“About time too.”
Knowles kept his eyes straight ahead, jaw clenched.
“At ease, Sergeant.” Knowles relaxed slightly, but remained standing. The Major didn’t offer the only other chair in the room.
“Do you know what we do in here sergeant?”
“No, sir!”
“Good. Best not to ask too many questions young man.”
“Yes, sir!” Don’t ask questions? It's cliché day from the pompous twat.
“I need a team to handle a potentially delicate situation, Knowles, and your name came up.”
“Sir?”
“I need you to choose your best men and have them follow orders without question. This is a delicate matter and nothing must go wrong. No media must learn of it, under any circumstances. Is that understood before we go any further?”
“Absolutely sir, you have my-”
“Cut the crap, Knowles. I need a team I can trust, I need it today and I need to know if that’s you.”
“You can count on me sir.”
“Careful Knowles, you don’t know what I’m about to ask you.”
“No sir.”
“Could you choose four men?”
“Yes sir. I would need to know what kind of op it was before I made my final selection.” Knowles already knew who he would choose: Meyers; Carruthers; Scarlet; Jones.
“I need you to watch someone for me.”
“Bodyguard duty, sir? With respect-”
“No, no. I wouldn’t use a field man like yourself for anything like body guard.” Smith leaned back in his chair and lifted a folder from the desk. He took a single photograph out of it and threw it to the desk.
“I need this man watched.”
“Sir? Again, with respect, that’s what the spooks do.”
Smith laughed. “No, Knowles, MI5 do not need to know about this man. We need to know if he can help us.”
Knowles frowned, looking at the photo of a young white man who clearly hadn’t known the photo had been taken. It had the grainy look common to all CCTV images.
“What’s he done?”
“It’s not what he’s done, Knowles, it’s what he might do. I need you to watch him discreetly and intervene if necessary.”
Intervene? In what?
“This might be the cushiest job you ever get sergeant. You watch this man for a month, maybe six weeks and then come home if nothing happens.”
“And what might happen sir?”
“That is why you are watching, Knowles. We want to know everything there is to know about Jack Stadler.”
2
An hour later, Knowles had assembled his team in a mission briefing room near their barracks. Carruthers wore his usual scowl, but Knowles knew that underneath the frown lay a man who had an unusually high intelligence for a grav. Scarlet was the polar opposite to Carruthers in intelligence, but was equally large, mean and lacking a sense of humour. Jones was almost the dictionary definition of average, but he knew his way around just about every weapon you could think of. Meyers could drive anything, fast, and through every terrain.
It’s like the A-team. Everyone has their uses.
Behind him on the interactive whiteboard was the image of Jack Stadler. “Questions?” he asked.
“What has he done?” Carruthers asked. Knowles had thought that the first question would have come from him. In fact, would have bet next month’s palimony on it.
“You don’t need to know that,” Knowles said, but didn’t add because I don’t have a clue.
“I recognise him.” Carruthers had a photographic memory. “Can’t place him yet, but I’ve definitely seen him before.”
“Over the next month, we will all get intimately acquainted with Jack Stadler’s every move. You place him, you let me know.”
“This op is a piece of piss sir. A month in Devon watching a civvy. Sounds like a holiday.” Jones grinned at the others as he said it. “I used to go there when I was a kid. Cracking place, Devon.”
“Why us?” Scarlet’s booming voice asked. “As Jonesey says, this is a piece of piss.”
Knowles shrugged. “We don’t ask, we do. They say where to go, we say yes.”
“Fine,” Carruthers said, “but this is wrong. We’ve got a combined tour of about thirty years, so why this Mickey Mouse op?”
Knowles knew that he could bawl Carruthers out for speaking to a superior officer like that, but he also knew that Carruthers was voicing what they were all thinking.
“The major asked for me specifically. I asked for you specifically.” He let that sink in for a moment, let the guys feel valued. “It’s better than Ghanners isn’t it?”
There was no argument in the room against that statement. They had all seen combat in Afghanistan. It was not something any of them were in a rush to get back to.
“There is one final thing though. Nobody knows we are going. Girlfriends and wives out of the loop, no contact until the end of the op.”
“No fucking problem,” Jones said. Single again then, now that could be an issue.
“What’s the cover?” Scarlet hated lying to his wife and kids. He did everything he could to protect them from the day-to-day of what he actually did, but that involved just not talking about it. Outright lies were not something he was good at.
“It’s our choice. We can be scuba diving in the Seychelles or skiing in Courchevel.”
“Yeah, but when we get back in six weeks, my wife will notice the distinct lack of a tan – or panda eyes,” Carruthers said.
“Actually, it’s a seven week op.”
They looked blankly at him. Knowles couldn’t suppress a grin: this was the bit that he’d been looking forward to.
“According to Major Smith, this is a seven week op regardless of how long we actually spend in Devon. When we finish, they send us where we want: Seychelles or Courchevel. If we’re there for six weeks, then the seventh week is spent there. We finish early, we go for longer.”
In the excitement that rose in the room, none of them thought to ask how that would happen: what exactly did they have to do to finish early?
