by Blake Banner
I glanced at Timmerman. He looked drawn. I said: “For Christ’s sake, cheer up. You look terrified.”
“They are looking for me. When I show them my ID card…” His hollow eyes flocked over my face. “You cannot kill me for this. I am not responsible…”
“I’ll blow you apart now if you don’t start smiling.” I laughed like I’d said something funny, and added, “And trust me, if they recognize you, you die!” like it was the punch line to a joke.
We were drawing closer. The lieutenant was holding Njal’s passport and shouting at him in a thick, Spanish accent, “Where do you come from?”
Njal looked scared. “I tell you, Norway. I am from Norway. See my passport…”
“No! No! From where do you come? In Spain? In France? From where you come?” He was getting mad and I was hopping Njal wasn’t overplaying his hand. His face cleared. “Aaaah… from where…? OK! From Barcelona. Before this from Santander, before this from Galicia…”
The lieutenant sighed and gave him back his passport, shaking his head, and waved him on. I had a hot, twisted knot in my belly. We couldn’t turn back and there was no way out except through the barrier. And Timmerman was right, the moment they saw his ID card, we were fucked six ways from Sunday.
I studied his face a moment, then reached in my pocket and pulled out Henry Winter’s passport and credit card, and the clear glasses I had worn as part of his identity. I handed them to Timmerman and said, “You’re British. You’re in Spain looking to invest in property. Put the damn glasses on. Pull ahead like we met on the train and you’re saying good bye.”
He opened the passport and stared at the face looking back at him. “The photograph, it is you with glasses and a mustache…”
“It’s neutral. You shaved and stopped dying your hair. Now pull ahead and put some conviction into your performance. Your life depends on it, pal.” I smiled at him and said, “Well, Mr. Winter, it was nice meeting you. Good luck with your investments.”
He sighed, closed his eyes a moment and shoved on the glasses. “Yes! You too,” he said, with bitter irony, “with your enterprise!”
We were approaching the barrier. Timmerman had pulled three or four places ahead of me. The woman in front of him was waved through by a young guard with an ugly attitude, and Timmerman stepped forward. He smiled at the guard and showed him his passport. The guardia wasn’t stupid. He scowled at it and shook his head. “Esto no es usted! This is not you!”
Timmerman gave a tolerant laugh. “Of course it is me! I have shaved my mustache. My hair… Last year it went gray! But it’s me! You can see, the face…”
The guard stared hard at the picture and at Timmerman two, three times. He was telling himself they were looking for three men, two were possibly terrorists, one of them was an EU commissioner who had been abducted. Henry Winter, alone, with a shaved mustache and gray hair was not what he was looking for, but still he knew something was wrong. He turned to the guy on the next line, “Pepe, que te parece…?”
He was asking him what he thought. He handed over the passport and his colleague took it, looked at Timmerman and back at the passport, then shrugged and made a face with his mouth pulled down at the corner. “Puede ser, de todos modos no es el hombre al que buscamos.” He shrugged. “No te compliques la vida, tío.”
It’s not the guy we’re looking for. Don’t complicate your life. The guardia took back the passport, glanced another couple of times from the picture to Timmerman, then handed it back to him. “You must update this photograph. This is no acceptable photo!” He jerked his head toward the exit. Timmerman thanked him and walked away, promising him he would do that.
I realized then that I’d had my shoulders hunched and I’d been holding my breath. The line began to move again and I maneuvered myself toward the lieutenant. He was the only one of the three who had not seen the photograph of Henry Winter. The other two had studied it closely and there was a good chance they would recognize me.
One passenger stood between me and the lietenant. Beside me, the guard who’d checked Timmerman waved two Spanish women through, then he waved his hand at me. I looked surprised and pointed at myself, “Me?”
“Si! Usted! Venga!”
I looked behind me at the people in his line. There were maybe half a dozen, but most of them were women and he knew he was looking for men. I could hear him shouting. Acting the gentleman, I gestured at the nearest women. The guard bellowed at me, “Venga! Venga!” The women looked mad. She strutted up to him and started rattling in Spanish. He shouted at her and she shouted back. She had a home and kids to get to. Franco had died, or hadn’t he heard? And he could stop shouting at her, too. Who the hell did he think he was, just because he had a goddamn uniform?
