by Rob Aspinall
“Brought together by a shared heart,” Dr Gradel said, seeming genuinely touched.
“Chloe,” she said, handing me a notepad and silver bullpen, “I’ll need to know what medications you’ve been taking.”
I scribbled out a long list and handed it over.
“Wow,” she said, reading through the list. “Who prescribed all these?”
“The NHS,” I said.
“Ah, public health,” she said, bending over to reach inside a low cupboard.
Me and Philippe caught each other admiring the view.
“What?” he mouthed.
“Pervo,” I mouthed back.
Philippe held his palms open as if to say “pot and kettle”. Dr Gradel spun around and the pair of us averted our eyes to opposite ends of the ceiling.
“I forget we’re more advanced here,” she said, handing me a small white box with the Grüne Hügel logo on the front. It was full of tiny blue pills called GXK. “Forget your previous medication. Just take one of these a day.”
“Wait, that’s it?” I asked.
I was used to popping thirty to forty pills. All the colours of the rainbow. A lot of them big. So big you felt them go down, from throat to stomach. Somehow it didn’t feel right taking one teeny, weeny pillette.
“That’s it,” Dr Gradel said. “We developed it here at Grüne Hügel. It will do the job of all your current medication, only far more efficiently. Greater immunity. Better heart health. Fewer side effects.”
“And way fewer pills,” I said.
Dr Gradel paused a moment. “Of course, they’re not cheap.”
“It’s okay,” I said, smiling and sucking my blackcurrant lolly down to the stick. “Daddy will pay.”
6
Basic
Somewhere else in Austria. The Alps. Basic training.
“If we’re going to do this properly, you need to be ready,” Philippe said to me on the drive over.
“So that was what the medical was for. To make sure I was up to it.”
“Can’t have you keeling over in the middle of a gunfight,” he said, steering the antique Polo up the narrow mountain roads.
The scenery was stunning, but death mere inches away. Deep valleys on one side, blind bends and big, swinging coaches on the other.
“So you’re in,” I said. “Why the change-a-roo?”
Philippe cranked the car into a lower gear as it struggled up the steep incline. “Can you see me playing golf?” he asked.
“Suppose not,” I said. “Not unless it involves beating a man to death with a nine iron.”
We pulled off the road and followed a rubble track across a field until we reached a log cabin about a million miles up the side of a mountain.
I struggled to get out of the car because of the wind, the air thinner than wafer ham.
“Welcome to basic training,” Philippe said.
We stepped inside the cabin.
Against the back wall stood a couple of bone-aching bunks with folded blankets that looked prison-issue; a worn iron pot over a portable gas stove; a rickety wooden table and chairs to match; and not much else besides the view.
“Home shit home,” I said. “This is some kind of dummy place, right? Where’s the eyeball scan? The secret door?”
Philippe dumped his rucksack on the bottom bunk. “New recruits on top.”
“You’ve got to be yanking my chain,” I said. “I mean, where’s the toilet?”
He handed me a shovel propped up against the inside of the door. “You’ll find it out there, behind the trees.”
Oh. My. God. Basic. He wasn’t kidding.
Ten minutes later, I returned with a dirty shovel, a roll of paper and hands in need of washing. There was a bucket of cold water and a bar of soap for that. I shook the water off my hands. Stepped inside the cabin. Philippe was sitting at the table, fiddling with Clarence’s phone.
“Here,” he said. “We’re in.”
I hovered over his shoulder. There was a message from a contact called UNKNOWN:
Status update?
Lost Vasquez on the U-Bahn, Philippe texted in reply. Police and FIS. Heavy presence. Had to disappear. Request instruction.
He hit send. Shortly after, there was a message back.
Changes to work schedule. Confirm soon. Protocol by protocol. Stand by.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means there’s no advance list of assignments anymore. They’re tightening the flow of information. Taking it one job at a time. Minimum notice.”
“Great, so the list is useless. Now everything’s changed again. And we know nothing.”
