by Andy Maslen
But he wasn’t seeing the view. Wasn’t seeing anything. His senses weren’t dead, though. He could hear perfectly well. Acutely, in fact. And what he could hear was a child’s voice. A young boy’s voice. And it kept saying the same, single word.
“Gable.”
His heart was racing and nothing he could do would make it stop. He felt like he had before his first parachute jump without a static line to open the chute for him. He turned and walked to the armchair. Sat down heavily. Put the tumbler of gin down on the table with a clunk, slopping some onto the polished cherrywood.
I need to talk to someone. But who can I talk to? Mum and Dad are dead. No relatives they ever spoke of. No friends from that time. Unless …
Master Zhao, I need you like I never needed anybody before.
Since he’d joined the Army, Gabriel hadn’t spoken to Zhao Xi. He revered the man but associated him with the past. And Gabriel wanted to move forward. Had to move forward. Like a shark. Stop moving and you die. He went online using his new phone and found Zhao Xi’s number in seconds. He taught martial arts classes and even had a website.
From almost six thousand miles away he heard the muted purr as Zhao Xi’s phone rang. He pictured the house, high in the hills above Victoria Harbour. What time it was in Hong Kong, he hadn’t bothered to figure out. The last words Zhao Xi had said to him were as fresh in his mind as if he’d heard them yesterday. “Make your way in the world, Gabriel Wolfe, as the cub leaves the litter. But remember where you first found safety.”
The ringing stopped, mid-purr. Gabriel’s pulse jumped upwards.
“Master Zhao, it’s me.”
“Me who? I know many ‘me’s.”
“Gabriel! Gabriel Wolfe.”
“It has been many years. Are you still a warrior?”
“I am. But not a soldier. Now I fight the enemy on a freelance basis.”
“And you are very good at it, of that I have no doubt. It is good to hear your voice, young Wolfe cub. Even at a quarter to three in the morning.”
“I’m sorry, Master Zhao. But something happened and I really need your help.
“Then speak. Speak. I will help if I can.”
“Master, did I have, I mean, does the name Michael mean anything to you?”
There was a short silence.
“It means many things to me. Pop stars. Basketball players. Sculptors.”
Say it. Just say it!
“No. Not them. I’m talking about Michael …” Gabriel heaved a deep sigh, “… Wolfe.”
There was a longer silence, during which Gabriel could hear his old teacher’s breathing on the line.
“I always wondered whether you would ever ask me that question. And now you have, I am so far away. But your parents’ instructions were quite clear on the matter. Tell you everything as soon as you asked. Hide nothing.”
“So?”
“Michael was your younger brother. Though I suspect you have already worked that out if you’re calling me.”
“Jesus! Hold on.” Gabriel drained the gin and tonic, which tasted bitter in his mouth, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and resumed speaking. “I can remember him. I mean, I can remember his name. But nothing else. Until a few hours ago, I would have sworn blind I was an only child. Why? Master Zhao, what happened to Michael? And why can’t I remember?”
“Ah, Gabriel,” Zhao Xi said, with a note of infinite sadness in his voice. “How I wish we were sitting together for me to tell you this.” There was a deep sigh. “Michael drowned in the Harbour. He was five, you were nine.”
“Drowned? How? And why don’t I remember any of this? Why can’t I even remember what he looked like?”
Another silence followed this question.
“Your mother had taken the two of you to the park at the Harbour near your parents’ house. You took a rugby ball with you. You used to be so keen on the game, do you remember that?”
“Yes. I used to play sevens. It was the only sport I enjoyed at school.”
“Just so. You were very fast. A great winger. Your mother told me you kicked the ball and Michael couldn’t catch it. It went into the water and you told Michael to fetch it out. Your mother called him back, but he idolised you, so he jumped straight in. He was a good swimmer for his age, but he banged his head and went under. You went in after Michael. By the time you found him, it was too late. After the funeral, you went into a blank state for a fortnight. You drank only water and ate almost nothing. You didn’t speak or even move unless your parents or I moved you.”
Gabriel felt empty inside. As the story unfolded, he still couldn’t picture the drowned boy, much less find the place a brother should have occupied in his heart.
“So what happened after two weeks?” he asked, finally.
“You woke up one morning and asked for a boiled egg. But your mind had let Michael go. You couldn’t remember him. Your parents tried to remind you, but in the end, the stress was too great, for them and for you, and they quietly removed all the photographs of Michael from the house. After you left to join the Army, we did talk about what had happened to you. That is when your parents gave me their instruction. And now I have fulfilled it. I am so sorry you had to hear it like this.”
“It’s OK, Master Zhao.” Gabriel swallowed, trying to push the lump in his throat down. “I believe you, and I know you’re telling the truth. It’s just, I still don’t really remember. Except, one more thing. What did he call me?”
“He called you Gable. He always found it hard to say your name correctly, and in the end, it just became a family nickname.”
“I remembered that, at least. But how can I get to all the rest? I can’t even picture his face.”
“Maybe in time, now you have opened the sluice gate, enough memories will flow through. Be patient, Gabriel, but be ready in case the dam bursts. You can always call me, you know that.”
