Cronos Rising

by Tim Stevens

  As Purkiss turned back to face the distant desk, his gaze sweeping the terminal, he sensed a tug at his right side. He glanced down, saw his overcoat swaying, felt a lightness there, barely noticeable.

  Clapped his hand against his coat.

  The wallet.

  A man was moving quickly away from the queue, towards the row of shops and eateries at the back of the terminal. Purkiss automatically worked out the quickest route to him. He could reach the man in under ten seconds.

  Distraction, his mind shouted at him. Don’t focus on the distraction.

  He twisted to his left, brought his left arm down sharply, felt the edge of his palm connect with a wrist, heard a hiss of pain. Another man was close up against him, ostensibly squeezing past to move further up the queue. Purkiss glanced down between them, saw the man’s arm at waist level, his hand barely emerging from the sleeve of his coat, something glinting in his fist.

  Purkiss seized the wrist, began to apply pressure, squeezing the bones together, adding a small degree of torque. All the while he remained standing, facing forwards. The man beside him maintained a similar posture, peering at the desks as if trying to read the flight information on the display on the wall behind them.

  Purkiss felt the man rotate his wrist, trying to turn it into a position which would allow him to pull it free from Purkiss’s grip. He didn’t look down, but he hadn’t heard the blade clatter to the floor, so he knew the man still had it in his grasp. He assumed the intention had been a smooth sweep as the man passed him, a neat severing of the femoral artery in the thigh or perhaps, more messily, a stab into the abdomen.

  The problem was, Purkiss couldn’t risk a counter-attack without drawing attention to himself. His best bet was to disarm the man and release him.

  Still the man continued to resist the pressure of Purkiss’s grip, though his arm was beginning to shake. Purkiss glanced at the side of the man’s face, a natural enough thing to do when you were standing in a queue and somebody lingered beside you, perhaps with intentions to push his way in ahead. He saw a European profile, possibly British, the hairline receding. The man’s jaw was set, but apart from that he betrayed no sign of the pain he must be in.

  Purkiss murmured, his tone conversational and just loud enough that the people in front and behind him wouldn’t hear, ‘Drop it or I’ll break your wrist.’

  The man let out a muffled grunt. His eyes flicked sideways at Purkiss and back again.

  The queue began to shuffle forward. Behind Purkiss, the family got moving with a great deal of noise and fuss. He felt the suitcase-laden trolley bump against the backs of his legs again, heard another apology.

  Purkiss glanced back over his shoulder. The trolley was just behind his legs.

  Keeping his grip on the man’s arm, he turned a little to his left, drawing the man with him. While the family were preoccupied, both parents scolding two of the children whose lips were quivering, Purkiss hooked the tip of his shoe under the front end of the trolley and swung it slightly so that it rolled between his legs and those of the man beside him. He pulled the man towards him, letting go of his wrist an instant later.

  The man stumbled across the trolley, tipping the precariously balanced suitcases off with a crash. Purkiss stepped aside, watched the man right himself and help to load the suitcases on again. There was no sign of the blade; he must have concealed it deftly.

  Purkiss backed away from the queue, keeping the man in his line of sight. The man apparently ignored him, fussing over the suitcases he’d knocked over. Purkiss surveyed the environment, looking for others who might be poised to take over and close in.

  Three of them, then, so far. The man from the coffee shop, the woman, and this man.

  If he could identify them all, it would give him an edge. Not much of one, but at least he’d know his enemy’s numbers. He needed to draw any others out, but it meant detaching himself from the public and putting himself in a position in which he could be cornered. And that could prove fatal.

  The burning in Purkiss’s chest and abdomen had eased, but had been replaced by a cramping which in itself provoked nausea. He hoped diarrhoea wasn’t next in the line of symptoms. Around him, the crowd appeared to be moving in slow motion, as if underwater, and the noises filtering into his ears seemed echoing and distant.

  Perhaps there had been some kind of neuromodulatory agent in the poison, after all.

