by Tim Stevens
Nakamura rolled his eyes. Berg turned back to Purkiss and said, ‘Okay. You can go.’
‘That’s it?’ He rose.
‘Go. I won’t even warn you what’ll happen if you’re caught doing anything wrong.’ Her face was suddenly in his personal space. ‘And I mean anything. A parking violation. Public spitting. Jaywalking.’
‘Understood.’
He picked up his holdall – they hadn’t searched it; hadn’t had probable cause – and followed Nakamura back down the corridor into the main concourse. Taking a moment to orientate himself, he headed towards the duty channels.
Once, he glanced back, and saw the two agents standing together, Nakamura half a head shorter than Berg. They were watching him.
*
Purkiss rode the escalator towards a ceiling-high clear glass wall, the exit to the subway system beyond it. At the top, the scruffy gum-chewing man from the plane was loitering. Purkiss ignored him and walked past, turning towards the subway entrance.
An hour later, having roved back and forth between Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan on a subway system he found just as Byzantine as ever, he emerged at Whitehall Street. The early afternoon spring heat was more acute than it had been in Amsterdam and Hamburg and even London, and he felt the prickle of sweat at his shirt collar.
He was fairly confident he hadn’t been followed. Perhaps eighty per cent.
Purkiss thumbed a text message into his phone as he walked. Battery Park in ten minutes. Before entering the subway he’d sent another: I’m going to wander for a while. Head to Manhattan and stay above ground near the southern tip.
For a few minutes, with the salt breeze coming in from the harbour and the sky deep blue with the merest streak of cloud overhead, Purkiss allowed himself to enjoy the moment. Behind him the city towered, compact yet vast. He’d been there twice before, once as a student and again six years ago with Claire, the cityscape changed forever in between by the attacks on the Twin Towers.
Battery Park was strewn with office workers taking late lunch breaks, mothers with baby buggies, and tourists. Purkiss consulted a legend on a signpost and set off deeper into the park. Of all places in New York to choose for a meeting of espions, he thought, there couldn’t have been a more cliched one. It was like Waterloo Bridge or the Brandenburg Gate.
The man was alone on a bench, scattering the dregs from a paper bag to the assortment of pigeons and other birds strutting around his feet. Thirties, average size, fair hair. Purkiss sat beside him as though glad to rest his feet and said, ‘Catching the weather while it lasts.’
The other man said: ‘Storms by tomorrow morning, they reckon.’
The parole and countersign over, they sat in silence for ten seconds. Purkiss surveyed the lawn in front of him, the path stretching to either side. Nobody obvious.
He said, ‘So. Tell me.’
The other man – Vale had said his name was Delatour – glanced directly at Purkiss. It was less obvious than if he’d muttered from the side of his mouth. ‘I believe we have visual confirmation of Pope’s entry into the United States via JFK approximately two hours before the killing.’
He held up a smartphone, one of the larger brands that was almost a tablet computer. On the screen was a captured image from a black-and-white surveillance camera, taken from above and to the left of the same passport control area Purkiss himself had been stopped at earlier. Delatour tapped the screen to zoom in. Standing patiently in line was Pope. The image wasn’t in perfect focus but it was sharp enough.
‘I’ve checked the passenger manifest,’ said Delatour. ‘He was travelling under the name of Brian Sopwith.’
It made no difference. It was an alias he wouldn’t have used before, and wouldn’t use again. Purkiss gazed at a dog sprinting after a squirrel, its hapless owner in tow.
Delatour was Service, working out of the British Embassy. He was one of Vale’s contacts in the city and had both first notified Vale of Grosvenor’s murder and agreed to help with confirmation that Pope was responsible, as if there’d been much doubt otherwise.
The problem with New York, as Purkiss well knew, was that unlike Amsterdam or Hamburg or any of the big European cities, the Service couldn’t simply monitor CIA signals and operations. It was the Company’s home turf, and that meant foreign services were constantly on the back foot. Delatour had no leads on Grosvenor or many other Company operatives in the city, no access into their operations. And therefore no leads as to Grosvenor’s possible connection with Pope.
