by Tom Wood
It didn’t.
‘You okay over there?’ a woman said.
He grunted and shooed with his hand. He didn’t want help. He didn’t want the ruin that was Sykes to be witnessed, to be made real, accountable.
‘Need me to call someone? Get you home?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said without looking at her, breathing hard.
She stepped towards him and he attempted to shuffle away from her, but he found himself far too heavy to move with any effectiveness. Leaning was the best he could manage, until he realised he would tip over, and shot out a palm to steady himself.
Sykes spluttered, ‘I don’t want your help, lady.’
She positioned herself so he had no choice but to look at her. She lowered herself to her haunches, so her ankles became her legs, then body and then face. He found her attractive in the same way he found pretty much any woman attractive when he was hammered. Not that he remembered the last time his dick worked as it should.
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone?’
‘Leave. Me. Alone.’
She reached into a pocket of her coat. ‘Here, you can use my phone. You can keep it if you like.’
Sykes didn’t feel quite so drunk all of a sudden. He watched as the woman took a mobile from her pocket and held it out towards him. Now he understood.
‘Take it,’ she ordered.
Sykes obeyed.
THIRTY-NINE
The driver wasn’t just the driver. He was the go-between. The bag man. He knew who had hired the team of shooters to wipe out Totti and his crew and lie in wait for Raven. That man was a foreigner, an American. He’s old. Distinguished. He never gave a name, but I know where he’s staying…
That old man was staying in a rented apartment. It was the penthouse of a small tenement that occupied a corner in Rome’s old town. The converging streets were narrow; plenty of room for horses and the occasional carriage, but now part of a one-way system. Traffic was rare. Residents in this part of the city didn’t own cars. There were no garages and no room to park on the streets. There weren’t even any kerbs. It was quiet as a result.
Raven had done her homework, and found nothing interesting or concerning. After the ambush at Totti’s villa she had taken no chances with her preparations. She had risked losing her window with the old man instead of risking her life rushing into another trap.
To her surprise, there was no evidence of one. Whoever the old man was, he wasn’t scared of reprisals. He had to know she was getting close to him. But he hadn’t fled. He had stayed put, despite the massacre at Totti’s villa. She couldn’t help but wonder why.
A day was plenty of time to make an escape, but not a lot of time to assemble more shooters. The Consensus had no standing army of people to draw upon.
The old man’s bodyguard was a local from a security firm. He was a different man from the one who had been keeping the old man company during the daytime. They worked twelve-hour shifts to provide him with round-the-clock cover. Both were competent, from Raven’s observations, but after posing as a prospective client to scope out their firm, it was obvious they were no real threat to her. Both were big and intimidating, the sort of guys who were hired out by visiting pop stars. They were good at pushing away over-eager fans and carrying luggage, but they had no military background. Neither was a serious operator.
Which was interesting. Raven knew something wasn’t right, but she didn’t know what.
She needed to question the old man regardless. She couldn’t waste this chance to learn more about her enemies, and if there was nothing to learn in this instance, she could still remove another one of them. Maybe eliminate this entire cell’s operational capabilities.
It was too good an opportunity to miss.
She decided on a rooftop approach. No need to bother any of the neighbours in the apartments below that way. Aside from borrowing their balconies to scale the building, that is. In the late afternoon the neighbourhood was almost silent. Siesta time.
The penthouse’s balcony had terracotta tiles and wrought-iron railings. Some plants provided greenery around a bistro table and two chairs. She imagined it was a pleasant place to enjoy a glass of wine in the evening. French doors provided access to the rest of the apartment.
They were locked, but the lock was as quaint and charming as the neighbourhood, built in a quieter time.
She eased the doors open and stepped into an open-plan lounge and kitchen. It was bright, with plenty of ambient light from the sunshine outside flooding inside, and a flickering glow came from further inside, along with faint sounds of conversation. She pictured the bodyguard watching TV to pass the time while his client did whatever.
She kept close to the walls as she made her way over the floorboards. They looked solid and well-maintained, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. In the hall, she could hear the sound of the television enough to make out the laughter track of a sitcom.
It was a two-bedroom apartment, with a clear master bedroom and a second, smaller one, suitable for a ‘single bed’ or ‘home office’, she had learned from an old listing. As far as she could tell, the apartment was rented by an offshore company. There would be a spider-web of ownership behind it that would take forever to link to any individual.
There was no noise or any sign of activity from the master bedroom. The old man could be having a siesta. A decent parabolic microphone could have told her for certain before she had committed to entering the property, but she had no such luxuries.
She caught the bodyguard napping – literally. He had fallen asleep in front of the TV.
Raven shot him with one of the dart guns she had taken from the shooters in Totti’s villa.
It made a pop sound. Loud, like a balloon exploding.
The bodyguard woke up, wincing because he had a big dart in his shoulder, but he didn’t know that. His eyes struggled to focus on Raven as she reloaded the gun with another dart and shot him again. He was a big guy.
