by Andy Maslen
Gabriel laughed.
“Where did you pick up such salty English phrases?”
“Oh, you know, hang around with Don and his crew of cutthroats and a few choice pieces of idiom rub off on you. Now get this thing rolling and get me out of here.”
Marlborough Lines
Approaching the gatehouse at Marlborough Lines, Gabriel experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. Back on base! The militarily precise road layout, the white lettering on the tarmac for PASS HOLDERS and NON–PASS HOLDERS. And an almost perfectly circular roundabout, in the centre of which stood a rectangular block constructed of some kind of pink stone. Gold lettering told the visitor, if he needed telling, that he was approaching Marlborough Lines. Above the lettering, the logo of the British Army: a golden lion atop a crown, in front of crossed swords.
Gabriel rolled to a stop at the barrier and buzzed the window down, waiting for the gate guard to come round the car to ask the usual questions.
“Good morning, sir. How can we help you?”
Gabriel had his Department ID ready and handed it over.
“We’re here to see Captain Forshaw. He’s expecting us.”
The guard frowned, then bent his head to scrutinise Gabriel’s ID card. He turned it over but the back was blank, then turned it round again. His brow furrowed.
Not seen one of these before? Gabriel wondered. Or is this your usual routine?
“Does your companion have one of these too, sir?” the guard asked, looking past Gabriel at Eli.
Eli returned his stare, turning on that powerful smile that Gabriel had seen work its magic on complete strangers before. Her eyes sparkled like gemstones in her tanned face.
“Yes, I do, sergeant,” she said, proffering her own ID.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not a ma’am. Just a miss.”
Then she winked.
To Gabriel’s amazement, the soldier blushed and after a quick scan of Eli’s ID, handed both cards back in to Gabriel.
“Wait—” he cleared his throat. “Wait here, please, sir,” he said.
While the guard went into the guardhouse to check them out and presumably call Captain Forshaw, Gabriel turned to Eli.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?” Eli replied, eyes wide, all innocence and butter-wouldn’t-melt.
“That!” Gabriel nodded towards the guardhouse.
“I was just being friendly.”
“Huh.”
“You’re jealous!”
“No I’m not! He’s just the gate guy.”
“Maybe I like men in uniform. He seemed very sure of himself. I like that in a man. And don’t forget, Captain Wolfe, I used to be a samal rishon myself.”
“A staff sergeant, yes, I remember. But you ended up an officer, didn’t you?”
“They forced it on me. I told you before I would’ve preferred to stay in charge of a squad.”
“And I bet your men loved you, didn’t they?”
“Yes. The girls, too.”
Just then, the gate sergeant returned to Gabriel’s side of the car.
“Can you both come inside and fill out visitor passes? Then we can let you in and direct you to Captain Forshaw’s office. We’ve rung to let him know you’re here.”
“I can,” Gabriel said. “But my colleague here twisted her ankle. We had a little adventure on the way down here.”
The sergeant peered in at Eli. She lifted her leg with both hands to give him a look at the swollen ankle.
“No problem, miss. I’ll bring you a form. If you can take a selfie we’ll get it off your phone and onto our system. You’ll want to have that looked at by the MO.”
She smiled at him and fished her phone out.
The formalities dealt with, the sergeant waved them through with directions to the medical centre and Captain Forshaw’s office.
“I think you’ve got a friend for life back there,” Gabriel said.
Eli pouted at him.
“Don’t worry. I still like you a little bit.”
Gabriel pulled the Merc off the perimeter road and parked in front of the medical centre.
“Here we are. Let’s get you to the MO.”
He jumped down and rounded the front of the car to open the door and help Eli climb out. She banged her injured leg against the door and swore, loudly.
“Fuck it, that hurts like a bastard!”
“Come on, it’s only a few steps. Here, give me your arm.”
Together they negotiated the double doors, stumbling and bumping hips, before they found the reception area and Eli was able to lower herself, with a sigh, into a chair.
