Headhunters

by Mark Dawson

  “Do you know where the station is?” he asked.

  “This side of town. Why?”

  “It’s our way out.”

  Milton kept up the speed. The track ran five metres from the road at one point and Milton had seen a large plaque on the side of the engine that announced it as the Indian Pacific.

  “What do you know about that train?”

  “It runs east to west, from Sydney to Perth. It only runs once or twice a week.”

  Milton guessed that the train would need to stop for a while to replenish its supplies, but he couldn’t guarantee it, and he didn’t want to spoil their chance of escaping on it by arriving too late.

  Matilda had opened the glovebox and was rifling through it. “How are we going to pay for tickets? I don’t have anything on me. No money or cards. You?”

  “No,” Milton said. “Nothing.”

  They would have to stow away. How practical was that? It was a big train. It would surely be easy enough to get onto the platform and, once they were on the platform, they would be able to find their way aboard. How long would they be able to stay there?

  “What stop comes after Broken Hill?”

  “Adelaide.”

  If they had to get off, they would get off there. Then what?

  “Check that,” Matilda said.

  “What?”

  She was holding up a wallet. She opened it and took out a wad of banknotes.

  “Lucky us.”

  That was fortunate. But it made him nervous. Luck tended to even itself out, over time. Where were they on the scale now? Ahead or behind?

  *

  MILTON FOLLOWED Matilda’s directions to find the station. It was an old Victorian building, with two large wings joined by a single-storey run with a veranda. There was a large parking lot that was mostly empty save for a handful of vehicles parked next to the entrance. He slowed and looked for people. There was a single man leaning with his back to the wall, a cell phone pressed to his ear. No one else.

  Milton parked and asked Matilda to wait. He took the wallet and walked across the lot toward the building. The man with the cell phone was lost in his conversation. Milton paused at the door and glanced quickly to the side; the man didn’t react, glowering into space and raising his voice as, presumably, his conversation took an unwelcome turn. If he was with the Mossad, he was good. Very good. Milton didn’t think it was very likely.

  He opened the door and stepped into the building. It was air-conditioned, and the cool washed over him. He was hot, sticky and dusty, and the change in temperature was welcome.

  He went into the bathroom and looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Bachman had landed a series of blows on his face and the damage was evident: dried blood clotted his nostrils, there was a cut above his right eyebrow and a contusion was forming on his left cheek, darker marks within the purple evidencing Bachman’s knuckles. Milton had boxed in the army, and had been good, and he had received thorough combat training in the SAS and then the Group. But Bachman was on another plane entirely.

  Milton was not used to being beaten so comprehensively, and Bachman had done it to him twice now.

  But Milton knew that Bachman had one weakness. The two of them had met before, years before their altercation in New Orleans, when Bachman was working for the Mossad and Milton was an operational Group Fifteen asset. The CIA, Mossad and MI6 put together a joint black operation, beyond top secret, to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear weapons industry. There was a factory in the Zagros Mountains responsible for the development of Iran’s Shisha missiles. They assassinated five key scientists in an audacious coup that put the fundamentalist bomb back by five years.

  The mission had involved a trek through the mountains and, during the journey, it had been necessary to ford a fast-flowing river. Each member of the team had been carrying a full combat load of weapons and other gear, and crossing the chest-high water had proven to be difficult and dangerous. Milton had gone first, working hard against the flow, concentrating on maintaining a solid footing, and had made it without incident. Bachman had waited and had gone last of all. He made it across, but it was obvious that he was uncomfortable. As they continued the trek on the other side of the river, both of them damp and cold, Bachman had sheepishly admitted that he was a poor swimmer and that he had always been uncomfortable in water.

  Milton had tried to exploit that weakness at the lake, but Bachman had been wise to his ruse.

  There would be a third confrontation. Bachman wouldn’t give up, and it wouldn’t be safe for Matilda until he was out of commission. Milton would have to take him out, one way or another.

  He filled the sink with cold water and stooped to dunk his face. The sudden chill was invigorating, sending tingles across his skin, and he stayed there for a moment and waited for it to bring him all the way back around. He stood again, took a tissue from the dispenser and began cleaning the blood from his face. The water in the sink darkened as his blood dissolved in it. When he was finished, he was left with a swollen eye socket and a litany of bruises, but he looked a little less frightening.

  He drained the sink, splashed another handful of cold water on his face and then took the wallet from his pocket. He withdrew the notes and counted them. Three hundred dollars. He slipped it into his pocket. There were three credit cards in the name of Paul Watson. An American Express, a Visa and a MasterCard. He knew that they would all be fake and that, even though he would have been able to draw down significant funds by using them, doing so would be too dangerous: Bachman would be able to trace each transaction, probably in real time, and although it would have been useful to have more money, it wasn’t worth the risk. He put the cards back into the wallet and dropped it into the trash.

  Then he went back outside.

