The rest can take their retirements and holidays. The rest can spend time with family and loved ones but for Frank, this is about mopping up a few loose ends, and Gregori the uglyman is the biggest loose end of all. Frank will find him, and Frank will kill him, maybe then he’ll go to the seaside for a day and eat ice-cream. Carmen keeps telling him to take a day off while he still can, but then Carmen is young and so different to the old dinosaurs.
Out of the undergrowth and Frank walks the miles back through the tracks and heathland to his car. A rambler and nothing more who smiles and gives friendly greetings to those he passes.
Into his car. An old Volvo that matches his appearance and he drives steadily to the outskirts of the city to his mid-range budget hotel where he carries his bags in with a smile to the girl behind the desk.
Into his room. Television on and a flashback of memory to the room Neal Barrett had in the facility in Switzerland. The evenings Frank, Carmen and Neal spent drinking and laughing. The slow cultivation to bring the scientist on side, the seduction by Carmen.
He makes tea using the in-room facilities and showers in the bathroom before flicking his cut-throat razor out to rid the hairs on his upper cheeks and lower neck, then he drinks the tea and cleans his weapons. Stripping the pistol and sub-machine gun down to check moving parts, to oil and make ready while casually watching awful daytime television and waiting for the call to confirm the location for Gregori’s overnight stay. Henry did argue that taking out someone like Gregori needs specialist support and suggested they bring Dave back in for a single mission. George said he could organise it, but Howard said no.
‘He’s stacking shelves in Tesco’s, Howard old chap,’ George said during the meeting. ‘The most highly-skilled asset we have ever used is working nights replacing tins of peas…’
‘Dave stays where he is,’ Howard said firmly and that was it, discussion over, so now it’s down to Frank to do it, who - before Dave - was the most highly-skilled asset but now has sore knees and a bad back and eyes that struggle to read things too close or too far.
Carmen did say she would do it, and helpfully pointed out Frank’s sore knees, bad back, failing eyes and also the hairs sprouting from his ears and the old-man smell of piss he always has. Bless her.
Frank smiles in his room, thinking of the meeting and throwing a notepad at Carmen who then mocked his throwing ability and said she really should be the one going for Gregori.
They said no of course. Carmen is good at what she does but sending her against Gregori would be a suicide mission and why do that with so little time left before the world goes pop?
The reveries ends when the phone rings with the words Howard the knob displayed on the screen.
‘Have you found him yet?’ Frank asks, pressing the phone to his ear.
‘Hello, Frank. How are you? Oh, I’m fine thanks, Howard and how are you?’
‘Go play golf. Have you found him yet?’
‘Who?’
‘Take your pick…either the missing scientist that has the list of people immune to the deadly contagion that will spread across the world in a year or so or the Albanian hitman currently in our country.’
‘No and yes. Neal is invisible, but I do have an address for Gregori.’
‘Fire away,’ Frank says, switching mental gear to memorise the address.
‘Frank, listen…I know I said no to using Dave, but we can put an SAS team in there…Gregori is good, Frank.’
‘Oh no, no no no, I’m having that pleasure thank you very much.’
‘You’re a stubborn old git, Frank…ready for the address?’
‘Yep…okay…repeat it…yep, got it. I’ll check in with Henry later. How’s retirement?’
‘I don’t bloody know. I’m glued to my desk at home still sorting your shit out. Did you know George caught a Tinker Thompson on his flight out to Greece? On his holiday!’
‘Henry told me,’ Frank chuckles. ‘Family all okay?’
‘All good, Howie’s a night manager now. He said they’ll move him onto day shifts soon. Sarah’s doing well in London. Listen, I better get on, Frank. Getting wind of a riot or something in Eastern Europe…good luck for later.’
Another cup of tea and he settles back on the bed for an old-man-nap as Carmen calls them. He’ll deploy in a couple of hours to recce the address and go from there. If he can’t get in then great, if not then he’ll wait for Gregori to come out. Nice and simple. Always the best way.
