by Bill Walker
Chapter Twenty-Three
The young girl moaned and bucked beneath him, her normally placid face now twisted into a grimace of ecstasy, sweat gleaming off the stud in her nose.
“Oh, God, Fergie!” she screamed, digging her rather generous claws into his back. “Fuck me harder!”
Biting back the pain, Ferguson thrust into her harder in retaliation, his wolfish grin widening. This one was a real tart. He’d seen her round the pub often enough, squawking and giggling with her girlfriends, always giving him the “sly eye.” And she was a real treat for the jaundiced eye: sort of Punker meets Sloan Ranger with a touch of leather. She had style, all right, but she couldn’t resist the odd touch, like the stud in her nose and garish makeup that made her look like something out of Madame Tussaud’s. It was like a mustache on the Mona Lisa, or mooning the Queen, a rebelliousness that appealed to Ferguson’s contrary nature. Unfortunately, he’d always managed to be with someone else, either another woman, or his drinking buddies.
He’d hit the pub right after work and gotten lucky.
Absorbed in his pint of MacEwan’s, he’d been thinking of Mike and how much of a screw-up the poor sod was with women, when he chanced to glance up and found her staring at him from the other end of the bar.
Neither her friends, nor his buddies, were anywhere in sight. Bloody perfect.
He smiled back and lifted his glass in a toast. She took it as her signal and sidled over, a little unsteady for the drink. She must’ve started early. Then again, it could have been the six-inch spike heels.
After another half a pint and a bit of meaningless conversation, they’d headed over to his flat, three streets away.
That had been two hours ago, and the bird was insatiable—wanting to do it in every imaginable way (even up her bum), bending herself into shapes that would make a Chinese acrobat jealous.
She screamed again, and Ferguson gamely thrust harder, feeling as if he were in a long-distance race. Well, he was game if she was. After all, as his Mum once said, “Be careful what you wish for, son, you just might get it.”
“Too right.”
“What?” the girl said in between grunts.
“Nothin’, love,” he said, thrusting harder still, “just daydreaming.”
She was too swept up in her pleasure to notice the sarcasm behind his remark, which made Ferguson all the giddier. But his pleasure was cut short when a pounding began on his front door two rooms away. It sounded as if someone were storming the bloody Bastille. He tried to ignore it, hoping it was just one of the local hopheads mistaking Ferguson’s flat for that of a dealer’s, but the pounding only increased in tempo and volume.
“Who’s that, Fergie?” the girl said, breathless.
Ferguson climbed off of her and slipped into his pair of leopard-print briefs and an old ratty robe. “Never mind. Stay here.”
The girl sat up in the bed, her kohl-rimmed eyes blazing. “You got another woman coming here, don’t ya? Well, I don’t do that stuff. I’ve got breeding, ya know!”
Ferguson snorted in annoyance and stalked into the sitting room. Here the pounding was louder, shaking the flimsy door on its loose rusty hinges.
“Bloody gits,” he mumbled. “All right! Why don’t ya just bust the bleedin’ thing in? Hold your horses!”
When he reached the door, he refrained from opening it, suddenly nervous. What if it was some crazed addict angry for some imagined slight, or a rival dealer thinking his nemesis lay behind the door he was pounding on. Christ! He might have a bloody machine gun, or some such nasty, waiting to mow him down. Realizing that he made a rather large target in front of the door, he quickly stepped to the side, like he’d seen done in all the cop shows.
“Who is it?” he said, hating the nervous quaver in his voice.
“Open up in the name of Her Majesty’s government,” came the firmly stated reply.
Ferguson frowned. What had he done that would merit this?
“Open up, this is our last request.”
Ferguson fumbled with the two locks and swung the door open. Three men stood before him. One of them, obviously the senior man, stood about an inch taller than Ferguson, had blond hair combed boyishly over to one side, a thin ascetic face and a nose as sharp as a spear. He looked like some pompous public school proctor, the kind that would as soon kick you in the arse as smile at you. And then he did smile, only confirming Ferguson’s assessment.
“So sorry to intrude, Mr. Ferguson. But I wonder if we might have a word?”
The accent was all oil and polish, and so smooth it would have the average idiot eating out of the man’s hand. It made Ferguson want to throttle him.
“Who the bloody hell are you? And what do you want?”
The man smiled again, and Ferguson frowned. Was that contempt he saw in the man’s blue eyes?
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m Simon Welles, MI6.”
Ferguson looked dubious. “MI6 is military. I was a bloody washout. How about some ID?”
“Very well.”
Welles reached inside the jacket of his olive-tan suit and pulled out a wallet made of expensive Morocco leather and flipped it open, revealing a picture ID. Ferguson made a big show of taking it and looking it over. A moment later he handed it back.
“So, what do you want?”
“Just the answers to some questions.”
Ferguson leaned toward Welles conspiratorially. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, nearly whispering, “I’d rather wait until morning. I’ve got some company...if you catch my drift.”
Welles smiled again then shook his head. “I’m afraid it can’t wait. Please come with me.”
Welles nodded to the two large men, who moved toward Ferguson with alarming swiftness. Each one grasped an arm and began dragging him out.
