by Tim Stevens
He pulled the trigger as he waded through the black water.
Six shots, in groups of two.
Two more.
The boat was becoming smaller, the darkness swallowing it up.
Purkiss drew breath.
He had two shots left.
If he used them, and succeeded, he’d be effectively unarmed.
If the man in the boat had a gun, he’d turn it on Purkiss.
But at least Purkiss would have achieved his main goal, which was to stop him from getting away.
He sighted down his arm and along the smooth length of the pistol.
Felt himself become one with the gun.
He squeezed back on the trigger.
The boat veered wildly, its nose arrowing upwards and sideways, its motor roaring as if in protest.
Then the sound cut out, and momentum carried the boat sideways and forwards a few feet before it ebbed to a standstill.
He saw the figure in the boat twist to face him.
*
The waves lapped and churned against his torso. He’d waded far enough that he was in up to his waist. Any deeper and his footing would be compromised.
Purkiss watched the man place both hands on the edge of the boat as it bobbed, adrift, on the surface of the sea.
The man swung his legs over the side, and sank into the water.
He struck out towards Purkiss, swimming strongly. Purkiss backed off a little, feeling the suck of the tide and compensating for it.
When the man was twenty feet away, he rose from the water, the level at the height of his chest.
He tipped his head back, gazing at Purkiss, his face pale in the dim glinting light from the surface.
‘So here it ends,’ he said.
It was the first time Purkiss had heard Rossiter’s voice since he’d visited him in the one-man prison, the Box, two summers ago. Then, their conversation had been almost urbane.
Distantly, far behind, the sounds of gunfire punctuated the night.
‘In the water,’ said Rossiter. ‘Just like before.’
Yes. Just like that October morning on the Baltic Sea.
Like two sparring partners sizing one another up in the ring, they began to move towards each other.
Purkiss had the advantage, he knew. He wasn’t as deep in the water as Rossiter, which afforded him more mobility, more control over his actions.
He was more than a decade younger than the other man.
And he’d been active in the field continuously, while Rossiter had been a prisoner for more than two years, permitted exercise but hardly subject to the kind of physical challenges Purkiss had faced and overcome.
But there was something about the unforced confidence in Rossiter’s face as he waded forward, the relentless determination, that set off an alarm in Purkiss’s mind.
They closed in, and it hit Purkiss at the last instant.
He’s got a knife.
The tip of the blade bit deeply into Purkiss’s right thigh, in the meat of the quadriceps muscle near the top. The pain was exquisite, surreal, almost, heightened as it was rather than numbed by the cold of the water.
The blade struck where it did only because Purkiss reflexively brought his leg inwards. If it had met its intended mark, it would have pierced the femoral artery on the inner aspect of the thigh, and Purkiss’s life would have ebbed into the water in short order.
Purkiss rammed the heel of his hand into Rossiter’s slightly lowered face.
The blow rocked Rossiter backwards, only the support of the water keeping him upright. Purkiss followed with a hammer strike to the upper arm in an attempt to numb the limb and cause the hand to open and drop the knife.
But Rossiter was fast, and he tensed and raised his arm and Purkiss’s fist glanced off the point of his elbow.
Rossiter lunged in, sliding his other arm around Purkiss’s neck and jabbing the knife upwards. Purkiss caught the wrist and applied torque.
They hung like that, partially submerged, the honed tip of the blade quivering slickly, inches from Purkiss’s face.
He twisted the wrist, but Rossiter hung on, and the blade barely moved.
The man’s cheek was pressed against Purkiss’s. He felt the rasp of stubble.
Purkiss turned his head a fraction and sank his teeth into the side of Rossiter’s lower jaw.
The weakest man, Purkiss had learned, could demonstrate an awe-inspiring amount of force with a bite. There was no freeing oneself once a human being’s teeth had sunk into the flesh. No way of avoiding injury.
A berserker’s roar erupted from Rossiter’s throat and he wrenched his head sideways and Purkiss felt the skin tear between his clamped teeth.
The knife had angled away, and was pointing directly upwards.
Blood flooded Purkiss’s mouth - his own blood, and Rossiter’s - and he felt himself about to gag. He relaxed his jaws a fraction and Rossiter pulled himself loose.
Purkiss punched his fist into the man’s exposed larynx.
With a hoarse, atavistic moan, Rossiter flailed backwards, the knife dropping from his grip and disappearing beneath the water. He clasped his hands to his throat, his eyes trying to focus on Purkiss but rolling involuntarily.
Purkiss lunged at him in a crawl stroke, grabbing his shoulder. He slipped his hands around Rossiter’s neck and thrust his thumbs under the man’s hands and found the carotid artery pulse points.
He began to apply pressure.
One of Rossiter’s hands broke free from his shattered tracheal cartilage and slapped at Purkiss’s head. Purkiss twitched away, as though shaking off an insect at a summer picnic.
He bent his thumbs and increased the pressure.
