Something in his tone catches Marion’s eye, a deeper voice rarely heard from him. She gets up from the chair, smiling at the new friends before following George into the bar.
‘George, what has got into you?’
‘No time to explain, Marion, take these and get changed, there’s a toilet there, use that and be quick.’
‘George…’
‘Now, Marion,’ his voice carries a force never heard before. He gently pushes his wife through the door, making a point of closing it behind her, cutting her off in mid-sentence.
Hand in pocket he fingers the specially made razor. All the men in the department use them, standard issue and an innocuous enough item to have about the house without drawing attention.
His eyes dart to the lobby at the sound of the ear piercing scream. Every head on the veranda snaps that way, the barman already running.
George stands his ground, barely a flicker of emotion on his face as the screams get louder. More voices join in, sounds of fighting, of bodies hitting the hard marble floor. Out of sight around the corner but the noises tell him everything that’s going on.
‘Well, Georgie, you’d better have a damn good reason for this,’ Marion exclaims as she walks out of the toilet carrying her evening dress.
‘You look wonderful, dear,’ George pecks her on the cheek, ‘now we’ve got to move fast and I need you to stay with me at all times, can you do that?’
‘Of course, George, but really, I have no idea what is going on and what is all that noise? Has the cabaret started?’
‘No, dear…’
Out through the bar and out onto the veranda, crossing the grounds George locates a side path running from the beach to the front of the buildings. Soft orange lights illuminate the path as they move swiftly along. George scanning the area, his head moving left, right, ahead and listening intently.
‘George, is this a planned moonlit walk? That sounds awfully romantic, George but on our first night?’
‘No, dear, something bad has happened, I will explain everything to you but not right now my love, I really need to listen so we have to be quiet.’
Keeping to the far edge of the paved walkway he starts towards the town. In truth he is more than capable of holding a conversation while continuing to listen and asking Marion to stay quiet was simply to buy time, putting off the inevitable, not knowing where to start.
George had been meaning to tell Marion for years but somehow, it just never seemed the right time.
Pulling his phone from his pocket he checks the screen, noticing the signal bar is now empty. Nodding in grim understanding he pushes on.
‘Is that someone running, George? He looks drunk, look at him staggering about, should be ashamed of himself. Oh dear, I think he’s seen us, yes…yes he has seen us. Is he alright, looks like he’s bleeding…oh dear, George, he’s been fighting, look…he’s got blood all around his mouth. Please don’t come any closer young man we’re not interested in your drunken antics, go to the hotel lobby if you need assistance,’ Marion shouts at the man staggering towards them.
The man stares fixed at George and Marion, fresh blood pouring down his chin, a large wound evident on his neck and as he comes into the light George notices the red bloodshot eyes.
Having gauged the speed and manner of movement, George ascertains the point of impact and steps forward, drawing the cutthroat razor from his pocket, flicking the blade open at the last second to gently brush the steel across the jugular as he shoulder barges the figure away, causing the spray of blood to spurt onto the road and not at Marion who he grabs and pulls on as the body slumps behind them with a gargled thud.
‘George?’ Marion asks after a few minutes of brisk walking.
‘Yes, dear.’
‘Did you kill that man?’
‘Yes, dear.’
She lapses into another silence as George thinks furiously on how to begin explaining that their whole lives have been based on a lie.
The road takes them directly into the town. Tourists seated on the tables outside the cafes and restaurants, waiters moving amongst them. Shopkeepers lounging in comfy chairs outside their premises, couples and families moving slowly through.
Still holding Marion’s hand he walks onto the pavement, moving through the crowds, examining and scanning every person that passes by. Looking for signs of injury or blood. His hand holds the razor in his pocket, ready to be drawn in an instant while looking for a viable mode of transport he can take quickly and quietly.
‘Didn’t I get you that razor, George?’ Marion asks in a far-away voice.
‘No dear, it was a gift from work.’
‘The treasury department gave you a razor?’
There it is. The opening question that gives him an opportunity to explain but still he can’t bring himself to start, knowing the knock-on effect will be awful. Was there a way through this without telling her? Not after cutting a chap’s throat open with a straight blade razor there wasn’t. And why isn’t she asking questions?
At the centre crossroads, he grips Marion’s wrist and steps back, hearing the loud diesel engine before the minibus comes into sight. Going faster than it should be. The engine stuck in a low gear but still accelerating. Coming from the left George snaps his head to see as the vehicle careers past, swerving across the width of the road. A glimpse of the driver holding the steering wheel one-handed while he fights the man biting into his shoulder.
An old Greek woman crossing the road shunted high into the air, spinning as her body is sent through the plate glass window of a souvenir shop. Screams sound out. The minibus clings to the road for a second before swerving a hard left. The sudden action tips the vehicle over; slamming onto its side it scores along the ground sending plumes of sparks from the metal frame grating on the concrete before hitting the low feeble railing of a café, ripping the fixtures from the ground as it powers into the packed chairs and tables. Bodies flattened, crushed, mown down and more sent spinning off as the back end of the vehicle slides round.
