by Tom Wood
‘I assume we’re heading to the cliffs.’
‘That’s right,’ Victor said.
It was only a short walk.
‘Keep to the path,’ Victor said.
There was no designated footpath along the cliffs, but walkers had forged their own with their tread, wearing down the grass so the rain wore the topsoil to a narrow, stony track.
The priest made his way along it at a slow pace. In part because of his age and limited mobility, but also because he was in no rush to reach the destination. Victor didn’t hurry him because he was in no rush either. The priest’s cottage was isolated. They were miles from any other dwelling. No one was watching. No one could watch. No one walked these cliffs at night. Too dangerous. The priest was no hard target but Victor was always thorough. He had made the same preparations for the priest as he would a warlord.
It was cold, as Victor had told the priest. Protocol kept Victor’s overcoat buttons unfastened and his hands out of pockets. The priest was no threat, but every rule Victor had, every facet of protocol, had either kept him alive before or else might have helped one of the many who had died by his hand. Protocol became habit, habit became instinct, and instinct kept him alive.
‘I’ve always liked the ocean,’ the priest said as they neared. ‘I’m not a good swimmer and I’m no fan of the cold, but it’s the sound of it. The noise. If God speaks to us, it is through nature, and if He has a voice, it is in the song of birds and the crashing of waves.’ He paused to inhale the sea air. ‘That’s why I came here. To find peace with myself and with God.’
‘Take your time,’ Victor said.
The wind howled, but the sea was louder. It was black and roiling; hungry waves foaming against the cliffs.
The priest said, ‘Where will you go to find your peace?’
‘I am at peace.’
‘Then I pity you.’
Victor shrugged. The pity of others, or the lack thereof, meant nothing to him. He would first have to care about opinions. He would have to care about people. He allowed the priest to talk because it made things simpler. Not easier, because the priest was incapable of making things difficult for him. But a few minutes listening to what someone else thought of him cost nothing, and changed nothing. It kept things simple. It created acceptance. Chasing down a fleeing old man complicated matters when they didn’t need to be complicated. Trying to run wouldn’t help the priest, but it might leave footprints in the wet grass and an astute investigator might start to question whether it had been a suicide or accident, after all.
The cliff Victor had selected was about one hundred feet high. If the priest hit the rocks at its foot he would be killed in an instant. If not, the icy sea awaited and hypothermic shock and drowning would compete to finish off what the fall began. An excellent swimmer with youth and strength might survive those waves, but for an old man, the ocean was as certain a fate as a bullet.
The priest said, ‘Can you tell me who sent you?’
Nothing could change the man’s fate, so Victor answered, ‘British intelligence.’
‘But why?’ he asked. ‘I spied for them. I was an informer.’
‘For both sides,’ Victor explained. ‘For every republican you gave up, you gave up a British agent too.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘You asked who sent me. You wouldn’t have needed to if you weren’t playing both sides.’
The priest didn’t argue otherwise. Instead, he said, ‘But it was decades ago. That’s a lifetime ago. I was another person back then. I had no faith then, and no honour. I did what I had to do. I did what I did to survive. I had no choice. Both sides used me. You’d have done the same as me in my place. You don’t understand what it was like back then.’
‘I’m just the messenger.’
‘But it’s all over now. There’s peace.’
Victor said, ‘It’s nothing to do with me and I don’t know all of the details. If I were to guess, however, I would say that one of those British agents you betrayed all those years ago had a friend and that friend is now somebody and that somebody has a long memory. But maybe I haven’t been making myself clear: I don’t care.’
‘You can kill an old man, no harm to anyone?’
‘It’s what I’m paid for.’
The priest recognised something in Victor’s words, or maybe tone, and stared. ‘You.’
Victor nodded.
‘The confessor.’
Victor nodded again.
‘I thought you were making it up,’ the priest said. ‘I thought you were crazy.’
‘I am, in a way.’
