by Andy Maslen
“I kick it as high as I can.”
“What happens, Gabriel? When you kick the ball so high?”
“It flies up in the sky. Right over Michael’s head. It’s gone in the water. Michael couldn’t catch it.”
“Now what? What are you telling him?”
Michael is laughing. He’s pulling his T-shirt over his head and treading the heels down on his trainers to push them off. He turns his back on me and walks to the harbour wall at the edge of the park. Mummy hasn’t even looked up. She told us to play quietly but that was ages ago.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Why, nothing? Are you sure? Don’t you want the ball back?”
I don’t want to see this next bit. I don’t want to!
“Yes, but Michael’s bossing me again.”
“What is he saying?”
“He says, ‘I’ll get it. Watch me, Gable.’ He’s climbed over the wall and dived into the water. He’s … Michael! No! Mummy! Come quick! Michael’s … I can’t see him, he’s … No!”
The lady in his head sounds worried. Not cross, exactly. But she doesn’t sound so friendly anymore.
“Listen to me, Gabriel. Come back with me. I’m going to count to three and when I say ‘three’ you will wake up and be here with me. One, two, three.”
Gabriel opened his eyes and sat bolt upright in the armchair. He was panting and staring at Fariyah. He spoke, though in his head his voice sounded leaden and flat.
“It wasn’t me.”
Fariyah shook her head, smiling softly at him.
“It appears not.”
“But how come I thought I’d ordered him into the water to get it? If he made the decision, why did I blame myself for all these years?”
Fariyah clasped her hands in her lap. Looked down at them, then up at Gabriel.
“Perhaps, as his older brother, you felt it was your duty to protect him. To look after him. Your subconscious found it impossible to accept that he had dived in voluntarily, so it fabricated a story that fitted with your moral outlook. I know you took personal responsibility for Smudge’s death, though that, too, was not your fault.”
“Maybe not my fault, but he was one of my men. He was my responsibility.”
“I know. And I think that is simply an aspect of your character, an unchanging aspect. It is part of what makes you the man you are.”
Gabriel furrowed his brow, clasping his hands together as if in prayer and bringing them to his pursed lips. How could I have got it so wrong? Blaming myself for Michael’s death when all along it was him who decided to go in after the ball?
Fariyah was consulting a notebook. Then she looked up at him. She looked troubled. Oh no, what now?
“Something wrong, Doc? I mean apart from my memory?”
“Not wrong. But there’s something you said a couple of appointments ago that I wanted to check with you. It has to do with Michael. Normally we would have got to this within a month or so, but your … unpredictable … schedule means that months can turn into years.”
“Go on, then.”
“Can you tell me that story again about when you realised you hated him?”
Gabriel scratched at his scalp. Reaching back into his memory twice over, he located, first, the time he’d talked to Fariyah about his intense feelings of jealousy when Michael was born, and second, the incident that seemed to mark the beginning of those feelings of possessiveness towards their mother.
“It was my third birthday. It’s my earliest memory. I remember it clearly because the cook made me a big birthday cake, and my Dad gathered all the staff for a tea party that afternoon. I was in my bath after the party. Mum was sitting on a towel chest, feeding Michael. Breastfeeding him, I mean. You know, he was just this little baby. All red and wrinkly. I climbed out and punched her legs. Then, later, after she’d put us both to bed, I went into the nursery and looked into his cot. He was all wrapped up in a little blue blanket and I remember wanting to kill him. Wanting him to be dead so I could have her all to myself again.”
Fariyah’s normally smooth forehead furrowed again.
“Mothers normally only breastfeed until six months. Maybe a year if they’re able. Your description of Michael makes him sound younger. But can you see the problem with this picture?”
“What, you mean apart from a psychopathic toddler wanting to kill his baby brother?”
“Yes, apart from that.”
Gabriel looked up at the ceiling. A broad-bladed fan revolved slowly, wafting cooler air down across his forehead. Through an open window, a sudden gust of wind brought the scent of roses into the conservatory from the garden beyond. The same scent as he’d smelled in the carpark at Marlborough Lines. The same scent given off by the roses down in Victoria Park and outside his boyhood bedroom. Something was battering at the doors of his conscious mind. Something about the baby. About the toddler. The little baby. And the three-year-old toddler.
The truth came like a slap.
He looked at Fariyah, the synapses in his brain all firing at once, so that he felt illuminated from within by a bright, white light.
“I was too young!”
Fariyah nodded, her face impassive.
“You were three. The baby was somewhere between newborn and a year old. Michael wouldn’t be born for another year.”
“But how? First the harbour and now this?”
She shook her head.
“There’s no easy answer to that question. But let’s take a step back here and look at what we know. One, you were in no way responsible for Michael’s death. You need some time to process that, but I think that’s tremendously positive. Guilt is a destructive emotion, as I think you know, and this is a huge burden you can lay down. Two, it appears that there was a third child. A middle child.”
“Of whom I have no memory. Or only that one. Did it die?”
Fariyah sighed, then she smiled a small, tight-lipped smile. Coming from her, it seemed an impossibly sad expression.
“It looks as though he, or she, might have. Otherwise, they would have grown up with you and, even if you were living with Master Zhao, you would have known about them.”
