by Adam Brookes
The woman looked at her, a half-smile on her face.
“Is it a smart phone?” she said.
“It is,” said Pearl. “Here.” She handed the burner phone and the charger to the woman, who took them and examined them.
“I can call my daughter,” she said.
“Sure,” said Pearl.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
“You’re a kind girl. And you look after that little one now, you hear?”
“I will,” she said, touching the beach ball.
And Pearl walked away, wondering what she had done.
46
Pearl moved slowly across the ticket hall, toting the backpack, one hand on her belly. She bought a ticket on the first bus to leave, heading north. It was for Toledo, up there by the Great Lakes, but she decided to get off some forty miles short, in Findlay, Ohio.
There, she walked to the edge of town, and, behind a chain-link fence, amid towers of scrap and the stench of oil, prevailed upon an elderly man to sell her a car.
It was an ancient black thing, its sporty wedge shape mocked by the scabrous, dull paint, the moss growing at the base of the windscreen. The man was attached to an oxygen bottle which he walked around with him on a little trolley, the clear plastic tubing hooked into his nose. He coughed and haggled with her, and she paid him three hundred dollars.
“Well, I sure hope it gets you where you’re goin,’ young lady,” he wheezed. “And I hope God grants you a safe journey, and a beautiful and healthy child. In His wisdom.” He gave her a pamphlet. It was called Prayers of Love and Deliverance, Parenting in the Name of Jesus.
The car shuddered and started, and the old man raised his hands as if in his own prayer, and Pearl pulled out onto the street as it began to rain, her only company the muffled clack of the wipers, the headlights coming on, the endless miles of highway.
She drove for hours, long blank hours on the interstate, hugging the slow lane, hanging on the lights of the eighteen-wheelers, skirting Chicago, heading west and north. Every now and again she’d pull off, drive down some dark back road, stop, piss in the bushes. Once she took a catnap, but woke after an hour, cold and deeply frightened. She opened the window, listened, heard voices somewhere off in the trees, saw lights and just panicked, starting the car and roaring off down the road. She merged back on the interstate and didn’t stop for another hundred and twenty miles, her hands clamped to the wheel.
She finally stopped for gas—it must have been two or three in the morning—somewhere up in Wisconsin. She paid cash in advance and bought a chocolate bar and some water. The forecourt was empty, neon lit, and she stood there, the gas hissing from the pump, and she shivered. There were cameras, she realised, counted at least five.
A pick-up pulled in, coming too fast onto the forecourt, and lurched to a stop, music pounding. A guy got out, in a camouflage T-shirt and a trucker’s cap. As he reached for the pump he saw her, did a mock double-take, and then just stood there, chewing on something, looking right at her. She looked away, but she could feel his aggression, his desire to toy with her like some fanged animal toys with prey. She got back in the car, locked the doors, felt for the Ruger under the seat, and drove away into the night.
Outside Madison, she pulled over at a rest stop as it was getting light, ate some chocolate, put the seat back, and closed her eyes. Sleep wouldn’t come. The car was too cold, and trucks were constantly rumbling through. Her mind raced. Where would this end? Where would be far enough? How would she know?
She reached into her backpack, bought out her tablet, opened it, and again made sure it wasn’t signalling. She opened a blank document and started writing.
So, Philip.
I just wrote someone I love a letter. I told him he was the only person I could trust right now.
I didn’t tell him about you.
Can I trust you? What does British intelligence want with me? Won’t you just hand me over to the CIA or FBI or whoever deals with people like me, with people like my parents? I mean, you are allies, right? And I’m a criminal now.
So what do we do? You and me?
They’re coming for me, aren’t they? Those people. The ones who control my parents. The man they say is my cousin, Beetle. That disgusting lawyer in Suriname. The expensive woman. And the neat and clean little old man. I’m going to hide from them, but I think they’re going to find me.
Yours in despair,
Pearl
PS I stole my father’s laptop.
Finally, she dozed.
Later, eighty miles on, she stopped at roadside services. In the food court she bought a hot chocolate and found a Wi-Fi signal. She submerged herself into darknet, deep into the encryption. Invisible, she navigated back to the laptop that she’d left in the apartment in Columbus. There it was, up there on top of the kitchen cupboards, still working, still online. She used it to send the email to Mangan.
TOP SECRET STRAP 2 BOTANY—UK EYES ONLY
COPY 2/5
//REPORT
1/ (TS) Source FULCRUM addressed a further letter to C/FE. This is his seventh communication. It is printed below in full.
Beijing
To: Controller, Far East and Western Hemisphere,
United Kingdom Secret Intelligence Service,
Vauxhall Cross, London
Dear Friends,
I am very troubled by recent events in our relations. Even though I have adopted a reasonable and generous attitude in our professional intercourse, yet you are making unreasonable demands. This is most arrogant and unacceptable. I feel I must again repeat the principles upon which our arrangement is based, and which can lead to mutual respect and cooperation.
1/ I will NOT tell you my identity. Your demand is unacceptable.
2/ The information I provide will be at my decision. I will not accept tasking from you. I will provide information only that I think you need to know.
