by Zoe Sharp
She and my father would have got on like a house on fire.
As they hurriedly wheeled the boy away to pre-op she peeled off her latex gloves and dropped them into the nearest waste bin. There was a symbolic finality to the act, a washing of hands.
Then she turned to me. I expected some form of greeting but instead she gave me a swift cool appraisal and asked, “Where is Riley? I must get back to my work.”
I jerked my head toward the landing area nearby where we’d just set down. “Offloading medical supplies.”
“Then tell ‘im to ‘urry,” she responded, and swept out past me.
“Yes ma’am,” I said under my breath. “And it’s a pleasure to be working with you, too … “
It wasn’t until we were in the air again twenty minutes later that she deigned to offer me her full attention. We were travelling in the rear of the helicopter on flip-down seats facing each other, so it was harder for her to avoid it.
Riley was left to his own devices in the cockpit. He seemed put out that he could no longer play the inept rookie with me, and as a result he flew a smooth straight course, forsaking drama as well as conversation. Maybe it was simply the dampening effect Dr Bertrand had on him.
Without its cargo the interior of the Bell seemed vast. The empty space beat with reflected flight noise like a giant drum.
“So, Charlie,” she said via the headsets we both wore, curling my name into something more than it was, “why are you ‘ere?”
I had my official story down pat. “To advise your team on personal safety, minimise risk, protect you if necessary, help out where I can.”
“That is not what I meant.” She frowned. “But your actions out there today,” she went on, her fingers making a small gesture to indicate the helicopter and all that had gone into the rescue, “were they safe - or advisable?”
“I think that falls under both protecting you and helping out.”
“But you did not seem to give much regard to your own safety. ‘Ow can we be sure you will give regard to ours?”
“I said minimise risk. I know I can’t eliminate it entirely, so my job is to put myself between you and whatever hazards I can, but still allow you the freedom to do your work,” I said. I paused. “I understand you lost a team member recently. I’m sorry. Please be assured I will do everything I can not to let that happen again.”
“Thank you.” She favoured me with a vaguely regal nod. “I confess that I did not like Kyle Stephens, but in most ways ‘e was a professional and I could at least admire that.”
“Why didn’t you like him?”
She gave me a slow blink, almost in surprise that I had the temerity to ask.
“‘E did not think much of women,” she said at last.
“Can I ask … what happened to him?”
She stiffened. “Why do you ask?”
“I try to learn from past mistakes in order to avoid repeating them. Other people’s as well as my own.”
“It was … ‘e did not …” She gave a growl of frustration and tried again: “Natural disasters are often followed by great lawlessness … people who wish to take advantage of the situation for their own gain. This can make such places very dangerous, as Monsieur Stephens found out to ‘is cost.”
“Dangerous how?” I persisted.
She flashed me a quick look of irritation. “We were in an area of Colombia where the rule of law is somewhat … tenuous,” she said at last. “The local guerrilla fighters were determined to come in and take what they wanted - including our equipment and supplies. We needed time to make a successful evacuation.” She shrugged. “Perhaps ‘e should ‘ave advised us to move out sooner. ‘E paid the price for that oversight.”
All of which was precisely no help whatsoever towards finding out what actually caused the death of my predecessor.
And no help either towards planning how best to avoid following in his footsteps.
Seven
The dead lay in rows in a temporary mortuary established at an army base about ten klicks from the capital.
In the weird way of earthquakes, while some areas were totally destroyed this whole place had escaped totally unscathed. Everyone fervently hoped it would stay that way. Even so, whenever an aftershock hit there was a fractional pause before they carried on. Outside, there was the constant rumble of engines from the line of commandeered refrigeration trucks being used for storage.
Dr Bertrand briefly explained the cataloguing system used for each victim as they were brought in. Every piece of clothing and personal items had to be removed, photographed and bagged.
She seemed to take it for granted that I wouldn’t freak out in close proximity to so many corpses. Particularly ones who had not exactly died peacefully in their sleep. Her only concern was whether I could be trusted to operate a camera with enough skill to be useful.
“This is not in my brief,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t I be more - ?”
“Tomorrow - maybe,” she interrupted, thrusting a Canon digital SLR and a clipboard into my hands. “But the teams are already scattered across the city. For now you are more use ‘ere.”
I shrugged. “Where do I start?”
And so I began. The quake had been no respecter of age, race or social status - an equal-opportunity killer. That first day I listed and photographed toys found clutched in the hands of children, lavish rings from well-manicured fingers, and the rags of the homeless.
I was handed all these possessions to arrange and record as they were stripped from the bodies. In some cases blood and other debris had to be cleaned from them first.
“We try to make an initial identification from family or friends recognising the property found with the victim,” I was told by the girl I was working with. She introduced herself too fast for me to catch her name and there never seemed to be opportunity to ask a second time.
The level of concentration I felt compelled to maintain in order to give these people the respect they deserved made it an engrossing but dismal task.
