by Anthony Fox
The doctor had given Assia a list of exercises to help build the strength in her knee, but only once she was able to walk on it again. For now her whole leg was well strapped with something disconcertingly close to an old-fashioned splint, and putting any weight on it was out of the question. Not that this was much of a problem, as Assia wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment. She couldn’t even make a phone call.
Grandad had kept a close eye on her. He’d been pleasant, and tried to make her feel comfortable, but she didn’t trust him. Or Matthews.
His name was Matthews.
Later Grandad told her to forget the name. As if she could.
Matthews.
The name enraged her. For the name, like the events of that evening, was now seared into her memory like a nightmarish tapestry, bright with explosions, flames and gunfire. Dark with blood and death.
As Assia’s thoughts drifted inevitably back to the scene at the apartment, the shocking, horrible and yet simple truth continued to dawn on her again. Charlie was dead. She’d seen the man in the night vision goggles lower his gun under the bed, and...
What had he ever done to hurt anybody? He’d been so afraid on the train, then back at the apartment, locked in the bedroom. She should’ve done more to comfort him. He wasn’t used to these kinds of things, this level of stress. And now he was dead.
‘How’re you, Assia?’ asked Grandad, stepping into the room.
‘Fine,’ she answered.
‘Can I get you anything?’
Assia shook her head without looking up. He looked down at the splint on her leg. ‘How’s the knee?’ he asked.
‘Painful,’ she answered. She knew he just wanted to hear her speak, wanted to make her respond to know she was listening, but then he left her again, and Assia was alone, and Charlie was dead.
She was surprised, on meeting the person Matthews referred to as Grandad, to see he was an Indian boy about the same age as herself. She’d screamed and pleaded to be allowed to leave, of course, but this ‘Grandad’ boy said no.
‘Sorry. It’s not safe, and you can’t walk. I’ve to wait for Matthews to wake up,’ he’d reasoned.
That was, if Matthews woke up.
They’d arrived in the dead of night. A full day plus another night later, with Assia mostly fighting restless sleep, she was now feeling less like a survivor and more like a prisoner.
Making a great effort not to put any weight on her bad knee, she got up from the uncomfortable chair and hopped down the long corridor and into another room. Once in the room she reached an identical wooden chair at the end of the bed and carefully lowered herself in.
Just a few weeks, they said. A few weeks and she would walk again. Then she would be gone. Right now, a few weeks felt like a lifetime. She thought back to the barn, picturing the giant man stood by his car firing his gun. Assia had seen some terrible things, but that was probably the scariest man she’d ever laid eyes on.
The acrid taste of dust stuck to the roof of Assia’s mouth. The smell of damp filled the room. Assia propped her bad leg up on the bed, her calf muscle sinking into the soft mattress, and looked across at him. Matthews lay still on his back, his eyes shut.
The anger she felt for him burned inside her so intensely that she was unable to look at his face, instead just watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Once again the dark thought flashed in her mind. How easy it would be. She could just reach out for the pillow. Rest it over his face. Grandad would stop her of course. Even now she could feel him close by, checking on her. But could Grandad stop her in time? It was the least this man deserved for what he’d done to her. For what he’d done to Charlie. The man on the train had entered their cabin, and the man at the apartment pulled the trigger, but this man – Matthews – was the reason they were there.
However, for now she made not the slightest move for the pillow, and just sat watching him. Hating him.
42
The rain could be heard clearly against the double-glazed window the first time the patient woke. It fell straight and heavy from the sky, as if the clouds were throwing it down at the city. It wasn’t too unusual to get such heavy rain at this time of year. There were always a few days during the summer when the clouds came in and the grey skies descended. Everyone knew it would last no longer than a day, two at the most. People even welcomed it, as it helped to lighten the air and clear the humidity.
Listening to the rain on the window, the patient lay in her bed and stirred from her sleep. Her eyes open to the plain white ceiling.
Where am I?
Raising her head, the patient tried to sit up. A woman stood at the foot of her bed. The woman looked down at her and waited. Wearing a long white coat over a smart, mid-range grey suit, eventually the patient realised the woman was a doctor. The doctor asked how the patient felt.
She said a few words but was unable to formulate a coherent answer.
‘What’s your name?’ the doctor asked.
‘Rose,’ the patient responded after a long pause, although what she wanted to say was water. Her voice sounded dreadful. The words scratched her throat.
‘I always liked that name,’ the doctor said with a smile. ‘Rose what?’
‘Rose McCarthy,’ she said. Her voice cracked and broke. She didn’t even know where the words came from. Her head began to throb.
The doctor spoke with a strange accent and, as if reading her thoughts, explained they knew Rose spoke English because she’d talked in her sleep. The doctor proceeded to tell Rose she was in a serious accident and needed to rest. Apparently she’d been unconscious for two days. She was informed her head would be painful for quite a while. The doctor asked if Rose remembered anything about what happened, but she wasn’t able to respond.
‘Is there anybody I can call for you?’ the doctor asked, but she didn’t really hear.
