Delivering Caliban (John Purkiss 2)

by Tim Stevens

  She hasn’t been seen since. We all know what’s happened, though we all pretend not to.

  Now Z is making out his wife has left the island. When and how this happened, he doesn’t say. I could have saved her. I could have saved many if not most of the other lives that have been lost on this island. But I didn’t, because I hung on too long. I let the ultimate goal, of getting right to the head of this operation and cutting it off, rule me. And now I’ve failed utterly, and the chance to do any good at all is lost.

  They’re either going to kill me, or simply strand me here. Either way I’m dead. The basement will provide little protection against the hurricane. I’d end up entombed there like a character from an Edgar Allan Poe story.

  I sent the email yesterday, with Z’s express permission. Right up until I hit the ‘send’ button, I found it hard to believe he was allowing me to do so. The rules were clear. No electronic communication with the outside, for obvious reasons of security. Z read what I typed, of course, and made sure I wasn’t attaching any files. I’d said it was my son’s birthday and that I didn’t know when – if – I’d see him again. Z seemed to sympathise. He feels something for his own daughter, I’ve no doubt.

  So all hope now rests with my son. If by some quirk of nature somebody is listening to this, it means my son has come through. Has shown the commitment and the downright canniness I know he’s capable of. I’ve been a terrible father, one of the worst kind, because my abuse has been not physical but of the neglectful variety. Now it’s too late to make amends. But if this is reaching anybody’s ears, please – at the risk of sounding maudlin – please tell my son that I love him.

  I’m alone now, but it’s almost time for us to begin the final preparations for our departure. I won’t go quietly, whatever they have in store for me. But I will go, of that I have no doubt.

  May the God I cannot believe in have mercy on them for what they’ve been doing here. And may God preserve my own soul.

  *

  It was the final entry in almost four hours of recorded material, most of it transcribed from his father’s memory and now committed to his. Pope had played it over, countless times, listening to nothing else through the rest of his university career, no music or recordings of seminars. He’d absorbed every detail until it was part of his own history as well as his father’s. It had taken all he had to focus on his studies and pass, comfortably but hardly with flying colours.

  Towards the end of his final year he’d started to sound out the political groups on campus, ones of diverse hue. He developed a finely tuned sense of who the genuine students were and who the agents provocateurs and the talent scouts. And he’d let himself be approached - had put himself in the direct path of the recruiters, once he’d identified with them.

  In October 2003, a month after graduating, Pope had signed up with the Service. And his plan began.

  Twenty-Nine

  Sussex County, New Jersey

  Tuesday 21 May, 12.40 am

  ‘The man who phoned me couldn’t get hold of his two friends,’ said Purkiss. ‘It means they’re incapacitated. So Pope’s got to them.’

  They were piling back into Nakamura’s Taurus, the night cool and wet around them. Berg had eyed Purkiss and said, ‘Anything else you took off those dead guys other than their phone?’

  ‘Of course.’ Purkiss patted the small of his back, where he’d tucked one of the handguns he’d picked up. A Glock 23. He’d seen Kendrick select one as well. Berg shook her head but did not comment.

  ‘Pope’s got to them,’ Nakamura said, starting the engine, ‘meaning he may have got the woman, if they were right behind her. He might have killed her by now.’

  ‘We have to assume otherwise.’

  Kendrick: ‘And her role is what, in all this?’

  ‘We can’t know that,’ said Purkiss. ‘She’s significant enough that both Pope and this CIA group want her. Possibly both want her dead. But she’s too young to have been involved in the Holtzmann Solar business, even if she wasn’t a civilian, which she clearly is. She would have been ten or eleven at the time.’

  ‘Jeez,’ said Berg. ‘You don’t think she’s some kind of... experiment? Some leftover from the drug trial who they need to dispose of now to stop it all coming out?’

  Purkiss thought about it. ‘Doubt it. Crosby told us the drug was something to do with interrogation, remember. Not the kind of thing a child would be much use as a subject for. Unless they were testing purely for side effects or something.’

