Cronos Rising

by Tim Stevens

  As nursing homes went, Rebecca doubted there were many better than this, or even as good.

  In the corridor outside the old man’s room, Rebecca felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

  She put the brake on the dining trolley with her foot and fished out the phone.

  Read the text message.

  Lifted her head and stared down the corridor.

  At the far end, Jasmine, one of her fellow nursing assistants, was helping another resident, a woman in her eighties stunted by arthritis, to pick her painful way towards her room. Jasmine looked up, smiled at Rebecca.

  Rebecca remembered at the last instant to smile back.

  She looked down at the phone in her hand again, half-convinced that the screen would be blank, or that the message would be some junk one asking her if she had been missold PPI in the last five years.

  But the text was still there, terse and stark as a paper cut.

  Four words, and a number.

  Almost without thinking, Rebecca deleted the message.

  She grasped the trolley once more and wheeled it towards the kitchen, where she deposited it just inside the doors. Then she made her way to the corridor which housed the offices.

  *

  ‘A week.’

  Rebecca’s boss was called Sheila Docherty. Her hair spilled untidily from beneath her matron’s cap. Her eyes were tired, her stout body reluctant to unwedge itself from behind her desk.

  ‘Yes. Probably no longer than that.’

  Docherty’s gaze roved over Rebecca’s face, dropped to her hands. Rebecca held them clasped before her, as if to stop them from writhing.

  ‘Rebecca, you look awful,’ Docherty said. Despite her aloof, almost grim demeanour with her staff, Rebecca knew she was a sympathetic person at heart, and a shrewd one at that.

  ‘Not feeling great, Sheila, to be honest.’

  Docherty dropped her pen on the desk and tilted her head. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘My brother,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s been in a car accident. Down in Devon. It’s... well, he’s had a head injury. He might not come round.’

  It was the first lie.

  Docherty’s expression softened immediately. ‘Oh, Rebecca. I’m so sorry -’

  ‘We’re not close,’ said Rebecca quickly. ‘But I’m his nearest relative. He’s single. Divorced. I have to go down there.’

  ‘Of course.’ Docherty spread her hands. ‘Forget what you said about a week. Take as long as you need.’

  ‘I know you’re short-staffed,’ Rebecca muttered. ‘I’ll try to get back -’

  ‘Forget it,’ Docherty said again. ‘Don’t even worry about it.’

  ‘Thanks, Sheila.’ Rebecca sucked her lips in between her teeth, as if to suppress a sob. ‘I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I know.’

  The older woman stood up. ‘Do you need anything? Is there anyone who can go with you?’

  ‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head. The last thing she needed was company. ‘If I set off this evening, I can be there in a couple of hours. I’ll stay at his place. My brother’s. I’ll be fine.’

  She’d never taken emergency leave before. She was a diligent, reliable worker, well liked by the residents of the nursing home and the staff alike. Docherty would probably have allowed her to take time off anyway, but Rebecca had invented the lie to speed things along.

  Lying was what she was steeped in.

  Docherty waved her hands, as if she’d allowed the gruffness to slip for long enough. ‘Go. Now. I’ll cover the rest of your shift.’

  *

  Rebecca reached the North Terminal of Gatwick Airport in fifty minutes. She left her VW Polo in the long-stay car park and made her way through the throng inside the concourse.

  The first three words of the text message had said: Gatwick, Nth Terminal.

  The next: Locker C26.

  She could have no more avoided complying with the instruction inherent in the message than Pavlov’s dogs could have prevented themselves from salivating at the sound of his bell.

  In the pocket of her jeans - which she’d changed into quickly in the car, tossing her nursing assistant’s uniform into the back seat - she felt the small hard shape of the key.

  She’d kept the key with her, never more than a few feet away even when she was in bed or in the bath, for the last six years. Ever since her mother had given it to her, a couple of days before her death. A thin, superficial layer of Rebecca’s mind had told her she’d never have occasion to use it.

