Blackout

by Dawson, Mark

  He had almost everything he needed.

  Now he just needed Milton.

  * * *

  JESSICA ATTRACTED the attention of the bartender—a man with a sleeve of tattoos down his right arm and a head of greasy black hair—and ordered another gin for herself and an orange juice for Milton. The man turned away and busied himself with the drinks. Jessica put her hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. She seemed reluctant to address the thing that had brought Milton halfway around the world to meet her. Milton found that he didn’t mind the delay. He realised he was anxious about what he might hear.

  “You said you didn’t work for the government anymore,” she said.

  “No. I left. About the same time I stopped drinking.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “I’m a cook.”

  She stared at him.

  “I’m serious. I work in a little café in London. It’s nice.”

  “I don’t believe you. After what you did before?”

  “I know,” he conceded. “It’s not what you might have expected. Like I said, my life’s taken a few unusual turns since I was here last.”

  “You’re full of surprises.”

  The bartender brought their drinks. Milton reached into his pocket, took out two three hundred-peso notes, and laid them on the table. The man put his hand over the notes and swept them away.

  “What about you?” Milton asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I work with my father. We have a bakery in Lucena.”

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “Two hours south. We make pandesal. Sweet breads. You should come. I remember you have a sweet tooth.”

  There was a moment of silence. Milton glanced up at the mirror behind the bar and used it to look back into the room. One of the tables that had been occupied when he arrived was empty now. There was hardly anyone else here.

  “I’m surprised you stayed here,” he said. “I thought you might leave.”

  She shook her head. “No. This is my home. And I didn’t think it was necessary. You were thorough. Fitz went to jail. And…” She paused. “And there had been a change in my circumstances.”

  She smiled a little weakly at him, but then continued before he could speak.

  “My parents were here. I was young, and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a mother. It wasn’t planned.”

  Milton put his elbows on the bar and steepled his fingers. This was the moment. The question he knew he would have to ask.

  He turned and looked directly at her. “And you’re sure?”

  “That I’m a mother?” She smiled at him. “Pretty sure.”

  “That James is my son?”

  Jessica reached down into her bag and took out a small leather-bound book. “Here.”

  She laid it on the table and pushed it across to Milton. It was a scrapbook. He opened the pages, the protective plastic sheaths sticking together until he peeled them apart. A series of photographs had been affixed to the adhesive surfaces of the pages and further secured in place with the sheeting.

  He looked at the photographs.

  The first page contained pictures of a baby. It was a boy, with fat cheeks and a shock of messy black hair. His skin was smooth and coloured the lightest of browns. His eyes were blue, piercing, as he looked into the camera.

  He turned the page.

  The baby was older now. A toddler. The hair was more blond than brown, but his plump cheeks were a little less fat. His eyes were no less blue.

  He turned the page.

  The toddler was a small boy, and then, as he flipped through, a bigger boy. Milton was terrible at guessing the ages of children, but even he could see the passage of time. Five years. Ten years.

  He felt choked. He felt a stickiness in the back of his throat and a tightness in his chest.

  “He’s…” he began. “He’s…”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s yours.”

  “There wasn’t—”

  “Anyone else?” she finished when he could not. “There was de Lacey, like you know, but… he doesn’t look like him, does he? He looks like you.”

  Milton thought that he had processed the information, but, as he sat at the bar with Jessica, he found that he had not. He felt blindsided.

  “Would you like to meet him?”

  “I… I…”

  “It’s Independence Day here the day after tomorrow. There’s a parade and fireworks. James wants to go. Maybe you could come, too?”

  Milton emptied the rest of his drink in one swallow. “I need a cigarette,” he said. “You want one?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just need a breath of fresh air,” he said.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. “Can I get you another drink?”

  He got up. “Yes, please. The same again.”

  12

  LOGAN SAW the door to the bar open and watched as a man walked outside.

  There was a brief flare of red and then a steady glow as the man lit and drew down on a cigarette.

  Milton.

  Logan held his breath. Milton looked up and down the road, but it was apparent that he was distracted. He took a couple of puffs and flicked the unfinished cigarette into one of the large plant pots that flanked the entrance to the bar. He paused for a moment—Logan was concerned that he was going to leave—but then turned on his heel and went back inside.

  * * *

  RODRIGO WATCHED the man buy a pack of cigarettes from the machine and leave the bar. The woman was still sat on the stool.

  “Could I get the same again, please?” she asked.

  “Another orange juice and a gin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.”

  She got up, collected her phone from the bar and went back to the bathrooms.

  Rodrigo swallowed hard. He was nervous. He had been thinking about what Logan had told him and, the way he figured it, he didn’t really have a choice. He was deep in the hole, there was no way he could find the money to pay him back, and, worse, there was something about the way Logan had looked at him that made him even more fearful than he had been with Espinosa. The loan shark was a typical thug, covered in tattoos and with a mouth full of gold caps. Logan was neat and tidy, well dressed, not the kind of man who would come and hang out in a dive like this, but there was something icy about his manner. He had looked at Rodrigo with disdain, as if he was nothing, and, when he had showed him his pistol and made his polite threat, Rodrigo had believed him.