  ‘Ah, Christ.’ Nakamura trod down harder than necessary on the accelerator, the tyres pealing on the tarmac.

  Online traffic news hadn’t revealed anything particularly unusual on the roads between Charlottesville and Washington D.C. Nakamura had the radio set for updates. It was possible that the Ramirez woman had made it to the capital and Pope or the CIA men had caught up with her there. Again, nothing from the Washington news websites leaped out at them.

  Washington was where they needed to head, they were agreed. Before they left the diner Purkiss said: ‘We could do with a second car.’

  ‘My driving a problem?’ said Nakamura drily.

  ‘It’ll give us more flexibility,’ said Purkiss. ‘And we’ll be a divided target, that way.’

  *

  Nakamura found a car rental shop that was still open. The clerk behind the counter looked up sleepily and recoiled a little at the sight of them, as if he expected to be attacked.

  Purkiss chose a black Subaru. In the lot at the back Kendrick eyed it. ‘Pity. Quite fancied trying a Yank car. Mustang or Caddy or something.’

  Berg said, ‘We should split up. One of us with one of you. Spread our skills.’

  Kendrick said, ‘Works for me, darlin’.’ He winked at her.

  Purkiss closed his eyes.

  Berg said, quietly, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Need to get going,’ said Purkiss.

  Nakamura jerked his head. ‘Hendrix, you ride with me.’

  ‘Kendrick.’

  ‘Right.’

  *

  Berg took the wheel of the Subaru. Purkiss felt the excitement of discovering the Ramirez lead dissipating quickly. Over two hundred miles to Washington – and then what? All they knew, or suspected, was that Ramirez might have made it to the capital or Pope might have got to her by now.

  Beside him Berg said, ‘One option we have is to call in. Have a nationwide alert put out on Ramirez.’

  ‘No time,’ said Purkiss. ‘It’s gone midnight. There won’t be enough people awake now to make it worthwhile, and it’ll just drive her and Pope deeper underground.’

  ‘What I thought,’ said Berg. ‘Danny’s monitoring police frequencies to see if anything comes up, but it’s another long shot.’

  They drove in silence for a while, the Taurus in sight ahead of them. Kendrick and Nakamura were no doubt swapping war stories.

  Berg said, ‘Your buddy’s an asshole.’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘That kind of talk. Sexist, racist. That doesn’t go down well here.’

  ‘Fair point. But he’s saved my life. More than once.’

  She gazed ahead. ‘I kind of know what you mean. Danny Nakamura’s done the same for me, and God knows he’s a rough diamond. But he still knows where the line is.’

  After a few minutes she said, ‘You married, Purkiss?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘No kids, and divorced.’

  He gave it a beat, then said: ‘You’re not the kind to make small talk for the sake of it.’

  Berg sighed. ‘I’m a cliché. Work’s been everything for me, and I let my marriage go down the crapper because of it. I’m thirty-six years old, I’m a rising star… and now I do this. Throw my career away over a bunch of CIA spooks who are treading on my turf.’

  ‘It’s bigger than that, as you well know.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She gave half a laugh. ‘You English make
everything sound so reasonable.’

  Purkiss gazed out at the unfamiliar surroundings, saw the signs indicating they were joining Route 95.

  Thirty

  Interstate 95, between Washington D.C. and New York

  Tuesday 21 May, 1.30 pm

  Nina was starting to drowse, her body tipping forward against the sling of the seatbelt, when the voices started.

  She jerked upright. Pope glanced at her, then turned his attention to the road once more.

  For a few seconds she was relieved. It had been a hypnagogic hallucination, the kind of thing normal people experienced: a brief, simple noise perceived on falling asleep.

  Then it came, distinctly.

  ‘She’s up to her old tricks again.’

  A man’s voice, with a chuckle in it, somewhere ahead of her. She peered at the windshield but saw only the blurred ghost of her own face.

  ‘She thinks she doesn’t need to run any more.’

