Scorpion Trail

by Geoffrey Archer

  The desk clerk handed him the room key without comment. Then when the couple disappeared into the elevator, he changed the figure ‘one’ in the occupancy column of the register to ‘two’.

  They stood close together in the lift, their bodies touching, but not their hands. Slowly he bent his head and their lips brushed with the lightness of feathers.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened, but for a moment their eyes stayed on each other, neither wanting to break the spell.

  His hand shook as he fumbled with the key. Like a cat, she rubbed her face against his shoulder, her breath halting and uneven.

  Inside the room, he dropped the suitcase beside the wardrobe, then held her by the waist. She slipped her arms round his neck, threading her fingers through his hair.

  His mouth crushed against hers, their lips and tongues re-discovering the taste and territory they’d once known well.

  She pulled back from him, her eyes wild and hungry. She stroked his beard, trying to familiarize her hands with the unfamiliar.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ she breathed, ‘maybe that’ll have to go.’

  ‘What, now?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Her mouth widened into a smile. ‘Not now. Later. A lot later.’

  She slipped off her knitted waistcoat then crossed her arms, taking hold of the hem of her shirt and pulling it over her head. Alex did the same with his pullover. They dropped the clothes on the floor.

  He kissed her bare neck and shoulders, his hands tingling at the feel of her smooth, soft skin, the soapy perfume of her flesh borne upwards by her body heat. She was so thin, he could feel her ribs. He ran his fingers down the ridges of her spine, remembering their geography. Then with a little twist he unclipped the strap of her bra and slipped it forward.

  Lorna tossed back her head and closed her eyes to heighten the sensations shooting through her body. His tongue’s caress hardened her nipples. She breathed in sharply, clasping his head as if it were the most precious thing on earth and ran her fingers up the soft, sensitive skin behind his ears.

  She felt his hands start to work on the belt of her jeans.

  ‘Hang on,’ she panted, ‘you’ve still got your shirt on.’

  She tugged and pulled at the buttons, breaking one of them, then pushed the shirt back over his shoulders.

  She rubbed her body against the thick mat of hair on his chest, remembering. Remembering how fine-tuned his flesh had been when they’d met that second time in Belfast, how addicted she’d become to what he did with it.

  He had the belt undone and slipped his hands under her knickers, cupping her small buttocks, his fingertips reaching to feel the hot moistness underneath.

  They pulled apart to throw off the rest of their clothes.

  Lorna threw the duvet onto the floor and lay down on the smooth white sheets. She covered her breasts with her hands, conscious that they weren’t as firm and shapely as when he’d last seen them. But then, he wasn’t the same shape either, she realized, seeing the slight bulge of his stomach when he knelt beside her on the mattress. She looked up at his beaming face as his hand caressed her stomach and teased through the tufts of her bush.

  ‘You’re as gorgeous as ever, Lorna,’ he breathed. ‘D’you know that?’

  A silly grin spread across her face.

  ‘So are you,’ she purred.

  She took hold of him and pulled him down on top of her.

  Twenty-four

  Monday 4th April, 10.30 a.ms.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  ANNIE LOWELL, NÉE Donohue, slit open the hand-delivered letter and pulled out a pack of photographs. She frowned. For her? Some mistake, perhaps. Then she unfolded the single sheet of writing paper accompanying them and recognized the writing of her younger sister.

  ‘Hey, it’s from Lorna,’ she smiled, realizing then that the scenes in the shots were Bosnia.

  Always close, she and her sister. Two years between them in age, but as children they’d been like Siamese twins when it came to coping with the tyranny of their father.

  It was a brilliant spring morning in New England, maples and birches exploding with yellow-green life. The Lowell children were back at school after a few days at home because of bad colds. Annie had the house and the day to herself.

  An uncontrolled appetite for muffins and donuts had left her with hips and thighs that were painful to joke about, but she had a ready Irish smile, lively brown eyes and tawny hair almost down to her shoulders.

  She took the letter back to the kitchen and poured herself some of the coffee she’d left to brew. Then she sat down and read.

