Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  Either he was an incredibly convincing actor or his reactions were consistent with being as surprised as she was. But he seemed to know an awful lot about that technology – too much not to be involved in this on some level. Besides, she didn’t even know why he was here, what he wanted with her. Why hadn’t she asked him when she had the chance?

  Eva stared at him, coldly.

  Silence descended on the cabin.

  Eva looked again from one to the other. She knew the technology required ‘mapping points’. If she could feel their faces, she could see who was the imposter and who was real.

  ‘Am I the only person who can see two Jacksons?’ she asked out loud.

  ‘Yes,’ Irene responded, her voice dull.

  ‘Leon?’

  No response.

  Now Eva turned to the area of the plane where Leon had been patching up Irene. But it was Leon, not Irene, who was horizontal in the seat.

  ‘Leon?’ she took a step towards him. She realised Irene had a gun.

  ‘What are you doing, Irene?’

  ‘Tie her up,’ Irene said to one or both of the Jacksons.

  Eva started to panic.

  There was no one in this small space she could trust.

  So far, no one had moved. Whoever responded to Irene had to be the fake Jackson, which presumably was why neither had yet given themselves away.

  With a growing sense of panic, Eva realised how powerless she was. In fact, she had been helpless for weeks – from the moment she had arrived in Berlin. At every stage, someone had been pulling the strings. And she could do nothing. Her heart began to beat faster as she turned to Irene. Somehow, she felt this woman was responsible, whether that was logical or not. She’d been pretending to be Eva’s ally but she was not. Perhaps she never had been.

  ‘I trusted you, Irene.’

  The two women stared at each other. Eva realised she was willing Irene to shoot her. She felt appalled, with herself, with Irene, with this entire situation. A red mist of rage began to descend.

  Then she sprang at Irene over the back of the seat, just a metre from where Eva stood. The gun fired, sending a bullet into the wall between cabin and cockpit.

  There was a struggle, gravity had pushed Eva on top of Irene, where she was pinning the older woman to the floor. She repeatedly smashed her closed fist onto Irene’s wrist, trying to force the release of the gun, but Irene would not let it go.

  They grappled.

  Irene did not have the space to aim the gun and so hit out with her fists. Eva responded with the back of her hand.

  Then Irene landed a punch that made Eva see stars. Eva made a grab for the nearest seat as her vision darkened, dragged herself to a crouch and turned back to Irene, lunging at her as the other woman tried to stand.

  Irene staggered, one hand shot out and she grasped Eva’s throat, fingers quickly closing around her windpipe but she lost her balance, dragging them both to the floor again.

  On her back, Irene held Eva’s throat in her left fist, her arm rigid. She began trying to aim the gun she still held in her right hand at Eva. Then both of them had fingers around the gun.

  ‘We need her alive, Irene.’ Jackson’s voice from behind them both. But which one?

  Eva screamed as frustration overwhelmed her, the noise muffled by the vice around her throat. She felt another surge of white hot rage and ripped the gun from Irene’s grasp by sheer brute force. The surprise Eva felt at her own strength registered in Irene’s eyes, too. Eva smacked the gun, with all her strength, against the side of Irene’s head. The woman was still, her hand dropping to the floor, fully releasing Eva’s neck.

  Eva rose and turned slowly to the two men behind her, with the gun in her hand. Both still looked like Jackson. Neither had moved. But one had spoken. And that one she had to kill.

  THIRTY FOUR

  Paul was dizzy, elated. He felt a sense of excitement, as if what was about to happen was all his work. It was nothing less than an entire country they were taking by stealth; a bloodless coup. He had finally been given the full picture of what was about to take place and it was fascinating. It was unprecedented.

  The thing about countries like the UK was that they were inherently undermined by their profit motive, which won over human interest every time – even when it came to the decisions of an elected government.

  Of course this was the oldest of conspiracy theories. And that was what made this so perfect. As if there was some kind of double jeopardy rule with conspiracy theory – the more times it was aired the more unbelievable it became. The more it appeared like the plot of a book or a film, the more it seemed like fiction.

  In his experience, the truth was always stranger than fiction.

  He scrolled through the list of electronic instruments at his fingertips, those that gave him such complete control – him. He realised, of course, that he was just the caretaker but he also felt privileged to have been so trusted, even at this late stage. Even the old man hadn’t been given this high level information. Had he? It left Paul with rather a conundrum. It was at this point that the plan had been for him to parachute out but Paul wondered whether this might be a good career move for him. It surely shouldn’t matter to Jackson either way.

  He might like this life of high end crime, it seemed to suit him. What troubled him was what might happen next.

  He knew, within the technology that Jackson had instructed him to obtain, that there was a failsafe, a way to undermine the system when it was in use.

  The thing about holding someone or something to ransom was that whatever you were using to do it potentially made you just as vulnerable to being held to ransom yourself. He was surprised no one at ACORN had checked for such vulnerability. Or considered he might have an ulterior motive, or be in the pay of someone else.

  And then he stopped. His fingers froze.

  Had they?