The guy in front of me went through and the lieutenant waved me over. I handed him my passport and he studied it, and me, carefully. I fit the description he’d been given, but so did a million other men, and there was only one of me. There should be three and one of them should be behaving like a hostage, scared, at the very least nervous.
“Where you come from?”
“Paris.”
His eyes narrowed. “What were you doing in Paris?”
“I am writing a book about the collapse of the European Union. I was doing research.”
“You are traveling alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you staying in Spain?”
“I’m staying the weekend at the Hilton, then I will travel around Spain, talking to people...”
He nodded once, handed me my passport and waved me on.
The main concourse was practically empty. I walked past the guards and the dogs, who ignored me, and went through the big, plate glass doors into the main station building. There was no sign of Njal or Timmerman anywhere.
I followed the exit signs past closed cafes, the tropical garden and a couple of cleaners with big yellow carts and mops, who looked like they were as tired of their lives as they were of their jobs. I rode the escalator up and crossed the mall to the main exit. All the shops were closed and the only humans up there were a security guard staring through a shop window and a man and a woman in suits, pulling cases on wheels. The automatic plate glass doors slid open for them and they stepped out into the broad gardens that fronted the station. I followed them, searching for Njal and Timmerman. They weren’t there either.
I made my way up to the Plaza Emperador Carlos V. It was bright with lights under a black sky, and still busy with traffic, despite the hour. I stood for a moment and looked around. On my left was the Paseo de las Delicias, the Boulevard of the Delights. I headed down that way. It wasn’t especially delightful, but after two blocks I turned left into the Calle Murcia and found Njal, in the light of an old, iron streetlamp leaning with his ass against a dark blue Toyota Land Cruiser. Timmerman was leaning against the wall, by the grocery store. I said:
“What about the key?”
“It was taped underneath. Standard procedure.”
“You drive four hours. Then I drive. Let’s go.”
The lights flashed and bleeped. I opened the door and Timmerman climbed in. I got in the front passenger seat and slammed the door. Njal was behind the wheel and looked at me. “Where are we going?”
Timmerman looked at me curiously in the mirror. “Not even he knows?”
I ignored him. “You’re looking for the E5 headed south toward Cordoba, Avenida de la Victoria.”
He punched it into the satnav, then pulled away, crossed over the Boulevard of the Delights and turned south onto the Boulevard of Saint Mary of the Head. You have to hand it to the Spanish. They know how to name a street.
We drove through the night. There was no landscape visible, only the dark glass of the windows, and the tapering blacktop in the amber funnels of the headlamps. After the initial plains south of Madrid, the roads were mainly mountain roads that climbed and dipped through pine forests that loomed on either side, like vast black walls. Occasionally we wou
ld plunge into a long, narrow tunnel, illuminated with bleak, yellow light, and emerge again on the other side, among more black peaks, with the road winding on, seemingly interminable.
At that time of the night, the roads were largely empty and the going was easy. Timmerman slept most of the way, and I allowed myself to drift into a state of semi-sleep, where I was relaxed enough to rest, but aware of what was going on around me, aware of the steady procession of dead gas stations and closed, silent ventas by the side of the road.
At three fifty A.M., we finally approached Cordoba, a distant glow on our right. Njal followed the signs and pulled off the highway. We followed the narrow road for a couple of hundred yards and suddenly we were in a town that could have been in Arizona or New Mexico. There were low, one-story houses with small verandas on roads lined with orange trees. Tall, steel streetlamps cast a sickly, yellow glow over empty streets with sidewalks that were made of yellow dust, where here and there a truck was parked, and bars displayed Coca-Cola signs shaped like bottle tops.
Then, just as suddenly, we were among seven story blocks, kebab shops and dark, silent bars with terraces. We came to a big roundabout, crossed it and then we were on a large bridge, crossing the Guadalquivir River onto a broad avenue flanked by gardens. The satnav spoke suddenly, “You have reached your destination.”
