a semi-automatic pistol and pointed it at John. The gun jerked more than shook with the twitching of Fisher’s hand, but at this distance, it would still be hard to miss. “Good job or what, Varushkin?” he said, through clenched teeth.
A person this jumpy could accidentally fire the gun. It was a shame that Fisher couldn’t internalise his rage and blow his own brains out.
“Calm down. We are comrades. Tell me who make you feel this way. I will kill for you,” John said, taking a tentative step forward. What was he doing?
Fisher lowered the gun a few inches. “Stay back, Varushkin, or I’ll shatter your kneecaps.”
Taking twitches into account, John was likely to be hit anywhere from his waist down, and the thought stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Look boys,” piped up Savannah. “Are we done here? Haven’t we got a gun to pick up?”
Fisher swung the gun up and around to point it at Savannah’s head.
“No!” John said, stepping between Fisher and Savannah.
Fisher walked up to John and pressed the end of the gun against his forehead. The small, jumpy movements of the gun made John’s head shake in unison.
“What happened to your accent, Varushkin?”
John closed his eyes. The constant stress of possible death was becoming unbearable. He pressed his head back against the gun.
“I live here for long time. My accent gets mixed. We get gun now or you shoot? I prefer to get gun, but I am bored, so either is good.”
Fisher exhaled through pursed lips as he pulled the gun away and turned his back on his captives. Savannah came up behind John. He felt her short and rapid breath on the back of his neck. “Take it easy, hero,” she whispered.
Fisher spoke with his back to John and Savannah. “I have nothing against you, Varushkin, or you, Jones. I need to get the gun and make those responsible pay for what they did to us.”
While curiosity begged a question of John, he figured anything more than straightforward agreement was a risk too far. “We go now,” he said, signalling to Savannah to lead the way while he followed closely behind Fisher.
*
I don’t trust Jones. She is pretty, more than pretty - young and beautiful, like Sasha after she had blossomed in the sunlight of our parents’ deaths. Pretty only means double-crossing to me now.
My body is numb as I follow Varushkin and the girl. Varushkin is obviously my equal or superior in combat. I never thought I’d see the day. He will have to die, as will the girl. I don’t thirst to torture these two. I can vent my artistic side on those that deserve it most. First I need the gun.
My mind wanders and loses focus. The sharpness is wavering. I am drifting in a sea of memories. I remember my childhood and my parents. They had been parents by genetics only. If there is a gene providing a duty of care or nurture, then theirs had long since been driven into submission by the constant intake of alcohol and drugs. The social workers had been useless. Sasha, my mother and I wore fresh bruises and cuts every day. ‘Not enough evidence’ they would repeat over and over. Mould grew in the corners and insects fed on the mould. Different social workers would visit us weekly and express concern but flinch and run the moment our father shouted and raised his fists.
My spineless bitch of a mother had retreated within from the physical and mental torment, taking pain free refuge in her best friend, heroin. I remember our father kicking her on the ground and shouting, “You’ll take any man’s cock in any hole for a needle, but you won’t touch mine with gloves on.”
My father had brought about the change to the family dynamic by getting Sasha pregnant. She had been the only good thing in my life, and her forced departure left me as the focus of his beatings and molestations. Not once did I surrender to him, not once. It would have spared me countless punches, bruises and broken bones. I was only fourteen, but I took everything he had. My persistent resistance rewarded me with more anger, harder blows and more sadistic rapes. I absorbed every bit of pain, held it and stored it up until I was ready and it could wait no more.
I’ll never forget the look on the bloated drunkard’s face as he realised that his sixteen year old son was stronger than him. Every weight lifted in every spare second, until my head throbbed with the effort, had been worth it just to see fear in the bastard’s eyes as I forced his trembling head into the gas oven.
My drug retarded mother had looked on in her permanent dreamlike state, like a zombie whose only appetite was for a syringe of heroin rather than flesh. I had smashed her face in with my fists clenched tightly in my father’s gardening gloves, the ones he used to protect his own knuckles when raining blows upon me. The irony was heavenly. I had done her the biggest favour imaginable. Blow upon blow rocked her head sideways and backwards until it finally flopped and sagged like a rag doll. She had toppled face first to the lino floor like a felled tree whose connection with the living was severed forever. I had finally broken free.
“We don’t like to split families up,” Social Services had said in their defence at the inquest of his parents’ deaths. Why couldn’t they have saved me when they removed Sasha?
It had been a real life tragedy. Forget about ghosts and monsters, they had nothing on good old Mum and Dad.
“Fisher!” says Savannah, pulling me back from the kerb. A red Fiat Punto misses my foot by inches.
“Huh?”
Why hadn’t she just pushed me in front of the car? Perhaps it would have been for the best. There is nothing but my vengeance to keep me here. It’s better than nothing. It is clear that Sasha wants nothing to do with me as a sister let alone anything more. I know that she enjoyed the sex in front of our father. She never speaks of the times we played together when father was out. Or that there had been every possibility that I had made her pregnant. There is no point in telling her this now. It won’t get her back.
It isn’t my fault I’ve turned out like my father, Doctor Meredith said so herself. So whose fault is it? Who allowed us to drown in our despair until all of our needs, even sexual, were provided solely by each other? Yes, somebody needs to pay more than Whitehall. They can wait. My plans need to change.
25: Monday 26th September, 12:15
A
minute green light pulsed beneath the centre of Johnson’s watch face, alerting him that a sound transmission was being received from Smith.
Distracted by phone calls and high speed driving, he had no way of knowing how long he had been oblivious to the flashing alert. He twisted the winder back a notch, pairing the Bluetooth device with the car’s loudspeaker. At first there was only silence, but upon turning up the speaker, he realised that the noises were similar to the ones that surrounded him. It was the sound of traffic but in a built up area with car horns and revving engines going nowhere fast. He couldn’t risk making verbal contact with Smith via the watch. For all he knew Fisher or Wilson or both could be listening in.
He checked the proximity of Smith to the watch he had planted inside the briefcase. They were no more than a quarter of a mile apart, and the distance was reducing. If he didn’t get there soon, his death-defying driving would have been in vain. He activated the vibration on Smith’s watch once more. If Smith still had the watch, he might just take the hint.
*
John Smith, Savannah Jones and Gregory Fisher approached the row of glass doors which formed the main entrance to Twickenham station. It was cool and breezy. The clouds above were thick, high and white, suggesting little chance of rain or sunshine. With the morning commute to work over, few bodies entered or emerged through the doors. John jerked his arm as the vibrating Rolex once again caught him unawares. Bloody watch was going to give him a coronary.
“What’s up?” Savannah asked as they entered the quiet station through the glass doors.
“Doesn’t she know?” Fisher said. John almost believed there was genuine sadness in Fisher’s tone, but he was past trying to rationalise the minds of others. For whatever reason, good or bad, the ex-soldier was nuts, and John’s only concern was to save Savannah and himself.
“Is not her business,” John said dismissively, longing for the time when he could explain the remark to Savannah. If they were meeting Wilson, then surely it must be Johnson setting off his watch. If so, Johnson should have worked out that the three of them were together and were on their way to meet Wilson. Maybe the agent was close and trying to signal his arrival? He looked around, keeping his head forward and allowing his eyes to wander, but there was no sign of the tall man in the distinctive dark coat. Then it struck him: Johnson wanted information. John stopped and tapped Fisher on the shoulder.