Gabriel went up to the reception desk and explained to the medical orderly on duty what had happened. He returned to the chair next to Eli.
“MO’s going to come and get you in a few minutes.”
“Good. I need this thing strapping up and a fistful of painkillers.”
“Painkillers? I thought with your background, you’d just bite a bullet and gut it out.”
Her eyes popped wide.
“Fuck you!” Then she punched him, hard, in the shoulder. Twice. “Gut that out, why don’t you?”
Eli’s bunched knuckles had located a bundle of nerves called the brachial plexus. The punches had numbed his arm down to the elbow. Gabriel rubbed away at his shoulder, trying to massage some sensation back into the squashed nerve fibres. That’ll teach me to poke fun at an injured ex-IDF and Mossad operator .
“Miss Schochat?”
A warm male voice with a hint of a Scottish burr made them both turn round.
“I’m Dr Murray,” the man approaching Eli’s chair said.
He was short: barely more than five six, and trim like a bantam-weight boxer. Ginger hair cut into an old-fashioned short back and sides, with a salt-and-pepper moustache like a toothbrush.
He shook hands with them both and then squatted in front of Eli to take a look at her ankle.
“Let’s get you a wheelchair and we’ll take a look at that properly. I see you’re sporting a plaster, too. We’ll have a little peep under that as well while we’re at it. Orderly?”
The orderly on reception hurried over.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Could you scare up a wheelchair for this young lady, please? Quick as you like.”
While Eli was being treated in Dr Murray’s consulting room, Gabriel pulled out his phone and called Don.
“Hi, Boss, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks, Old Sport. Tip top. How was the briefing with Tim?”
“Fine. He knows his stuff. Put together a short but informative dossier on Darbandi for us.”
“Excellent. He said the same. And did you arrive at Marlborough Lines in one piece?”
“More or less. But we were contacted on the way down. Chased off the M3 by a Merc SUV and then barged off the road. Four occupants, looked like private security. Armed with pistols. New-looking Sigs.”
“And?”
“And they came after us. We made it into a wood and killed them all. Eli’s got a twisted ankle. She’s with the MO now. We took their car, so you may want to recover it and send it for forensic analysis. And we took their pistols. I haven’t checked under the boot floor so there may be more weapons in there. Other than that, the car’s pretty clean. No documents, no personal items. The plates are probably fake.”
“Good work. Glad to hear you’re both safe. Whereabouts did they run you off the road?”
“It’s a stretch of the A30 just past Micheldever Station. It’ll be easy to find. There’s a bloody big dent in the Armco and a Ford Mondeo-shaped hole in the undergrowth all the way down the bank and into a field.”
“The woods?”
“Head for an oak tree and an old harrow in the centre of the field. From there go into the woods at about eleven o’clock. Body one’s pinned to a log through his hand. Two’s—”
“That’s all right. We’ll send a team in with dogs. Di
d it look like the sort of place hikers might stumble over?”
Gabriel thought for a moment. No obvious paths. The barbed-wire fence.
“I don’t think so. It looked like it was enclosed on private land.”
“Good. I’ll get some people down there ASAP. One last thing?”
“Yes, Boss?”
“Did you or Eli get the chance to talk to any of the men before they expired?”
“I did. I asked him who sent them. All he said was it was blacks.”
“Blacks?”
“Yes.”
“Which blacks? Africans? West Indians? Americans?”
“I asked him but he’d gone by then. I retrieved their phones, though. Four of them.”
“OK. Look, stick to the plan as is. I’ll put wheels in motion this end. We’ll recover the Merc and the phones, and you can have the car our chap comes down in. Keep me posted. I want regular reports. Especially if anything else … um … untoward happens.”
