Safe House

by Paul Starkey

  “How did you know?” he said softly.

  She chanced a glance towards the other end of the room. Nobody had moved. The two older men seemed curious about the conversation going on by the bookcases, but she doubted they could make out what was being said, and she’d purposefully kept herself and Cheung sideways on to make even lip reading difficult.

  She could tell him the truth; that she hadn’t actually known for sure until just now, until he’d fallen into an age old trap that perhaps, just perhaps, indicated he really wasn’t cut out for this business.

  Instead she did what spooks always did. She lied.

  “You think we don’t have sources inside SIS the same way they do with us?” She smiled. “Considering we’re on the same side I think we spend too long spying on each other.”

  “Hmm,” he said. Had he believed her? Did it matter?

  “Your handler, Tom.”

  He responded in the most obvious way. “Why? Why call in MI6, why not…” His eyes widened a little. “You think this mission was compromised from the inside?” His voice raised an octave, he was still whispering, but still the surprise was showing.

  She shrugged. “Lucy was one of us, yet obviously she was working for someone else. At the moment the only member of the Service I trust is you.” Laying it on a little thick, but essentially it was the truth.

  Cheung nodded over her shoulder. “And the old man?”

  “Tyrell? Oh I trust him too, but he isn’t exactly an active agent is he now.”

  “I guess not.” He still looked confused, but thoughtful now as well. She suspected his mind was traversing similar lines to hers now, lines that led to unpleasant destinations.

  She didn’t want to give him too much time to think, a spy’s mind working overtime was never a good idea, and pretty soon he’d be suspecting her. “The number,” she said. “And name of your contact.”

  He reeled off the number of a landline somewhere in London. She input it into the mobile and put it to her ear, waiting to be connected.

  “My contact is Frank Peters,” Cheung added.

  She felt herself smile involuntarily. “Domino?”

  He nodded; slightly embarrassed.

  That was good. She’d known Frank Peters for years. He was a portly man in his fifties now who’d worked for Six for as long as she could remember, probably all the way back to the late seventies. He was cursed with several unsightly moles on his face; two to the left of his nose, three to the right, hence the nickname. He could be a grumpy, officious bugger, but he was honest as they came, a patriot who never let inter-service rivalry get in the way of anything truly important. She figured this situation would fall into that category. Irrespective she wasn’t about to start talking and ghosts and ghoulies.

  The phone was ringing now. She checked her watch, almost one in the morning; she hoped Domino wouldn’t be too put out.

  The ringing stopped as the phone was answered. She was expecting a barely conscious drawl. ‘What?’ maybe, maybe not even that coherent, maybe just swearing…

  The voice on the other end of the phone was clear as day, and she suspected the person speaking was wide awake.

  Or had been when they’d recorded the message.

  “Thank you for calling the consular department of the Embassy of Israel. Our office is closed at the moment but is open between…”

  She jabbed her thumb down hanging up the call. Then she looked at Cheung. She wanted to ask him what the hell he was playing at, ask if he thought this was an appropriate time to be taking the piss.

  She didn’t. Cheung was many things, but even at the best of times he’d never been known as much of a joker.

  “No answer?”

  “I think I got the number wrong,” she said, throwing in a silly me smile for good measure.

  He didn’t look like he believed her, but he reeled the memorised number off again. She put the phone to her ear and mouthed the word thanks.

  The phone rang and rang, when it passed the point where last time a recorded message kicked in she took heart. Eventually the ringing stopped as someone lifted the receiver. When a voice answered it was as tired and barely comprehendible as she’d been expecting.

  “Wha… what ….who …what the…who is this?”

  She ended the call. Her hand was shaking now. For the life of her she wasn’t sure why she’d hung up on her own mother.

  “What is it?”

  She looked at Tom, this time she didn’t lie. Whatever was going on clearly it wasn’t anything to do with him. He’d given her the same number both times. She might not have the kind of memory that Ibex had, but her short-term recall was excellent; besides the mobile confirmed that the same number had been dialled twice in a row.