  Purkiss needed cold air, and quickly. He could always exit the terminal, inhale a few lungfuls, and then return. And by going outside, he might draw out further enemy elements.

  He reached the glass façade of the terminal and was approaching the sliding doors when the woman appeared at his side, walking in the same direction as him, and murmured in English: ‘Turn around immediately.’

  Purkiss reacted more quickly than he’d believed himself capable of, pivoting on one foot and jabbing the stiffened fingers of his right hand upward at a point just below her breastbone. It was a potentially incapacitating blow which had the advantage of preventing the recipient from crying out, and was often useful in public places for subduing an opponent while attracting the minimum of attention.

  But his aim was off, and she turned her body so that his fingertips jabbed into her upper arm. He grabbed the arm, felt unsteadiness drag at his legs, and took a second to regain his balance.

  She caught him and pressed in close so that he leaned against her, as if they were two lovers parting or reuniting. He tensed his abdomen against the blade that would surely slip in, cold and hard.

  In his ear, she whispered: ‘There are four of them waiting outside. You’re in no fit state to confront them. They’ll take you down easily. Stay inside the terminal.’

  ‘Why –’ he started to say, but found he couldn’t complete the thought. He let her turn him slowly, with an arm around his waist, and he saw the hubbub of the terminal swing back into shaky view.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she said, quietly but conversationally, as they walked slowly back towards the check-in area.

  ‘Some kind of toxin,’ he said. ‘I expelled most of it, I think.’ He realised now what he had been meaning to ask: why are you protecting me?

  As if she’d read his thoughts, she said: ‘I’m a friend. There are at least two of them inside the terminal. Probably more. And four outside. All male.’

  Purkiss said, ‘Another exit. There must be.’ He shook his head, the disjointed word order sounding stupid to him. ‘A service tunnel.’

  ‘No. Too easy to get trapped in.’ She said, ‘I have an idea.’

  She told him. He nodded.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘Deacon.’

  ‘I’m –’

  ‘Purkiss,’ she finished. ‘I know.’

  They reached a pair of police officers armed with rifles, who stood stockily, their impassive gazes trained on the crowds.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the woman said, still in English. ‘My boyfriend. He’s not well.’

  The police officers glanced at her, then at Purkiss. Purkiss realised for the first time that the sweat was pouring off him, matting his hair and his clothes to his skin.

  The policemen’s eyes hardened.

  Purkiss stared at them, his eyes wide.

  The policemen turned towards him and the woman.

  Purkiss broke free from the woman’s grasp and, with a yell, began running across the concourse, cannoning into people.

  Even if he hadn’t intended to be caught, he probably wouldn’t have got far. He felt his feet kicked out from under him and landed hard on the tiled floor, his head slamming against the ground. The floor was cold against his cheek as he felt his arms yanked up behind him and the cuffs biting into his wrists.

  The woman, Deacon if that was her real name, stood several yards away, her hand up over her mouth, her eyes stricken.

  Nine

  They released Purkiss four hours later.

  He’d expected to be detained longer, but he supposed
they were overstretched, and needed to focus their manpower and energies on more worthy targets. The police captain had watched Purkiss as he passed on the way out of the interrogation room, his tongue a pinched strip of white between his teeth, the contempt in his gaze palpable.

  A pair of junior officers escorted Purkiss into the waiting room of the station, where the woman, Deacon, sat nursing a styrofoam cup of coffee. She rose as he approached, put her arms round him in a gesture that combined relief and exasperation.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Purkiss muttered.

  He felt the officers’ eyes on his back until he and Deacon were through the front doors. Outside, it was early afternoon, the skies clearer than they’d been on his arrival at the airport that morning but still filmed over with a thin cloud layer.

  ‘I rented a car while you were in there,’ she said.

  She’d chosen a VW Passat, solid and unremarkable. Purkiss dropped into the passenger seat and sat with his head pressed back, his eyes open. He waited until she’d pulled out into the light traffic before he said: ‘Who are you?’

  She ignored the question. ‘I presume you held up in there.’