  He quickly filled both glasses with ice, added gin and tonic and a slice of lime to one and poured orange juice into the other. He had the bag that Logan had given him in his pocket. He reached down, found it amid the loose change and lint, and brought it out. He unsealed the mouth of the bag and tipped half of the dirty white powder inside it into the gin and then the other half into the orange juice. He took a stirrer and whisked it around in both drinks until the powder had dissolved.

  The woman returned and, a moment later, the man came back in through the door.

  Rodrigo dropped the plastic bag on the floor, picked up both glasses and set them on the bar. His hands were shaking.

  “Thank you,” the woman said, taking out three hundred-peso notes from her purse and handing them to him.

  He took the money and put it in the till. When he returned to them with their change, they had both taken sips of their drinks. He put the change on the bar and had to clasp his hands together to stop them from shaking. He expected them to comment on an unusual taste and then to ask him what he had done with their drinks, but they didn’t seem to notice the powder. Perhaps it was tasteless, as Logan had suggested.

  Another customer signalled that he wanted to order drinks. The distraction was a relief. Rodrigo left them as they took another sip of the drinks, and went to take the new order.

  * * *

  LOGAN LOOKED at his watch.

  Fifteen minutes had p
assed. He had no idea whether he had frightened the barman enough to have him go through with what he needed him to do. That unpredictability was the only weakness in Logan’s plan. If he didn’t, Milton would gain a reprieve. Logan’s instructions were very precise. It would have been easy to take Milton out now, just as it would have been in London or at the hotel earlier. But that was not what he had been ordered to do. His task was more complicated, and it relied upon the behaviour of others that was impossible to guarantee.

  His phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and opened the messaging app. He read the message, deleted it, and put the phone back into his pocket again. He instinctively reached up to check the holstered pistol beneath his armpit and, reassured, opened the door and stepped outside into the muggy night.

  * * *

  RODRIGO DIDN’T know what to do.

  Thirty minutes had passed. The man and the woman were both still at the bar, but they were incapacitated. It was as if they had gone from being sober to utterly drunk without having to take another drink. The man, Smith, was slumped forward, seemingly unaware that his elbows were resting in a pool of spilt beer. He wore a look of confusion on his face, his eyes closed and his brow wrinkled from frowning. His friend, Jessica, was faring no better. She had slipped from her stool and now she was standing next to Smith, her hand clutching his elbow as her knees buckled.

  Rodrigo looked at the other customers. This was the kind of place where people came to get wasted, but it was early, and no one else was nearly as drunk as they appeared to be. They stood out. He felt bad for what he had done to them. Logan had promised him that they wouldn’t be harmed, but now he worried that he had been lying. He wondered whether he should call someone for help. Perhaps he should call for an ambulance.

  He opened the hatch and had just stepped out from behind the bar when he saw a man and a woman sitting in a booth at the back. It was dark, and they had positioned themselves there so that they could watch what was happening in the room via the mirror that Rodrigo had installed to make the dance floor look bigger than it really was. They stood now and stepped into the chequers of light that swirled down from the disco ball above the dance floor.

  And then Rodrigo saw Logan, too. He was wearing the same neat suit, the glitter of the lights sparkling off the lenses of his glasses.

  The other man and the woman headed toward the bar. The man was dressed similar to Logan, although his suit was not as well fitted. He was bigger, too, his jacket a little too tight around muscular shoulders. The woman was compact but plainly fit and strong, with a hardened look to her face that suggested it would be foolish to annoy her.

  Logan came up to him.

  “Well done,” he said.

  The man and the woman arrived behind him.

  “Who are they?” Rodrigo said to Logan, gesturing to the other two.

  “They’re here to help me.”

  “To do what?”

  “We’re going to take them with us.”

  “You didn’t say—”

  “I’m not asking for your approval. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”

  “You said they wouldn’t be hurt.”

  “And they won’t.”

  The second man ducked down and looped Smith’s arm over his shoulders. He put his arm around Smith’s waist, straightened up, and then carefully helped him slide off the stool. Smith had no strength in his legs, and he almost collapsed. The man was strong, though, and he was able to hold him upright. He pretended to say something to Smith, laughing as if they were old friends and he had made a joke about the condition that he had found him in. Smith tried to speak, but the effort was too much for him, his mouth curling around the words as if he had forgotten how to speak.

  Logan stood aside as the man helped Smith to the exit. “If anyone asks, you don’t know who they are.”

  “I don’t know who they are.”

  The woman put her arm around the woman’s torso and half-carried her in the same direction.

  “They got drunk, their friends arrived, they left. That’s it.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Rodrigo said before he could think to be silent.

  “Do you want your debt to be paid, or do I have to look at collecting it another way?”

  “No. It’s fine. Just go.”