  There was a woman being served at the ticket window. Milton joined the queue. The woman seemed to know the clerk and the two of them were having a very pleasant conversation about a shared acquaintance and how he was recovering from a recent stroke. Milton tapped his foot, and then cleared his throat. If either of them noticed his impatience, they did not show it.

  Milton felt a twist of anxiety.

  Bachman was following. Had to be. Milton didn’t know how far behind them he was, but it couldn’t have been more than half an hour. The road was straight, and he hadn’t seen anywhere that he might realistically have hidden during their eastward flight. Given that, he guessed that Bachman would have continued. It wouldn’t be long before he caught up. Ten minutes? Would he check the station, or would he assume that they would carry on and keep driving west? It was impossible to guess, but Milton would feel anxious until they were moving again.

  The woman finally shuffled out of the way and Milton stepped up to the window.

  “Afternoon, sir. Where to?”

  He had been considering their destination. There was one given: they had to get out of Australia. But where would be the best place to do that?

  “Next train to Sydney?”

  “Direct train leaves in six hours.”

  That was too long to wait. Bachman would be in town much sooner than that. And it was the most obvious choice. He tried to put himself in Bachman’s shoes. It was most likely that Sydney had been the staging post for the Mossad agents. If they had others with them, or if there were sayanim working with them, that was where they would be stationed. They would be routed to the airport to look for him.

  Too dangerous.

  “When does the Indian Pacific leave?”

  “They’re just resupplying it.” She looked up at the clock on the wall behind Milton. “It’ll be off in thirty minutes.”

  “Two tickets, please.”

  “Where to?”

  “Perth.”

  Milton took the money. The tickets cost $295. He pushed the notes beneath the window and watched as the woman counted it out, returning a single five-dollar bill. That was all they had to last them until he could find another source of funds. He would worry a
bout that later.

  “Enjoy the trip, sir.”

  *

  MILTON WENT back to the car.

  “We’re good,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Perth.”

  She leaned forward and rested her head against the dash. “Perth,” she mumbled.

  “We need to get as far away as possible. And we won’t make it if we drive.”

  “I don’t believe this is happening to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Matty, but it is happening. The train leaves in twenty-five minutes. We’re going to be on it.”

  He took the keys from the ignition and went around to the rear of the car. Twenty-five minutes was good in that it would allow them to prepare for the trip, but it was bad in that it might be enough time for Bachman to find them. He thought about that again. Would he guess that they would risk the train to increase the distance between them? There was no way to predict that.

  They had twenty minutes. He got back into the car and drove the short distance into the centre of town. They found a clothes store and quickly found fresh jeans, shirts and shoes. They got changed in the dressing rooms and then walked out of a door at the back of the shop. The proprietor was taking a delivery and didn’t notice them. They hurried back to the car and Milton drove them back to the station, parking in a side street a hundred yards from the building. He would have preferred to have left the car a little further away from the station—if Bachman found it, it would be a simple enough deduction to guess where they had gone—but he was happy enough. It was obscured from the main road and would be difficult to find.

  They walked briskly across the parking lot. The station building was empty and the only people on the platform were a family who were transferring their luggage inside. A guard poked his head out of a window three carriages ahead of them and a cloud of diesel fumes from the engine drifted back to them. The heat was crippling, almost dizzying, and Milton was anxious to get inside. He checked again that they were not observed—the family were too chaotic to be anything other than authentic—and, satisfied, he opened the door and waited for Matilda to get inside.

  A guard emerged onto the platform and put a whistle to his lips. He blew, long and shrill, and the engine grumbled as the driver increased the power. Slowly, and with rattles and jangles as the carriages were coaxed into motion, the huge train parted ways with the station and continued its long journey to the west.

  *

  THE TRAIN ran between Perth and Sydney, taking three days on a mammoth trip that also included stops in Adelaide, Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie. It was 2,698 miles from point to point, one of the longest railway lines in the world. The train was, in effect, a rolling hotel, with rooms, a restaurant and several lounges.

  There were three levels of travel: economy, gold and platinum. Economy had open seating, and gold cabins were split into twins and singles. Milton had paid for a gold ticket. He found their carriage and opened the door. They had a twinette sleeper. The sleeping car had a corridor along one side, with compartments opening off it. Each compartment had an upper and lower bunk that folded away to reveal a sofa for daytime use. There was a tiny private bathroom with a hot shower, toilet and washbasin. It was neat and tidy and clean. It would serve them well enough, he thought.

  Matilda went inside. Milton followed and closed the door.

  She sat down on the sofa. “All right, John. You need to tell me now.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Who was that?”

  “I’ll give you everything,” he said. “But I’m tired. You’re tired, too. Can we get some sleep first?”

  “No. I need to know.”

  “Please, Matilda. I’m exhausted.”

  “John—”

  “I’ll tell you everything, I promise. I just need to close my eyes for a couple of hours.”

  She looked at him, and, eventually, she relented. “Fine,” she sighed.

