“Though I can’t think from where,” Jack said, eventually. “Do you work here?”
“No, my mother moved to South Africa a few years ago. I still live back home in England. I came out for a few weeks. I try to get down to see her as often as possible, though I have only managed to make it down a few times in the last year.”
Jack smiled warmly. Too much information, he thought. It was a classic sign of someone who was desperately trying to keep to the script of their cover. Still, she was young and with time she would get better at the game.
“It is a long way to travel,” Jack replied.
“Yes, but when it’s your mum, well... Has to be done. She’s on her own. Dad died when I was a baby and her new husband, who is from here, he died last year in a car crash. I am all she has by way of family, and it is nice to spend a few weeks in the sun every now and then.”
Far too much information, Jack thought, as he grinned internally. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was basically dictating her entire life story to him, the fact that the story itself was so obviously full of holes was pathetic. Why didn’t her mother move back to England when her new husband was killed? Or why didn’t the young woman move to South Africa if being there for her mother was so important to her?
“Did your mum not think about moving back home to the old
country, or does she likethe climatetoo much down here?”Jack asked. He knew that it wasn’t fair to put her under additional pressure, but he couldn’t help it. Being a little bit wicked with a rookie was fun and it would help her learn how to use a cover story properly for the future. The young woman wasn’t at all fazed.
“She has business interests here and she set up a charitable foundation in her late husband’s name. That takes up a lot of her time. She feels that she must stay here and look after the foundation. I keep telling her that she could pay someone to do that for her. That way she could come back home and we would get to see one another a lot more often. But like you say, she also likes the climate here. And she has made a lot of good friends.”
“Well then, as long as she’s happy,” Jack said.
The young woman had forwarded far too much information, perhaps more than a rookie spy trying desperately to cling onto the cover story that she had been provided with. This led Jack to dwell for a moment on another possibility—could she be a civilian? Could her story be true? Could the chance encounter be nothing more than that; chance? As Jack looked into her eyes he saw that same recognition from moments before when they had first made eye contact. Perhaps it wasn’t the world of secrets and death that he saw in her eyes? Perhaps it was a sense of genuine pain? She was about to leave her mother behind and the prospect did not agree with her at all. They were both leaving someone who they loved behind in South Africa.
As he probed her eyes for further signs of recognition he was interrupted by a middle aged man in a poorly fitting suit.
“Jack, I hate to interrupt, but your plane is ready. If you could come with me I will take you to it,” said the man.
The man turned and walked away. He was there to get Jack to the plane and that was what he was going to do. Jack wasn’t quite finished. The man stopped a short distance away and he turned to face Jack. The man checked his watch before glaring at Jack with impatience.
“Your friend seems to be in a hurry,” said the woman.
“Friend would be overstating what that man is. But yes, he is in a hurry and I’m afraid he is a man who I can’t ignore. It was really nice meeting you and I hope your journey home is pleasant.”
Jack stood up.
“It was nice to meet you too, and I hope the same for your flight.”
“With that pain in the arse over there sitting next to me on the plane, I have a feeling it will be a far from pleasant trip home.”
The woman smiled as she stood up and offered a hand for Jack to take, which he did, with gentle firmness.
“I would really love to know where I know you from,” she said. “Ah
well, we will just have to put it down as one of life’s wee mysteries. Ships that pass in the night, and all that.”
“Indeed,” she said, adding, “ships that pass in the night.” “Anyway,
I better be going. My companion is on a tight schedule and his patience with me is already at an end.”
They parted with a smile. As Jack walked away a thought occurred to him. He had not asked her name. Jack turned to rectify the omission. The young woman was nowhere to be seen. A sudden pang of regret hit him but it
mused as he headed
quickly passed. Ships that pass in the night, he off towards the runway. As he approached the plane he regretted not asking her more questions. If he had done that then he might have been able to work out where she had seen him before? Perhaps her mother lived in the same housing complex as Jack, or maybe her foundation was in the same part of the business district as his office? There were so many possibilities. The fact that Jack’s minder did not pay the young woman much attention was yet further evidence that she was nothing more than some lonely stranger who thought she knew Jack from somewhere.
Three different military transports took him from South Africa back to London. They were uncomfortable, and bleak, and a material reflection of how he felt on the inside. He did not feel any better when he touched down at Heathrow. Three days of intensive debriefing left him feeling completely drained. that somehow she would get hours and days slipped past that looked less and less likely and then to add to the depression that he was going through he was called into a final meeting. The young officer sitting in front of Jack was Christopher Black. He wore a perfectly tailored navy suit and designer glasses and he had all the appearance of a man who had never spent a day in the field and that immediately put Jack on the defensive— there was no way this guy could ever understand the real world out there where men like Jack lived and died.
