by Andy Maslen
Gabriel stopped talking, aware he was beginning to gabble his words. He looked round. Eli was staring at him. Don took his fingers away from his chin and laid his palms flat on the desk.
“You all right, Old Sport?”
“Yes, of course. I’m fine.”
“Only, when you and Eli came to my house, you said you hadn’t met anyone up there.”
Gabriel tried for an offhand shrug, but it felt mechanical, forced – a puppet being operated by an unskilled apprentice.
“I was probably still in shock from being tortured by Razi.”
Don pursed his lips. Then he drew his hand slowly down across his cheeks and chin, before pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. He said nothing for a few seconds. Gabriel counted to five. Wondered what his boss was going to say.
Get yourself a psych eval from The Department’s psychologist.
Take some time off.
Give the old brain a chance to relax?
Heat of battle, Old Sport. Happens to the best of us.
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Any other little glitches in the old grey matter?”
Gabriel shook his head. It was easier than outright lying.
Don turned to Eli.
“And from your perspective? How did it go?”
“The second operation was a total success. We destroyed Vareshabad and put it beyond use. Whatever materials, technology, records and expertise they had, it’s all either blown to pieces or hotter than hell. I’d imagine we put their nuclear capability back to square one.”
Don smiled.
“Maybe so, maybe so. Although in my experience, rogue states have a way of bouncing back. For every snake, they seem to find a ladder.”
“Yes, well, we’ll just have to blow up more ladders, then, won’t we?” she shot back, eyes flashing. Then Gabriel saw colour rush into her cheeks. “Boss, I mean. Sorry.”
Don flapped his hand a few inches off the desk, where it had come to rest, and shook his head.
“Relax. This is The Department, not the bloody Army. I’ve had enough deference to last me a lifetime, believe me. One last question.”
“Yes, Boss?”
“I had your old boss on the phone yesterday. Very chatty, asking after Christine, the usual pleasantries. Very pleased with how you two handled yourselves. Staving off nuclear war in the Middle East and so on. And he wondered how you were getting on. So I told him. Said you were an indispensable member of my band of cutthroats – ”
Eli smiled.
“Thank you.”
“ – and then he asked me to release you from your contract. Said that after what you and Gabriel had achieved, he thought they could find a senior position – a very senior position was the way he put it – in Mossad. My question to you, therefore, Ms Schochat, is, would you like me to? I meant every word of what I said to Uri. But he and I go back a long way. We both feel the same about our line of work. Individuals matter, but ultimately we’re all pawns. What matters is the game itself. If you think you could do more, would enjoy the work more, back in Israel, you’ve only to say the word and I’ll make it happen.”
Gabriel suddenly became aware just how much he wanted Eli to turn Don down. He felt a hard knot of tension tighten in his stomach as he turned to watch Eli’s reaction.
She ran a hand over her hair and pulled on the ponytail into which she’d fastened it before leaving the house that morning. Then she shook her head.
“No, thanks, Boss. I knew Uri was going to pull a stunt like that. He all but got down on his knees and begged me to stay when you recruited me. I like it here, I like working for you. And,” she turned to Gabriel and grinned, “I like working with Gabriel. Tell Uri I’m staying with your crew of jolly pirates.”
Gabriel exhaled, trying to keep his breathing light. And silent. It mostly worked. Don heard nothing. Eli, however, winked at him.
“What about Frye?” Gabriel asked.
“What about him?”
“How did you track him down?”
“My chap in Frye’s department, Faroukh, told me who had access to details of the operation. It was just him, Frye and one other. We were also looking at Gaddesden, Bennett, Julian Furnish and one or two others, just to be sure. Callie’s DI, the one we met a few years ago, surveiled Frye for almost a week. We needed to catch him red-handed. She finally arrested Frye in Battersea Park, just after he’d met the chief Iranian spook in their London embassy.”