3
Knowles packed quickly. Smith had told him the cover story and then outlined the brief for the trip to Devon. They would be five lads on holiday for a month, looking for all the outdoor pursuits that Devon excelled at: climbing, mountain biking, surfing and kayaking. They were to be soldiers on leave following an extended tour of duty. It was best to keep the story as close to the truth and as simple as possible.
They were renting a holiday cottage two doors away from the Stadler house. The first job was to find a way in to bug the place and they were to keep Stadler under twenty four hour surveillance for at least a month. If they observed anything they felt to be suspicious in any way, they were to bring him back to the base immediately.
The major had been very vague as to what ‘suspicious’ behaviour they might observe.
Knowles had the usual feeling in his stomach: a queasy sensation like he was going to be sick any moment that he always had just before going on a live op. In Ghanners, he had lived with the feeling twenty-four hours a day. After a week, he had thought he might get used to it. After a month he knew that wasn’t going to happen. After a year, he had begun to embrace it, but he never once forgot it was there.
When his patrol had been ambushed, the sick feeling was replaced with out and out terror. Scarlet had saved his life, but they had been too slow to save two of their team. Both had been shot by snipers whilst Scarlet and Knowles had been shielded by a jeep.
Knowles pushed the memory aside.
I am not going back there if I can help it.
Chapter 5
1
Jack awoke in his bed. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows and obscured the time on the alarm clock. He pushed it into the shadows by the wall and saw 07:30 in light blue numbers. Groaning, he went for a shower and was halfway through washing when he remembered what had happened on the way home.
He inspected his arms carefully. No rogue clumps of hair, strange lumps or waves of rippling skin. No hangover either. The water was as hot as he could stand it, but it felt as soothing as a massage. Had he imagined it?
No.
What was going on? What had happened? He had no memory beyond the churchyard and seeing the waves coming out of his arm. Just a trick of the light? The beer messing with my head?
I need help.
No. I’m fine, just a little sleep deprived and in shock. Get Katie and Josh home and things will return to normal soon enough – or at least, as normal as they can be with a baby.
He turned the shower off then dried and dressed quickly. With a cup of tea he watched the breakfast news. Nothing of note except the usual doom and gloom. The local news didn’t mention him at all: he was a good news story which meant a shelf life of one day, max.
He stroked and fed Ginny, then left for his car.
At no point did he wonder why he wasn’t hungry.
2
Katie was awake and feeding Josh when he arrived. She had some colour back in her cheeks and she looked more like her old self – or at least her old self with an extra stone. He told her she looked good and kissed them both gently. Josh didn’t break stride with his feeding.
“He takes after his old man for feeding,” Katie said.
“Don’t say that.”
“What? He’s eating really well, the nurses are dead impressed.”
“Old man. I hate that expression – always have.” Jack made a face. “It sound like when you’re a dad, that’s it, life over. Mine feels like it’s just starting.”
Katie beamed at him. “Mine too.”
Josh stopped feeding, looked at Jack for a nano-second then fell asleep. Jack took him gently and Josh nuzzled in to his neck. Years before, he had worked with a man who claimed he’d happily do time if anyone hurt his kids. In that instant, Jack knew exactly what he meant.
“Can you come home today?”
“Yes. Did you bring the car seat?”
Jack nodded. The seat had been fitted the car the day they’d bought it and he had not removed it since. It looked too complicated.
“Could you pack my things for me while I get dressed?”
“No problem. Do you need a shower or anything?”
Katie wrinkled her nose. “Not here. I’ll have a bath at home later.”
Jack raised his eyebrows with a smirk.
“You can forget that for a start!” Katie said. “I’m going to have to bathe with tea tree oil to help, y’know, the healing.” She stressed the word healing and Jack felt his insides clench. The vaginal tear had been quite severe but she had been stitched back up before the epidural had worn off.
It’s good to be a man.
Once he had packed her bag, they went to the nurses’ station and said their goodbyes. Sue, the older midwife, was there and she removed the security tags from around Josh’s ankles. He didn’t wake, despite all the nurses cooing and fussing over him. Jack felt an insane moment of pride when they said how good looking a boy Josh was, despite knowing that it was probably in their contracts to say that to everyone. Sue said that she would visit them at home on Thursday and then discharged them. It all seemed far too easy to Jack, who had expected much more resistance to the idea of going home.
Too easy. Surely this should be harder? I’m walking out of here with a baby. Shouldn’t someone stop me? Point out that I’m nowhere near mature enough for this?
Katie looked at him, beatific smile in place. She held his hand and gave it a squeeze. I have to be ready, no one else is doing this for me. Five minutes later they were heading for home via their first car journey as a family.
3
It was lunchtime before they got home. Two days before, the drive had been never-ending. Now it was again, but for very different reasons. Katie made fun of him all the way home, but he knew that she was feeling as anxious as him. She had made him turn the stereo down low, but he had no trouble making out every word – no mean feat as the CD was still Lambchop from the previous evening.