“We continue to seek information regarding Alexa and Barry from
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All the while he still held out hope a message through to him. As the
every possible contact that we have. As soon as we have something, anything, I will let you know,” Black began.
“I would appreciate that,” Jack said, as he tried to sound appreciative.
“The team that we sent to South Africa to investigate the destruction of the jet carrying Commander Deeley was unable to confirm that he was on the flight. However, such was the destruction our experts say that this conclusion is not surprising. In fact, it would have been suspicious had we found something that indicated he was on the flight. The security footage from the airport certainly suggests he got onto the plane prior to the attack. I am sorry that we couldn’t give you the definitive proof that you requested but it really does look as if we are going to have to settle for the comfort of the best guess many experts have made.”
Jack smiled.
“If I saw his body and put two rounds in his head, I would still not be certain the man was dead,” Jack said. “But I appreciate the effort. From all involved.”
“Well Jack, unless there is anything else that you want to share with me, or if there is something else that I can do for you, then you are free to take a well earned holiday.”
Jack smiled and he relaxed into the chair.
“Any idea where you would like to spend it?” asked Black.
Jack had thought of little else for many days. He thought about returning to South Africa, or perhaps the answer to her disappearance would be solved in her homeland? In the end there was only one place for him to start his search. It was the one place where he could get his head around finding her, by first finding himself.
“I want to go home,” Jack said, simply.
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22
Maxixe, Mozambique
Barry had being sitting tied to the chair for what seemed like hours. The pain induced by the thin nylon rope that was binding his hands behind his back, to the chair, may have altered his percep
tion of time. Regardless of the reality of time, his body and mind could not take much more pain. The black hood that they placed over his head on the way out of South Africa was placed as much to cause confusion as it was to hide the route to the warehouse where Barry was being held. In truth, they had a free hand to do as they pleased in the country—driving around with a bound Irishman in the back of their car, living or dead, it did not matter—they were above the law.
The hood was removed swiftly. The sharp pain that pierced his eyes felt like hot needles being driven into his pupils. He flexed his head sharply to one side. More pain. This time into the back of his head. His eyelids had slammed shut when the strong sunlight flooded in through the skylight above his head and it took a few moments before he was brave enough to try opening them again. When he eventually opened his eyes he saw two men standing in front of him. One of the men was tall and thin, and the other was short and fat—jolly fat, rather than unhealthy and morbid. They were wearing suits. They were Chinese. The tall man spoke in perfect English. The short man remained silent.
“I am happy to see that you are back with us, Barry,” said the tall man.
“Fuck you,” Barry replied.
“It was your uncooperative attitude that landed you in your current position. Please moderate your language or we shall be forced to leave you for a while longer until your manners improve.”
Barry longed to repeat the rebuke but the pain pulsing through his body stopped him.
“Good boy,” said the tall man. “Now, down to business. My government has been trying to establish business interests in Africa and the Middle East, and the old Western powers have been doing everything they can to stop us. We want you to help us persuade the British government to stop standing in our way.”
“I’m Irish, you racist arsehole,” Barry hissed.
“I know what you are Barry, and I know that you have no direct influence with the British outside sorting your little local difficulty.”
“Five hundred years of British oppression is hardly a little local difficulty,” Barry said.
“Aww, poor you. Every country has stubbed its toe at some point in its history. Get over it.”
He paused for a reply from Barry. No reply came.
“You have no direct influence with the British, but you know a man who does.”
“You’ll have to narrow it down. Like I said, over five hundred years of oppression. The bastards are everywhere back home.”
“Good for you Barry, keep on sucking that lemon, I’m sure it will turn into candy someday. You know the man of whom I speak.”
“Jack,” Barry said. “Jack who is back in London right now, drinking tea, and kissing the Queen’s fat arse.”
“And plotting the next five hundred years of oppression in Ireland,” said the man, mockingly.
“Closer to the truth than you might think,” Barry added. “Anyhow.
We want you to twist Jack’s arm. We want you to turn him.”
“Huh?”
“We want you to turn him,” he repeated.
“To turn him into what?”
“An agent of the People’s Republic.”
Barry chuckled through the pain.
“You poor deluded man,” Barry said. “You have no idea just how crazy that statement actually
check on a target, check again
and pointless.”
is. Next time you run a background before you do something this stupid
The short man walked across the warehouse to a badly worn door. He opened the door and then vanished through the doorway. A short time later he returned. He marched a rather shaken Alexa across the warehouse to stand in front of Barry. Alexa was bruised and dry blood stained the left hand side of her face. She had obviously put up one hell of a fight at some point, but her body language now was of a broken woman who had completely given up. What fight she had was gone and both body and mind had been given over to a fate that was beyond her control.