Nonetheless, Delatour touched the screen and another picture appeared. A mild-looking woman with dark, bobbed hair, in her late fifties or thereabouts.
‘Sylvia Grosvenor,’ he said. ‘Mostly winding down in her career, as far as we can tell. Passed over for promotion once too often, and by now too old to make it back up the greasy pole. Probably embittered. Still active, often out of the city. That’s what our sources have gleaned, anyway.’
‘Anything on her operations?’
Delatour took back the smartphone. ‘Virtually nothing. Some low-level work in Canada and in North Africa over the last twenty years, mainly looking at Islamist groups. Nothing spectacular, nothing to bring her to anybody’s attention.’
Purkiss’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out. A text mesage read: You’re clean, far as I can tell. Bit difficult to tell about those trees straight in front of you. I’ve got wheels if you need them.
He put the phone away, scanning the treeline ahead. The foliage was dense with spring bloom, and yes, it was possible somebody was lurking there, but he couldn’t tell.
To Delatour he said, ‘What about extracurricular activities?’
‘Grosvenor? Again, not much. Single. Occasionally men round, but nothing serious.’
‘Any evidence of black ops links? Unofficial missions?’
‘No.’
Damn it, though Purkiss. Three dead agents with almost nothing to connect them. There was no evidence that Grosvenor had even known Taylor or Jablonsky.
He said: ‘Any chance you could get her financial records?’
‘Not much. They’re pretty tight on security over here when it comes to that sort of thing. A Company person would be exceptionally so. You’d need the FBI to get access to that sort of stuff, andeven they’d struggle.’ Purkiss was aware Delatour was watching him. ‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Money links people, more often that not. It’s a long shot, but it would be worth pursuing.’
Was that a glint in the trees, now? Brilliant early afternoon sun flashing off metal? Purkiss took out his phone again, thumbed in a text: You may have a point about those trees. Any chance you could get on the other side?
The reply came immediately. I’m on it.
Purkiss stood, stretched. Delatour rose after a moment.
‘Is there anything else I can provide?’
‘I don’t think so. Thanks for your help.’
‘Such as it’s been.’ The man looked embarrassed.
Purkiss said, ‘It’s a start.’
He manoeuvred so that he was facing the copse of trees, fifty yards away, and Delatour had his back to it. Purkiss held out his hand to shake, murmured, ‘Don’t turn round. There’s somebody watching us from those trees behind you.’
Delatour’s eyes held steady. He said: ‘Numbers?’
‘I don’t know. Light on metal or glass.’
Delatour stiffened. It could mean a camera, binoculars, or a firearm.
Purkiss said: ‘I’ve got a colleague here in the park. He’s going to be watching from the other side. We need to split up and walk away in opposite directions. You head out of the park. I’m going to head for the esplanade. Whoever it is, and however they got here - whether they followed me or you - it’s me they’ll be interested in.’
Delatour nodded with his eyes and began walking back along the pathway towards the entrance to the park through which Purkiss had come in. Breathing deeply, Purkiss strode south, towards the es
planade and its glitter of water beyond.
He still held his phone in his hand and when it vibrated he glanced at it.
Definitely a man in there. Just watching, I think, but he’s holding some sort of device. Doesn’t look like a rifle.
Binoculars? Some kind of long-distance audio device? Purkiss typed back: Got a visual on me?
Yes.
Purkiss fitted an earbud and plugged the end into the phone. He speed-dialled.
Immediately Kendrick answered: ‘Got you.’
Ahead the esplanade stretched left to right, the harbour beyond. Purkiss reached it and turned right, walking parallel to the railing with its intermittent punctuation of old-fashioned lamps.