Don ended the call. Gabriel looked at the screen, then at the door through which Eli had been wheeled. Maybe I’ve got time , he thought. As the thought entered his conscious mind, an unconscious part sent a shiver of anticipation through him. He tapped for his speed-dial numbers and hit BF. As the distant phone rang, he listened to the long purrs with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. No answer. He started composing a message to leave on her voicemail.
Hey, Britta. It’s me.
Shit! That’s so lame. Maybe in Swedish.
Hej du. Hur går kriget mot terror?
How goes the war on terror? Really?
Then she answered.
“Hello, you. Long time, no see. Or hear, I mean. How are you? Are you still fighting bad guys for Don Webster? Oh God, sorry. I’m bibbling.”
“It’s babbling . And it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yours, too. I thought you were never going to speak to me again.”
So did I , Gabriel wanted to say. But he held back. He needed to feel his way back into his relationship with the Super-Swede he’d wanted to marry. Loading her up with guilt wouldn’t help.
“I just needed to get away. I went out to Hong Kong. I lived in Master Zhao’s house for a year. Well, it’s mine now. He left everything to me.”
“You know, I never had time to talk to you properly about what happened. And I wanted to. I still want to. I know you lost everyone who mattered to you. I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t lose you, though.”
“No. You were my Riddare i skinande rustning , weren’t you? I teased you about it, but you saved me from Lizzie Maitland and her tame pit bull. You saved my life. And not for the first time.”
And still you dumped me! Gabriel wanted to shout down the phone at her.
“You would have done the same for me. So how’s life in Stockholm. The new job working out?”
“Oh, ja! Jävla jättebra! Jag älskar det .”
Britta lapsed into her mother tongue whenever emotions were running high, Gabriel reflected ruefully. It’s fucking awesome, and you love it. Pity you couldn’t have taken the job before I proposed.
“That’s great. I’m really pleased for you.”
“So are you seeing anyone?”
That’s my Britta. Always direct and to the point.
“Oh, you know.”
“No, I don’t. But now maybe I think you are. Is she pretty? Is she bright? You told me you liked clever girls. Didn’t you date an archaeologist once?”
“Petra, yes. But she was an anthropologist.”
“Basically the same thing, isn’t it?”
“I think so. One’s more about the living, the other’s more about the dead.”
“And what about your living girlfriend? Is she pretty? What’s her name?”
Gabriel sighed. Britta had a way of asking social questions as if she were interrogating a suspect.
“Yes, she is pretty. She’s Israeli. Her name’s Eli Schochat. We’re working together. And here she is now. Look, I have to go. Can I call you again?”
“Of course! Don’t be a dummy! Whenever. Ciao!”
Gabriel looked at Eli. She was smiling. Limping, and using an aluminium walking stick. But no wincing.
“You’re looking better,” he said as she sat beside him.
“The doc fixed me up with a bit of strapping and a couple of very nice purple pills. Not sprained, just went over on it. It’ll be fine in a day or two.” She touched her forehead. “He glued me together!”
“Good. We can rest up and hit the gym or something, then get on with the training when you’re properly fit.”
“On which subject, the doc wants to see you next.”
“Me? Why?”
Eli stretched out a finger and gently pressed the tip against Gabriel’s right cheek.
“You have a nasty cut there. It needs cleaning and maybe suturing. Couple of butterfly stitches, maybe.”
“OK,” Gabriel said, standing. “Wish me luck.”
“Who were you just talking to?”
“What, on the phone?”
“No, idiot! Through the speaking tube. Of course on the phone!”
Gabriel hesitated, just for a fraction of a second. But Eli caught it.
“It was Britta, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. You told me to.”
“Well?” Eli said, leaning closer and nudging him with her shoulder. “How was it?”
“It was fine. You know, I mean, really, it was OK. Good. We just swapped a bit of news. Then you arrived and—”
“You hung up guiltily.”
“No! I just wanted to see how you were.”
She leaned closer still and planted a kiss on his cheek, just below the cut.
“I’m teasing. I like you a lot, Gabriel Wolfe, but I know you two have history. You don’t think I was a blushing virgin before I met you, do you?”
