Final Offer

by Eva Hudson

  She made the gears grind a fourth time, then applied the brakes. They were right outside the pub. The Range Rover pulled up behind them.

  “I don’t know what is happening,” she lied. She leaned forward and felt for the catch that released the hood. She was playing the part of a compliant hostage. The hood popped. “Perhaps we can fix it?”

  She unclicked her safety belt. The man from the Range Rover was framed by her wing mirror: he was holding the shotgun. She looked over at the pub. Two smokers stumbled out, their faces ghostly white in the glow of their phones. She wound down the window.

  “Can you help me?” She needed to speak up. She tried again. “My car has broken down.”

  The smokers—white males, thirties—lifted their heads.

  Ingrid did not step out. She was safer in the car. Viktor was sitting on his weapon and the Subaru offered some cover from the shotgun behind.

  “I can give it a go.” The smoker checked the road for traffic before crossing over to them.

  She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  He bent forward and looked inside the car. “Hi,” he said to Viktor. “What’s the problem?”

  “The clutch, I think,” Ingrid said, smiling nervously. “I’ve popped the hood.”

  He flicked his cigarette into the hedgerow and lifted the hood. “I didn’t think Americans really said that.”

  The other smoker sauntered over. “Vince is useless. He’s just showing off.” He too leaned into the car, his jack-o-lantern smile constricting when he saw the damsel in distress was not alone.

  Behind, a car door slammed, the Range Rover revved up and sped off into the night down the road and out of the village. Her passenger had not moved. Her hand jittered as she pushed the door open. Taken by surprise, Viktor did not know what to do. Ingrid got out quickly and joined the smokers in front of the car. Aware Viktor could not see her through the open hood, she ran.

  “Hey!”

  She kept running, beyond the pub, down into the dark lane, away from the village and away from Viktor. She powered on down the pitted tarmac road. Her breath smoldered in front of her. Her lungs burned. She was getting away from the man with the semiautomatic, but somewhere up ahead was another man with a shotgun.

  60

  The rain fell harder but Ingrid kept running. She’d driven down the road on the journey from London and knew it was miles before the next turning.

  Over the sound of her labored breaths she heard a vehicle, its tires droning on the wet road. Its headlight beams came into view up ahead before it rounded a bend. It was a big car but too far away to tell if it was the Range Rover. Her breaths shortened: if it was, he would run her over. Her eyes darted left and right: on one side was fields, on the other a wood.

  The car got closer. It was speeding up. It was definitely him. He had seen her and he was coming for her. She turned abruptly, her boots sinking into the wet verge before reaching the cover of the trees. The undergrowth grasped at her calves, but she kept running. She couldn’t see where she was planting her feet. Bare branches scratched her face in the dark.

  Behind her, the car stopped. A door opened. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Run or hide? Hide or run? She would be easier to spot if she ran, so she ducked behind a tree trunk and pressed herself against it. Rain dripped down from above. Her chest heaved. She clamped her mouth shut in case he heard her breaths. She daren’t turn round.

  Ingrid tuned into the hum of the downpour on the tarmac and the drip, drip, drip of rain tumbling from branch to branch, but she couldn’t hear footsteps. Slowly, carefully, she slid her hand in her pocket and felt her dead phone and a bank card. She had nothing of any use. Saliva pooled under her tongue. It was painful to swallow. In the distance was a car engine. Beyond that a train rumbled. But there were no sounds of footsteps thrashing through the undergrowth.

  Or a shotgun being loaded.

  The engine noise got louder. A horn blared. It sounded like the driver had swerved to miss the stationary Range Rover. Ingrid’s heart thudded against the inside of her sodden sweatshirt.

  What was that?

  Something moved. Something rustled. She couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop herself from screaming. Another noise. Then another. Were they footsteps? Coming toward her? Moving away?

  A clunk. The car door. Then the engine started. Exhale.