There were four DVI teams - Disaster Victim Identification - from different countries working alongside each other. Apart from the murmuring of the pathologists dictating their observations and the occasional rapid rattle of a bone saw, the only sounds were the muted pop of camera flashes and the flutter of Canon motorwinds.
No chatter, no jokes, no music.
The Japanese team, so experienced in dealing with situations like this, held a sombre minute’s silence before starting on each new victim. An overwhelming sense of sadness pervaded the place. By the time I’d been there a couple of hours I was mentally and emotionally flattened.
“Charlie.” Dr Bertrand’s voice, loud and unexpected, made me jump. “I need you over ‘ere.”
I turned, saw the young guy who’d been photographing for her stumbling away with his shoulders hunched.
“‘E is too tired to work efficiently,” Dr Bertrand said, following my gaze. “I ‘ave sent ‘im to get some rest, and so I must make do with you.”
I bit back my instinctive sarcastic comment and said instead, “What do you need?”
She laid a hand on the naked thigh of the overweight middle-aged male cadaver on her table, like a butcher contemplating which cut to take from a side of pig.
“This man ‘as an artificial ‘ip,” she began.
“Which will have a unique serial number tied to the patient who received it.”
She gave me a small sideways glance but stopped short of actual praise.
“I will, of course, need to expose that area of the implant for you to document,” she warned.
“Of course,” I repeated blandly.
I had seen the dead up close before. In fact I had been the cause of death more times than was probably good for my eternal soul. And once I watched my father carry out an emergency procedure to clamp a man’s severed brachial artery by the side of a road, armed with no more than a Swiss Army knife and the rusty toolkit from a Ford pickup truck.
&nb
sp; But I had never witnessed such a swift and brutal partial dismemberment as Alexandria Bertrand performed. Her incisions were precise and practical, without a wasted stroke or hesitation. The image of her as a butcher returned as she peeled back the dead man’s skin and flesh with no more drama than if she’d been boning a joint of meat for Sunday lunch. Then she stepped back with an impatient flick of her fingers.
“There. Be sure it is entirely visible and in sharp focus.”
I snapped away and checked the results on the view screen at the back of the camera, zooming in as far as it would allow. But when I offered to show the good doctor she waved me away. It brought to mind generals who give orders and expect them to be carried out without question, but who would never lower themselves far enough to actually check.
We worked on into the evening. By then I had confirmed my first impression of Dr Bertrand. She was tireless, ruthless and humourless. But bloody hell she was good at her job.
Exactly the same qualities were much admired in contract killers.
“Hey, Al!” called a voice from the doorway.
My head jerked up and I realised Dr Bertrand and I were the only two people left in the mortuary amid a sea of empty stainless steel tables.
The former Marine, Joe Marcus weaved his way between them. He had exchanged his coveralls for lightweight trousers and a cotton shirt but everything about him carried the authority of rank.
“Clear up and give the new kid a break,” he said. “Chow time.”
Dr Bertrand let out her breath and frowned as if considering whether or not to comply. The fact he’d called her “Al” didn’t seem to cause a flicker. Marcus reached us and stood silently across the other side of our work station. She had just finished with the burned body of an old woman and I had carefully put all her documented charred belongings back into a labelled archive box and shelved it in the ante room next door while she completed her notes.
From that point of view Marcus’s timing was excellent. It didn’t stop Dr Bertrand having a short stare-out competition with him, though. I reckoned they were fairly evenly matched, but in the end the former Marine beat her on points.
“You’re only as good as the most exhausted member of your unit,” he said.
I would have argued about that, but realised it would not do me any favours.
“OK,” Dr Bertrand said at last. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them into a flip-top bin, in the same way she’d done earlier at the medical centre after we’d delivered the boy from the roadside. I followed suit. Marcus nodded at her capitulation.
At the doorway she stopped and looked back almost longingly.
“Dead is dead. Another few hours isn’t gonna make any difference to them,” Marcus said quietly. “But it will to you.”
She switched off the light without replying and we stepped outside into the humid wash of evening.
While Dr Bertrand locked up Joe Marcus shifted his eyes to me.
“You were lucky out there today,” he said. “Nice reflexes.”
For a moment I went blank on his meaning then realised he was talking about that slip as I’d jumped for the helicopter. The rescue on the cliffside seemed to have taken place days ago.
“Yeah well,” I said with a smile, “I told Riley he’d have to try harder than that if he wanted to get rid of me.”
His eyes narrowed and I didn’t miss the quick look that Dr Bertrand flicked in his direction. And in that instant I had sudden flash-recall of launching myself for the Bell, of the helo jinking away from me at exactly the wrong moment.
Or had it been exactly the right moment?
Not enough to appear deliberate - just a correction for an unexpected gust of wind buffeting the aircraft. But coming after Riley had stated there was “not a fart” of a breeze, even allowing for the difficult angle, it sent a shiver of delayed reaction along every nerve.
And when I met Joe Marcus’s gaze I saw that he either knew anyway or he’d already worked it out. He stared back at me steadily.
I’d thought Dr Bertrand was a cold one, but I realised that he was infinitely colder.
