Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  It was a dark place, Alliance Base, or so she had always found it. Something about the very structure, full of foreboding. Its head offices—Gauthier’s among them—located in the center of the building, as far away as possible from any exterior walls.

  Every window in the building replaced with thick, one-way ballistic glass. Allowing only light to enter. . .and nothing to escape. A black hole.

  A far cry from the corporate offices she had known a decade earlier as a chief executive in the French aerospace industry, Brunet mused, the elevator doors closing on her as she pressed the button for the ground floor—reaching up to brush a strand of jet-black hair back from her eyes as she leaned back against the wall of the elevator.

  Her transition from the private to the public sector had been relatively seamless—an extension of having handled Astrium’s contracts with the French military for years before her early retirement from the company.

  Acclimating herself to the shadowy world that was the intelligence business had taken far, far longer. And now, confronting the Islamist threat like this, in her own country. . .

  The doors of the elevator opened and she walked out into what an American intelligence officer stationed there had, years before, informally termed “the bullpen”—a large, open space filled with workstations—large flat-screen televisions mounted on the northern wall, tuned into cable news networks from around the world, dominantly the United States and Europe.

  Brunet overheard snatches of conversation from analysts huddled around their desks as she passed through on her way to the exit—all of it in French, which was the working language of the center. A convenient fig leaf, considering that the majority of their operational budget came courtesy of the CIA.

  And then she saw it, the empty desk sitting there amidst the commotion surrounding it, its chair pushed in—the screen of its monitor dark, powered off.

  Her face twisted into a grimace, remembering the funeral as if it had been just the previous day. Victor Mandel. Forty-one—over a decade her junior—a husband and a father of two. Prior military and a veteran DGSE analyst, one of her finest.

  Killed over a month earlier, shot to death aboard the train returning to Paris from Caen, where he’d spent an early summer holiday with his family.

  A young Algerian man had stood up in the middle of the crowded train car—screaming “Allahu akbar!” as he pulled a Glock from within his jacket.

  And Mandel had rushed him, like the soldier he was—like he had been to the very end—taking a bullet to the chest and still grappling desperately with him for the weapon. Until two more rounds entered his body.

  He’d died fifteen minutes later, his head in his teenage daughter’s lap—his blood flecking her white blouse.

  An attack that had, like so many before it, originated in Brussels. More specifically, in the district of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek.

  It couldn’t be allowed to continue. Brunet pursed her lips together, shaking her head as she turned reluctantly to leave. Far more was riding on LYSANDER’s success than she cared to admit.

  Everything. . .

  6:33 P.M. British Summer Time

  A terraced house

  Abbey Road, London

  “. . .facing more unrest in the streets of London as the investigation continues into the murder of prominent right-wing publisher Arthur Colville and the coalition government in Westminster struggles to consolidate power in the wake of Labour’s fall. Here to discuss the ongoing situation with us is UK political analyst Naveen Bhargava. Naveen, could you. . .”

  The voice of the BBC presenter droned on from the flat-screen television mounted on a stand in the corner of the den as the man came back into the darkened room. Slight and of medium stature, he was just passing middle-age, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled past his elbows—a single malt poised delicately between his long fingers, crystal glittering in the light from the television’s screen.

  He paused by the bookshelf before returning to his armchair, his eyes flickering across the haphazardly-arranged books—gilt-bound volumes of Shelley, Byron, and Kipling mixed in with Rousseau and Solhenitsyn—a ragged paperback of the first volume of Das Kapital, half-concealed behind the old photograph propped up in front of it.

  Three men, standing on a street corner in West Berlin—two Americans and an Englishman.

  Frank Beecher, David Lay. . .and a much younger version of himself, so very many years ago.

  We three spies, Julian Marsh thought, a wry smile tugging at his lips as he retrieved the photograph from the shelf, turning it over in a weathered hand.

  The bad old days of the Cold War—out on the front lines where East had once met West.

  An age gone by, just like so much else, the director-general of the UK Security Service reflected, returning the photograph to its place on the shelf as he walked back over to his chair—sinking into its comfortable depths as he placed the crystal tumbler on the end table beside it, retrieving his reading glasses.

  Former director-general, that is, he corrected, catching himself as he had so many times over the past few weeks. For that too was in the past—his career just another casualty of the political unrest that had engulfed the UK since the terrorist attack targeting the Royal Family two months before.

  Since the Security Service had been implicated in the murder of Arthur Colville, a newspaper publisher who, in the wake of the attacks, had begun to release hundreds of classified documents outlining the Service’s failure to stop the plot as it unfolded.

  He’d been found four days later, shot to death in his house in the Midlands, along with three members of his security team. Executed, the lot of them.

  There’d been no evidence of his killer, but in the wake of the revelations. . .the media’s finger of blame had been left pointing directly at MI-5.

  Marsh sighed, adjusting his glasses as he picked up the remote, switching off the BBC newscast. The news, the security of the realm, none of it was his concern. Not anymore.

  He’d been forced to resign by the Home Office in the midst of the media firestorm, a last desperate flailing move to avert disaster by a government whose own days were numbered, with MP Daniel Pearson calling for a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons only three days after he’d left the Service.

  We all fall down. The vote had passed by an overwhelming margin, toppling the government. Leaving chaos behind as rival parties scrambled to consolidate power.

  To bring order to a country that seemed increasingly hellbent on tearing itself apart.

  And that had been Colville’s plan all along, the former intelligence officer mused, the publisher accomplishing in death so much of what he had failed to in his life.