Two days. What had happened? Then she wondered how she could feel such overwhelming tiredness after being unconscious for two whole days, as her eyes slowly closed and she drifted off again.
43
Edinburgh, Scotland.
The White Wolf, Alan T. Pincer, took a sip from his mug before answering.
‘Clayton,’ said Pincer flatly.
‘Afternoon, sir,’ greeted Roger Clayton.
‘What do you want?’ Pincer’s reply was sharp.
The American got straight to the point. ‘What do you think? You told me Jenkins would simply be picked up when he landed in Austria. Now I hear he’s dead.’
Pincer didn’t have time for this.
‘So?’
Roger Clayton’s lazy voice drifted softly over the air. ‘Well, considering you had me set up a surveillance operation on him before he left, his death now draws attention to me.’
The NSA agent had done a lot of work for Pincer over recent years, earning more than a little extra cash on the side, and Pincer preferred to keep their relationship purely one-way.
‘I doubt that. But if it does, you should have no trouble talking your way out of it.’
‘Did you have him killed?’ Clayton asked him bluntly.
The White Wolf actually chuckled at that. ‘Careful, Roger. No. Believe it or not, there are still some things out of my control.’
Very much a cool customer, Clayton didn’t strike Pincer as one to expel much energy on trying to change the past, and he let it go. ‘So how’s the other thing going in Siberia?’
‘Apparently it’s snowing. But we’re on schedule. You can thank me tomorrow when it’s finished,’ said Pincer.
‘I can’t deny it’ll be a big help. Keeps the Russians and the Ukrainians occupied for a while. Do you need anything from my end?’
‘No. Anything else?’ Pincer asked as he took a sip from his mug.
Clayton made another short enquiry before asking:
‘Perhaps you remember a conversation we had eighteen or so months ago regarding you looking for any former American agents keen to pick up a bit of work?’
‘Then you’ll remember I gave you five names, the top two names being a pair of former military men, Phil Connelly and Robert Paxman.’
Pincer now knew what Clayton was calling about. He pressed a button on his office phone, allowing him to hear Clayton without emitting any noise from his end, then held down a button on the intercom. ‘Bring me the file on Operation Matterhorn again. Just the last section on Austria,’ Pincer ordered his secretary through the intercom. He released his finger and pressed the button that took Clayton back off hold.
‘Did you act on the conversation we had?’ asked Clayton.
Pincer’s secretary knocked and then entered, carrying a thin file in a brown binder. Without a word she dropped it in front of Pincer on his desk, turned and walked out of the room, closing the door after herself.
‘Yes,’ Pincer said impatiently as he leafed through the file on the last few days of Operation Matterhorn, preferring the hard copy to simply scanning a computer file. ‘I gave the two men some work a while back. Simple enough job. They completed it, and I paid them.’ Pincer realised he’d answered a little too quickly. Clayton would pick up on it. He would hear the lie.
‘Do you remember what I told you about using them?’
‘I said I remember,’ said Pincer.
All the while he was speaking to Clayton, all Pincer could think was one thing, and that was what an unholy mess this damned operation had turned out to be. He’d wanted no part of it, should’ve had no part of it, but he let his sentimentality get the better of him. Now there was only one question he wanted answering.
Where the hell was Matthews?
His men on the second floor had brought him word of the explosion and the bodies in Austria, but Matthews wasn’t amongst the rubble as far as they could tell.
‘So you haven’t contacted them recently? I have something coming up they’d be useful for, and I need to speak to them quickly.’ It took Pincer a moment to realise Clayton was still talking about Connelly and Paxman.
‘I told you I gave them some work. They completed it satisfactorily. You were the one who told me how to contact them.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I can’t find them now. They just seem to have gone off the radar. I wondered if you knew something about that.’
Pincer didn’t like the insinuation.
‘Well, I don’t, and now I have to go.’
Just how much does Roger Clayton know?
‘Fair enough,’ said Clayton. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘OK.’
‘Ciao.’
Pincer hung up and looked down at the file. He immediately dialled an internal number for his head of department on the fourth floor. It was answered after one ring. The man on the phone didn’t speak. He wasn’t given the chance.
‘It’s about time you stopped screwing around down there and found Matthews. I don’t care how busy you are. Find him. Dead or alive, I don’t give a damn. Nobody goes home until it’s done.’ Pincer slammed the phone down and drank the contents of his mug.
Then his phone rang again. In truth it never stopped.
He pressed the intercom. ‘Bring me Roger Clayton’s file.’ Then he thought of something else. ‘And bring me more coffee,’ he growled, reaching for the mug.
44
Somewhere near Feldkirch, Austria.
The doctor had just left. Once again he was greeted by Grandad at the door and both went straight in to attend to Matthews. But this time it was different. This time the doctor had been summoned, no more than twenty minutes earlier, to urgently attend to his patient. For Matthews was conscious again.