“Thank you. I will. But this is just, I’m not, you know, I’ve repressed this memory so completely and for so long. I’m sorry I haven’t called you before. I have to go. Goodbye, Master Zhao.”
“Goodbye, Wolfe cub.”
Gabriel remained sitting in the armchair in the hotel room. He refilled the glass at his elbow from time to time, but otherwise remained unmoving. He closed his eyes, but sleep did not come. Nor did hallucinations. No dead soldiers. No drowned boy, as he had half-expected, half-dreaded. Just a dead, cold, black silence stretching back through history to the late 1980s when, apparently, he had ordered his younger brother to his death in the murky green waters of Victoria Harbour.
“Oh, Michael,” he said, finally, as the sun came up. “I’m sorry. I wish you were here to forgive me. I wish Smudge was, too.”
72
Cleanup
WHEN STILL ALIVE, CHRISTOPHE JARDIN had known a lot about exploiting people’s weaknesses. But he did not have a monopoly on those insights. The commander of the operation to round up the Children of Heaven was similarly knowledgeable about human psychology, which is why she ordered her armed officers into the grounds of Elysium House several hours before dawn. Her counterparts in the German Bundespolizei, American FBI, the French Gendarmerie and the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch were issuing identical orders.
All the residents of Elysium House were taken into custody. “Protective custody” was how it was framed for the media. Clinical psychologists, hypnotherapists, and specialist social workers went to work on the members of the cult, ‘deprogramming’ them before handing them back to the police to be interviewed in connection with a series of global terrorist attacks. The older members were subjected to considerably more forceful interviewing techniques than the younger.
*
Later that day, a team of forensic analysts and Brazilian Special Forces soldiers flew into Eden. They were accompanied by detectives from Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, and Miami, and a neatly turned-out phalanx of FBI agents from their Quantico headquarters and the field office in Houston. More than one hardened vet
eran of wars in Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq wept as they witnessed the corpses of so many young people.
*
Five days later, at 11.00 a.m., Gabriel sat on a squashy, yellow, chintz-covered sofa facing Don Webster and Barbara Sutherland in the sitting room at 10 Downing Street. They were drinking tea from bone china cups decorated with a pattern of pink roses, which clinked politely every time they were settled back into their delicate saucers.
“Well, Gabriel Wolfe, you did us proud,” Barbara said with a smile. “You got that bastard before he could cause any more suffering.”
“Not really. They’re probably still toe-tagging six hundred corpses in the middle of the rainforest.” Her eyes flashed. Oops. Still the PM, Gabriel. Probably best not to be too familiar. “Sorry. I just meant …”
“It’s all right, my love. I know what you meant. And I should have chosen my words more carefully, shouldn’t I? Before he could order any more attacks. Is that better?”
Gabriel nodded, feeling a blush creeping onto his cheeks.
“He almost got you too, didn’t he, Old Sport?” Don said, before taking another sip of his tea.
“Yes. I was all ready to press the red button myself and take out two politicians and a few dozen civilians.”
“Now look, Gabriel,” Barbara interrupted. “You and Don don’t need me for all the detailed debriefing. And I know all about his rules of engagement and standard operating procedures and all that quasi-military bollocks. So I won’t be offering you a medal or anything like that. Although, God knows, you bloody deserve one. But is there anything else I can do for you? It’s a cliché, but you do, actually, have the gratitude of a nation.”
Gabriel thought for a moment.
Saw a pair of strong, brown-skinned hands guiding his own to pull the muzzle of a pistol away from his head.
Heard a soft South London voice talking about his daughter.
Then the same voice screaming for her.
“We left one of ours behind on my last mission in the Regiment. Mozambique.”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to bring him home.”
She paused for a moment and looked at Don. Then she looked back at Gabriel.
“We’ll have to see what we can do then, won’t we?”
THE END
Andy Maslen
Andy Maslen was born in Nottingham, in the UK, home of legendary bowman Robin Hood. Andy once won a medal for archery, although he has never been locked up by the sheriff.
He has worked in a record shop, as a barman, as a door-to-door DIY products salesman, and as a cook in an Italian restaurant. He eventually landed a job in marketing, writing mailshots to sell business management reports. He spent ten years in the corporate world before launching a business writing agency, Sunfish, where he writes for clients including The Economist, Christie’s, and World Vision.
As well as the Gabriel Wolfe and DI Stella Cole thrillers, Andy has published five works of non-fiction on copywriting and freelancing with Marshall Cavendish and Kogan Page. They are all available online and in bookshops.
He lives in Wiltshire with his wife, two sons, and a whippet named Merlin.
*
News of the fourth Gabriel Wolfe thriller on the next page…
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Gabriel Wolfe returns in a new novel, First Casualty. Turn the page to read the first chapter.
FIRST CASUALTY
1
Firefight
A FOREST. NORTHWESTERN MOZAMBIQUE—27 DECEMBER
GABRIEL Wolfe looked down at the bloody bullet wound in his right thigh.
“Britta! I’m hit!” he shouted.
