by Dawson, Mark
“What do you mean?”
Milton’s voice was clipped, disciplined. “I looked inside. Both guards were shot. I checked him and he’s been shot, too. Two rounds, in the chest, close range. Professional.”
“Shot by who?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside. They’ve got four men up there already, and there’ll be more on the way. Where are you?”
“Ground floor.”
“Get out now.”
“I will.”
“You still need me?”
“No. It’s done.”
“Copy that.”
“Good luck, Milton.”
“And you.”
Pope ended the call and put the cellphone back in his pocket.
He looked at his watch. He had been here for ten minutes. Already more than he would have preferred. The stairwell had been busy for the first few minutes as staff and visitors evacuated.
He was turning to go when he heard the sound of retching on the landing above him.
He reached inside his jacket for the Sig and pushed his shoulders against the wall. He started up the stairs, one at a time, the gun raised next to his cheek and his finger curled around the trigger, ready to fire.
He had taken ten steps upwards when he saw the girl on the floor.
She was crawling in his direction, on hands and knees, vomit plastered across her face.
He stopped, his muscles throbbing with coiled energy, adrenaline flooding his blood, his every instinct, hardwired from years of combat, telling him that he needed to get out of the hospital and he needed to do it now, right this second, and yet he didn’t. He stayed.
Because as she looked up at him he recognised her.
“Isabella?”
She froze.
His brain flashed and joined the dots.
She had killed Control?
She was Beatrix’s fallback?
Holy shit.
Beatrix had left behind one hell of a legacy.
The girl scrabbled backwards, panic on her face.
“Hey,” he said, quickly shoving the Sig away and holding up his empty hands. “Hey, relax, it’s alright. I knew your mother. I came to see her once, in Marrakech. You’ve met me before. We had dinner together. Remember?”
The girl scrambled all the way back across the half-landing, her back bumping up against the wall.
“I know what’s happened. I know what you’ve done. We need to get you out, right now.”
She hugged her arms around her chest.
There was suddenly a clatter as the door above was thrown violently open, crashing back against the wall, and two men rushed onto the landing.
Soldiers.
Pope’s hand was moving to his holster even as they turned and looked down at them on the half-landing.
“Hey!” one of them called down to them as Pope’s fingers snagged the grip, pulled the gun out in a smooth sideways motion, aimed and fired. The suppressor barked, the bullet travelling the short distance between them in a flash, terminating its flight in the man’s stomach. He gasped, clutched his midriff and dropped to his knees, exposing the second man, and Pope nudged his aim to the left and fired again. The bullet tore into his leg, punching it out from underneath him. He toppled over the stairs and rolled down them, an abrupt crack marking the moment when he snapped the vertebrae in his neck. The first man, gut shot, tried to raise his semi-automatic, but Pope fired a third and final time. His head splashed red and grey, and he jack-knifed over onto his back, pivoting at the hips, arms wide.
The second man’s body slithered down the steps, coming to a rest next to Isabella. His arm was trapped beneath his body, his legs pointed straight back up the stairs, and his head was twisted at a perverse angle.
Isabella screamed and clasped her hands over her face.
Pope holstered the gun again, hurried across to her and knelt down.
“It’s alright,” he reassured her. “It’s alright.”
She didn’t respond and her hands stayed where they were.
“I can get you out of here, Isabella. You want to get out?
She nodded, still silent.
“But if we don’t go now, they’ll find you. There’ll be more men like them. I’m sure your mother told you what you needed to do, and how to get away, but you’re running out of time. We’ve got minutes, that’s all. We have to go. Now.”
The girl took her hands away and looked up at him fearfully. How old was she? Thirteen? Fourteen? She looked much younger.
“Come on. Your mother wouldn’t want this.”
He reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.
He thought she might shrug it away, but she didn’t.
“You can trust me, Isabella.”
Pope opened the door to the elevator lobby. He scanned quickly: the alarm was still ringing, much louder down here, and staff and visitors were dutifully filing towards the exits. They moved quickly and purposefully, calmly, no panic. They probably thought it was a drill.
That was good.
He took his suppressed Sig and dropped it into the trash.
“Do you have your gun?”
She shook her head.
“Where is it?”
“In the room. The bin.”
“Good.”
He reached down and scooped Isabella into his arms. He had cleaned the vomit away as best as he could, but she was pale faced and looked as if she could faint at any time. He walked out into the atrium, past the reception desk, and merged at the back of the queue of people. The girl was small in his arms, her skin cool and slender, and she was holding on tight.
Pope was going to get her out.
He owed Beatrix that, at least.
She had saved his life once, far away.
This would square the ledger.
The two of them drew closer to the revolving doors.
He watched as two police cruisers raced up the access road and screeched to a sudden stop.
They entered the revolving door, the girl pressed up close to him as he shuffled around.
The doors opened and four officers exited.
Come on.
