Was I wrong? The doors close and then the lift comes to a stop on the very next floor. A woman gets inside with me. But I’m distracted and don’t look at her.
What was that all about?
‘I’m going up,’ I say.
‘That’s all right,’ she answers.
When I realise she has a gun in her hand, it’s too late to reach for mine. She pulls aside my jacket and takes my Glock from the holster underneath as though she’s always known it was there.
‘Hello, Michael,’ she says. ‘You’ve been a very bad boy, haven’t you?’
‘That depends on how you view things,’ I say. ‘What do you want?’
I look right into her eyes and memorise her features. When I get myself out of this situation, I may be able to identify her.
She has a faint German accent. And a strange quirk of the lips that makes me think that she is mean or bitter. Mid-forties. Black hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. I search my memory for any recollection of her when I was under Beech’s influence, but I find nothing.
‘I’ve been sent to bring you back into the fold.’ Without looking away, she reaches out and presses the button that takes the lift to the top floor.
The elevator reaches my floor, and because I’d pressed the button it stops and the doors open. Her eyes skitter to the landing and at that moment I take my chance, and throw myself at her, knocking the gun from her hands. It flies out of the lift and across the corridor and so does my Glock. We tussle and fight. I find the moves that the Network taught me from childhood coming back, as I respond to her, matching blow for blow. I smash her face against the side of the lift, then throw myself out as the doors start to close, blocking her inside.
Her foot is part way through the door though and so they close on it, and then start to open again. I kick her foot and move it inside the lift. She seems stunned, though is moving as though to get up. The door closes on her, blocking her from my view.
My gun is on the floor. I pick it up and take hers too, putting it in my pocket. It’s likely she’ll be off on the next floor and will come back down after me. I run through the fight in my mind again. She was tough and determined. If I want to get away, it’s possible I’ll have to kill her. The assassin in me stirs. I feel my emotions going cold. Beech’s training will always be part of me and I can and will kill without remorse if the situation calls for it.
I hurry to the stairs to wait for her to come down, but as I open the door to the stairwell, I find myself looking at the man from the train who is coming up the stairs. He’s no longer holding a book: he’s clutching a gun. I wasn’t mistaken after all.
I fire two shots at him, and he dives away, tumbling down the stairwell. I go back onto the landing, taking this as my safest option. Just then the lift returns, the doors open, and the woman comes out, gun blazing. She obviously had a backup weapon! I throw myself back through the door to the stairs, firing at her as I go.
There is a yelp on the landing from one of my neighbours. She screams that she’s ‘calling the police’ and I hope she does. I fire a couple of shots down the stairs again to the lower floor in an attempt to pin the man down. Then I run up the next flight to the floor above, taking two steps at a time. On the next landing I bang on the nearest apartment door.
‘MI5 – open up.’
No one answers and I move to the next apartment. I’m about to kick in the final door, when my pursuers reach the corridor.
The woman fires a warning shot at me: I’m trapped. Even with the best training it’s hard to avoid bullets when you have nowhere to run. My training kicks in: When is doubt, pretend to be defeated…
‘Get in the lift,’ she says to me as she approaches. ‘Try anything again and I’ll kill you.’
The man pulls the gun out of my hands and pushes me inside. They both get in with me, guns trained for a direct hit. I know I’m not getting out of this as easily as last time but I still watch for an opportunity.
The lift travels upwards once more, and I wonder what’s waiting for me on the top floor.
‘I assume you’re from the Network,’ I say as the lift reaches its destination. ‘Can I ask where you’re taking me?’
‘You’ll know soon enough,’ says the man.
The lift doors open, and they pull me out, then lead me towards the roof stairs at the far end of the corridor, past the stairs that could take me downwards.
I run it through my mind, how and when I can make my break for it. But once I pass the stairs there’s no going back. I feel the gun in my back, pressed against my spine. One bullet and I’ll be crippled. I have to comply.
Outside I hear sirens approaching: someone on the lower floors must have called the police. The man grabs my arm and yanks me into the stairwell; the woman brings up the rear.
It’s dark on the stairs. The man flicks the light switch but nothing happens.
‘Hurry,’ says the woman.
I can hear a whirring sound above my head as we begin to climb the final flight of steps to the rooftop, and I realise that this has been the plan all along. Above there’s a helicopter, waiting to take me elsewhere.
I can’t go back to the House. An odious panic surges up into my chest and I fight to quell this rush of weakening fear.
I decide then that I won’t be controlled by the Network again. Even if they kill me.
I fall into a roll, taking the woman down with me. There’s a blast of gunfire above, but it doesn’t hit us. Instead, I see the man stumble and fall, as though someone has hit him from behind. He tumbles down behind us. The woman’s head cracks against the concrete wall. She falls limp. My arm is grabbed again.
‘Come on,’ says Neva, pulling me to my feet.
We run back onto the top corridor towards the stairs, but she pulls me past them. She leads me to the last apartment on the floor. The door springs open after she taps on it.
‘This is Janine,’ she says.
