by Mark Dawson
Bloom didn’t press. He knew what King was referring to. They had discussed the options when they had planned the London operations.
“There is one other thing,” he said instead.
“Yes, Vivian?”
“I have a vestigial vulnerability—”
“You have a what?” King interrupted.
“I still have a problem,” Bloom clarified with extravagant patience.
“Then say you have a problem.”
Bloom ignored him. “We need to remove all evidence of Captain Pope’s old unit. Group Fifteen. The surviving agents all need to be found and eliminated. All of them who were active when we shut it down—there can be no trace of them or of it. I don’t know what Pope told them, but they’re going to wonder what’s happened to their boss. And I can’t rule out that he’ll make contact with them, either. You said it yourself. Group Fifteen is a relic. It needs to be abolished.” He turned to the doctor. “You’ve been waiting for a chance to demonstrate the effectiveness of Prometheus. I’m not convinced after the first demonstration. Here’s a second chance.”
“What are you proposing?”
“Lend me one of the assets.”
“And then?”
“I point out the targets and let it do its work.”
The doctor frowned. “Really, Bloom? ‘It?’”
“I prefer not to humanise them.”
“They are as human as you or I.”
“I think we might have to agree to disagree about that.”
“Stop it, Vivian,” Carington said. “You’re deliberately antagonising him.”
Bloom held up his hands, palms facing outwards. “Fine. Just give me one of the assets. I’ll find the targets. He, she, it—whatever word you prefer—it can eliminate all of them. One by one.”
“Doctor?”
“Of course. Mithras is in Paris. We can activate him easily enough.”
“Do it.” Carington turned back to Bloom. “And once that’s done?”
“We find Pope. We find the captain and the girl and we kill them too.”
About the Author
Photo © 2014 Tom Nicholson
Mark Dawson has worked in the London film industry and lives in Wiltshire with his family. His work includes four series: The John Milton series features a disgruntled assassin who aims to help people make amends for the things that he has done. The Beatrix Rose series features the headlong fight for justice of a wronged mother—who happens to be an assassin—against the six names on her Kill List. The Isabella Rose series is a high-octane action-thriller series featuring Beatrix’s daughter, trained by her mother to follow in her footsteps and become a world-class assassin. Soho Noir is set in the West End of London between 1940 and 1970.