At the same time, he bore down, so that he was pushing Rossiter ever lower into the water.
He leaned over the man, looking down into his eyes. Even in the darkness, he could see the suffusion of the conjunctivae, as the whites were replaced by an expanding web of burst capillaries.
He stared at the eyes.
He saw Yulia Saburova. Purkiss had no idea how she’d come to be involved with Rossiter. But, at the last, as she lay broken and dying on the train platform, he’d understood that she wasn’t like him.
He saw Abby, his friend, whom he’d let down, bloodied and twisted after the guns had done their work.
He saw Claire. His lover. His fiancee. Corrupted and made treacherous.
The water was at the level of Rossiter’s ears. He was bent backwards so that he lay supine.
As his face sank beneath the surface, his eyes blinked, once.
Purkiss thought he saw something in the simple movement of the lids.
Not regret, or repentance, certainly. Not even defiance.
But something approaching acknowledgement.
Purkiss stared down at the pale face for a long time. The features were blurred beneath the foot of water covering it.
Briefly, he thought he’d stood like that until dawn. But he realised that the light illuminating the water around him came from the torches that were being shone down on the water.
A hand gripped his arm.
He heard voices, around and above him.
We’ve contained it. The situation’s clear. All hostiles have been neutralised.
Purkiss opened his fists, and let Rossiter go.
Twenty-nine
Purkiss was ushered through the security measures with something approaching deference.
He found Vale and Rupesh Gar waiting for him on the other side. Each man studied him in his own way: Vale with an air of slightly diffident, slightly hangdog, but completely genuine concern, Gar with the blank, appraising eyes of a pathologist examining an autopsy specimen.
There was nothing to be said, at this point.
Purkiss let them escort him up into the immense heart of the building. He didn’t stumble along the way, but he felt the weight of fatigue bear down on him like a sodden shroud.
Sir Peter Waring-Jones stood in the middle of
his office, a glass in his hand. Behind him, the view from the picture window was even more magnificent than it had been in daylight, the river and the south bank lit up like a celebration.
Gar hung back. It was Vale who kept in step with Purkiss as he approached Waring-Jones. The Director looked haggard, the lateness of the hour unnatural for a man of his age, whatever his job. Vale himself had new lines of weariness etched in his face. They were old men, and Purkiss felt old, too.
He’d changed into clean and dry clothes on the journey back. It was a civilian aircraft that had picked them up, Purkiss and the three paratroopers. The fourth man had taken a direct hit from the Eurocopter’s machine gun and had been killed instantly, and he was being returned by separate transport. Purkiss had learned that the two crewmen in the helicopter had been shot dead, as had the four remaining members of Rossiter’s staff inside the shelter carved into the base of the hillock.
Waring-Jones stood before Purkiss, watching him in silence. The ice in his glass ticked as it liquefied, degree by tiny degree.
He said, quietly, ‘Mr Purkiss. Words cannot express the debt this country owes you.’
Purkiss returned his gaze.
He said: ‘Then this country needs to take a long, hard look at whom it chooses as its creditors.’
Waring-Jones’s nostrils flared in puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I made an elementary mistake,’ said Purkiss. ‘When Vodovos told me that Mossberg shook Rossiter’s hand, when he revealed that Mossberg had been expecting to be rescued, and was in on the operation all the time... Vodovos believed his own government was behind the entire thing. And I wouldn’t put it past the Russians, frankly.’
Purkiss turned and walked slowly over to the window.
With his back to the rest of them, he said: ‘I didn’t know if his theory was right or wrong. But I didn’t consider that he might be correct in the general details, but wrong about the particulars.’
He turned back from the window.
‘No. Bad choice of words. I did consider it. I just didn’t want to believe it. And that’s unprofessional. Shamefully so.’
Waring-Jones played with his glass, his long fingers rotating the rim of the crystal. His brow was creased in interest.
‘With hindsight, it’s obvious,’ said Purkiss. ‘But we’re not supposed to deal in hindsight. We’re supposed to be the ones who anticipate. Who spot the clues as they’re presented to us.’
He took a couple of steps towards Waring-Jones.
‘The Prime Minister authorised the release of Richard Rossiter. A man who not only posed a greater threat to the security of this country than almost any other individual in living memory, but was also a high-level SIS asset. The Prime Minister sanctioned the handing over of Rossiter to the Russian state. The very idea beggars belief.’
Out of he corner of his eye, Purkiss saw Vale clasp his hands, press his knuckles against his lips. He recognised the gesture. It was a sign that understanding was dawning.
‘The only person - the only person - who could persuade the PM that exchanging Rossiter for an obscure dissident scientist was justifiable, had to be the most senior intelligence advisor in the country. In other words, the Director General of SIS.’
Waring-Jones had stopped turning his glass.
