The History Book

by Humphrey Hawksley

  But that doesn’t make him useless.

  “Max,” she screams as a gust of wind suddenly clears the smoke.

  Yulya’s gaze shifts to Kat, rifle raised, then back to her brother, who has her in his sights. Her moment of hesitation is enough for Kat to vault onto the jeep’s charred hood, and use its bounce to hurl herself at Yulya. She crashes into her headlong, and as Yulya tries to regain her balance, Kat punches her in the neck, making sure the sharp edges of Suzy’s ring cut through the skin.

  As they hit the ground, Kat punches harder, twisting the ring’s metal and pushing it through soft tissue until blood jets out, flooding over her, and Kat knows she’s ruptured one of the carotid arteries.

  Kat holds Yulya to stop her struggling, and, as her strength goes, Kat pulls her head up by the hair, bringing them face to face. Through trembling and fading eyes, Yulya manages to concentrate on Kat. In those last seconds, her arrogance stripped, her lips moving without the smirk, a softness covers her face, as if she’s a little lost and surprised.

  Kat drops Yulya’s head and stands up, her hands soaked in warm blood. She’s flooded by a terrible sense of fury that Yulya’s dead but nothing’s resolved. She needs to do more.

  She hooks her foot under Yulya’s body and turns it so the back of Yulya’s head is against the ground and her face is staring up. She wipes her hands on her clothes, picks up Yulya’s rifle, checks the chamber, and puts the barrel against Yulya’s forehead.

  A hand falls on Kat’s shoulder. She shakes it off. Grachev holds both shoulders gently. “It’s over, Kat,” he says. “She’s dead. It’s okay.”

  She lets the gun fall and Grachev hold her, lets him absorb her rage. Amid the smells of blood, oil, and fire, and the feel of sunlight on her face, Kat waits for her trembling to subside, for serenity to take its place. But before it does, she hears static in her earpiece and Cage’s voice.

  “Kat, you there?”

  “We’re okay here,” she says, stepping back from Grachev.

  “Are you watching Abbott?”

  “In a second.” She runs back to where the cell phone’s still on the ground. She looks down at the cell phone. Abbott’s speaking. She clicks up the speakerphone’s volume. “Even with high energy prices, the American people have made our economy the envy of the world,” the U.S. president is saying. “But keeping America competitive requires affordable and secure supplies. And that is why I am proud that the United States is a leading partner in the Coalition for Peace and Security.”

  Abbott’s right hand goes up to his earpiece. His eyes sweep the room, rest on the Russian president, then go to Tiina Gracheva, then back to his lectern.

  Kat hears Cage’s voice. “He’s seen his autoprompter. He’s reading from the hard copy of the speech. We’re telling him to pull out or the pictures will be superimposed on the soccer screens.”

  Abbott brushes the lapel of his suit. “However,” the president says haltingly, “the gathering today is designed to examine the finer details of the coalition . . .”

  The Russian and Chinese leaders look down sharply at the prepared text.

  “. . . agreement of all partners to ensure—”

  “He’s pulling out,” says Cage. “It’s done.”

  “Good job, Bill,” says Kat.

  She doesn’t end the call, doesn’t know what to feel, so she gets up and walks over to the jeep.

  Grachev looks down at his dead sister. Tears run down his face. Kat steps forward, arms outstretched.

  “It’s okay, Max.”

  His embrace hurts. She’s bruised all over, and her side stings. She feels his deep crying.

  Behind them, Kat sees Luxton lying on the ground. Liz crouches next to him. She’s sponging his face. Kat’s father is propping himself up with an arm around Nate Sayer’s shoulder. They walk together out of the hangar.

  Gently, Kat steps away from Grachev. “Go see your dad, Max,” she says.

  Grachev walks robotically toward John Polinski. It’s then that Kat notices the guardhouses are deserted.

  “Everyone’s cut and run,” she says to Cage.

  “The police are on their way. We’re delaying them. But you’ve got about fifteen minutes.”

  Enough time. Kat keeps walking. It’s wonderfully quiet, with smells of aircraft fuel mixed with the English harvest. Birds dip and weave through the big sky, streaked with silver clouds.

  “The signing delay. How did you do that?” asks Kat.

  “The CPS schedule was contingent on the start of the game. I got Javier Laja’s number like you asked, called him, mentioned your name. He said sure. He made up some sexy soccer star bullshit for a few minutes. It bought us enough time and, well, anyway, the pissing contest’s over, and we’ve won.”

  At the beginning of what Cage says, she’s laughing inside because of Javier Laja. At the end, she thinks of Suzy, her mom, her dad, Cranley, Max, Mike, Liz. She sees the faces on Voz Island.

  “Yeah,” she shouts, and can’t help herself. “Who’s won, Bill, and at what fucking cost? Just tell me that.”

  She throws the phone to the ground and feels dryness in her mouth.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Saturday, 1:14 p.m., BST

  Kat walks over to her father. He’s standing with the help of Grachev and Sayer. She takes his hands in both of hers. She holds them for a few seconds. Her father is too weak to speak. She doesn’t know what to say. Suzy always handled Dad better than she did.

  She looks at Sayer. “Take care of him, Nate?” she says. “Bring him home safely.”

  Sayer nods.

  “Bring Suzy home, too.”

  Sayer nods again.

  “Bye, Dad. See you in Washington,” she says awkwardly.

  “Thank you,” he whispers.

  She digs into her pocket and brings out the VSS cartridge that Sayer gave her. “Max, if you’re still a cop, get this matched to that rifle. There’ll be some trail to Yulya, and I want it on record that Yulya killed Suzy.”

