‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I wasn’t sure.’ His self-deprecating smile had disappeared.
‘And now you are?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Jesus, God, Sam – whose fucking side are you on?’
The Jordanian colonel didn’t like Brits; thought they’d fucked up the Middle East for all time when they’d redrawn the Arab borders a century before and done their shady deals with the tribes. He glanced at Manson and decided he was typical of the crowd London always sent – a pushy bastard who wanted it done his way, gave orders as if he owned the country and didn’t give a toss about anyone else.
When the message had first come through, he had wanted to say no to the whole operation. But the phone calls had kept on coming and the squawking, high-pitched voices from the ministry in Amman had by turns become angrier and more threatening.
According to his chief of staff, the minister had asked to be kept informed of events throughout the night.
In other words, screw it up at your peril.
The colonel told Manson he was going for some fresh air, slid out of the Land Rover and headed into the icy darkness.
What he disliked most about the mission was that, if it all went to plan, his men would be shooting on sight a female American agent, probably unarmed, almost certainly exhausted and running for her life.
However you spun it, this wasn’t going to be the unit’s finest hour.
She could see the victory smile on Youssef’s face, the sweat pouring from his forehead, the tiny child-like hands trembling with excitement. But she felt no fear. The scene in the little kitchen was darkening, the movements getting slower, voices fading in and out. She was drifting beyond his reach.
She caught the rough guttural Arabic of the man who was with him. ‘Do it, brother. Why do you wait? Take her and kill the others. What are you waiting for?’
But the words meant nothing to her. And the silence that fell around her seemed to confirm that it was over.
‘You remember me?’ The nose, sharp and glistening was just inches away from her. ‘I knew I’d find you again.’ Youssef began to laugh. ‘You thought you could run, thought you were cleverer than us. Maybe you imagined your friends would rescue you. But now you will die at my hands. Do you know that now, American whore?’
The voice, soft and even. Syrian Arabic, she thought. The best, the most correct …
His face turned away from her, towards the others – the schoolteacher, the baker’s wife, Lubna, their faces expressionless.
Mai could feel them close to her, sense their calm.
Youssef knelt down beside the schoolteacher, laid a hand on his shoulder as if to comfort him. ‘You are the oldest, my friend. So perhaps I should kill you first. I shall try to make it last a little longer so that we can all enjoy it. What do you think?’
His hands fixed around the man’s throat and his fingers began to bite into the arteries.
Neither Youssef nor the commander saw the gun that killed them, they were far too busy exalting in the capture of their prey, the certainty that they were invincible; the pungent, thrilling jab of a kill.
So they hadn’t heard Ahmed’s entry into the smashed and broken building, hadn’t seen his sure-footed advance across the rubble and into the corridor that led to the kitchen. He had stood for a moment and listened, without emotion, to the rantings of Youssef and the curt commands of his companion and given no thought to the lives they had lived or the road that had led them to the schoolteacher’s house.
They were problems to be put aside, obstacles to be surmounted, the means to whatever end Moscow had decreed. It was routine, nothing more, checking the line of fire, deciding the order of the two targets, pumping the two soft-nosed bullets into the back of each head with precision and economy.
Youssef was dead by the time he had hit the floor, the commander took another bullet before he too stopped moving.
Ahmed bent and checked for a pulse on both men, replaced the gun in his pocket and looked back at the faces of the living.
‘It’s over. Don’t be frightened.’ He glanced quickly around the room and pointed at Mai. ‘I’ve come to take her home.’
The contact had been sent back down the road to collect the car. By the time he arrived and they had lifted her onto the back seat, Mai was unconscious.
Ahmed turned to her three companions who stood motionless beside the half-ruined house. The baker’s wife and the girl held hands. Beside them the schoolteacher stared straight ahead into the darkness. The wind tore at his straggly hair and the sleeves of his shapeless jacket.
Three people, he thought, who did not expect to live till the morning.
‘You need to leave here,’ he told them. ‘Now. There’s not much time. People will come looking for those men.’
‘Where will you take her?’ asked the baker’s wife.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Then go quickly,’ she said. ‘She needs urgent care. And when she’s better, tell her there are three people in Syria who will not forget her.’
Ahmed took the driver’s seat and guided the car slowly and without headlights along the rough track.
He felt troubled but it took a few minutes before he realized why.
So many years since he’d heard words of kindness from gentle people. People who looked out for others, who took no part in brutality or execution, who would always give more than they took.
They seemed to echo from a distant world he had once visited many years before – and to which he had never been able to return.
Margo led. A black woollen balaclava covered her blonde hair. In her right pocket she clutched the automatic, its silencer already in place.
She remembered smiling the first time they had handed her a gun in training. Didn’t want it, didn’t need it, she had told them. And they had shrugged and told her to do as she was told and learn how to use it. Such early days, she reflected – long before reality had broken down her door and stolen all the silly ideals. She had wanted to believe that intelligence was more about brains than bullets. But as she rose in the Service, the bullets came back into fashion. Colleagues left London in planes and returned in coffins, apparently unprotected by their brains.
