A Loyal Spy

by Simon Conway

  They leaped aboard and the dog leaped in after them. They were immediately swept south toward the crossing, spinning in the rising tide, while Nor repeatedly yanked on the ignition cord.

  “Come on!” he shouted.

  The engine roared into life. Nor steered the boat around and into the tide and opened the throttle. They slammed into each successive wave, following the channel north through the marshes towards where it emptied into the Medway.

  They went around a narrow spit of land, into the sudden shelter of a meander, a bend in the river that offered protection from the storm. There was a concrete pier nestled against the land and a forty-foot steel-hulled tugboat moored against it. They came alongside and Nor heaved himself over the port gunwale. He reached down and scooped up the dog, swinging him aboard. Miranda followed.

  The dinghy was swept away.

  Jonah was kneeling in ankle-deep water that was rushing across the grass and cascading down the hillside. Pakravan still had his gun pressed against the back of Jonah’s neck. Beside them, Winthrop was trying to get through to Nor. He had been ever since he had spoken to Miranda on Alex’s phone. “Answer the phone, damn it!” he snarled.

  Taff got out of the Range Rover and walked toward them. “What’s the problem?”

  Jonah thought he understood the problem. “Why don’t you just go ahead and dial the number and blow up the ship?” he asked.

  “Be quiet,” Pakravan told him.

  “Because you don’t have the number, do you? Only Nor has the number. I mean, he’s not stupid. And now you can’t get hold of him. And what about Alex? Who was that you were talking to on his phone? Has Alex been arrested or is he dead?”

  “What is he talking about?” Taff demanded, looking from Winthrop to Jonah.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Winthrop yelled.

  “There are cop cars on the motorway,” Ginger shouted from the open car door.

  Abruptly, the blinking lights went out on the twin masts on the nearby hill.

  Ginger looked at his phone. “I’ve got no bars.”

  “Me neither,” said Taff. Nobody had a signal.

  “They shut down the networks,” Jonah told them. “They know all about you. They’re coming for you.”

  “Damn it!” yelled Winthrop. He flung his phone into the water.

  Then they saw the flashing lights of police cars approaching from Sittingbourne, heading for the Sheppey Crossing. “If they control the crossing, we’re cut off,” Ginger said.

  “Where’s the helicopter?” Winthrop demanded. “Bring it back here.”

  “We’ve got no comms,” Ginger told him.

  Jonah laughed out loud. “You’re so fucked.”

  Attention all shipping, especially in sea areas Humber and Thames. The Meteorological Office issued the following gale warnings to shipping at 1900 GMT today. Humber, Thames, southwest gale 8 to storm 10, veering west, severe gale 9 to violent storm 11 imminent.

  Nor and Miranda were standing together in the wheelhouse, listening to the radio while the boat slapped against her moorings and the wind howled in the wire stays and outrigger cables.

  Rain battered the windows. Nor had cut the running lights and they could see only by the greenish light of the instrument panel and the occasional flash of lightning.

  Nor looked down at his phone and frowned, “I’m not getting a signal.” He switched it on and off again. “Nothing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Either that the storm knocked out the masts or someone’s switched off the networks.”

  So Mikulski had come good. “What do we do now?” she asked. He reached for the radio that was now issuing a soft, sibilant hiss. He switched several channels. The same hiss. Either the air was too highly charged or the police were jamming the frequencies. It didn’t matter which. “I have to take the boat out to the wreck.”

  “You’re going to take the boat out in this?”

  “I don’t have any choice,” he said with a sort of weary resignation. “I have to reach the buoy and blow the charges manually.”

  “It’s not worth it,” she said. “We could just run. We could go away somewhere together.”

  “They’ll kill us anyway,” he said, and turned the key. The diesel engine roared into life and the planking in the wheelhouse throbbed with the power of it. “You can get off here.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said, without hesitation. He stared at her. Another shared moment, another shiver down her spine. She had committed herself to this, to stopping him, whatever it took. “You can’t do it on your own.”

