The Pretender- Escaping the Past

by C R Martens

  She moved around his dead body in a daze, erasing herself from the house as she had done so many times before, but there was no recognition in the routine. This was new, knowing the victim, loving him. And just like that, it was like she had never been there. She had never been a part of him and now she never would be. The heart-wrenching reality was, Eve had used his computer, it was her mistake that had cost Patrick his life. She closed the door behind her. Numb to her surroundings, she pulled out her mobile from her pocket and called Cain.

  “Meet me at the south harbour in Copenhagen, at a building site by Larsen A/S,” she said coldly. “Shouldn’t be hard to find. 10 pm tomorrow.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to respond before she hung up. She didn’t care about being monitored or traced. In fact, she would welcome her enemies with open arms right now. Eve had nothing left to lose.

  She travelled back to the city. On the outside she must have looked just as horrendous as on the inside as an elderly woman came up to her on the train asking her if she was okay. Dusk was settling around her, casting a gloomy, dark-yellow hue over the sky. For a busy afternoon on the train, everything seemed very quiet around Eve.

  She called Hellström. “Hello,” he answered tentatively.

  “I need a favour,” Eve said. “I don’t need you to do anything but I need a gun, a new id, passport, healthcare card, credit card and a clean record. Is that something you can provide?”

  “When do you need it by?” he asked. “And what name?”

  “As soon as possible,” she said. “Can you hack into various security systems?”

  “Why? What do you need?” he asked, without hesitation. “And why do you need a gun?”

  “And I want you to see if you can locate Roman Belov. I know he is here, I just need a rough estimate of where he might be,” she said. “You know why I need a gun. I’m ending their hunt tomorrow. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder. I have done that my whole life, but not anymore.”

  “I’ll send you a location to meet,” he said. “It’ll be after darkness has fallen. Will that work?”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Make the documents in the name of Eve Burns.”

  It was possibly reckless, choosing the name the firm had given her, but her instincts told her that that was the last name the firm would expect she would go under.

  Eve sat in a tired and dated hotel room looking out of the window watching the afternoon slowly disappear. Feeling nothing but hatred, she could feel her heart grow cold. In that moment, she was exactly what the firm wanted her to be all along, a cold-hearted killer. Except they hadn’t planned for her to turn on them.

  Seven minutes later a text came in with a picture of Belov and a location to his whereabouts. Hellström had outdone himself; he had given Belov’s location with pinpoint accuracy. Then another text ticked in, this time with a location to meet Hellström. Eve could see he was pushing his comfort zone for her in coming close to the city. So, with hours to spare, she decided to go look around Belov’s supposed location. He was staying at an equally shady hotel, a place no one would go looking. She sat at a café with a distant but clear view of the hotel entrance. With her laptop open, she looked just like one of the five students sitting there, drinking their coffees and eating their croissants. Surveillance often took up the majority of time in any case she had ever worked on and therefore it was imperative that you could blend in anywhere. If you got that right, there was less of a chance of things going wrong. Right now, nothing seemed to be going her way. Images of Patrick kept invading her thoughts and the only person she needed to show up, didn’t make an appearance.

  At 8 pm the café staff politely asked her to leave as they were closing. She packed everything up and walked out into the street. It was a chilly evening, fog was in the air, making the streetlights glow in a milky hue. Eve walked down towards the hotel when a man in a great rush hurried past her. Before running across the street, he turned his head towards her to look for passing traffic. Belov. It took everything in Eve not to attack him right then and there. Her body shook as she imagined what he had done to Patrick and she felt the tears well up in her eyes, not sure if they were due to anger or grief. But Belov was just a little piece in a greater, more-evil puzzle and if she killed him now, she might not get to the person who was behind everything. She needed a positive id to go with that ‘one name’.

  Eve stood still, watching him walk through the doors of the hotel. She knew characters like him and she also knew what room he would prefer – a corner room, that’s what she would have chosen. So, she stood waiting to see which window might light up. Moments later, the corner window on the fourth floor on the right-hand side lit up. Standing in the shadows, pushed up against a cold brick building opposite the hotel, she watched him come to the window, look around and then pull the curtains closed. Then she left to meet Hellström.

  Eve arrived first, or so anyone else might have thought. Hellström’s skills weren’t what they used to be when it came to tailing someone. She knew he was watching her and she understood why. The car park by the school was empty and the school lay abandoned for the night. The trees gave a slight rustle as the wind caught them every so often. About fifteen minutes after her arrival, Hellström finally deemed it safe enough to step out of the shadows.

  “Fashionably late,” she said to him as he approached her. “Not something you see often in our line of business.”

  “I had to make sure you came alone,” he said, putting down his backpack.

  “I know you did.” Eve smiled and he looked at her in surprise. “I appreciate you doing this for me. I know what it means for you to come all the way up here. It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “You got me thinking,” he said. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder either. Which is why I am coming with you to your meeting.”