“Par for the course,” said Philippe. “There’s no reason to think they’ll change the assignments. Just the dates.”
“So what now?” I asked, taking a seat across from him.
“We wait for the next message,” he said, resting Clarence’s phone on the table. “Which means we’ve probably got a week or two at most to cover two years of tradecraft development.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Don’t I know this stuff? I mean, instinctively.”
“You said it came and went.”
“Well, I guess.”
“When you go into a situation, you need to be in control. You, not me or any part of me.”
In truth, I was just trying to get out of it. If the cabin was this unwelcoming, what would the training be like?
“First though,” Philippe said, “we both need to get fitter and stronger.”
He took a needle pen from a supply Dr Gradel had given us and stuck it in my arm without asking.
“Ow. What’s this for?”
“It’ll stop you dying tomorrow,” he said.
“Why, what’s tomorrow?”
Zero four hundred hours. Yep, four in the fricking a.m. Philippe dinked the single, naked lightbulb on, brighter than the sun. I lurched awake and checked my watch. WTF? Philippe rattled a spoon in a tin cup. So loud it sounded like Stomp. I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and juddered.
“It’s the middle of the night,” I said, deciding to climb back under my blanket. “I’ve changed my mind. Tell JPAC to do their worst.”
Philippe whipped the blanket off me and dragged me off the bunk. The wooden floor was as cold and rough as reality. He shoved a neatly folded pile of clothes in my arms and plopped a pair of heavy-duty black boots on top.
“I phoned ahead and asked Helga to pick out your size,” Philippe said.
“Helga?”
“She’ll be here soon,” he said, checking his watch. “Better get changed.”
A morning mountain wind whistled in through the open door and shook the entire cabin. It was still dark when I stepped out onto the mountain, swamped in a set of green army fatigues.
“Do I look like a size ten to you?” I asked Philippe, who snorted with laughter but kept most of it in.
“Tell this Helga, I’m a size six,” I said. “An eight, max.”
“Tell her yourself,” Philippe said, staring into the distance.
A pair of long, yellow headlight beams zig-zagged their way up the mountain road below.
“It’s ball-busting time,” Philippe said as she stepped out of an old army jeep, wider than she was tall, a spiky white short back and sides on a face that made tree stumps look pretty.
She paced up and down in front of us, barking in an Arnie Schwarzenegger accent. “You shall do what I say when I say. Or I will personally shit in your mouth. Understood? IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”
“Yes, sir!” I blurted out.
I was supposed to say Yes, Drill Sergeant, like Philippe. For that, I got an extra rock in a rucksack that already outweighed a hippo. Helga revved her jeep up the mountain behind us as we scrambled up the energy-sapping soil, moss and rocks to the top.
“Okay, do it again!” she said, just as I was about to collapse.
Philippe was abnormally fit, but after three circuits even he was puffing.
“I think I�
��m gonna die,” I said, fighting back a dry heave.
“You don’t get out of it that easily,” Helga shouted from the jeep. “Fucking move!”
No one could do this. My legs gave way under the weight of the bag. Helga stopped the jeep a foot behind me and leaned on the horn until I got to my feet. Philippe doubled back and dragged me along, my boots barely touching the ground.
Not even 6 a.m. and I was already finished. We staggered back to the cabin and I immediately threw up. Helga allowed us a few slugs of water before it was on to the next exercise. Box jumping. Impossible. Too high. My legs too weak. I stood and watched Philippe hop lethargically on and off his box.
“I have a condition,” I said, showing Helga my scar.
“Aww,” she said softly, stroking my hair. “Sorry, my little English flower, I didn’t know. Maybe you should sit this one out, huh?”
“Yes,” I said between breaths. “That would be amazing.”
“OR MAYBE JUST MOVE YOUR FUCKNG LAZY ASS!”
The curly cable veins in her temple scared me into action. She kept on barking until I’d completed all twenty reps. The last ten or twelve, I was basically flopping on top of the box, Helga pulling me off by the waistband and dumping me back on again.