The door revolved, and they were outside, the cool air on their faces.
Calm. Stay calm.
Pope concentrated on looking as normal as he could. The fact that they were together made it less likely that they would be stopped. What were they, after all? A father and his daughter, leaving the hospital just like all the others around them. She was weak or upset. Nothing unusual. No reason to give them a second glance.
An SUV with blacked-out windows and the crossed gladii logo of Manage Risk raced up the access road and stopped next to the police cruisers. Three operatives got out and hurried into the hospital.
Another SUV was racing to the hospital along the main road.
They would be swamped soon. Drowning in ex-special forces operatives who had probably already been told that the explosion and what had happened to Control was an act of terrorism.
Operatives who would, very likely, have a predisposition towards shooting first and clearing up the mess later.
Pope walked briskly to the parking lot and, with one hand, opened the passenger door to the rental. He lowered Isabella into the seat and buckled her up. He checked the mirrors, saw that the lot was clear and started the engine. The second SUV swept into the lot, and Pope drove slowly around it, gently accelerating away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The place she was looking for was not far from the Jemma el Fna. Isabella had the address on a piece of paper. It was in her mother’s neat and tidy handwriting, and she looked at it often. Not because she had forgotten where she was going, but because it reminded her of her mother. She had found the
piece of paper in her mother’s bag.
She reached a grocery store with a brothel above it. She stopped and checked the address again. Two of the girls from the brothel were leaning against the railings, smoking joints. They regarded Isabella coolly as she paused to check the address.
“What are you looking for?” one of the women asked.
“The tattoo parlour,” she replied in her serviceable Arabic. “Do you know where it is?”
“Round the back.”
“Thank you.”
There was an alleyway that led around to the rear of the grocery store. There was a neat and tidy courtyard and, facing onto it, a door that had been painted in a multitude of different colours. The sign above the door read “Johnny’s Ink,” and when she opened it, a bell tinkled musically. She went inside. The parlour was small and colourful, with hand-drawn flashes that advertised the tattoos framed and hung on the walls. The floor was tiled in white and black chequerboard and a large canvas had been painted with the parlour’s logo: a femme fatale in a tight dress, smoking a cigarette in a holder as a devil in a top hat inked a tattoo on her arm.
There was no one there.
“Hello?” she called out.
A man’s voice came from a second room: “Hold on.”
There was a pause, and then Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” played out, loud, from speakers hung from the walls.
The man who came out of the room was tall and muscular. He looked like a soldier. His hair was shaved short, and every inch of exposed skin was covered in tattoos.
“Hello,” he said with a wide smile. “How can I help you?”
“Are you Johnny?”
“I sure am.” He had a lazy American drawl. “And who are you?”
“Isabella Rose. My mother used to come here.”
His eyes went wide. “Oh shit,” he said, and then, “I’m sorry . . . my language.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, her turn to smile.
“No, I . . . I . . .” he frowned, floundering.
“You like Metallica?” she said, nodding up at the speakers.
“I do. You too . . . I mean, if you want, I could . . .”
“I love them,” she said. “You got ‘Ride the Lightning’?”
He looked relieved. “Sure I do. Hold on.”
He went back into the other room, and after a short moment, “Fight Fire with Fire” started to play.
He came through to the reception again.
“There,” he said. He smiled awkwardly again. “Your mother liked them, too.”
“Yes. She did.”
“How is she?” He said it diffidently, as if he already knew the answer, but the question still had to be asked.
“She’s not here anymore.”
“Oh shit . . . I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I knew she was ill,” he said.
“Cancer.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Cancer. When did she pass?”
“Four months ago.”
“Oh, man. I’m really, really sorry.”
She nodded.
He forced a hesitant smile and changed the subject. “So what can I do for you?”
“I want a tattoo.”
He looked at her with dubious regard. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Isabella.”
“And how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to need to see something that says that. If I tattoo someone younger than that, I could end up losing my license.”
She reached into her bag and took out the fake passport. “Here,” she said.
Johnny looked at her picture and the details alongside it, his dubious expression slowly changing into one of mild surprise. “Yep, there we go. Sixteen. Nearly seventeen. Sorry about that. You look younger.”
“It’s alright. I get it a lot.”
He stepped aside and pointed to the other room. “You go on through there, take your sweater off and make yourself comfortable. You want a soft drink?”
“Do you have any Coke?”
“Sure. Go on, go through. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The second room had a couch, a wheeled stool, more art on the walls and a fridge with beers inside it. Isabella took off her light cardigan and hung it up on a hook fixed to the wall. She was wearing a singlet underneath so that her arms and shoulders were bare. She knew what to expect. She sat down on the couch.
Her mother had sat here, too. On the same couch.
Four times.
Four different tattoos.
There had been no time for the fifth.
