Safe House

by Paul Starkey

  He felt very alone all of a sudden. Like this house was a ship far out at sea, the patter of raindrops against glass only heightening the illusion. Dry land seemed very far away.

  He leaned his head against the window, relishing the solidity of the glass even as he was dismayed at the vague reflection of a stranger he saw in extreme close up. Not for the first time he wondered if the morbidity was an outcrop of his illness, or whether he’d just turned into a morbid sod even before the encephalitis.

  * * *

  “Cheer up, might never happen,” said Brendan Fox as he saw the old man lean against the window. He didn’t wait to see if he responded, he’d already turned his attention back to the luscious Miss Parrish. “Ok, Luce, you take that one, reckon the yank’s right, it must be the master bedroom.”

  “Thanks,” said Lucy, her nose wrinkling in that cute way he liked so much as she smiled.

  Fox winked. Then he turned back to Tyrell who had removed his head from the glass thankfully. “We’d better go this way and see what kind of rooms your friend Quintus has left us,” he said, gesturing towards the single door on the opposite side of the landing.

  “He’s not my friend,” said the old man limply.

  “Just a turn of phrase,” Fox replied, trying to seem friendly, at least until Lucy was inside her room. He clasped Tyrell gently on the back to encourage him forwards. The man flinched as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat.

  For a moment Fox closed his eyes. Please God, let me die before I get that fucking feeble. He opened them to discover that Tyrell was moving. Before following he took a breath and turned towards the master bedroom. “Sleep well,” he called towards Lucy, who was just stepping over the threshold.

  She said nothing in reply, but did look over her shoulder at him and smiled before quickly hurrying inside and closing the door. He resisted the urge to grin, he was sure she’d been blushing, sure that smile had contained way more than friendliness.

  First things first though. “My turn to dawdle this time,” he said, as he caught up to Tyrell.

  “I guess.” The other man looked tired, really tired, weary and crushed beneath aeons of time and shovels full of shit.

  Brendan opened the wood panelled door, identical to every other bloody door in this place, and they found themselves in another corridor, similar to the one downstairs. There were tiny chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, forming an illuminated line that led towards the end of the corridor, and the top of the staircase leading down to near the kitchen area. Silently he mentally chided himself. He’d let tiredness, irritability and, be honest, lust distract him from his job. He should have insisted on a full recce of the place. Chalice should have done, but he guessed even super agents had their limitations.

  He had a lot of time for her, but she was nowhere near as good as people made out, promoted beyond her limits like so many had been since the War on Terror had been and (almost) gone.

  He was shook out of his reverie by the sight of Tyrell reaching towards the nearest bedroom door. “Not that one, mate,” he said sharply.

  Tyrell turned and looked quizzically at him. “That your ma… that’s Ibex’s room.” He didn’t really give a shit about disturbing the Yank, but he didn’t want to delay matters. He had less than an hour after all.

  “Ah. Next one then maybe?”

  “Yeah next one, after you.”

  Tyrell loped off and Fox shook his head in dismay before following. A corridor branched off to the left, but judging by the hint of porcelain he glimpsed through the half open door at its end, he figured it was just a bog. The next door they came to opened into a small, but neatly furnished bedroom. Quaint, the sort of place his wife would like. There was a single bed shoved up against the wall, the headboard under the window. A small fireplace took up far too much space given the tiny size of the room. On the mantle rested two ornate silver candlesticks, each holding a pristine white candle, neither looked like they’d ever been lit. Above the mantle was a framed aerial photograph of the house and grounds. Fox made a mental note to take closer look at it.

  Later.

  He closed the door.

  “That would have done me?” said Tyrell, hand reaching forlornly towards the door handle that Fox kept grasped in his hand.

  “Nah there’s bound to be better.” Tyrell looked uncertain, confused by Fox’s sudden friendliness. He ushered the older man on, further down the corridor, leaving him no chance to get by him and into the room they’d just checked.