  But, deeper, she’d known this day was as inevitable as sunrise.

  She found the locker, an anonymous square block among a grid of identical ones, and inserted the key. Almost surprisingly, the door opened immediately.

  Inside was a small canvas case. Rebecca drew it out, feeling something shifting within. She closed the locker and turned the key again. Then she walked towards the public toilets at the end of the passage and found an empty cubicle and bolted the door shut, before sitting on the lowered lid and unzipping the case.

  Inside, she found a tiny flash drive, a mauve-coloured UK passport, a wad of euro bills – she estimated the total came to at least a couple of thousands’ worth – and a handwritten note, with a photo attached.

  The passport was in her own name, Rebecca Deacon. All the other details were accurate, too: her date of birth, her home address. It was an eerie clone of her own passport.

  The note read: You’re booked on one of the next three British Airways flights to Rome. Find out which one at the BA check-in desk. When you get there, find the man in the photograph. His name is John Purkiss, and this is the address where he’s staying.

  A hotel listing followed, with a room number.

  She read the rest of the note.

  One phrase caught in her mind.

  Do the necessary.

  Rebecca studied the face in the photograph, absorbing the essentials, noting the benign expression, the dark hair, the direct look straight at the camera.

  She tore both note and photo into tiny pieces, and flushed them down the toilet, several times, until every fragment was gone. She pocketed the flash drive.

  Then made her way towards the check-in desks, her heart seeming to pump newly found blood through her vasculature, her entire body tingling as though she’d sloughed off her old dead skin and had been reborn.

  Five

  Purkiss suspected David Billson would go straight back to his apartment, rather than to a hospital. After all, Purkiss hadn’t hit him all that hard, and the last thing Billson would want was staff asking difficult questions, and possibly involving the police.

  So it was to Billson’s apartment that Purkiss himself headed.

  He knew the man had a girlfriend, a local Italian woman who didn’t live with him but had stayed over at least one night since Purkiss had arrived in Rome and had been keeping Billson under surveillance. She might be there tonight, which would complicate matters, but not insurmountably.

  It was after one a.m. by the time Purkiss reached the apartment block. The desultory rain had stopped, the clouds tugged away by a light breeze, and the yellow autumn moon hung three-quarters full overhead.

  Billson’s third-floor apartment was in apparent darkness.

  Purkiss had already established the layout of the building from his examination of it over the last two nights, and he knew the fire escape at the rear ran close to the balcony at the back of Billson’s apartment. He walked round the block a couple of times, satisfying himself that no lights were on in any of the windows. Then he stole up the fire escape, his running shoes making only the faintest sound on the iron rungs.

  His hands were empty. He’d stashed the damaged briefcase with its probably worthless contents beside a dustbin in an alley at the back of the apartment building.

  When he was close to the balcony, he lifted one foot up onto the banister of the stairs. The distance between the fire escape and the railing of the balcony above was approximately ten feet.
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  Pistoning his leg out, Purkiss launched himself across the gap, the moment freezing as he hung, terrifyingly, over the sheer drop.

  Then his hands slapped against the railing and he caught hold and hauled his body up and over the low wall onto the platform of the balcony.

  It was directly outside the main bedroom, he assumed, as balconies tended to be. If Billson was in there, and awake, he’d likely have heard the soft thump of a man landing outside.

  Purkiss flattened himself on the floor of the balcony beside a tall pot plant and waited.

  He closed his eyes, held his breath to shut off his sense of smell temporarily. Focused on the data reaching his auditory cortex, channelling all his attention into the sensations passing through his ear where it was pressed against the cold stone.

  He heard nothing through the floor. No footfall. No creak of furniture shifting under someone’s weight.

  Purkiss opened his eyes. The sliding glass doors between the balcony and the room beyond were hung with heavy drapes on the other side. There was no light through the slight gap at the top of the drapes.

  He rose to his knees, then his feet, keeping himself to one side of the doors. Cautiously he crept forward and peered through the gap. He had a dim impression of a shadowed room beyond.