“Let us eat,” she said abruptly. “There is still much work to do.”
She strode away along a narrow path bordered by whitewashed stones. Marcus indicated I should go before him with a sweep of his arm. Good manners precluded my refusal, but I found I didn’t like him walking behind me.
I’d come here looking for a potential killer.
Instead I’d found three.
Eight
Only a few hours before I boarded that Hercules I’d never heard of an outfit called Rescue & Recovery International. Nor had I ever crossed paths with a former US Army Ranger called Kyle Stephens. The fact that he was dead was of little interest to me.
I had other things on my mind.
Foremost of these worries was the state of my relationship with Sean Meyer. Sean had been my training instructor during my short and bitterly inglorious military career. The toughest of a tough bunch, he was the one who had goaded me towards excellence. And just when I thought he was the coldest bastard I’d ever encountered, he confounded me by offering a glimpse of his human side that provoked an incendiary desire.
Our affair while we were still in uniform was short-lived, illicit, and ultimately doomed not only to failure but to personal and professional ruin for both of us.
I never would have dreamed back then that Sean and I would reconnect, or would end up living together in New York working for Parker Armstrong’s prestigious close-protection agency. We’d certainly had our share of high points, but there had been some equally stunning blows as well.
The previous winter I nearly lost him for good. For more than three months I pilgrimaged daily to his bedside while he lay in a coma and on some subconscious level made up his mind between holding on and letting go.
And during all that time I loved him and hated him in equal measure.
In the end my prayers were answered but with a sick twist neither of us could have prepared for. We came back to each other changed from who we were - and not for the better. Just when I finally became more like Sean - more like the old Sean wanted me to be - he became less like himself.
Everyone from the neurosurgeon who dug the fragments of skull out of his brain, to the coma specialists and psychologists, had warned us he might be different afterwards. If he lived.
The one thing I clung to was that if he made it back then the bond between us was strong enough to cope with whatever might follow. In the event, I found myself devastated by his sudden unexpected enmity towards me. For someone in a profession that stands or falls by its anticipation of every obstacle, I admit that one took me completely by surprise.
We still shared the Upper East Side apartment Parker had arranged for us as part of our relocation deal, but I moved my things into the second bedroom. At first this was a temporary measure while Sean acclimatised to the fact we were a couple. His last waking memory of me was as someone he despised.
As is always the way with temporary measures, the move soon became permanent. But it also seemed to ease the tension between us. He took some tentative steps toward me and I thought, finally, we might be making progress.
And then it all changed again.
The day that eight-point-six earthquake hit I sat watching the news coverage and teetering on the cusp of melancholy. And that’s when Parker Armstrong rang me.
“Charlie!” he greeted. There was surprise in his voice, as if he hadn’t expected to catch me at home when he knew that’s where I’d be. “How you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
He let the lie pass, said instead, “I have a client coming in at three this afternoon. I’d like for you to be here, meet with them.”
I poked my brain doggedly into work mode. “Is this a solo job or part of a full detail?”
Parker hesitated. “Not exactly either,” he said. “Best if the client explains it to you herself.”
“OK, so what’
s the threat?” The question lacked finesse, but hell - people didn’t hire Armstrong-Meyer unless they needed protecting from something bad.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said, not sounding at all fazed.
I felt my eyebrows rise. Parker was usually meticulous. He possessed a wariness born of long experience at the sharp end of close-protection work. He did not normally offer his services - or those of his operatives - on such an open-ended basis.
In spite of myself, I was intrigued. And almost anything was better than this frantic inactivity.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
I made sure I reached the midtown offices of the Armstrong-Meyer agency a good half an hour before the appointed time. Excessive perhaps, but Parker always stressed that we were there to wait on our clients, not the other way around.
As it was, I was told to go right in as soon as I stepped out of the lift into the marble-tiled lobby. The Armstrong-Meyer nameplate was still displayed behind the reception desk. I wondered how long Parker could continue to keep Sean as a full partner when he no longer played an active role.
I knocked briefly and opened the door to Parker’s office. His domain occupied a corner of the building. It had a fabulous view out over the Manhattan skyline but I didn’t get chance to admire it.
Parker was not alone, I saw immediately. There was a woman with him who was sitting in one of the low client chairs that bracketed a coffee table in the centre of the room. She was in her forties and the best word to describe her was sleek.
She was dressed with a careless elegance only the long-term wealthy ever truly manage well. I couldn’t pull it off with a gun to my head. What little jewellery she wore was antique and expensive without being gaudy. Her hair and nails were flawless. And she was a redhead - one of Parker’s weaknesses.
My boss was standing behind his desk, leaning both fists onto the polished surface, his arms braced. His head came up sharply when I entered.
For a horrible moment I thought I’d walked in on a situation that was personal rather than professional. There was definitely something going on even if I couldn’t put my finger on what. I heard the tension fizzing in the air and saw the flash of stubbornness in the woman’s eyes. Eyes that widened when I walked in on them.