Gabriel shook his head. He reached for his glass and drained it. It had warmed up in the time he had been sitting with Fariyah and tasted acidic.
“I … I need to find out what happened. This is just, I mean, I came to see you because of Michael and now there’s, you know, I had another brother, or a sister. At least for a little while.”
“It sounds as though you need to do some research in Hong Kong. Or perhaps our old friend Google would be the place to start.” She checked her watch. “I think that’s plenty for today. Let’s end it here and join the others. I can smell something lovely coming from the kitchen.”
Gabriel drank only water at dinner. He supposed the lamb stew and rice Simon had cooked tasted delicious, though he could barely register the sensation as he put each forkful into his mouth. The talk ebbed and flowed, and the three Crace children were lively conversationalists. If he contributed, he forgot instantly what he had said. After a dessert of rose petal jelly and tiny cups of thick, sweet coffee with almond biscuits, Fariyah stood and motioned to Gabriel to join her as she left the kitchen.
Standing in the hall, she looked into his eyes. Her forehead below the smooth folded edge of the hijab was furrowed with concern.
“Are you all right?”
Gabriel inhaled deeply then sighed the air out in a rush.
“I’m not sure, to be honest.”
“Would you like to stay here tonight? We have plenty of room.”
“I think I’m going to head back, if it’s OK with you? The drive will do me good and that coffee was strong enough to wake the dead. Sorry, bad choice of words.”
“It’s fine. Go, then. But drive carefully. And call me when you can. I’m always here for you, Gabriel, you know that.”
Gabriel returned to the kitchen to say goodbye, then left.
As he twiste
d the key in the ignition, he checked the mirror, then reversed into the road and pulled away, resisting the almost-overpowering urge to slam his foot down on the throttle.
With each passing mile, the traffic lessened. He tried and mostly succeeded in keeping his speed below 100 mph. Then, on the A303, he was alone. The digital clock on the dashboard said 11.30 p.m. He checked his mirror. No black SUV racing up behind him, gaping maw threatening to swallow him whole. He looked forwards. No red lights in the distance. The road ahead swept down and to the right in a long, sweeping curve. Now he did what he had been resisting since Hampstead.
With a yowl from its turbocharged engine, the RS3 leapt forwards under the urging of Gabriel’s right foot. Someone at The Department had specced, or added, a head-up display. Seeming to float twenty feet in front of the windscreen, green numerals registered the car’s increasing speed. Whoever had added the head-up display had also removed the speed limiter. Steering into the bend, Gabriel watched the ghostly numerals shimmer through 155 mph and continue ticking up. At 170, the engine was roaring. Gabriel held his arms firm, without locking his elbows, and powered on down the road and exited the bend at 174. Then it happened. An audible snap inside his head like a safety catch being flicked off.
He had the same, mad desire that seemed to afflict him more and more these days. To stop steering into the bend and let the car run off the carriageway. Onto the hard shoulder. Then into and through the barrier, until it all ended in a spectacular crash that would make his and Eli’s previous adventure behind the wheel look like a fairground ride, and he, Gabriel Wolfe, would be rendered into his constituent parts, to join Michael, his unknown sibling, his parents, his dead friends and comrades and Master Zhao, and all his many targets.
“No!” he shouted.
He gripped the wheel tighter and eased off the power until the small bomb in which he was encased slowed through the triple-figures and broke the ton – in the right direction this time. The road straightened and he resumed an 80-mph cruising speed, letting his breath normalise. When the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream had dissipated, he pulled over and brought the car to a stop. Then he opened the driver’s door, rushed round to the nearside of the car and threw up onto the long grass beyond the Armco, holding onto the sharp-edged metal barrier for support. Blowing his nose and dabbing the tears from his eyes, he climbed back into the cabin.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, gently massaging his stomach.
When will it end? Just when I thought I’d come to terms with Michael’s death I discover I was one of three children.
He kept his eyes closed and slowly drifted into a place somewhere between waking and sleeping. Waiting for the pain in his gut to subside and the voices in his head to quieten.
A sharp rapping on the window jerked him out of his semi-trance. He opened his eyes and looked right to see a traffic cop peering in, his silver beard glistening in the light from his torch, which he was shining directly at Gabriel’s face.
Going too Fast
Gabriel checked the rearview mirror. A police car in chequered trim was parked a few yards back. He buzzed the window down. If the cop had been alerted to his passage through this part of Wiltshire at over twice the legal limit, Gabriel would need the famed “Get Out of Jail Free” card possessed by all Department operators.
“Everything all right, sir?” the cop asked, his voice not unfriendly, though his eyes were narrowed with suspicion, or maybe it was just in response to the bright light of his own torch.
Suddenly, Gabriel had an uncomfortable thought. What if he’s not a cop? What if he’s with the same crew who barged us off the road? He scanned the front of the cop’s hi-vis vest but couldn’t see a telltale bulge that would indicate a firearm.
“Yes, officer. Sorry. I had dinner with friends and something must have disagreed with me. I had to stop to be sick.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes. In London.”