  Dearest Annie,

  You will NEVER guess who the guy with the beard is, standing next to me in a couple of these photos! His name begins with the letter ‘A’!!!

  See you soon. Lorna.

  What was she on about? Never got sensible letters from her any more.

  She riffled through the prints until she found two that showed a bearded man standing uneasily next to Lorna. Certainly didn’t recognize him.

  She read the letter again.

  His name begins with the letter ‘A’!!!

  ‘Oh my God!’ she shrieked. ‘That’s not possible.’

  She looked again at the pictures, then stomped to her husband’s den and pulled a box file from the bookshelf. She returned to the kitchen and opened the lid. Inside were hundreds of photographs, dating back years, all the prints that had never merited being pasted into albums.

  Her heart was thumping so much she feared a coronary. She dug deep in the box, guessing anything from so long ago should be at the bottom. She stirred the prints like a cake-mix, but didn’t find what she was looking for.

  ‘Come on, Annie, you’re being stupid,’ she scolded herself. ‘Go systematic.’

  She began again, removing each print individually, checking and stacking them into piles. Eventually she found it.

  Hands trembling, she held the print taken in Belfast in 1973 next to the new ones.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she howled.

  The beard had fooled her. Older now, jowlier, bigger gut, but the same man.

  ‘A for Alex!’ she hissed.

  She took the new pictures to the window and held them to the light, looking for signs on Lorna’s face of the bitterness she’d harboured for the Englishman for so many years. Lorna certainly didn’t look happy in the photograph. The smile looked fixed.

  The two sisters had always confided in each other. She remembered Lorna crying over the stocky, unsophisticated boy she’d fallen for in a London pub in the nineteen-sixties. She had been broken-hearted at having to leave him and return to college in America.

  She remembered too the ecstatic phone call from Belfast ten years later, announcing they’d met again. Then, just a week or two after that, the betrayal.

  Annie had never shared Lorna’s belief in fate; when she learned Alex was spying for the British, it hadn’t been hard to conclude that he had engineered the meeting to make use of her.

  Was he doing it again? What use could she be to him this time? Lorna wasn’t involved in anything sensitive these days. No longer had anything to do with the Cause.

  Annie read the letter once more. No clue from Lorna as to what she felt. No reason given for sending the photos. Just those ambiguous exclamation points. It was almost as if after twenty years of pledging to get her own back on Alex, Lorna couldn’t decide what to do, now she had the chance. As if she was asking for help . . .

  Mister Alex Jarvis. Annie knew what she would do to him. Cut his balls off.

  But it wasn’t down to her. Not down to Lorna, even. When revenge was personal it was almost always wrong. There were bigger issues to be considered. This was one for the organization, for the boys with long memories who would’ve given their right arms during the last twenty years to know the tout’s whereabouts.

  She picked up the telephone and dialled her husband’s number. Joe had sat on the Irish Republican fundraising committee for over fifteen year
s. They’d both of them been involved since soon after the British troops went in. Campaigning, lobbying. Joe would know what to do. He’d have a feeling for the mood amongst the Provisionals now there was a cease-fire on the way.

  Joe was in a marketing meeting, but his secretary pulled him out. He listened silently as she explained, then gave his answer in a couple of sentences.

  She padded back into the den, took an envelope and writing paper from Joe’s desk and returned to the kitchen. She slipped one of the photos inside the envelope, keeping the other back for herself. For at least ten minutes she just sat, wondering whether she’d done the right thing after all, talking to Joe.

  It was she who’d encouraged her sister to get involved in the Cause. Her thoughts drifted back to 1973 when Lorna had fled from Belfast like a wraith. After the boys in Boston put a contract out, the creature had hidden in cupboards, terrified a knock on the door would be followed by a bullet.

  Above all, Annie remembered how Lorna’s spirit had been broken by that bastard’s betrayal, by the shock that someone she’d loved and trusted could do that to her. Annie had told her sister to forget him, but she never could. Never got him out of her system. Lorna, she guessed, was one of those benighted women who only loved the men that abused them.

  Annie picked up the picture again and peered into her sister’s eyes. What did she see there? Anger? Hate? Oh, no . . . Not the other thing for heaven’s sake . . .