  He blinked.

  Perhaps they had.

  How would he know?

  Paul removed his hand from the keyboard as it dawned on him that, in this situation, whilst he sat here pondering his ability to undermine those who had paid so much for his stolen technology, perhaps the same could be done to him. Maybe right now. By the same people he was targetting.

  With a start, he realised he wasn’t sure where reality lay anymore; he wasn’t certain of anything.

  Eva stared at the two men in front of her and knew reality was not something she had any appreciation of at that moment. This was going to come down to instinct. An instinct that felt precarious, at best. Neither of the men had shown any reaction to her confrontation with Irene.

  Her gaze moved from one to the other and she quickly made a decision as to which she should shoot. Her finger began to press on the trigger of the weapon. And then she stopped. Could she trust her instinct? After so much had been done to alter the chemicals in her brain, did she really – actually – know she was making the right decision?

  Reality. Truth. Weren’t they an entirely subjective thing in any situation?

  There is no truth, only points of view…

  Her finger moved away from the trigger. Philosophy breeding inaction.

  The arm holding the gun dropped slightly.

  Then there was a sudden movement and, instinctively, she turned and shot in the direction from which it came.

  The bullet pierced the shell of the plane and the entire structure began to shake and swerve. Oxygen masks fell from above the seats.

  Eva stumbled.

  She opened her eyes wide as she saw Leon, clutching the top of his shoulder, blood pouring through his hands. That was wrong. Had she shot him? Had someone else shot him?

  He was staring at her. No one else moved.

  The plane lurched.

  Suddenly, everyone fell to the side.

  Eva, wrong footed, stumbled
, hit her head on the top of the seat to her right. She managed to keep the arm holding the gun aimed in front of her. She squinted. Her vision was beginning to blur again. She felt her heartbeat flutter, a missed beat, another. She was about to have a second fit, she could feel it.

  And then her vision cleared.

  With horror, she saw clearly the two men in front of her. The first face she recognised was that of Joseph Smith.

  Instantly, Joseph realised something had happened when Eva hit her head on the seat.

  He calculated his options. He had only one.

  He began to move towards her at speed. She was only two paces away. But she was faster.

  She shot him, first through the leg and then the chest.

  As he fell, he activated the device he had been given to understand would destroy the key. Not out of necessity, just out of malice. Finally, he had some sort of power over her. He watched Eva react instantly as the trigger in his hand released a stream of chemicals into her bloodstream from the delivery mechanism under her skin. For several seconds, nothing happened. In the time that elapsed, he felt as if the space around him was suddenly silent, there was no one there except the two of them.

  He opened his mouth to speak to her when he realised she was just standing staring at him. Or was she – was that his imagination? He knew his life-blood was ebbing away, his heart was beating at a weaker rate. She had shot him, first disabling him, and finally the potentially fatal wound. But she would not win, he would not allow it.

  Once again, he made contact with her eyes but they were glazed. As his head hit the floor he saw her body begin to move, almost as if she was dancing.

  In front of his hand, Paul’s screen began to flash red. The words ‘key compromised’ jumped out at him.

  He sat still for several seconds, not realising what was happening.

  Key compromised? He fumbled quickly with his phone, calling up the basic instruction manual he had pieced together from the research he had stolen, a crib sheet for being convincing.

  Key compromised – the key was about to be destroyed. It was a final protection, built in to allow someone to permanently deny access: death. But to activate that series the physical key would have been required and he had the only copy.

  He sprang to life.

  He began pressing the pockets frantically on his suit, trying to feel for the shape of the tiny key. He couldn’t believe he could not immediately bring to mind its location.

  After several seconds, he realised he did not have it.

  It was gone.

  And there, he thought, is the only flaw in this piece of technology – there is just one key. Although he knew the flaw was not in the technology but the human being who had allowed it to be taken.

  He sat for several seconds, fists clenched in front of him and stared at the flashing words on the screen of the laptop.

  Key compromised.

  She was failing. And it was unlikely he could stop it, which meant that he was compromised.

  There was only one person who could have taken the VERITAS key from him, Joseph Smith – perhaps the only individual he had chosen to trust in quite some time.

  He pressed the ‘locator’ key on the laptop and the system began to circle across a map of the world. The locator drilled down, country by country, and settled on a route somewhere between France and Switzerland. But it did not stay there. It was moving.

  And it was not only moving forwards but seemed to be dropping in altitude, too.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, under his breath, and began frenetically typing into the key pad in front of him. Consecutively, the three mobile phones on the table in front of him began to ring. Their tuneless tones rang on and on but he ignored them. Briefly, each one stopped and then instantly began again.

  He was not going to be able to stay – and neither would he be able to escape. Joseph Smith had effectively erased him too.

  A crew member stepped out from behind the curtain of the front section of the private plane.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Not now. I told you not to disturb me.’

  ‘But, sir, I think this is urgent.’

  ‘I said not now!’ He hurled the first thing which came to his hand at the stewardess. A bone china coffee cup. It struck her on the shoulder.