The priest was angry now. ‘You’re sick. You’re twisted. What psychosis makes a man take confession from a priest who will become his victim?’
‘I don’t see the two roles as mutually exclusive.’
‘Which allowed you to talk freely to me, knowing it could never harm you.’
Victor shook his head. ‘I go to confession once every year. As I told you before, it’s something I have to do. I’m always honest. I’m always candid. But like you, no priest ever believes me.’
The priest was silent. Far below, the sea was black like the night, crashing against the cliff. He stared down at his fate.
‘I won’t kill myself. Suicide is a sin,’ the priest said. ‘You’ll have to push me.’
‘That was always the plan.’
‘You are a man of faith. I hope you’re prepared for God’s wrath.’
Victor said, ‘If God made man, He made me. If God made me, He knew exactly what He was doing.’
‘And why did British intelligence send you in particular?’ the priest asked, now demanding, voice loud.
‘It’s a test from a new employer,’ Victor explained, content to answer questions if that’s what it took to keep things amicable. ‘They want to see what I’m capable of.’
‘Capable? And just what are you capable of? If you can murder an old man – a priest – where do you draw the line? Is there even a line?’
Victor did not answer.
The sea roiled below, ever hungry, black waves gnawing on the cliffs.
The priest was beaten down by the lack of an answer. Victor saw the will draining from him with each passing second, but the priest wasn’t ready yet; he needed to keep talking a while longer. ‘Okay,’ he said, conceding, ‘tell me why they needed to send a professional hitman to silence an old man like me. Weak. Frail. Any thug could have stabbed me in the night or throttled me in my bed. Why you?’
The priest was right. It didn’t require a man of Victor’s talents. He was perhaps as soft a target as Victor had ever been hired to kill. Clients used him to assassinate those no one else could: warlords, arms dealers, spies, mercenaries, terrorists and other professional killers; those too dangerous or too well-protected or too hard-to-find for anyone else. The priest was none of those.
‘Because no one else would do it.’
The priest absorbed this and saw one last play to make. ‘I’m not surprised that some killers would be reluctant. Not an easy thing, to take the life of a man of God, is it? If ever there was a sin that would be without equal, it would be that. Even for a non-believer, it would test their disbelief. It would weigh on the conscience, growing heavier year on year, until it became an unbearable, inescapable burden.’
Victor remained silent. In that silence the priest understood that he had failed, because he saw no conscience in Victor’s eyes to appeal to; no humanity; no mercy; no pity.
‘Do it,’ the priest said.
Victor fed him to the waves.
ONE YEAR LATER
ELEVEN
Alvarez was no golfer. Sure, he could hit the ball four hundred yards, but he had to hit the ball first. He was more likely to take a chunk of turf from the fairway and leave the little ball unscathed. He’d done that before. He’d done that before several times. As a young man, he’d been banned from a golf club for the damage caused. Over time he had learned to rein in his strength an
d settle for a modest couple-of-hundred-yard drive that may or may not end up in the rough, but at least he didn’t embarrass himself or the proper golfers in his company. He never chose to play golf himself, but Washington was a town full of men who liked nothing better than to discuss matters of national security out in the open. If he wanted to be kept in the loop, if he wanted to cement relationships and establish friends with power, he had to waste time in the way the powerful liked to.
It was a pleasant afternoon, at least. The sky was cloudy, but the clouds were of the cotton wool kind that drift in a lazy way across the sky, allowing intermittent bursts of sun to brighten the grass and warm the back. Alvarez had left his suit jacket in the car and played with his tie in his trouser pocket and his shirt-tails loose, sleeves folded up to mid-forearm. His golfing partner had changed and looked the part: baggy slacks and polo shirt, canvas ball cap and those funny shoes. He looked a bit nerdy, and in truth, he was, but Alvarez was always respectful. He was respectful to most people, but he didn’t always mean it. Here, he did.
