by Merle Nygate
Petra’s eyes rested on the parquet floor and she noticed the rubber scuff marks and ground dirt at the base of the desk’s legs. But her mind was in Geneva again, where her early career had come to an end. They were staying at the Beau Rivage Hotel on the lake within sight of the Jet d’Eau; the hotel was a welcome change from the side street guest houses and motels of most operations. It was elegant and grand. She was playing the role of a British businesswoman; a science expert trying to buy data for an industrial plant in Kuwait to enhance the oil industry. The seller was a Pakistani scientist. It seemed like a straightforward job; all she had to do was keep her eyes out for the Swiss authorities who were famously intolerant of clandestine activities.
It was one of the rare times that she was in the field with Alon who was by then largely deskbound. It was a treat to be with the older man. When they arrived in Geneva they had dinner at L’Entrecôte. They’d even spent an afternoon by the side of the lake while they waited for the Pakistani to peel off from his meetings at the UN Environmental Programme.
It was all standard; everything was usual; a nice easy job. The last thing Petra remembered before it all went wrong was how pleased she was with the pashmina she’d bought at the Duty Free boutique in the hotel; she was arranging it around her shoulders on the ground floor of the Beau Rivage.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Alon appeared by her side. ‘Malik’s been followed and they’re dangerous.’
‘What?’
Alon’s face was non-committal but he was sweating. He went on, ‘Leave everything; we have to get to the car and drive to France.’
Matching Alon’s pace Petra walked briskly to the exit and down the street towards the public car park.
‘How dangerous, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘This is Switzerland. No one carries here; that’s the arrangement with them; everyone knows that.’
‘Freelancers don’t,’ Alon said. ‘They’re not civil servants, so they don’t play by the rules.’
Former KGB officers with skills but inflation-hit pensions were offering themselves as guns for hire. Often to be found in hotel bars trying to pick up work, any work, they were generally vicious and the bane of the international intelligence community.
Petra lengthened her stride, wishing that she wasn’t wearing heels. The air was whipping up cold from Lake Leman and she clutched the pashmina closer around her as they crossed the street at a trot into the car park.
They found the Pakistani scientist on the second floor by their VW. In a foetal position he was being kicked by two shaven-headed middle-aged men who looked more like backroom desk men than entrepreneurial muscle.
‘Play straight,’ Alon whispered.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous faites?’ Petra held up her phone. ‘What are you doing? Leave that man alone. I’ve called the police and they are on their way.’
One of the men paused in his rhythmic kicking of Malik’s ribs. She never forgot the man’s expression; she never would. Looking up from his task, his head was to one side and he grinned at her, like a kid caught doing something naughty but who knew he would be forgiven. Meanwhile, Malik was on the cement floor of the car park, he’d stopped moving. She didn’t know if he was dead or just playing dead.
Petra took two steps forward and drew herself up to her full height. ‘Hors d’ici!’ she said.
The smiling goon tapped his colleague on the arm and they both started walking towards Petra and Alon. What did they look like? A woman in a business suit and an old man. No matter how fit he kept himself, Alon was more than sixty with a shock of white hair and narrow shoulders. As if they were terrified, Petra and Alon stood still.
‘You must be the British woman our friend here speaks of,’ he said in a thick accent.
‘Pardon?’ Petra twisted her pashmina shawl between her hand as if she was anxious. ‘Je comprends pas; que voulez-vous dire?’
She caught a glint of steel at his wrist and then spotted the knife. In her peripheral vision, she saw Alon. His arms were open in supplication; he appeared to be the frail older man who was trying to make peace. Not the practised Krav Maga black belt.
In tandem, they went for the goons. Using one of his open arms, Alon grabbed the Russian freelancer, pulled him towards him and kicked his groin; fast, quick and repeated. Meanwhile, Petra tossed the pashmina over the head of the grinning bastard, slipped off her shoe and used the heel like a hammer to whack the knife from her attacker’s hand.