House Guest
ALDEBURGH
After the debriefing at MOD Rothford, Gabriel and Eli drove the pool car – another grey metallic Mondeo, sadly; nothing like the spunky little Audi – to Aldeburgh, arriving ninety minutes later. As he drove slowly down the pretty main street, Eli kept up a running and very sarcastic commentary on the chichi boutiques and home interiors shops.
“Very nice! A recycled birdcage. Yours for just two hundred pounds. Ooh, look at that divine smock, darling! What colour is that? Mud? Driftwood? And those ceramic puffins. We should buy them all. We could have our own flock!”
Gabriel smiled as he neared the end of the road and its cheek-by-jowl Victorian houses in pastel shades of sky-blue, primrose-yellow and rose-pink.
“We’re nearly there,” he said. “Slaughden Road. I’m the last house on the right.”
He pulled onto the gravelled drive of a detached, brick-built house situated next to a boatyard. A white picket fence, peeling in the sun despite its recent paintjob, separated the flower-filled front garden from the road. He climbed out, stretching and rolling his shoulders, and watched Eli do the same. The late afternoon sun was casting long shadows that lengthened ahead of them, across the road.
“It’s beautiful,” Eli said, looking over her shoulder at the house then turning towards the sea, visible beyond the car park opposite the house. “Even nicer than your old place.”
Gabriel opened the boot and took Eli’s bag before she could reach for it. He carried their bags inside and dumped them at the foot of the stairs.
“I’ll show you around later, but first, let’s go and get a drink. The Brudenell Hotel has a terrace facing the sea.”
They’d agreed to split a bottle of white wine, so Gabriel ordered a Sancerre. Once the waiter had brought the wine then retreated to the interior of the hotel, Gabriel picked up his glass and tilted it towards Eli.
“Cheers.”
“Chin-chin.”
He took a sip of the wine. It was perfectly chilled, cool enough to bring out the subtle flavours of flint, vanilla and peach, but not so cold it killed them stone dead.
Eli pointed at the sea, fifty yards distant across an expanse of shingle on which a few families were sitting. The children buried each other under mounds of surf-smoothed stones, or lobbed them into the water. The parents looked on, smiling, or checked their phones, or, rarer still, talked to each other.
“You picked a good spot, Wolfe,” she said. “You didn’t think of moving to London?”
Gabriel sipped his wine. Then shook his head.
“I did, actually. I gave it a lot of thought. Britta’s flat was still up for sale, and for one crazy moment I thought of putting in an offer.”
Eli turned to him, eyes wide, chin pulled in.
“Really? You thought that was a good idea? Buying your ex-fiancée’s flat?”
He grinned.
“Let’s just say I saw the error of my ways. I never even contacted the estate agent. Anyway, I prefer the solitude of the countryside. I brought my boat up from Southampton, too.”
“You have a boat?”
“It was my Dad’s.”
“Oh, OK. Is that, I mean, is it all right, when that’s where they died?”
“It was weird at the beginning. I was going to sell her. But in the end, I decided not to. I mean, they were together on it and they loved each other. It makes me feel closer to them, you know?”
Gabriel stared out at the brownish sea, searching for ships in the distance and wond
ering, as he often did nowadays, whether his mother’s drinking was the result of her younger son’s death at the hands of her older son. No! He heard the inner voice of his psychiatrist, Fariyah Crace, admonishing him. Not at your hands. You were a nine-year-old boy. A little boy playing a game with his brother. Accidents are nobody’s fault, Gabriel. That’s why we call them accidents .
The death of the middle child, then?
Later, as they lay in bed, Gabriel listened to the sounds outside the window. The master bedroom faced the beach. The windows on the front and side walls were open, and a breeze shifted the floor-length muslin curtains as if someone incapable of standing still were hiding behind them. The metallic pinging of halyards against masts from the boatyard next door formed a counterpoint to the crying of gulls and the distant shushing of the waves as the tide came in over the shingle.
“You OK?” Eli asked him.
“Yeah, fine. I think you’re right, though. I need to go back to Hong Kong and try to find out what happened to the baby. I have a lawyer there who might be able to help, and if you did want to come …”
She snuggled closer to him and squeezed his shoulder.