  “Something’s not right,” she said. “Something…I dialled the same number twice.” She shook her head slowly. “But I didn’t get the same person twice.” She held the phone out to him. “You try. Dial the number, don’t use redial. Maybe it’s me…” Yes maybe it’s me, maybe this bloody house is making me think I dialled that number twice when I called the Israel Embassy, when I called mum. Fuck what time is it in Tel Aviv?

  Cheung looked a bit perplexed, but he smiled and shrugged and did as she asked. After a moment she saw his body language change as the phone was answered. For a second he looked like he was going to speak, but then he went deathly pale.

  “I’m sorry, wrong number.” His voice had been dead, devoid of emotion as he said the words. He hung up and passed the phone back to her. “I didn’t get Frank,” was all he said.

  She wanted to probe, but whoever had answered the phone it had been enough to spook him royally, so it had to be something more telling than a parent or an embassy. Part of her wanted to dial the number again, dial any number, to prove they weren’t both going mad, prove that the phone was possessed.

  Or maybe it’d been tampered with!

  Given everything that had happened so far in this house it seemed foolish to clutch at straws, and even if the phone had been tampered with, well what kind of enemy agent would configure such a random, pointless bit of sabotage as having it dial a different number to any you actually entered. Still she wanted to cling to the idea, wanted to cling to something that was normal, even if it was ridiculous.

  But how to check. She glanced around the room, wondering if it was worth dismantling the phone or…her eyes alighted on Felix, still enraptured by the CCTV. Oh god I really do need a holiday don’t I, she chided herself. Or maybe I need to bloody retire. I’m obviously getting too senile for this job.

  She tossed the mobile to Cheung. He caught it as welcomingly as a scientist might catch a test tube full of Ebola. She didn’t care, she was already moving towards the youngster.

  “Felix.”

  He looked up sharply, not so entranced by the telly then. “What now?” His voice had changed, childish resignation having replaced childish consternation. She wasn’t sure it was much of an improvement.

  She stopped just shy of him, looming over him like a maiden aunt and not caring. “You have a phone? Who am I kidding, you’re a teenager of course you have a phone.” She held her hand out and made a beckoning motion.

  He didn’t argue, didn’t protest. His shoulders slumped in that classic teenaged manner that suggested taking his phone out of his pocket was such hard work, but he complied nonetheless, handing her what looked like the latest iteration of iPhone. She wasn’t too enamoured of modern technology. It had its place but too often it was just an excuse to sell you something.

  Still she wasn’t so much of a Luddite that she couldn’t use it. For an instant she considered dialling Domino’s number again. Then she decided on a different tack. Scrolling through Felix’s address book—so many bloody names, what would his Facebook account look like?—until she found his mother’s number.

  New York would be five hours behind give or take, so at least she wouldn’t be waking Antonia up. She dialled the number and waited. By this time everyone se
emed interested, and both Ibex and Tyrell had forsaken their chairs to come and stand close to her, even Cheung had moved nearer. Only Felix didn’t seem remotely bothered, his gaze returning to the TV.

  The phone rang seven times. Then it was answered.

  Silence on the other end. No, not quite silence, she could hear someone breathing. She couldn’t be sure but she thought it was a man. Not Antonia then, was it too much to hope it was Burgess?

  “Hello?” she said, the word sounding ragged because her mouth had gone suddenly dry.

  Nothing.

  “Hello?” she said again. “Is anyone…”

  “Eshtaqto elaika katheeran.”

  She was suddenly lightheaded, but if the blood had drained from her head, then she had no idea where it’d gone, because her fingers felt suddenly chilled to the bone, as if her circulation had broken down.

  Perhaps her body was doing its best to protect her heart, diverting all resources there.

  Eshtaqto elaika katheeran. In Arabic it meant ‘I missed you so much.’