But she was off-balance. With a roar the man ripped the pashmina off his head and lashed out; he punched her; she toppled down and hit the cement shoulder first and felt the excruciating pain of dislocation. The knife skittered on the cement and with her good arm she lunged for it, grabbed it and held the knife upwards as the Russian threw himself on top of Petra pinning her down.
His hands were at her throat and she was moving from side to side, struggling to breathe, feeling sick from the pain, trying to free her good hand. On top of her the Russian had his hands around her throat and he was banging her head against the ground. Petra got her arm free and with all her force she plunged the knife into the man’s neck.
He sat up, sat back on his heels and felt his wound. His face showed shock. Petra wrenched out the knife and stabbed him again and again and again, until Alon pulled the dead Russian away.
The scratching pens of the students on paper became the sounds of Petra and Alon dragging the bodies of the two men into the boot of the car. Between them they picked up Malik and gently lay him on the back seat where he whimpered with pain from the attack. But Malik was lucky – a thick coat over a heavy suit meant he only suffered bruised and broken ribs.
She remembered the blank grey sky and the blizzard that was their friend; Geneva was plunged into swirling mist and snow and they reached France without incident. There Malik was cared for and Petra’s shoulder was pushed back into its socket. It took weeks for all the bruises to come and to go; months for the physio to get her movement range back to near normal; but no matter how many years passed, Petra never forgot the fear and rage that made her kill.
Petra watched the students as the last seconds ticked away on her phone. The alarm rang. Her voice sounded flat, even to her own ears. ‘Okay people, you’ve had enough time to write War and Peace. Let’s hear some of those sentences. Who wants to go first?’
But before the teaching could resume the classroom opened and Deanna came in with the spaniel trotting behind her, its claws clicking across the parquet. The dog scampered up to Petra and tried to climb on to her lap.
‘Good afternoon Deanna, welcome. You’re just in time to hear the group’s sentences.’
‘That sounds marvellous, can’t wait. If the class will forgive us, I’ll be back in a few moments to hear those sentences,’ Deanna said.
Petra stood up and followed Deanna out of the classroom into the corridor where they stood under a depleted noticeboard. There was a sheet of exam results, a poster for the drama club; torn pinpricks in the cork and ragged remnants of blue tack. Past times. Forgotten events. Best let go.
‘Is there anything I need to know,’ Deanna said.
‘No, they’re reading out their sentences and then I was going to show them another episode of Downton Abbey.’
‘Very good,’ Deanna said but she didn’t look happy.
‘I truly appreciate this, Deanna, I promise to get back as quickly as I can but if I don’t take my godfather to his hospital appointment it won’t happen and the poor chap is all on his own. The hospital have called him in for a procedure he’s been waiting for for months because there was a cancellation and he’s really got no one but me to help him.’
‘Of course, Petra. I understand; anything to help.’
Petra put her hand on Deanna’s arm. ‘Thank you. You could be saving a life.’
50
Watlingford Public School, Oxfordshire – One Hour Later
Eli paced up and down the gravel path in the kitchen garden and kicked at the boundary st
one that neatly contained the vegetable beds. ‘Where the hell is Trainer?’ Eli said into his phone. ‘I’m standing here waiting and there’s no sign of Sweetbait; if anyone ought to know where the girl is then Trainer should.’
‘Trainer left a message,’ Rafi said. ‘I’ve only just picked it up. She had to go to the airport to pick up a kid; some job she had to do for the school.’
‘Just what we need. Trainer off site and no idea where Sweetbait is.’
‘Where’s your fall-back? Go there, give Sweetbait half an hour and then I’ll pick you up. Savlanut, patience, Eli.’
‘Ein li savlanut,’ Eli said. ‘I don’t have any patience, I need –’ Eli turned around to see Sahar standing a metre away with a puzzled expression on her face. He held his finger to his lips and continued to speak in Hebrew. ‘Ken, mevin,’ Eli said. ‘Yes, understood. Make sure everything is in place. Be safe.’ Eli ended the call, pocketed the phone and with an open-handed gesture towards Sweetbait showed her the wooden bench. She hovered, hesitant.