  Purkiss had been questioned by a total of four different people. Two were senior police detectives. The other two didn’t introduce themselves, but were almost certainly BfV, the German domestic intelligence service. He’d explained, in tones that were alternately sheepish and self-righteous, that he’d taken a pill that morning which he’d been given in a club in Rome the previous night. It had made him paranoid, caused him to hallucinate. When he’d seen the two armed policemen at the airport, he’d panicked, and had run.

  They’d studied his passport. Did he have any other ID on him, they’d wanted to know? He said he must have lost his wallet. Which was perfectly true.

  He and his girlfriend, Miss Michelle Havers - Deacon had told him that was the name on the passport she was using - were tourists from London. They’d arrived that morning from Rome on separate flights, because they’d met in Rome a few days earlier and had discovered they were both heading to Frankfurt, albeit at different times. He’d taken the pill just before the flight, and by the time he met Michelle at Frankfurt Airport he’d already started to feel its negative effects.

  The police detectives lectured him on the dangers of illicit substances. Purkiss concurred, said he’d never do anything like it again. By the time the two security agents had questioned him and had left, the detectives’ interest in him was clearly waning. At last, they sent him on his way.

  ‘Yes,’ Purkiss said to Deacon. ‘I held up.’

  As a tactic, it had worked. His arrest had meant he and Deacon had been spirited out of the airport under armed guard. His opponents in the terminal would have been unable to intervene. He’d given them the slip, for now at least.

  Purkiss said again: ‘Who are you?’

  He studied her profile. She was probably a little older than he’d initially thought, maybe thirty-two or -three. Her features were strong, the lines of the nose and chin straight, the eyes dark. Not a conventionally pretty face, but an attractive one nonetheless.

  ‘My name’s Rebecca Deacon,’ she said. ‘I was given instructions yesterday to find you and protect you. I went to Rome, but you weren’t in the hotel. So I was pointed in the direction of a man named David Billson. He told me you’d been to visit him earlier that night, and that you were asking about Quentin Vale.’

  The mention of the name jolted Purkiss, as if the seat beneath him was wired. ‘You know Vale?’

  She shook her head, once. ‘I know of him. The person giving me my instructions is a former associate of his. I say former, because Vale was killed on board Flight TA15. As you already know.’ She paused, as the traffic ahead slowed in the approach to a roundabout. ‘My instructor asked me to go to Frankfurt, because that was where TA15 took off from. He believed you’d head for the airport in search of clues.’

  The four hours in the police room, during which he’d been supplied with coffee and water and a sandwich, had helped clear Purkiss’s head. The nausea, the abdominal cramps, were also much diminished. But this new overload of information took him a while to process.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Go back a bit. What’s your background? Who do you work for?’

  She glanced at him for the first time since they’d set out in the car. ‘I’m Service.’

  ‘SIS?’ But he knew that was what she meant. MI6 was the popular name. SIS was the official one. To operatives, it was simply the Service.

  ‘Yes,’ Deacon said. ‘I’m a cold asset. This is my first mission in three years.’

  A cold asset was an agent who’d been trained for a specific task, usually one of a troubleshooting nature. MI6 cultivated a number of these, subjecting them to the standard training at the beginning, then deploying them in day jobs for most of their lives, with regular refresher courses in fieldwork and IT surveillance. Some of them would remain forever as sleepers, always on potential call but never actually summoned.

  Purkiss had always been sceptical of the idea. The notion that British Intelligence could rely upon a reserve force, as the military did, seemed faintly ludicrous to him. You were either an operative or you weren’t. Espionage skills weren’t something you could turn on and off every now and again. They needed constant honing through experience, or they’d wither and die. Much like those of a doctor, or a lawyer, or any professional.

  He said, ‘Who’s your handler? Your instructor, as you call him?’

  ‘You’ll meet him soon enough.’ Deacon swung down a slip road. An industrial estate loomed before them. ‘I need to show you something.’

  She pulled into a car park outside a vast supermarket depot. Reaching into the back seat of the car, she pulled a laptop from her bag and opened it. From her pocket she produced a flash drive.