  She recognised the voice of course, even though it had been fifteen years since she heard it.

  “Did you get through?” asked Cheung.

  Chalice looked at him, wondering absently if the terror she was feeling was evident in her eyes? Was that even the emotion she was feeling?

  “Who is this?” she asked, voice fragile, not certain she wanted an answer.

  “Ada'tu tareeqi,” said the voice from her past.

  Ada'tu tareeqi. ‘I’m lost.’

  She wanted to hang up, wanted to throw the phone across the room and burn this fucking house down to the ground. She couldn’t terminate the call though, wouldn’t. Not until she had a chance to tell him something.

  “Aasef.” She said the word softly, and as she spoke she became aware of wetness on her cheeks as scattered tears rolled from her eyes.

  Assef.

  Sorry.

  Apologising to a dead man.

  In reply, only breathing; Then, “Hal beemkanek mosa’adati?” Can you help me?

  The steely core of her being was reasserting herself. She’d been guilty for fifteen years, and it had been horrible, a shitty way to live. But live she had because, as the cliché said, life was for the living.

  He repeated his question.

  “Assef,” she said again, and then hung up the call. She handed Felix his phone back, only then did she wipe her eyes clear.

  Ibex was looking at her. She felt her eyes narrow. “Don’t mistake this for weakness,” she said softly. “It’ll be the last fucking mistake you make.”

  He said nothing. His dead eyes continued to bore into her. She wondered who he’d get if he used the phone, wondered if there was anything in this world or the next that would perturb him?

  “Did you get through?” asked Tyrell.

  She shook her head. “Nobody’s home.” She smiled coldly. “Nobody you’d want to talk to anyway.” She drew her shoulders back. “We’re leaving.”

  “Leaving?” said Cheung.

  “Yes, leaving. Getting the fuck out of this house and driving as far away as we can.”

  “Now hang on one cotton picking minute…” began Ibex.

  She knew her reactions were good, but even she was surprised at just how quickly she was in his face, left hand grabbing at his collar while her right jabbed the barrel of the Beretta under his chin, forcing his head back. His expression tightened, but still it didn’t reach his eyes. Like a bloody shark.

  “We. Are. Leaving.” She said the three words slowly, deliberately. She forced a hard smile. “Nobody else is going to die here, I won’t allow it.”

  He smirked. “Well, doesn’t look like I have much choice now, does it?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Sure you do, Quintus. You could try and shank me with the knife you palmed in the kitchen earlier.” Finally a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Oh come on, Quintus. I might not be on top form right now but I’m not an idiot, and I know damn well that you don’t do anything out of the goodness of your heart, and that includes stopping some teenager doing something stupid. Oh no, it wasn’t about Felix, it was about the knife block.”

  He said nothing, showed no more emotion. God, how easy it would be, just a bit of pressure on the trigger and his brains would be decorating the ceiling. And wouldn’t that solve a lot of problems…

  “What’s the matter? Figure that even if you did use the knife my finger would still twitch?” She laughed, a sound as dry as the desert where she’d last heard Hakeem’s voice. “How about I make it easier?” She took a half step back and lowered her gun.

  She shrugged when he didn’t move, not even to rearrange his clothes. “How about now,” and she jammed the pistol into her waistband and clasped her hands behind her back.

  “Chalice…”

  “It’s ok, John. He isn’t going to do it.”

  Ibex was finally smiling. “Of course I’m not. What would be the point when your two pet poodles will just put me down a second later?” He jinked his right arm and a second later a knife dropped blade first. He caught it by the handle as it fell then reversed it so he was holding the blade. He held it out towards her. “Besides which, we’re on the same side.”

  She took the knife without hesitation. “Are we?” she said, slipping the knife into an inside pocket. It wasn’t a large blade—just a couple of inches long—but she didn’t want to chance putting it down somewhere that he could retrieve it from later, she’d seen people wounded badly by smaller weapons. The human body was a contradiction, capable of withstanding hideous punishment, yet fragile enough that a tiny nick of an artery was enough to kill in seconds.