  He went out onto the deck and cast off the ropes securing the boat to the pier. Then he was back in and edging them away from the pier, with the engine in reverse. He opened the throttle and black smoke spewed out. They sailed out into the Medway approach channel. They could see, through the wheelhouse window, the size of the oncoming waves. Her face flushed, her eyes grew wide.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God, look at it.”

  IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

  Mikulski and a police sniper ran across the tarmac towards the waiting Search and Rescue helicopter, a bright yellow RAF Sea King. They climbed in the jump door and knelt down beside the auxiliary fuel tank at the rear of the aircraft, while the pilot completed his preflight checks. They were wearing immersion suits, wetsuits and inflatable life vests. The sniper was carrying a .50-caliber Barrett rifle, a weapon strong enough to punch a hole through metal plate.

  The rotors began to thud into life, losing the sag of their weight, and the helicopter shifted on its tires and was suddenly airborne. They flew east along the Thames into the eye of the storm.

  Gravesend Port Control Centre was reporting that on the radar a boat had left the Medway and was sailing toward the Montgomery. It had to be Nor.

  The Range Rover was slipping and sliding as it came down off Furze Hill. Ginger was at the wheel with Taff beside him, a map on his lap, shouting directions. Pakravan and Winthrop had Jonah hemmed in the back with his cuffed wrists jammed between his knees. There were spinning blue lights on the crossing a couple of miles to the south and more police cars racing north toward the port.

  They bounced onto a farm track and slid across a farmyard, accelerated over a roundabout and slammed into the side of a police car, sending it careering across the road and into the marsh. They turned north away from the crossing and over another roundabout with police cars pursuing them.

  “Left,” Taff shouted.

  They drove past low red-brick bungalows, over a railway track and across a small stone bridge. There were sheds on either side—it was some kind of factory—and then a narrow road of crumbling asphalt with the River Swale on one side and marshland on the other, curving to the right and around the bend a narrow spit of land and at the end of it the pier. The Range Rovers screeched to halt.

  “Cover us,” Pakravan shouted. Winthrop pulled Jonah out of the car and onto the tarmac. They ran out along the pier. Behind them Taff and Ginger scrambled to opposite sides of the road. They crouched behind their weapons with their legs out behind them, and when the first police car came out of the bend they opened fire.

  “Where’s the fucking boat?” Winthrop yelled.

  “He’s gone,” Pakravan shouted back at him, “Nor’s gone!” Which was the point at which Jonah decided to act: he threw his cuffed hands over Pakravan’s head and yanked backward, tightening the chain across his neck. Pakravan gasped and Jonah pulled him backward and on to his knees on the pier. His left shoulder was screaming. He pushed down on his right side until all his weight was in his right shoulder and his hip. Pakravan’s neck snapped.

  The boat groaned as if she was being crushed and the engines raced as the bow went down in a trough and the propeller blades were lifted out of the water, and then another wave slammed the deck and Miranda was swept off her feet, carried aft with the gaffe in her hands.

  Things unraveled in slow motion. Looking back across the moving deck at t
he wheelhouse, Miranda saw Nor’s face, an unearthly green by the light from the instrument panel, and beyond him the wall of water. It was terrifying. A massive swell. There was no horizon, just surging green water and the rising and falling deck.

  The wind was making a sound she’d never heard before, a deep tonal vibration that made her think of the end of the world.

  And suddenly she glimpsed a flashing red light—the buoy with the ignition assembly that carried the detonators.

  She heaved herself upright against the transom and swung the gaffe around so that the hook on the end of the pole was hanging over the water. She lunged for the buoy.

  And a spear of white light came out of the sky toward her.

  Mikulski couldn’t believe what he was seeing, massive foam-laden swells rising and falling in the cone of light, some barely missing the belly of the helicopter.