“Hey! Now, wait a bleedin’ moment! I’ve got rights ya know! You can’t be pullin’ a man out of his bed like the fucking Gestapo. Let me go, you bloody gits!”
The door slammed shut and Ferguson’s protests faded away, leaving the flat eerily silent. A moment later the girl’s voice rang out from the bedroom. “Fergie? Where are you? You coming back to bed? I’ve got an itch needs scratching.... Fergie?”
The Mercedes responded like a trained tiger under Michael’s hands, hugging the winding Sussex roads with practiced aplomb, its engine growling contentedly. It felt good to drive it, felt good to let the car’s power infuse his mind and body. And he needed to feel good at the moment. Staring through the windscreen, he watched the darkened landscape streak toward him, taking him farther away from the cottage.
He glanced in the rearview, then, seeing the white lines receding into the distance, like some giant pair of apron strings that would never run out, never exhaust their hold on him. But was that why he’d gotten angry? Was it as silly as feeling that his mother had ruled his life—that even knowledge of his own father had come through her? And here they’d uncovered something new, something both terrible and wonderful and he felt as if his heart might explode.
He shifted gears then looked over at Erika. He could feel her anger coming at him in waves. Obviously, he was a total fuck-up when it came to women, including his own mother. The mere thought of Lillian and his anger renewed itself. Could she really have not known of the letter’s existence all these years? And if she had, then why hadn’t she’d told him about it sooner? It didn’t make any sense. After all, hadn’t she always said she loved him, said it that very night?
Michael stole another glance at Erika. She sat stiffly in the soft leather bucket seat, her luminous face staring out through the windscreen, a tiny frown furrowing the skin just above the bridge of her nose. Even with as dour an expression as this, she was breathtaking.
He turned his attention back to the road and noted a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror. The car joined them not long after they’d left the cottage and had stayed about a quarter mile behind them the whole way. The lights were low to the ground, suggesting some
kind of sporty model.
“That was a shitty thing you did,” Erika said, breaking into his thoughts.
He turned, fixing her with a puzzled frown. “Was it?”
“Yes, it was. She’s your mother, not your enemy.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” he said, downshifting as they rounded a curve. “She made Dad into some kind of hero all those years. He was like a god to me...perfect. And now this.”
“You can’t blame her for not wanting to deepen her wounds, Michael. My God, she’d just lost a husband, and was pregnant. She needed to survive.”
Erika was right.
And knowing it only made Michael feel worse. Even in his righteous rage, he’d known he’d treated his mother unfairly, lashed out at her with forty years of a young boy’s anger at losing his father—blamed her for it, in fact.
Leaning back in the seat, he exhaled a long breath, as if expelling four decades of accumulated poisons from his body. He shook his head.
“You’re right. I’ve been a right bastard. She’s done her best, Lord knows. There’s a pub a few miles up the road. We’ll call her from there.”
Erika’s expression softened. “What about Cadwallader and Soames?”
“You’re as curious as I am, aren’t you?” he asked, a sly smile turning up the corners of his mouth.
She nodded, returning the smile.
“We’ll try them in the morning. Nothing we can do till then.”
A flicker in the rearview mirror made Michael glance up into it. He frowned. “What the bloody hell is this?”
As if on cue, the car behind them snapped on its main beam and roared forward, closing the quarter mile gap between the two cars in seconds. It pulled up to within a foot of the Mercedes’ bumper.
From what Michael could see, the car looked to be a late model Lotus Esprit, either black or midnight blue. And because of the glare on the Mercedes’ back window, it was impossible to tell who was driving. Erika turned in her seat and squinted into the glare.
“Maybe they want to pass,” she said, her voice sounding unconvinced.
Michael shot her a look. “If they’d wanted to do that they would have done so. The road’s deserted.”
The Lotus made its move. With a growl from its powerful 300 horsepower engine, the car nudged the Mercedes, forcing Michael to grip the wheel harder to remain in control. Erika screamed and Michael took this as his cue to step on the gas. The Mercedes leapt forward, its eight-cylinder engine winding out until he remembered to shift gears. Now in fourth, the 500 SL streaked forward into the night, the white line now taking on a greater significance. As long as he stayed with it, Michael knew he would be all right. The problem was, the Lotus looked as if it had every intention of running them off the road.
“Pull over, Michael!” Erika yelled.
The Lotus smashed into the back of the Mercedes, making Erika scream again.
Michael stomped on the accelerator, pushing it to the floor. The 500 SL responded like a bullet shot from a gun, the tires screeching as the car rounded a tight curve.
“Slow down, you’ll kill us!”
“And I suppose the men in the Lotus won’t?”
Her answer was her hand on his arm, her grip like a vise.
The two cars reached a straightaway and Michael caught sight of the Lotus in the driver’s side mirror as it swung out and shot forward, coming alongside the Mercedes. They rode side by side, each car jockeying for position. To the uninitiated, it would appear that the two cars were having a “drag race,” but Michael knew without having to be told that the stakes were a lot higher than macho bragging rights.