‘You’re too stiff, Antonio,’ his golfing partner said. ‘You need to be loose. Like a piece of rope. You’re like a chain.’
Alvarez tried to be more like a piece of rope than a chain. The ball, and a tuft of grass, sailed into the distance.
His swing wasn’t improved by his bad shoulder. His right anterior deltoid had taken a nine-millimetre parabellum – a clean through-and-through – but it had never been the same since. Day-to-day activities were fine, but exercise could be problematic. He was never going to get close to his personal best in the overhead press. The scarring on the front was minimal and worse at the back where the bullet had come out again, tearing a chunk of flesh out with it. Alvarez couldn’t see it unless he stood with his back to a mirror and near enough snapped his neck trying to look backwards over his shoulder. Christopher thought it was cool. Alvarez had tried to hide it from him, but his son was inquisitive and intuitive. He had sensed there was something his dad was hiding and therefore just had to find out what. His ex had given him hell over it. He wants a scar too, just like his dad, she had shrilled. Is that appropriate? Is this your way of being a role model? Is this your way of being a good father?
He was no kind of father because he didn’t get the chance to be. Jennifer hated him for falling out of love, and even though she was married to another man – happier than I ever was with you – she still took delight in punishing him every chance she got. He tried to take it on the chin, for Christopher’s sake. Alvarez had grown up with parents screaming at one another and he still wasn’t over it. He wouldn’t do that to his son, so he saw him every other weekend and tried not to show how much it hurt when the kid was picked up by his stepdad and gave him twice the hug he did Alvarez. He lived in the hope that one day things would be different.
‘Ouch,’ the other man said as the ball drifted wide and disappeared out of sight. ‘Maybe I’m not giving you the right advice.’
‘You’re no golfing coach, that’s true.’
‘I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none.’
‘That’s a weird turn of phrase,’ Alvarez replied. ‘Was there a real Jack or is it a generic term?’
‘You’re an etymologist now?’
Alvarez shrugged. ‘You’re the one who used the phrase. It’s got me curious.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ The other man gave him a look. ‘The Queen of England told it to me.’
Alvarez chuckled.
‘I shit you not.’
Alvarez nodded. ‘I know you’d never shit me.’
Maryland had many such golf courses to cater for the rich and powerful’s insatiable need to hit plastic spheres with metal clubs. He understood the appeal, though he didn’t enjoy the game. It was exercise, but gentle. Competitive, but not demanding. A game for those who didn’t want to break an ankle or put their back out. There was a certain irony to the game and the players. To relieve the stress of politics and business and seventy-hour working weeks they went outdoors to get some fresh air and have a walk, maybe even a little fun with it. A simpler life, maybe spent outdoors, maybe fewer hours, maybe with exercise, and they wouldn’t need to get rid of the stress in the first place.
‘What’s on your mind?’ the other man asked. ‘You look pensive.’
‘I was just thinking about something the Dalai Lama said: Man ruins his health to make money, then spends his money to regain his health. Or something like that.’
‘Try not to get too existential on me, Antonio. I get enough of that at home. Come on, the balls won’t find their way to the promised land without our guidance.’
They played a while longer. Alvarez’s golfing partner was going easy on him – mis-hitting his shots now and again so as not to embarrass him. It was a kind gesture, and Alvarez appreciated it. Had they been in the gym, he would have left a few plates off the bar, doing a few less reps. They weren’t friends, but they were friendly. Pals, perhaps. Acquainted through work, and only work, but theirs was a mutual fondness. Alvarez didn’t like many people. He didn’t have many who he could rely on.
His golfing partner was some ten years older and though in reasonable shape and reasonable health he was starting to look old. Alvarez hadn’t worn his hair in anything but a buzz cut since leaving the Marines, so it was hard to tell how many grey hairs there were amongst the black stubble. He didn’t care. He cared about his health, not his looks.
The other man said, ‘How are you settling in to your new role? Everyone treating you well?’
