by S. G Mark
“How?”
“My source told them,” he said, “My source betrayed me.”
“What? The one you’ve had for a while? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been blackmailing him since the start. Since the first day we held the market together at London Bridge. I guess it became too much for him.”
“Blackmail? What?”
“I told you, it wasn’t right that someone was buying more than one set of Rations,” Jack said, distantly.
“I don’t understand? How did he know where you’d be??” Lana asked, instantly fetching him a bottle of cheap drink from the cupboard.
“I asked him to spy on his friend, his old pal Quentin,” Jack cracked open the bottle and swigged directly from it. He passed it back to Lana, “So he did. And at some point down the line he grew tired of it, and gave up and he betrayed me.”
“So you told him you were going to attack Quentin at some point?” Lana asked, “And he reported it back?”
“No, I didn’t tell him our plans. He just gave me Quentin’s schedule for the month. I just passed it on…”
Lana stopped mid-swig. They’d both realised the same thing.
“Your source.... how could he have known the plan if you never told him?”
Racing to the sink, Jack threw up again. Lana was right. Julian had given him a month’s worth of schedules: there was no telling which day The Resistance would choose or even if Jack was going to be there in person.
“I’m made a huge mistake,” he said, wiping his chin, “I killed him… I killed him not twelve hours ago and I didn’t need to…”
“Oh fucking hell, Jack…”
“It’s worse than that…” Jack retched again.
“What do you mean?” Lana yelled.
“There’s a mole… there’s actually a mole in The Resistance…”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Get Kyle over,” he ordered to Lana, “Now.”
Jack grabbed the bottle back from her and gulped a mouthful down. He hadn’t realised it before. He’d been too busy blaming the obvious candidate - the obvious but innocent candidate. Jack had killed Julian for nothing.
He slammed the bottle down on the coffee table. He fucking knew it. Julian’s last words, why hadn’t he listened?
“I saved you,” the poor man had said.
He had. The man had saved his life a month ago - if he wanted rid of him, he would have let it happen there and then.
Jack began pacing the room. Lana was on the phone. She didn’t have Kyle’s direct dial, so the wait was excruciating. Jack demanded that she reveal nothing about why she wanted to contact him. Jack wanted to admit his mistake in person.
He looked out the window. Cold weather swarming. City lights warming. Back to the sink. He felt another capsule of vomit rise. But he suppressed it. He needed to stop this. He needed to be strong. Until Alex was better, he was leader. He made the decisions. He needed to act like he did as well.
“He’s going to ring me back,” Lana said, putting down her phone. “Are you alright?”
He was shaking uncontrollably, and his mind was at the point of hysterical laughter.
“Do you ever remember past worries and wonder at what point they all became so trivial? Cos I remember a time I stayed awake underneath the stars, panicking over what my future was going to bring. It was just after the massacre in Fort William. I thought I’d grown up then, I thought I could take it on…” Jack turned to her, “Lana, you’ve known me for a long time... do you think I can do this?”
She looked at him for a long time before she said anything, “I don’t think you want to do it, no. But I think that’s what makes you unique…”
“What do you mean?”
“Because whenever personalities get involved, the bigger picture shrinks into oblivion. I think you can do this because you have to, not because you want to.”
A wave of relief crashed over him. It was the boost he needed. He strode across the room and kissed her on the forehead.
She looked up at him expectantly. Then the phone rang and the Lana he’d seen for a split second disappeared in the gravity of the situation.
“Hello,” she answered the phone, “Yes. He is here. He wants to meet.”
There was a pause whilst Kyle responded.
“Good. Yes. Okay,” she hung up. “He’ll be here within the hour.”
Jack immediately sat down, gathering his thoughts. His face flashed on screen once more. He wondered whether or not Eliza knew. By now, it was unlikely that she didn’t. An entire day had passed, and the man she’d broken her virginity to was being plastered all over national television? At least, he thought, she now knew what had happened to him. At least the wondering was at an end. But she was just as blind as the rest of them. Just as deaf to the truth as he had been.