3/ It is a big insult to question the importance or veracity of materials I am provide to you. I will not respond to follow-up questions.
4/ I now suspect you are finding ways to pressure me. Do you think you can do this? I remind you that my position is secure and my work is respected. Pressure or threats will have no effect. If this is true then I am most disappointed. Pressure or threats to me are like a whining mosquito, of no consequence. Perhaps I will look for other partners who have a better understanding of my value.
5/ You have still not respond to my request for diamonds. Please give this your urgent consideration.
I hope we can proceed on the basis of seeking common ground and avoiding disagreement.
Your friend,
Z
ENDS //
The HAMPERS had torn up the interstate to Columbus, Ohio. Harker and O’Riley were close behind them, the Paulsons on their way. In Columbus, the tracker on HAMPER 2’s vehicle showed him darting around the city like an agitated rodent.
In the safe flat in Tyson’s Corner they sat, the four of them, around Mangan’s laptop. Brendan had been on a conference call with VX. Po-faced, self-important, he relayed something of the hysteria building at VX.
“I would say, without wanting to sound overly dramatic, that the top floor is demonstrating a measure of concern.” He paused for thought, looked down. “I think that, while there is appetite for a continued presence in this operational arena, it’s fair to say that there is concern, too, over the operational modalities, and, of course, over the degree to which we risk infringing upon or destabilising the norms of inter-agency liaison and cooperation.”
He looked directly at Hopko, who was wearing her iron face.
“And I say all this even as the top floor is fully cognisant of the operational rationales in play.”
“And what are those exactly?” said Mangan abruptly.
Hopko smiled at him, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“I rather thought we were clear on that,” she said. “The knowledge that she is in possessio
n of her father’s laptop makes finding her an imperative.”
Mangan turned to her, and Patterson saw it, the side of him she sometimes sensed. What would she call it? Principled? Empathic? Not really—more clear-eyed, illusionless, hard to impress. The side of him, she realised, she waited for, that she respected.
“If these people get to Pearl first, if they find her before we do,” said Mangan, “what will they do to her, do you think?”
Hopko sighed. “We’ve seen it before. They’ll get her out to a third country. On a gurney, probably. There’ll be an interrogation.”
“And then what?”
“They won’t kill her, if that’s what you mean. She’ll end up locked in a house somewhere on the outskirts of Beijing, probably. Out of sight. Somewhere with minders, high walls. And that will be that for her. For a very long time.”
Mangan was sitting very still.
“And us, if we find her first, what will we do?”
“Philip, we will behave like decent human beings. Is that what you need to hear, my love?” She smiled, a hard smile, shot through with intention. “And in order for that to happen, you need to be persuasive, don’t you?”
Mangan regarded her for a long second
And it was then, in that evaluating look of his, that, much later, Patterson would recognise the beginning of his dissent.
Pearl,
Time is running very short now. You have been tracked to Columbus, Ohio. Is that where you are? Can you tell me? I will come and meet you. You do not have to be alone in this, I will come and help you decide your next steps. We can get you out of this situation. We can get you to safety.
I realise that you must be going through enormous personal pain and loss. Please talk to me about what you are thinking and feeling.
I give you my word that I will help you.
Philip
Mangan’s first draft had included a commitment to her security and well-being, but Brendan had asked him to take it out.
“I’d rather we kept it general, at this stage,” he’d said. “Clearly, it would be inadvisable to make any commitment that could be construed as a financial guarantee.”
Pearl was in North Dakota when she stopped.
She pulled over by the side of the road fifty miles out of Bismarck, rolling farmland to the horizon, cold, clear air, the chatter of insects and strange, fluttering birdsong. She stood there for a while in the long grass by the side of the road, feeling the breeze on her face.
Time to catch her breath.
She checked into a motel in a place called Watford City. A tattooed girl with a toddler glanced at her driver’s licence and gave her a key—a real, old-fashioned metal key, attached to a wooden fob. The place was full of oil men, burly, silent guys in trucker caps and pick-ups, scouring the state for work on the fracking rigs. They ignored her.
The room was hot and smelled of drains, air freshener. She sat on the bed, took off her shoes and tried to keep the despair at bay. On the bedside table was a paperback entitled God’s Word for the Oil Patch: Bible stories interspersed with inspirational tales from the oil rigs. It seemed to have been dropped in the shower, its pages puffy and crinkled.
She slept for a while, and when she woke it was nearly dark. She opened the window, and the temperature had dropped. And off in the gloom, beyond the town, she could see the gas flares on the rigs speckling the prairie, flecks of flame in the gathering dark.
She went out for food at about eight, the Ruger in her waistband, bought a burger and fries and went back to the hotel room. A car had pulled up on the forecourt, next to her door, a white sedan. It hadn’t been there before.
She stepped back around the corner, out of sight, waited for a moment. There was no movement, and she walked quickly to her door and went in.
