Rattlesnake

by Andy Maslen

  As the audience laughed, Clark snatched the headphones from his ears, finished his whisky in a single gulp and strode across the room and out onto the balcony. “The rich!” he shouted at the streets below. The streets teeming with Mercedes, Porsches and Ferraris and their obscenely wealthy occupants.

  He decided to specialise not in their diseases, but in their deaths.

  Planting evidence, cooking up fake intelligence reports, misleading the media – these were meat and drink to Clark. And they allowed him and a trusted employee, an ex-CIA agent like himself, to begin abducting not terrorists but tycoons.

  The victims were terrorised into handing over their bank details, stockbroking account passwords, property deeds, hidden stashes of gemstones, gold and cash. Anything to escape the “enhanced interrogation” techniques that Clark and his colleague visited on them, leaving them choking, fainting from pain, coughing up water and so frightened they frequently voided their bladders and bowels.

  Their signed confessions were filed away.

  Their wealth was transferred to offshore accounts in the Caribbean.

  Their bodies were dropped from helicopters into the azure waters of the Persian Gulf, where the tiger, hammerhead and bull sharks took care of them.

  He stayed for six years, amassing a personal dollar fortune that ran into the high nine figures. Relatives of the disappeared clamoured in the media for news, and a few even managed to interest one or two of the better known global human rights charities. But in the fog of war, and under the impenetrable cloak of secrecy provided by his official paymasters, Clark remained beyond scrutiny.

  In 2011, he returned from the Gulf, used his money and contacts to acquire a biotechnology start-up, and began the assiduous courtship of clients in the US military, the Department of Defense and his former home in Langley.

  While the hard-tech firms concentrated on drones, the company he renamed Orton Biotech, or at least a substantial part of it, focused on biological warfare. Specifically, the weaponising of pathogens, from gene editing to delivery mechanisms. It was lucrative work. But it was also risky, contravening, as it did, numerous domestic and international statutes. To mitigate the risks, he advertised for a head of security.

  He was delighted when he saw the résumé of the third candidate he was slated to interview. Vincent Calder. Ex-Delta Force. A patriot, like himself. Possessed of physical courage, a keen mind and a deep understanding of the emerging discipline of cyber security.

  They shook hands at the end of the interview, and Clark knew he had found his man.

  10

  Hello Again, Doctor

  LONDON

  “YOU’VE redecorated. I like it,” Gabriel said. He twisted around in the armchair to glance around him at the pale walls of Fariyah Crace’s office at the Ravenswood. “What colour do you call that, then? Cream?”

  Fariyah laughed, a warm, throaty sound that lifted Gabriel’s heart.

  “I believe the facilities manager told me it was called Bone. But yes, it’s basically cream.”

  “Bone,” Gabriel repeated absently, looking at her but not seeing her. He found certain words triggered associations, mostly unpleasant ones. The single syllable with its four innocent letters – B, O, N, E – spirited him from a seat in a psychiatrist’s office to a swirl of what had once been river mud, baked to a crust by the glaring African sun, flecks of mica glittering in its exposed surface like diamonds. A human vertebra prised from its crisp embrace. A pair of identity discs in their rubber silencer ring. A shattered skull pulled from a leaf-filled cavity in the bole of a baobab tree. All that remained of his old friend and comrade Trooper Mickey “Smudge” Smith.

  “Are you all right, Gabriel?” she asked.

  He refocused on her brown eyes. They gleamed against her coffee-coloured skin, itself demarcated by the pleated edge of her pink-and-grey floral hijab.

  “Sorry, miles away. Funny how words can do that to you, isn’t it?”

  “Words are very powerful. They are how we make sense of the world. Tell me, where were you just now?”

  Gabriel sighed and scratched at his scalp through the short black spikes of his hair, speckled now with silver despite his being only in his midthirties.

  “Mozambique. That trip I took to retrieve Smudge’s remains.”

