by Mark Dawson
Isabella knew that she had taken a risk. So far, it had been justified. But she had acted impetuously, without a plan for what might come next, and that fact became more and more apparent as the first hour bled into the second and then into the third. She was dependent upon Pope, and she had heard nothing from him. She started to worry: perhaps he’d been injured more badly than she’d thought? What if he was detained, or worse? What would she do then?
Isabella took out her phone and checked the time. It was six in the evening. They had been here for six hours.
There was still nothing from Pope.
Where was he?
It was as if the woman could sense her unease. Her eyes flickered open and she gazed at Isabella.
‘Is Mr Pope coming?’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ Isabella said defensively.
‘You can relax, Isabella. I’m happy to wait.’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said, indicating the pistol.
The woman smiled and held up the cuff that shackled her wrist. ‘This would be easy enough to snap.’
‘Not before I shoot you.’
‘You can’t shoot me when you’re asleep.’
Isabella’s confusion must have been obvious.
‘You were asleep for twenty minutes.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ Isabella said.
‘There’s no shame in it. You must be tired.’
‘I didn’t sleep.’
Isabella squeezed the pistol a little tighter. Had she fallen asleep? She was tired. There was no point in denying it. She’d travelled thousands of miles during the past twelve days, and the little sleep that she’d got had not been particularly good.
‘I’m not trying to make you worry. I’m happy to wait for Mr Pope. I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Like you didn’t hurt Aleksandra?’
A frown passed over Maia’s face. ‘I didn’t hurt her.’
‘I saw you after the explosions. You went over and checked that she was dead.’
‘No. I wanted to help her.’
‘You think I’d believe that because I’m young?’
‘I was there to protect her,’ Maia said. For the first time, there was a little anger buzzing beneath her otherwise impassive voice. ‘Mr Pope complicated things. He frightened her. If it’d just been me and her, she would still be alive.’
‘We frightened her?’ Isabella said. ‘Are you even listening to yourself?’
Maia exhaled. ‘It doesn’t matter what you think. I don’t blame either of you. I would’ve done the same. And what’s done is done.’
Isabella looked down at her phone again, willing it to ring.
‘Was Mr Pope injured?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then I’m sure he’ll be here.’
Another thirty minutes passed. It was monotonous, but Isabella made a determined effort to stay awake. Maia closed her eyes again, letting her shackled arm hang loose at her side. Isabella looked at her. There was nothing very special about her, yet the memory of what she had watched her do in Montepulciano was still fresh in her mind.
‘Wake up, Isabella.’
She opened her eyes, cursing under her breath. She had started to drift off again.
‘Talk to me,’ Maia said. ‘That might help you stay awake.’
Isabella got up and stretched her arms and legs. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Since we’re talking, I want to ask you a question.’
Maia nodded for her to go ahead.
‘When we were in Pope’s apartment, you mentioned my mother,’ she said. ‘You said you were sorry about what happened to her and that she was impressive. What did you mean?’
‘I said that because I know who your mother was.’
‘How? You met her?’
‘No. But I knew who she was. We all did. I knew what she did before she died, too. She was very ill, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes. She had cancer.’
‘Then what she did was impressive.’
‘What do you mean – how do you know what she did?’
‘Your mother attacked the company that owns me. She killed men and women who worked for the company, and then the man who preceded Michael Pope as Control.’
‘No,’ Isabella corrected. ‘I killed him.’
It was obvious from the surprise that twitched across her face that Maia was unaware of that. ‘Really?’
‘After what my mother did . . .’ Isabella started, then paused until she had recovered her composure. ‘After that, he was in hospital, and I shot him. That’s what this means.’ Isabella unbuttoned her shirt and pulled down the sleeve to reveal the tattoo of a rose that she’d had done in Marrakech. ‘My mother had five. One for each of the bastards who killed my father and took me away from her. This one is for the sixth. For Control.’
‘He had it coming,’ Maia said.
‘How do you know anything about us?’
‘I was given your mother’s file to study. She was causing a lot of concern. They were going to assign me. If it hadn’t ended the way it did . . . well, it wasn’t necessary for me to be involved. She made sure of that.’
Isabella felt a tight little knot of emotion in her stomach. She tried to wall off her memories of what had happened on that morning and the days that followed it, but her ability to do that had always been weak.
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘No. It’s just me and . . .’ Isabella trailed off.
‘Mr Pope.’
‘Yes.’ Isabella found the turn that the conversation had taken to be disconcerting. She was saying too much, so she waved a hand to forestall any further talking. ‘That’s enough.’
Her phone buzzed. She looked down at it.
She recognised the number on the display.
It was Pope.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Pope handed the driver of the taxi a twenty, told him to keep the change and stepped outside.
