The History Book

by Humphrey Hawksley

  She eases out the throttle a fraction more, feeling the craft accelerate. Then she jumps.

  The cold shock of the water is more brutal than she’d expected, knocking air from her lungs. The bag on her back wrenches against her shoulder. She kicks to keep her head above water and finds her feet pushing into soft mud, knee deep.

  Kat pulls herself free, rolls onto her back, hears the roar of Mason’s engine, and glimpses lights as his craft speeds past her.

  She swims the few yards to where mud, slime, and water meet and lets the water push her up and ground her.

  She hears the helicopter again, and the dawn helpfully reveals it, a two-seater, like the ones used for traffic reports, flying fast and straight from the south about half a mile out to sea.

  She clutches at clumps of grass and hauls herself up onto solid land. Then she sees another smaller river, more like a stream or canal. She half swims, half wades across. She crawls into a field, freshly harvested, grazing herself on sharply cut stubble.

  A few hundred yards away, seagulls are following a tractor. Behind her, on what looks like an island, the helicopter is touching down next to a metallic, oblong building that looks like a warehouse.

  Kat needs fog or darkness, but instead she’s got a rising sun on a hot day. She gets the GPS from the bag, takes off its waterproof cover, and waits for it to tell her where she is. She came ashore on Sudbourne Beach and swam across the River Alde. She has more than a mile of marshes to cross before she gets to the nearest road. Inland farther is the village of Sudbourne. After that, there’s a forest.

  Kat slips down the green waterproof cover of the cell phone. It’s a standard military-issue Motorola 358A, used by many agencies in the field. She snaps off the back, takes out the SIM card, closes the phone, and turns it on. As it boots itself up, Kat concludes from each message and symbol that, as soon as she uses it, the phone will be tracked by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

  The only sign of human movement around her is the tractor.

  With each step the land becomes firmer, but the cover less. Kat crawls most of the way, except when she wades through small, crisscrossing tributaries. At the fence of the field where the tractor is working, Kat wriggles forward on her stomach, breathing in the stench of manure. The field is dotted with shelters shaped like old aircraft hangars, tubes cut in half, with the pigs nesting down inside and roaming free inside the field. At each shelter, the tractor stops, the driver climbs down, takes a sack of straw off the trailer, and clears out the shelter. A dog runs alongside.

  Kat slithers forward through dewy grass, unhooks the bag, pushes it under the fence, then squeezes under herself. To her left, there’s a jumble of metal hanging from the fence like a wind chime. The tractor is too loud and far away for the driver to hear. Kat listens to the sucking-in of her own breath.

  From behind, she hears the sound of the helicopter again, taking off across the water.

  The tractor driver climbs up into the cab, reverses the trailer between two shelters. The driver is a woman, not much taller than Kat, with dark hair tied back and a long, serious face.

  The helicopter begins a wide seaward loop, heading south to where Kat left the raiding craft.

  Kat is on her feet, running. The ground is uneven, with puddles of water, soft pig and cow shit, and ruts made by the tractor wheels. She keeps her eyes on the farmer, who’s kneeling on all fours, and when she starts to back out of the shelter, Kat drops hard to the ground.

  The farmer moves to the back of the trailer, where she brings down a sack, slices open the top, and scoops out feed with a shovel. There’s a cell phone sitting in a cradle just to the left of the steering wheel.

  Kat keeps moving, but looks back, the sun in her face. When she reaches the huge tractor wheel, the dog, a brown and white foxhound, lopes toward her with a stream of high-pitched barking.

  The farmer edges back from the shelter, hand on the low roof, helping herself to her feet. Her eyes are dark and alert, flickering briefly to the gulls with curiosity, then with fury to the approaching helicopter. She shakes the feed scoop like a weapon.

  “You snooping bastards!” she shouts.

  Then she catches sight of Kat, and her eyes stay on her while the helicopter roars back overhead and makes a loop for a return run.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Thursday, 6:20 a.m., BST

  Enormous eyes framed by a weather-beaten face, teeth yellow from cigarettes, keep Kat in sight while the farmer checks that all is intact on the tractor. She’s wearing loose denim pants with pockets and a red checkered shirt. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, then rests both hands inelegantly on her hips.