  She leaned back in her chair and placed her hands softly in her lap. Even though he was aware of the technique to relax people by first mirroring then leading their body language, Gabriel followed suit.

  “You went to the funeral. How was that?”

  “It was OK. Good, I mean. I was one of the pallbearers. We got to say a proper goodbye. His family was there. Melody, Nathalie—”

  He paused, as his recollections of that cold, grey day in Camberwell New Cemetery surged forwards, clamouring for attention.

  “His wife and daughter?”

  “Yes. They were sad but happy, you know? I mean, they already knew he was dead. But they’d never had a grave to visit. Never got to put him in the ground.”

  “And how do you feel about it now?”

  He shrugged.

  “About Smudge? Good, I think. I mean, yes, I did feel guilty for leaving him behind. I was his boss, after all. But after all that business with Sutherland, I knew we’d been betrayed. So although I wish we could still have brought him back after the ambush, I accept his death wasn’t down to me.”

  “You mean the Prime Minister? That Sutherland?”

  “Yes. That Sutherland. Like I told you last time, I trapped her into admitting everything. The dodgy deals. The blood diamonds. Her leaking our mission details to that scumbag Hamilton. It’s why she disappeared.” A sudden wave of anxiety pulsed through him. “That’s still all bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, right?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “It is. Though from the little you’ve told me about the people you work for, I dare say it would be, what would you say, ‘career limiting’ to blab about it?”

  He laughed, a short mirthless, sound.

  “Something like that, yes. Though to tell you the truth, I’m not sure if I can go on with Don’s little outfit. I mean, look where it’s got me. A rich, friendless exile that trails death behind him like a plague.”

  Fariyah frowned.

  “You know we were talking about words a moment ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just used an interesting word. You said an exile that instead of an exile who. What do you think that means?”

  Gabriel hunched forwards in his chair, crossing his arms.

  “It was just a word. A slip of the tongue. It doesn’t mean anything. I was wallowing in self-pity.”

  “Hmm. Maybe. But we refer to things as that. People take who. Is that how you see yourself at the moment? As a thing, not a person?”

  Gabriel could feel his pulse bumping in his throat. He was suddenly hot, catching a scent of his own sweat. He stood and paced up and down the office before throwing himself down into the chair again.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. What’s your shrink-jargon for it? Depersonalised? Maybe. Why not? I’m walking around in a human body but I’m about as good to be around as an IED. Get too close, put a foot wrong and BAM!” he shouted this last word, making Fariyah flinch. “You’re dead. Shot. Throat cut. Blown to pieces. Run through.” He held his hands wide, feeling tears like buckshot forcing their way out of the ducts. “Tell me, doctor, is that normal for a human being?”

  Fariyah pulled her own chair closer to Gabriel’s then leant forwards.

  “You have suffered a great loss. A series of great losses. Yes, people have died. People you loved and who loved you. But just as with Smudge, their deaths were not your fault. Did you pull the trigger?”

  She paused, and Gabriel realised she expected him to answer.

  “No,” he said, sounding even to his own ears like a grumpy adolescent.

  “Did you wield the knife?”

  “No.

  “Did you detonate the bo
mb?”

  “No.”

  “Did you use the sword?”

  “No. But I tell you what I did do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I did kick the ball.”

  Fariyah released his hands and he leaned back, willing himself to breathe and to unclench his muscles.

  “Your brother’s death was an accident. You know that. We talked about it last time. But we should talk about it now.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes and was immediately carried back over a quarter of a century.

  The green-blue water of Victoria Harbour, twinkling in the sun.

  His mother watching as her two sons – one nine, the other five – played with a rugby ball on the small patch of grass by the water’s edge.

  The high arc of the ball and the splash as it entered the water.

  The older son commanding the younger to fetch it.

  The dive.

  The panic.

  The bubbles.

  The smooth surface.

  The drowned boy.

  He opened them again.

  “I wanted him dead.”

