9
‘Passport, please.’
I handed the Eurostar security guard the junior doctor’s brand-new maroon passport. I yawned and looked down, covering my mouth as I did so. ‘Sorry,’ I apologized from behind my palm. ‘Late night.’
David Peter Mann was sixteen years younger than me, black-eyed and brown-haired, with a jaw square enough to play liar dice with. A grey beanie covered my head. A disposable razor had smoothed my chin. I pinched the sleep out of my blue eyes, feigning a hangover headache. While he scanned the photo page, I busied myself with the contents of my coat pocket.
Rose had played her part well. An hour earlier I’d stalked across the freezing parking lot at Ashford International in a shirt, shoes and coat she’d filched from a cupboard downstairs in the Emergency Department. In the back pocket of my jeans, the passport and driver’s licence she’d lifted – albeit reluctantly – from the bag she allowed the eager junior doctor who’d done my initial assessment to keep in her office. I had no phone, and didn’t want one. As for money, I had a hundred-dollar bill – and five hundred pounds in cash courtesy of Rose’s bank card. She had a promise of repayment from a terse Glaswegian.
And Grumpy Jock – Regimental Sergeant Major Jack Nazzar – was as terse, and as tough, as they came. Legendary Special Forces old-timer, he was the founding father of the Wing – or the SAS’s Revolutionary Warfare Wing – a Dirty Dozen of Hereford’s most experienced operators. MI6 called them ‘the Increment’. I called them when I was in trouble. I’d relied on them for overwatch on dozens of UKN operations, and spent more weeks in the field with Nazzar than I could remember. I wasn’t sure if I was still operational or not. And with Frank out of the picture, there was no one to report to, or receive orders from. I couldn’t call Whitehall even if I wanted to. As far as the Establishment was concerned, I didn’t exist: Director Special Forces didn’t take phone calls from a ghost. Frank was my only link to the offices of state and backchannels of diplomacy that ultimately determined every operator’s fate; Jack Nazzar was my only remaining connection to the off-the-books world of warcraft that supported them. I’d counted on him being a friend. He hadn’t let me down.
And neither had Doctor Mann.
‘Thank you, sir. Have a nice trip.’
I took back the passport and stood in line for the X-ray at security, wondering how outlandish my appearance would have to be before someone questioned my identity. I filtered my way through French customs – who barely looked at the photograph – picked up a cup of coffee and a croissant and crossed over the steel and glass footbridge that dropped me down on to the platform. I’d booked myself on to the 0655 to Paris, Gare du Nord. A small clutch of other passengers braved the icy morning as if by their perseverance they might conjure the train from St Pancras a few minutes early. A stiff breeze picked up from the south-east. Anyone with any sense clung to the warmth of the waiting room upstairs for as long as possible. It was an hour before sunrise. My wounds ached, and I remembered that I wanted to smoke. I tried not to think about either and watched the clock instead. My breath steamed in the frigid air.
Ten minutes to departure.
The call to Nazzar had achieved its single objective: to persuade Rose to assist me by proving I was on the side that deserved her help. She’d stayed at the hospital overnight, eventually distracting the policeman and the nurses on my ward with a dropped cup of coffee just long enough for me to bolt. The wires weren’t, it turned out, linked to a central bank: the room monitor bleeped feebly as Rose said it would when I peeled the pads off and then stopped abruptly as the unit’s machine-brain realized it was no longer hooked up to a human.
As I stood on the platform, the ward sister would have been cursing my accomplice for having ordered my transfer to another ward without filling out the proper paperwork. She could fret about finding me as the irate policeman jabbered into his radio; or, more likely, she would throw her hands up and tell him she had better things to do than unpick a consultant’s cock-up. But whatever she chose to do next, I would be lost in the system for a precious hour: a man who didn’t exist, nowhere to be found, in a bed that hadn’t been assigned.
When the police finally discovered that I’d flown the coop, they would issue a missing persons report. But with no photo, and limited manpower for migrant-hunting, the chances of them sweeping the station before departure were minimal. By the time they’d pulled my image from the hospital’s CCTV – if they even bothered to do that – I’d be in Paris.