  At the next door Tyrell demurred to Fox, who poked his head inside but quickly closed it again. “There’s one more,” he muttered. He wanted Tyrell as far away from the action as possible; the demented fool might only screw things up.

  The final bedroom was the mirror image of the one two doors down; same candlesticks, same photo, even the same chintzy bloody bedspread. He closed the door.

  “I think that’s it for bedrooms,” said Tyrell who’d overcome tiredness for a moment to explore further. “Just a bathroom and the stairs here.”

  Fox followed, curiosity overriding other priorities for a moment. The bathroom was huge, and though he’d have expected and old fashioned iron tub on clawed feet, the bath was modern white enamel, unsurprisingly the basin and toilet matched. The room seemed little used, and Fox wondered if the master bedroom might have an en suite, actually come to think of it so might the room Ibex had chosen.

  He ushered Tyrell out and shut the door. “Back the way we came.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Tyrell. “For a second I thought you were going to drag me downstairs and make me sleep in the kitchen.”

  Fox had started back up the corridor but now he paused and turned to find Tyrell was smiling. Automatically he smiled too. “C’mon, let’s get you tucked up before you fall down.” The impish smile had affected him, for a moment John Tyrell had looked less like and old man and more like a cheeky schoolboy, and Fox felt a sudden pang of emotion as he recalled saying goodbye to his twin sons that very morning. They had gone past the annoyance of the terrible twos (which seemed to last into their threes) and had become two very grown up, very cute four year olds.

  He ignored the identical chintzy rooms and opened the door between them; reaching in to flick the light switch on. “You take this one, the bed looks comfier,” he paused and wrinkled his nose. “Sorry about the décor.”

  Tyrell entered and Fox walked after him. The room was easily as big as the two either side combined, and there was nothing quaint about it. The wallpaper wasn’t black, but it might as well have been, composed as it was of dark blue and brown stripes. No fireplace in this room, no chintzy bedspread. The bed was bigger, queen sized, and shoved up against the wall, and it did look comfier. Scattered by the bedside were a mixed up pile of socks and magazines. Another, larger mound of clothing, dirty he assumed, was wedged between the wardrobe and the far wall. There was a small desk that looked like it had been (badly) assembled from flat pack. A PC sat uneasily on the desk, surrounded by a morass of notebooks, pens, CDs, USB sticks…it took Fox a second to realise there was a keyboard buried under the stuff.

  There were three posters on the wall, all showing the same quartet of black lipsticked musicians of indeterminate gender. At least he thought they all featured the same band. At least the bed was clear of debris, and even the brown duvet looked normal.

  “Sorry it’s a bit emo,” he muttered.

  Tyrell turned. “Emu?” he said, brow furrowing.

  Fox chuckled. “You know, you’re a funny bloke at times, John. See you in an hour.” And, still amused, he closed the door behind him, shutting Tyrell in Goth heaven without an explanation.

  Fox ignored the other rooms and instead headed back the way he’d come. Instinctively now he was alone his right hand slipped under his jacket to check his Beretta.

  Chapter twenty three

  Chalice had gone back to the drawing room as she’d told Cheung she would, but she hadn’t gone back to jot down questions for Brendan
to ask Ibex. Fox was irritating, difficult to manage, and too easily distracted by a pretty face, but he was no fool, he was a damn fine agent and he’d know exactly which avenues to proceed down when it came to Quintus Armstrong.

  She couldn’t tell Thomas the real reason she was here though.

  She had to wheel the ladder to the left and climb several steps before she reached the shelf she was looking for, or more specifically the book she was looking for. There was nothing particularly special about it, no special relevance to the fact that it was an Old Testament bible. She’d chosen it for two reasons during her last visit to White Wolf House five weeks before. The first was that it had the dusty appearance of a book that rarely left the shelf; the second was that it was large enough for her purposes.