“For Christ’s sake,” Barry said. “She needs medical treatment.” “We have already seen to that. She is now fully protected from the poison. However, she is still not immune to bullets.” The tall man took out a pistol. He pressed the gun to her head. Alexa looked terrified.
“So Barry. What do you say? Will you help us to turn him? Or will you watch her die and then help us to turn him?”
Barry swallowed hard.
Epilogue
It had been weeks since he returned to Scotland and no one from London had been in touch with him. When he walked into his mother’s house unannounced hewas surprised to see just how much she had aged. Her smile was warm and too large for her face, and her words were scathing; why had it been so long since his last visit? Why hadn’t he told her that he was coming? The rebukes were filled with love and had she greeted him in any other way he would have been suspicious. His childhood home seemed so small but it was more colourful and alive than any other house he lived in. After his second night in the house the background noise of the city outside was as familiar and comforting as ever—it was very different to London. He was home and it was as far removed from his life as a spy as it could possibly get. When he was acclimatised, with the help of his sister and her children, he began to venture out into the streets that he had once owned as a young man. In all the time he had been away, and with all the redevelopment that had taken place in the city over the course of those many years, the place was still as comfortable to him as it had always been and he knew immediately the reason why—the people.
As the weeks with no contact from London moved into a second month he began to wonder if they would ever send for him. He was still being paid but beyond that he was completely in the dark
about his future in the service. Perhaps this was what happened to broken hearted spies—the service sent them home to their mommies and hoped that they would not spiral out of control? He had always imagined that early retirement would involve a bullet to the head or some deadly mysterious illness, not a heart attack brought on by his mother’s rich cooking.
When he went to his local a few nights a week for a drink with old friends he always looked out for that face that didn’t quite seem to fit—at least it would be some kind of indication that his masters back in London still knew who he was. The face never came. He struck up a friendship with one of his sister’s friends from work. Julie was a great lass. Her heart was warm and her laugh was filthy.
“Jack, you never talk about work,” Julie said, as they sat over a couple of pints in the pub. “You have been all over the world. You have seen so much. Would it kill you to turn a girl’s head with the odd wee tale of some of the places you have been to, or the adventures that you had as a big time oil man?”
She was not nagging; she was simply trying to make a connection with Jack. It was clear that she thought the world of him and in her head he could be someone who she could end up spending the rest of her life with. Jack wondered if all her questions about his work were merely her roundabout way of asking him if he was going to leave soon.
“It really isn’t glamorous,” he said. “A s for the adventures I’ve had. Well most of those involved women of very low morals and are hardly the kind of thing to bring up in polite company.”
“If they shacked up with you then they had no morals at all,” she said, with a wicked grin.
Another woman would have taken offence at the mere mention of other women, even in a joke, but Julie was different. She knew that Jack had a past and she was comfortable with that. That she was so comfortable with it made Jack wonder a little about her past too. If things were a little different then maybe the relationship could have gone a lot further, but things were what they were and the hole that Alexa left in his heart was simply too large to be filled with another woman, no matter how dirty her laugh was. At some level Julie knew
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that Jack was never truly going to be hers, but that fact was never going to stop her from trying to reach him. Julie
and Jack spilled into the small kitchen of his mother’s house late one Friday evening. The old woman was in bed. Jack had promised Julie a cup of coffee, and with his mother’s room right next door to his room, a cup of coffee was all that was on offer. The physical side of their relationship was conducted at her house. It was a rule that was never discussed but it was strictly observed.
As Jack brought two cups of coffee through to the living room the phone started ringing.
“Bugger!” he exclaimed.
He handed Julie a cup and then he set the other cup down on the table next to the phone. He picked up the receiver and answered in an annoyed tone.
“Hallo.”
There was silence for a few moments.
“Hallo,” he repeated.
“Hallo,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Is that you Jack?”
The woman’s voice was familiar though he didn’t immediately place it.
“Yes,” he said, simply.
This was the call that he thought he had been waiting for—initially dreading, then secretly longing for. Work had finally made contact.
“We need to meet,” said the woman. “Aye,
when and where,” Jack answered. “Soon,”
said the woman.
“Soon?” Jack asked, with confusion.
“Well, you know how it is? Ships that pass in the night, as you once told me.”
“Huh?” Jack said.
Immediately he knew who he was talking to. How could he have been so wrong about her?
“We will talk soon. Dad,” she said. The
line went dead.
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Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) Page 29