*
The phone ringing brings him from his old-man-nap. His eyes opening to look left to the bedside table to focus on the screen and the words Howard the knob showing the caller.
‘Howard?’ he asks, sitting up while blinking the fug of sleep away.
‘Frank, the contagion is out…’
‘What?!’
‘Listen, Frank! It’s out. God knows what’s happened. Get to Carmen and get south…I’ll update Henry and get word to George…’
A pause, a grimace. Frank’s face hardens as he draws air. ‘Gregori is right there, Howard…’
‘Jesus, Frank! The contagion is out and already in four different countries. Fuck Gregori…my contacts are saying this is beyond anything they’ve ever seen. One woman took a whole clip of NATO rounds to her body and kept going…bullets aren’t putting them down, Frank so fuck Gregori…we’ve got maybe an hour before it hits the UK, two at most…I’m sending you Carmen’s location, you’re the closest. Get to her, get south…Howard out.’
He dresses quickly, tutting with sublime understated expression at having such poor luck as finally finding the uglyman just as the bloody world is ending. Typical.
Out the door. His go-bag over one shoulder. The sub-machine gun inside and one of the pistols secured on a holster at the back of his belt, hidden from view by his lightweight old-man sports coat as Carmen calls it. Bloody Carmen. Bloody world. Bloody Gregori and bloody contagions.
‘Going back out, Sir?’ the receptionist asks, giving Frank a huge smile.
‘Unfortunately,’ he mutters, catching sight of the large flat screen television mounted in the bar next to the lobby. A cluster of people, staff and guests all watching the footage of civil unrest somewhere in Eastern Europe. The blue and red lights of emergency service vehicles flashing amidst the pop of small arms fire and shaky phone-camera clips of people running and screaming.
‘Looks awful,’ the woman remarks, having moved from the desk to stand next to Frank. Young, early-twenties and with a figure that suggests recent childbirth. No wedding ring either. She looks tired with bags under her eyes.
‘Do you have kids?’ he asks.
‘Baby boy,’ she says with a smile. ‘Only six months old. What do you think’s happening?’ she asks, nodding towards the television.
‘Not sure,’ he murmurs, stepping away then stopping with a wince and a shake of his head with an internal argument being waged between duty and conscience. Between being a trained operator dedicated to his role and being a grumpy old fart that’s earnt the right to bend rules now and then. The grumpy old fart wins, and he turns back to the receptionist, striding to take hold of her arm and guide her back to the desk in a manner full of authority well practised over decades of service. ‘Listen to me,’ he says urgently, his tone soft but firm, his eyes locked on hers. ‘Go home. Get your son and grab as much food and bottled water as you can. Bring him back here and find the furthest room on the top floor and lock every single internal door between here and that room…’
She stares at him, mesmerised by the way he speaks then slowly blinks down to the pistol being pushed into her hand.
‘Hide it, point and shoot anyone that threatens you. Stay quiet and wait it out because that,’ he says, pointing at the television, ‘will be here in about an hour. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t talk to anyone. Get your son. Get food. Get water. Lock all the doors and stay quiet. Do you understand?’
She nods once.
‘Good luck,’ he strides off, opening his ba
g to pull his spare pistol out to slide into his now empty holster as he rushes to the old Volvo and sets off for the south.
*
He drives fast because triggering speed cameras and getting letters through the door within fourteen days doesn’t matter anymore, and save for the risk of upsetting a passing police patrol car he drives in a way termed as progressive. Meaning fast. Meaning very fast. From the city to the slip road to the motorway and he blasts past anything in the way. The Volvo might look tatty, but all fleet vehicles are serviced and tuned and this one is no different. Two hands on the wheel. His eyes reading the road ahead. Calm now. Breathing easily. The radio on and flicking between the channels to hear the brief news bulletins that grow steadily longer and more frequent as word of the unfolding crisis finds its way to editors and reporters.
A bleep on his phone. A text message from Howard the knob giving Carmen’s location and that in itself tells Frank just how serious this is because although their calls are secure and encrypted, nothing of note or importance is ever passed by SMS message.