  She peeked round the tree to see the Range Rover drive off in the direction of the village. Weak, she gripped the trunk for support. After a deep breath, she picked her way back to the road, and when she reached it, she ran until she came to the village. The pub was shrouded in the orange glow of streetlights at the end of the long dark road, a scene cut through by the pulsating blue flashes of a police car. She kept on running. She could make out the smokers who had tried to help, standing in the rain, phones clamped to their ears. The Subaru was still blocking the road, its doors open.

  “That’s her.” One of the smokers, his office suit clinging to him like wet brushstrokes, pointed at her.

  A police officer followed his finger and jogged toward her.

  “Are you all right?”

  Ingrid blinked hard. “Yes.”

  “You’re bleeding.” The police officer—forties, built like a quarterback—stared at her cheek.

  Ingrid raised a hand to her face. Blood smeared her fingers. “It’s just a scratch. Have you got them?” She was struggling for breath.

  “I’m still trying to work out what’s happened.”

  Ingrid nodded. “They’re not here? The men?”

  “Fella over there says a Range Rover just sped through, picked up the passenger from this vehicle then drove off. Do you know what’s going on?”

  Ingrid fought to get enough air in her lungs. “They are both armed, one has a shotgun, the other a semiautomatic pistol. The Range Rover is probably heading toward Bench Farm on Holymeoak Lane.”

  “You’re going to have to slow down.” His forehead knitted. He was a rural cop who thought he was dealing with a traffic violation.

  “You need to call it in. You need to send armed response vehicles to Bench Farm—” She stopped herself. That might be a bad idea. Now Viktor and the priest knew the FBI was onto them, and they also knew she was alive, there was no way of knowing what they would do next. Every agent feared another Waco. She nodded rapidly as her thoughts solidified. “My name is Ingrid Skyberg. I am an FBI agent. I work out of the US Embassy in London, and I have reason to believe the men who just abducted me at gunpoint are holding at least twenty-five people against their will at Bench Farm.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Rain trickled inside her collar. The rain jacket clung to her like a second skin. She wiped rain from her eyes. “Deadly. I think you should approach the farm with caution. They’ve got everyone brainwashed.”

  He looked her up and down. He believed her. No Scully comments. No ‘is this being filmed.’ He got on his radio, called for backup and did his job. Ingrid needed to do the same.

  Viktor and the other man would surely get time for firearms offenses. Kidnapping convictions were also a possibility. However, she also needed the Essex constabulary to arrest the priest, but without Operation Dovetail, she couldn’t request it on the hacking allegations. Perhaps they could get him on coercive control or something like that? If he was still in custody when Dovetail got de-iced, they would extradite him then. She didn’t like it, but it would have to do.

  Ingrid’s eyes swam in their sockets, and she staggered like a fighter about to go down as she realized Igor Rybkin wouldn’t be charged with anything. He was a victim rather than a criminal. Brainwashed and manipulated by people who preyed on his public humiliation so they could siphon off his money. He had been guilty of hubris, vanity and gullibility, but you don’t end up in an orange jumpsuit for those. She looked up to the sky as rain trickled inside her collar. She reached for her phone: she needed to update Cath and Marshall.

  Marshall.
/>   Somehow she had forgotten about Marshall and she instantly felt hollow. She desperately wanted to let him know they had Rybkin. They had the priest. She wanted to tell him they had the good headline the Bureau needed. The moment Dovetail was re-opened, they had the collar of their careers. Hell, knowing him, Marshall would probably get a promotion out of it. But that would have to wait until he woke up.

  Her phone was still dead. She held down the top button until the Apple logo appeared.

  The policeman approached. “ANPR has picked up the Range Rover heading north.”

  “Is that the direction of Bench Farm?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where are they going?” Ingrid asked.

  “My guess is they’re making their escape. Don’t worry, we’ll get them.”

  Her phone started ringing. It was Carolyn.

  “Hi.”

  “I’ve been calling.” It almost didn’t sound like her.

