The Girl in the Mirror

by Philip J. Gould

  She half-expected to see the man who’d caused this devastation to be creeping up on them. It was just a matter of time, or slender moments, she thought. He was most definitely out there somewhere, casing out the situation, biding his time, preparing his next move. She knew none of this had been an accident. They’d found her somehow. She was in immediate danger; her and her son. She had to get out of the car and get to safety. The car could explode, she knew this. There had been countless fatalities where cars had burst into fireballs after a collision or RTA. The smell of petrol was strong in the air − all it needed was a single spark to set things off and they’d be identifying her and Charlie via their dental records.

  Still holding Charlie, Harriet edged backwards to the front of the car; she twisted round and shuffled onto her back. Now with her feet facing the windscreen she aimed a powerful kick at the shattered glass, kicking it again, larruping it repeatedly, smashing it free from the buckled frame. She clambered round and with Charlie she climbed out of the car, reaching, as an afterthought, for her handbag that lay amongst other personal debris that littered the upturned roof of the car.

  The strong stench of petrol was thicker as she crawled out from beneath the vehicle, adding to the urgency, through the brambles and the nettles, barbs piercing and slicing and bloodying her bare arms and face. She was aware of the pain lancing through every inch of her body but did not feel it − adrenaline anaesthetising and subduing the pain receptors in her brain − but only momentarily, just enough to see her out of immediate danger.

  Once clear of the wreckage, Harriet made to stand, and screamed, dropping Charlie as she collapsed in a heap. Her left leg beneath the knee was swollen to twice its size. Probing it she felt the contusion and winced from the slightest touch. A second touch elicited a curse.

  It just gets better and better! She screamed in her head. She dared a look over her shoulder, going past the ruined Prius, scouring the area for her pursuer. She could hear the telltale sounds of a car accident; the continuous trumpet of a horn filled the otherwise serene summer’s afternoon.

  Where was he?

  Then she spotted the smoke and could just make out the rear of the Mercedes, the tree that had halted its progress having shed a sizeable branch atop its roof, crushing it beneath.

  She needed to know what had happened to her pursuer. Against all reasoning she picked her four-year-old up and then limped across the road a short distance, to a small clearing that provided relative safety from the threat of either the wreckage of the Prius or her pursuer’s car exploding.

  “Charlie, I just need to check something. Wait here for a moment. Don’t you move!” Harriet inched away, her left leg screaming bloody agony with each and every footfall.

  “Mummy, don’t go!” Charlie cried behind her. “Don’t goooooo...!”

  “Shush, be quiet,” she hissed. “I’ll be back in a minute,” less chiding, the pain in her voice notably worse.

  “Promise?”

  Harriet tried to smile. To Charlie it looked more like a grimace.

  Approaching the car, Harriet stooped and armed herself with a club sized branch. She tested the weight of its swing and then carried on shuffling forward, momentum helping her to ignore the pain.

  The front of the Mercedes was concertinaed from the impact against the large oak that stood in its way, the windscreen, like the Prius’, was shattered, a small branch having punctured through the screen at driver’s eye level, surprisingly missing its coincidental target. Music boomed from the speakers, discordant in its accompaniment to the horn that blared continuously. Born to be Wild, by Steppenwolf.

  Yeah, darlin’ Gonna make it happen... Take the world in a love embrace... Fire all of your guns at once... And explode into space...

  Harriet remembered the song from her teenage years. Even then it was an old song having been penned in 1967 − it was around 1990 she’d regularly heard it on the jukebox at her local pub, The Swan − she was seventeen at the time. She would meet her eventual husband George there listening to that song. Some regarded it as the song that gave birth to heavy metal. She tried to ignore it and peered through the passenger side window.

  Through the cracked glass she could see that the driver’s seat was empty. Peering closer, she could see from across the vehicle that the driver’s side door was open. Hobbling around the back of the car, stooping below the branches that overlapped the car’s roof, and continuing around further, she stopped only when she saw the prone form of the man who’d caused the mangled, smoking mess that had cost Dominic the better part of two years’ wages.