  Without waiting for a response, Kat kneels and embraces Liz. “You’re a big star. You made it work.”

  Liz is still cradling her brother. “F-fuck them for m-making us do it.”

  Luxton props himself up on his elbows and says something to Liz, who helps him to his knees, then his feet.

  Yulya’s shot grazed Luxton’s left temple and made him black out. But he knows what he and Kat are to do next, because they decided it in case they ever got this far. They lay Yulya’s body across the back of a jeep, and Kat drives to the airliner. She and Luxton load the bodies of the three dead guards in, too, then drive into the middle of the hangar and stop under the wing of the Gulfstream.

  They unload the bodies. They carry Mason onto the jeep. Kat drives out to Sayer. “We need to get him home, too,” she says. Luxton and Sayer lift Mason’s body onto the tarmac. Sayer covers his face with his jacket.

  Luxton and Kat take the jeep back into the hangar. Luxton pulls the M20 grenade launcher out of the wreck of the truck cab. He leaves two grenades in the jeep and another in the cockpit of the helicopter.

  Kat closes the hangar door until only a narrow gap remains open. Luxton fires a rocket-propelled grenade into the fuel tank of the Gulfstream.

  As they walk away, a fireball gathers inside the hangar. The walls burst open, and a sheet of flame leaps skyward, then subsides.

  She says good-bye to Luxton at the deserted entrance of the base, walks down the road to the Mini Cooper, drives to Heathrow airport, and leaves the car in the long-term parking lot.

  Bill Cage has had Kat’s clearances restored and fed her biometric and iris readings into the British security system. Kat buys new clothes, showers, and eats. The TV screens show the 2–1 Brazil victory over England. The CPS signing has been delayed for technical reasons. A gas explosion at a private airfield on the east coast has destroyed a hangar, but there were no injuries.

  She boards a flight to Washington. At Dulles, she catches a cab to Dix Street and giv
es the driver $100 to wait. It’s just past ten at night, and Vendetta answers the door.

  “What you been doin’, girl? That shit you told me to keep been all over TV.”

  Kat stays in the doorway. He has whiskey on his breath. “Thank you, M,” she says. “Thank you so much.”

  He peers at her face. “You got yourself cut up, there, above the eye.” His finger hovers by her face. Then he steps back, opens the door for her to come in. She shakes her head, kisses him, draws in the smell of tobacco, whiskey, and hashish.

  “You got those things from the safe on R Street?” she asks.

  “I got ’em.”

  “Can I have ’em?”

  “Can I have you?”

  “Yeah.” Kat kisses him lightly on the lips. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Vendetta laughs, leaves the door open, and comes back a moment later with a supermarket plastic bag, heavy with documents. “You scare me like no one on this street ever did. But that don’t mean I don’t love you.”

  Kat smiles. She feels good, knows it will only last a minute. “Me, too,” she says. She brushes his cheek with the back of her hand.

  The cab drops Kat at her apartment. It’s been searched, but neatly, and she doesn’t care. In the mirror, she looks at the cut above her left eye and another on her right cheek. She showers, wraps one towel around her and dries her hair with another. She makes herself coffee, perches on a kitchen stool, paints her nails a softly hued burgundy to offset her blond hair, and watches TV.

  A Red Cross plane has landed at Voz Island.

  When her nails are dry, she dresses in loose beige pants, sneakers, and a burgundy top. She takes time with the lipstick and eye shadow.

  She hesitates about Suzy’s ring and decides to leave it on her workbench. She picks up the supermarket bag. On the way out, she sees a handwritten envelope amid the junk mail, recognizes Cage’s writing, and leaves it on the floor.

  It’s balmy outside. She walks up to R Street, past her dad’s house, crosses the intersection, presses Nancy’s doorbell, and speaks into the intercom.

  She holds out the bag as Nancy opens the door. Nancy’s not surprised. Nate must have told her everything. She looks drawn, but welcoming.

  “Hi, Aunt Nance,” Kat says. “Nate asked me to put these back in his study.”

  “You know where it is,” Nancy says warmly. Kat runs upstairs. The safe’s open. She puts the bag inside and locks it.

  Kat’s twenty-four years and a few months old—nearly eight days older than she was last week, when she went into the Kazakh embassy. She’s done all right, but there’s a lot she doesn’t know about the world. Nancy’s waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You know, Aunt Nance. If you’re . . . I mean, it’s a nice night, and I wonder . . . you know . . . I’d just like to walk and talk with someone, if you’ve got time, that is.”

  Acknowledgments

  Many people gave their time to make The History Book possible. Roger Whittaker and Lengya Cheng explained computers; Amanda Gunn and Grahame Wylie showed me the skills of a video editor; Dr. Togzhan Kassenova guided me through Russia and Kazakhstan; others, who would prefer not to be named, gave insights into the world in which Kat finds herself; and the BBC, which sends its reporters to places other broadcasters rarely venture, has allowed me to work in Kazakhstan, Washington, and beyond, where I met people and found ideas.

  Claire Bolderson, Liz Jensen, Cait Murphy, Lisanne Radice, Mary Sandys, Ed Stackler, Tanya Warnakulasurya, and Adam Williams guided and advised on the manuscript.

  My thanks to the team at Warner Books and particularly to my editor, Les Pockell, whose incisive input improved the book no end.

  A very special thanks to my agent Simon Lipskar who worked on The History Book from when it was merely a five-line concept on a piece of paper and enthusiastically supported it throughout. Without you, Simon, it would never have been published.