He said, ‘Who…?’ and passed out.
He had a gun, which she collected. Like the dart gun, like the night-vision scope, she looted what she could to utilise on the next mission. Spoils of war.
The old man was ready by the time Raven entered the master bedroom. He was sitting on an armchair with a pistol in his right hand, pointed at her.
She glanced at the desk next to him. ‘I don’t imagine you’re much of a shot without your glasses.’
‘They’re for reading.’
‘So go ahead, let’s see what you’re made of. Dare you.’
‘And why haven’t you shot me, Miss Stone?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘What is it with people refusing to call me Raven?’
He didn’t answer. ‘Is Luca dead?’
‘He’s sleeping. He’s going to wake up feeling like crap, but he’s going to wake up.’
‘How merciful of you.’
Raven said, ‘I’m not big on collateral damage, and I’m not going to kill innocent people just to get to the bad guys. That would make me a bad guy too, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not qualified to judge your motivation, Miss Stone. Perhaps I could recommend a psychiatrist to you.’
‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘But do you know what’s funnier? I told someone once about you guys. I tried to explain what you were. I said you were the old white men who ran the world. I wasn’t being literal. Yet here you are. Old. White. Male.’
‘I don’t rule the world, Miss Stone.’
‘You work for those who do.’
‘Maybe I work for no one. Maybe, like you, I serve my own interests and only my own interests.’
‘Then your interests must align with the others or they wouldn’t let you do what you do.’
‘You give them too much credit. You’re creating phantoms to explain what is very real, very human.’
‘I know all too well how real you guys are, and I like to demonstrate that you’re all
too human.’
The old man said, ‘Then perhaps you could tell me why you haven’t yet demonstrated my humanity. Why haven’t you killed me?’
‘I’m a traditional kind of gal. I like to get to know a person first.’
‘You can’t hope to learn anything from me. You must have realised by now that we operate with next to no knowledge of one another’s activities.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You Consensus guys have got a good thing going on there. Doesn’t make my job very easy, I’ll tell you that.’
‘We’re not called the Consensus, Miss Stone. We’re not called anything. We have no name.’
She shrugged. ‘You’re the Consensus to me. I had to name you something. When you say “they” or “them” all the time, people think you’re a conspiracy theorist in a tinfoil hat.’
‘We wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re crazy, now would we?’
‘I have a hard time convincing myself otherwise, let alone anyone else.’
The old man gestured with his pistol. ‘I’m going to set this down. It’s getting heavy.’
He did so with an exaggerated slowness. She watched, confused. Then she sidestepped towards the window, still keeping her own weapon aimed at him while she glanced outside. The street was empty. No sign of any backup.
‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ the old man said. ‘In fact, I’ve been waiting for you to come and see me.’
‘Don’t think you can convince me you mean me no harm. You’ve already tried to have me killed.’
‘That’s not my goal.’
‘It’s not? Because there’s a whole lot of corpses who would argue otherwise. I mean, if they could argue. They can’t, being dead. That’s part of the condition.’
‘I have sent only one team after you, and they were tasked with your apprehension, not execution.’
‘Then why the guns?’
‘Backup,’ the old man explained, ‘in the event the primary objective failed. A contingency is useful when dealing with a dangerous individual such as yourself.’
‘Stop it, you’ll make me blush.’
The old man said, ‘Killing you has been a goal of ours for a long time, given your insatiable desire to do us harm, but I’m of the belief that there are other, better solutions to the particular problem that is you. It is a problem I have inherited and thought carefully about. I believe my predecessors lacked imagination. I believe they misjudged you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Why do you think I put down the gun?’
‘Because you’re a weak old man with about as much chance of hitting me as we both have of being struck by lightning at the same time?’
‘Amusing,’ he said. ‘I had read about your glibness. I told you I don’t want to kill you and I know, once this conversation is concluded, you won’t kill me either.’
‘Keep dreaming.’
‘Your parents are both dead, correct?’
‘Thanks for reminding me of that particular pain. But, please, give me even more reasons to dislike you.’
‘You have no family at all, do you? No dependants?’
‘No one for you to use against me,’ she said, and then regretted it.
‘That’s what it says in your file, otherwise we would have exploited that by now. However, when I said my predecessors lacked imagination, I wasn’t just talking about their desire to kill you. You see, no one looked beyond your CIA file, and why would they? Because you would have been thoroughly vetted. But the Agency was only looking at you as a person, as a potential threat. They weren’t looking for leverage. They weren’t picking apart your young life to find any potential weakness that could one day be used against you. Your file listed blood relations, naturally. But not those that would be considered family by any other name.’
Raven felt cold.
The old man said, ‘How’s your brother Ben getting on these days?’