  Fariyah smiled.

  “You wanted your mother’s undivided attention. I should think every single first child reacts in exactly the same way when a sibling arrives to distract their mother.”

  “Well, it didn’t work, did it?”

  “You went in after him, isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Why of course? You said you wanted him dead.”

  Gabriel massaged his temples. That was the trouble with trick-cyclists. You thought you could read them and all along they were reading you. Lulling you into a false sense of security, then springing their traps.

  “OK, fine. I didn’t want him dead. I loved him. God, I loved that little boy so much.”

  Now the tears did come. Hot, angry. He let them course down his face and drop onto his lap. Fariyah waited. He did not expect the comforting arm. That was not her style. Or her job, she had told him early in their first session.

  He fished a folded white pocket square from his jacket and wiped his face dry. He cleared his throat.

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged.

  “What for? You think I haven’t had grown men crying in this room? I could collect all the tears and fill a bath with them.”

  The image was so comical it jolted Gabriel into a different frame of mind. With his laughter, and hers, bouncing off the bone-coloured walls, some of the anguish he had been carrying on his shoulders let go its talons and slid off.

  “You’re very good, you know,” he said. “Have you ever thought about doing this professionally?”

  Her eyes widened and she pointed an accusing finger at him.

  “You cheeky man! Now, tell me something, Gabriel Wolfe. Where are you off to next? What wrong are you trying to right?”

  Gabriel sighed.

  “An old friend. An American. We swore to each other we’d investigate if either of us died except in our beds. His wife texted me. He’s dead. I’m headed to Texas. San Antonio.”

  “You’re off to do a little sleuthing? Detective work?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So, here’s what I think. His death, your friend’s, was not on you. Hold onto that. And I sense that your craving – I think that is not too strong a word for it – for redemption is in play. Which is fine. We all need noble motivations. Too many in this world cleave only to money or possessions or status. But don’t let it become all-consuming. We may seek all manner of spiritual goods, but in the end, God will judge us not for what we sought, but for what we did.”

  Gabriel raised his eyebrows.

  “I wasn’t expecting theology in a psychiatrist’s office. I thought it was all id and ego with you guys.”

  “As I said to you once before, I’m a good Muslim. Just think on my words, Gabriel. You can replace ‘God’ with another idea if you like, but he’ll serve well enough.”

  11

  How Was Your Stay?

  HOTEL rooms varied only in their furnishings, square footage and sound insulation in Gabriel’s opinion. While the hotels themselves might have sumptuous banqueting facilities, snooker tables, bars, restaurants, fitness centres and pools, when you boiled it down, what most people wanted from a hotel was a decent night’s sleep. This particular hotel, built within the confines of the vast tract of land comprising Heathrow airport, had done passably well on the furnishings – crisp, white bedlinen on the king-sized bed and the usual abstract art screwed to the wall – and the square footage. The double-glazing even did a reasonable job of filtering out the constant roar from the planes landing, taking off and taxiing within sight of his fifth-floor window.

  But the noise from the next-door room was already inside the hotel, and the walls were not up to the task, despite the weirdly hairy paper with which they were covered. The greater part of the racket was composed of male voices, three or four as far as he could tell. An argument about a business deal, it appeared to be, with sporadic sentences clear enough for him to make out.

  “… twenty million? You take piss …”

  Shouting.

  “… reneged on our agreement …”

  More shouting.

  “… fuck your lawyers …”

  At least one of the shouters had a Russian accent, though the men were speaking English.

  Gabriel checked his watch: 11.15. He put his book – a worn copy of Crime and Punishment – down on the bedside table, got to his feet and dressed. Nothing fancy, just jeans and a grey T-shirt. No shoes. He crossed the room, removed the security chain and opened the door, pulling his purple plastic keycard from the plastic slot on the wall as he went.

  He stood in front of the door to the neighbouring room. From here, the noise was even louder. He brought his knuckles up to knock, when a noise behind him made him turn.