I recognise the woman. She sometimes leaves the building early in the morning and I occasionally speak to her in the lift.
Janine closes the door behind us, blocking out the sudden burst of chaos as the police reach the top floor.
Neva grabs me and hugs me.
‘So… Who…?’
‘She’s been keeping an eye on you,’ Neva says. ‘For me.’
‘You’ll be okay,’ Janine says. She has a Russian-sounding accent. ‘Go in the bedroom. I’m going to open the door and be a concerned citizen.’
Neva leads me to Janine’s bedroom.
‘Who is she?’ I ask.
‘Former KGB. I helped her get out a few years ago. She works for me on occasion.’
I sit down on the bed. ‘What the fuck…?’
‘When the cops have cleaned up those bastards, we can slip away. I’m getting you out of here.’
‘I can’t. My job,’ I say.
‘Michael, that was the Network. They were claiming you back and they won’t stop until they have you. You have to come with me. There’s no choice. You must see that.’
‘MI5 will protect me,’ I say.
‘What, by having you followed by inadequately trained, half-arsed agents?’
I’m about to answer when Neva shushes me.
She stands at the door and we hear Janine’s concerned call down the corridor. She now has a fluent English accent. ‘What’s going on out here?’
‘It’s okay, miss. We have the culprits. Please stay inside your apartment.’
A short time later, the police knock on the door and question Janine to see if she saw or heard anything. When they’ve gone, she comes to the bedroom.
‘They’re clearing out. But give yourself time,’ she says to Neva.
‘I’ll need to get some stuff from my apartment,’ I say.
‘No,’ Janine says. ‘MI5 are in there. They’ll be looking for you.’
‘Give me your phone,’ Neva says.
I don’t ask why but I take it out of my pocket. The screen is damaged, but
I can see I have six missed calls from Beth. Neva takes it from my trembling fingers. Then she opens the window in Janine’s bedroom and drops the phone out.
‘If they are looking for you, they’ll find that and assume you were taken when that helicopter took off. I knew there was a reason why I didn’t shoot the pilot,’ Neva says.
She tells me to rest for a while and she goes into the other room with Janine. But I can’t rest. It doesn’t make sense. Why would the Network come for me now?
I get off the bed and go into the living room, Neva and Janine are talking in whispers by the kitchen door.
‘Why now?’ I ask her.
‘You’re a risk to them if they leave you out in the cold. You know too much and you’re helping MI5 with a lot of subconscious knowledge,’ Neva explains.
‘But they’ve left me alone for six months,’ I say. ‘So why didn’t they come for me before?’
‘The Network were in chaos. They’re regrouping, faster now since they appointed a new chair,’ Neva says.
‘How do you know that?’ I ask.
‘I have my moles, just as they have theirs. Michael, there’s something you should know. There is a spy in the ranks at MI5. Another sleeper agent. They will have told the committee something that’s sparked this move to take you back,’ she says.
‘What could they have said? That I’m back and trusted now? Or I was before this?’
‘I don’t know, but I suspect you’ve uncovered something that they don’t want you to share with your colleagues,’ Neva says.
I shake my head. ‘No. There’s nothing. No secret that I know other than what you’ve told me, and I can’t share that with my colleagues for obvious reasons.’
Neva thinks for a moment. ‘It may be something they think you know then. Michael, have you been working on anything else, other than the flight disappearance?’
‘I’ve been searching for information about other spies, but my colleagues know about all my findings. I’ve been completely transparent. What I found led us to Olive Redding’s family.’
Neva says, ‘It can’t be that.’
Yet I’m aware that further investigation of the parents of missing children may have brought us closer to finding the Network’s committee.
‘What was Stanners to the Network?’ I ask her now.
Neva shakes her head, ‘I don’t know, Michael. You know I don’t. I’m trying to find out all I can but those who know keep it to themselves for fear of reprisal.’
‘They didn’t try to silence him for nothing,’ I say.
‘Well, whoever he was, it may have been someone in Archive who informed the Network you were on to him. For the moment you can’t return to Archive. Not until we discover who the traitor is.’
She says this to reassure me that my life might be normal once again if this puzzle is solved. But somehow, I just can’t imagine it. My work life has been turned upside down again and Neva as always is in the centre of it. Was it just a coincidence that she happened to be in the right place at the right time? I can’t help suspecting her of being involved in this too.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kritta
Kritta had woken first in the stairwell. She had found her colleague, Stefan, on the floor beside her. He too had been knocked out. She shook him, ordering him to wake.
‘We need to get to the roof!’ she’d said. Stefan came round but not before Kritta heard the helicopter above take off, leaving them behind.
‘Looks like we are on our own,’ she had said. ‘Get up! Find your gun.’
The door to the stairwell was yanked open before either of them could find their weapons.
‘Freeze!’ said a cop. He was armed, wearing Kevlar and even a riot mask covering his face. More armed men backed him up.
Kritta had known it wasn’t worth the fight – they couldn’t win. Kritta and Stefan had put their hands up. The police had swarmed around them. They were cuffed and pulled from the stairway and out onto the corridor. From there they were bundled into the lift, while some of the other officers went upstairs.