  The searchlight swept across the boat. She was plunging into the crest of each wave and launching out the far side, with spray streaming off the wheelhouse and green water sheeting out of her scuppers. Mikulski could see Nor standing in the wheelhouse and Miranda, barely keeping her feet, at the stern of the boat, with the gaffe in her hands. He looked back at the sniper crouching in the fuselage. He was throwing up.

  The pilot could barely control the aircraft. They were getting batted around the sky.

  By the time Jonah had got the keys out of Pakravan’s pocket and uncuffed himself, Winthrop was halfway across the River Swale, his arms flailing as he rose and fell with the waves. Jonah glanced back in the direction of the firefight. Armed police were trading shots with Ginger and Taff, who were falling back, taking it in turns to provide covering fire while the other sprinted backward. Bullets ricocheted on the tarmac around him, and peppered the hedgerows, chewing up leaves and branches. If he stayed where he was, he was going to get caught in the crossfire.

  He looked back along the pier toward the marshland on the far side of the Swale and in the distance, beyond the Medway, the burning lights of the power station on the Isle of Grain. The Swale was only a few hundred yards across. Winthrop was practically on the other side.

  Fuck it.

  He sprinted to the end of the pier, took a running jump and plunged into the churning water. He swam with one arm, side-stroke, shoveling his hand into the water.

  Nor rushed down the ladder from the wheelhouse and out onto the deck with the assault rifle in his hands. As the boat pitched and the helicopter came at them, he raised it and bellowed. Then he was firing, the scalding cases cascading on to her exposed skin as she cowered on the deck behind him. There was a rush of wind and noise, the rattle of the helicopter’s engine and the blur of its rotor blades as it passed overhead, and the staccato crack of the rifle. The boat pitched forward again. There was no one at the wheel. Another wave struck. She was knocked off her feet again. She’d lost the gaffe. The dog was washed past her and overboard.

  She slammed against the transom. The helicopter came around again. It tipped down, with the howling storm behind it, its searchlight rushing toward them. Beside her, Nor’s rifle had jammed and he was struggling with the rifle’s bolt to unblock the stop-page. It was then that she saw it, rising behind the helicopter. The whole horizon was blotted out by a huge gray wall. It had no crest, just a thin white line along the whole length, and its face was unlike the normal sloping face of a wave. It was a wall of water with a completely vertical face.

  There was no time to think or to act, only to marvel at the sheer size of it.

  The wave engulfed the bow, the foredeck and the wheelhouse, blew out all the windows and flipped the boat end over end.

  The last thing she saw was white water coming at her like a massive fist, then darkness and a moment later dazzling blue sparks, like lightning, arcing down into the water as the ship’s electrics shorted out. The boat was upside down and she was under it. The water was freezing cold and blurry with silt. She surfaced briefly in a small air pocket, took a deep breath and struck out to get clear of the boat, but within moments a powerful force had her in its grip and was dragging her farther downward. She was being sucked down by the vacuum created by the sinking boat.

  down down down …

  The pressure increased. It felt as if she was in a vice. Her ears were agony. Her lungs were screaming. Her eyes were burning.

  A shape materialized out of the shifting silt, the wreck of the Montgomery. She was buffeted from all sides and swept along the top of the ship’s deck. There was a sensation of darkness closing in, like traveling down a long tunnel.

  Ahead of her, an anchor chain rose toward the surface. She grabbed it as she passed and with all her strength kicked for the surface.

  She emerged beside the warning buoy. She held on for a few seconds, gasping for air between each crashing wave, cold and exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her. Then she looked up and saw it, just out of reach, the ignition assembly: a clear plastic box containing a bundle of explosives, detonators and blinking circuitry, and feeding into it the twin ends of detonating cord rising from the depths. The box was already beginning to disintegrate, and she watched as the cable sheared away and the charge began to unravel.

  It was over. She was swept away.

  DEATH WILL FIND YOU

  Miranda dreamed that she was on land with her back to the sea and something was slithering across the mud from the water’s edge. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t turn around. Something had risen from the depths and was coming for her, slowly and deliberately. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t run. She was filled with ancient dread. The thing was right behind her. It had been searching for her for ten long years and she knew that it would be the most dangerous thing that she ever had to face. Saliva spooled from its open jaws. There was a foul smell and a child’s voice at her ear saying, Mother, I’m here. I’m here.

