by Mark Dawson
He went downstairs again. Matilda was still asleep. He left the house through the side door, ran back to the car he had stolen and drove back with it, reversing into the drive so that it was adjacent to the door. He went inside, scooped Matilda into his arms, and carried her to the car. He laid her across the back seat, looking down at her face for a moment. She gave out a peaceful exhalation, but didn’t move. Milton clipped the seat belt to anchor her to the seat, shut the door and went back into the house.
He collected the Tec-9, two of the Glocks and filled a plastic carrier bag with boxes of ammunition for both.
Outside, he locked the side door, got into the driver’s seat, put the car into drive, negotiated the downward slope of the driveway and set off.
*
MILTON STOPPED the car at a lay-by when he was beyond the Mount Osmond city limits. He stepped outside into the burning heat and took Hughes’ mobile phone from his pocket. He quickly scrolled through the messages for anything that might have been useful, but there was nothing of note. Hughes had been too careful to leave anything in the memory that might be incriminating.
He navigated to the contacts and found the blank page with the single number that Hughes had identified.
He pressed CALL.
“Hello?”
A terse, tight voice. Milton thought he recognised it. Malakhi.
“I want to speak to Avi Bachman.”
A pause. “Who is this?”
“John Milton. Put him on now.”
Another pause. Milton could hear the sound of muffled conversation, none of the words distinguishable.
The line cleared and the sound on the other end became a little more distinct. A hand removed from the microphone, perhaps.
“Milton.”
“Avi,” Milton said.
There was a pause, just the crackle of static on the line.
Milton waited.
“Where are you?” Bachman said. “Adelaide?”
“I was. But not any more.”
“The girl?”
“Don’t worry about her.”
“She’s your girlfriend?”
“No,” he said. “I know you think I’m saying that because I want you to leave her out of this, but it’s the truth. But I’ll be honest: she is important to me. I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I’m sorry, John, you should have thought about that before you shot my wife.”
Milton sighed, his grip tightening on the phone. “I’m going to say this one more time. I didn’t shoot her. You did. You pumped fifty bullets into that container. One of them ricocheted.”
Bachman shouted down the line at him: “You’re fucking lying!”
Milton paused. “I know that’s hard for you to hear, but it’s the truth. And I know there’s no point in us talking about it any more. You’re not listening to me, so I’m not going to waste my breath. You can think whatever you like.”
“Why don’t you tell me where you are? We can meet and talk about it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So why are you calling me?”
“I’m giving you a warning. One of the sayanim who found the girl is dead, and the other one is only alive because I decided to spare him. I’m giving you notice, Avi. I know you’re not listening to me. I know you need someone to blame for what happened to your wife and that you blame me. And that’s fine. I know you’re not going to stop coming for me, but this isn’t going to be one way any more. I’m coming for you, Avi, and anyone else working with you. You’re all fair game. I just wanted you to know that.”
He expected Bachman to explode with rage, but, instead, he heard a bitter chuckle. “Nice try, Milton. But it’s not just us. Me and you. It’s the Mossad. All of the Mossad. How long do you think you can run from that?”
“I don’t have to run,” he said. “I just have to take you out. I know about the Black Book. If you’re not a threat to them any more, why would they risk coming after me?”
“Not as simple as that.”
“But that’s why I’m calling. I’m giving you notice. I’ll see you again, but it’ll be on my terms.”
“Didn’t go very well for you the last two times we met.”
“We’re not going to fight. You know what I can do. I could end this from five hundred yards away.”
He ended the call.
He didn’t know whether Bachman would buy it. Probably not. He just wanted to give him something to think about. Something that might, maybe, slow him down.
It was a diversion. Milton had a plan. Something that Bachman wouldn’t expect. He just needed the opportunity to put it into action.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MILTON PULLED into the lot of the Playford Tavern. He had found it with a quick search on Hughes’ phone and selected it because it was outside the city and a half hour’s drive away from the house. It was a basic motel, with clean and functional rooms. There was a restaurant for guests and, as Milton surveilled his surroundings, he saw a couple emerge from the door to their room, cross the veranda and enter the large room. Matilda was sleeping in the passenger seat, still deep in the grip of the narcotic, but he didn’t want to leave her for long. He walked briskly to the reception, where he booked a room for one night and paid in advance with the cash that he had taken from Hughes. The room was fifty bucks, which left him $250 once the transaction had been completed. That wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to get out of the country. He would have to think about the best way to find more.
He paused at the exit, checked left and right, and, confident that he was not being observed, he cautiously crossed the lot to the car. He had been allotted a room at the end of a long row, and he parked the car directly outside the door. The room was small and basic, as he had expected, with a double bed, two chairs and a television that sat on a cheap bureau. A door opposite the bed opened into the rudimentary bathroom.