  Logan nodded, and, without another word, he turned and followed the others out the door and into the street beyond.

  13

  MILTON HAD a key in his pocket. It was attached to a fob inscribed with a notice that requested that if the key was lost, it should be returned to the Makabat Guesthouse in Leveriza Street, Malate. Logan put the address into his satnav, pocketed the key, and drove there. It was a cheap place, down at heel, the sort of dive where you could pay by the hour if that was what you wanted. Logan let the engine idle as he glanced around. There were other cars in the lot, but there was no one else here.

  Milton and Sanchez were in the back of the car. They were awake, but neither of them was aware where they were. Sanchez was whimpering, her words unintelligible. Milton was breathing deeply, almost asleep. The man and the woman from the surveillance detail were in the car, too. Their names were du Plessis and Faraday, and they had been loaned to him by the British government. The man, du Plessis, sat between Milton and the door, and Faraday was in the passenger seat next to Logan.

  Logan reversed into the space nearest the door to Milton’s room. He stepped out, crossed the narrow veranda, and examined his surroundings carefully. He saw two small cameras fixed to the underside of the veranda roof.

  “Wait here,” he said into the car.

  He followed the cables that led from the cameras along the ceiling of the veranda. They reached the end of the building before crossing the gap to a freestanding building five metres away. Logan approached it. There was a sign reading OFFICE next to the door.

  He stood by the door for a moment and listened carefully. Nothing. He reached into his pocket and took out the box of powdered green nitrile gloves that he had purchased earlier that afternoon. He pulled out a pair and put them on, the elasticated openings snapping against the skin of his wrists. He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. He opened the door slowly and stepped into a small office. Logan saw a PC, an old-fashioned screensaver sending colourful pipes around the screen in isometric patterns. There was a cash box, a row of shelves with lever arch and box files, and piles of paper.

  It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. He looked up at the ceiling and saw the point where the cables that led to the cameras—clipped together now in a thick bundle with additional cables—entered the room. They descended along the join between two walls into a cupboard next to the door. Logan opened the cupboard. There was an old-fashioned D-Link digital video recorder on a shelf. Logan pulled it out, yanked the cables from the back, and, after satisfying himself that there was no one who might see him outside, he took it back to the car and dropped it in the trunk.

  Logan crossed back beneath the now-defunct cameras, unlocked the door to Milton’s room and pushed it open.

  He checked: the room beyond was empty.

  He signalled to du Plessis and Faraday. They opened their doors and stepped outside. Milton was first, Faraday on one side of him and du Plessis on the other as they dragged him across the lot. Milton’s toes caught on the edge of the veranda and then scraped along the wood as they brought him inside. They hauled him to the bed, turned him around and then let him fall back onto the mattress. Milton groaned, then started to mumble something that Logan couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter. He was too far gone to go anywhere or do anything.

  Logan followed du Plessis and Faraday back to the car. Sanchez was asleep, her head turned to face the door, snoring gently. They reached down and eased her out. There was no point in trying to help her to walk, so du Plessis scooped her up in his arms and crossed the short distance back to the veranda and the room.

  He laid her in a chair.

  Faraday p
aused at the door. “What do you want us to do now?”

  “You’re done,” Logan said. “You can go.”

  They didn’t question him, nor ask what the rest of his plan would entail. They would be able to join the dots if they read the news tomorrow, but Logan was unconcerned. They were paid well and loyal to the government. They had no idea who either of the people on the bed were, nor the reasons for Logan’s attention to them. For all they were concerned, they might be enemies of the state, deserving of whatever might come next.

  Logan waited for them to go and then went back outside to the car. He opened the door and took out the plastic bag with the items that he had purchased earlier that afternoon. He took the bag inside, closed the door, turned the key and fitted the safety chain. He did not want to be disturbed.

  Milton hadn’t moved. Logan crossed the room to the bed and looked down at him: he was breathing easily, in and out, his eyes closed. It looked as if he was asleep. The roofies contained flunitrazepam and were ten times more powerful than the diazepam found in Valium. It relaxed the muscles, reduced anxiety, and had a strong sedative effect. It also produced a strong amnesia, which was one of the reasons Logan had chosen it over the alternatives.

  Logan addressed the room.

  He had things to do.

  He took off his jacket, hung it on the edge of a chair, and swept his hand down it, straightening out the creases. He went over to the suitcase and opened it, carefully rifling through the clothes that Milton had brought with him. A spare pair of trousers, a crumpled T-shirt, underwear; he was travelling light. There was a book inside the suitcase. Logan took it out. It was dog-eared and bore the signs of being well thumbed. It had a deep blue cover, with the words Alcoholics Anonymous written across it in bold white type. Logan flipped through the pages. There were words written in the margins and passages that had been picked out in faded yellow highlighter. He glanced over at Milton and thought of his pitiful existence in London, his minimum-wage job and the meetings with other drunks, where they would open their hearts and wallow in self-pity.