by Tim Stevens
Z shows his stress in restrained ways: a clenching of the hands behind his back, the faintest tightening at his jaw. But the pressure inside him must be enormous. Grosvenor and Jablonsky took turns conducting the interrogations today, and became so irritated with one another between cases they almost came to blows.
There’s talk of a huge shipment of new subjects early next month, perhaps as many as fifty. The product will have to be studied closely after today’s events; there might have been a contaminated batch used, but if not, then modifications will need to be made to the product before Z will allow it to be tested again. He can’t afford wastage like today’s.
I can prevent the next death quite easily. A simple phone call will do it, will bring the US Navy and the Marines down upon the island like a hailstorm. But it’s too soon. Open though Z has been with me, he continues to withhold the name I need. Blowing the whistle at this point will more than likely mean that the person who has furthest to fall in all this will escape.
Six weeks, I’ll give it. Taylor is already suspicious; it’s only a matter of time until Jablonsky and Grosvenor and Z himself see through my cover. Six weeks – and God knows how many deaths – and I’ll do it.
*
Pope stopped the flow of words at that point and switched his thoughts to John Purkiss. He had no way of knowing where Purkiss was at that moment, could only assume that his ruse had worked and Purkiss was wasting time and energy in Hamburg. Once news got out of Grosvenor’s killing, of course, Purkiss would be back on the trail. But there was no way he’d work out the pattern, no chance of his heading south and ambushing Pope there. At worst, Purkiss would be tearing Manhattan apart looking for him when Pope carried out the next stage of his plan.
And after the final one, after Z, there’d be no more.
Pope himself would disappear forever. He probably wouldn’t survive; but even if he did, what he would do with the rest of his life he had no idea. It was something he’d never considered. It was an irrelevance. His entire adult life had been shaped around his pursuit of the target that was now within his sights.
Numerically speaking, he’d achieved three quarters of his goal. Three dead, one to go. But his final target outweighed the others. That was why he’d saved Z until last. He wanted the man to know he was coming.
He wanted him to squirm.
Eleven
Charlottesville, Virginia
Monday 20 May, 6.40 pm
Nina ran.
Through the neon-emblazoned streets of downtown Charlottesville she wove, stumbling, the violin case bouncing at her back. The evening was crowded for a Monday, as though the population had spilled on to the streets in order to slow her down or maybe to jeer at her. Here a doorway yawned toothlessly at her; there an overturned trashcan spilled its debris across her path like an arm trying to trip her up.
There were no more watchers because everyone was a watcher. Everybody around her was an enemy to be dodged and fled from.
But there were no voices. Yet.
In her mind’s eye she saw Rachel’s body flung this way and that by the shots, her face crimson and almost accusing as her eyes met Nina’s for the last time.
She’d killed them both. She should have stayed away.
Nina slowed, the ragged breath sawing in her throat, and gazed about. Somehow she’d arrived at the Mall, the most congested place she could have picked. On her left was the Pavilion. She and the quartet had performed there many times.
Strolling toward her, coffee cup in hand, was a uniformed cop.
Nina did a back and forth shuffle that would have been comical in a slapstick movie: preparing to run one second, then starting toward the cop, then taking fright again. An authority figure, a public symbol of law and order and safety. She ought to feel reassured by his presence.
But the men at the door had been federal agents, or at least had been carrying ID that suggested they were.
The cop was looking straight at her. Grinning.
Nina took a step backwards, then another.
The hand on her elbow made her yelp. Close to her ear a woman’s voice said: ‘Whoah there. Steady.’
Nina stared round, saw that she’d backed into another cop. The first one had been grinning at her, his partner, not at Nina.
‘You okay, miss?’
The male cop had reached her. Although the female one had backed off a little, Nina felt crowded, hemmed in.
She realised she was staring stupidly from one to the other.
‘Fine.’ Had she said it? She wasn’t sure, so she repeated it, shouting too loudly this time. A couple of passersby glanced over.
The woman cop was running a careful eye over her. Nina didn’t like that. ‘You look sick, honey.’
Nina became aware suddenly of the hair slicked to her face with sweat, the shirt clinging to her armpits. She hefted the violin case, feeling it slipping, and immediately the cops were on guard, hands if not quite on their holsters then hovering in the vicinity.
They think I might have a machine gun in here, she thought, and rammed down an impulse to laugh.
Once more her eyes darted from one face to the other. The woman cop looked sympathetic and a little concerned. The guy’s expression was more sceptical, as though he thought he was up against yet another student strung out on speed or acid on a school night while hardworking people like himself were trying to earn a crust. She was dimly aware that the more she glanced from one to the other, the crazier – or guiltier – she appeared.
Suddenly she had it: a way she could get help of a sort from them if they weren’t in league with the men who’d come to the apartment and killed her friends.
‘Apartment eight, first floor, Allentown Heights,’ she blurted. ‘Adams Street. Two people are dead there. My friends. They live there. They did, anyhow. Some men killed them.’
Nina took a step back, colliding off another passerby who grunted at her. The cops were staring at her and at each other.
