by Mark Dawson
The medical staff were uncomfortable about their patient discharging herself but there was nothing that they could do to stop her. She was not injured, she appeared to be rational and she was not alone. Milton answered their reflexive concern with a tone of quiet authority that was difficult to oppose. She signed her discharge papers, politely thanked the staff for their care, and followed Milton outside.
Milton had parked in the nearby NCP building. He swept the detritus from the passenger seat, opened the door, waited until she was comfortable and then set off, cutting onto the Embankment. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was staring fixedly out of the window, watching the river. It didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. Fair enough. He switched on the CD player and skipped through the discs until he had found the one he wanted to listen to, a Bob Dylan compilation. Dylan’s reedy voice filled the car as Milton accelerated away from a set of traffic lights.
“Thanks for this,” Sharon said suddenly. “I’m very grateful.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“My boy should be home. He’ll be wanting his tea.”
“What’s his name?”
“Elijah.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“His father liked it. He was into his Bible.”
“How old is he?”
“Fifteen. What about you? Do you have any kids?”
“No,” Milton said. “It’s just me.”
He pulled out and overtook a slow-moving lorry and she was silent for a moment.
“It’s because of him,” she said suddenly. “This morning––all that. I know it’s stupid but I didn’t know what else to do. I still don’t, not really. I’m at the end of my tether.”
“What’s happened?”
She didn’t seem to hear that. “I don’t have anyone else. If I lose him, there’s no point in carrying on.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” She looked out of the window, biting her lip. “How have you lost him?”
She clenched her jaw. Milton shrugged and reached for the radio.
She spoke hurriedly. “There’s a gang on the Estate where we live, these young lads. Local boys. They terrify everyone. They do what they want––cause trouble, steal things, deal their drugs. No-one dares do anything against them.”
“The police?”
She laughed bitterly. “No use to no-one. They won’t even come onto the Estate unless there’s half a dozen of them. It’ll calm down a bit while they’re around but as soon as they go again, it’s as if they were never even there.”
“What do they have to do with Elijah?”
“He’s got in with them. He’s just a little boy, and I’m supposed to look after him, but there’s nothing I can do. They’ve taken him away from me. He stays out late, he doesn’t listen to me anymore, he won’t do as he’s told. I’ve always tried to give him a little freedom, not be one of those rowdy Jamaican mothers where the kids can’t ever do anything right, but maybe now I think I ought to have been stricter. Last night was as bad as it’s ever been. I know he’s been sneaking out late at night to be with them. Normally he goes out of his bedroom window so I put a lock on it. He comes into the front room and I tell him he needs to get back to bed. He just gives me this look and he says I can’t tell him what to do anymore. I tell him I’m his mother, and he has to listen to me for as long as he’s under my roof. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“So he says that maybe he won’t be under my roof for much longer, that he’ll get his own money and find somewhere for himself. Where’s a fifteen-year old boy going to get the money for rent unless it’s from thieving or selling drugs? He goes for the door but he’s got to come by me first, so I get up and stop him. He tells me to get out of the way and when I won’t he says he hates me, says how it’s my fault his father isn’t around, and when I try and get him to calm down he just pushes me aside, opens the door and goes. He’s a big boy for his age, taller than I am already, and he’s strong. If he won’t do as he’s told, what can I do to stop him? He didn’t get back in until three in the morning and when I woke up to go to work he was still asleep. “
“Have you thought about moving away?”
She laughed humourlessly again. “Do you know how hard that is? We were in a hostel before. I used to live up in Manchester until my husband started knocking me about. There was this place, for battered women, we ended up there when we got into London. I’m not knocking it but it was full up. It was no place to bring up my boys. I was on at the social for months before they gave us our flat. You have no idea the trouble it’d be to get them to move us somewhere else. No. We’re stuck there.”
She paused, staring out at the cars again.
“Ever since we’ve been on the Estate we’ve had problems. I worry about Elijah every single day. Every single day I worry about him. Every day I worry.”
Milton had started to wonder whether there might be a way that he could help.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Here I am telling you all my troubles and I don’t even know your name.”
Milton almost reflexively retreated to his training, and to his long list of false identities, but he stopped himself. What was the point? He had no stomach for any of that any longer. A foundation of lies would not be a good place to start if he wanted to help this woman. “I’m John,” he said. “John Milton.”
He approached the junction for the Whitechapel Road and turned off.
“I’m sorry for going on. I’m sure you’ve got your own problems. You don’t need to hear mine.”
“I’d like to help.”
“That’s nice of you, but I don’t see how you could.”
“Perhaps I could talk to him?”
“You’re not police, are you?”
“No.”
“Or the Social?”
“No.”
“I don’t want to be rude, Mr. Milton, but you don’t know Elijah. He’s headstrong. Why would he care what you said?”
He slowed down as they approached a queue of slower-moving traffic. “I can be persuasive,” he said.