  Book in hand she climbed down and then paused, eyes flickering nervously towards the door as she did so. Already her mind was running through scenarios should Cheung choose that moment to re-join her. These ranged from the least viable option—i.e. tell him the truth—to the most obvious; tell him she’d picked it up off the floor out of curiosity. Given how many books the Carmichaels had left lying around there was no way he could disprove this, and likely he would take her at face value, he was the sort of man to do that. Sometimes she wondered if this was a failing or a virtue given their line of work.

  Resting the bible on one of the ladder’s steps she quickly opened the book. During her last visit she’d instructed Antonia to leave her alone in this room for fifteen minutes. Whilst Antonia was away, and in a shocking act of vandalism that would have appalled her mother, not to mention, she supposed, God, Chalice had used a Stanley knife to cut a rectangle into the pages. Removing the loose fragments she’d been left with a ragged gap that was large enough for her purposes. The waste paper went into her briefcase, while the bible went back on the shelf, albeit now hiding the mobile phone that was still there. Antonia had returned with curiosity burning in her eyes, but with too much sense to ask what Chalice had done in her absence.

  Chalice removed the phone now and slid it into her jacket pocket. Before doing anything else she climbed back and replaced the book, sliding the ladder back to its original position afterwards.

  She didn’t remove the phone until she was seated at the dining table. Eyes still flickering to the door she flipped open the silver pebble and turned it on. The screen brightened almost immediately, and bars soon appeared on the generic screen to indicate both good battery strength, and a clear signal. After checking that the phone was on silent she closed the two halves together and returned it to her pocket. Now she had to consider whether to use it or not.

  From the earliest planning stages it had become obvious that Bottlewood would require a secure, remote location. By the same token Chalice Knight was not a woman who liked to be cut off from help if it were needed. She could have had Antonia and Burgess tell her where they’d hidden the house’s landline phones, but she disliked having to rely on them more than she had too. She couldn’t take a mobile into the house because the trust of her team relied on her seeming to be adhering to the same restrictions as them.

  Hence she’d hidden an old fashioned (but fully charged), anonymous, pay as you go mobile here all those weeks ago.

  Ideally Fox would have been with her now, and she’d have let him in on the plan, he’d trust her, he’d understand. Thomas had queered that particular pitch though, and as a result he’d set her antennae twitching, she just didn’t know why yet, but the fact that he’d been so obvious in staying down here with her was somewhat unnerving. Especially give the (unconfirmed) rumours about him. She hadn’t wanted to believe them, was sure he’d have at least broached the subject with her, but now she wasn’t so sure…

  She resisted the urge to check the SIG Sauer. She had minutes, if that, to decide whether to use the phone to contact Sir George, to break protocol and suggest that measures be taken to ensure Ibex appeared dead rather than just vanished. It could be done tomorrow, but the longer it took the more questions both the Chinese and the Americans might ask, and if they asked enough they might convince themselves of the truth, that Quintus Armstrong wasn’t dead, and then any chance of using the Nigerians to send false info would be lost.

  If she used the phone though, she risked compromising their location.

  What to do…what to do…

  She’d never been one to ruminate for long on a particular course of action, and she didn’t now. Eyes on the door she took out the phone.

  * * *

  Quintus lay on the bed; eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. He wasn’t tired. He’d never been much of a sleeper, able to survive on a few scant hours a night if needs be. He was glad about this because, much like Poe, he disliked sleep, the dark gnawing emptiness, oblivious prelude of what was to come. Every member of his family was deeply religious, and he’d gone along with their quaint beliefs. America might claim to be a country where God and State were unconnected, but like so many facets of the American psyche it was a fallacy—you only had to see how big a deal every single US president made of their convictions to see that.

  Quintus believed in no God, but he’d wanted to get on in life, and while revealing his atheism might not have hampered his career, it certainly wouldn’t have helped it. Besides, Church was good for networking.