He looked over at the house, saw the number – 4269 – and crossed the path to climb the steps into the front garden. Isabella had said that he should go around to the rear. There was a path to the side of the house. Refuse bins had been left there, pushed up against the wall and reeking with the smell of old, rotten food. Pope squeezed by them, pushed through a wild bush that had been allowed to grow unchecked and made his way into the back garden. There was a door into the back of the house. He tried the handle, found that it was unlocked, carefully opened it and went inside.
It was a small house, in poor condition. He was in a room that had been used as a dumping place for the detritus that had not yet graduated to the rear garden. There was an old-fashioned, top-loading washing machine, a tumble dryer crammed into the space next to it, cardboard boxes tossed atop one another and black bin liners that had been gnawed upon by vermin, the clothes inside spilling out on to the floor.
He stopped and listened, concentrating hard, but he couldn’t hear anything. He turned the handle of the room’s other door and opened it, looking along a small corridor that ended with what he guessed to be the front door of the house. There was a step up from the room to the corridor and he took it, grimacing again from the pressure on his leg, and he slowly made his way down the hall.
There was a door to the left. It was open. Isabella was standing just inside the doorway. She was holding a black pistol in her right hand and was aiming it out of the room straight at him.
‘Relax,’ Pope said.
She lowered the weapon.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine. You?’
‘Cuts and bruises. We got lucky.’
Isabella gestured that he should go inside.
The room must have been used as the lounge at one time, although the days when it would have been pleasant and comfortable were long gone. The furniture was sparse and in poor condition. His attention was drawn to the floor next to the sofa. There was a woman there. She was naked. Her wrist had bee
n cuffed, the other bracelet attached to the riser pipe of the radiator.
Pope went over to the woman on the floor. Maia. There was nothing unusual about her: average height and build, with nothing to suggest she should have been capable of throwing him around the way that she had. Pope could see the lines of the muscles in her chest, the bulges down her arms and legs.
‘Hello again, Mr Pope,’ she said.
She rolled her shoulders to straighten out the kinks and, as she did so, Pope could see around to the location on her shoulder where Isabella had stabbed her.
There was nothing there.
He felt a shiver of unease.
He could diagnose his foreboding easily enough: it was uncertainty, fear. He had doubted the things that Atari and Litivenko had described to him. It was easy enough to do that, given the outlandishness of their claims, even after witnessing the freakish physical feats that had been carried out by this woman and the man who had pursued them in Shanghai. But here – looking down at the unblemished skin where there should have been a scar, a wound that had healed far more quickly than it had any right to – was a kind of proof that was more visceral and immediate. It suddenly became something real rather than theoretical, much more difficult to dismiss as fantasy.
And it led him inexorably to a second conclusion: that his family was held at the whim of people who had this kind of ugly science at their disposal.
Pope reflexively moved away from her.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ she said.
‘Stay there and be quiet.’
He put his hand on Isabella’s shoulder and moved her to the doorway.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Has she been any trouble?’
‘No. She said she was happy to wait for you. She hasn’t tried anything.’
‘That doesn’t mean we can trust her,’ he said, reaching out his hand for the gun.
‘What are we going to do?’ she said as she handed him the Glock.
‘Have you had a chance to look around?’
‘I’ve been down here with her. Didn’t want to take any chances.’
‘Search the rooms. See if you can find her phone.’
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Isabella returned with a small haul of booty.
She had two Beretta handguns: a small Beretta Pico and an M9. There was a karambit fighting knife, a cell phone, a collection of explosives and detonators and some clothes. Isabella laid everything out on the beaten-up sofa.
‘Where did you find those?’ Pope asked.
‘The M9 and the clothes were on the bed. The explosives and the Pico were under the floorboards. I saw one was loose.’
‘Well done,’ he said.
‘There’s this, too.’
Isabella had a sheaf of paper in her other hand. She handed it to Pope and he flicked through the pages. He scanned quickly: there were emails referring to Litivenko and the time she was due to land at Dulles, together with a short biography.
‘What does it mean?’ Isabella asked.
Pope drew her into the hallway, where they could speak quietly without being overhead. ‘She was there today to kill the doctor – this just proves it.’
‘She says she wasn’t,’ Isabella said.
‘Really?’
‘She says she was there to protect her.’
Pope shook his head. ‘She’s trying to trick us. She was there to kill her.’ He took Isabella by the shoulders and looked down into her face. ‘We can’t trust anything she says, Isabella. She works for the bad guys. Remember what she did in Italy.’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘You’ve got to stay sharp. This is an opportunity for us. We just have to work out how to take it.’
‘There’s one other thing. It was too big to bring with the other stuff. Wait there.’
She climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom. There was a square box with an adjustable webbing shoulder strap and an external display that recorded the temperature inside. She put the strap over her shoulder and took it down to Pope.