* * *
6.
CONTROL HAD REQUESTED Milton’s file from the archive and, after it had been delivered, he shut himself away in his office with a pot of tea and a cigar and spread the papers around him. It was late when he started, the sun long since set and the lights of the office blocks on the opposite side of the Thames glittering in the dark waters of the river. He lit the cigar and began his search through the documents for a clue that might explain his sudden, and uncharacteristic, decision. Their conversation had unsettled him. Milton had always been his best cleaner. His professionalism had always been complete. He maintained a vigorous regimen that meant that he was as fit as men half his age. His body was not the problem. If it was, he mused ruefully, this would have been easier to fix. The problem was with his mind and that presented a more particular issue. Control prided himself on knowing the men and women who worked for him and Milton’s attitude had taken him by surprise. It introduced an element of doubt into his thinking and doubt, to a man as ordered and logical as Control, was not tolerable.
He held the smoke in his mouth. Milton’s dedication and professionalism had never wavered, not for a moment, and he had completed an exemplary series of assignments that could have formed the basis for an instruction manual for the successful modern operative. He was the Group’s most ruthless and efficient assassin. He had always treated his vocation as something of an art form, drawing satisfaction from the knowledge of a job well done. Control knew from long and vexatious experience that such an attitude was a rarity these days. Real artisans––real craftsmen––were difficult to find and when you had one, you nurtured him. The other men and women at his disposal tended towards the blunt. They were automatons that he pointed at targets, then watched and waited as they did their job. Their methods were effective but crass: a shower of bullets from a slow-moving car, a landmine deton
ated by mobile phone, random expressions of uncontrolled violence. It was quick and dirty, flippant and trite, a summation of all that Control despised about modern intelligence. There was no artistry left, no pride taken in the job, no assiduity, no careful deliberation. No real nerve. Milton reminded Control of the men and women he had worked with when he was a field agent himself, posted at Station M in the middle of the Cold War. They had been exact and careful, their assignments comprising long periods of planning that ended with sudden, controlled, contained violence.
Control turned through the pages and found nothing. Perhaps the answer was to be found in his history. He took another report from its storage crate and dropped it on his desk. It was as thick as a telephone directory.
In order for a new agent to be admitted to the Group, a raft of assessments were required to be carried out. The slightest impropriety––financial, personal, virtually anything––would lead to a black mark and that would be that, the proposal would be quietly dropped and the prospective agent would never even know that they had been under consideration. Milton had been no different. MI5 were tasked with the compilation of the reports and they had done a particularly thorough job with him. They had investigated his childhood, his education, his career in the army and his personal life.
John Milton was born in 1968. He had no brothers or sisters. His father, James Milton, had worked as a petrochemical engineer and led his family on a peripatetic existence, moving every few years as he followed work around the world. Much of Milton’s early childhood was spent in the Gulf, with several years in Saudi Arabia, six months in Iraq during the fall of the Shah, then Egypt, Dubai and Oman. There had been a posting to the United States and then, finally, the directorship of a medium-sized gas exploration company in London. The young Milton picked up a smattering of Arabic and an ability to assimilate himself into different cultures; both talents had proven valuable in his later career.
His life had changed irrevocably in 1980. His mother and father were killed in a crash on a German autobahn and John had been sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle in Kent. A substantial amount of money was bequeathed to him in trust, and it was put to good use. He was provided with a first-class private education and, after passing the rigorous entrance examination, he was sent up to Eton for the Autumn term in 1981. His career there was not successful and, thanks to an incident that MI5 had not been able to confirm (although they suspected it involved gambling), Milton was expelled. There was a period of home tutoring before he was accepted at his father’s old school, Fettes. He stayed there until he was sixteen and then took a place at Cambridge to read law.
He was involved in the OTC and it had been no surprise to anyone when, in 1989, he ignored the offer of a pupilage at the Bar to enlist in the Royal Green Jackets. He was posted to the Rifle Depot, in Winchester, and then sent to Gibraltar as part of his first operational posting. He served in South Armagh, where, as a newly promoted Lance Corporal, he killed for the first time during a firefight with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In 1997, after spending eight years with the Green Jackets, he decided to attempt SAS selection. The process was renowned for being brutally difficult but he passed, easily. While serving with Air Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS for ten years, Milton worked on both covert and overt operations worldwide, including counter terrorism and drug operations in the Middle East and Far East, South and Central America and Northern Ireland. He trained as a specialist in counter terrorism, prime target elimination, demolitions, weapons, tactics, covert surveillance roles, information gathering in hostile environments and VIP protection. He worked on cooperative operations with police forces, prison services, anti-drug forces and Western backed guerrilla movements as well as on conventional special operations.