A quick calculation in his mind. The south is over two hundreds miles away. It’s Friday and the roads are busy, but then speed limits no longer matter. He can cover the distance easily, but he has to stop for Carmen. Another bleep on his phone. Another message from Howard the knob.
Carmen is on a covert embed. She will not be aware.
‘She will be in a minute,’ Frank murmurs, pushing his foot down harder on the accelerator.
*
‘You know P Diddy? My yacht is bigger than his.’
‘Oh wow.’
‘You know JK Rowling? She has a big yacht. My yacht is bigger than hers.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Steven Spielberg. He owns a big yacht…’
‘Is yours bigger?’
‘Yes. My yacht is bigger.’
She wants to yawn. She needs to yawn. She can feel it tugging at the back of her head but suppresses it and through years of training and experience she takes the energy of the yawn and pushes it into a smile while narrowing her eyes slightly to imbue an appearance of genuine interest and sexual attraction.
Not that she could ever be sexually attracted to this man. He is a vile, obese, self-centred, greedy beast. He’s also one of the richest men in the world. A Russian oligarch filled with a staggering sense of self-belief and entitlement. Carmen detests him, but she smiles and listens as he drones on, name dropping every yacht owner that ever lived ever and how his boat / house / cars / and everything he owns is bigger and more expensive than all of theirs.
The decision was taken to approach the investigation from another angle because time is running out. The contagion could be released in a year.
Carmen was there with Frank in the secret facility in Switzerland. The UK government was one of the many parties financing the operation and through back channels and by using old-school cloak and dagger techniques they managed to get Frank in as a maintenance worker and Carmen on the facilities team.
The world’s top scientists all paid fortunes to take part and agree to be secured within a mountain facility. A table-top exercise and nothing more. A theoretical discussion using the best academic minds.
What effect would a Panacea have on the world?
That was it, but none of those scientists, or any of the other staff recruited to help run the exercise, including Carmen and Frank, knew anything about it until they were all in and the doors locked, and even then, they were repeatedly told it was only a table-top exercise.
Neal Barrett was one of the scientists. A world-renowned statistician and from everyone within that facility, he was the one with the greatest grasp on predicting global outcomes to any given set of circumstances.
Frank befriended him. Carmen seduced him and together they cultivated him and made him see they were the good guys trying to thwart a very real global threat. Then Neal was approached by the team running the exercise and the confirmation was given that the Panacea existed, and the true plan was to cull the population prior to releasing it, and how we're going to gather people in safe zones to keep them secure while everyone else died, and how they wanted Neal to be with them.
Frank and Carmen got Neal out of the facility and agreed to meet him later and use his knowledge and data to try and stop it, except Neal disappeared and the entire operation suddenly never existed. Most of the other scientists died. Car accidents. Suicides. Muggings. All normal and it became very clear, very quickly that it went right to the heart of every government in the developed world.
The team changed tactic and investigated discreetly, quietly, without even their own kind knowing and Carmen was tasked with getting close to the richest men in the world to see if she could gain hint of something coming and if they had a place within a safe-zone, but during that whole time they had to appear normal and so Howard took semi-retirement and now works mostly from home. Henry scaling back and staying mostly in the office. George the same, sliding slowly into retirement to spend more time with Marion and Frank waiting to be told where to go and who to kill while grumbling and moaning like an old man.
‘Do you like football?’ the Russian oligarch asks, bringing Carmen back to the now.
‘Sure, if you do,’ she replies demurely. A black woman, elegantly beautiful, intelligent, fun, brutally capable and currently bored out of her mind. She wishes it was Neal she was seducing again. She liked Neal. He was all nerdy and cute. Carmen likes nerdy and cute. Big tough alpha men are ten a penny in her world, but true brains and true nerds make her belly flutter a bit and give pleasure in her world of work.
Now she sits at a table in an absurdly expensive restaurant a few miles south of Oxford on a sultry Friday evening in mid-July and listens to a fat Russian boasting about the football club he just bought and what players he’s going to buy from Manchester United and Juventus and Milan and whatever other clubs he wants cos, you know, he’s super rich and super entitled.