  He was lying still. Was he dead?

  He’d shuffled about thirty-feet away from the wreckage, his virgin white shirt was a little stained with the maroon liquid that continued to leak from a wound to the side of his face.

  At her feet, Harriet found Dominic’s handgun. She picked it up, felt its dangerous weight, thumbed the safety and pointed the semi-automatic weapon towards the decumbent man, barely registering thought.

  Hearing the gun, Dominic lifted his head up and stretched a look over his right shoulder. On seeing Harriet he relaxed and dropped his head to the dusty ground.

  “You,” he half-croaked almost in a whisper, ending in a cough. He started to laugh at how absurd the woman looked. Her appearance was dishevelled, her face was coated in blood from a small cut above her eye and one of her legs looked either badly bruised, or maybe broken, so swollen it looked like she had substituted it for a balloon. The way she held his gun, she could have been the heroine from a 1980s action movie, Cynthia Rothrock in China O’Brien.

  Harriet levelled the gun so that it was aimed at Dominic’s head. She felt sick to her stomach and her heart thumped so hard that she half-expected it to wear itself out and explode beneath her chest.

  “You’ll never get her!” Harriet spat. The gun in her hand was now shaking − more from her body’s reaction to shock than justifiable nerves.

  Dominic chuckled. “How do you know it wasn’t you we wanted?” he rasped. “Poor deluded Harriet. Do you think it will really ever be over?” He smiled sinisterly, “Killing me won’t change a thing.” It was a knowing smile that almost bordered a lunatic’s grin.

  “You’re probably right.” Harriet sneered as she aimed the weapon and squeezed the trigger of the Beretta –

  Click!

  Dominic laughed harder which turned into a fit of coughs.

  Click! Click!

  Harriet squeezed the trigger desperately but nothing happened. No explosive discharge. No bullets punching holes into the man who’d pursued her and her family relentlessly for so long. She pressed it again. Over and over.

  Click! Click! Click! Click!

  “Oh dear…” tut tut, “no bullets.” He was shaking his head as he stood up, composing himself. He opened his left hand that contained a dozen shells and allowed them to fall harmlessly, as though it were a fistful of sand. They jingled and chimed against the ground, ending their descent in a puddle of boxer-primed brass shimmering in the sun. “I can assure you, Harriet, that this one isn’t empty.” Hidden from view, Dominic pulled a gun − his spare − from behind his back, raising and pointing it ominously at the injured woman.

  Harriet reluctantly dropped the Beretta and raised her hands up in surrender.

  “Okay, what now?”

  “We wait for the cavalry to arrive,” he said.

  Born to be wild had made way for This is the end, by The Doors.

  How prophetic, Harriet thought.

  Chapter Eight

  Ryan

  Like the VCR, tape decks and 7UP shandy, phone boxes were now a thing of the past, or fast in decline. Finding one that wasn’t conspicuous was like searching for a book in the local library that didn’t contain the word ‘the’. A victim of the mobile phone age, phone boxes were all b
ut extinct, located now in a few isolated spots around shopping districts or in busy shopping centres, or placed in tourist hotspots for their ‘intrinsic’ value, but, sadly no longer on every other street corner.

  Only one could be found that suited Ryan’s needs and he’d had to travel for over an hour outside of London to find it. Nestled at the end of a road in a discrete, dozy village he’d stumbled upon the phone box by chance, as far removed from the noise and bustle of the city that he could ever have imagined.

  Reaching into his pocket, Ryan removed a small scrap of paper. It had been folded in half, and upon opening he noticed the deep crease of the fold obscured one of the numbers written therein.

  He felt nervous, his palms sweaty. He looked about him before entering the phone box, only setting forward once satisfied he hadn’t been followed. Closing the door of the phone box behind him, he picked up the handset and carefully studied the scrap of paper clutched in his hand.