  “Is it you he’s looking for?” she says. Her expression is of neither shock nor anger.

  “I need your phone,” says Kat, pointing up to the dashboard.

  The eyes don’t leave her. Nothing hostile. Nothing friendly. “That phone’ll get us into trouble.”

  The driver peels back Velcro from a pocket in the right leg of her pants and brings out another cell phone, holding it out to Kat. “This one’s registered in my dummy name, Margaret. Dump it when you’ve finished.”

  “Thank you,” says Kat, hiding her surprise. She takes the phone, staying pressed against the tractor wheel, hidden from the helicopter. It’s a regular Nokia, meaning its SIM card should fit the Motorola.

  Margaret jerks her head skyward. “With him so skittish up there, you’d best go where he can’t see you.” She points to the shelter that she’s just been clearing out.

  “I just need to—” Kat begins.

  Margaret raises a knotty finger to her lips. “I don’t want to know who you are, what you are, or where you come from.”

  The dog paws Margaret’s ankle. Margaret stoops down, crawls into the shelter, and beckons for Kat to follow.

  “It doesn’t matter, you knowing the dog’s name, though,” she says once they’re inside, under cover. She picks up the dog; its tongue is all over her face. A sow is lying on her side at one end with a litter on her nipples. The straw is damp and smells of urine.

  “Rufus has a gammy leg, so I kept him, when they made me get rid of all the other hunting dogs,” she says. Her voice breaks, and she lets the dog jump out of her arms, out of the shelter, and back to the trailer.

  She rearranges straw at the entrance. “My husband had twenty-five years with a clean license, a law-abiding citizen, then in the space of six months, his driving license was taken away because they said he kept breaking the speed limit. Nothing changed about the way he drove. They put a camera on every corner, then when they don’t like someone, they find something you’re doing wrong. They used speeding tickets to destroy him.”

  She points out toward the sky. “What I’m trying to say is that they’ll get you in the end, but don’t go without a fight. If he’s your enemy, you’re my friend. And that’s all we need to know about each other. Now, hide up here until he buggers off.”

  Kat has a clear view on both sides out into the field. She fires up the Nokia and turns on the GPS she took from the launch. The Nokia shows a full signal with £100 of prepaid credit. She dials Bill Cage and listens to white noise and the twitter of a satellite.

  It’s been a day and half since he told her she was wanted on a federal double homicide rap, and since then, Sayer said Cage himself had been pulled in for questioning.

  He answers, knows it’s her because no one else uses this number.

  “You okay?” Cage’s voice is tired, strained.

  “I’m fine,” says Kat. “You?”

  “The FBI searched my house and your apartment,” he says quickly. Kat hears a distant siren. Cage is walking, and it’s 1:30 a.m. in Washington. “Can you stay clear of Sayer until Sunday?”

  “Believe me, I’m trying. What’s with Sunday?”

  “Once the CPS is signed, they might back off.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I wish the fuck I knew.”

  “My da
d—is he alive?”

  Silence.

  “Yulya Gracheva. She killed Suzy, right?”

  Silence. The line’s gone dead.

  Kat lies flat, her face in the stinking straw, looking out at the shadow of the helicopter. It comes in hot and fast and lands heavily on the grass 150 yards away, near the tractor. Margaret walks toward it, hands on hips, as the door opens and the pilot jumps down. Kat can read the make—a Robinson 22—and the words SUFFOLK CONSTABULARY on the side.

  Neither of Kat’s phones would be secure. But would the response be this quick? Or has Margaret turned her in? From the body language between the two of them, Kat can’t tell which.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Thursday, 6:34 a.m., BST

  The sow stirs and scrambles to her feet, scattering her piglets into the straw, shakes herself, and waddles to the entrance.

  Kat uses the Motorola to go into an Internet search engine that matches English postal codes to locations on the GPS map, which is coming up with house names like Hill Farm, Stanny Farm, High House, Church Farm.