“Pathetic,” she said. “Next exercise.”
“Can’t we have breakfast?” I asked, trying to get my breath back. “Alpen? Toast? A Pop Tart or something?”
Helga called me Lazy Ass again and gave me double squat thrusts.
It went on for two days. Burpees, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, sprints, crawling through mud, walking like a crab, all while trying to stop my combats falling down. More than once, I planned my escape from the training camp, but I couldn’t go through with it. I had to stick it out. By the end of the day, the pair of us were running on fumes, bowls of porridge mixed with vegan protein powder absolutely vile and nowhere near enough to keep us going. Swaying on the spot, covered in mud, Helga sized us up at the end of the nightmare.
“Vazquez, gut. Lazy Ass …”
Please, no more.
“Lazy Ass, you pass,” she said. “Just.”
Helga jumped back in her jeep and sped off down the mountain.
“Tell me she’s not coming back,” I said, virtually crying.
Philippe stared vacantly into the distance, dead on his feet. “If she comes back, we kill her,” he said.
She didn’t come back. My reward was a watery veggie stew, a poo in the bushes and six hours of blissful kip on the hardwood bunk.
#heaven
7
Survival
04:00
Light bulb on.
Door open.
Blanket off.
“Today we start your survival training,” Philippe said.
“Haven’t I survived enough?” I asked, shivering in a ball on the bunk.
Apparently not. He drove me blindfold to a giant, green-brown autumnal forest and ditched me deep in the middle with an army-issue rain mac, a survival book, a map, a compass and a torch.
“What the hell are we doing here?” I asked.
“It’ll toughen you up against the elements and help if you have to go on the run. This is the fastest way to learn.”
“Learn what? How to die of pneumonia?”
“You mean hypothermia,” he said, heading back to the car. “See you in two days … if you make it back.”
“What the f—” I said, jogging after him. “What am I supposed to do out here?”
“Read the book,” he shouted back without breaking stride. He gave me the slip between trees and suddenly he was gone. Like thin air gone.
I stopped and threw my arms in the air. “Great!” I shouted into the forest. “Fucking great!”
I sat against a tree for twenty minutes, moping and grumbling to any forest creature who’d listen. I realised it wasn’t a scare tactic. He really wasn’t coming back.
So what about food?
Water?
Shelter?
Warmth?
And how the frig did I get out of there?
After an hour of aimless wandering, hoping for a main road with a passing truck, I sat down again and flipped through the survival book, looking at the diagrams and pictures.
I read the chapter on how to navigate using the sun and the stars. I emptied out the contents of my rucksack, spreading out the map and flipping open the compass. According to the map, I needed to head west. After a two-hour walk, I realised I had the map upside down and I was supposed to be moving east. It started to rain. Really rain. I trudged back on myself through the endless woods, fat water droplets singing off the trees and rat-a-tatting off my plastic green mac.
I drank from the sky and low-hanging leaves as I walked, until it stopped raining and the sun came out.
I leaned against a tree trunk and took five. The tree trunk seemed awfully familiar.
I checked the compass and the map. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. I’d been there before. It was the same damn tree I peeled the bark off in frustration, earlier in the day.
A squirrel bounded across my path. It stopped and squeaked at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, slumping to my bum. “Laugh at the stupid human.”
I woke up spitting out a mouthful of leaf. I checked the time. Late afternoon, already? In reverse order I needed:
Fire.
Food.
Water.
Shelter.
The shelter design in the book looked too hard. Collecting, cutting, weaving, knitting.
I built a really crap wigwam against the tree trunk instead. A small collection of branches resting precariously against one another. A tiny fart from the wind blew it over, so I pushed the four branches into the ground and draped the mac over the top, tying the ends off and roping the pull string around the tree trunk. Suddenly I had a sturdy shelter and a waterproof roof.
Ha. Voila. Lorna of the Wild.