‘Do you know what this is?’ she said.
He examined it. ‘Looks like a portable fridge.’
He flicked back the clasps and opened the case. Cold air leaked out. The box was lined with heat-preserving aluminium foil and there was a cold gel pack at the bottom. There were three test tubes inside the inset. He took one out and held it up. The tube contained blood.
He took it into the living room. ‘Is this yours?’
Maia nodded. ‘I take a sample every week.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they monitor my blood.’
‘They?’
‘Daedalus. I take drugs for certain conditions I have. I have a weekly injection. They test the blood to make sure everything is as it should be. There is a balance that needs to be maintained. It can be dangerous if it gets out of control.’
‘Dangerous for whom?’
‘Mostly for other people, Mr Pope,’ she said.
‘How do you get the blood to them?’
‘A dead drop. I was supposed to leave it there this morning.’
‘And you didn’t.’
‘No. Not this time.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I chose not to.’
Pope returned to the portable fridge, slotted the tube back into the inset and closed it. It had given him an idea.
Isabella held up a key fob. ‘I found this, too.’
‘Do you know which car it’s for?’
She nodded. ‘It’s parked outside.’
‘That’s good. We need to get out of here. It isn’t safe. Grab her clothes – let’s get her dressed.’
Pope stood back and aimed the pistol down at Maia as Isabella collected the clothes from the sofa and brought them across the room.
‘Give me the phone,’ he said.
Isabella did as he asked. He switched it on, navigated to the camera app and snapped a series of photographs of Maia. He made sure that the photographs included a clear shot of her face.
‘We’re going to leave,’ Pope said, making sure to stay out of range. ‘Understand?’
Maia nodded.
‘I’m going to give you the key for your cuffs. I want you to undo them and then get dressed. If you try anything, I won’t think twice: I’ll just shoot you. Okay?’
‘I understand. Where are we going to go?’
‘Just get changed.’
Pope nodded to Isabella. The girl took the key for the bracelets from her pocket and slid it across the floor. Maia took the key and unlocked the cuff.
‘Get dressed.’
Pope kept the gun trained on her as she dutifully pulled on her jeans. She leaned forward, and Pope noticed the dressing on the back of her neck.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘A cut,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Cuff yourself again,’ he said. ‘Hands in front this time.’
She did as she was told and then, at Pope’s instruction, covered her cuffed hands with a throw that she took from the sofa.
Pope went to the window and peered out through a narrow gap between the board and the frame.
‘What are you going to do?’ Maia asked him.
‘You don’t need to worry about that.’
‘Are you going to offer to exchange me for your family?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Because if you are, you should be careful. I don’t know how valuable I am to them any more.’
He knew there was little to be had by engaging with her, but he couldn’t resist. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘I’m damaged goods.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ve disobeyed orders. I know you won’t believe me, but I wasn’t there to kill the doctor. I wanted to help. They probably know that now. They might prefer it if you shot me. You’d save them a bullet.’
Pope
gripped the pistol a little more tightly. ‘Shut up, you crazy bitch,’ he said. ‘If you think I’m going to listen to you, you’re nuts.’
‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to struggle. I’m tired. I don’t care what you do to me.’
Pope ignored her. He turned to Isabella. ‘She’s going to ride in front with me until we can find somewhere we won’t be overlooked; then she’s going in the trunk. You ride in the back with the Pico. Keep it aimed on her. Shoot her if you have to.’
Chapter Sixty
Maia rode in the front of the Cruze with Isabella pressing the little Beretta against her ribs until they were out past Woodland Acres. Pope found a quiet road on the way to Chantilly. He went around to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. He took the gun from Isabella, went back to the front of the car, opened the passenger door and walked Maia to the back. She got into the opened trunk without objection. There was plenty of space for her. She drew her knees up to her chest and stared out at him as he aimed the gun down at her.
‘You’re very cooperative,’ he said.
‘I told you. I’m tired. And I don’t see any point in resisting. You have the gun.’
Her calmness was disconcerting. Pope slammed the lid of the trunk down and got back into the driver’s seat.
Isabella slithered into the front. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Maybe we don’t need Atari any more. Do you have her phone?’
She handed it to him.
‘We have two choices,’ he said. ‘We could contact Atari and offer to give him Maia if he helps me find my family. That’s the easiest of the two options, but I’ve never really trusted him. He nearly got us killed twice: Shanghai and then today. He has some clever tricks, but I don’t think he can keep a secret.’
‘So?’
‘The second option is we take the initiative.’ He nodded his head back towards the trunk. ‘You’ve given us an opportunity. If she is what we think she is, she’s very valuable. They’re going to want her back again.’
‘We swap her?’