  “I’m sorry. I…” There was no way of explaining. Ingrid could hear bleeping in the background. “Where are you, Carolyn?” Her chest heaved and her jaw tightened.

  “The hospital.”

  Time ceased. The world disappeared. All Ingrid could feel was a pulsing sensation behind her eyes. Her hand didn’t seem to be holding the phone. Her feet didn’t appear to be in contact with the ground. She looked up at the rain and let it fall into her eyes.

  “Carolyn?”

  The girl gasped but could not speak.

  “Carolyn!”

  Tears burned the corners of Ingrid’s eyes. A fizzing enclosed her skull and a soft, low moan left Ingrid’s body as she slumped against the car. “Did you get there in time?” she asked.

  Carolyn gasped. “No.”

  An unbidden howl left Ingrid’s lungs and soared up into the purple sky.

  61

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  The cab pulled up outside her red-brick apartment building in Maida Vale, and Ingrid looked up at the block as if she were seeing it for the first time. Some windows had Christmas lights flashing; several more flickered with the blue glow of a television. The windows of her own apartment were dark.

  “You’ll be glad to get home, I bet,” the driver said, applying the hand brake.

  “I guess,” she said.

  “You still got that envelope?”

  She tapped it, making it jingle. “Right here.”

  “Well, that’s my job done, then.” He popped the trunk. “I’ll give you a hand with your bag.”

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  He got out anyway, insisting on lifting her small case down on the wet driveway for her.

  “You’re very kind.” She handed him a fiver.

  “Thanks very much. And happy Christmas.”

  Ingrid wheeled her case to the front door and tipped out the set of keys from the envelope. The shiny new metal glinted in the headlights as the taxi reversed.

  The lobby was unusually quiet for nine o’clock at night. Maybe a lot of residents had gone home for the holidays, but someone on the ground floor was cooking curry. She was grateful not to run into anyone. She had promised herself she would buy a bottle of wine for her neighbors on the top floor to apologize for the fire, but she’d never got round to it, and now it felt too late.

  The elevator quickly ferried her to level six, and when the doors slid open, she was confronted by the sight of the front door to her apartment. Its new coat of paint glistened under the strip lighting. She checked her neighbor’s door. It too had been redecorated. The entire corridor had.

  She slipped another new key into a new lock. The extra layer of paint made the door fit snugly into its frame, and she shouldered it to get it open. She flicked on the light switch and blinked in the bare-bulb brightness. She felt like a trespasser. Ingrid picked up the mail, took the few steps into the kitchen and dumped it on the new countertop.

  The kitchen had been entirely replaced with wood-effect melamine units. The new oven was covered in a protective film of cellophane. Everything had been chosen by a builder to match a loss adjuster’s budget. It had never been a homely apartment, not during her tenure anyway, but now it seemed municipally cold. She opened a cupboard. Bare. The only thing in the refrigerator was the operating instructions and manufacturer’s guarantee.

  In the bedroom, a new mattress with the fire safety tags attached lay on top of her old bed frame. A packet of new linen had been provided. She looked around but didn’t see a duvet or pillows. She opened her closet to find her clothes shrouded in dry cleaner’s wrapping. So much plastic, she thought. In a drawstring bag she found, laundered and folded, the rest of her clothing and underwear. Even though these items belonged to her, touching them felt like handling a crime scene exhibit.

  The living room echoed with its own emptiness. One couch, chosen to be inoffensive to anyone who might ever lay eyes upon it, but apart from that it was bare. There was something hostile about its sterility.

  It took Ingrid a moment to acknowledge what she was feeling: regret. Other thirty-five-year-olds owned their apartments and filled them with flea-market finds, fruit bowls from the Crate and Barrel sale, and blankets bought on city breaks to Copenhagen. And dogs. And houseplants. And kids.

  She blinked back a tear. It wasn’t just the thirteen hours of travel to get back from Minnesota. Or the unexplained layover at O’Hare. It wasn’t even Svetlana’s incessant talk about settling down. Something had shifted, the ballast of her being had moved, and this was no longer where she was meant to be.