Lana sat with him until the doorbell rang. An uneasy atmosphere had descended upon them. Jack was shivering with fear. Lana wordlessly comforted him. Right now he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to have the post mortem of what had happened. He just wanted to stare at the frayed carpet by the television stand as his mind slowly unpicked the threads of thought that strove to liberate themselves from his calm collectiveness.
Had he reached the end of the road? Was there no more track on the line? The cold concrete barrier mocked him from the television screen. The photograph staring back at him wasn’t the grainy CCTV image anymore. A fragment of a memory battered through his swollen brain; a party a few years back, arm round a friend. Red faced from the flash and the sweaty nightclub: someone he knew had sold a photograph.
How much had they fetched for a few fucking pixels of his face, and what were they now thinking of their friend? Who was Jack to them now? Not a friend, not the chatty colleague that became a little odd towards the end. That face they knew, from the drunken late nights to the early morning shifts, wasn’t assigned to that person anymore. Jack Blackwood disappeared in puff of smoke, the trick was over and the applause flat.
His elbows resting on his knees, he was shaking relentlessly now. Cold sweat ran down his temple. How much longer did he have left? Were they going to burst down the door at any second? Jack felt weak, powerless; pathetic.
At last the doorbell rang. Lana, cool and calm to Jack’s stark horror, went to the door; checking through the security eyehole first. A moment later the door opened for a fraction of a second; a gust of wind rampaged through, carrying decaying leaves and street debris in with it. Kyle stormed in, his long jacket flowing behind him. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair streaked with a darker colour. Stubble dabbed his chin.
“Are you alright?” he said, immediately kneeling beside him.
Jack stared back at Kyle, sarcasm weighing down his gaze.
“Course you’re not fucking okay,” Kyle sighed, sitting back against the wall by the window.
Scruffy jeans, holey trainers, old shirt and faded jacket; he’d dressed up for his visit.
“What’s going to happen now?” Jack said, his voice deep with dread.
Kyle looked up and for a flinch of a moment, Jack thought he’d read his mind. This was it, the end. He was a dead man walking and there was an hourglass above his head; grains trickling from above into an abyss of nowhere.
“We need to move you,” Kyle said, “But not tonight. It’s too risky. It’s not broken the news but they know you’re in London.”
“How?”
Kyle paused, psyching himself up to what he was going to say, “They know about Julian Syme.”
It was not unexpected, but at the same time it hit him like a wrecking ball.
“I thought he had betrayed us,” he said.
Kyle stared at him, not a trace of judgement in his eyes.
“He knew too much,” Jack continued, but found little motivation to justify his actions.
Lana had returned to her place on the sofa, quietly keeping out of the situation but her presence spoke volumes.
“It
was your call to make,” Kyle said, though his lack of tone spoke otherwise, “He was your source, I trust? The media haven’t announced it yet, but I’ve been told who he was… who he knew.”
Jack nodded, “His wife knows?”
Kyle nodded, “The family has been informed.”
Jack looked to the frayed carpet again; his old familiar friend.
Meanwhile, Kyle got to his feet and grabbed a bottle of beer from the side.
“You need to drink just to get through every fucking day here,” Kyle sighed, unscrewing the cap and taking a healthy swig. He passed it to Jack, who took it too enthusiastically.
Lana reached out her hand next.
“What a fucking day,” Jack said, “What a fucking shit day.”
But as his eyes slipped casually, depressingly, to the television screen, the words that spilled across the bulletin reel were quite unexpected.
Steven Lennox Confirmed as Leader of The Resistance
Jack looked to Kyle, who returned an equally quizzical expression.
“Why the fuck do they think that?” Jack exclaimed.
Kyle shook his head, “I have no idea. But if they think that…”
“What?” he asked, but when Kyle fell mute, he lost his cool, “Goddammit what the fuck happens now?”
Jack jumped to his feet. He felt as if the crosshairs were on the back of his neck already. He rubbed it violently, but the feeling remained.
