by Sam Christer
181
CALIFORNIA
The SSOA Gulfstream flies sub-supersonic but takes only seven hours to get from London to the landing lights in San Francisco.
Mitzi has been in a state of shock all the way. Her brain refuses to accept that both her daughters have been shot and are still fighting for their lives.
Bronty and Dalton have flown with her. Her FBI colleague is mumbling about a woman diver he met who thinks underwater caves off Lundy’s shores might contain Arthurian tombs. Mitzi couldn’t give a damn.
Nothing matters any more.
Nothing, except being with Jade and Amber.
Despite her physical and mental pain, she knows she still has to talk confidentially to Dalton. There are things he must be told.
As soon as Bronty goes to the washroom, she slips into the seat alongside the consul. ‘I want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, the Goldman case is closed. I appreciate you flying back here with me, I really do. And I know it’s not just because you have your codex back.’
‘It’s not.’
‘I know.’ She gives him a reassuring smile. ‘We’re done. Everything I heard and saw while I was in your country is forgotten.’
‘Thank you.’ He looks relieved.
‘The truth is, I’m done as well. I’m planning on handing in my shield and gun.’
‘That would be a loss.’
‘I don’t think so. If my girls live, then maybe I get a second chance at being a good mom.’
‘Mrs Fallon, I’m sure you’re a very good —’
‘Please – don’t patronize me.’ She gives him a scalding look. ‘And don’t call me Mrs Fallon. Go back to Britain and carry on doing whatever it is that you do. You and your secret knights have taken vows to be a power for good. So, you have my admiration, my support and my silence.’
He pushes his luck. ‘I know Sir Owain harboured thoughts that you might join us.’
She shakes her head. ‘Not me. I’m sorry.’
Bronty returns to his seat and Mitzi and Dalton fall silent. An in-flight announcement tells passengers to buckle up for landing.
The plane wheels drop. Mitzi feels the pressure build in her head. She shuts her eyes but there’s no relief. Just two faces.
Jade.
Amber.
If they die she doesn’t know how she’ll live with herself. The doctors said Amber took a bullet in the hip and another in the back. Mitzi didn’t even dare ask about paralysis. Everything from that moment onward seemed distant and blurred, as though it were happening in a fog.
The plane lands and taxis to a stop. She’s vaguely aware of hands helping her down steps. The noise in the terminal splits her head. The cool, middle-of-the-night air makes her shiver as they wait for the limo to pick them up.
Mitzi smells new leather as she slumps in the back seat. Cars, lights and buildings flash by her side-window. She looks out into a world that she no longer feels part of.
Bronty sits alongside her in the back of the Jaguar. Dalton is in the front, talking about her on his phone, as though she’s not there. And he’s right. She isn’t. She picks up that her ex-husband has been informed of the girls’ injuries and is travelling over from LA.
She pities him. Not for a long time has she had a kind thought for Alfie Fallon but right now, she feels for him. Fears for him. As low as he is, this period of his life is going to drag him even lower.
‘We’re here.’ The voice is Bronty’s.
Car doors open.
She feels Dalton’s hand on her right arm. Feels the touch of the fingers that surely killed a man at a Dupont Circle diner and set her off on a journey that ended with her daughters almost dead.
Mitzi pulls away from him and steps out into the darkness. A polite babble of voices breaks out. She looks at the sprawling front of the San Joaquin Hospital and wonders where Amber is.
Someone calls to her. Donovan is here. Others, too. Vicky the researcher, hand in hand with a tall man she doesn’t know.
And Ruth.
That bum of a husband, Jack is right alongside her. They’ve all turned out. Her sister tries to catch her eye, but Mitzi looks away. Not now. She’s not ready for reconciliation and all the questions that go with it.
Not yet.
She takes a beat and decides to say something before someone else tries to. ‘I don’t want to be rude. I’m really grateful everyone turned out so late. But could you all just leave me the fuck alone? Just while I visit my daughter and try to behave like a mom – and not like a cop.’