Isabella had forced herself to be strong, like her mother had been, but there were times, like now, when it was still raw, like the stitching on a wound had been picked open, exposing the hurt inside. She gasped a little, her eyes prickling with tears, but she breathed deeper and wiped the tears away, and in a moment, she had it all back under control again. She would be strong.
“Here,” Johnny said, returning with a cold bottle of Coke.
He gave the bottle to her, took a bottle of beer from the fridge, popped the top and touched the neck against hers. He took a long sip and set it down on the table next to his magnums.
“You got an idea what you want?”
“A rose. Like my mother’s.”
“Funny you should say that. I was looking back at the designs I did for her just last week. Hold on.” He shuffled through a sheaf of transfers on the table and picked one out. “Here. We were always going to finish the sleeve off. She had two more to do, five and six.”
He handed it to her. Of course, she remembered the four roses that her mother had worn on her arm, running all the way down from her shoulder. The completed sleeve would have been beautiful. The roses were gorgeous, deep blood-red petals, long and sinuous stems and vivid green leaves. They would have matched the others on her arm.
“What do you think?”
“Very pretty.”
Johnny smiled at her praise.
“The fifth and the sixth roses. The ones she didn’t have. Can you do those for me?”
“Sure. Would be good for me, too. I hate not finishing a design after I’ve drawn it. You know she was having these roses done one at a time? She said she was ticking things off a list, adding one whenever she’d done whatever it was she was doing.”
“That’s exactly what she was doing.”
“She never did tell me what was on that list. Did she tick the last things off?”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “She did.”
“That’s good. Nothing as bad as a job that’s only halfway done.” He took the design from her, sat on the wheeled stool and kicked back to the table. He picked up the transfer and rolled back to her again. He cleaned her skin, took a stick deodorant, daubed it over the long space between her shoulder and elbow and then rested the transfer there.
“Last chance,” he said. “You still sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“I ain’t gonna lie, sweetheart. It’s going to hurt some.”
“That’s alright,” she said. “I don’t mind a little pain.”
Isabella wandered through the square. It was big and mad, and it had frightened her when she had first arrived with her mother last year, but as the weeks had passed, she had grown to love the crazy rush of it, the hordes of people, the haggling, the clamour. The change from day to night was best of all. The fires were lit, the lights started to glow against the gloaming, the smells became richer and more appetising. The muezzin’s call rang out from the minarets of the mosque, and overhead a flock of fat gulls circled the market, waiting to gorge on the abundant scraps.
The last four months had b
een a mad, dizzying blur. Michael Pope had driven her away from the hospital as the police and the black SUVs with tinted windows descended upon it. Her mother’s plan for her had been to catch the train to Philadelphia and then fly out of the airport there, but he had suggested that would be too dangerous. She had been too frightened to demur. He had driven west to Charlotte, instead, and Douglas International. They had taken a domestic flight to Atlanta and then flown from there, direct to Paris. They transferred again and flew Air Maroc to Marrakech.
Isabella had slept on the flights. She had been smothered by the urge to sleep, and since she felt a little uncomfortable talking to Pope, she had surrendered to it. When she did awake, she would look at him through the slits of her half-closed eyes. As they transited through Charlotte and Atlanta, she noticed that he was watchful and alert. He looked very able, and Isabella felt safe with him.
They had arrived in Paris. Pope had been uncomfortable when she had thanked him for his help and told him that she would be fine. He was reluctant to let her leave, but really, what could he have done? Her passport might have been fake but it was a good fake, and it recorded that she was sixteen years old, almost an adult, and he was no relation to her. There was also the problem that he clearly had no idea what he should do with her. He couldn’t take her back to England with him, especially if she didn’t want to go. And if she had gone with him, what would he do with her next? Foster parents again? Isabella would never have accepted that, and Pope had known it.
Instead, he had written his telephone number on the back of a magazine and told her that if she ever needed him, then all she had to do was call. She had torn the page out, folded it and slipped it into her pocket, although she had no intention of ever using it.
Pope had told her one more thing. He had seen her mother when they were in London, and Beatrix had asked him to wipe every trace of her daughter from the record. He said that he had done that. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Isabella Rose did not exist.
And then that was that. His flight home left before hers, and so he had hugged her, wished her good luck, and left her alone with the swell of travellers in the departures lounge.
She had her mother’s credit card, and it had been a simple enough thing to purchase an onward ticket to Marrakech. Her hopes had originally been pinned on Mohammed and Fatima. That had been the plan. Her mother had said that they would be responsible for her in her absence, and yet there was no sign of them. The telephone number that she had called from the airport went unanswered. Her mother had given her the name and address of a café in Marrakech that she was to visit in the event that she couldn’t reach Mohammed, but the proprietor said that he hadn’t seen him or his wife for several days. She had visited every day for the first month, but there was no sign of them. Then, at the start of the second month, the proprietor told her that he had heard Mohammed and Fatima had been seen with a group of four white men, just after the attack on the riad. They had been forced into the back of a car and driven away.