What Nazzar chose to do next was anyone’s guess. The call would have been logged and recorded but not monitored – so there was no reason why any wires would have been tripped at his end unless he chose to raise the alarm himself. It could take days – weeks, even – for the call to be reviewed. Nazzar had taken chances on me before. Whether I made it on to the train or not would tell me whether he had again. I guessed he’d hold off until I’d fired a flare. As much as he was a an ally forged from the furnace of old times’ sake, he was a friend out of necessity, too. His necessity. If there was a problem with UKN, there was a problem for the Wing. And Jack Nazzar didn’t like problems. I knew he’d always vote for the most effective solution to deal with them – sanctioned or otherwise. He didn’t like politicians either.
Rose would be safe. I’d take the rap for the stolen passport; if asked, she’d say I forced her to make the call. But her guilt by association in the eyes of whoever was hunting me was not so easily solved, not even by Nazzar. I knew he’d send an operator to keep tabs on her and her wife – and in all likelihood take them into unofficial military protective custody. That was as much an insurance policy for him as it was for them. If – when – that happened, it would feel like they’d been kidnapped at first, and I was sorry for it. Depending on how things worked out, a new identity, home, job, life were all potentially coming down the line at them. I’d told Rose to take her wife on a surprise holiday, immediately, though I doubted Nazzar would let them leave the country. The brutal fact of the matter was that, irrespective of what ultimately transpired, both of their lives would be changed irrevocably by Rose’s chance meeting with me. She would be protected by the Wing – but at a cost she’d not calculated.
Five minutes to departure.
I revisited the plans I’d made from the hospital bed. In Paris I’d catch a connection to Toulouse. From there I’d hitchhike and walk into the Pyrenees. The winter would be tough, but there would be isolated chalets and retreats abandoned till spring. Breaking into second homes owned by foreigners was a national pastime in France; so much so that the thinly stretched rural gendarmerie were mostly unconcerned as long as no violence was employed. I tried to shake off the cold of the platform and imagined the warm spring sun that would follow the vernal equinox. In my mind’s eye I saw the mountains’ snow caps melting into the streams and lakes where I’d drop a hook at dawn. There was no question that I could sustain myself. Special Forces selection, followed by years of training in a succession of increasingly harsh environments, would see to that. In comparison to Nunavut’s Arctic tundra, surviving the Pyrenees would be a cinch. What would happen when – if – I re-emerged was a question I would have plenty of time to consider.
Three minutes.
The train pulled into the station. Metal ground against metal. Hydraulics wheezed. Doors opened. A guard wrapped up in a blue-black fleece stalked along the platform. I stepped over the yellow line, jostled by the backs and bags of a disorganized family eager to be in the warmth of the carriage.
Of course I could survive. But to what end?
I’d persisted in the pursuit of death because I had been persuaded by my soldier-scientist father that it mattered who pulled the trigger. And so it also mattered to me – if not to Frank – that even if what I’d become was a killer, at least I wasn’t a murderer. But the reality was that Doc was dead because – and only because – I’d gone to him; and gone to him in the full knowledge it might kill him. I may as well have pulled the trigge
r myself. If that wasn’t murder, what was?
Worse still, the consequence of his death could be another fatality as unconscionable as it seemed inescapable: if Doc had been killed somehow because of his connection to me, then there was every possibility that Rachel Levy could follow her father to the grave. No loose ends. God knew I’d tied off enough myself. Arkhangel didn’t just read like a message: it felt like a death warrant.
If she died, I would lose the last person who knew me when I was Mac Ghill’ean, and not McLean. I thought of Frank and of the tide of blood we had loosed upon our enemies. His enemies. And suddenly, for the first time in a long time, it felt like who I’d been mattered more than what I’d become. Doc had said Rachel was in London. Stop running and start thinking.
Stay.
Find her.
Save her.