  ‘She’s wrong, honey.’ The woman’s reply came from over to the left, where Pope sat in the driver’s seat. Nina stared hard at him. The woman’s voice always held a nasty, brittle edge.

  ‘She’s a dead girl walking.’

  ‘Riding.’

  ‘A dead girl riding.’

  Nina put her hands over her face.

  ‘She’s covering her face.’

  ‘She’s taken her hands away again.’ The woman inflected the simple, neutral words with a sneer.

  Nina found the running commentary the most unbearable of all. As a child she’d joined in the maddening game of repeating everything another person said until it drove them to distraction or forced them to stay silent. Now, she couldn’t do anything to stop the voices. If she sat quietly and did nothing, the voices would –

  ‘She’s sitting breathing, trying to do nothing.’

  ‘She’s thinking how she hates us talking like this.’

  Nina sat on her hands to stop them flying up to clamp over her ears. She knew from experience that the voices just got louder if she did that.

  ‘She’s squirming.’

  ‘Like she needs the john.’

  ‘She’s afraid he’s going to notice.’

  ‘She’s trying not to look at him.’

  Nina dared not tell them to shut up, even silently. It only goaded them on.

  Concentrate on something else. Look at the windshield wipers. They’ve slowed now to intermittent because the rain’s stopped. It’s just the spray from the road that’s getting on the glass.

  ‘She’s noticing the windshield wipers.’

  Look at the dashboard clock. It’s one-thirty on a Tuesday night. That’s why there aren’t many cars on the highway.

  ‘She thinks we’ll stop if she focuses on the mundane.’

  ‘We’re out there.’

  ‘In the rain.’

  ‘In the cars.’

  ‘On the highway.’

  ‘We’re everywhere.’

  ‘Pantheism.’

  Nina crammed her knuckles into her mouth and choked back a sob.

  At the edge of her vision Pope was looking across again. It’s all right. He won’t know. He’ll think you’re just upset because of all that’s happened.

  ‘She knows what to do.’

  ‘She needs to stop the car.’

  ‘Stop the car because she’s dead.’

  ‘Dead people can’t ride.’

  ‘If the car stops then she stops.’

  ‘If she stops then we stop.’

  Stopstopstopstopstop

  The voices rose to a roaring chant.

  ‘Stop the car. Stop the car. Stop the car. Stop the car –’

  Nina grabbed the steering wheel and hauled it towards her.

  *

  Through the windshield the night slewed abruptly sideways, the yellow sodium light from the streetlamps arcing by, the beaded headlights of the cars on the opposite side of the highway across the divide spraying like sparks. Below the taunting rhythm of the voices Nina heard the yowl of rubber on tarmac and the frantic Doppler dip of car horns.

  The impact rammed her against the back of her seat so hard she felt as if she were being driven through it. An instant later she flopped forward, the seatbelt wrenching across her chest. Her lashing head flicked inches short of the tip of her violin, propped upright where it was in the footwell.

  ‘She’s crashing. She’s bleeding. She’s dying.’

  The sudden absence of movement was nearly as jarring as the collision had been. Nina sagged against the seatbelt, her head lolling stupidly on her neck. It swivelled round of its own accord and she looked at Pope. He was mouthing something at her, but his words were drowned out.

  ‘She’s dead. She mustn’t think she isn’t. This is the afterlife. She’s died and gone to hell.’

  Close to hers, Pope’s face was white, red shadows thrown across it from the lights beyond the windshield.

  *

  The voices took over then, Wagnerian in their intensity. Everything else happening to her was ornamentation.

  She was dragged from the car, Pope turning to speak to another man, the man shouting silently. Through the noise she managed to grab her violin by the neck through the case and haul it out after her. Light blazed at her through the darkness as she felt herself stumbling across slick road surface, her elbow supported.

  The voices were less distinct the louder they became. They’d melded into one, a sexless and even inhuman grating, unintelligible as spoken language. Like a blast at close quarters they rendered her deaf.

  She squatted, huddled, clasping the violin to her like an oversized infant, and stared at Pope’s legs before her.