‘Too well. It makes me nervous.’
A chuckle. ‘You’re not regretting it already?’
‘Not at all. I’m in the transitional phase. It’s a big change to be steering the ship instead of in the engine room.’
A wry smile. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Just watch out for icebergs. They can, and will, come out of nowhere.’
‘I’ll add that to the list.’
‘List?’ The other man regarded him. ‘You mean the list of useless bits of advice all and sundry have given you to tell you how to do your job?’
‘That’s the one.’
The laugh was brief, but genuine. ‘What’s the first order of business?’
‘Taking down bad guys. One in particular. The one that got away.’
‘You make it sound so simple.’
‘This won’t be, but I have faith in myself.’
‘Confidence gets you everywhere.’
‘Ain’t that the truth?’
His golfing partner nodded along with him, then said, ‘I’m hungry. I skipped breakfast. Are you hungry? Wanna get a bite at the clubhouse once we’ve finished up here? They make an incredible off-menu Sloppy Joe. Just for me. Privilege of the position.’
Alvarez said, ‘I’m not big on red meat or refined carbs.’
‘They have a salad bar,’ the other man said, a glimmer of tease in his eyes. He glanced back over his shoulder, hearing something, and said, ‘That looks ominous.’
Another man approached. He was taller than both the golfers and broader even than Alvarez. He was dressed in a black suit and wore sunglasses with impenetrable lenses. He spoke to Alvarez’s golfing partner.
‘Sir, I need to ask you to come with me.’
‘I know that tone well, Terrence. Credible threat?’
Terrence nodded.
‘I’ll see you at the car in one minute.’
Terrence nodded a second time, almost robotic, and left them alone.
‘Duty calls, Antonio.’
He gave an understanding look. ‘I have somewhere I need to be anyway.’
‘You know, we almost got through a whole game this time. Had you not spent quite as long in the sand trap, we might have actually finished.’
‘I was giving you a false sense of security,’ Alvarez said. ‘I had you just where I wanted you. I think you gave Terrence a signal because I was on the comeback trail.’
His golfing partner grinned. ‘It won’t be long
before I have plenty of time on my hands. Then, we might actually finish a course.’
‘When that time comes,’ Alvarez said, ‘I won’t need to pretend to like golf.’
Another laugh. Deeper. ‘I will miss your frankness.’ He offered his hand. ‘Good to see you, Antonio, and all the best in your future endeavours.’
Alvarez shook it. ‘And to you, Mr President.’
TWELVE
Procter settled into the armchair. It was comfortable, but he wasn’t. His hip made it hard to sit down. The right angle was the problem. The bone didn’t sit in the socket as it should. He had to brace his hands on the armrests and lower himself with his triceps. It was the same standing again. He had lost around 50 per cent of the muscle mass of his glutes, hamstrings and quadriceps as a result of the accident. He had never been a fit man. He had never been into exercise or eating right or even caring as his waistline expanded at a steady rate, year on year. The accident had changed all that. Being immobile for so long had made him reliant on Patricia. Patricia had hit her half-century and exploded into life: Pilates, yoga, interval training and some Olympic lifting. She counted calories and macros. She had a fruit basket’s worth of smoothie every morning. She took so many supplements she had an entire kitchen shelf just for the bottles. The pea protein, spirulina, wheatgrass and chia seeds took up a whole cupboard. She had halved her bodyweight and never felt better. Procter had felt better too because, while immobile, while reliant, he had to eat what she prepared for him. Steak and fries became tofu stir fry. Barbecue ribs became beans and vegetables he hadn’t known existed. She assured him the healthy eating would help him recover. Maybe it had. Maybe he would be in a worse state otherwise.
The thought must have shown on his face because Alvarez said, ‘Are you all right? Can I get you anything?’
He shook his head and waved a hand to halt the younger man, who was already rising to assist in whatever way was necessary.
‘Would you like some water?’