I checked myself. I could dress it up all I liked, but a killer wasn’t what I had become; it was what I had chosen to be. I screwed up my eyes. The fact was, I hadn’t pulled the trigger on Doc. Someone else had. I was sorry, but there it was: a single tragedy written in the unending roll call of the dead. Rachel: a woman whose face I tried not to remember, and could hardly recall when I did; a woman whose name I struggled to speak out loud. Aged forty-two, and I was still acting like a cunt-struck teenager.
No.
Fuck her.
And fuck Frank and his circular firing squad.
I stepped up towards the open carriage door and stopped there, one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train.
And yet Frank might still keep faith. Maybe he had never lost it.
You made a choice, I told myself. You’re still a soldier. So wait for orders. And then follow them.
Still I hesitated. Move forward or step back. The past was a foreign country, too, and one I had much less idea how to navigate than France. I thought of my father, who for stretches of my childhood I very rarely saw; and I thought of Doc, too, who perhaps saw more of my mother than either my father or I had wanted to admit. If love for her had bewildered him until he died, then he would have died for me, too. Maybe my mother murmured his name with mine as she swept her tired child’s limbs into bed.
I’d never thought too much about love. Every man I’d killed had been some mother’s son. To dwell on that could make a strong man lose his mind. Or his soul. Even now – especially now – thinking about my mother and father, about Doc and Rachel, was like standing too close to a wall. All I could see were bricks and mortar, not what they encompassed. But there were no walls I had not scaled in the past. I would survive. And yet what was the point of survival if there was no one, least of all myself, left to love?
Get a grip on yourself, Max. You’re a fighter. So fight.
One minute.
I stepped down off the running board and put both feet on the ground. I paused and turned around, smacking into the frantic father of the family that had boarded before me, busy with a folded stroller. As his hand went out to steady himself, a rolled-up copy of The Times unfurled itself from under his arm and tumbled to the platform. I stared down at the wrinkled pages curling in the brittle air, straight into my own eyes.
The portrait was reproduced twice its original size, captioned with my name. I looked passively at the camera. No smile. Short haircut. Shave. The tip of my left ear missing. A bright, perfect print against a white background. It was my passport photograph, and it had been taken three weeks before at Raven Hill barracks. The headline above it: ‘Lone wolf’ sought over terror attack. Below the fold, in lurid colour, was a photograph of Chappie Connor’s burned-out cottage. Thatch gone, glass gone, door gone: it sat, still smoking, like a charred skull sinking into the sodden headland.
Fifteen seconds.
I stooped to pick the paper up, and the man said ‘Thank you’; but grappling with the baby carriage, he had no hands to take it. I stood and watched as he clambered on, received through the open door by his panicked wife. The last whistle blew. The platform had emptied of everyone except the guard and myself. In a moment the doors would lock. I looked at the paper up close. There was only one person who could have released that photograph. Commander Frank Knight had vaporized my most valuable asset in the creases of tomorrow’s fish-and-chip wrapping. My face would be everywhere. My name, too. Movement would become impossible. Helping me would be suicide. I was beyond the pale.
Time was up.
If I stayed, it would get bloody, quickly. If I left, it might be impossible to return.
All bets were off.
I stepped on to the train.
10
‘Monsieur?’
‘S’il vous plaît, un café et un verre d’eau.’ My eyes scanned the menu chalked up on a thin blackboard hung near the door. ‘Et un croque-madame,’ I smiled. ‘J’ai faim.’ The waiter nodded and cleared the cups and plates left by the couple whose table I’d taken. The bistrot was set to the side of a small square dominated by a large church, a short walk from the Gare du Nord. In the summer tables and chairs must have spilled out of the concertinaed wood and glass doors on to the flagstones outside. But on that cold morning the panes had fogged over, creating a damp, grey curtain that cut off the city beyond. It was good to be inside.
When I’d arrived, I’d exchanged the sterling left over from getting to Paris and then used some of those euros to buy a train ticket to Berlin, via Düsseldorf. I’d walked the cavernous concourse cautiously but casually. In Ashford there’d been no point in hiding my face from the station’s security cameras: Mann’s passport would have given my route away immediately. But in Paris I was careful not to show my face to the lenses that pivoted on gantries above me. This was where I needed my trail to go cold – or at least cool.