  If Stephen Cranley had been transferred to the zone of East Anglia, he might have a home in the area. It’s a long shot, but worth a try.

  She types in BRITISH TELEPHONE DIRECTORY and gets to British Telecom, where she tries Cranley, initial S. She skips the street and city names and puts in just IP, the first two letters of the postal code.

  The message appears: SORRY, NO KNOWN SUBSCRIBER.

  Brick wall.

  Outside, the pilot has both hands on Margaret’s shoulders. Margaret knocks them aside angrily and steps back.

  Kat uses the Nokia to dial Mercedes Vendetta in Washington.

  “Hey, Kat, where you at?” So he’s not locked up; it’s hard to sound that mellow when you’re in police custody.

  “Hoping to speak to someone by the name of Leroy Jenkinson.” She uses the lilt of Dix Street slang, like when they joke together.

  “Anyone tell you that, they’re looking at history.”

  “Your own history?”

  “I don’t do history.”

  “Past few days, you been behind bars?”

  “What shit you talkin’?”

  “I heard it.”

  “You heard shit.”

  “You been talkin’ ’bout me to anyone?”

  He sounds less mellow now. “Why I been talkin’ if no one’s been askin’?”

  “I need straight talk, M,” she says, her own tone hardening.

  “I love the way you say my name.”

  “You heard about me being on a homicide rap?”

  “I have not. But I do know you are not a natural killer.”

  “You heard about any shooting around any embassy?”

  “Not that either.”

  “The cops been asking you about me?”

  “They haven’t. Should they?”

  “You remember me telling you about my sister, Suzy?”

  “You never stopped talkin’ about Suzy. Wish I had a brother love me like you love Suzy.”

  “You heard anything about her?”

  “We walk in different worlds. You know that. Why all the questions? You in trouble?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You wanna come by?”

  “I’m outta town. I needed to know about those things, that’s all.”

  Out in the field, the pilot and Margaret are still shouting at each other. A white car’s winding down the road toward them.

  “You sound like one worn-out babe,” says Vendetta. “I tell you two things. My birth name was Leroy Jenkinson. But no cops have been round askin’ ’bout me or you.”

  Nate Sayer lied to her. Or someone lied to him. Or Mercedes is lying to her. Or the FBI are onto Cage, but not Mercedes?

  The car rounds a corner into the shade, a blue light rotating on its roof. Two uniformed men get out, dark pants, white, short-sleeved shirts. One walks over to the pilot and shakes his hand. The other’s talking into a radio and pointing over toward Kat. As Mercedes has been talking, another name has come to her, the man who drove Liz to the parking lot, who spoke to her for five seconds with a pipe, a dog, an SUV, and an aristocratic English accent.

  Simon Tappler.

  “Gotta go, M,” she whispers. “Love you.”

  She punches Tappler, initial S into the Telecom search engine.

  Kat stays flat on her stomach, her face brushing the straw, nostrils fighting the stench, waiting for the search.

  The cop from the white car finishes on the radio. Margaret gets back onto the tractor, points over in Kat’s direction, lights a cigarette, and draws on it as if it’s the nozzle of an oxygen tank. The pilot walks to the helicopter. The cops go to their car.

  Kat’s eyes are on the search screen. TAPPLER, S. W. CHERRY TREE FARM, BRADFIELD ST MARK, SUFFOLK, IP30 0EH. The map scrolls through until it settles on a speck about 50 miles inland from where she is now.

  Gradually, the engine rumble of the tractor gets closer. Ice churns in Kat’s stomach, and her defenses tighten.

  It pulls up across the entrance to the shelter. Margaret jumps down with a pitchfork and a bucket of pig feed. She forks through the straw near Kat. “Keep your head down, and get up into the trailer,” she says. “Lie flat. I’m going to cover you with pig shit and get you out of here.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Thursday, 7:16 a.m., BST

  They know you jumped into the water, but they don’t know where,” says Margaret, taking a tight left turn. “The pilot called the police when he saw me working.”