Dear Philip,
It’s so strange. I used to have a family. A pretty whacked-out one. My dad was always so angry. Or else trying to persuade everyone he was such a nice guy, like a real assimilated immigrant. He was so embarrassing. My mom, not so much. She would come to the school gate to meet me and she never talked to any of the other moms. And I never got to go to anyone’s houses or anything. And summer vacations were like these long empty periods when either I would stay home by myself or I would have to go away to math camp. Actually, I quite enjoyed math camp. At least there were other geeks there.
But it was my life, at least. And I thought I understood it. And it had a feel, a texture, of its own. Like when I would sit out on the deck in summer and eat watermelon, and feel the juice run down my chin, and watch the fireflies. Do you have fireflies where you are from? They’re my favorite thing. They come out in June for about a month on the east coast, and in the evening there they are, sparking and winking in the trees, these beautiful little green flickering lights. And when it gets dark, and you go outside and let your eyes adjust, whole trees are flickering green. And they fly so slowly, you can just reach up and grab them with your hand and they’ll sit on your fingers and their bellies will light up fluorescent green.
I think of them as a metaphor for us, for our consciousness. Consciousness as a tiny flicker in the dark. It’s there, then it’s gone.
I had planned to spend my whole life studying that tiny moment of light. Trying to figure out what it’s made of, where to find it.
And now I’m sitting in a crappy motel by myself, far from that life, watching fire on the horizon.
I don’t know what to do.
Help me.
Pearl
The white sedan worried her though she couldn’t say why, and she left before dawn. She headed west again, then south, over mile after mile of prairie, watching the storms sweep across it in great pillars of cloud, dragging ribbons of grey rain. The fracking rigs squatted on the landscape, their flares billowing flame up into the rain. Once she saw a herd of spotted ponies thundering through the grassland, their manes long and wild, kicking up great clods of earth as they went.
Pearl found herself utterly alone on a back road, stopped the car, got out and stretched. The bleached skull of a steer sat atop a fence post, a rainbow in the far distance. She felt a spatter of cold rain on her face and wondered when it would turn to snow. Soon.
She looked back down the road a mile or more. The only other vehicle she could see was coming slowly towards her. It was white.
She tried to control herself, tried to manage the rising panic, but it had hold of her. She ran back to her car, jumped in, pulled away and put her foot right down, leaning forward, hunched over the wheel. In her mirror, nothing, just open road behind her. She pushed west, and crossed into Montana.
At Lame Deer, there was no sign of a white sedan. She stopped to fill the car. The place was Cheyenne, a reservation town in rolling hills with a water tower and a casino. At the trading post she bought Coke and a big bag of Cheetos and toothpaste, and the girl behind the till smiled at her, asked her if she was doing okay today, and she nearly cried again. The tattooed men outside leaning against their pick-ups watched her go, this dumpy little green-eyed kid with dirty hair in her skanky car who clearly had no clue where she was or where she was going.
Philip,
There’s a poem I love. It’s by this ancient Chinese poet called Bai Juyi, and it’s from the Tang Dynasty, like twelve hundred years ago. One of his slave girls ran away, and he was really cut up about it and he wrote this poem.
“Losing a Slave Girl” by Bai Juyi
Around my courtyard house the wall is low, and on the door they rarely check the names.
To think we were not always kind brings shame, the knowledge of your unpaid work, regret.
But a bird won’t long remain inside a cage, and in the breeze a flower leaves the branch.
As for news of where you are tonight, there’s none, and only the moonlight knows.
Isn’t that lovely? I just wonder if that little slave girl felt the way I do right now. Were they hunting her? Was she alone?
I don’t know where I’m
going or how I’ll know when I get there.
Am I going to you?
There’s a white car, and I think it’s following me.
Pearl
On, into Crow, the towns little more than hamlets of prefabricated homes and beaten-up pick-ups adrift in the huge landscape, the skies strewn with vast, strange striations of cloud. A man flagged her down some way out of Busby by just standing in the middle of the road, refusing to let her pass. He wore a filthy padded jacket and a woollen beanie. He came over to her window and she opened it a crack.
“You going to Billings?” he said.
“No,” she replied.
“You gotta take me to Billings,” he said. He smelled of something, of piss maybe, and his pupils were constricted, almost to pinpoints.
“I’m not going to Billings,” she said.
“But I gotta file for my account there. My Treasury account,” he said. He was holding a wad of paper, the sheets covered in handwriting. He pushed them against the window. Pearl read: REGISTERED WARRANT CLAIM FOR TRUST SPECIAL DEPOSIT.
“You gotta take me there.” His voice was rising.
“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know what any of that is—”
He thumped the window.
“I’m a free citizen under common law and I gotta get to Billings!” he shouted. He began to kick the side of the car. “Open the door.”
Pearl checked her mirrors and began to pull away, but she was too slow and he saw and tried to run round to the front of the car to prevent her leaving, his arms out, clutching the paper. Pearl yanked the wheel around and she could hear him screaming obscenities at her. He tried to jump on the hood but she was putting her foot down now and the car threw him off and she saw his hand flutter by the window as he went to the ground and she accelerated away, shaking, shocked, frightened to her very core.