  Punching in the telephone number, guessing that the obscured digit was a ‘two’, he waited for the ringtone before inserting a pound’s worth of change. Judging the obscured number correctly, the line’s expectant pre-dial-up tone was replaced by the keener ringtone as the call was connected.

  The ringing sounded for longer than Ryan would have thought possible. He was used to hearing recorded messages before now, offering the excuse that the receiver wasn’t available; please leave a message. Instead the ringing tone stopped with a click, abruptly followed by unearthly silence.

  Using a folded handkerchief, Ryan spoke in a disguised voice.

  “George?” slightly muffled. He pressed the receiver tight against his ear. He could hear the slight exhale of breath. “George?” he repeated. “I know you can hear me. Listen, I know about your son’s accident.”

  “Sorry… I can’t hear you.”

  “George?”

  “You’re terribly muffled...”

  Ryan removed the handkerchief and spoke into the handset undisguised.

  “George Jennings? Is this better?”

  George sighed, ignoring the question. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Just a friend, but that’s not important. There is no time. You need to get your wife and child out of that hospital as soon as you can,” he paused, hoping George was listening. “They are in danger. An extraction team is on its way to them as we speak. You have to hurry, they don’t have much time.”

  “How-”

  “It’s not important,” he repeated. “Just keep them safe. Your home has not been compromised yet. Lie low. We’ll meet when the time is right.”

  Ryan pressed the cut off button, ending the call. I hope I’m not too late, he thought.

  Ryan Barber stepped out of the phone box and hurried back to his car. Despite being in a quiet, sleepy village where no one was in view, the roads being empty; the silence was deafening. He couldn’t help feeling exposed; couldn’t help feeling countless eyes spying his every step and every muscle movement. Maybe it was the guilt. After all, had he not just given warning to Britain’s most wanted man?

  But wasn’t it for the greater good?

  It wasn’t guilt, he decided, it was the shame he felt at having to betray his employer. He had worked for the corporation since leaving school − which on latest count would make it twenty-one years now − and since the beginning of his career he’d had nothing but admiration and respect for his boss – and for the work undertaken by the business. However, the killing of innocent men and women, and now the hunting down of children, was not something he had ever signed up for, no matter how just the cause may appear to be.

  Besides, he was motivated by something else closely linked. Irrevocably, it had become personal.

  He closed his eyes to the emotions which threatened to engulf him. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on past losses or succumb to grief.

  He knew he was taking great risk in doing what he’d just done, hence the precautions. Before now he had only helped from a safe distance, never speaking to his quarry, always keeping well back, his identity retained, his involvement barely noticed. What he’d now done exposed him to almost as much danger as that which George and his family experienced on a daily basis. His employers wouldn’t understand his rationale; they wouldn’t care for his reasons. Duplicity and betrayal would be all they understood.

  What to do, he thought. He couldn’t run or just leave the organisation; that would arouse suspicion. He had no alternative but to return to his post at Kaplan Ratcliff Biochemical and Life Sciences, despite the air of foreboding that surrounded the idea. Besides, from the inside, he was George and his family’s best chance of survival, and his only advantage of acquiring retribution.

  From his position as the firm’s Assistant Intelligence Officer, it was his job to know what was going on. Until two years ago, his role and single objective was only interested in what his competitors were doing. Since then, he had been enlisted into a whole different programme, a programme that had spiralled out of control, involving designs that he did not agree or wish to be a part of; it was also one that was maligned by his own personal ambitions. He knew what Samuel had planned for the girl and what he meant to do with the loose ends that stood in his way.

  Ryan couldn’t in good conscience allow the fate that was reserved for Sophie. And the punishment to be meted out to George? Honestly? That would NEVER compensate Ryan for everything that he’d lost.