  They’re in her battered green sedan, with torn seats and broken taillight. Rufus stands on a blanket thrown over the backseat, his nose catching the wind out of the window. Margaret’s given Kat a wide sunhat, tilted to cover her face from the view of oncoming drivers.

  Kat’s told her where she needs to go.

  They drive through a copse of trees, heavy with late-summer leaves, past a field of horses, and come out again into vast stretches of harvested fields and hog shelters.

  “The Snape Maltings concert hall.” Margaret glances hard at Kat. “They say a young woman was killed there on . . .” She lifts her hand off the wheel to her mouth. “Wait a minute. She was an American, and you’re—”

  “I’m from the States, yes,” says Kat.

  Margaret’s eyes flit back to the road, her expression flat. They pass between a church on the left and a freshly planted forest of saplings. She slows for an intersection.

  “You anything to do with it?”

  “She was my sister.”

  Margaret turns right into a wider, better-surfaced road with markings in the middle. “I’m sorry.”

  Kat expects another question, but Margaret adds, “We mind our own business in this part of the world.”

  They travel in silence with a long stretch of forest on their left, bringing in smells of pine. Margaret slows where the road forks, checks for traffic, begins to pull out, then brakes so sharply that Rufus yelps and falls against the back of Kat’s head.

  Around the curve to their right is a police cordon.

  Margaret turns the wheel left, away from it, and goes quickly until they’re out of sight. Kat pushes Rufus out of the way and puts the GPS to the window.

  “Fifty yards up, take the right fork in the road,” Kat says.

  The signpost at the fork reads BRADFIELD ST MARK—2.

  “A couple of hundred yards through the village, turn right.”

  “Where do you want to go, exactly?” Margaret asks it like she already knows.

  “Cherry Tree Farm,” says Kat.

  The foot eases on the accelerator. Margaret stares straight ahead, shaking her head. “Are you with Tappler’s lot?”

  “I need to find him.”

  Margaret’s face becomes rigid. “Keep the hat. Keep the mobile phone,” she says. “There’s a farm track round the back of the Tappler house. You’ll find a gap in the hedge. Go through that, keep to the right side of the tennis court. You’ll co
me to a stone gardening shed which used to be a private chapel. You’ll know it from the cross above the door. From there you get a good view into the house, kitchen to the left, dining room center, then living room. If the police cordon is because of you, and if you’re associated with Tappler, then they might be at his house as well.”

  Kat gets out of the car. Margaret drives on.

  Three vehicles are in the driveway: a dark blue Jaguar sedan, a red Mini Cooper, and a Toyota Highlander. The garden shed is derelict, with moss and weeds growing up inside it and a glassless window that gives her a view into Tappler’s kitchen. The kitchen window is diagonally crisscrossed with small panes, topped by a sagging timber with maroon paint peeling off it. The sun’s rising on the other side, and the kitchen’s lit by a single overhead bulb. The house is older than anything Kat’s seen in the States.

  She sees Tappler first, right hand on the window frame, left cupped around the bowl of his pipe, sharp eyes scanning the garden.

  Behind him, she recognizes Stephen Cranley, sitting at a table in the middle of the kitchen, ending a call on a cell phone. He gets up and rests a hand on Tappler’s shoulder.

  Cranley’s expression is that of a man who has absorbed much in a short space of time but remains in control.

  Her eyes scan what she can see of the rest of the room. Nothing lavish there. Wooden chairs, not even matching. The oven’s to the left. The sink faces out the other side into the morning sun, which isn’t over the house yet, so Kat’s part of the garden remains in shadow.

  A beam of sunlight hits her in the eyes. It comes from the far side of the house, where it’s reflected off a driveway mirror put there to check oncoming traffic.

  Cranley steps back from the window. He has a glove in his right hand, palm open, balancing a pistol, checking the rounds in its magazine.

  It’s likely cameras have picked her up coming in, and Cranley knows she’s nearby.

  Hands raised, Kat steps out of her cover. Tappler opens the door with Cranley watching their perimeter, gun at the ready.