182
NORTHERN MEXICO
It’s been a long drive. The drive of his life. But he’s made it.
Larry Petty, a man previously known as Chris Wilkins and originally christened Charles James Wood, slides the rental car down the tight driveway of the house and squeezes on the brake. The dash tells him the outside temperature just hit 106 degrees, so he leaves the air-con running, unbuckles the safety belt and sighs with relief as it zips back over his shoulder.
For a moment, he just wants to sit and enjoy the fact that he’s stopped running. That he’s alive. Safe and free. It’s taken him more than twenty-four hours, two stolen cars, a bus and train ride, plus the use of his one remaining false ID to get here.
Quite a feat.
There were moments when he wondered if he’d make it. Times when he realized that Tess hadn’t. He’d pulled to the side of the road and sobbed himself in half. Convinced himself that she’d been arrested. Nothing worse. That she was sat somewhere laughing at the cops and saying jack shit to them. But then he’d heard her death on the news and his world had fallen apart.
The whole journey has been spent with one eye on the road and the other in the mirror looking for cops. He’d gambled they’d focus on airports and freeways and he’d been right.
From Stockton he’d taken the long and winding back roads until he hit Fresno. Out there, he’d stolen a Chevy parked in a car-share pool and worked minor roads to Bakersfield, where he picked up a bus to Flagstaff. He found his way to a train station and bought a ticket to Mexico.
Now he’s about to grab a shower, heat up a pizza bought at a gas station and crash out in the two-bed row house he’s rented down by the Sonora River.
He turns off the engine and steps out into the baking heat. The neighbourhood looks upmarket and smart. Brightly painted houses are stacked next to squares of burned grass and the odd slab of tarmac to park on. Nothing special, but it’s neat. There’s no trash. No graffiti. No gangs out on the streets. It’s the kind of place he can blend in for a day or two.
When he’s rock-bottom sure all the heat has died down, he’ll catch a plane out of Garcia International and start over. Life goes on.
183
SAN JOAQUIN HOSPITAL, STOCKTON
The doctors tell Mitzi that Amber is going to live.
They also tell her it’s too soon to define what quality of life she’ll have.
The bullets have ripped tissue, caused trauma and chipped bones. Recovery will be slow. Long. Painful.
The consultant, a big man with white hair and kind eyes, says, ‘She’s still unconscious, Mrs Fallon, but her vital signs are good and I expect her to come round any time soon.’
Mitzi pushes for good news as he takes her to the recovery room where Amber’s resting. ‘She’s going to walk again, right?’
He smiles. ‘We’re really hoping so. Right now, we just need her to regain consciousness and start talking to us. Then we can run tests.’
They turn a corner and in the corridor Mitzi sees a hard chair staked outside a room. There’s a familiar figure crumpled uncomfortably on it.
Eleonora Fracci looks up, bleary-eyed.
‘How long have you been there?’ Mitzi asks.
‘All the time. I stay until you arrive.’
The Italian stands up and straightens herself out.
‘You really look like shit,’ says Mitzi, then opens her arms to her.
They both hol
d tight and try to squeeze the pain away.
When they break, Mitzi takes the Italian’s hands in hers. ‘Thank you for being here, for looking out for my daughter.’
Eleonora nods. ‘I wish I could have done more.’
She nods to the door. ‘I’m gonna go in and sit a while.’
‘Then I take a shower, so I look less like shit when you come out.’
Mitzi smiles and enters the darkened room. The first thing she notices is the beep of the machines. That and the fact that Amber’s dressed in pink flowery PJs. She’d go crazy if she saw herself.
Mitzi slides into the seat by the bed and goes to take her hand. She sees the bandage around the severed finger and almost cries. Her head fills with the screams she heard down the phone. Amber’s words – ‘They’ve c–ut me – Mommy!’
Mitzi lifts the hand and gently kisses it. ‘It’s gonna be okay, baby. Your mom’s here now and everything’s gonna be okay.’