If they were with the men who’d done it, she’d have given nothing away. If they weren’t, they might check it out just in case.
And she realised her mistake. The cops would already have been called by the neighbours who’d heard the gunfire in the apartment. They’d be on their way, or there already, turning the place into a crime scene.
All Nina had done was make herself a suspect.
She turned and plunged into the jostling, scuffling crowd once more, trailing the cops’ confused shouts behind her.
*
Nina ran on, with no destination in mind, wanting only to be alone.
She’d been different, or at least had first realised she was different, at the age of around twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t long after her first period, when all kinds of weird stuff started happening to her: she grew, she spread out, she had bizarre and exciting dreams and thoughts.
And the voices had begun. Two of them, a man’s and a woman’s, both strangers. Sometimes they occurred together, sometimes one or the other on its own. Sometimes they spoke to her, but more often they spoke about her, again either to one another or as though commenting on her like a narrator at the beginning of a movie.
She assumed this was a normal part of puberty, and when she and a bunch of girlfriends at high school had been sitting around discussing boys and periods, she’d mentioned it. The others had stared at her, laughed at first, then edged away: not immediately but gradually, over weeks, until she was alone.
She didn’t speak to her grandmother about it. The family doctor was friendly and caring, and a woman herself, but although Nina booked an appointment with her she chickened out at the last moment and said to the doctor’s kind gaze that she was suffering cramps, which was true enough.
The first person she told was, in the end, her grandmother. But that was later, when she was eighteen and getting ready for college, and could take care of herself. Her grandma was horrified, not by what Nina was telling her but because Nina hadn’t told her before. She assured he
r grandma that the voices came only when she was stressed, like around exam time; that she could cope with them now that she’d learned they couldn’t hurt her; and that she didn’t need meds. In fact, she was only telling her grandma to prove to herself how confident she felt about having them under control.
But the voices, she came to realise, were only the latest manifestation of the problem. The Watchers had been there earlier. From when she was ten, possibly even before. They’d been at the dark crack of her door in the middle of the night, when the house was in darkness. She’d huddled against the headboard of her bed, the duvet crammed up against her mouth to stifle her screams, while the watcher, or watchers, had stood beyond the doorway in the blackness, staring at her. She’d never seen them, never heard or smelled them. But they’d been there, so vividly that she had told her mother about them.
Her mother had looked grave and had listened carefully, then had gone off to find her dad. When she came back, she held Nina close and whispered against her hair: ‘There’s nobody out there, baby. I’ve checked. I’ve checked with your father.’
It was only later that she realised what an odd comment that was. I’ve checked with your father. But of course, later she had the advantage of hindsight.
And now she had proof that there was indeed somebody out here. More than one person.
They were coming for her. And they were prepared to kill to get to her.
*
She’d been running for a half hour at least, doing crazy loops, seeing familiar landmarks repeat themselves around her. By now the intensity of the crowds around her had diminished: they were no longer staring at her but seemed instead to be deliberately, smirkingly avoiding looking at her. Nowhere did she encounter a man in a suit bearing down on her, or a uniformed cohort boxing her in.
She found herself in control enough to be able to take an inventory. She had her clothes: jeans, T-shirt, jacket (which she’d kept on at Rachel’s apartment – Rachel had offered to take it for her but she’d felt protected in it to some extent, as though swaddled). She had her violin, its weight on her back reassuring as ever. And – thank God – she had her wallet. Nina didn’t use a handbag, to her friends’ amusement. She kept her wallet in her hip pocket at all times, believing it to be less vulnerable to robbers than if it were in a bag perched on her arm. Nor did she own a cell phone. They made it too difficult to be alone.
Other things were in her favour: she was physically intact, if shaken. The drop from the window hadn’t hobbled her as it might have. The voices hadn’t started up – yet – so that distraction wasn’t a problem. And she had the entire rest of the continental United States outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, in which to lose herself.
There were downsides. She was being pursued by a group of men, number unknown, who had murdered her friends when they tried to intervene, and who were either government agents or able to pass themselves off as such and therefore had considerable influence and possibly resources at their disposal. She was in a highly fragile state of mind. And she was alone.
She dared not head for the homes of any of the other few friends she had; Rachel’s and Kyle’s deaths were already her fault, and the understanding of this was yet to hit her fully. She had no surviving relatives, not now that her grandmother had passed. She couldn’t approach the police, because either they were in on it or they were seeking her in connection with her friends’ deaths.
Nina stopped dead. She was back on Main Street, the Mall ahead of her. Over to the left was the Greyhound bus station, though it wasn’t the sight of the familiar building that had made her pause.
What was she thinking? She did have a living relative after all.
The recollection both triggered a surge of hope within her and repelled her. She stood, balanced on the dilemma like a highrise act.
The footsteps came behind her, running; and although she had no idea if they were a follower’s or belonged to somebody incidental, she made her decision and strode towards the bus station.