I said, “Keep going. Stay right at the next roundabout.”
We followed the avenue past a large fountain and a grotesque hotel faced in ugly bronze plates, then right past silent department stores with luminous, frozen tableaus in their windows, and left past the Parque de Colon, with its giant eucalyptus trees and 18th century water features. After that, we crossed two avenues and began to climb out of the dawn city into the foothills of the Sierra Morena, into the suburbs of El Brillante, the residential area of gated, luxury houses with swimming pools and tennis courts and lawns shaded by giant pine trees and palms, where the rich Cordobeses sunbathe and pretend they are in Malibu.
I said, “Take the second right, then it’s the fifth house on your left, big green metal gates.”
I pulled out my cell as we turned onto a cobbled hill, dialed a number and, when it stopped ringing, said, “We’re here.”
Up ahead, a set of large, green, steel gates was rolling back. Njal slowed and I said, “Turn in here.”
We pulled into a gravel driveway and came to a halt in front of a double garage. Behind us, we could hear the gates rolling closed again. On our right, there was a garden—eighteen orange trees set around six palms which encircled an arabesque fountain. Broad steps led down to the garden from a veranda, overgrown with jasmine and Russian vine, that fronted a classical Spanish villa. Njal killed the engine and we climbed out.
At the top of the steps was a man in his late thirties. He was clean-shaven with sandy hair parted on the left. He was wearing a khaki shirt and chinos. When he spoke, he had the amused drawl of the English upper classes.
“Lacklan Walker, as I live and breathe.” He came down the steps and held out his hand. “It’s good to see you, old friend. I won’t ask what the hell you’re doing here, I assume it is illegal.”
I shook his hand and slapped his shoulder. “Need to know, D’Arcy. Where is your wife?”
“Carmen is staying with her parents tonight. I packed her off when you said you were coming. Who are your friends?”
“This is Njal, a colleague…” they shook. “And…”
D’Arcy smiled and reached out a hand. “Jean-Claude Timmerman. I do watch the news, Walker. How do you do, Mr. Timmerman?”
Timmerman shook his hand and shrugged. “I have had better days.”
“I’m sure. Shall we go inside?”
He led us in to a central patio with a cobbled, mosaic floor and another fountain at the center, surrounded by potted jasmine, geraniums and other flowers. Two staircases rose on the right and left to a galleried, second floor landing that surrounded the patio on three sides. He led us across and down some steps into a large, modern kitchen with an old, heavy wooden table in the middle of the floor.
“You’re probably desperate for some coffee and something to eat, aren’t you? Grab a seat.”
Njal and Timmerman sat on old pine chairs at the table. I remained standing while D’Arcy put a pot of coffee on to brew, and then loaded the table with milk, sugar, bread, butter, cheese and ham. When he was done, he glanced at me and said, “Got a moment? Let me show you the house while the coffee brews.” To Njal, he said, “You chaps help yourselves to anything you want. We won’t be a minute.”
He led me back up the stairs to the patio, then crossed it to the left and opened the door onto a long, broad library-cum-study furnished with heavy, oak Castilian furniture that looked authentic. At the far end there was a desk, and halfway down a couple of armchairs by an old, stone fireplace. He went to the desk and rested his ass against it. I sat on the arm of one of the chairs. We looked at each other a moment, then D’Arcy said:
“Head Office is a little unhappy, Walker.”
When the British military say they are a little unhappy, it means they’re as mad as a grizzly with a hornet up its ass and death and mayhem are likely to follow. I raised an eyebrow.
“Why’s that?”
“Emile has been murdered. He was a valuable asset. The shop said you’d asked for a delivery to be sent to him.”
I nodded. “He tried to blackmail me, threatened to talk.”
“There are procedures for that, Walker. You don’t just go around killing company assets because they annoy you. You shouldn’t strictly have been using him in the first place. You aren’t really in the company anymore.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. I found that out the hard way.”
“They’re worried you’ve gone rogue. I’ve been ordered to take care of it.”
I felt a hot jolt in my gut. “Take care of it?”
“I’ve been told to find out if you’re a liability.”
