by Jordan Burke
We ended up in the laundry room, where Watts unfolded a long-sleeve t-shirt and a pair of cotton pajama bottoms with a drawstring. He lifted my shirt, removed my bra, and then my pants. I stood naked before him as he toweled me dry, then slipped the shirt over my head, and held the bottoms for me to step into. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder. The bottoms were too long, and Watts knelt before me and rolled them up.
“Socks?” he asked, standing.
“No, thanks. I’m okay.”
He led me back to the den, asking me if I was warm enough.
“I’m fine,” I said, taking a seat on the couch. The anticipation of what was about to happen next was getting to me. It seemed almost as if he was delaying it on purpose. “You’re scaring me.”
Watts sat beside me. “I’m going to tell you something that may make you regret ever having exchanged a single word with me. All I need from you is to hear me out until I’m finished. Then you can ask me anything you want, and I’ll tell you. But I have to warn you.”
He stopped talking, letting that ominous statement hang in the air between us.
Finally, he said, “After I tell you this, you’re going to have to make a choice, and it’s not going to be an easy one. I’m not the man you think I am. I’ve done some horrific shit in my life, Catherine. And it continues to this day. You’ll have to judge for yourself in a few minutes, but there’s a chance you’re going to think of me as a bad guy.”
I don’t know if it was intentional or not, like he was easing into it, giving me a hint, but as he spoke I noticed more and more that he had started speaking with a slight English accent.
Chapter Ten – Watts
Hearing Catherine’s life story as she stood there soaking wet and shaking in the bookstore was like having a knife slice open all of my own old wounds. I immediately connected with her. She had grown up without ever knowing family. When I took her in my arms, I thought of how fragile she was—not on the outside, but on the inside—and how she had the courage to tell me, along with the need to tell me.
She had no idea that I knew all too well the pain of having no family. There was no way I could have let her twist in the wind alone. I had to tell her my story, and as we sat there on the couch, this is what I told her….
. . . . .
I had just turned nineteen years old, and was starting my second full year in the British Army. I was supposed to travel with my parents and my younger sister, who was fourteen at the time, to Moscow for two weeks. A sudden change in my schedule prevented me from going.
My parents had always been avid travelers, and were intent upon passing that down to us. We’d been to most of Europe and some parts of Asia, but never Russia. This trip was to be a first for us, and I regretted missing out.
The only good thing was that part of my leave overlapped with the trip, so while I couldn’t go with my family, I still had some time off to go home and party with my friends.
Home was Farnham, about an hour and a half by car and forty-five minutes by train southwest of London. It’s where I grew up, and where all my friends lived. It was a place I’d always called “home,” but not after what happened in Moscow.
I had spent the first three nights of leave going to pubs nearby and clubs in London with friends. Being in the Army came with incredible demands. Any chance to drink, and dance, and hook up with girls was a chance I wasn’t going to pass up.
But the fourth night was quieter. Recuperation time and all that. I had the place to myself, of course, and I cooked up a quick dinner and sat down in front of the television.
That’s when I saw the early reports on the BBC about the explosions. Two bombs had ripped through two trains at two different locations along the Moscow Metro line. The ghastly scene unfolded before viewers in the form of short video clips taken by people as rescue workers arrived. You couldn’t tell much from the video, just that there was a lot of chaos.
My initial reaction was two-fold: fear that my family had been nearby, and the all too human inclination to believe that nothing like that happens to you or your loved ones.
The first turned out to be true.
The second was a completely cruel, self-deluding coping mechanism.
I got the call from my grandfather the next afternoon. My mother’s parents had been listed as next-of-kin on their travel documents.
Authorities had identified my father, mother, and sister as being among the 112 who were killed in the explosions. Their remains were flown to London a week later, after having been held as evidence in the investigation.
My grandparents and I met them at Heathrow, and drove the slow journey back to Farnham, where they were buried the next day. Many people from the town—most of whom I’d never met or even seen before—showed up to pay their respects.
I never knew anyone on my father’s side of the family. My mother had been an only child, and now my grandparents were the only family I had.
I got an extension on my leave, ignored my friends’ urging to join them for various events to try to get my life back to some level of normalcy, and went into seclusion. There was no way. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t properly mourned the loss of my family, so there was no way I could enjoy doing anything social.
There was no way I could go back to the Army, either. At least not right away. And when I went in to speak to the Army counselors, they recommended that I be discharged. I was deemed too angry to be in the National Service, and they felt like I would be more of a liability than an asset.
I agreed.
They set me up with a shrink. I never went.
I stayed in the house, went for long walks at night, saw my grandparents a few times every week at first. I only went out in public on weekday mornings, when I was sure places would be less crowded and therefore I’d be less likely to run into my friends.