Twelve
New York City
Monday 20 May, 2.15 pm
They closed in on Purkiss a minute or so after he’d presented his passport at the desk. A tall woman in a grey trouser suit with short, highlighted blonde hair, and a beefy Asian man, also besuited. They’d appeared out of nowhere.
‘Sir, you need to come with us.’ The woman spoke, her voice firm, confident. The man touched his elbow lightly.
Purkiss let them steer him between them away from the queue at passport control and down a side corridor. He was aware of the curious and thrilled stares prying at his back.
In a square room with walls painted an institutional pastel they sat him behind a table that was bolted to the floor. He half-expected to see an overflowing ashtray on it until he remembered New York was smoke free.
After the experience flying to Hamburg and in the airport afterwards, his senses had been tuned to fever pitch, both on the plane from Hamburg back to Heathrow and on the connecting flight to JFK. There’d been no-one suspicious, he was certain of it. If you excluded the wiry man with unshaven, sallow cheeks and dirty jeans across the aisle a few rows behind him. The man had sat through the entire seven-hour flight with headphones on, jaw working a piece of gum.
The woman pulled up a chair and sat across from Purkiss. The man remained standing, his hands in his pockets, his head lowered.
Purkiss didn’t feign outrage, or the normal nervousness a civilian would feel when pulled aside by what was obviously a pair of federal agents. He held the woman’s gaze, calmly, without challenge. She studied his face.
‘Mr Purkiss, I’m Special Agent Berg. This is Special Agent Nakamura. Federal Bureau of Investigation.’
Purkiss said nothing.
She drew a tablet computer from her bag and touched the screen. ‘John Purkiss. Secret Intelligence Service.’ She turned the tablet to show him his mug shot.
So that was it. He was on the database from back when he’d been a Service agent, and his appearance at Immigration had tripped their radar.
‘I used to be. I no longer work for them.’
This was both true and untrue. Technically he was employed solely by Vale, who was registered as a limited company. But Vale was funded at least in part by the Service. Purkiss suspected the Home Office contributed as well.
She gave him a deadpan look of utter scepticism. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Check with London, if you like, or with the embassy here in New York. I left the Service in 2008.’
Behind her shoulder Nakamura gave a tiny snort. Purkiss ignored him.
Berg said: ‘In which case, Mr Purkiss, what’s your business in the United States?’
‘Road trip.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I intend to rent a car and take a trip across country. Explore the mythic American landscape. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I never got a chance when I was with the Service.’
‘Jack Kerouac.’ This from the other agent.
‘If you like. Not following in Kerouac’s footsteps, though. I just want to go where the road takes me.’
It was an absurd story. Purkiss didn’t blame them for what they were doing. A foreign spook on your turf... their suspiciousness was natural. But he felt irritated and frustrated; this was something he should have anticipated. At worst, they’d make up some excuse and deport him, Vale would smooth things over, and he’d return. But probably in a day or two’s time, at the earliest, and by then Pope would be even further out of reach than he was now.
‘You’re here how long?’ Berg.
‘Ninety days. Just like anyone else. Then I’ll be heading back. I’m not looking to immigrate.’
They watched him. He had time, so he looked back levelly. At Berg, not Nakamura. He suspected the man was going to start cutting up rough in a moment and he wanted to give the impression he wasn’t prepared for him. If he maintained eye contact with him he’d betray his intentions.
After a
full twenty seconds Purkiss said: ‘How long is this going to go on for?’
‘Why?’ Nakamura spoke up. ‘Got someplace you need to be?’
Purkiss raised his palms. ‘Getting hungry, that’s all. And I don’t know if you’re going to wait till I confess to being on some mission in your country. If so, we’ll be here a long time. Forever, actually.’
The two agents didn’t look at each other but something passed between them, invisible communication that ends to develop between working cops paired together for several years. Purkiss began to wonder. Had they got anything else on him? Had they somehow linked him to the killings in Amsterdam or here in New York? It didn’t make sense. If anyone had connected him with the investigation into the killings it would be the CIA. And they’d hardly share the intelligence with the FBI, even though it was properly the Feds’ business if somebody linked to a crime against American citizens arrived on US soil. The rivalry between the two agencies was too great for that.
Berg said, ‘Where do you intend to head after this?’
Purkiss shrugged. ‘I was going to take a cheap hotel in Manhattan. Greenwich Village, maybe. Soak up the city for a day or two, while I make some plans. Then head west.’ He closed his eyes for a second, sighed. ‘Look. I know how you feel. I’m unwanted here. But seriously, I’m on holiday. I’m no threat to you or your country. If you’re going to deport me, please call London first. They’ll vouch for me. And they’re not going to lie to you, not about this.’ He was telling the truth. London was cosying up to the newly reelected President with renewed vigour, and wouldn’t want to scupper things. It was one of the reasons Pope’s responsibility for the killings couldn’t be shared with the Company.
Berg glanced back at Nakamura, who nodded. Purkiss realised for the first time that they were on a more-or-less equal footing, though he’d assumed before that Berg was the senior partner. She stood, stepped towards Nakamura and conferred with him in murmurs.