Before Gabriel could frame a suitably diplomatic reply, she pushed him.
“Go on,” she said. “Can’t keep the MO waiting.”
Stitched Up
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?” the MO said. “Now, relax your facial muscles. Can’t get the bloody thing in otherwise.”
He depressed the plunger on the syringe he was holding and injected anaesthetic into Gabriel’s cheek. Gabriel winced at the thought of the needle tip hitting a bone beneath the skin.
“I wouldn’t let her hear you talking like that. She’d rip your arm off and beat you to death with the soggy end.”
“Really? I didn’t form that impression of her at all. Seemed remarkably pleasant. Especially considering you practically backed over her foot.”
“What?” Gabriel almost corrected the MO, then grinned. That was one thing he liked about Eli. She loved to keep information close to her chest. She was playful, too. “Oh, yeah. She’s very forgiving.”
He watched as the MO threaded a suture onto a curved needle. Steeled himself. Bullets and grenades, knives and bayonets – they were weapons of war, and Gabriel had long ago found an accommodation with the idea of the injuries they could inflict. But he’d never enjoyed the idea of surgery while awake, even though he’d been stitched up more than once by a combat trauma surgeon.
“Now, then,” the MO said. “Let’s just put this – ”
Gabriel felt pressure in his cheek –
“ – into there – ”
– a tugging sensation –
“ – and then we’ll have it out – ”
– another softer tug –
“ – there. Tie it off. Snip the ends, et voilà ! I think we’ll just put one more in for luck. Hold still.”
Five minutes later, Gabriel and Eli were driving away from the medical centre, looking for Captain Forshaw’s office. Gabriel saw the sign he was looking for and pulled off the central avenue through the base onto a side road. At the end of the road, he drove through a set of gates and into a car park. He pointed at a brick-built block across an expanse of grass, in the centre of whic
h an olive-drab anti-aircraft gun stood sentry on a concrete platform, its fifteen-foot barrel pointed skyward. Gabriel searched his mental database of heavy weapons and came up with a hit: a Vickers QF 3.7-in heavy anti-aircraft gun.
“Come on, then, Hopalong,” he said, nudging Eli in the ribs.
Inside the building, which was titled “Training, HR, Learning & Devt.,” the layout and furnishings suggested a regional manufacturing firm, or maybe an IT consultancy. Bland corporate sofas in royal blue, grouped around a low table on which Army and civilian magazines were scattered. Brochures and reports in a revolving literature display stand. And a reception desk, staffed by two civilians, a man and a woman, both in grey suits and white shirts.
Gabriel approached the desk.
“Yes, sir,” the woman said, with a bright smile. “How can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Captain Forshaw. We’re expected.”
“Can I see your visitor passes, please?”
Gabriel handed his over and went back to get Eli’s, which he slid across the top of the reception counter.”
“Those both look fine, sir. Thank you. Take a seat, and I’ll call Captain Forshaw.”
Gabriel did as he was told and settled in to wait. Stand by to stand by , he thought. But it turned out they didn’t have to stand by at all. The receptionist replaced the handset on her phone and called across to him.
“Sir? Captain Forshaw’s free now. Through the double doors, down the corridor, turn left, and it’s the third door on the right.”
Gabriel pushed through the doors and held them for Eli. Then, slowing his natural gait so Eli could keep up, he headed down the narrow corridor. It smelt of nylon carpet and cleaning fluid. Arriving at the third door – which bore a name plaque: Capt. M. Forshaw – he knocked then pushed open the door and beckoned Eli through.
The woman behind the desk was halfway to standing as Gabriel entered the office. She was in No. 8 combat dress, and the rank slide on the front of her jacket bore the three bullions, informally known as “pips,” of a captain. Smiling, she extended her right hand. Eli took it and then it was Gabriel’s turn. Bloody gate sergeants! he thought.