  ‘Lorna, sweetie, don’t do it. Just don’t do what I think you’re goin’ to do,’ she said to the picture. ‘He’ll fuck you up again, sure as God made little green apples.’

  She began to write. Just a few sentences. Just enough to let the boys know what was what. Like Joe said. Then it was up to them what they did about it.

  12 noon

  Universitätsklinik Sembach – Frankfurt am Main

  The gun attack on a Bosnian girl in a quiet residential street had made front page news. Armed police guarded her ward in the recently-built hospital and the media were beating a path to her door. The TV had portrayed Vildana as a tragic war victim, gunned down by the man she was trying to bring to justice for the murder of her family. The story had touched hearts around the world.

  The Universitätsklinik was the accident and emergency hospital for a swathe of semi-urban landscape south of Frankfurt. A white-painted, five-storey block, extending each side of a central entrance that served ambulances and visitors.

  Alex and Lorna asked at the main desk for directions to ward 4F. The receptionist assumed they were journalists and told them coldly they’d need to speak first to the hospital administrator.

  ‘And he’s not let anyone see her all morning,’ she added briskly.

  ‘We’re not press, we’re family,’ Alex answered in German.

  ‘Really?’ She’d heard the same story four times that morning. ‘The police won’t let you in.’

  Alex took Lorna’s arm. ‘Come on, we’re wasting our time.’ He led her to the elevators.

  As the doors opened on the fourth floor, they almost collided with photographers being nudged away by a police officer. Along the corridor two more uniformed men from the Kriminalpolizei stood guard outside room F.

  Alex struggled with his school German to explain who they were. One officer went inside and reappeared with Nancy Roche.

  ‘Hey, it’s good to see you guys!’ she exclaimed. Her tanned skin looked grey and pinched with exhaustion. She led them into the four-bed ward and closed the door again. Vildana was dozing in the far corner. Two other beds were occupied by children, one alone, the other with a mother in attendance.

  ‘She’s sleeping, thank the Lord,’ Nancy whispered. ‘It was a terrible night. She was in a lot of pain when the anaesthetic wore off. Nobody got any sleep. Nataša is totally washed out; I sent her home at eight this morning, after a nurse came on who’s from Yugoslavia. She looks in once in a while. Say, have they caught the man yet?’

  ‘Not that we’ve heard,’ Alex answered. ‘Kommissar Linz hasn’t rung us.’

  Anyway they’d been too pre-occupied to enquire.

  ‘Vildana’s scared out of her wits. Thinks he’ll chase and chase until he finds her.’

  ‘She’s probably right,’ Lorna agreed. ‘The man’s a monster.’

  They looked across at the sleeping child. She had one hand up to her mouth, half obscuring her birthmark, the thumb resting on her lips.

  ‘She’s a sweet kid,’ Nancy murmured, shaking her head. ‘So young, and suffered so much already. Now look, are you guys going to be here a while? Can you give me a couple of hours to flop, to go home and take a shower?’

  Lorna and Alex looked at one another and nodded. ‘Sure, why not.’

  ‘That’s swell of you. One thing, some Bosnian refugee centre has been in touch, just making sure someone’s taking responsibility for Vildana. The police say they’re bona fide, but I’m a little anxious. Scared they’ll take her away from me I guess,’ she grimaced nervously.

  ‘And you don’t want that . . .?’ Lorna asked, checking. The woman could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for when she agreed to take Vildana.

  ‘No way,’ Nancy replied, startled at the question. ‘She’s my girl now. Leastways, so long as that’s what she wants,’ she added. ‘See you in a couple of hours then?’

  ‘Sure. Take your time,’ Lorna said, squeezing her arm.

  She and Alex sat down beside the bed, watching the rise and fall of Vildana’s breathing. Her right breast was covered by a thick, white dressing.

  Such tiny breasts, Lorna thought, little more than buds. And now there’d be a scar, another physical one to go with those that they couldn’t see, in her mind.