In his ear Kendrick said, ‘One of them. He’s coming out of the trees, heading in your direction but a bit ahead. Dark suit, dark curly hair.’
So whoever it was intended to head him off. That meant there was probably somebody else behind him.
He was in full view of the thin crowd wandering up and down the esplanade. If they made a move it would need to be a subtle one.
Purkiss stopped and stood with his hands braced on the railing, and waited.
Thirteen
Outside Charlottesville, Virginia
Monday 20 May, 9.25 pm
Nina pressed her head against the cold, grimy glass of the window. The streetlights were become fewer and further between now that the Greyhound was leaving the confines of the city and its suburbs. High above, a pale rind of moon emerged intermittently between thin clouds.
She clutched her violin to her, something she did for comfort without risking looking like a child. Nobody on the bus could be trusted, of course; but although she’d attracted a few glances on embarking, none of the other passengers seemed to be looking at her now. She’d had to wait at the station for the booking office to open at eight thirty, and every time somebody had come in she’d recoiled, the shock of fear jolting her.
She was headed for Washington.
Nina didn’t know quite what it was that her father did, hadn’t kept in touch even as far as Googling his name to find out about him; but she knew he did something in the Federal government, that he was a man of some importance and influence, and that he therefore probably worked and lived in the nation’s capital. She’d set about finding his exact location once she was there and had access to an internet café. If she’d had a cell phone, she’d have been able to start the search already and save time. But then they’d have caught her already.
She hadn’t seen her father since she was eleven. Fifteen years. His face was still clear in her mind, and she doubted he’d have changed enough to be unrecognisable. Whether he’d recognise her, a child grown into a woman, was another matter.
Nina didn’t want to sleep, but she let her eyes close and plunged into memory.
*
‘Nina, baby, where are you?’
Her mother’s voice is distant as an echo, even though it comes from upstairs. Far louder, and clearer, is the scream when it comes.
She pads to the front door and opens it. It locks once closed and can’t be opened from outside without a key, but it’s a risk she’ll take. Her mother will be there to let her back in.
The scream comes again as she lets the door swing shut, as loud and as sudden as if it’s next to her ear. She flinches, putting up her hand. Can’t her mother hear it?
The driveway is washed in moonlight ahead of her. Her dad’s car squats off to one side. Nina touches the hood: it’s warm. He hasn’t been home long.
Except he isn’t home.
At the end of the driveway she finds the electronic gate shut. She clambers over easily and drops into the dirt on the other side, scuffing her knees. It doesn’t hurt; she’s done it before.
Across the cracked tarmac of the road, beyond its own gate, the Box sits blackly. There’s a glow from it, as though a light somewhere inside is seeping through the walls.
The scream breaks loose again.
A rumble starts up from over to her right. Nina swings, terror clawing at her. A car’s coming down the road, one of the old Jeeps that’s always sitting outside the Box. The headlights are burning through the night.
Nina leaps towards the boulders at the side of the road and crouches behind them.
The Jeep slows at the gate and sits, growling, as the railed metal inches its way open. When there’s just enough room the Jeep squeezes through and stops next to the Box.
The moon’s behind the Box, not behind her, so Nina knows her head won’t be seen. She peers over the top of the boulder.
Far behind her, her mother’s voice calls her again.
Two men are jumping down from the Jeep, men in those khaki uniforms she’s always seeing around. She’s seen the men before but doesn’t know their names. One of them unhooks the door at the back of the jeep while the other one stands back, a long gun cradled in his arms.
Two other men have come out of the Box and help the first two drag a man form the back of the Jeep. He loses his balance and has to be held under his arms. Nina sees that his hands are tied behind his back. He’s making funny wet hissing noises but doesn’t talk. There’s something tied across his mouth, too.
The men in uniforms drag him across to the door of the Box. When they’re almost there he suddenly twists sideways and tries to run away. One of the men jabs the end of the gun into his back and he falls. They haul him up again and through the door.