Once in the safety of their home, Katie sank onto the sofa and suddenly looked exhausted. Jack held Josh gently and was surprised to see he was awake. Josh stared at his father, eyes wide with amazement. Then he went bright red and farted loudly.
“You’re holding him, you get to deal,” Katie said with a smile.
“No problem,” Jack answered. He stood in the doorway looking around the room.
“Nappies and wipes upstairs.” Jack paused, holding Josh at arm’s length. Katie watched him with obvious amusement. “You want a hand?”
“Um. Yeah.”
They went up to the nursery room which remained unpainted. They had been planning to paint it that weekend, but things had been brought forward a little. Still, as Josh was going to be in with them for at least a couple of months, they had plenty of time to fix that.
Jack lay him on the change mat whilst Katie got out a nappy and a large packet of wipes. Jack un-popped all the buttons on the sleep suit and pushed it up under his son’s back. The slowly rotting stump of the umbilical cord caught slightly and Jack inhaled sharply.
“Sorry little man.” Josh didn’t appear bothered, just kept staring at his dad. The stump was black from the clip to where it entered Josh’s body. It was the most revolting thing Jack had ever seen.
Except for those waves running up your arm last night.
Jack ignored the thought and concentrated on what he was doing. He took the nappy off and was greeted by the second
-third-
most revolting thing he’d seen. The nappy was covered in a thick black substance. It clung to the nappy and Josh’s back like tar to a road.
“Holy crap.”
“Close. It’s meconium.”
Jack’s memory of those god awful baby books he’d read when Katie had announced she was pregnant. He wiped it and was surprised at how quickly it came off.
Then a large arc of warm liquid squirted across the room, covering Jack’s arm and hitting the far wall of the nursery. Katie started laughing so hard she was almost doubled over.
“You already lost your wee cherry!” she said in a bad American accent.
Jack couldn’t help but laugh also, even though he was soaked. He reached for another wipe and started to clean his arm. Before too long, Josh was clean and Katie dressed him whilst Jack cleaned up the mess.
4
Later that afternoon, they had their first visitors. John and his wife Karen came round with a present for Josh and bubbly and chocolates for Katie.
“For Katie.” John stressed, handing her the box deliberately. Jack started to make some drinks whilst Karen went through to the living room.
“How’s your head?” John asked when they were alone.
“Not bad,” Jack lied. “Not that great either.”
“No, I’ve been shit all day. Was nearly sick on the way to work.”
“Christ, I’ve not been that bad.”
“I’m out of practice see. You’ll find out – kids are great for your liver mate.”
They made four mugs of tea and went through to join the others. Karen was cuddling Josh, who was predictably enough, asleep with his head resting on her shoulder.
“Oh, Jack, he’s gorgeous,” she said. Jack felt the lump in his throat come back. “Josh is such a great name too. I like that it’s not Joshua.”
“I teach several Joshuas,” Jack said. “Most are good kids, but we wanted something different.”
“Proud-foot Cloud-walker Stadler,” John said, to blank looks from the others. “That’s different isn’t it?”
Karen scowled at him and Jack suppressed a grin. They had toyed with a more outlandish name, but hadn’t wanted to make the boy an easy target later in life. Jack had actually taught an Oliver Hardy once. What were the parents thinking?
“You’ve missed all the excitement then,” Karen said to Katie.
“Yeah. Husband
on the six o’clock news, me in hospital. Bloody typical!”
“You also didn’t tell us much about that last night mate,” John said.
Jack shrugged. “Not much to tell. I was running with Ginny like I normally do, hole opens up, I fall in like some kind of twat.”
It was Katie’s turn to scowl. “You’ve got to be careful with how you speak now.” She gestured at Josh who was still fast asleep.
“You’re fucking joking!”
“Jack!”
“So, how come you were running across that bit of land then? There’s no path there,” John said.
“You’ve had a look?”
“Half the bloody village has, mate. The other half will have by today. You’re a bit of a celebrity now.”
“Great. I’m famous for falling down a hole.” It was one of Jack’s bugbears that, as an incomer, lots of people knew everything about him, but he knew very few people in return.
“Hell of a hole though,” John said admiringly.
“Tell us more Jack,” Karen pleaded.
“Ginny disappeared, and she wouldn’t come back, so I ran after her. I don’t think that particular bit of land has had anything on it heavier than a rabbit for years. The ground gave way and I fell into the hole.”
“You pass out?”
“No, or at least the paramedics didn’t think so.” Another lie. Jack knew he had passed out, at least for a little while.
Actually, you might have died there for a moment or two.
“I landed on some sort of slab which broke my fall.”
“A slab?” Katie looked concerned again. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yeah, a big stone slab, almost like a table.”
Covered with weird symbols.
Like the Devil.
“You broke your fall on stone?” John’s tone of voice said it all. The room had become a little tense in the last few minutes. Jack laughed to try and break it.
“Yeah. How lucky am I?”
That’s a very good question Jack. Just how lucky indeed? Lucky enough for your flesh to ripple?
The Original's Return (Book 1) Page 4