‘Ahlan bik. Welcome, welcome, you are well?’ Eli said in Arabic. ‘I have something for you. Something very important from home,’ he added.
She was frowning. ‘Abu Marwan, I thought... you speak the language of the Zionist monkeys?’
‘Of course I do,’ Eli said. ‘How else do you think we pass unnoticed among them? I am proud of my accent, I have studied hard to make it authentic, and I believe it to be convincing, inshallah. When we walk among the wolves we must not look like sheep. Now, come, please. Time is short and I want to be certain that you understand the plan because it’s possible I won’t see you again until the day of your martyrdom.’
Eli reckoned his confident explanation had quelled the obvious doubts that she’d had. It was the first rule of deceit. Own and acknowledge and then move on. If he explained any further, then it would raise even more questions in the girl’s mind.
Eli started by testing Sweetbait on the layout of the operational location.
‘To the right is the red entrance,’ her eyes were half shut as she visualised the map. ‘Across the main concourse is the area where there are stalls with clothes. I... I... turn left towards the control tower but before I get there I turn left towards the pavilions. When I see the Techno Zone I go down the path and find the central point in the space. That is correct?’
‘Mumtaz,’ Eli said. ‘Excellent. And this is all in your memory? You are remarkable; it’s as if you are seeing the map in front of your eyes. How Allah has blessed us. Do you have a photographic memory?’
She blushed, her fine skin was rosy, ‘I work hard, Abu Marwan. I want all to be well with my Shahada, and I am nervous that I may make a mistake. That is why I work so hard. I worry –’
‘Don’t worry, never worry,’ Eli said. ‘You are blessed and God will guide you. Now, I want you to give me the phone you have been using and I am going to give you a fresh phone.’
Her hands clenched and Eli saw in her frown and eyes that look again. The one he always saw on agents whenever the schedule was changed, whenever they had to grasp a new set of instructions, whenever the tenuous hold they had on events by routine was tugged away from them. It was the look he’d seen on every single agent he’d ever worked with – apart from Red Cap.
Faced with Sweetbait’s anxious eyes Eli used a voice that would soothe her anxiety. ‘It’s the exact same phone as the other one so there will be nothing new for you to learn. Aiwa? You will carry it with you at all times but will only use it on your day of Shahada. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only use on day of martyrdom,’ she said. And then repeated the words to herself without sound. He saw her lips move as if she was trying to imprint them on her brain or perhaps trying to calm herself with another ritual.
It might have been nice to tell her that the fresh phone had no blue tooth connection. To have let her know that, although she was at the heart of a complex covert operation, on her day of martyrdom she wasn’t going to blow herself to kingdom come. To have comforted her with the knowledge that she didn’t have to steel herself for death, but that when she pressed the sequence of buttons – nothing would happen. At least, not in any final sense. But then, agents never got to learn the full story.
51
Watlingford Public School, Oxfordshire – The Next Day
Since it was a small group and a local trip Petra was the sole leader. Standing in the aisle of the minibus, Petra spotted an empty seat next to Sahar. As soon as the diesel engine had powered up, she swayed down the aisle and sat next to the girl who looked pale.
‘How are you this morning, Sahar?’ Petra beamed. ‘You’re going to love the outing today. It’s everything that makes England special at this time of year.’
‘Thank you. I know that I will like... it,’ Sahar said.
‘Bravo! Future tense!’ Petra said.
There was a flush of pleasure in the girl’s face. ‘I want to thank you, Petra. You are all the time kind to me.’
Petra smiled back, ‘It’s very easy to be kind to you.’
Although she smiled, that morning Petra was tired. She hadn’t got to bed till 3am. The 150-mile round trip, the nervous anticipation and what she had to do had been taxing. Yet she felt good; much had been accomplished. In spite of her worry that the tracker wouldn’t work for some reason, it had been absolutely accurate. Now Petra needed her lucky streak to hold.
The minibus with students rumbled along and after fifteen minutes it drew up at the riverside dock where they were to board their punts and meet their punting guides.