184
CARDIGAN, WALES
Sir Owain Gwyn’s grapheme under-armour soaked up most of the blast.
But not all of it.
Not enough of it.
The C4 concealed in the candle was remotely detonated just as he lifted it from the right hand of the Welsh national shrine. Because the ex-Guardsman was so large, he absorbed enough of the force to save the pontiff and all surrounding clergy.
But not himself.
The blast took off the front of his face and the top of his head. If he’d been a few seconds earlier – if he’d managed to pull the candle tighter to his body, then maybe he’d have survived.
Lance Beaucoup guides Lady Gwyn down the aisle of the Church of Our Lady of the Taper. Once her husband’s remains had been taken back to the private family chapel at Caergwyn Castle, she insisted on being taken to the spot where he spent his last moments. Throughout the journey she’d replayed the message he’d left on her phone: ‘I love you, Jenny. Love you more than you’ll ever know.’
Somehow, the world’s press has learned of her visit. Local police have shut off the streets in an attempt to give the widow of one of Britain’s most distinguished knights a little privacy.
And, of course, Beaucoup has deployed enough SSOA men to make doubly sure the area is safe.
Laid outside the church are hundreds of bouquets, all carrying messages of condolence, praise and respect. Among them, wreaths from the Pope, the British prime minister and the American president.
As Lance and Jennifer enter the nave, they notice the back pews are still covered in masonry dust. The normally vibrant church light is muted because so many windows have been blown out and boarded up. The front pews have been removed and stacked at one side.
To the front of the chapel, there are heaps of rubble, wood and glass in different piles and Beaucoup’s expert eyes detect where the bomb squad have been, where they have inspected and where they still intend to carry out further examinations.
The deputy chief constable and two senior officers are only yards away in case they can be of assistance. But Jennifer doesn’t need them to point out where her husband had died.
Her heart guides her to the fatal spot.
She takes her arm out of Beaucoup’s and looks into the eyes of the man her husband chose as her lover, the man destined to look after her when this terrible moment arrived. ‘Could you ask everyone to leave? Just for a minute. I’d like to be alone with my thoughts of him.’
185
NEW YORK
The quiet backstreet in Greenwich Village is filled with overhanging trees and birdsong. Gareth Madoc checks for a tail as he zaps the central locking on his Range Rover and crosses the road.
He walks a full block and a half to the safe house where Zachra and her mother Nasrin have been since Khalid Korshidi was lifted by the NIA. He speed-dials a number on his encrypted cell.
SSOA agent Dana Levine answers. ‘All clear for you to come up, sir.’
Madoc lets his eyes drift to the upstairs window of the dainty row house and sees a curtain cracked and Levine looking down on him. He climbs six stone steps to the big door and presses the buzzer.
One by one, he counts the bolts and bars sliding back. Five in total. Finally, the door opens.
‘Hi there,’ he passes the giant form of Ritchie Handsworth, the second SSOA agent stationed in the safe house.
‘Morning, sir.’ The agent shuts the door and locks and re-bolts it.
Madoc takes the uncarpeted stairs to the large back room. Zachra and her mother are sat watching TV, a rerun of an Oprah show about dealing with broken homes. Both are dressed in casual Western clothes. The younger woman turns and her face fills with delight. ‘Mr Madoc – I didn’t know you were coming.’
He smiles back at her and dips into the jacket of his black suit. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He hands over an envelope and a separate folded sheet of paper.
Zachra takes them and gives him a suspicious stare. ‘What are these?’
‘Look for yourself.’ He adds the reassurance she needs. ‘It’s nothing bad.’
Her eyes sparkle as she rips open the envelope. ‘Momma, look. Plane tickets to London. A chance to start again.’