Water next. I remembered walking by a shallow brook not far from basecamp. I retraced my steps and found it babbling away. I drank until I was full and doubled back.
Too tired to build a fire or figure out which berries were safe to eat, I dried out some leaves on top of the shelter and stuffed them into my fatigues for insulation. I went one further, burying two thirds of my body under the dirt and leaves, shivering myself to sleep.
Not that I slept for long. During the middle of the darkest night on record, I heard all kinds of scary noises. Bugs. Crickets. Owls. Weird sounds I’d never heard before. Then, in the far distance, a howl. A bloody bastard wolf. Seriously?
I heard rustling in the trees and bushes nearby. I flicked on the torch and scanned the forest floor, catching a pair of narrow yellow eyes watching me from the bushes. Was it a bear? The Blair Witch?
I left the torch on, pointing out of the shelter, hoping the forest killer would think it was fire. Eventually, daybreak arrived. I could swear I felt a child’s hand on my shoulder. Thought I saw fingers. Small and dark. I jumped up to my feet. Looked around me. No, imagining it.
The batteries in the torch had died, but it was light and I was alive, with no visible chew marks. I shook the forest floor out of my clothes, took a swig from the brook and set off early, this time finding a road cutting through the forest. I crossed over and headed straight on. According to the map, it was the fastest way. By afternoon I was absolutely knackered, every bone in my body aching. Even the tiny one between my bum cheeks.
My feet were blistering in my boots, waterlogged from another downpour. Yet, according to the compass and the sun, I was getting closer to the X, made in red marker pen on the map. At last, I emerged from the forest into a wide-open expanse of meadow, wild flowers up to my thighs. I looked up and saw a relatively small mountain in my way. Worse still, it was climbable. I couldn’t just give up.
Taking another big gulp of sky water, I started up the mountain. Loose rock at the bottom gave way to slippery mud as I got closer to the top, my whole body on fire. The sun abandoned me withou
t warning and left me stuck up there in the pitch black. The more I scrambled and clawed in the cold muck and gravel, the more I seemed to slide backwards. I kept going, hallucinating that Auntie Claire was there with me, commenting on how all this filth was going to be hell to wash out of my clothes. Likewise, Helga walked with me part of the way, calling me Lazy Ass and barking at me to speed up.
I thought I heard the words Am I alive? whispering on the icy mountain wind. And saw Nathan’s smirking face in the sky. Until, finally, I made it to the top at around 2 a.m.
Shit. Now I had to get down. I crawled backwards on all fours, all the way down into the valley below. Achingly, achingly slowly.
Around five in the morning, I trudged up the winding road to the cabin, caked in mud from hair to hands to the bottom of my boot soles. I thought I saw a small girl standing further up the road – the girl in the white nightie from my dream. I rubbed my eyes. Nothing but a little white mountain goat. It bleated and trotted off into a field. Jesus, I was losing it.
I zombie-walked up to the front of the cabin, too tired and pissed-off to celebrate. Philippe stood in the dim light of the doorway with a steaming brew in a bent metal mug.
He checked his watch. “Seven hours late.”
“Just tell me we have a bathtub,” I said, mouth drier than a cracker sandwich.
Of course we did. And of course it was outside, around the back of the cabin, overflowing with freezing-cold rainwater.
“I’m not getting in that,” I said.
Philippe picked me up and dumped me in. He held me down as I screamed bubbles below the surface.
“It’s the best thing for the aches and pains,” he said, as he pulled my head up out of the water. “You’ll get used to it in a minute,” he said, dunking me in all over again.
The sadistic bastard was right about one thing. The bath from hell did stop a lot of the aching. After a morning power nap, there was just enough time for a bowl of porridge puke before I was handed some clean fatigues and a gun.
“Target practice,” Philippe said.
At last, the proper stuff. A few lucky shots aside, my aim was still pretty shocking. Philippe started me off firing from close range at one of those human-shaped targets you see: black with white circles on the chest.