Standing on the dock by the punts, the excursion leader addressed the group. ‘Just a couple of health and safety issues. Do not stand up in the punt please, unless your guide has explained to you how to do it safely. We don’t want any accidents. And there’s just one other thing, we’d like you to leave your bags and rucksacks and whatnot in the minibus. There’s room for cameras on the punts but no bags.’
‘That’s fine,’ Petra said. ‘Mick will be here and he’ll look after the bags.’
Petra noticed that Sahar was grasping her black rucksack with both hands.
‘I cannot go,’ Sahar said. ‘I do not leave my bag with Mick.’
A picture flashed into Petra’s mind; an image she’d missed during her tunnel-vision attempts to get Sahar to talk to her; to trust her; to spill out everything to her. The image was Sahar, in her room, talking about changing into a warm dress – and eyeing her bag; guarding it like a dog.
‘What’s the problem?’ Petra said her voice was reassuring and calm. ‘Is there something you need on the punt?’
‘No, no.’ The girl’s eyes darted around in panic.
‘You can absolutely trust Mick,’ Petra said. ‘Truly. He’s entirely honest and reliable. He’s just going to sit in the minibus until we all come back.’
‘I do not know him. I won’t go. I stay here. It is okay, you go. I stay.’
‘Please come,’ Aneeta said. ‘Sahar, you are my friend, I want you to share.’
Petra looked from one girl to the other and said, ‘Listen, Sahar, you cannot take the bag on the punt but I’ve got an idea. Do you think you can trust me to look after it? If I promise to sit on the bus with all the bags and keep them safe?’
Petra looked into Sahar’s eyes and she saw the girl was cornered by Aneeta’s plea and her own solution to the problem.
Five minutes later, Petra stood by the riverside as the class set off on the three punts; only one small face turned back and a hand was raised to wave back at her.
Petra strode back to the bus aware that she was being watched by Mick the driver. Too bad. If he hadn’t been staring out of the window keen for the company she’d have been able to go straight into the boathouse toilets to search Sahar’s bag.
Petra climbed back into the bus.
‘What was that all about?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ Petra yawned and sat on the front seat tossing Sahar’s bag care
lessly next to her. ‘They all have issues of one sort or another. Do you have kids, Mick?’
‘Two. Girls. You’re right. There’s always something going on with them. How about you?’
’No, I just teach them. That’s quite enough for me,’ Petra was focused on Sahar’s bag next to her on the seat; how was she supposed to search with Mick sitting two feet away?
‘You know, I’d really love a coffee,’ Petra said. ‘Do you know anywhere round here we could get one? I’m happy to stay here if you go. My shout, Mick.’
‘Oh, we don’t have to go to all that trouble,’ Mick reached under his seat and took out a box. ‘My wife says I’m a proper boy scout.’ He took out a flask and a cup.
‘She’s right,’ Petra said. ‘I bet you’ve even got some biscuits.’
‘Hobnobs,’ Mick said with pride.
‘My favourite. I’ll just pop to the loo and wash my hands.’
Petra was still holding on to Sahar’s bag ready to take it with her. She stepped out of the minibus.
‘Isn’t that the little girl’s bag?’ Mick called after her, ‘The one who was making all that fuss about leaving it behind?
Petra looked down at the bag. ‘So it is – I forgot I was holding it.’
‘It’ll be all right with me,’ Mick said.
Petra had no choice; it would have aroused his suspicions if she’d insisted on taking it. She picked up her own bag.
In the toilet Petra stooped down and loosened the shoelaces of one of her high-top trainers and slipped the nail scissors from her make-up bag into her back pocket. Emerging from the boathouse into the sunshine, conscious of Mick watching her in his side windows, she approached the minibus from the rear. Just when she was abreast of the rear tyre she knelt on the ground to tie her shoelace. But before she stood up, she slid her hand into her back pocket and neatly knifed the tyre near the hubcap where a tear wouldn’t be immediately visible. Standing up Petra slid the scissors into her jeans and ambled towards the door of the minibus.