FORTY
Raven hid her rising nausea. The old man was bluffing. They didn’t know about her brother. No one did. Maybe they found out the name, but he was her stepbrother in everything but name. They had grown up together. Her mother had taken Ben in when his junkie mom had abandoned him. It had never been official. No papers, no adoption, because the junkie mom had got herself cleaned up in the end and wanted Ben back. By then he didn’t want to go back. He never changed his name. He stayed with them, where he wanted to stay. He was her brother but not via biology and not on paper.
‘It took considerable time and effort to find him,’ the old man explained. ‘Ironically, had you not gone rogue, had you not turned against us, we would never have known about him. Only in our hunt for you did we stumble across his existence. There’s no legal document linking the two of you, but plenty of your old high-school year who never moved away knew about Constance and her “brother”, Ben. All the algorithms in the world couldn’t discover what legwork and small talk could. Of course, it helped you that he moved to Scotland, which certainly slowed the process. I dare say much of the trouble you have caused us might have been averted had my predecessors known what I know.’
She was caught in a moment of indecision: deny the connection or pretend it didn’t matter. They already knew Ben was real so she said, ‘He’s nothing to me. I haven’t seen him in years.’
‘I thought you might say something like that. But you must know you can’t bluff your way out of this. If there is even a one per cent chance you care about Ben, then we will act on that. If you haven’t seen him in years then you might not be aware he’s married now. He has a lovely Scottish wife, Suzanne. She runs a book store. It’s losing money, but it means a lot to her. Ben has taken over her father’s farm. The father’s too old to run it himself, but he thinks of Ben as a son. Ben and Suzanne seem happy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking of starting a family.’
Raven couldn’t speak.
‘I see you didn’t know about the wedding. Must hurt not to have been invited.’
It did hurt. She hadn’t seen Ben since she began doing black ops, not since they were kids, when they were still close. They had been the same age, brought together by chance, two lost souls without siblings. Their bond had been like no other. Which was why she hadn’t seen him for ten years, doing everything she could to keep him secret, to keep him safe from what she was doing for her country, then safe from her enemies. She kept wanting to seek him out, to ask how he was doing, to hug him, but the more she learned about the Consensus, the more impossible that hug became. She thought it had worked too. It had worked, but no longer.
‘You should have known this would happen one day. Everyone can be found if one knows how to look.’
She had no choice but to ask, ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to work for us again, Miss Stone. I want you to work for me. The team at Totti’s villa were there to drug you and bring you to me so we could have this very conversation. There is nothing personal between us. I care about very few people, least of all those you have killed to expedite my progression in – what did you call it? – the Consensus. I want to bring you back on side, to make use of your talents in the way they were designed.’
‘And in return you leave Ben and Suzanne alone?’
‘A simple arrangement that benefits all parties involved, wouldn’t you say?’
‘How do I know you’ll stick to the deal?’
‘If you have reservations, I’m happy to kill Suzanne first, just to prove to you that we’re serious, just to incentivise you to do as we ask. And, naturally, we will make sure Ben knows that you could have saved his lovely wife but chose not to.’
‘You’re a monster.’
‘I’m whoever I need to be. Now, I’m your new boss.’
Raven said, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘What you’re good at, what you’re best at. I want you to kill for me.’
‘Who?’
‘All in good time, but, naturally, someone whose death we would benefit from.’
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‘You mean someone who is a threat to you,’ she said. ‘Like I am.’
The old man smiled. ‘Like you were.’
Raven understood. This target would be someone important, someone who would be missed, and they wanted her to do this particular job because she was already a wanted woman, already a rogue assassin. No need to create a narrative for the assassination when there already was one. Then the Consensus could pass the baton to the whole US intelligence community. They would come after her with everything they had.
‘So I’ll be on the run and too occupied to come after you. Clever. I like it.’
‘That’s correct, Miss Stone. But Ben and Suzanne will be safe. They’ll be alive.’
‘What’s stopping me killing you right now and going straight to Ben and Suzanne?’
He checked his watch. ‘Because tonight you need to be in Prague. There’s a man-made beach along the river. There’ll be a bank of payphones near it. One will ring at midnight. The one on the east edge. You’re going to answer it. You will be provided with another city, another address, another deadline. I’m sure you can see the merits of this. If you don’t pick up by the third ring, your brother and his wife die.’
‘What if the phone is being used?’
‘Get there early. Make sure no one is using it.’
‘My flight could be delayed.’
‘Miss Stone, if you want your brother to stay alive, you will find a way to pick up that phone when it rings. And please note that we are closely monitoring Ben. If you attempt to contact him, that will be the last time you hear his voice.’
‘What happens if I make all the calls? You can’t keep me bouncing around indefinitely.’
‘At some point you’ll end up in the right city and you’ll receive your assignment.’
‘How do I know this isn’t a trap to kill me?’
‘If I wanted to kill you, this would be the trap. But, unlike my predecessors, I don’t wish a bloodbath. You’re not the type of girl who goes quietly, are you?’
‘That almost sounds like another compliment.’