Britta Falskog whirled round, still firing her SA80 assault rifle in five-round bursts over the top of the fallen tree she was using for cover.
“I’m coming. Can you move?”
“Not sure. Hurts like fuck.”
“OK. Hold on.”
She ducked down, rested the SA80 against the rough bark of the tree, then unclipped her two remaining grenades from her belt: a white phosphor and a high explosive. Holding one olive-green steel sphere in each hand, she pulled the pins out with her teeth, let the springs fly, then counted to two and lobbed them into the path of the incoming fighters.
Three seconds elapsed, during which she retrieved her rifle and crawled over to Gabriel, who had cut away his trouser leg and was staunching the bleeding with a QuikClot sponge he’d pulled from his medical kit.
With loud bangs a half-second apart, the two grenades exploded. There were screams from the enemy fighters as the shrapnel fragments hit them, tearing open gaping wounds. The white phosphor was worse, exploding outward in a cloud of burning chemicals that stuck to the skin and kept burning all the way down to the bone.
Britta pulled her pistol, grabbed the SA80 with her left hand, and popped up again, spraying rounds into the small clearing where the enemy fighters had fallen. None returned fire. Their AK-47s lay on the ground near their owners, who were maimed, burning, bleeding, or all three. She vaulted the log and rushed towards them, killing each man in turn with a double-tap to the head.
Now she rushed back to Gabriel. His face was white and his lips were drawn back from his teeth.
“Help me with the field dressing,” he said, grunting rather than speaking.
She unravelled the bandage and wound it tight round his thigh, holding the QuikClot sponge in place against the wound. He drew in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth. She checked on the other side of his leg.
“No exit wound. Round’s still in there. Fuck!”
“We need to go,” he said. “Get me up.”
She shouldered her SA80 and bent to grab his arms and pull him to his feet. He pulled upwards and transferred his weight to his good leg. Gingerly, he put some weight on the right and almost collapsed, biting back a scream as the pain intensified. Blood squelched out round the edges of the anti-clotting sponge and through the dressing, and ran over the pale skin of his leg and into his boot.
In the distance, they could hear shouts and gunfire. More fighters. More Kalashnikovs. More machetes. More trouble.
With Britta supporting him, Gabriel was able to limp along. What worried him was the amount of blood flowing down his thigh. Their progress was agonisingly slow. The undergrowth was thick and Britta had to slash at it with her parang every few steps to clear a path he could negotiate. Even with the razor-sharp blade, it was slow going, and the enemy fighters were getting closer.
“Wait,” Gabriel said, pulling Britta to a stop. “We won’t outrun them. Not with me like this. I’ll hold them down and you go. Get back to base. Try and get some support out here for me. Whatever happens, Don can pull you out.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “Fuck you, Wolfe! I’m not leaving you. We’ll fight these fuckers off, then I’m getting you out of here or we’ll go down together. OK?”
Gabriel nodded, his mouth set in a grim line of determination and pain. “Over there,” he said, and pointed to a clump of tree ferns with fat brown trunks covered in a scales of tough, hairy bark.
Britta half-dragged, half-carried him to the ferns and they flopped behind them, backs to the trunks.
With a grunt of effort, he unshouldered his own SA80 and pulled back the cocking lever.
“How are you for ammunition?”
She patted the bandolier that ran diagonally across her chest. “Got three clips. Thirty rounds. How about you?”
“Not as wasteful as you. Five. Plus whatever’s in the mag.”
“OK, so we’ve got maybe ninety rounds between us. SIG?”
“Two full mags and a handful loaded.”
“I’ve got one spare, one just loaded. MP5?”
“Out. Dumped it.”
“Me too.”
“It’s going to be tight.”
She swiped the back of her hand across her high forehead then pulled the plait of copper-red hair straight out from the back of her head. “When was it ever not?”
Then a burst of automatic fire shredded the foliage of the ferns as somebody opened up with an AK-47.
They rolled away from each other onto their bellies and shimmied sideways along the ground like crabs, taking up firing positions on each side of the clump of ferns.
“Come out, British cowards. Die like men,” a voice called from about thirty yards away. Its owner sounded like he was laughing. “Or we can come and get you. You can eat your own balls while we watch, if you like.”
There was another burst of fire. The Kalashnikov’s 7.62mm rounds slammed into the trunks, spattering Britta and Gabriel with sharp chips of bark.
She looked across at him.
“British?” she mouthed.
“Balls?” he mouthed back, grinning despite his wound, as adrenaline neutralised the worst of the pain.
They looked into each other’s eyes and nodded. An old, familiar signal.
The man who’d issued the threat went down with half his head missing as a three-round burst from Gabriel’s SA80 hit him in the face. Three more lean, brown men replaced him, rushing forward, AKs held at their hips, set to full auto and spraying bullets at Gabriel and Britta.
Britta hit the leftmost man in the groin, doubling him over and leaving him screaming in the mud. The centre and right-hand men swerved to their left, only to be caught by a long burst from Gabriel that took them both in the torso, tearing great holes through their bodies, smashing and liquefying internal organs before exiting from their backs in showers of blood, bone, and tissue.