  A woman stood there, wearing one of the hotel’s white towelling dressing gowns, wrapping one arm across her stomach. She looked tired, nervous and angry, her face taut and pale.

  “I’ve rung down,” she said. “But they’re hopeless. They said they’d send someone, but listen to that!” She jerked her chin at the door.

  Gabriel smiled.

  “Go back inside. I’m going to ask them nicely to keep it down.”

  “Huh,” she said contemptuously. “Good luck with that.” But she retreated inside her room and seconds later he heard the scrape and rattle of her own security chain.

  “I’ll ask them very nicely,” he said, raising his fist to the door and knocking hard in a rat-a-tat beat.

  The noise stopped instantly. Gabriel waited, hands by his sides, bare feet planted squarely on the soft carpet.

  The door opened. Gabriel looked up into the hard eyes of a man who towered over him. Bulbous nose, heavy black beard, long, greased-back dark hair, swarthy. All he needed was a gold earring, and he’d make a first-rate panto pirate, Gabriel thought. In the gap between his imposing frame and the door jamb, Gabriel could see three more men, sprawled on a sofa, an armchair and the bed.

  “What fuck you want?” the pirate demanded, glaring down at Gabriel.

  “Can you keep the noise down, please? People are trying to sleep.”

  The man raised a fist, extended an index finger and poked Gabriel in the chest.

  “We pay for room. Businessmen, yeah? We talk business.” Another poke. “So fuck off back to your room, little man,” he turned back to his friends for a moment and nodded over his shoulder at Gabriel before returning his gaze to eyes front, “and buy fucking ear plugs if you can’t sleep.”

  He stepped back and moved to close the door but Gabriel put a hand out and prevented the door from closing. He followed his arm with his body, getting inside the giant’s reach.

  “I said, keep the noise down. I even said ‘please.’ So don’t swear at me, and don’t poke your finger at me, either.”

  The space he’d backed the man in
to was narrow – a short length of corridor before the room opened out into the living space. It meant the incoming punch lacked force. Gabriel was ready for it, anyway. He slipped sideways, feeling the puff of air as the meaty arm whistled past his right ear.

  What happened next, happened very fast.

  Gabriel’s straight fingers, held rigid like a blade, jabbed upwards, catching the big man under the jaw at the side of his neck. As his legs buckled, Gabriel skipped back and smashed a fist down onto the back of his neck like a hammer. The blow hastened his fall and his head hit the ground with a thump. He lay still.

  The three men inside the room had jumped to their feet and were rushing at Gabriel.

  Fine, let them come all at once.

  He moved into the centre of the carpet between the desk and the bed and as the first of the three arrived, leaned back and kicked up with the side of his right foot. His foot connected with the man’s solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and forcing a deep groan from his stretched lips.

  Continuing the fluid movement, he whirled, stepped forwards and delivered a straight-armed blow with the heel of his left hand to the second man’s lower jaw.

  An incoming strike from man number three glanced across the back of his head, but he was already moving away and the impact barely registered. His right arm, bent at the elbow, lashed sideways like a whip, catching his assailant square on the nose. It broke with an audible snap, spraying blood through the air and into Gabriel’s face.

  “You fuck! You’re dead!” the second man hissed.

  Gabriel turned to find himself looking at the waving blade of a knife. A hunting model, black steel blade with a serrated top edge. As he moved back, and time slowed down, he found himself wondering how the man intended to get the knife through security. Perhaps he’s going to check it. It’ll look pretty strange on the X-ray machine, though. He gave a mental shrug. The knife was coming in. Low. Belly-height. Time to move, Wolfe. Don’t want our guts all over the carpet, do we?

  He swept his left arm down and out to his left side, catching the incoming forearm and sending the tip of the blade past his left hip. He moved closer and drove his fist hard into the man’s throat: a single blow, but with all his power concentrated over ten inches of travel into the soft flesh under the jaw.