  She woke up.

  She was lying face down in the mud, in corpse pose. Rain was pounding the earth beside her and water was lapping at her ankles. All around her, she could hear the storm raging, but where she was, on a worthless spit of land, there was an eerie calm. She scrambled to her feet and sloshed through the mud and the reeds away from the crashing waves, away from the water’s edge, away from her son’s voice.

  Walk.

  The first part of the walk was the most difficult. There was the rain and the mud. Several times she sank to her thighs in the mud. Each time she had to pull herself out by grabbing fistfuls of reeds, and each time she felt herself growing weaker. She was forced to wade across a narrow creek. On the far side, she pulled herself onto the remains of an ancient earthwork and lay there breathlessly. She was tempted to close her eyes again but it didn’t seem like a very smart idea.

  Are you tough, little bird?

  “I’m tough,” she said, as she always did when her father asked. “I’m Isaaq.”

  Then hit my fist.

  She looked up and for a moment it was if the curtains of rain parted and a couple of hundred yards away, across a stretch of marsh, she could see a pylon line. Pylons lead to plugs, she thought, transmission lines lead to houses. She was genuinely glad to see the ungainly metal structures.

  Are you tough?

  “I’m tough.”

  She took a few deep breaths and set off again through the mud, pulling herself forward with fistfuls of reeds. She was cold but she hardly noticed the rain now.

  She heard the sound of a helicopter from somewhere behind her and, turning, saw the long white beam of light sweeping the marshes, searching the barren ground.

  “I’m here,” she shouted, but no one heard.

  Beyond the pylon line there was a raised hard-core track full of ruts and potholes. It made her think of Jura, of the long walk to Barnhill from the end of the country road. Walking, that was what she did. There was a rhythm to it. It was what she’d done every day since she discovered that Omar was dead. It was what she was: a forked animal, following a track one step at a time.

  “I’m tough,” s
he said, but it sounded hollow in her ears. The helicopter had wrecked her concentration. “Damn it, get a grip of yourself.”

  Walk.

  She came to a cattle grid, with a locked wooden gate beside it. Who would lock a gate here, where there were no fences? Rather than cross the steel bars of the grid or risk her footing in the surrounding marsh, she climbed over the gate, falling across it and tumbling onto the wet earth beyond.

  She stood up again. The rain was falling in horizontal sheets.

  She was blinded. She took several steps and sank to her thighs in the mud. She had lost the track.

  Omar was there walking beside her. Sixteen years old. He was almost as tall as his father. She was no longer afraid of him.

  “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” she said.

  I know.

  He smiled sympathetically.

  “Am I going to make it?” she asked.

  Follow me.

  “I love you,” she said. “I love you so very much.”

  I love you too, Mom.

  Ahead there was a metal structure, a dilapidated lambing shed with sheets of roofing metal flapping in the wind. He had led her through the marsh to the only nearby shelter. He was a determined and resourceful boy.

  I’m going now.

  “Come back soon,” she said. She was so glad to have seen him, so glad that he had turned out so well. She struggled toward the barn. Soon she would be out of the rain and somewhere that she could lie down and rest until Omar woke her.

  As she approached, a man that she did not recognize at first stepped out of the shadows at the entrance to the barn and lifted something toward her.

  He was pointing at her.

  It was Richard Winthrop IV. She knew immediately that he was accusing her of something. She had done so many wrong things.

  There was a loud bang and an intense flash of light and she felt a massive shock. There was no pain, only a violent shock, as if she had been electrocuted, and immediately after it a sense of absolute fatigue. The barn in front of her receded to a great distance. The next moment her knees crumpled and she fell. Her head hit the ground with a thud. She had a numb, dazed feeling, an understanding that she must be very badly hurt, but no pain as such.