Keeping his eye on the road, he saw a bend about a mile ahead. He turned his head and tried to see into the Lotus’s windows. Unfortunately, they were tinted a smoky black, making an identification of the driver and any passengers impossible.
Returning his attention to the road, Michael tried pulling ahead. The Lotus stayed with him. He then tried to drop behind, hoping to give the exotic car some of its own medicine, but the Lotus merely matched his speed. The problem was the straightaway was rapidly diminishing, and any moment someone could come around the bend. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Michael’s face, and his hands felt slippery on the wheel. He looked for a turn off, but there was nothing, just a narrow strip of road lined with stone walls.
“Michael!”
He looked into the distance and spotted a pair of headlights as it rounded the bend in the road up ahead. A bad situation had just gotten worse.
And then the Lotus began smashing into them, trying to force them into the stone wall. Michael shot a smoldering glance at the Lotus then wrenched the wheel toward it, sending the right wing of the Mercedes into the Lotus. The screech of metal as the two cars collided was music to Michael’s ears. He imagined that the men inside, professionals though they must be, were nonetheless a little flustered as he bashed into them. Perhaps they were even a little worried.
He smashed the Lotus again; the other car approaching them was now flashing its lights.
Michael turned to the Lotus. “How do you like that, you bastards?”
Now, the Lotus tried to back off and Michael matched their speed, keeping the other car on a collision course with the oncoming car.
“Michael, NO!”
Her words ripped into his brain, and hearing them, he realized what it was he’d been about to do. Pushing on the accelerator, he sped forward allowing the Lotus to squeeze in behind him, just as a white Mini Cooper streaked by, its reedy little horn howling. A second later, the Lotus was back beside him. Michael didn’t wait for it to try to force him off the road. He began smashing into the Lotus again.
It was then that the passenger side window of the Lotus rolled down and an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer poked out gripped in a ham-sized fist. The barrel turned down, aiming for the Mercedes’ tires. The pistol coughed twice, and the right front tire blew out, then shredded and fell away from the steel rim. Erika screamed while Michael fought to control the hurtling car. When the car left the road, the steering wheel tore from his grasp and the car veered toward a massive tree.
At the last second before impact, something gave, and he managed to wrench the wheel to the right. The car shot past the tree, so close the side mirror sheared off, clanging against the door before flying off into the night.
Michael tromped down on the brakes, bringing the car to a lurching halt against a low outcropping of rocks, accompanied by a loud ripping sound. The last thing he saw before the curtain of darkness descended was the hub of the steering wheel hurtling toward his face.
The car listed slightly to the port side and Erika struggled with the seatbelt, finally forcing the buckle to open. Turning to Michael, she saw that he was unconscious, his head resting against the steering wheel. A trickle of blood seeped from somewhere on his scalp, tracing the line of his jaw. She eased him back, letting him collapse against the seat.
Suddenly a familiar odor assaulted her nostrils.
Benzine.
There was a leak!
Working quickly, she unbelted Michael and then climbed over him. She tried his door and found it jammed shut. Bracing herself, she reached under his arms and heaved him over the passenger seat and out of the car. His feet hit the ground and she heard him groan.
Good. The fact that he was only lightly unconscious meant that a concussion was unlikely. Straining, she pulled him to what she judged a safe distance from the Mercedes, laying him out of sight from the road behind some brambles. She felt his pulse.
Slow and steady.
She returned her attention to the road, freezing when she spotted the Lotus pulling over to the side. Two men got out and stared at the Mercedes. In a moment, they would be coming to investigate.
She remembered her purse and reaching inside, she pulled out a pack of matches and crawled toward the Mercedes, careful to keep as low to the ground as possible. She was grateful there was no moon out that night, or the two men from
the Lotus would certainly see her.
Raising her head, she looked at the two men. They still stood watching the car. They wouldn’t wait much longer. Despite this being a lonely country road, someone else might happen by. And that could not be left to chance.
She saw one turn to the other and say something.
Hurry, you fool. Do something!
Scrabbling the last few feet to the Mercedes, Erika, pulled one of the matches free from the pack, lighted it, then touched it to the remaining ones. The matches flared and Erika tossed it beneath the car near the ruptured fuel tank. In the same motion, she tumbled backwards and pushed her face into the earth. Even with her eyes closed the flash of flame was bright, making stars dance behind her lids. Opening her eyes, she saw the Mercedes totally engulfed, the tongues of red-orange flames dancing skyward. She could hear the sizzle of the leather seats and smelled the burning rubber of the tires. The heat made the flesh of her face feel parched and crackling, as if she’d spent the whole day lying in the sun.
Another sound caught her attention. The two men had returned to the Lotus. The engine roared again, and the midnight blue car streaked away.
She’d done it.
She stood then, feeling the blood rush from her head, making her momentarily dizzy when she made her way back to where Michael lay. She knelt beside him and ran her hand across his cheek. His eyes snapped open and he bolted upright, his attention riveted by the burning car.
“Erika!”
“Here, I’m here,” she said, touching his arm.
He visibly relaxed. “My God, I thought you were— What happened?”
“Take it easy, we’re all right. I set fire to the car. They think we’re still inside.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “But they followed me from Dover, and I think they were on the boat over, too.”