It would serve their purposes.
He returned to the car and, after checking once again that he was unobserved, opened the door and stooped down to Matilda’s recumbent body. He released the safety belt, slid one arm beneath her legs and the other behind her back and lifted her out. Her muscles were relaxed and her head rested against his chest. Milton crossed the veranda, entered the room and closed the door with a backwards push from his foot. He laid Matilda down on the bed, closed the curtains and locked the door, fastening the chain for added security.
He took out the Glock and rested it on the table. Then he took out Hughes’ cell phone and opened a window in the browser.
He had business to attend to.
Chapter Thirty
MILTON’S SLEEP had been fitful. He had been unable to relax, still afraid that they had been followed and that, at any moment, the door would be kicked open and armed katsas would appear to take them both. It was an irrational fear, given life by his fatigue and the state of restless torpor that would not quite allow him to slide all the way into sleep. His mind raced with thoughts and images: murderous bloodlust on Avi Bachman’s face, the sight of Matilda lying unconscious in the front room of the house in Adelaide, and, as he was just about to cross the margin into sleep, the memory of what had happened that day in Iraq, a replay of a personal movie that had driven him to the bottle in order to forget.
He awoke with the dawn. He was in the chair, his legs stretched out before him. He didn’t feel particularly refreshed, and, as he came all the way around, he became aware of the throbbing from the injuries that Bachman had inflicted on him and he remembered the full scope of the predicament that he was in.
Matilda was still asleep.
He went to the vending machine outside the office and bought a packet of cigarettes. He went back to the room, checked that Matilda was still asleep, and then went back outside to watch the sunrise and smoke. He needed to think.
He had made his plans the night before. He knew that his best option was to run. He could slip back into obscurity again and stay out of sight. He was trained
to do that and, if he determined that it was the best course of action, he was confident that he could make himself invisible to Bachman regardless of all the help that he had somehow managed to summon. He would go to Africa or South America, just as he had when he had fled from Control and Group Fifteen, and simply erase himself so that he was impossible to find. He could live out a life in Durban or Rio or Buenos Aires and never have to think about Avi Bachman again.
He could do that.
But Matilda could not.
How could he ask her to exchange her life for one spent watching shadows? A life where she had no choice but to abandon her brother and her friends and accept that she could never see any of them again? She had done nothing wrong. This was nothing to do with her. Her involvement was because she had been unfortunate enough to have crossed his path, just as others had been unfortunate in the past. And some of those people were dead.
Milton swore to himself that that was not going to happen to her.
Thinking of Matilda had crystallised his thinking. He couldn’t keep playing defence. At some point, he was going to have to bring the fight to Bachman. The only way he could guarantee her safety was if Bachman was gone.
But to do that, they would need to travel.
The sun’s rays were already strong and he took off his shirt and hung it on the door handle. He looked out at the vast Australian landscape and the buildings in the far distance that marked the edge of the city. He thought of David and Paul Hughes and all the other sayanim that the Mossad could call upon to find him. He thought of Bachman and the agents with him.
Where were they?
He stretched, smoked the last of the cigarette and ground the butt beneath his shoe. He wished that he still had his copy of the Big Book, but it was still in his pack at Boolanga, most probably lost forever. He would have liked to read a few of his favourite passages, but he would have to do without it. He closed his eyes and meditated, reciting the Twelve Steps to himself and allowing himself a moment of reflection. He needed the peace and tranquillity that it brought; he knew that there would be no other opportunity for that today.
He went into the room, collected the pistol and slid it into the waistband of his jeans. Matilda had shifted position so that she was on her side, her face angled toward him. The anaesthetic had knocked her out all day and all night. She had stirred, once, at three in the morning and let out a sudden fearsome shriek that shocked Milton awake, but the moment had passed and she had quickly fallen back into the grip of her drugged slumber. Milton had rearranged the covers over her and returned to the chair.
He would have liked to let her sleep off the remnants of the drug, but they had to get moving.
“Matilda, wake up.”
She shifted, her legs sliding down the bed, her eyes opening for a moment and then closing again.
He knelt beside her and rested a hand on her brow.
“Matilda, wake up. It’s John.”
She mumbled something that he couldn’t understand, but he could see that she was starting to come around. He had left a glass of water by the bed for her, but she hadn’t touched it. He took it into the bathroom and refreshed it. When he came back into the bedroom, she was awake, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Where are we?”
“In a motel. Just outside Adelaide.”
She didn’t answer, lying there quietly for a moment, but then the memory of what had happened came back to her and her eyes went wide with fright. She pressed down with her legs, shoving her body all the way up the bed until her back clattered into the headboard.