  Purkiss looked at the glass doors. There was a single mortise lock, the key presumably on the other side.

  He could pick the lock, but it would require pushing the key out first, and that would make a sound. The lock would yield in perhaps twenty seconds, if he was lucky. Twenty seconds would allow plenty of time for anybody in the room beyond to prepare himself.

  Purkiss glanced at the plants on the balcony. They stood four feet high, and sat in matching ceramic pots.

  Sometimes, finesse was the best approach. At other times, sudden force was necessary.

  Purkiss grasped the stem of the nearest plant, felt the solidity of its roots deep in the soil and the heft of the pot, and swung it through a hundred and eighty degrees.

  The ceramic cracked against the glass of the door, the noise exploding into the night. Purkiss swung the pot again, the glass splintering this time. The door was double glazed, and Purkiss’s third blow sent a nebula of cracks across the inner pane.

  He pistoned his foot against the glass and kicked great shards away and ducked his head so that it was protected by his arms and his shoulders and the padded material of his duffel jacket and charged at the ruined pane. He registered that there was indeed a bedroom beyond as he burst through the glass and hit the floor with his shoulder, rolling, balling himself up as tightly as he could to reduce the surface area available to anyone who might be waiting there, gun in hand.

  Purkiss was on his feet again even before he consciously registered what his senses had already told him: that there was a man in the room, on the bed to the right of the balcony doors.

  David Billson sat up, the bedsheets covering him to his waist. His eyes were wide in shock, but his face was puffy with sleep.

  Purkiss seized the quilt covering Billson and tore it away. No gun in the man’s hands, and he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Billson shrank away, pulling his legs up so that he was kneeling. But Purkiss realised immediately the man wasn’t prepared for an attack, and wasn’t in need of subduing immediately.

  ‘Who the hell are –’ Billson began. Purkiss held up a warning finger.

  ‘Who else is here? In the apartment?’

  ‘What? Nobody.’ Outrage was beginning to wrestle with alarm on Billson’s face.

  ‘The woman. Where is she? I know about her, Billson. Don’t bluff me.’ Purkiss turned slightly so that he could keep the bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar, in the periphery of his vision.

  Billson said flatly: ‘She’s not here. There’s no-one else in the apartment.’

  Purkiss thought the man was telling the truth.

  When Billson started to edge towards the end of the bed, Purkiss said: ‘Stay where you are.’ He didn’t want Billson getting dressed. Sitting there in his undergarments put him at a psychological disadvantage.

  Purkiss folded his arms. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Billson returned his gaze, his confidence starting to come back. ‘You’re the man who attacked me by the river. Stole my briefcase.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t your briefcase. You were handed it by an asset of the Chinese government.’

  Billson’s expression gave away nothing. That was odd, Purkiss decided. Most people, confronted with an accusation like that, would betray something in their eyes. Most likely fear.

  Billson said, quietly: ‘Why are you here?’

  A man who’d had a briefcase stolen from him just hours earlier, a briefcase containing what he believed to be either cash or clandestine material from an enemy government, wouldn’t be lying in bed at home, either. He’d be driven mad with terror, or anger, or both, and would most likely have fled rather than linger in his own apartment.

  Purkiss said, only half to Billson: ‘It was a set up. All of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Billson.

  *

  Billson had thrown on a dressing gown and sat on the edge of the bed, the chilly night air coming in through the smashed balcony door. He fished a cigarette out of a packet on the bedside table, raised his eyebrows at Purkiss and, when Purkiss shook his head, lit up and took a deep drag.

  ‘Who was the man in the gallery?’ said Purkiss. ‘The one you took the briefcase from.’

  ‘You know who he is, presumably,’ said Billson. ‘Xing Ho Lee.’

  ‘I mean, who is he? What’s his role?’

  Billson exhaled a jet of smoke, blue in the dim light. ‘He’s an asset of ours. SIS.’