Another scream, this one going on for ten seconds at least. Not from the new man, but from somebody else inside the Box.
Nina crawls into herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. The moon’s suddenly terribly cold, like the sun in reverse.
‘Nina?’
Nina shrieks, scrambling around the boulder and losing her footing, sprawling in the dust. Then her mother is pulling her close, her warmth and smell swallowing her, whispering and sobbing into her hair.
‘Nina, oh, baby, my God, what have you seen, what are you doing here, oh Jesus, baby…’
*
Nina jerked upright, blinked around. The bus had stopped at a light, that was all. She glanced at her watch. Ten p.m.; they’d been travelling for just under an hour. She hadn’t dozed off after all.
Her head slumped back against the seat. That wasn’t the memory she’d been looking for; but it kept returning, unbidden, and she didn’t know why. She’d see worse, far worse. But that was the first time she’d seen her mother so scared for her. Terror and guilt: it was a combination that flavoured many of her recollections of her mother.
Once more she closed her eyes, but the memory she wanted, normally so richly infused with sensory associations, didn’t come. Instead, her father’s face kept appearing, as she’d seen it the day he’d told her of her mother’s death: square, the stubble blue on his chin even though it was noon and he’d shaved that morning, his mouth soft and with the beginnings of a smile as it always was, only his eyes telling her something wasn’t right. His face had splintered, the shards scattering, as she’d absorbed his words, even though she knew now that an eleven-year-old couldn’t really grasp what death meant.
‘The storm,’ he said. ‘It took Mama away.’
At first she thought he meant like in the Wizard of Oz, that her mother was in some faraway land doing battle with witches and flying monkeys. But as he spoke, his hands barely touching her shoulders, his arms straight out in front of him as he crouched before her, she began to understand. The storm had swept across the island, across the whole country – across a good part of the Western hemisphere, she now knew – and had taken her mother with it. Their home was gone. The Box was gone – and what of the people inside it, the ones who screamed?
In the past week there’d been frantic activity on the island, boxes being carted away by the Jeepload and extensive makeshift construction work as wood and steel was hammered down as reinforcement. Nina had watched and listened, bewildered, the feeling growing in her that none of the adults actually believed what
they were doing was going to work. Sure enough, three days later her father had bundled her out of bed in the middle of the night and she’d found herself on a dream journey that involved a car and a roaring, shaking plane, before she’d woken shivering and terrified in her grandmother’s bed.
Her father came to her after two days, with the news that their home was lost, and so was her mother.
*
And now, almost a decade and a half later, she was on a night bus from Charlottesville, VA to Washington D.C., fleeing men in suits who were at the same time authority figures and the murderers of her friends, in search of the only person who could help her. Her father, whose whereabouts she didn’t, if she was honest, have a clue about; who had been out of her life for more than half of it; and whom she had learned to hate.
Fourteen
Charlottesville, Virginia
Monday 20 May, 9.05 pm
Over the years Pope had mastered the art of stillness; of waiting absolutely silently and ignoring the clamour of hunger and other more pressing bodily requirements.
After four hours in the girl’s flat he decided to use the lavatory.
Immediately afterwards his ears strained for tell-tale signs that somebody was already in the flat and had reacted. But there were none. Satisfied again that he was alone, he went back to wait on the living room sofa in the dark.
He flexed the muscles in his arms and calves and thighs minutely to keep the blood flowing. The distorted Dali clock on the wall said it was nine p.m. He’d arrived in Charlottesville on the Amtrak train at four, and had found the flat within half an hour. Entry had posed no problem. He hadn’t expected her to be at home on a Monday afternoon, and he was right. On arrival he did a quick prowl around the flat, familiarising himself with the layout and trying to determine if anyone else lived there.
Nina Ramirez seemed to live alone. There was no tract of any male presence, no man’s clothes in the wardrobe or shaving kit in the bathroom. Nor were there any signs that she shared with a woman friend. The bedroom was a single one.