The station seethed with passengers and tourists, watched by patrols of maroon-bereted paratroopers from the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment. The troops moved slowly, purposefully, Famas assault rifles cradled across their chests, eyes looking for a fight – and, if and when they got word, for me.
The Thalys fast train to Düsseldorf departed in less than two hours from the platform adjacent to the Eurostar arrivals. I’d double-checked the departures board and cooled my heels for a minute. When the video of the station CCTV was played and replayed, I’d be spotted, eventually, exactly where I wanted them to find me: scoping out another international train, but one I had no intention of boarding. If whoever was looking for me concluded Germany was my next stop, it would buy me time. And time, as always, was golden. Head down, I’d scuttled off and buried myself in a crowd of Dutch students making for the Métro. I’d descended with them. At the bottom of the stairs I’d peeled off and ducked into a photobooth. After putting five euros in the slot, I’d sat there impassively, waiting, counting my breaths, listening to the weekend bustle beyond the curtain.
A few minutes later I’d emerged again on to street level by the Buffalo Grill, opposite the main entrance, ditching my bundled-up coat into a litter bin. Walking back into the station by the taxi rank, I’d lifted an unguarded Yankees ball cap sitting on top of a careless American’s rucksack.
I’d considered stealing his phone, too, but unlocking it would have been impossible. I could have bought a burner, but I needed to stay as low profile as possible. Unregistered phones don’t stay active for long in France – and authenticating the SIM card would require identification. Showing Doctor Mann’s stolen passport wouldn’t just alert London – it would ring an alarm bell loud enough to be heard as far away as Washington and Moscow.
I hadn’t thrown the passport away with my coat, though. Doctor Mann’s ID wouldn’t get me through immigration again – but his identity might still come in handy. The steps I’d taken to get to Paris would be revealing themselves behind me, pace by pace, hour by hour. The most I could do was give anyone in pursuit the runaround while I made my own best guess at what to do next.
The world had shrunk to the radius of my vision. I had to assume that any attempt to reach out would see my hand severed. Whatever
had been written about me in the papers would have multiplied a hundredfold or more online. Searching the web at an internet café was a possibility – but even if I could connect via a VPN, the shop itself would have cameras to watch its customers. Besides, any searches of any value were so specific that, if I was being tracked online, entering the search terms that interested me would be like waving a red flag above the parapet of whatever anonymity I had left. Nothing was certain, but if the people hunting me enlisted the help of French internal security, it would be a matter of hours, not days, before I ended up in the papers again. The DGSI didn’t mess about. And once Interpol got its act together, all of Europe – and beyond – would be on the lookout for me.
Old media: it was the best and only option. Paper and ink were untraceable. I’d grabbed a copy of Le Monde and the international edition of The New York Times from a Relay news-stand and headed out to the bistrot I had in mind, tossing the stolen cap into a rubbish cart as I went.
The waiter returned with the coffee and a glass of water. I grunted my thanks. He grunted his acknowledgement of it. I tried to concentrate on the facts, or what passed for them on an operation this messed up.
I didn’t know if Frank was – or ever had been – managing the Connor job solo, as he’d let me believe, or if instead he’d been working with Whitehall and Vauxhall Cross all along. I didn’t know if General King – Director Special Forces – was involved or not. I didn’t know if Jack Nazzar had let me get away because he wanted to, or because he’d been ordered to. And I sure as hell didn’t know how the Russians – if they were Russians – fitted into the picture, or how they’d found me in Mayo. They’d done their damnedest not to kill me, despite every opportunity to do so.
I didn’t know why Frank had ordered the hit, or if it was definitely Chappie Connor, and not me, he’d hoped to eliminate. But it didn’t take faith in archangels to see that I, personally, was of interest to someone – and not in a good way: I’d been ambushed, and then tracked and kidnapped.
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