  The small pile of mail was mostly flyers and soliciting letters from real estate agents offering a free valuation of her property. Ingrid had no idea how much the apartment she was standing in was worth, but it was far beyond what she could borrow on her salary.

  She opened the largest envelope first and pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings accompanied by a Post-it note from Jen. Oligarch Held Against Will In Essex Cult. Exposed: The Orthodox Cult in Rural Essex. Rich Russians Brainwashed By Fake Priest. Ingrid scanned a double-page spread from the Evening News, complete with aerial photos of Bench Farm. Viktor and his boss had been intercepted at a port called Felixstowe, trying to escape, and the priest had been named as Nikolai Kozak and charged with kidnapping, fraud and firearms offenses. But not hacking. That would come, she told herself. The moment Dovetail was de-iced, she would start the extradition process herself and show the naysayers the Bureau still had the grit it was famed for.

  The report revealed that Igor Rybkin—the paper was still using the photo of him in the white suit leaving the auction—was being looked after by a daughter from his first marriage at her home in west London. He was not being charged with any crime. The article portrayed him as a victim whose poor mental health after Christie’s had been exploited by the manipulative and charismatic Kozak for financial gain. The murder of his wife and brother added to the sympathy the paper expressed for him.

  Vitali Shevchenko—the prime suspect for those murders—didn’t get a mention, but Ingrid knew he was still at large, protected by one of the world’s biggest fortunes and most powerful politicians. The moment he surfaced anywhere in the world, the FBI would find him and prosecute him for Marshall’s death. She would make sure of that.

  The rest of the mail was mostly Christmas cards with US postmarks from people she had caught up with after Marshall’s and Rennie’s funerals. Season’s greetings from Auntie Val and Uncle Vijay. And a ho-ho-ho from all the Miltons of Milwaukee. Glad tidings from Bobbie and Clark. Their vacuous salutations tore at her heart.

  A folded letter fell out of the next envelope. She stooped to pick it up, noticing an insipid swirl in the new vinyl flooring. The letter was the annual festive update from her father’s brother, who she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it and picked up the next card. The envelope just said ‘Ingrid.’ Hand delivered. Maybe one of the neighbors knew her name after all.

  ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’ Ingrid gas
ped. It was Marshall’s handwriting. ‘I hope you’ve moved back in time for the holidays. I asked the contractors to leave this for you, and also, if they’ve followed my instructions, there should be something in the icebox for you.”

  Ingrid’s lip quivered. Her nose prickled. She bent down and opened the refrigerator. Inside the small freezer compartment was a bottle of Stolichnaya. Her chest felt constrained as she suppressed the sobs she knew were inside her. She reached for the bottle and placed it on the counter. Breathing was painful, making movement hard.

  He had remembered about the vodka.

  She rested against the worktop before kicking the refrigerator shut and searching the new cabinets, looking for a glass. She found six identical coffee mugs, unscrewed the vodka and poured a large measure.

  She held the icy fluid in her mouth before swallowing. Her phone buzzed again. And again. It had probably, belatedly, decided on a UK network and was downloading all her messages. She took another slug.

  She picked up Marshall’s note and carried on reading. ‘I’ve agreed with Human Resources for you to get a portion of the standard relocation package so you can buy what you need. I’ll see you when I get back from Charleston. Can’t say I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving this year, not with Carolyn’s news. But I guess it’s important I’m there for Mom and Dad.’ Ingrid put down the card.

  Carolyn had come to her after the funeral. She’d wanted to tell her parents she was gay, but couldn’t do it while they were in mourning. She was going to take the rest of the semester off, but would probably transfer to Duke to be closer to them. Ingrid encouraged her to take a few months before making a decision. How different, Ingrid thought, the Claybournes’ Thanksgiving would have been if Marshall hadn’t risen to the security guard’s bait, if he had just held his tongue and sucked up the insults. But the man had threatened his sister and Marshall had lashed out him.