Assia made no attempt to go near the room, so she wasn’t told to stay out. After he was done, the doctor came out of the bedroom alone and was gone. On all his visits since the first, when he treated and strapped her knee, he never even so much as glanced in Assia’s direction, let alone spoke to her. Grandad attended to her knee since then. She’d no idea how Grandad summoned the doctor, as he destroyed all their phones when they arrived.
Assia was sat in the corridor on the floor near her bedroom door, her strapped knee lying straight out in front of her. A few minutes after the doctor departed, Grandad came quietly out of Matthews’ bedroom and gently closed the door behind him.
He spotted Assia on the floor and walked over to her, slid his back down the wall and sat next to her.
‘How’re you, Assia?’ This was always his opening line.
‘Fine,’ was her standard response.
‘He’s resting, but he’s in good shape,’ Grandad told her, answering a question she’d never asked. ‘Doc says he’ll be just fine.’ He let out another sigh as Assia remained still as a statue by his side.
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t interested. She wanted to tell him it made no difference to her what Grandad did or whether Matthews woke up or not. But Grandad had her at a weak moment, a moment when she was tired of hating them. ‘Is he awake?’ Assia asked instead.
Grandad looked both surprised and pleased that she’d engaged him. ‘Nah, but he was. Seemed pretty with-it when he spoke earlier. You know, all things considered.’
She observed him as he spoke, watching how the low light reflected against the smoothness of the brown skin on his cheek. It was clear now this was more than a job to him. Whatever this was.
He genuinely cared for Matthews.
‘Doc’s keeping him under, he’ll be back the day after tomorrow to bring him round all the way. Once Matthews does come around, he says we’ll be surprised just how quickly he recovers.’
She wanted to ask more about this doctor, but she didn’t. ‘You sound like you’ve dealt with this before,’ she said instead, staring at the wall.
‘I’ve had a colourful life.’ Grandad smiled a sad smile.
‘So Matthews has come through worse, then?’
Grandad shrugged. ‘Worse? Sure. Can be scary when there’s loads of blood, but the bullet missed all the good stuff. It’s just a little harder as he’s getting older now, though he’d never admit it.’
‘When he wakes, I can leave?’ Assia asked tentatively, wondering if she was afraid to hear the answer.
After a pause Grandad said, ‘Soon as Matthews thinks it safe for you.’ He tried to offer her a reassuring nod. His face dropped as Assia left him there and went to her room.
45
Girona, Spain.
A small boy holding his mother’s hand walked awkwardly down the street, trying his best to keep up, his mother unwilling to slow down. Hopping and bobbling along, the boy suddenly almost fell over backwards as he tried to look up at the man passing them in the opposite direction. Would have fallen over, in fact, had he not been holding on to his mother’s hand.
At first the boy saw the lower part of the legs of the person coming towards them and raised his head to where the face of a grown-up man ought to have been. However, instead of a face he got only more legs followed by an enormous body that went as high as the boy could see. It was like two grown men stuck together. Either that or he was looking at a giant, and his Mamma told him giants didn’t exist. Like dragons and supermodels. It was all made up by television, his Mamma said.
But See! It’s true, giants truly do exist!
He couldn’t wait to get home and tell his Papa. Only he suddenly remembered Papa might not be there when he got home because Mamma had mentioned something about Papa being in the doghouse and going there for a long time, and the boy didn’t know where that was because Mama didn’t let them have any dogs…
***
Luque didn’t pay any attention to the small boy and his mother as he entered the small park high up in the hills. The drive from Feldkirch was a painfully long one for Luque that required he go right the way through France. Although he covered the thousand-plus-kilometre stretch in a rapid ten hours it was still a heavy
drain on his energy.
The ground first changed to the grass and soil of the park’s perimeter. Further along it became hard, flat sand in the shape of four symmetrical rectangles. A crisscross of flagstones ran through each rectangular sand pit. Inside each sand pit old men and women threw their steel boules at the cochonnet and conferred with team-mates, focused expressions on their faces. As Luque approached he saw the line of stone benches and tables across the back of the park, just beyond the sand set on perfectly trimmed grass. At the tables sat more elderly men and women, playing card games or backgammon and drinking from clay carafes. The sun began to drop low in the sky. The bright light of the day would not last much longer.
He walked around the side of the petanque games and over to the stone tables at the back of the square. Although his arms were loose at his sides his fingers played subconsciously against the thumbs. Whenever he was going to meet his primo de la muerte – his cousin of death – he had to force his feet not to turn around and run in the opposite direction. The man Luque was going to meet had been his ally since the first days on the streets of Venezuela, since the gangs and the exile to the Middle East, and he was the only person Luque had ever been afraid of. But it was too late now. It was always too late. And it would never do any good to run.
‘A por ellos!’ yelled one of the old women as Luque marched by, the comment directed not at him but at her teammate as the man to her left flung his last boule in a high arc towards the crowded target area in front of them.
Luque sat down at the only empty seat on one of the stone benches. He looked around at the small lime trees that covered the perimeter of the square on all sides.