Kritta had smiled then, because the helicopter was long gone.
‘I’m injured,’ she had said as they pushed them both into the back of a police van. ‘You have to get me a doctor.’
There were two officers with them, one driver, one accompanying.
‘We don’t have to get you anything,’ said the older police officer.
He had slammed the back of the van shut, and then climbed into the front.
Now the van pulls away from the apartment and heads downtown to the nearest, most secure gaol.
‘MI5 want a word with you,’ the officer says before he bangs the partition closed between the driver’s compartment and their new cage.
‘This is very inconvenient,’ says Kritta.
There is a sliver of drying blood on the side of her head and staining her right cheek. Her head throbs from the concussion, but she shakes away the pain because she’s been through worse.
‘Another double-cross, Kritta,’ Stefan says. ‘I thought your source said this would be easy.’
‘Shut up,’ says Kritta.
The van turns off the main road and takes a back route, avoiding the worst of the London traffic.
The police officer sighs to himself as they drive. He turns to the driver, ‘I hate London traffic. All these back ways we have to take just to—’
At that moment all four of the van’s tyres are blown out. The driver struggles with the wheel and briefly loses control. The van swerves and grazes the side of two parked cars before skidding to a halt.
There is sudden movement outside and gas grenades are thrown into the front of the van, smashing the side windows. The two officers cover their faces from the shower of glass and then start coughing as the gas takes effect.
In the back, Kritta and Stefan drop to the floor and cover their faces as best as they can. They had been expecting something like this.
The back of the van is pulled open and two men wearing gasmasks climb inside. Kritta struggles, holding her breath as much as possible as the men bodily move them out of the van and into the fresh air. Stefan is coughing and retching on the road as they are hurried to a black SUV and pushed inside.
The car speeds away, leaving the police van open and the cops now cuffed and in the back.
One of their rescuers passes Kritta a phone.
Kritta presses it to her ear and then she hears the soft exhale of Annalise. ‘Well?’
‘He got away,’ she says. ‘Neva ambushed us.’
‘I see,’ says Annalise. ‘Now they’ll run. It will be only a matter of time before one of ours spots them. In a way they are easier to find together than they are apart.’
‘I thought the idea was to capture Michael,’ says Kritta.
‘It is. But that will be simpler when he’s away from England and MI5 are no longer able to back him up.’
‘What now?’ says Kritta.
‘I have people in all the right places, don’t worry your concussed little head about it.’
Annalise hangs up and Kritta is left feeling insecure. She looks at the men sitting in the back of the car with them. She doesn’t know any of them. Are they loyal to the committee? Or are they controlled only by Annalise?
The answer comes a short time later when they arrive at their destination, a nondescript house in an anonymous backstreet of North London.
‘Annalise says you’re both to stay here,’ says one of the men.
‘I’d rather get back to my own house,’ she says.
‘For now, this will be your home,’ says the man. His tone gives no room for further discussion or negotiation.
Kritta and Stefan are taken into the house and given a bedroom each. Kritta finds bars over the windows and the door is locked behind her as she’s shoved inside. She looks around at the beautifully furnished room but all she sees is a prison.
She wonders if this was Annalise’s plan all along. Someone betrayed
them tonight after all. Perhaps she was the one who let Neva know of the attack…
Kritta paces the room, wondering what the ultimate game plan is and having no idea at all where this is going to end. She thought by being chosen for the committee she was safe from retirement. Beech had promised. And she’d done everything she could to back him up, follow his rules – even given up a child to the House.
There is regret and loss, and a bitter anger surges up inside her: an emotion she has denied herself for years. That bastard Beech. Why did he have to go and get himself Getötet? His death had left the Network in a complete mess.
Kritta sits down on the bed. She is tired and drained, and the extraction of Michael should have been easy but it was one fuck-up after another. Not helped when Stefan was observed by Michael. She should have known better than to trust him too.
The door is unlocked and opened and one of Annalise’s men comes in with a food tray.
‘Can’t have you starving in here,’ he says.
‘Why am I being held?’ she asks. ‘You have no right. I’m a member of the committee.’
‘You’re not being held,’ says the guard. ‘You’re being protected.’
‘From what?’ she asks.
‘From doing anything foolish,’ the man smiles.
Kritta runs through a scenario of how she will bring him down. She has a desire to snap his neck, but she notices then that the other guard standing by the door, gun trained in her direction.
‘Thank you for the food,’ she says.
When the guards leave, Kritta gets up. She begins to open drawers and cupboards, looking for anything that will help her escape. After all, the cops took her lock picks and the knife she had hidden in her boot. But the drawers are empty and the little bathroom off the room doesn’t have a window, not even a mirror she can make use of to create a weapon. It seems that Annalise has thought of everything.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Michael
When Neva thinks it is safe to leave, she comes and wakes me. I’d been determined not to fall asleep, but in the end, I was exhausted, and I’d nodded off on Janine’s bed.
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