Milton reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Relax. It’s fine.”
“They drugged me.”
“I know.”
“They were at the station. They took me. They… What happened?”
“I saw what happened. I followed them.”
“Where are they? I—I…”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She looked at him and, for one heart-breaking moment, he saw that he was the cause of the fear in her eyes. “What happened to them?”
“One of them is dead.”
She remained where she was, the colour leaching from her cheeks, but then, with a suddenness that took Milton by surprise, she surged out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. He saw her fall to her knees, her head over the open toilet, and heard as she retched.
He wanted to go and help her, but he stayed where he was. She vomited again and again, eventually standing and closing the door behind her. He heard the tap run and the splash of water and, when she re-emerged, her face was wet.
“Matilda,” he said, “I had no choice. They would have killed you.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed, saw the glass of water, and drank it down.
“We need to talk.”
She replaced the empty glass on the table.
“Matilda, we need to leave the country.”
That brought her around. “What?”
“It’s not safe.”
“I’m not—”
Milton cut her off. “Listen to me. Please, for once, just listen to me.”
Fresh blood coloured her cheeks and her eyes flashed, but she stopped.
“You saw what happened. It’ll keep happening until I’m dead. They’ll come for both of us.”
“This is a big country.”
“Yes, it is. But there are a lot of them, and they have backup. Until they’re satisfied, you won’t be able to go back home. You won’t be able to see Harry. You are leverage, Matty. They know that if they have you, they’ll have my attention. They know I’ll come for you.”
Her voice was ragged. “Why did you do this to me?”
“I’m sorry. I should never have come.”
She paused, biting her lip. The fight drained out of her and, for a moment, he thought that she was going to cry. “So what do we do?”
“We leave.”
“To where?”
“Tokyo.”
“What? Why?”
“I have a friend there. Someone who can help us.”
“Tokyo,” she mumbled.
“I know I don’t deserve your trust. I’d understand if you never wanted to talk to me again. None of what has happened to you is fair. But you know I care for you, Matty. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear it to you on my life. I’m going to fix this.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“We’re going to stop running. We’re going to fight back.”
“But we are running. You want to go to Japan.”
“We’re not running. There’s a man there who can help us. Someone I worked with before.”
She bit her lip. She looked washed out and weak, the bloom of indignation that had suffused her cheeks quickly dissipating again. The vigour and pep that Milton liked about her so much was gone now, and she looked young and vulnerable. Milton hated himself. He was the cause of the change.
Eventually, she gave a small nod. “Okay,” she said uncertainly.
“You’ll come with me?”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, but she nodded.
He was relieved: he had anticipated that it would be more difficult to persuade her. But securing her assent was just the first obstacle to clear.
“How do we get there? I don’t have a passport.”
“I know a man. We need to get to Perth.”
“How are we going to do that? Drive?”
“No. I don’t think that would be safe.”
“How, then? I can’t fly. I’ve got no money.”
“No,” Milton said. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Thirty-One
MILTON WENT outside, checked that they were unobserved, and started the car. Matilda was watching through the window and she hurried out at Milton’s gesture and strapped herself into the passenger seat. He put the car into drive and they set off.
He had noticed the goods yard as he had driven to the motel. It was
in Regency Park, toward the northern edge of the city, a confluence of railroads that accommodated several big diesel engines, each of them at the head of a long line of freight boxcars. It took half an hour to drive there; traffic had slowed to a crawl as rubberneckers gawped at a wreck on the side of the road. Milton drove carefully, watching his mirrors, but he noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
They arrived at the yard. The facility was protected by a wire fence, but stretches of it were in poor condition. There was a tyre iron in the trunk of the car and Milton was able to use it to prise the fence open wide enough for them to ease through. He knew that the yard would be protected, especially after 9/11, and he waited to ensure that there was no one in sight. Finally satisfied, he led the way and they hurried across the open ground, stepping across the lines, and reached the nearest boxcar without being seen.
The boxcars were identical. They were fifty feet long, with aluminium panels fitted to a yellow steel under-frame, and two big wheels on the front and rear axles. There was a door in the middle of the car in front of them. Milton unlatched the lock and hauled himself inside. The boxcar had been loaded with sacks of cereal. Milton examined the sacks until he found a bill of lading that identified the destination.
“We got lucky,” he said as he reached down to help Matilda into the boxcar.
“Melbourne?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The delivery date is for tomorrow. So I’m guessing it’ll be soon.”
*
THEY HAD TO WAIT. Milton kept the door open just a crack, not quite enough to be noticed from the outside but enough so that he would have warning if security drew too near. A white pickup went by on two separate occasions.