‘And I should have seen it earlier,’ said Purkiss. ‘But I didn’t. Because you’re the sincere one. Gar -’ Purkiss glanced across - ‘is the cold fish. I suspected him, at first. But it’s you, Waring-Jones. You procured Rossiter’s release. You colluded in his escape. You set things up so that your own agent, Mossberg, would be freed at the same time. And your goal was the same as Rossiter’s. To portray Moscow as responsible for a terrorist atrocity against Britain, so that our two countries could finally return to a state of undeclared war, after a quarter of a century of ramshackle co-operation.’
It was probably exhaustion that was making Purkiss reckless, he thought. He took a few further steps so that he was close to Waring-Jones, just within the boundary of his personal space.
‘Except there’s a difference between you and Rossiter. He did what he did out of genuine conviction. He was insane, grandiose, misguided in the extreme. But he believed he was working for a better world. You, on the other hand, are motivated by a desire for power. Under your directorship, the new Service would have an authority it’s never had since its inception. The Prime Minister, Parliament, would bow to your every dictate. And that makes you worse than Rossiter.’
Four seconds of silence passed.
Waring-Jones put his glass down on the coffee table.
He turned to Gar.
‘Rupesh, this man is exhausted. It’s understandable, given all he’s been through. All he’s achieved. Please see to it that he receives whatever he needs.’
He clapped his hands together. Purkiss saw him nod at Vale, then tilt his head. The gesture was clear: we need to talk about Purkiss.
Gar stepped forward.
‘Sir Peter.’
‘Yes.’
In a monotone, Gar said: ‘Under the authority granted to me by Her Majesty’s government, and under my oath committing me to the defence of the realm, I hereby advise that you are to be placed under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit treason.’
Purkiss looked at Vale.
The older man bowed his head, as though weighted down by sadness.
Thirty
They’d walked for a long time, Purkiss keeping track by ticking off the bridges across the river to their left. The night’s temperature was at its nadir, but already there was the first blush of the coming dawn, if not in the dark sky then in the lack of bite in the air.
They did this after every operation. Usually, it was a few days later. Sometimes it was as long as a month. This time, it had to be immediate.
It was the slow winding down, the recalibration of their psyches following the heightened and grossly abnormal states of mind they’d been forced to endure during the course of the preceding events.
As popular parlance would have it, it was their attempt at closure.
Purkiss noticed that he had to slow his pace periodically. Vale was tall himself, and bony, but every now and again he faltered, just a little, and it seemed malicious to force him to keep up.
He was ageing, there was no doubt about it.
They were drawing near to the elegant expanse of the Albert Bridge when Vale broke their silence.
‘We’ll do well out of Gar.’
‘He owes us,’ said Purkiss. ‘He’s guaranteed the Director’s job.’
‘I’m serious, John.’ As though he’d forgotten about them for the last twenty minutes, Vale fumbled his cigarettes from his pocket. ‘My funds were beginning to dry up. Austerity measures were threatening us. But Gar will make good on that. As you said, he’s a cold fish. But he’s a pragmatist. He has an eye for value, and you’ve proven your worth.’
As if on a silently agreed whim, they turned onto the bridge and began to cross the Thames.
‘Two requests,’ said Purkiss.
‘Name them.’
‘Tony Kendrick gets forgotten about. He never shot those men on the dock. It was Special Branch.’
On his way back down from the Shetland Isles, Purkiss had learned that Kendrick was being held at the SIS division in Liverpool. He’d been an uncooperative witness, and had at one point threatened to assault the agents who were questioning him.
‘Yes,’ said Vale. ‘No problem.’
‘And Asher.’ Purkiss watched Vale flip the glowing stub of his cigarette over the railing. ‘He’s solid. A valuable asset. I’d like him to get some credit for all of this.’
‘That might be more difficult,’ said Vale. ‘We handled this on our own, without the Company getting a look in. They won’t be happy about that. They won’t be pleased with Asher.’
‘Then I’ll go to Langley myself and give him a testimonial.’
Vale paused to light up again. He shook the flame of
f the match and dropped it into the river.
‘No need for that. I’ll see what I can do.’
They stood at the midpoint of the great Victorian bridge and looked east, towards the heart of the city.
‘John,’ said Vale.
Purkiss waited.
‘Back there, with Waring-Jones. You were excoriating yourself about how supposedly naive you’d been.’
‘Yes. I was.’
Vale took a long drag on his cigarette.
He said, ‘Naivete isn’t the worst quality a human being can possess.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Purkiss. ‘In our line of work.’
Vale smoked in silence.
Purkiss said: ‘I suppose you’re going to say that cynicism is our deadliest enemy.’
Without looking at him, Vale shook his head.
‘No. It’s sentimentality.’
Purkiss watched the river. He had the sense that Vale was leading up to something.
At last Vale pitched the stub into the water with a flick of his finger and thumb. It dropped, the embers glowing like fireflies.
He said, ‘I have a task for you. Perhaps the hardest I’ve ever asked you to undertake.’
Purkiss looked straight down, gazing at the sweep of the water as it passed beneath them.
He said, ‘Bring it on.’
John Purkiss returns in HERETIC.
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