  ‘Not working for Beijing.’

  ‘No.’

  Purkiss was surprised at how forthcoming Billson was, so quickly. But he thought he understood why. Billson would know he was outmatched, and that Purkiss would know if he was lying. Rather than hold out, and risk physical coercion, he was telling Purkiss what he’d eventually find out anyway.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ said Purkiss.

  Billson shrugged. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. My instructions were to meet Xing at the gallery, pick up the briefcase he left there, and then wait for somebody to accost me and take the case. I was to put up enough of a struggle to make it seem like I was resisting, but not enough that I overcame my attacker.’ He glanced at Purkiss, and went on wryly: ‘In the event, that wasn’t an issue.’

  ‘And you didn’t know what was in the briefcase.’

  ‘Not a clue. Could have been bricks, for all I knew.’

  Purkiss didn’t answer for a moment. Then: ‘Who gave you these instructions?’

  For the first time, Billson hesitated, concentrating on his cigarette. The way he applied himself to it, as if performing a task which required intense focus, reminded Purkiss of Vale, who was – who had been – one of the most dedicated smokers Purkiss had ever known.

  ‘My superior officer at SIS,’ Billson said at last.

  He was good, thought Purkiss. There was barely anything in the man’s body language to suggest that he wasn’t telling the truth. But the way he raised his cigarette to his lips immediately after speaking – that was the equivalent of the classic tell, touching one’s mouth after a lie as if trying to force it back in.

  Purkiss said, softly: ‘We’ve got all night, Billson. And it’ll be a long one. Trust me on that.’

  Billson glanced at Purkiss again, as if evaluating him. He ground the cigarette out in an ashtray and said: ‘My orders came from a man named Smith. I don’t know his first name, and I suspect Smith is an alias.’

  ‘Describe him,’ said Purkiss.

  ‘Thirtyish, fair hair, stocky. Five foot eight or so. He –’

  ‘Don’t you mean tall, thin, black and in his sixties?’

  For the first time since Purkiss’s unexpected arrival through the balcony doors, Billson looked startled. And Purkiss knew he’d hit hom
e.

  Vale. Vale had ordered the set up.

  Billson’s shoulders slumped a little in resignation. He reached for another cigarette. ‘You know him, then.’

  The story came out quickly and succinctly. Smith – Billson genuinely didn’t seem to know his real name – had recruited Billson a couple of years earlier, using him for infrequent and minor work here in Rome while he continued in his normal role as an SIS operative. Smith had convinced Billson that he was responsible for policing SIS activities and trapping those agents who broke the rules, which as perfectly true. Billson didn’t know Xing Ho Lee, but he assumed Smith was running him in a similar way.

  Smith had arranged a rendezvous with Billson a week earlier, here in Rome, and had given him his instructions. They were simple: receive the briefcase from Xing in the gallery, then wait to be accosted. Nothing more.

  When Billson had finished, Purkiss said: ‘Are you to report to this Smith now?’

  ‘He didn’t say,’ said Billson. ‘I don’t ask questions. I just carry out the tasks he gives me, and then don’t hear from him for months until the next time.’ Once again he gazed at Purkiss. ‘What happens now?’

  There was a fatalism in the man’s eyes, something Purkiss had seen before in people who were about to encounter death and were beyond fear. Purkiss said: ‘You think I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you assume I’m one of these rogue agents Smith is after.’

  ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’

  Purkiss wasn’t a sentimental man, especially where intelligence operatives were concerned. But he felt a certain admiration for Billson, for his composure, his lack of self-pity.

  He looked at the shattered balcony doors. ‘This your apartment? Or did the Service provide it for you?’

  Billson blinked, puzzled by the change in topic. ‘It’s my own.’

  Purkiss reached into the pocket of his jacket – Billson tensed a fraction – and brought out his wallet. He counted out several fifty-euro notes and tossed them on the bed. ‘This should cover it.’

  Billson stared down at the money, his forehead knitted in confusion.