“Whereabouts in London, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Gabriel realised what the cop was doing, but his mind was fuzzy and he couldn’t think fast enough. Hesitating would look bad.
“Hampstead.”
The cop smiled.
“Nice. And you left your friend’s house when?”
“Er, not sure exactly. Ten thirty?”
The cop made a great show of consulting his watch.
“Well, you’ve made extremely good time. It’s only eleven forty-five now, so you made it from Hampstead all the way to here in just an hour and a quarter.”
Gabriel started mentally preparing himself for what would come next, visualising the scene where he handed over the white rectangle of plastic with a Government crest on it and a phone number.
“There wasn’t much traffic.”
“There can’t have been! That’s, what, a seventy-mile trip? Let’s see.” The cop looked upwards. Then back at Gabriel. “If my maths is correct – and I did get an ‘A’ in my GCSE – you averaged fifty-six for the journey.”
“Is that good?”
“Good? It’s bloody amazing! Stick to the speed limits all the way, did you, sir? In Hampstead and round the North Circular?”
Honesty is the best policy. Gabriel smiled and aimed for a sheepish look.
“I may have gone over it once or twice, officer. When the roads were empty, you know?”
The cop scratched his chin. He was still squatting at the window and Gabriel was willing to bet his quads were screaming.
“OK, look. Let’s not muck about,” the cop said, finally. “Car like this? Middle of the night? Empty roads? You’ve been caning it. From the noises coming from under the bonnet I’d say your engine’s just short of melting point. I can’t smell any alcohol on you and you seem to have your wits about you. But for the rest of your journey, I want you to stick to sixty, OK? Where are you headed?
“Marlborough Lines.”
“Soldier?”
“Ex. I’m with the Ministry of Defence now.”
“Fine. I’m going to follow you to the turnoff. We’ll call it one public servant helping another, shall we?”
So, for the remaining portion of his journey, Gabriel trundled along like the pensioner he’d railed at on his previous drive down the A303. He switched the cruise control to 59 mph, with his Battenburg-liveried escort maintaining a fixed, if discreet distance behind him. When he turned off, the cop roared past, giving him a double-toot on the horn and a wave.
He was in bed beside Eli twenty minutes later.
“How’d it go with Fariyah?” she mumbled. She smelled of massage oil.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”
“OK, Boss. Night.”
“Night.”
But Gabriel didn’t sleep. Not until much, much later.
The following morning, he roused Eli and, while they dressed, explained about his session with Fariyah the previous evening.
“That’s amazing. She’s really good, isn’t she?” Eli said through a mouthful of toothpaste foam.
“That’s one way of putting it. But now what? I mean, I thought my life was complicated enough, but now it’s like a fucking great jigsaw where someone ripped the picture off the box.
She spat into the basin, then turned and put a hand on his cheek.
“Let’s talk more tonight over a bottle of wine. Right now, we need breakfast. What time did Sam say we had to be at the Plain?”
“Eight thirty.”
“OK. It’s seven now. Come on. Let’s get going.”
Briefing Room 17D
TEHRAN
Its present occupants would have denied the fact strenuously, had they known it. But Briefing Room 17D at the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security on Delgosha Alley could have been lifted directly from the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Or, for that matter, from MI6’s in London, Mossad’s in Tel Aviv, the FSB’s in Moscow or countless other security service buildings from Ankara to Tokyo. That is to say, unim
aginative institutional decorators, or those who wrote the rules they followed, had selected for the walls the sludgy green of stagnant pond water. The boardroom table that almost filled the fourteen-by-fourteen-foot space was of highly polished mahogany. The seats were mesh-backed, black leather, swivel numbers. And a matrix of four plasma TV screens entirely covered one wall from waist-height to the ceiling. In the centre of the table a black plastic conference-calling module crouched like a giant black spider, from which someone had pulled all but three, fat legs.
Facing the black screens sat General Omar Razi, head of the MOIS. Next to him sat the third-most-powerful cleric in Iran, Ayatollah Sharpour Al-Khemenah.
“General Razi, sir. I have Blacksmith on the line. Shall I patch him in?”
Razi came from an old Persian family who had served the Shah during his reign and the previous members of the Pahlavi dynasty who had ruled Persia/Iran for two and a half thousand uninterrupted years. After the 1979 revolution, they had skilfully manoeuvred their way back into the corridors of power. His father had also been a military man, though in a frontline combat regiment rather than in the intelligence role he once told his son was little more than “creeping about listening at keyholes.” Nevertheless, he respected the old man, and had heeded his words that, “One should always be courteous to those under one’s command. Shouting is for bullies and weak men.”
Now, he leaned towards the microphone placed on the polished wood in front of him.
“If you would be so kind.”
“Very good, General.”
The black spider clicked once, then, as though he were sitting in the next-door office, the man known as Blacksmith, came on the line.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope you are all well,” he said in Farsi.
Razi rubbed at his nose. Despite the vetting they had devoted to the Englishman, he was never entirely comfortable holding conversations with him. If he turned out to be a plant by the British, then Razi would very quickly get to experience all the delights of the MOIS basement that he himself had been instrumental in developing. The fact that the mole spoke Farsi perfectly did nothing to reassure him.