  He looked quizzically at her. “Of course we are. Unless you know something different of course,” and he bared his teeth. The gesture half friendly, half challenging.

  Ok, she thought, might as well do this now as later. “Well for starters…”

  The sentence died a death as the lights in the room suddenly went out.

  The bulbs didn’t pop, but neither did she hear the sound of a switch flicking, and there wasn’t even that tell-tale flicker as power was cut.

  “Nobody move, nobody do anything,” she called into the gloom. “It might just be a temporary blackout, like in the hallway earlier.”

  Feeling slightly self-conscious, even though nobody could see her, she slipped the Beretta out of her jeans and rested her thumb on the safety. Given the gloom around her, and the probable nature of any threat, this didn’t relax her as much as it might have done under other circumstances.

  The dark was total, impenetrable. She knew she was in a large room, knew there were four people close by, but she didn’t believe it. She was convinced that she was alone, and rather than in a lavish drawing room of White Wolf House, she was stood inside a small enclosed space, a chimney perhaps, a horizontal coffin, and if she should try to move it would become apparent as she bumped into bricks, into wood or dirt.

  Her hands began to tremble, her skin felt suddenly cold, clammy. She was alone, alone and buried alive and nobody was ever coming to save her from this torment.

  The fact that none of the others responded to her words only seemed to reinforce this crazy notion. Her mouth had gone dry, and more than anything she was desperate for contact, for proof that someone else was with her. God help her, even Ibex. She held her tongue, she’d shown enough weakness, she had to fight it, had to fight this fear.

  The darkness seemed to close tight around her, like a blanket, like a shroud. Was it her imagination or was the air getting thin…

  In the end it wasn’t one of the others that saved her from screaming, it was the return of the light…after a fashion.

  The light bulbs didn’t burst back into life; it was the TV. She hadn’t even realised it’d gone off as well as the lights, but now it was back, bathing the room in a watery, eerie green glow. She found everyone where they’d been before the lights went out. Tyrell, Cheung, Ibex—was it her imaginati
on or did the snide little smile he was wearing suggest he somehow knew how frightened she was?—and Felix. Yes, Felix, still crouched in front of the TV, eyes fixed to those four camera feeds.

  Except now he looked up at her. “I don’t think it wants us to leave,” he said, voice weak, terrified.

  “What do you mean, it?”

  He didn’t reply, he just pointed at the TV.

  Chalice cautiously moved over to take a look. The others followed.

  Nobody said a word, they just watched the four tiny views, each different yet now all connected in some way that went beyond any of their understanding.

  The long shot of the main gate showed a pale shadowy form patrolling languidly back and forth inside the locked gates, nose close to the ground as if it was searching for a scent.

  Somehow the sight of the white wolf there didn’t especially disturb her, and maybe if it’d been confined to that one corner of the screen she wouldn’t have minded. But it wasn’t, the wolf, the same wolf, was clearly visible to each camera.

  The second image still showed the front of the house, the Audi and the Range Rover still there, along with their new companion; Felix’s Skoda. Currently the wolf was standing on top of the Audi’s roof, its white fur almost, but not quite, blending in with the white bodywork of the German coupe. Only the fact that it was moving, shuffling from side to side as if its claws were having trouble finding purchase, ensured that it was plain to see.

  The third image showed the side and back doors, and again the wolf prowled. Much like at the main gate it seemed a very purposeful, if relaxed pattern as it walked down the side of the house and then turned the corner, padding another few metres, just past the door that led to the utility room, then turned back the way it had come.

  And the final feed. The wolf stood midway between the conservatory and the old oak tree, stood stock still, head pointed towards the house as if it was looking directly at them, its vision unhampered by bricks or mortar.