People knew who I was, though, and I’d get sad frowns and head nods, tentative verbal greetings and well-wishes, all of which I would return and keep moving. Except for one man, a chap who owned a bookstore and had become good acquaintances with my father, who was always buying books. He offered me a part-time job. I took it.
On a Tuesday morning almost three months after the bombings, I was walking out of Starbucks with my coffee when a man in a gray wool trench coat approached me.
“Bookstore guy, right?” he asked, pointing at me.
I didn’t recognize him, but obviously he had been in the store. He looked to be around forty. He had a full head of dark hair, slicked back. His nose was red from the damp cold. I noticed he wore a lapel pin—red with the letters “E” and “R” on it, along with some other insignia. It was a pin indicating that he had once served in the British Royal Military Police.
I simply nodded.
“Are you headed to work now?” he asked me.
I sipped my coffee, not really wanted to talk with him, but I had no reason to be pissy with the guy. “Sure am.”
“Well, perhaps you have a couple of minutes to spare?”
I did, but having them to spare and wanting to use them up by chatting on the sidewalk were two different things.
“Two minutes. Literally.” His face had changed from friendly to serious. “Walk with me.”
Talking with a stranger on the street wasn’t something I’d normally do, but I went with him anyway.
We only walked a few steps before he sat down on a bench and said, “Have a seat.”
I sat.
He didn’t look at me. He looked straight ahead, and so did I. We both watched our reflections in the dark glass of a storefront.
“I know some things,” he began. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve lost. I know what’s happened to your life since it all happened.”
He stopped as a group of people walked by us on the sidewalk.
Before he could begin again, I turned my head to him and said, “Who are you?”
“Not important yet, but we’ll see if we get to that point.” He was still looking straig
ht ahead. He crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands in his lap. “For now, this is what you need to know. You think you’ve lost everything, Daniel. But one thing remains.”
I sipped my coffee. Mostly out of nervousness. I’d pretty much lost interest in it by then. “What’s that?”
“It’s just one thing,” he repeated. “But it’s one of the few things that have made the world go around since the dawn of man.” His head turned slowly in my direction until out eyes met. “The desire for justice.”
“You mean revenge,” I said quickly.
He shook his head, then looked back at the glass storefront. “No.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Motive. Justification. An unwillingness of governments to hand out justice. There’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling, Daniel.” He stood. “Give it some thought. I think my two minutes are up, but I’ll be back tomorrow, same time. Meet me here.”
A black sedan pulled up to the curb. He got in the passenger’s side and was gone before I could react.
What the fuck had just happened here?
The next afternoon, I found myself skipping work and being driven to a farm an hour’s drive north. I had spent the entire previous day running that odd conversation through my head. I’d stayed up all night thinking about it. And on the way to work that morning, I’d decided to sit on the bench and wait for the guy.
Horses and sheep roamed the rolling hills of the farm. A cluster of trees grew next to a large pond. There were stables, and larger buildings that looked like warehouses. What stood out the most, though, was the house on the property.
Huge. Lavish. Bordering on being worthy of being called a castle.
The guy pulled up to the front door and told me to go inside.
I spent two hours talking to a man named Richard Atherton, who sat in a large plush chair with a walker in front of him. He could have passed for Winston Churchill’s twin brother.
He was in his late seventies, an oil and gas tycoon, tech investor, and also a dabbler in financing mercenaries.
And that’s why he had summoned me to his home.
“The Chechens killed my son,” he said. “My only son.”
He was referring to terrorists who came from Chechnya. They were the main suspects after the bombings that killed my parents and sister. Additional groups from other countries in the area—the Caucasus region—were high on the list, but everyone suspected the Chechens because of their history of carrying out attacks against Russian targets in their campaign for separatism.
Mr. Atherton lost his son in another Moscow Metro bombing, four months before the attack that killed my family.
He sat across from me, his voice measured and low. An odd calming effect considering what we were discussing.
I remained silent, barely able to process what I was hearing.
“They never showed the security footage,” Mr. Atherton said. “Bloody Russians and their goddamned secrecy. I firmly believe that if they had showed that video, perhaps our government and others would have taken action. Sixteen Americans also died that day. And yet, they didn’t do anything about it, either.”
I too had become infuriated that no response was launched against the terrorist groups who carried out the bombing. No, it didn’t happen on British soil or American soil, but this was clearly a threat. British and Americans were already victims. What were they waiting for? I often wondered.
“Do you ever think about that, Mr. Watts? Why we never saw the security footage?”
“All the time.”
A man dressed in all white came in with a tray that held a teapot and two cups. Atherton offered me tea, and I accepted it.
“The Chechens,” he said, “are mortal enemies of the Russians. Yet the Russians, even with so many of their own killed by these animals, are for some reason still hiding the true nature of those grotesque attacks. The Russians will kill Chechens when they get a chance, but they won’t let the rest of the world see how bad the Chechens are. It makes no sense. Not a bit of sense at all.”