Madoc realizes he’s never seen her happy or relaxed before. He adds the more important detail. ‘You need to study the single sheet I gave you. It tells you your new identities, where your new home is and your new bank account. The house is a modest terrace on the outskirts of London, but you’ll be safe. It’s paid for and it’s yours for as long as you want. The bank account has ten thousand pounds in it. It should help resettle you while my people get you both jobs.’
Zachra throws her arms around him and kisses his cheek. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to us.’ She glances at her mother and then back at him. ‘You’ve given us both our lives back. It’s like being reborn.’
‘You’re very welcome. You’re an enormously brave and talented young woman, Zachra. If anyone deserves to be reborn it’s you.’
186
JOHN MUIR MEDICAL CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO
An FBI helicopter takes Mitzi the fifty miles from San Joaquin to John Muir.
It’s almost dawn when staff in the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit lead her to where Jade is recovering.
A foot from the door and alongside a wall sign that says NO PHONES, hers rings. ‘Sorry. I need to take this.’
The two nurses drift back to their station.
‘Hello.’
‘This is Eleonora.’ She takes an emotional breath. ‘It’s your daughter —’
Mitzi puts her hand on the wall and feels faint. The pause is too long for it to be good news. She should never have left Amber’s bedside.
‘She has regained consciousness.’
‘What?’
‘She is awake and talking.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Mitzi slides down the wall and sits on the floor. The relief makes her heart hammer and tears flow. ‘How is she?’
Eleonora laughs. ‘How is she? She is like a little Mitzi, that’s how she is. She is already complaining about her clothes. You want to talk to her?’
‘Oh yes, yes please.’
‘I put her on.’
The phone becomes a swirl of crackles and clunks.
‘Mom.’
‘Baby.’
‘Mom, are you all right?’ Her voice is post-op raspy and drowsy.
‘I’m fine, sweetheart. Don’t worry about me. I’m visiting Jade and I’ll be back to see you soon.’
‘Is she okay?’
Mitzi gets to her feet and tries without luck to see through the bedroom window. ‘Yeah, I think so, baby.’
She picks up on her mom’s worry. ‘Jade will be okay. Jade’s a Fallon girl and like you said, Fallon women are winners, right?’
Mitzi feels a rush of pride. ‘Yeah, we are, baby. We’re winners.’
‘Mom…’
‘What, honey?’
‘Did you see the PJs they put me in?’<
br />
She laughs. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘Yuuck!’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring new ones.’ She hesitates. There’s a question eating a hole in her head. One she has to ask. ‘Can you feel your legs, honey? Is everything working?’
There’s a long pause.
Too long for Mitzi’s liking. ‘Amber, can you feel —’
‘Mom, stop nagging. I’m just wriggling my toes and checking like you asked. Yeah, I’m okay, but I really hurt a lot and I think I need to pee.’
Mitzi laughs again. ‘You go pee while I see your sister, then I’ll call you back. Deal?’
‘Deal. Oh, and Mom, pleeease don’t forget the PJs.’
Mitzi finishes the call and enters Jade’s room.
The curtains are closed and the place is cast in a grey shade that smells of antiseptic. Her good mood has gone. A nurse has tried to disguise the brutality of the head wound but there’s no hiding the swelling. The sight of it breaks Mitzi’s heart.
Over in the corner is a single wardrobe. Placed neatly outside it are the Prada trainers Jack got her. She remembers feeling bad when that ass-groping pig bought them. Now she’d do anything to see her walk in them again.
She moves slowly along the bed. Jade looks deathly pale. It’s so wrong that she’s this close to death. Her life was only beginning. She was becoming a beautiful young woman. Albeit a headstrong, outspoken, feisty, never-let-it-lie, always-right, never-back-down, pain-in-the-ass of a daughter, but still a beautiful young woman.
Mitzi sits on the bed and takes the teenager’s hand, just as she’d done with her sister barely an hour ago.
Jade’s fingers are cold. Her nails are painted with Pink Bliss. It’s not her colour, but Amber’s. They must have been getting on. Before the world stopped and everything turned into flies and hit God’s windshield.