  Milton reached up and lowered the top bunk. There was a metal ladder beneath the bottom bunk, and he fixed it into its brackets and clambered up. It was a narrow cot, with a miserly mattress, but, after the events of the last few days, it felt luxurious. He lay down, feeling the aches and pains in his body from where Bachman had beaten him, the throbbing from his cheekbones and nose and eye socket. He had taken a lot of punishment and he would, he knew, look even worse as the bruises came out properly. No time to worry about that. There was nothing he could do.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the clatter of the train as it ran across the rails. It was regular, almost hypnotic, and he was aware of his breathing as it went from deep to shallow, ushering him ahead into sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IT TOOK MILTON a moment to realise where he was. He looked up and saw a ceiling that was close enough to touch with his arm only halfway extended. He closed his eyes again and heard the wheeze and rumble of wheels passing across track and then heard the blare of a horn.

  He remembered. The train.

  He turned onto his stomach and reached down for the curtain that he had pulled across the window. He twitched it aside, just a little, and looked out to a burning hot afternoon. He looked at his watch. It was half past twelve. He had been asleep for five hours. They were passing through a red and orange landscape, rocks and boulders strewn by the side of the track and, beyond them, the gentle ascent of uplands that were dotted with the occasional clump of desert pea or blaze cassia. He saw one tree, a myall, atop a hill that looked down over the wilderness like a sentinel.

  That’s right. They were on the train, headed west.

  And then he remembered.

  Bachman.

  He winced from the aches in his hips as he swung his legs off the side of the bed and descended the ladder. Matilda was asleep in the bottom bunk. She had taken off her shirt and the dark nutty brown of her shoulders was vivid against the thin white sheets.

  Milton hopped down to the floor as quietly as he could and went into the tiny bathroom. It was designed with some ingenuity so that it could fit into the compact space. The toilet bowl folded down for use and there was also a fold-down sink. There was a vanity with power points, a small cupboard and, overhead, a showerhead. Milton took off his new clothes and stood under the shower for five minutes. He found a sachet of soap and used it to scrub the dirt and dried blood off his skin. The water that ran into the drain was a mucky brown, and it took a minute to run clear. He scrubbed at his scalp, feeling the grit of the sand. There was a disposable razor in the cupboard and he used it to shave away his bristles.

  By the time he was done, he almost felt human again.

  The towels were in the compartment. He opened the door a little and peered out. Matilda was awake and staring right at him.

  “Towel, please?”

  She smiled at him, the first that he had seen from her for what seemed like an awfully long time. “Come and get it,” she said.

  “Matty, come on.”

  She grinned, relented, and tossed one of the towels across the room.

  He snagged it, wrapped it around his waist and came back into the compartment. He dressed while Matty used the shower, and then he called through the door that he was going to go and find coffee.

  *

  HE FOUND a café at the end of the third carriage along. There were four tables between seats upholstered in blue and yellow material. He gazed out the window while he was waiting and watched as a kangaroo kept pace with the train for fifty yards before losing interest and coming to a stop.

  He spent the rest of his money on coffee and Danish pastries and asked the server how long it would be until they were in Adelaide. The woman said that they arrived at three. Not long. Milton thanked her and returned to their compartment. Matilda was sitting on the lower bunk.

  Milton gave her the coffee and pastry.

  “So?” she said.

  Milton knew what she meant. He sat down next to her. “His name is Bachman. Sometimes he goes by Boon. I knew him a
long time ago.”

  “Who is he?”

  Milton sighed. There was no way he was going to be able to change the subject this time. She had just been abducted, hauled across the outback and threatened with death. She deserved to know everything.

  “He used to work for the Mossad. You know what that is?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “The Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Their Secret Service. Israel’s not exactly in a friendly neighbourhood, and they’ve always fought dirty. Very dirty. The Mossad is one of the most dangerous organisations in the world. I’ve been around them, once or twice, and they scare the shit out of me. They have a lot of blood on their hands.”

  “So why are they involved with you?”

  He shrugged. “Bachman hasn’t worked for them for a long time. He was supposed to have died in Cairo, years ago. That’s what they said, and it’s what I thought, too, until I saw him again in Louisiana.”

  “That’s where you were—before here?”

  “I was helping a friend. She runs a charity replacing houses that were wrecked by Katrina. She got into trouble with a corporation who wanted to build on the charity’s land. She wouldn’t do what they wanted, so they hired a man to get rid of her. That was Bachman.”

  “I still don’t understand. Get rid—”

  “Bachman is a hit man. He kidnapped her brother. I found him and got him out. There was a firefight. Bachman’s wife was killed. He thinks it was me, and now he wants me dead.”

  “But it wasn’t you?”

  “No,” Milton said. “He shot her. There was a ricochet. I’ve tried to tell him, but it’s the last thing he wants to hear. He’s angry and someone has to pay. He thinks it has to be me.”