He looked bewildered. I knew how he felt.
“Unless,” he went on, “you factor in this: they can’t hide the attacks entirely, but they can to some degree manage the public relations angle of their response on the world stage. And since they’ve done a pathetically poor job of hunting down these monsters and bringing them to justice, they won’t let the rest of us see just how horrifying it was.”
For the next several minutes he explained that he had powerful connections within the British government, specifically the intelligence network. He could buy any information he wanted. And he did.
He picked up a remote control and before I could blink, I was watching security footage from the Moscow train station. Atherton’s connections had obtained a copy and given it to him.
“Watch now,” he said, as we sat there viewing what looked to be a normal morning in any train station anywhere in the world.
Until the explosion.
It was the first time I had seen it. It occurred to me that I was among very few people in the world who had seen the tape.
Mr. Atherton played it, ran it back, played it, ran it back again. We watched the explosion over and over for three solid minutes. That may not sound like much, but when you’re talking about an explosion that lasts ten seconds, and you know your family was right there, it’s a long damn time.
He kept playing that sequence: The blast. People ducking in response. People dropping what they were carrying and running away from what remained of the train car. Some with limbs missing. Some falling to the ground, succumbing to their wounds.
He finally stopped running it back, though he did freeze it on the frame where the very first blast of fire was visible.
“Justice, Mr. Watts. I want justice. You want justice.” His words were like a voice-over in a movie, as I kept my eyes trained on the TV screen. “I’d do it myself if it weren’t for this bloody walker.”
I didn’t think about it. Didn’t even want to know the pros and cons. I wasn’t even exactly sure what he was proposing. It didn’t matter.
I turned my eyes to him. “I’m in.”
For the next four months, I stayed at Mr. Atherton’s farm every day and met and trained with a group of nine other guys.
They were all my age or just a few years older. Each had family members killed in the bombings. Each had either military or police experience. Each had signed on with Atherton to join the group of ten that would go to Chechnya and kill the leaders of the cell that had launched the Moscow Metro bombings.
Atherton hired three retired officers who had served in the counter-terrorism units of the British Army’s Special Forces. They trained us physically and mentally for the job. They analyzed intelligence data—which Mr. Atherton bought from a connection inside the British government—and had a replica of the terrorist compound constructed inside one of his warehouses.
They never told us when we would be launching the mission. Every day I woke up wondering if this was the day. Four months into training, that day finally came.
I still don’t know who flew the planes and helicopters. I don’t know where we took off from or where we landed.
All I knew was that we were on the ground in Chechnya for less than twenty minutes.
By the time we were wheels-up and heading back to England, twenty-two of the most sought after Chechen terrorists were dead.
I had shot and killed six of them.
By the time we had landed and were on our way from the airport to Atherton’s farm, I had stopped thinking about what I had just been a part of. My thoughts were turning to: what next? Do I go back to working retail somewhere? Maybe go to school? What in the hell does one do after something like this?
I didn’t have to worry about that until the next morning, though.
Atherton had arranged a celebration for us. There was no big party. No bands. No music. No speeches. No crowds cheering.
We each had ou
r own rooms in his mansion for the night. The refrigerator was stocked with alcohol. Fruit, cheese, and meat trays were arranged on the counter. And waiting on the bed, a naked, smiling woman.
She spoke only four words of English that night: “Welcome home, Daniel,” and “yes.” I gathered from her accent that she was German. I figured she was a model, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t think to ask that night, and I never got the chance, either. I never saw her again.
The next morning, when I met with Atherton, he had a new proposal. He wasn’t done hunting down Chechen terrorists and any and all extremists from the Caucasus region.
He told me he recognized no international borders. Wherever they were, he would find them and kill them. Or, more accurately, he would pay people like me to do it.
We would be a law unto ourselves, ensuring that no other attacks occurred, and seeking justice.
Or revenge, depending upon how you looked at it.
There was definitely a difference, but I didn’t care.
He gave me an hour to think it over. I sat alone in his great room while he went off to do whatever it was he normally did. Atherton had left the TV screen frozen on the image of that train exploding.
I focused on it, but my vision blurred at times as my mind drifted, showing me images it had stored—happy images of my parents and my little sister.
When Atherton came back in the room, I shook his hand, and accepted the deal.
Chapter Eleven – Catherine
I was sitting sideways on the couch, legs crossed, my knees touching his thigh. Watts sat facing forward. As he told me his story, he would occasionally turn his head to make eye contact with me. But most of the time I watched him in profile.
I listened with rapt attention as Watts told me everything. Parts of it made me want to cry. Others made me want to cringe. Some of it made me want to scream that he couldn’t be telling me the truth, and run out of there.
But I did none of those things. I granted him his wish—that I hear him out—and by the time he got to the end, I felt what can only be described as an interminable bond with him.