  “I feel like the appropriate response to that would be ‘no’,” she said. “But given what I’m about to walk into, I’m not going to say that. I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  “Tell me the plan.” He started to assemble a gun while Eve went over her plan. A plan she hadn’t given much thought to until now. All her training seemed to have gone out the window when they killed Patrick. She didn’t have the calmness of mind to carefully plan it and she didn’t know exactly for what she was planning or for how many. They took their time going over a rough plan of what might happen, leaving their exit strategy open. Two hours later Eve left Hellström with a gun and a spare clip in her bag. The morning hours were rolling on but she couldn’t go back to the hotel and sleep. She was restless and all she could think about was Belov.

  It didn’t take long to get into the hotel where he was staying; there wasn’t much security, the camera by the back entrance didn’t work and the lock was dead easy to pick. There were no cameras inside the building either, other than a few fake ones. In the lobby there sat a man who was probably a student. Eve watched him for a little while to see how aware he was. He didn’t see her, not even when she walked across the lobby.

  The hallway of the fourth floor was dimly lit, some of the lights weren’t even working. It smelled like mothballs and damp, the floors felt like they were moving under her every step, cracking and creaking, making it difficult to sneak up to Belov’s room. She stood for a moment in front of his door, listening to the silence. She put on a pair of latex gloves and then she carefully broke the two lights by the door. She got out her lock-picking kit and picked the door. Picking a lock in darkness was never easy but these were particularly shitty locks and easy to break into. The door clicked open and in that moment, she froze. Even her heart slowed down as she tried to detect any movement on the other side. She was starting to get back to her old self, doing what she did best. Eve walked slowly in, closing the door behind her silently. If the hallway was dark, then this room was black. She took off her shoes, placing her bag on top of them, pulled her hair back in a tight bun and finally taking off h
er clothes. Only wearing her underwear, she slipped silently across the room and sat in a chair opposite Belov’s bed. He was sleeping, not a care in the world, snoring every once in a while. Eve hadn’t felt hate for a long time. Not since John. But sitting there across from Belov, she felt it strongly. She sat staring at him for a half-hour. She saw why Belov had been excluded from the firm; there was no control in him and he lacked intelligence, not to speak of his level of awareness or lack thereof. Eve walked over to his bed, knife in hand. With one swift move she made a puncture in his neck, right at his artery. Not so big that he would die quickly, but large enough that he would die eventually.

  Eve saw his body jolt awake as she turned on the lights. His confusion was apparent; he had his hand to his throat. The blood slowly seeped through his fingers as he leapt to his feet to get to his gun. He removed his hand only to see a small but significant spray of blood land on the bed.

  “Yes, it’s a dilemma, isn’t it?” she said, sitting back down. “Should you grab your gun or keep pressure on your puncture wound?”

  “I will kill you,” he threatened. Fumbling around the bedside table, he grabbed his gun with his awkward hand. “They won’t get a chance to get their hands on you before I am finished with you.”

  “I have been sitting here for 30 minutes watching you sleep like a baby,” she said. “But good for you. It’s good to have faith, even when the end is near. You killed someone I loved, though. So, are you really that surprised I’m here?”

  “Yes, I am. They told me you weren’t top of the class.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I had my orders. I only do what is expected of me and nothing more.”

  “Who hired you and don’t say FIA,” she said. “I only want one name. Are you going to fire that gun?”

  “I know a gun without bullets when I hold one,” he said.

  Pointing at his cigarette, Eve walked over to his other bedside table and got one out of the pack. He knew it was the end.

  “Why are you turning your back on them?”

  “Because they started dealing with people like you,” she replied. “Did you kill Harlow too?”

  “Yes,” he said, matter-of-factly. Eve lit his cigarette. “Again, I did what I was told.”

  “What were you asked to do with Patrick?” she asked. “Did they ask you to torture him? Or did you do that just for fun? You already knew I was staying there so why do that to him?”

  “I don’t get specifics. They say when, where and who. Then I fill in the blanks.” She could tell he enjoyed it.

  “So, I wasn’t the target,” Eve concluded. Patrick was killed because of her. They had killed him purposely to get to her.

  “No. I may make mistakes but I always get the customer right.” He was clearly in it for the killing. “You asked for a name?”

  “Yes.” She was calm as the puzzle was starting to come together in her head. “Was it Cain?”

  “You already know. Yes, it was Cain,” he said. “Now, are you going to let me live?”

  “That’s a foolish question. I just needed confirmation,” she told him. “And you should know better than to hope with a punctured artery.”

  “Everyone gets like that. You should know,” he said. And she did know. No one relinquishes themselves to death. They all fight for life no matter how hopeless it is, they all think they might be that special someone who can make you change your mind and let them live. They try to make you sympathetic to their story, they try to persuade you that this really wasn’t their fault. Then they realise there is nothing they can do and they either make their final confession or they try to take you down.