  Jackson watched as his sister fell. He looked briefly around the shaking cabin of the plane they were in – it felt unstable and unsteered. Autopilot. Irene was dazed, possibly unconscious, possibly dead. He didn’t care particularly about her right at that moment, he didn’t even know why – or how – she was there.

  Leon was bleeding, not profusely but enough to disable him soon if it was not stemmed. As always, the huge man was looking to him for guidance. It seemed to be a natural instinct of his, even after all that had passed previously between them.

  Then there was the man he recognised but could not name – Eva had shot him and he lay on his back, staring up at the curved, shaking ceiling of the plane. Was he dead? Jackson would have to check but he could not seem to move. His old paralysis returned, the result of his near death all those years ago, scars that would never heal. He had never been able to recall those injuries – or who had inflicted them – and so he had never had the chance for revenge. Other than on ACORN. Their betrayal of him would now extract a huge price.

  He looked at the man on the floor and concluded that the other pilot – the man Jackson had paid – must be dead. He glanced at Eva. Jackson was well aware of the time pressure he was under.

  And yet he could not move.

  He felt Leon’s eyes on him.

  He almost thought he felt Eva’s eyes on him.

  He turned his gaze towards his distressed sister.

  After all the years he had been forced not to be a part of her life, her importance to him had slowly diminished. That’s why he had been able to make her his ‘key’. She didn’t matter. In reality, he felt little guilt for anything she had endured as a result of his actions. Because he felt nothing at all for anyone. The part of the brain that enabled emotional reaction no longer functioned for him – not since he had almost died.

  He watched as her body rocked back and forth where she stood then she, too, began to head for the floor.

  He didn’t move.

  He knew the exact make-up of the chemicals released into her system at that point – if the composition had not changed since he had worked on the VERITAS technology.

  He did not know 100 per cent what her chances of survival were but he knew that he had the tools to influence that and he knew that he must try to keep her alive. Even if it meant momentarily killing her.

  Eva was on the floor now. Jackson remained still.

  He glanced over at Leon, who was still staring at him.

  ‘Can you move?’

  A grim nod from the Frenchman.

  ‘Tie her,’ he said, indicating Irene, and, with considerable effort, Leon began to move from his position and head for the prone form of the older woman.

  Jackson took two steps towards his sister. He touched her skin and quickly withdrew his hand. She was cold, clammy.

  He steeled himself to touch her once again and then put her in the recovery position on the cabin floor as she began to vomit blue liquid.

  He looked up and realised Leon was staring at Eva.

  Jackson pulled a protective glove from a medical bag on one of the seats, put it on and ensured that Eva’s airway was clear. He left the blue, gel-like vomit where it was. The implants were dissolving.

  He took a step back, removed the glove and sat in one of the seats closest to the man Eva had shot. He appeared to be dead.

  Jackson checked his pulse.

  Apparently expired. Or close to at least.

  He looked into the man’s eyes for the customary ‘lights out’ effect all corpses had on
ce the life had ebbed from them.

  He hesitated. It seemed as if the man’s eyes had moved. There seemed to be light behind them. But this would not be the case for much longer.

  Jackson sat back in the seat and watched Eva shaking and jerking on the floor.

  When she was still, he stood and reached again for the medical bag. He found a bright silver cylindrical tube and removed what looked like an epi-pen.

  He walked back to Eva and waited for Leon to finish dealing with Irene.

  When Leon was at his side, the two of them stared down at Eva who was now still, unmoving and apparently unbreathing.

  Jackson hesitated.

  He looked at Leon.

  ‘Was there ever anything between you two, Leon?’ He had been in Berlin, he had seen how ineffective Eva caused Leon to be. For the next stage that would be an interference that he could not afford.

  The same hesitation was mirrored in the man opposite.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said quietly.

  Blue eyes glared back at him. Resentful of the prying.

  ‘No.’

  Jackson pushed the pen up against Eva’s skin and drove the plunger home.

  THIRTY FIVE

  In a nondescript office in Whitehall, a solitary figure sat in front of a computer screen. It was late and there was no justifiable reason for the slight woman at the terminal to be there. She knew that, and she had been careful to avoid registering her presence late at night – she had not used her own entry pass, she had looked away from the security cameras and she had even taken the precaution of identifying an exit route which would involve a two-storey jump to the ground. She had brought sensible shoes for this part. Flat shoes. As she pushed off her left heel and pressed the sole of her foot to the cold floor she looked forward to them. It had been a long, long day and, with the pressure of this evening hanging over her, she had felt an almost constant stream of adrenaline. It had left her exhausted.

  Although, now, she was beginning to wake up.

  In front of her, a steady flow of numbers was starting to appear on the muted brightness of the screen. The last of the trades and transactions were coming through. In her mind she imagined it like a wall, one with a number of missing bricks – these trades were those missing bricks. Each completed trade or contract would fill another hole in the overall matrix, making it into an impenetrable whole. Many were private government contracts, so the only way they could be credibly monitored was from here inside the intranet, which was the reason that she had been asked to become part of this network.