It doesn’t get easier either. It gets worse. A flotilla of tiny plates passing underneath her hands, each filled with a tiny blob of shit passed off as food while inside she slowly dies of boredom and wishes she was with Frank going for Gregori the uglyman instead.
She smiles when smiling is needed and laughs when laughing is needed. She listens intently and nods and makes eyes and watches the way he stares at her cleavage without concern of being seen doing so, cos you know, he’s super rich and super entitled.
She decides, while listening and nodding and smiling, that she might go the toilet and either try and escape through a window or failing that she could try and strangle herself to death with toilet tissue, or maybe bring a whole roll back and shove it down his gob to stop him talking, then stab his eyes out with a fork, then maybe stamp on his hands and break his fat fingers before his bodyguards, currently positioned on the adjacent tables, can respond and stop her.
It’s while fantasising over the injuries she could inflict that Frank enters the restaurant. His mop of unruly hair, his thick beard, sensible trousers and sports jacket standing out instantly in the ultra-refined, ultra-expensive eatery.
‘Can I help you, Sir?’ the head waiter asks smoothly, sidling up to Frank in a way that suggests there is no way this grizzled old man is coming in his restaurant.
‘Looking for my wife,’ Frank says, peering past the waiter.
‘Your wife, Sir?’
‘Yep, my wife…WIFE? WHERE ARE YOU WIFE?’
Carmen freezes, her fork mid-way to her mouth. The Russian oligarch still chuntering on about himself.
‘WIFE!’
‘Sir! I must ask you to leave.’
‘WIFEY? WIFEY MY LOVE?’
‘Jesus,’ she mutters, holding still.
‘THERE SHE IS!’ Frank booms, pushing past the waiter to stride through the suddenly silent restaurant. ‘You naughty wifey you…going out to dinner with fat Russian oligarchs…’
Only then does the fat Russian oligarch stop talking to blink and stare, in a s
uper-rich, super-entitled way to the greying hairy man walking over with a big smile.
‘You know this man?’ the Russian asks.
‘Yes,’ Carmen says simply, lowering her fork.
‘Wife!’ Frank says, stopping at her table to grin at her then at the Russian then back to her as the bodyguards start rising from their tables. ‘Looks like shit,’ he adds, glancing at her plate.
‘You’ve no idea,’ she replies.
‘Got a sausage roll and a bag of crisps in the car for you.’
‘What flavour?’
‘Salt and vinegar.’
‘I’m sold,’ Carmen says, rising from the table because the very fact that Frank is here means something very bad is happening right now.
‘You no go,’ the fat Russian says, waving a hand for her to sit back down. ‘You go,’ he adds, flicking that same hand towards Frank with a signal to his men to move in and Carmen watches as Frank stays perfectly still and waits for them to come, gauging distance, position, size, bulk and a hundred other things all at the same time. It’s amazing watching Frank work, even though he’s like well old and smells of piss, and the only person she ever saw that moved better than Frank was Dave, and Dave was on another level entirely. Dave made Frank look like a shuffling slow first-day-at-karate-school beginner.
A hand to Frank’s right shoulder. Another to his left arm. Big hands too. Big hands attached to big arms attached to big bodies. He starts with the hand on his shoulder. A quick motion to drop his shoulder, grip the hand, turn it over, break the wrist and turn into the man holding his left arm. A tangle of hands. A blur and Frank breaks the man’s thumbs then his wrists then his elbows and pivots to drive him across the table into the fat Russian oligarch and in so doing Frank presents his back to Carmen who reaches out to slide his pistol free of the holster and hold it out aimed at three other bodyguards charging towards them.
‘Don’t do it,’ she says, giving clear and fair warning. A pause. A hesitation, then their hands plunge out of sight into their jackets and Carmen fires as the restaurant erupts in panic while outside an ambulance with flashing blue lights careers wildly out of control and smashes into a bus-stop before crashing into the plate glass window of the boutique store opposite.
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