Sam tapped her shoulder and pointed to a car, caked in filth, abandoned on a farmtrack. An old Mazda with local Jordanian plates.
He tried the doors but they were locked. ‘This is the Russian’s car. No doubt about it. If he makes it, he’ll come back here.’
They crouched in the shadow of a small hedgerow close by. Margo thought she felt snow. The cold seemed to have locked itself around her.
‘It’ll be light in less than an hour.’ Sam gestured towards the east. ‘He’ll have to hurry.’
Two hundred metres from the border, Ahmed ran the car into a ditch. He heard the figure on the back seat move and turned to look at her.
‘Can you hear me?’
Mai coughed. ‘Yes. Who are you?’ The voice was barely audible.
‘I work for the Russian government. They told me to find you and deliver you across the border to your friends from America. I know nothing more.’
The contact touched Ahmed’s arm and jerked his head at the border.
‘I’ll take a look outside.’
‘There may be patrols.’
The contact nodded. ‘I know this place.’
He slid out of the car and was lost in the darkness.
Mai tried to clear her throat. ‘Talk to me … please.’
Ahmed stared straight ahead. The windscreen had misted and he opened the side window to let in air.
In the driver’s mirror he caught sight of Mai, her eyes now shut. He didn’t know if she was still conscious. In any case he reckoned she would die soon. Perhaps that made it easier to talk.
He started haltingly, as if choosing foreign words from an unfamiliar book, his hands and fingers in constant motion, plucking and tugging at memories, long since abandoned.<
br />
He told her of a young Moscow boy, beaten often by his father, spoilt and idolized by his Jordanian mother; of the gangs he had joined and the victims they had chosen, of cruelty and power on the streets, of a tramp battered face-down in the snow, of fresh blood frozen where it had spilled.
Of guilt and shame.
Of the men in uniforms who had sought him out because he was good with his hands.
A story he had never told – to a listener who had never existed.
Mai opened her eyes. ‘And you’ve been here …’
‘… for years.’ He didn’t look round. ‘Since the killing began.’
‘But how have you survived?’
‘By force.’ He shrugged. ‘All I can do is create incentives for them not to kill me.’
‘Has anyone tried?’
He could see now that she was fully awake. And yet her ragged breathing told him it wouldn’t last.
‘Of course. It’s normal in this part of the world.’
‘What happened?’
‘Russian special forces came in and eliminated the man who attacked me.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Not quite. They killed him after killing his children, his wife and his grandmother in front of him and posting it on the internet. Even in this region, with its quite exceptional levels of brutality, people sat up and took notice of that.’
She didn’t say anything. He realized she was using him to help her stay conscious.
‘So they left me alone after that. The odd stray bullet. An accident here or there. But everyone avoids me if they can. They fear the Russians more than anyone else.’
She coughed for a few moments, tried to sit up. ‘You ever think about Moscow … what it was like there?’
‘Moscow? So different from here.’ Ahmed grinned. ‘If you want to do something in Russia, the first answer – automatically, instantly, without a second’s hesitation – is no. And then if you’re very clever – or rich – you get around the no and start pushing for some yeses.’ He shook his head. ‘Here, as you know, the first answer is always “yes”. Yes, of course, Habibi – my dear – it is the most wonderful idea in the world and it will all be agreed by tomorrow, I swear to you.’ He stopped and spread open his palms. ‘And then nothing. The man never calls and never contacts you again. So the project dies. Perhaps it died in the exact second that he gave you his approval and swore on all that was precious and sacred to make it work. You see? That’s the Middle East for you and for me.’ He fell silent for a moment, before turning back, trying to read her expression. ‘It’s a land of beautiful promises – broken in the same moment they are made.’
WASHINGTON DC
Harry knew there would be no sleep that night. Once again, as he had done every hour, he checked the battery on the unlisted mobile phone in his pocket.
It was the last of the devices Grigory had given him – to be used only for the final message.
They would hear it, the moment it was used. They would hear everything, sitting even now in the anonymous grey or silver van, parked at the end of his road. But they’d have been told to wait for orders.
No one would touch Harry Jones until the White House said so. This was the president’s call. And no sweaty-handed, gilt-badged subordinate from local law enforcement would get to press the button and bring him in.
He wondered how the president would feel when the time came – but it made no difference. The two of them would never meet again. Once the machine kicked in, the process would be ruthless and unstoppable.
It was odd to think of such things, surrounded, as he still was, by the normality of his own house and its green and pleasant neighbourhood.
In that moment, he was still free to do as he wished, to read or eat or play music – or to climb the stairs and sit beside Rosalind, sleeping in her sickbed, watched over by the night nurse.
Choices which would be taken from him within a few hours, before the sun came up over the eastern seaboard.
He tried to imagine how the handcuffs would feel on his wrists and whether the cold steel would bite deep into his skin.