  She turned the laptop to face Purkiss.

  A video was cued up, and began playing a few seconds later.

  *

  Vale sat behind a desk in a room so anonymous it might have been a prison cell.

  He gazed at the camera in silence for a full ten seconds, as if he wasn’t aware it was switched on. His elbows were on the desk, and between the fingers of his raised right hand a cigarette smouldered, its blue ribbon of smoke catching the dim artificial light above him.

  ‘John,’ he said. ‘You’ll hate me for this cliche, but if you’re watching this, I’m already dead.’

  He glanced off-camera, picked up a newspaper with his left hand, held it forward. It was a folded-over copy of The Times, its front page on display. The date on the masthead wasn’t difficult to read: Wednesday, 22nd October.

  One week ago.

  Vale laid the paper on the desk and addressed the camera again. ‘Just to set the scene.’

  He took a contemplative drag on his cigarette, all the while watching the camera through the smoke.

  ‘I have reason to believe that an attempt will be made on my life. Imminently, possibly within the next few days. I’m going to try and meet you tomorrow, but I won’t tell you any of this.’

  Purkiss had received a phone call from Vale on the morning of Thursday the 23rd of October. He’d met him on Waterloo Bridge in the middle of the early-morning commuter rush and they’d begun walking. Vale had briefed Purkiss about the Rome operation, about the need to garner evidence that Billson was selling information to Beijing. The next day, Purkiss had flown to Rome.

  On the laptop screen, Vale said, ‘The woman who’s showing you this video is Rebecca Deacon. She’s a cold asset under my indirect authority, though she doesn’t know me personally. She’s first class. You can trust her implicitly. I’ve cultivated her specifically for such an eventuality as this.’

  Vale hunched a little further over the table.

  ‘The fact that you’re watching this, John, means that I’ve been killed, and your life is in extreme danger. Rebecca has been activated to protect you. Listen to her.’ He lifted the cigarette to his lips again.
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br />   Was there the hint of a tremor in his hand? Purkiss had witnessed it before. Vale was in his early sixties, but remained remarkably spry. Under stress, however, the shakiness was noticeable. Purkiss had seen it during the Jokerman business last year.

  ‘Rebecca’s handler is a man called Myles. Gareth Myles. He’s an associate of mine, and you can trust him, too.’ Yet another pull on the cigarette.

  Vale ground the stub out into a makeshift foil ashtray and drew another expertly from a pack in his breast pocket.

  ‘John,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you exactly what this is all about, for reasons which you may or may not discover in the course of time. But you need to find a man called Saul Gideon. He’s the key to all this.’ Vale paused. ‘Gideon may be dangerous. But he may be one of us. I simply don’t know, and that’s why you need to proceed with the utmost caution.’

  One of us. Purkiss thought about it. Filed it away for later consideration, so that he could concentrate on what Vale was saying.

  ‘It’s a matter of supreme urgency that you find Gideon,’ Vale continued. ‘I myself am going to try to, but you’re watching this, which means I’ve failed. If you discover that Gideon is the one who has had me killed, you need to take him down.’

  Purkiss resisted the urge to stop the video and rewind it. The cryptic remarks, the obliqueness, were threatening to overwhelm him. Rebecca Deacon sat in the driver’s seat, gazing impassively through the windscreen. She’d evidently watched the clip before.

  The picture jerked a little, as if it had been edited. Vale resumed: ‘Gideon’s last known location was the islet of Iora in the Aegean. It’s part of the Cyclades group. He may no longer be there, but it’s a good starting point in the search for him.’

  Purkiss thought Vale looked drawn. Ill, even, his face more lined than usual, and gaunter. Perhaps that explained the jump in the picture a moment earlier. He might have needed to take a break, rest his tobacco-coarsened voice.

  More quietly, Vale said, ‘Whatever happens, John, know that it’s been an honour working with you over the years. I hope, and trust, that you’ll continue to live a worthy life. Go well, my friend.’