  It was the same reason he’d married; not for love, not for companionship, not even for sex. No, he’d married out of simple expediency. Family men were almost twice as likely as singletons to get the big promotions.

  Not that either God, or marriage to Cheyanna had helped him. No, the odds were too heavily stacked against him by small-minded fools who were jealous, no fearful, of his abilities.

  Well come the morrow he would never have to deal with those idiots again. Come tomorrow he’d never need enter a church again, never need to spend a moment with that distasteful woman again, her own reasons for wedlock no better than his.

  Soon he would have his money, and his freedom. His plans were in place, his escape route ready—all he needed was the $2 million promised him by MI5. Nobody knew where he would be heading. The passport the British would supply would take him on a flight to Berlin. There he’d ditch the passport and collect another from a safety deposit box. The next leg of his journey would be longer, to New York and another safety deposit box, another identity. He would remain in his native land for only a few hours before another plane would take him back across the Atlantic, from JFK to Vienna. From Vienna he would fly to Cairo.

  Once in Egypt he would cease to use planes, cease to travel “officially”. From Cairo he would travel by road, across the border into Libya, then across another border into Tunisia where he would depart by boat to Malta where a final identity, and retirement awaited.

  He had visited Malta only once, covertly. He had no great love for the place and had chosen it at random because he had to retire somewhere, and he’d rather it was a place he had no known associations with. He would have loved to end up in New Zealand but, given his years at the American embassy in Wellington, that would be too obvious.

  Besides a place was just a place. He’d lived in so many over the years, and he’d adapted to every single one, even Nigeria. He would adapt to Malta and maybe, just maybe, after a few years, when the furore over Bottlewood had subsided, well maybe then he’d go somewhere else.

  That was the future thought. Right now he had more pressing concerns.

  The light was still on, illuminating the bedroom, but he’d given it no more than a cursory glance. It was a large, L-shaped room, the décor minimalist; plain beige walls, no photos or pictures. The double bed was comfortable, but had a degree of rigidity that suggested either the mattress was new, or else the room was little used. Little used as a bedroom at least. The bed, a slender black wardrobe and a matching nightstand had been squashed into one corner, leaving a large amount of space, which the rest of the furniture occupied.

  The pinewood desk was sturdy, well made. A flat screen monitor sat on the desk, b
eneath it the docking station for a laptop, though it seemed Antonia Carmichael had taken the computer with her. There was little else on the desk; a bland desktop calendar, a stainless steel pot containing pens and pencils, and a notebook. He’d flicked through it but the pages were all empty. Clearly the book had once held many more pages, even if there was a lack of remnants still attached to the spirals at the top. The woman was almost obsessively neat. For a few moments he wondered about the missing pages, then he saw the small shredder nestled under the desk and understood.

  The shredder had been empty, ditto the stainless wastepaper bin. The desk had no drawers, and the only other furniture was a bookcase built into an alcove in the wall. It was filled exclusively with legal volumes.

  On another day Quintus Armstrong would have explored further, pulled books out one by one to check for hidden letters, discs, photographs, doodles and the like, be they incriminating or banal. On another day he’d have run a pencil over the topmost page of the notebook to see if impressions remained from the missing page above.

  Not tonight though. He had allowed himself a few minutes to explore the room, even checking outside via both front and side facing windows. Nothing of any interest caught his eye from either direction, although he did quickly determine that if needs be the Audi would be the easier vehicle to use for a getaway.

  The edge taken off his curiosity he’d settled down on the bed to think. He’d always thought better flat on his back.

  A simple conundrum vexed him. The information he had brought into the house had run out—that was why he’d asked for food, for rest. He’d needed neither. Eating was much like sleeping, he could take it or leave it, but he’d wanted time.

  The debriefing had progressed much faster than he had planned for, and if he was going to have to resort to making up the rest of his tale, then he at least wanted a bit of time to do so, rather than being forced to come up with things on the hoof.