  Half an hour later, with Vildana still sleeping, Alex descended to the lobby telling Lorna he’d find them some sandwiches. His main aim however was to telephone MI5.

  ‘What are you doing in Frankfurt, dear boy?’ Chadwick’s voice, suspicious.

  ‘Just checking you’d read your papers this morning . . .’

  ‘And the rest . . . TV, radio, the story’s getting a huge play over here. But . . . were you there when it happened?’

  ‘Well yes . . .’

  ‘Why? How?’

  ‘I helped smuggle the girl out of Bosnia. Came here to see how she was settling in with her new family . . .’

  ‘Good heavens! You’re a canny bastard. Didn’t mention any of that when you rang from Split.’

  ‘It was still rather sensitive, then.’

  ‘Well, tell me something. That Lorna somebody-or-other mentioned in the Times – she’s not Lorna . . .?’

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ Alex lied. ‘Sorensen’s her name. Nordic background, I think.’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ Chadwick was unconvinced. He’d seen a photo of her in the paper. ‘You’re sure it was Milan Pravic who shot the girl?’

  ‘Can’t think who else would do it. Certainly fitted the description.’

  ‘I see. Who’s handling it for the Germans?’

  ‘A Kommissar called Linz. From the Bundeskriminalamt.’

  ‘Oh I know Linz. Met him not so long ago at an Interpol bash. Maybe I’ll give him a ring. I’ll tell him you’re a friend of mine . . .’

  Alex rang off then bought cheese rolls and mineral water from the stall in the lobby. He also picked up the Frankfurte Allgemeine and Bild Zeitung.

  Back in the ward he scanned the stories that had been written about Vildana.

  ‘It says here she was smuggled into Germany in the trunk of a car belonging to an American adoption agency,’ he translated. ‘Says it’s thought the killer tailed them all the way to Frankfurt.’

  ‘God! Who gives them this stuff?’

  ‘Better that than the truth,’ he commented wryly.

  ‘Do they name him?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘Not directly. There’s a lot about Tulici. Mentions the UN asking European police forces to hold Pravic if they find him. Oh, Kommissar Linz is quoted. Says he has no idea who
the gunman was. Appealing for more witnesses – all that crap.’

  Vildana stirred. She saw Lorna, made an attempt at a smile, then winced with pain. Lorna fussed with the pillows and the girl closed her eyes once more.

  It stirred memories for Alex, sitting by a child’s hospital bed. Jodie. He’d broken an arm once, riding his bike into a wall. Only ten at the time.

  Alex turned back to the papers. Leipzig again – the mystery suicide. A new twist . . . A Zagreb woman was critically ill with pulmonary anthrax. The hotel where she worked as a cleaner had been closed to be disinfected.

  ‘Extraordinary story, this,’ Alex muttered.

  ‘Now what are they saying?’

  ‘It’s not about Vildana, this one. It’s about a scientist in Leipzig University, who committed suicide last week. The official line is that he was depressed at being made redundant. You know, a man whose work meant everything to him? Well, his daughter tells a different story. She said her father had hinted about being forced to hand over supplies of lethal bacteria to some thug from the Stasi, you know – the old East German secret police?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The papers have been nibbling at it for days. They’re saying the bacteria could’ve been anthrax, and now there’s a girl dying from the disease in Zagreb.’

  ‘Zagreb! For Pete’s sake, why Zagreb?’

  ‘Dunno. But anthrax isn’t exactly as common as ’flu, so there’s some suspicion it came from the lab in Leipzig. And now, the papers say there’s a cover-up going on. They claim the German intelligence agencies know all about it, but aren’t saying.’

  ‘Wow! That’s some story!’

  Voices in the corridor outside, then Kommissar Linz walked in, dressed in his green raincoat and carrying a slim briefcase.

  He limped across to the corner bed and shook their hands formally.

  ‘Guten Tag, Herr Crawford. Frau Sorensen. Your hotel said you were out, so I hoped you would be here.’

  ‘You have news about Pravic?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Yes and no.’ He rested the briefcase on a chair, opened it, and pulled out a photograph about seven inches by five. ‘They wired this from Berlin this morning.’