Only then did the sadness and the sense of loss settle over him.
Harry looked at the phone, laid it on the desk beside him and shut his eyes.
He would never again know peace and privacy and the right to decide how he lived his life.
In a little while Harry Jones would be a case file, on its way to a grand jury and a courtroom.
A problem, about to be terminated.
LONDON
At three a.m. the prime minister’s wife had brought them coffee in the study.
She had asked if ‘everything was all right’ and had left without receiving an answer.
But the set of her husband’s jaw and the silence between the two men had told her all she needed to know.
When she’d gone the prime minister poured the coffee and took a cup over to Sears. ‘I want to know her name, Wally.’ It was an order.
‘Whose name?’
‘Don’t fuck me about. The name of the MI6 agent who’s in Jordan right now, trying to protect this country from enemies and allies alike – while we sit around pretending it’s nothing to do with us.’
Sears seemed about to object but the prime minister’s expression changed his mind. ‘Her name’s Margo Lane. She’s forty-three, single, born in North London, read Modern Languages at Oxford.’ He sipped the coffee and looked up at his boss, on the other side of the darkened room. ‘You want to say a prayer for her?’
BORDER
In the cramped rear of the Land Rover Manson heard the colonel’s radio burst into life and the short guttural exchange in Arabic.
The Jordanian turned to face him. ‘Patrol says someone’s moving out there. Single figure so far. Come with me.’
‘Wait.’ Manson leaned forward, hissing at him across the seats. ‘I made it perfectly clear: no one gets through tonight. Your men have orders to terminate whoever is crossing the border illegally …’
But the colonel was already outside the vehicle, moving stealthily across the freezing field. Manson caught up and tugged at his arm. The Jordanian shook himself free. ‘Listen to me. Sometimes children cross this border. Not many. Sometimes women. You want me to execute them in cold blood, whoever they are? I won’t do it. Nor will my men. Understood? You’ve two choices: go back to the Land Rover or come with me and stay silent. You’re in Jordan – you do as I tell you.’
The contact thought he’d been careful, thought he could find the way through, but he knew they had seen him, heard the shout and saw the movements a hundred metres to his left. Two, maybe three figures …
Stupid to have gone out there to recce – they might have been lucky and got across first time. But arrogance and bravado had got the better of him. Now he could sense the footsteps getting closer, knew the men would be younger and fitter and faster … and he couldn’t hold them for long.
He began to run. An old reflex. But it was pointless. He knew already there was nowhere to go. Only one thing left to do.
In his haste, he fumbled his mobile and sank to the ground to retrieve it. Just a second to dial Ahmed’s number.
Lying on the ground, face up, he saw the figures closing in on him. ‘Go now,’ he shouted into the phone, ‘go now … I’ll lead them away … go now.’
From his pocket he removed his favourite Glock pistol and wondered if he could buy the Russian a little more time.
Ahmed didn’t hesitate. Straight out through the driver’s door and from the back seat, he scooped Mai up in his arms, barely noticing the lightness of her body, face inert, eyes shut.
He wasn’t young but he was fit enough to do it. A fireman’s lift put her over his shoulder, her head down across his back, the long black hair, cascading towards the ground.
A final look back at the car and he caught the headlights skittering in the distance, moving rapidly towards him. Two sets at least. But it no longer mattered. Someone would have fou
nd the bodies at the schoolteacher’s house and would guess where he was heading. There was no way back.
He ran as best he could, bent double at the waist, like a strange primeval creature, eyes scanning for trouble. The ground was uneven, treacherous, and he skirted boulders and low fences. Despite the cold he could feel the sweat falling from his forehead, but he couldn’t wipe it. His left hand secured Mai to his back, the other was locked on the gun.
He was driven only by the mission, oblivious to risk, no star to guide him, no God to summon, skirting the frozen fields across a border that stood in name alone.
The living didn’t see him and the dead let him pass unhindered.
The line from a Russian poem dropped into his mind, repeating over and over again.
At the brow of the hill he stopped, heart heaving, and straightened his back. Turning, he could see the first light of day in a starless winter sky, the dawn seeping in over the path he had taken.
A moment later he heard two shots in quick succession and realized that the contact had paid the price for his journey.
Manson pulled out a flashlight, examined the body and swore under his breath.
He turned to the colonel. ‘How could you fuck it up this badly?’
For a moment, the Jordanian didn’t answer. Behind him, Manson glimpsed the men in black emerging from the darkness.
‘This is your doing.’ The colonel went over to Manson. ‘You wanted assurances no one would get across. There was no time for any identification.’ He jerked a hand at the body. ‘This man had a gun and he refused to drop it.’
‘Did he?’ Manson snorted. ‘I doubt he was even given the chance. Now there’s no way of knowing who he was and what he was doing here …’
He backed away angrily. ‘We have no idea what happened here tonight. You realize that? While you were chasing the wrong person, the woman might have got through.’ He threw up his arms. ‘What the hell? You don’t give a fuck anyway.’
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