“And if I am?”
He shook his head. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, Lacklan. You know the procedure. Be hospitable, engage you in conversation and if I decide you’re a liability, terminate you. The only reason we are in my study having this conversation is out of respect for our friendship. I confess, when Head Office contacted me, I was certain you’d have a good explanation.” He frowned, narrowed his eyes. “But here you are, turning up at my house, admitting you killed an important asset, for no good reason that I can see, and you have the missing Commissioner Jean-Claude Timmerman in tow. Frankly, Lacklan, at the moment, it’s looking as though you’ve taken leave of your senses.”
I puffed out my cheeks and blew, wondering where the hell to begin. “It’s a long story, D’Arcy, and I haven’t got a lot of time.”
“You may have less time than you think. What’s the short version?”
I spread my hands. “OK, Timmerman is the head of a covert, European organization. They had a branch in the U.S., which I destroyed. Timmerman sent a hit squad out to Boston to take me and my family out. I am here to shut down Timmerman and his organization.”
He stared at me for a long time, then burst out laughing. “It sounds like the plot of a second rate James Bond film. You expect me to believe that?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t, but it’s true.”
He was still smiling. His eyes were skeptical. “How do you plan do destroy this organization?”
“I can’t tell you that. Please don’t ask me. In any case, it isn’t relevent to what’s worrying you and Head Office.”
“You’ll have to give me something, Walker. You don’t want to make an enemy of the Regiment.”
“No, I don’t. I need you on side, and believe me, with what’s coming up, you need me on side, too.”
He frowned. “Is that a threat?”
“No. It’s a fact. Look, D’Arcy, I haven’t got time to explain everything to you, and I sure as hell haven’t got ti
me to try and persuade you. But if you hear it from Timmerman’s lips, will you believe me?” I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe this is something you guys at the DI need to know about.”
He studied me for a while, trying to read me. Finally, he said, “Yeah, OK. What about your chap, Njal? Who’s he?”
“He’s one of my guys. You can trust him.”
“You’re on bloody thin ice here, Walker. This had better be good.”
I smiled, but without much humor. “It’s good. Believe me. It’s going to blow your mind.”
He didn’t say anything, but his face told me he was hoping he wasn’t going to have to kill me. I was hoping that, too, because if anybody could, he and his pals could.
TWELVE
When we got back to the kitchen, Njal stood up.
“I must sleep. You have a room for me?”
D’Arcy nodded. “Of course. Main patio, up the far stairs, first door.” He turned to me. “I had Maria make up the beds when you said you were coming.”
“Yuh, thanks.” To me, Njal said, “What time you want to leave in the morning?” He looked at his watch. “Is quarter to five.”
I thought about it. “Mid morning: eleven, twelve.”
He gave me the thumbs up and left. Timmerman watched me and D’Arcy sit at the table and sighed. “I also could sleep. It has been an exhausting day.”
D’Arcy gave him a sympathetic smile that offered little hope. “I’ll show you to your room very shortly, Mr. Timmerman. I am very sorry about this, but we need to ask you just a couple of questions first.”
“Alors…” he spread his hands. “Ask.”
Before D’Arcy could speak, I said, “Explain to Mr. D’Arcy what Omega’s view of the British withdrawal from the European Union is.”
I caught D’Arcy’s startled glance, so did Timmerman. He gave a tired smile and shook his head.
“You are a very devious, dangerous man, Mr. Walker. So, Mr. D’Arcy does not know about Omega, but he works, I imagine, for the British Department of Intelligence. No doubt it is the Secret Intelligence Service. You need to make him aware of Omega, but you need also for him to see us in the negative light, as a threat to Britain, so you ask, how does Omega view Brexit.” He shook his head again. “Very well.” He studied D’Arcy’s face a moment. “Omega does not want a breakdown of the Union, Mr. D’Arcy. There are dark times coming in the near future, and Omega believes that a united Europe, with Britain at the heart of the Union, has a better chance of success in surviving these dark times than with a disunited, fractured Union. Therefore, we oppose Britain’s departure, and we work behind the scenes to prevent it.”