“Of course I want to come. I want to see where you grew up.”
The following morning – Sunday , Gabriel thought with pleasure – they went out for breakfast. Eli ordered “a full English breakfast, please, with poached eggs, white toast and a mug of tea” in an impeccable British upper-class accent that had Gabriel widening his eyes in surprise as the waitress turned away from their table.
“Not bad,” he said.
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m a good mimic, what can I say? Half the women in this town sound like the Royal Family.”
Gift Horses
After breakfast, he and Eli strolled the length of the High Street and back, stopping in every shop that Eli pronounced “quaint,” which amounted to half of them. She even bought a pair of the ceramic puffins.
“I looked up the collective noun. It’s circus ,” she said with a grin, swinging another shopping bag in her free hand. “Maybe they’ll breed, and we can start our own.”
They stayed out for lunch, returning to the house mid-afternoon. Eli announced she wanted a shower, and went upstairs. After his fun with the Ferrari salesman back in Swindon, Gabriel realised he still needed a new car. And maybe buying British was the answer.
A Jaguar? he wondered.
Bit of an old man’s car, Boss, Smudge opined from between his ears.
Something old school, then. A Morgan, or a TVR .
He poured himself a glass of Burgundy from a bottle in the fridge and took it through to the sitting room. There, he plugged his phone into the new amplifier he’d bought when he moved in and flicked through his downloads until he found something to help him think.
With Jimi Hendrix playing the blues on “Red House,” and a cold hit of the wine working its magic in his stomach, Gabriel opened his laptop, intending to find a car website and spend a few pleasant hours browsing among the more hairy-arsed vehicles on sale up and down the country. He’d just begun scrolling down a list of car makes when the email program pinged to let him know he had a message.
He swapped from the web browser to email and smiled as he saw the name of the message’s sender: Terri-Ann Calder. Not so long ago, they’d been drinking wine and eating steaks in her San Antonio home with a six-foot-four Texas Ranger by the name of JJ Highsmith. They’d been remembering her dead husband. Gabriel had avenged his murder in a series of brutal encounters with CIA operators and a particularly unpleasant and obscenely rich psychopath who’d been planning to test a new bio-weapon on Cambodian orphans.
The subject line was intriguing:
Fancy a “Yank tank” on your drive?
He clicked on the message. His smile widened as he read Terri-Ann’s words.
Hey Gabriel,
Guess what? I’m leaving San Antonio. In fact, I’m leaving Texas. In double-fact, I’m leaving the States altogether. I gave notice at school, and I’ve sold the house.
I’m going to be working, and living, in Cambodia. After I donated Orton’s money to Visna Chey’s charity, he got in touch. Well, to make a long story short, I mentioned I was feeling lost out here, and he invited me to go and work for him. He said he’d need help managing the charity in light of my donation.
So I said yes. I hardly even hesitated. Daddy told me he was right behind me. He’s in great shape and said he’d rather put a bullet in his brain than end up turning me into a caregiver (which is so like him!).
I’ve got about a month before I leave. Which brings me to the point of my email. I sold Vinnie’s truck. But the Camaro was his pride and joy. I can’t just put it on Craigslist and let it go to some stranger.
I know you had a blast driving Lucille around when you were over here, so my question is, would you like her? I don’t want any money, though maybe you could make a donation of your own to Tom Boh? You’d need to arrange shipping and whatever paperwork the UK authorities want. But if anyone but Vinnie’s going to be driving her, I want it to be you.
So, whaddya say, pardner?
Much love,
Terri-Ann xx
P.S. How is work now that you’re back in the saddle?
Gabriel took as long to make up his mind as Terri-Ann clearly had before accepting Visna Chey’s offer of employment. He took a sip of the wine then typed out a reply.
Hi Terri-Ann,
Great to hear from you. Your plan to work with Visna sounds perfect. And with your teaching skills you could help the kids with their English – they’d love you!