“Jack,” Kyle said, getting to his feet and grabbing Jack by the head with both hands, “You need to calm down.”
Jack latched onto Kyle’s arms with equal force, “I killed 2 people inside of three days. I killed the fucking Home Secretary and his fucking university chum and now they think I’m the leader. Tell me how the fuck I’m going to get out of this one, Kyle? Tell me how the fuck I’m going to lie my way out of this fucking disaster!”
He was panting heavily.
All the lies. They’d worked in the past: but he’d just reached beyond the luxury of their use. His face was plastered on the television. His name was being dragged through the mud. He was the fucking Enemy now. He was the man the government told the public to fear.
“First of all,” Kyle began, “You need to calm down. They don’t know where you are. You are safe here.”
“But you said not five minutes ago that I had to leave?”
“We do,” he said, “But we can’t move you now. It’s too close to Curfew. Besides, they’ll be looking for you now…”
“So what do we do?” Jack stared between Lana and Kyle.
Lana and Kyle exchanged looks, with neither advancing the conversation.
Jack sunk back into the sofa and once again his twenty-four year old self plagued him from the screen.
“My entire family is going to be watching this,” he said quietly, “My father… I just left him… what must be think of me… And Eliza… Eliza must know….”
Tears glazed his eyes. He didn’t want to be alone, but at the same time he felt that he already was. No one else could share his pain. Alex had skirted the glare of the media. His name was not being bandied about; his identity was not being assigned to titles he didn’t have and certainly didn’t deserve.
“What do I do, Kyle?” he said, his throat clogging up, “What do I do?”
There was no resolution. He couldn’t deny his involvement. He couldn’t erase the last eighteen months of his life. And after all he’d done; after the lives he’d taken; the lives he’d seen stolen by others, his sole thought was not how he felt inside, but how, all those hundreds of miles away, Eliza was judging him.
He stared at the television as it faded from the news to another depressing drama. Death and destruction: suddenly flowers and roses.
“She knows, Kyle,” he said, “She knows…”
Lana immediately looked to Kyle, but Kyle dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
“Jack, you have to focus on what’s important,” he said, “Does it matter who they think is leader? Does it matter that Eliza does?”
Jack nodded vigorously, “Yes! Of course it fucking does.”
“Then you have to force yourself not to care. Right now, you are the leader. Right now, she doesn’t exist to you. From now on, your family is not your family. They are gone.”
Jack was furious. He couldn’t understand why Kyle was unable to process what was really happening.
“This is my life, Kyle!” he screamed, “My fucking life. My family. My girlfriend!”
“She isn’t your fucking girlfriend, Jack!”
It was too late. He’d launched himself at Kyle and threw a punch in his face. The anger was wild. Kyle eventually pushed him away, throwing him backwards on to the carpet. Towering above him, Kyle’s figure cast a silhouette against the fluorescent ceiling light. He wiped his lip.
“Jack, you need to calm down,” he said, “This isn’t going to help anyone.”
“It’s helping me, alright?”
“You can’t behave like nothing's your fault anymore!” Kyle yelled, “You fucking killed two people! You’re involved! And you fucking delegated yourself Alex’s deputy whilst he’s out of action!”
Jack prepared to scream back a retort, but he’d ran out of energy. Kyle was right. Denial just delayed the inevitable acceptance.
That night Jack took the bed alongside Kyle. Lana slept on the sofa. The tiny safe house was pathetic in structure, but it was magnificent for its anonymity. A crappy council estate, plagued by the drizzle and ruined by age and substandard building regulations, it was the perfect cover for a dirty organisation with dirty secrets.
Pale blue light filtered in through the thinly veiled net curtains. Jack stared at the window, watching the little flecks of rain splash against the pane like paint. All night he lay awake, watching the sky slowly ignite from the deepest blue into the brightest pinks and deepest shadows of scarlet.
Kyle was awake too, presumably keeping a close ear to the ground on anyone approaching the flat. Neither spoke to each other. There was nothing left to say now. The anger had vanished; now just cold silence remained. Cold silence and sirens. Cold silence and exhaustion.