Deafening noise of metal against metal, metal against concrete, glass smashing, women screaming, men yelling, children crying. The momentum carries the minibus straight through one seating area and into the adjoining café, impacting on the front of the building.
The vehicle slams into the outside grill, killing the Greek chef instantly. The gas bottles break the seal from the pipes feeding the grill. High-pressure gas escapes the nozzle. The sparks from the scraping metal ignite the gas, a jet of flame being forced from the gas bottle. Within a second the flames get inside the large metal canister. The first bottle explodes. A giant grenade that sends burning fragments of sharp metal spinning for hundreds of feet in every direction.
Whole swathes of crowds are cut to ribbons. Heads torn apart, limbs amputated, guts ripped open as the deadly metal slices through them.
George’s heart rate only increases fractionally as he takes everything in. His eyes narrow as he focuses on the people running from the minibus, at the bite wounds on their necks, shoulders, faces and arms.
They start collapsing, clutching their stomachs. George holds Marion still, keeping to the security of the building line as he lets it play out for a minute. Watching, scanning, learning, assessing.
The first one that dropped holding his stomach starts twitching, convulsions that make the limbs lash out. After a few seconds, the twitches cease and the man goes limp and dead before sitting and rising awkwardly to his feet without the use of his arms to lever himself up.
The man surges into the press of bodies and bites down on the neck of a young woman. She screams, turning to beat the thing off her. Someone grabs the biter and pushes him away. He reels, staggers and collides with another woman, instantly biting her face.
She goes down with the thing on top of her. More people rush in, dragging him away. He bites them too, nipping and gnashing at fingers, hands and arms, passing the deadly infection with every bite.
A taxi left at the side
of the road. The driver running to help the injured. The engine still running.
‘Come on,’ George tugs Marion by the hand, leading his wife across the road as a body lunges at them, lips pulled back, teeth bared. George steps into the body, spinning it round to force the things head into the solid metal end of the taxi. Gripping the skull he expertly wrenches the head, breaking the neck.
Moving like in a dream, Marion is ushered round to the passenger side and gently pushed into the seat. George pulls the seat belt round his wife and fastens it in place before closing the door.
Into the driver’s side and he turns the key, easing the vehicle forward to the end of the road.
‘We need to go back through the town, Marion, it’s the only road out of here.’
‘Okay, George,’ she whispers. He glances at his wife, at the set expression on her face.
George pushes the automatic transmission into drive and applies pressure to the accelerator, increasing the push down as the vehicle sweeps up the main road. Swerving expertly round the dead bodies and flaming debris to get away with the quaint town erupting in fire and carnage behind them.
*
‘You owe Henry that drink now,’ she finally breaks the silence as they drive through the darkened streets. He snaps his head over, staring for a second. ‘Watch the road, Georgie,’ she reaches her hand out to stroke the back of his neck.
‘What?’ George stammers, his heart-rate only now spiking, his face only now showing a look of shock.
‘Bless you, George. Did you know you were about to go down in the departments history books as the only one never to have told his wife?’
‘Marion…I…’
‘Oh, Georgie, you should see your face, I wish I could take a picture, Frank and Howard would love it and I know Carmen would be in fits!’
‘Marion…’
‘You were recruited in the seventies with Frank, Howard and Henry, at the height of the cold war. There were too many risks associated with rogue and double agents so once we were engaged I was approached and spoken to. Do you remember that, George? When I went away for a few days before our wedding?’
‘To see your great aunt in Norfolk,’ George sputters.
‘No, George, I was being vetted and trained. All the wives did it. We had to because the department knew that no secret such as that could pass between a husband and wife, so they had to be sure we knew what we were getting ourselves into, and obviously to keep an eye on you men at the same time.’
‘You knew?’
‘The whole time,’ Marion smiles.
‘And…you’re not cross?’
She laughs, a soft pleasant sound that gives a sudden heart-warming feeling to George, ‘Of course not, George, it was a great subject between all of us, all those dinner parties and functions, all that pretence, it was exciting.’
‘You mean Henry knew that you knew? His wife knew? Frank knew? What about Howard?’
‘Yes, Georgie, we all knew.’
‘Bastards,’ George mutters at his friends. They had joined together, conducted missions together, killed and almost died together and the whole time they knew that Marion was aware.
‘Let me explain,’ she massages the back of his neck with one hand stretched over the back of his seat, ‘we were all given pre-op briefings with a very rough outline of what you were going to do. We were never told locations or the intimate details, just the basics so we could assess your mental state prior to the mission, we were then given a post-op briefing which updated us as to how the mission went, so we could handle the fall-out, the mental stress and as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder became more widely known we were also trained to recognise the symptoms and how to bring you boys back down to a state of relaxation.’
‘The dinners,’ George whispers.
‘Yes, George, the dinners. Every time you went away for a treasury trip,’ she smiles, ‘you’d come back and we’d have our special dinner, a bath together and a few days alone…please, George, I loved every day of being with you and I missed you terribly while you were away.’
‘My word,’ George shakes his head, ‘my word indeed, this is…well, it’s really all rather had to take in.’