  The voices were right. She’d stopped the car, and she was dead now, and in hell.

  Thirty-One

  Interstate 95, between Washington D.C. and New York

  Tuesday 21 May, 1.45 am

  ‘I don’t want your money, pal.’

  The man looked cheerfully affronted. He was five feet four or so, rotund yet tough looking, with a peaked cap perched on a wiry pate.

  ‘Good of you,’ said Pope. ‘Thanks.’

  He was using his generic American accent because although it was an effort to maintain, his grammar school vowels would be conspicuous. Particularly at a truck stop off a US interstate at a quarter to two in the morning, with a mute and shivering waif at his side.

  They’d walked a mile up the road, the lights guiding him on. O’Connell’s, stuttered the pink neon when he was close to make it out through the thin steam from the blacktop. A pitted, oil-stained forecourt bristled at the periphery with seven or eight trucks of varying sizes and degrees of articulation. Below the neon sign was a low, long diner-style building with heaving movement beyond the blurred windows.

  *

  Pope had regained control of the wheel a second after the girl twisted it clockwise. He was almost, but not quite, quick enough to keep the Mercedes in the centre lane. As it happened, the involuntary pressure of his foot on the brake pedal caused the front to bank sideways slightly, carrying it across into the slow lane, where, as luck would have it, a car behind was accelerating to overtake.

  The car behind – a Porsche roadster – rammed the rear door on the passenger side of the Mercedes at a thirty-degree angle, stoving it in and shunting the Mercedes back into the centre lane. Pope kept his foot off the brake and controlled the slide as best he could and the Mercedes stalled within a few feet. Behind and visible through Nina’s window, the Porsche too had stalled, its ballooned airbag filling the windscreen.

  Pope did a quick inventory in the sudden silence. He was unhurt. The girl shuddered in the seat beside him but seemed to be moving all limbs. From what he could see of the Mercedes from the front seat, the rear door buckled inwards at a sharp angle and that side sagging awkwardly, to all intents and purposes the car was a writeoff.

  He pulled the Heckler & Koch from beneath his seat and shoved it into his coat pocket, checked the road behind him – the cars w
ere veering round into the fast lane – and stepped out. The meagre traffic was slowing to stare. One man leaned out his window and held his hand to his ear in a telephoning gesture but Pope shook his head, smiled and gave him the thumbs up.

  One glance at the back of the car confirmed his suspicions. The rear wheel on the passenger side was flat and tilted inwards, the axle broken or at least bent. He moved forwards and opened Nina’s door. She didn’t look up at him. Gently, but with enough firmness not to leave any doubts, he took her by the shoulders and helped her out. She clutched at the violin case and he let her haul it after her.

  At his side, a voice said, ‘You’re in a heap of shit, man.’

  It was a young man, in his early twenties perhaps, his gelled-back hair only slightly rumpled. He was rubbing his face, his arms, his chest. His Porsche’s headlights backlit him.

  ‘Fucking asshole. Jumping lanes like that.’

  Pope didn’t point out that the younger man had been trying to overtake in the slow lane. He calculated quickly. The fake UK driver’s licence he’d used to rent the car would hold up, as would the temporary insurance certificate he’d obtained; at least long enough for him to exchange details with the man and get going again. On the other hand –

  The man had pulled a phone from the tight hip pocket of his jeans, wincing exaggeratedly as though discovering a pain in his torso he hadn’t noticed before. ‘My dad’s a lawyer, dickhead. Gonna sue your ass.’

  Pope’s decision was made for him. The man stepped closer, invading Pope’s personal space, wordlessly daring him to push him or swing a punch. Still supporting Nina’s arm, Pope stiffened the fingers of his left hand into what he visualised as a shovel. He slammed the fingers into the young man’s abdomen below the breastbone, felt the gasp of minty breath as the man jackknifed. Pope caught him by the collar as he dropped, controlled his dead weight as he slid to the ground. Releasing Nina momentarily, Pope crouched beside the man, shielded by the Mercedes from the rest of the road, and twisted his neck sharply sideways.