Right now, he missed Eliza more than he ever had before. Ashamedly, he had to put her in a mental folder and forget about her. She was as dear to him as ever, but she needed to be forgettable - out of necessity. Every minute he spent thinking about how much he missed her; how much he loved her, was a minute wasted on his dedication to survival.
The morning arrived with horrific haste. Lana made them a breakfast of dried toast and hot milk. Kyle’s eye was slightly bruised. Jack wanted to apologise, but convinced himself it wasn’t necessary.
As he gulped down his last morsel of warm bread, his attention reverted to the television once more. The news wasn’t blaring for once. A calm documentary about lions was playing.
“What do we do, then?” Jack asked Kyle.
Kyle took a gulp of his tepid milk, “I’ll get transported sorted for us to leave London this afternoon. I think being away from the capitol will help for at least for a while.”
“No,” Jack had thought of little else all night, “I don’t think that will help.”
“What do you want me to do?”
The long hours of the morning had brought the revelation to his lips long before they alighted from them.
“We need to meet. You, me, Devin, Kim and Melanie.”
Kyle screwed his face in confusion.
“You were right,” Jack said, feeling the sensation of genuine humility, “I am part of this. I need to stop denying it.”
“I’m glad,” Kyle smiled, “But why do you want to meet?”
“Because I have something to say,” Jack said, collecting the crumbs from his plate and drizzling them into his mouth, “And for once I think my opinion should be counted.”
As afternoon paled into evening, the doorbell rung, one after another.
“Lana,” he asked, “Can you get everyone a stiff glass.”
> As Lana set about pouring everyone a glass of the cheap alcohol, the rest of them sat down. Jack at the helm, his heartbeat racing and his adrenaline pumping.
“Well,” he sighed, “Don’t all queue up for autographs now that I’m a celebrity.”
The others laughed, but Jack was quick to put a stop to it. He had spent most of the hours of the day mentally preparing for this moment. He didn’t want to delay it any further.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” he said, “You were all in Alex’s inner circle. And because of that, you are the only people that I trust in this organisation.”
He eyed them all up and trusted in Alex’s judge of character.
“The last few days have been fucking difficult for me. But they’ve made me realise something that I don’t think any of us have been prepared to admit before. Now I’d like to invite you to take a stiff drink, right now.”
Jack stared at his sweaty palms, which left print marks on the coffee table he was resting them against. He was on the brink of an age he never believed he’d ever feel ready for; and he wasn’t entirely convinced he did now. But gravity was pulling him towards something more important than himself; he was both frightened and awed by it.
“How long have we been playing this game? How many times have we won some ground and lost it? How many dead comrades can we name?” he began, “The answer to all of those is too long, too much and too many. Now we have been fighting our hardest, but it isn’t working. Nothing we do is working. We’ve got people recruiting the public - ordinary people who are struggling. They are fucking fighting every day for their survival, for a good and decent life. But they won’t fight for us. They won’t join us… and I think it’s time to finally admit defeat. It’s not our fault. We’ve tried. We’ve done our bit. I think we just have to accept that they don’t want us to fight. And that may sound like I am completely giving up, but Alex shares my opinion. We have to fight for them, because they are not interested. And that brings me to my next point. Why? Why are they not interested, and we are? On the surface, you could claim its fear. Maybe it is for some. But I can’t help thinking that it’s something deeper than that. I know, I’ve been one of them. I was forced into this, maybe none of you realised. We were all one of them at one time or another, but I was probably the one most oblivious to this organisation. I hated you. I hated you all. I even reported this wanker to the CRU,” he pointed at Kyle, “I was blind, yes, fair enough. But I wasn’t blinded by fear. No, c’mon, how many times can they deal out the threat of terrorism before it becomes the norm? I wasn’t scared when I walked out the front door - not any more than I was by the possibility of being hit by a car. Though I was unnerved by the CRU, I genuinely thought they were there for the peace of the country….I think we forget…