  An hour’s drive found Ryan back in the command centre, which was just a fancy name for a large office where intelligence operations were controlled and in which he and a number of other agents carried out their mundane jobs and sundry tasks. It was also where Samuel Jackson could be found, mostly sitting in his office on the mezzanine floor, drinking vending machine coffee and eating macaroons; he, who could be seen through the glass wall of his office that overlooked the command centre, locked away within his ivory tower, a false sense of power. In truth he was just another puppet being guided by Tom Kaplan and his cohorts.

  The command centre had a high ceiling, and was illuminated mainly by the large video screen that took up most of the wall at the front of the office, as well as the many swing arm desk lamps that were bolted to the desks, a variety of different colours making the desks less clinical. There was no natural light as the room was deep within the building and devoid of external walls or windows. Analysts and intelligence operators dressed in sharp suits and razor-thin ties sat at desks, computers flashing up data and video images ahead of them, some on telephones, whilst others were on laptops or smart phones. Most were in various stages of consuming lunch or drinking coffee; half-eaten sandwiches, bagels, jacket potatoes and cheese toasties lay amidst the clutter of papers and the disarray of operators’ desks. To the uninitiated observer the place could easily have belonged to the financial services industry or a busy stock brokerage trading in shares and securities. The command centre was abuzz with activity and noise levels were at a crescendo.

  Despite the hubbub the acoustics of the room allowed Samuel’s voice to carry, booming like thunder and momentarily subduing the hysteria bubbling around.

  “Ryan Barber. My office,” barked Samuel. The way he spoke lacked decorum, almost akin to a parent berating an unruly child. He was standing a short way from the metal staircase that led to the mezzanine floor, to the conference room and more specifically to the office of the Security and Intelligence Director.

  Samuel Jackson was the tallest man Ryan had ever seen, stocky and built like an American footballer or a wrestler off WWE. Like the actor of the same name (minus the ‘L’), he was also black; unlike the actor, he didn’t have an inimitable, tough, ruthless voice or punctuate every sentence with a swear word. Nonetheless he was someone you didn’t torment or dally with.

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan muttered to himself sarcastically, moving slowly and heavily towards the Director
’s office, full of nervous apprehension. Suddenly he became aware of how dry his mouth felt as he climbed the stairs to the mezzanine floor.

  Ryan entered the office and closed the glass door behind him.

  “Ryan, take a seat.” The Security and Intelligence Director was sitting behind a large mahogany desk. A laptop was open in front of him, its screen facing him. Behind his back was a large LCD television affixed to the wall. A screensaver displayed the Kaplan Ratcliff company insignia and logo, flickering across the visual display unit on a continuous loop.

  Despite the heat of the office, he wore a black suit that radiated authority, white shirt and an electric-blue tie pulled taut to his neck. The air-conditioning was turned off. Almost, Ryan considered, to make any visitors sweat no matter what their disposition was. One was ALWAYS uncomfortable when in the presence of the Security and Intelligence Director.

  “Do you mind if I grab a glass of water?” Ryan asked before taking a seat. Not waiting for a reply he made for the pewter-coloured Primo water machine and poured himself a glass. Taking a deep mouthful of water he immediately felt refreshed by the ice-cold H2O. He refilled the glass.

  “Better?” Samuel asked as Ryan took the seat in front of him.

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  “Good. Listen Ryan, there’s been a development. Police are reporting a roadside accident near Seacrest. Quite nasty apparently. We’ve got a make on the vehicles involved,” he paused for effect. “One’s Dominic’s car. Christ knows what happened, or what he is doing, but he’s gone off the grid. The other car belongs to Harriet Jennings. A red Toyota Prius.”

  “Jeez, what happened?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. You’re probably aware, Dominic’s team were acting on a tipoff that Harriet and her youngest son were at the hospital. It’s the closest we’ve been in a long time. It should have been a simple extraction. A snatch and grab. I guess things don’t always go to plan… especially when it comes to the Jennings.”