  In that moment Belov made his decision and he made one last effort to fight for his life. He flung himself at Eve with everything he had left, but he was weak and lightheaded so she was kind. In one gliding move she slit the last of his throat. Eve stood next to him, feeling his body convulse against her leg. The nothingness of the night flooded over her, just as his blood flooded out. She was nothing but an empty shell. When she heard his last breath, she finally started walking towards the door. She didn’t even care about cleaning the room. If the police could find her, they were welcome to have her. She cared so little, she just walked out the front doors of the hotel, with blood on her face. She only heard the faint voice of the student behind the reception desk telling her to have a good night. He didn’t notice.

  Eve walked back to her hotel, needing to clear her mind of what she had just done. She felt like she was losing herself and felt like crawling back into her box and staying there. Everything she had done belonged in the box in the back of her mind. Including her. She laid down on the bed staring up at the ceiling. It must have been noon when she finally dozed off.

  ***

  She stood in the empty building; it was nothing but a shell. The building site had been abandoned many hours ago by the workers. Eve had been standing there for over an hour, Hellström had been here earlier than that, making sure no one arrived before them. She could hear him mumbling to himself every now and then over the ear-com. From the few words she heard, she gathered he was going over the plan in his head. She stood there dressed all in black as if going to a funeral. And maybe she would be. Later.

  Eve checked her gun again. It had been a while since she had last held one. Being a spy, she didn’t often deal with guns. Only when something had gone terribly wrong. It was usually a much quieter profession than that.

  The moonlight grazed her face as she stood by the second-floor window looking out. A beautiful woman with naturally full lips, blue eyes and dark blonde hair, Eve could have been anything she wanted but she had ended up trapped in a web of lies and betrayal.

  Then she saw him – a male figure approaching the site. It was a dark and misty night, everything seemed heavy, weighed down by the clouds. With one deep breath, she calmed her pulse down, the nerves disappeared and she was ready for whatever was to come. Then the figure moved into the light. And there he was. Cain. The one name. The name she first heard years ago, the only piece of intelligence Eve had hoped was wrong. It was a name dropped with an enormous consequence, started by Sir Jules.

  “Of all the people in FIA, you were probably the last person I would have suspected,” she said, walking out of the building. “Then Harlow died and it occurred to me. Harlow’s relationship with you was just too perfect and all wrong at the same time. Why was she working so hard to maintain a relationship with someone she generally didn’t like?”

  “Harlow was my friend and a good agent but she stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong.” He took a step back.

  “Harlow wasn’t your friend.” Eve smiled and stepped into the street light. “You were her target and she simply did what she has done hundreds of times before. She wooed you, made you feel comfortable and even special.”

  “What would you know?” Cain’s face was so full of anger that Eve hardly recognised him. The fact that he might have been played by Harlow had never crossed his mind. “Then why did you come? If you have it all figured out?”

  “You killed the man I loved,” she replied, her face growing cold. “So, the only reason for me to drop my pursuit, to forget what I learnt about the firm and about you, is now dead. And, of course, you killed my mentor and friend, someone I had great respect for. That was your mistake.”

  “Sentiment and compassion.” He smiled. “He said that would be your weakness.”

  “The pretend psychiatrist?” she asked. “Yes, I have compassion. If I hadn’t, I would have drowned in the mess of a firm a long time ago.”

  “Yes.” He was surprised that she knew about the psychologist. “How did you know?”

  “It wasn’t hard to figure out.” She changed the subject. “Harlow set a trap. Her suspicion of FIA started before I even came to the firm. So, when she recruited me, she downplayed my abilities every step of the way. She even changed my file and my test scores. Which is why you and I never warmed to each other. You didn’t think I deserved a place at
the firm. But the fact was and is, I even excelled Harlow’s abilities.”

  His face grew dark as he stood there in silence taking in her words. She knew he hadn’t come alone just as she also knew he wasn’t going to show his cards just yet.

  “She couldn’t have done that,” he said. “Only a tech in FIA could do that.”

  “That troubles you. Not knowing everything.” She looked at him closely but stayed back. Eve didn’t tell him about Harris. “Harlow found out, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “That the firm had changed its policies,” she said. “And that we were now taking money for kills.”

  “I told her to stop,” he said with remorse. “I even told her about the changes. She seemed fine with it but after that I started to see a change in her work routine. That’s when I started to keep a close eye on her.”

  “You know, Harlow was a compassionate person too. As I am. But it might actually have been a weakness for her. I guarantee you won’t find any compassion from me,” Eve said, trying to gather as many details as she could from Cain’s face. “You can look for him all that you want to, but Belov isn’t coming.”

  “It wasn’t him I was looking for.” His smugness was shining through as if he knew something I didn’t. “He’s keeping to the shadows. No, I have others here too.”

  “I expected as much,” I said. “But you are implying that Belov is here, right?

  “What do mean?” He looked confused.