As far as Lucille goes, yes please! That’s so kind. I’ll look after her. I’ll make arrangements to ship her over here. And I’m going to send a donation to Visna as you suggested – brilliant idea. It’ll give you even more paperwork to administer when you arrive!
Work is good. Can’t say more than that.
All best,
Gabriel x
He pressed Send then closed the laptop. His grin threatened to split his face open as he envisaged thrashing the all-black, ’60s muscle car down an English country road.
Eli appeared in the doorway. She’d changed into a pair of white jeans and a nautical-looking blue-and-white striped top, two of her many purchases from their morning shopping expedition.
“What are you looking so happy about? You look like, what is it, a dog with two dicks?”
“Very good. And yes, I am happy. A friend in the States has just solved my car problem for me.”
“So who’s this friend and how did he solve your car problem?”
“He’s a she, actually. A Texan lady. Used to be married to a friend of mine in American Special Forces. Her husband was killed, and she’s just given me his car.”
“Killed how?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Tell me a story.”
Gabriel told Eli the story of his mission to fulfil the blood oath he swore with Vinnie. Eli interrupted now and again to ask questions about logistics, or a particular piece of kit. When he reached the part where a superannuated Russian jet fighter had dropped two modified cluster bombs full of a bio-weapon onto a school playground, he felt her tense.
“Shit! I hope you killed the fuckers!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know what happened to the pilot. But everyone else got what they deserved.”
“Good. People like that don’t belong among the living.”
They spent the following morning sailing, and the afternoon on the beach. Eli had changed into a coral-coloured bikini, and stood, legs apart, sending stone after stone plinking off a red metal sign poking out of the water thirty yards from the shore.
Gabriel noticed other people on the beach watching her. Admiring her , he thought, with a mixture of pride and pleasure. She’d shaken out her hair and the sun ignited its auburn colour into flares of red. Her olive skin glisten
ed with the suntan lotion she’d had him apply, but the bruises from her encounter with the Iranian security men were still visible. They’d fade, though. In time. Only to be replaced with others , he thought ruefully. No scars, though. Not even beneath those two indecently tiny scraps of sand-speckled fabric.
She turned to see him watching her and waved. Her smile sent a flicker of desire through his bloodstream. He waved back.
His phone rang. It was Britta.
“Don’t tell me you’re here already?”
He looked around, half-expecting the Super-Swede to be walking across the beach towards him, her freckled face cracked with that gap-toothed grin.
“Nope. But I did get an earlier flight. I just got into Heathrow. It’s four o’clock now. I reckon if I hire a car and drive fast I can be with you by seven. Is that OK?”
“Ja! Perfekt! Köra säkert, ja ?”
She laughed.
“Drive carefully? That’s your advice to me , three-time Swedish Army ice rallying champion?”
She had a point. Britta was fast, but never careless. Unlike him. He’d bet she’d never had the urge to floor the throttle and aim the front end at a cliff edge.
“Fine. Drive how you normally do. I’ll put something cold on ice for when you get here.”
“OK. Vi ses senare .”
“Yes. See you later.”
Eli plonked herself down beside him on the towel. She leaned closer and kissed him. She smelled of salt, suntan lotion and her usual lemon shampoo. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer.
“That was Britta. She got an earlier flight. She’ll be here at seven. Six-thirty, if I know her.”
“Excellent! I get to meet her at last.”
At 6.55 p.m., Gabriel opened a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet from the fridge. Three freshly washed and dried glasses stood on a slatted wooden table in the back garden, glinting in the early evening sun. He pushed the bottle down into an aluminium ice bucket and took it out to the garden. Eli, changed now into a long white linen dress, sat on a folding chair, her feet up on a cushion resting on a second chair. She’d washed and brushed her hair, and tied it back with a white ribbon. The dress and ribbon threw her tanned skin into even sharper contrast than the coral bikini had done earlier that afternoon. He leaned over to kiss her. Smelled perfume. Took in the whisper of shimmering green makeup on her eyelids and the deeper pink of her lips.