Control turned through to the pages dedicated to Milton’s service during the First Gulf War. He had been dropped behind Saddam’s lines to take out the Scuds he was using to launch rockets into Israel. His patrol had eventually been compromised, the men fleeing on foot towards Syria. Three were killed and the others were captured. Milton was held for six weeks and tortured throughout. By the time they forced their escape in a firefight during which three of the others were killed he was suffering from nerve damage to both hands, a dislocated shoulder, kidney and liver damage, and had contracted hepatitis B.
The Distinguished Conduct Medal he received on his return to London, together with the Military Medal that he won during a patrol in Northern Ireland, made Milton the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when Control decided that he was the perfect replacement for Number Seven, who had been killed while on operations in China. He made the pitch himself. It was a persuasive offer, and Milton had accepted immediately.
Control put the history aside and turned back to contemporary papers. Milton’s recent yearly assessment had seen a significant dip in results and, as he turned back through the years, he noticed a trend that had remained hidden until then. The assessments were intense, and combined a rigorous physical examination, marksmanship tests and a psychological evaluation. Milton’s performance in all three elements had been in decline over the last three years. The drop was steepest this year, but it was not isolated. He chided himself for missing it. His continued success in the field had blinded him. He was so good at his job that the suggestion that he might not have been infallible was ridiculous. Now, as he examined his file with the benefit of hindsight, he saw that he had missed a series of indicators.
His physical examinations returned strong results. He was fit, with the cardiovascular profile of a man fifteen years younger. He made it his habit to run a marathon every year and the times had been noted and added to the file; he had never finished the course in more than three and a half hours. Nevertheless, he had suffered a series of injuries in the field that had exerted a toll on his body. The damage inflicted during his incarceration in Iraq had been severe, but there had been other incidents. Since joining Group Fifteen he had been shot twice, stabbed in the leg and shoulder and had broken more than a dozen bones. He reported the usual aches and pains but the physician suggested that he was being stoic for the benefit of the examination, and that it was likely that he was in mild to moderate pain most of the time. Blood tests detected the beginning of mild arthritis in his joints, a condition for which there was a familial history. He took a cocktail of drugs: gabapentin for his nerve damage and oxycodone for general pain relief.
Control relit his cigar and picked up his psychological assessment. He stood to stretch his legs and read the report next to the window. As he skimmed through the pages he realised that missing the warning signs contained within had been his most egregious error. The psychiatrist noted that Milton had complained of sleeplessness and that he had been prescribed promathazine to combat it. There had been a discussion about reasons behind the problem but Milton had become agitated and then angry, refusing to accept that it was anything other than an inability to quieten a busy mind. The psychiatrist suggested that Milton’s naturally melancholic temperament indicated mild depression and that he seemed to have become introspective and doubting. The report concluded with the recommendation that he be monitored on a more regular basis. Control had ignored it.
Damn it.
Milton was a valuable asset and he had wilfully ignored the warning signs. He did not want to admit that there might be a problem and his inaction had allowed it to metastasise.
He put the files back into the storage crate and lit a second cigar. There came a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he called.
Christopher Callan came into the office. He was Number Twelve: the most recent recruit to the Group. He had been transferred from the Special Boat Service after a career every bit as glittering as Milton’s had been. He was tall and slender and impeccably dressed. His jacket was two-buttoned, cut from nine-ounce cloth. The pockets were straight and the lining was simple and understated. There was a telltale faint bulge beneath his left armpit where he wore his shoulder holster. H
e did not wear a tie. The trousers were classically cut, falling down to the back of his shoe. He was strikingly handsome although his head was round and small, supported by a muscular neck. His scalp was covered with tight blond curls that were almost white, reminding Control of the classical hair of the statues of da Vinci. The curls were thickly pressed against each other and against the skull. His skin was a pristine white and his grooming immaculate. There was a cruelty to his thin-lipped mouth and the implacability that veiled those pale blue eyes seemed to infect the whole face. It was, Control reflected with a moment of mild revulsion, as if someone had taken a china doll and painted its face to frighten.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” he said.
“Yes, Callan. Take a seat.” He inhaled deeply, taking the smoke all the way back into his throat, then blowing it out. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. It’s one of the other agents––do you know Number One?”
“Only by reputation.”
“You’ve never worked with him, though?”
“No, sir. Why?”
“Afraid he’s started to behave a little erratically. I want you to find out everything you can about him––where he’s living, what he does with his time, who he’s seeing. Everything you can.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“No. Start immediately, please.”
“Of course.” Callan stood and straightened his jacket. “Number One was in France, sir? The Iranian scientists?”
“That’s right.”
Callan nodded thoughtfully. “That was unfortunate.”
Control looked at him and knew that he would have followed the rules of engagement to the letter. He would not left any witnesses. He had the same single-minded ruthlessness as Milton when he joined. He had made a reputation for it in the SBS, that was the characteristic that had appealed to Control when he had recruited him.
“Daily reports, please, Number Twelve. Get started at once. You’re dismissed.”