‘Twenty-five years of marriage, George. I think a wife has the right to understand her husband. Now, what’s the egress route and what do I need to know? Did you get a map? I take it we have no estates or assets on this island?’
George stares at his wife. His beautiful wife that he’s been devoted to since the day they met. ‘I do love you, Marion.’
‘You too, Georgie, now, are you going to tell me or do I have to water-board you?’
Twenty Three
Day One
Northern England.
The Cessna bounces down onto the grass airstrip, the propellers blurring as the light aircraft decreases speed and navigates towards the hangars. Early morning and already the sun is strong. The pilot gently pulls his Aviator sunglasses from his face and rubs his nose. Several men dressed in casual street clothes lean against the sides of ordinary vehicles. No dark suits or status symbol four-wheel drives with blacked out windows. Casual men waiting casually for their friend to arrive. They smoke and talk quietly but all of them fall to silence as the side door to the aircraft opens. Even for such ruthless men as this, the arrival of the ugly man is something special.
None of them have seen him before but all of them have heard time and again of his exploits across the globe, so they try to remain casual in their casual clothes next to their casual cars, but the sense of trepidation builds as the side door of the executive aircraft opens and a small set of steps lowers down with a faint whine from the electric motor. The co-pilot exits first, a typical hard faced Eastern European but smartly dressed in a crisp white shirt and pressed trousers. He bounces down to the tarmac and nods at the men before turning to look back at the door.
Gregori appears swiftly, a fluid movement that has his bulk sliding through the doorway and down the stairs with a casual glance around as though taking in the view.
‘You really are an ugly bastard,’ Frank murmurs to himself, grimacing from the dull ache in his lower back brought on by lying on his stomach in thick undergrowth at the edge of the airfield for way too many hours. A set of military grade binoculars on a stand that he peers through, watching the uglyman move smoothly to a waiting car. One of the most wanted men in the world right there and if Frank had a sniper rifle he could kill him now and be done with it. But he doesn’t have a rifle, so instead he grumbles to himself and watches Gregori drop into the back of car that pulls away to drive down the access road out of the airfield and only when the cars are fully out of view does Frank thumb the screen on his phone and hold it to his ear.
‘Hello, Treasury Department, Office of Fiscal Studies, Henry speaking, how may I help you?’
‘I’ve got backache,’ Frank says gruffly.
‘Well now, that is terribly sad.’
‘I never used to get backache.’
‘You’re old, Frank. We’re all old. Stop moaning, it’ll all be over soon anyway.’
‘I should be on holiday like George. You heard from him yet?’
‘Just a few minutes ago as it happens, funniest thing actually, he saw old Tinker Thompson on the plane out.’
‘Tinker Thompson eh?’ Frank asks mildly.
‘Dozed off on the plane. Anyway, enough gossiping. How’s it going at your end? Wildlife any good?’
‘Yep. Just saw a great speckled Uglius Albanius Bastardius…except I don’t have an appropriate piece of equipment to shoot the Uglius Albanius Bastardius with seeing as they want him to go and kill a bunch of Russians first…’
‘Frank,’ Henry groans. ‘We’ve been over this.’
‘My back hurts and I hate politics…’
‘Frank…’
‘The world is going to go bang soon so what difference does it make? I had him, Henry. Right there. The most wanted man in the world…’
‘Frank, you’re
grumbling like an old man.’
‘I am an old man, too old to be lying in bushes…do we know where the Uglius Albanius Bastardius is staying tonight?’
‘Howard’s working on firming the intel up now.’
‘I bet Howard isn’t lying in a bush. I bet he’s working from home pretending to be retired while pottering about in his shed and polishing his golf clubs…tell him I said he’s a knob and why hasn’t he found Neal Barrett yet?’
‘I’ll tell him that, Frank.’
‘If he can find Uglius Albanius Bastardius then he should be able to find an untrained and unskilled statistician…’
‘Yes, Frank. Go and lie low. I’ll update you later…’
‘Bye, Henry. I’ll just crawl out of this thorny bush and wipe the fox shit from my knees…’
Frank smiles on hearing Henry tut before the line disconnects. An older man, late fifties with a mop of unruly hair and a thick beard speckled heavily with grey on a creased and weathered face. Broad shoulders, thick arms and gnarled hands. The appearance of a builder or an engineer, of someone who has worked outdoors his entire life.
He drops his chin to his hands, exhaling noisily through his nose. ‘The end is nigh,’ he mutters, snorting a dry blast of humour while thinking of life and living, of many things at once. He wonders where Neal is and how the hell he’s managed to stay off the grid for so long. He wonders how long it will be before the balloon goes up and he wonders about his team. Howard now in semi-retirement. Henry not far off. George down to part-time and just doing the odd day here and there. He smiles on thinking about George and Marion and wishes to be a fly on the wall when they have that conversation.
The God-botherer left a few years back and disappeared into the ether. Howard probably knows where he is but then that was Howard’s job, to know, to keep tabs and find things out.
A secret kept between them all but then that was always their way of life. To know the bad things and deal with them. This one can’t be stopped though. It’s too deep. Too well-financed. Too secret yet too global. Too dangerous. A few more months, maybe a year then none of this will matter.
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