  Marsh shook his head, nursing his scotch as he leaned back into the chair. And none of that was his concern, as he kept telling himself. Again and again—an impulse, a force of habit almost as difficult to turn off as that which still made him take a dress shirt out of the closet every morning. An addiction. Powerful as any narcotic.

  He turned on the light beside his chair and retrieved his copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed from the end table with a restless sigh, flipping it open to the piece of scrap paper serving as his marker.

  He’d been educated as a young man as a classicist at Cambridge, where MI-5 had first recruited him—if this forced retirement was going to be good for anything, perhaps it would permit him to return to the passions of his youth.

  Some of them, anyway.

  He’d been reading five minutes when his mobile rang, an unfamiliar number displayed on its screen as he reached for it, answering with a cautious, “Yes?”

  “Julian, something’s come up,” a man began, Marsh instantly recognizing his voice. Phillip Greer. The head of the Security Service’s D Branch—Counterintelligence. “Is it possible for us to meet?”

  Marsh let out a deep breath, staring for a long moment at the ceiling of the den. “Whatever this is about. . .I can’t help you, Phillip. My clearance is no
longer what it was, as we both know full well.”

  “This concerns our friend in the Midlands,” Greer responded after a moment’s pause. Arthur Colville. “The bookshop, Julian—five tomorrow evening?”

  The former director-general swore beneath his breath, shaking his head. All right. “Five tomorrow.”

  7:03 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Parc du Cinquentenaire

  Brussels, Belgium

  It was a beautiful evening to take one’s family to the park, the man thought, a wistful smile flitting across his dark, weathered face.

  Clear and fair—the bright rays of the setting sun casting a long shadow before him as he walked across the grounds toward the Arcade du Cinquentenaire, the massive triple arch which anchored the center of the U-shaped complex of the building, weaving his way through the clustered groups of people gathered upon the green with a deceptively aimless purpose.

  If anyone was following him—and no one was, he was quite certain of that after the previous two hours he’d spent doubling back upon himself—they were going to have trouble marking his position amidst the throng of tourists and holiday-goers—a group of them clustered around a young woman’s easel to one side of the walk.

  His own children, well. . .he smiled. They were far beyond such simple pleasures. Grown and gone, scattered across the face of the earth.

  His son, a day trader in Hong Kong. His daughter—in Toronto, working as a climate change activist.

  Only he remained. He and Claire, together as always throughout the decades.

  He glanced up as he approached the arch, the greenish bronze of the sculpture surmounting it looming high above him, a female charioteer representing Brabant itself forming the centerpiece of the quadriga—standing erect in the chariot, the Belgian flag held aloft in her hand.

  His gaze flickering away from the statuary to search the face of the nearby wall for the tell, the single, unobtrusive line of chalk that would serve to alert him that a drop had been made.

  The photo ID in the man's wallet identified him as Armand Césaire, an officer of the French diplomatic service, headquartered in Quai d'Orsay in Paris—here in Brussels these last few months as a part of the staff of the Ambassade de France, a half-dozen kilometers to the west of the park.

  The name was his own, given to him by his parents nearly sixty years prior, in his birthplace on the West Indies island of Guadeloupe. As for his place of employment, it lay further to the east in Paris, along the Boulevard Mortier—the imposing building which served as the headquarters of the DGSE.

  He'd spent more than three decades as a case officer of his country's foreign intelligence service—the majority of it in Africa, the color of his skin giving him an advantage in recruiting local assets on the continent as France struggled through the final throes of a dying colonialism.

  And now. . .he found himself here, as the seeds of those years began to bear the bitterest of fruits. Defending his country, as ever before.

  The wall was naked and bare, his eyes failing to find the slightest trace of what he was looking for as he passed on without pausing beneath the arch—giving no outwardly visible sign of his interest.

  LYSANDER had yet to make contact. . .

  Chapter 2

  8:09 A.M., June 25th

  Brussels, Belgium

  Fear. A nameless panic seeming to wash over him, his leg muscles protesting from long disuse as he pedaled on, the wheels of the bike a blur as it careened down the shaded Brussels street and across an intersection. Faster and faster. As if trying to escape the demons, the ghosts of the past crowding into his mind—drowning out all thought of anything else.

  Screaming out for attention. For redress that would no longer be denied.

  The haze cleared just long enough for Harry Nichols to glimpse a group of tourists paused on the crosswalk ahead, his hand squeezing the bell to sound a warning as he leaned right, guiding his bike around them at the last minute.

  Curses in three languages floating out after him as he picked up speed once again, going. . .he knew not where.

  Escape.

  He stopped only when exhaustion overtook him, on the outskirts of the Cinquentenaire—a large, spacious park in Brussels not more than a few kilometers from their dingy Molenbeek apartment.

  Leaning the bike against a tree as he collapsed onto a park bench—nearly doubled over, his legs burning from the exertion. Biting his tongue to keep from crying out from the pain in his side, the wounds in his abdomen still healing and reminding him of it every time he subjected them to strain, as he struggled to get himself back into condition—the limitations imposing a keen awareness that he was no longer what he once had been.

  That what had been so simple almost two decades earlier, making his way through CIA training at The Farm in Camp Peary, Virginia was no longer nearly as effortless now, as he found himself nearing forty.

  But he had no other choice. Not if he wanted to stay alive.

  But is that really what you want? A haunting voice from somewhere deep within asked—no, demanded. Insistent, unanswerable.

  He’d spent a career staying alive—fifteen years as a paramilitary operations officer for the US Central Intelligence Agency, the euphemistically-named “Special Activities Division.” Fighting for a flag, all over the world.

  Fighting. Surviving, where other—better—men had died, all through the years. The guilt of the survivor, that most crushing of burdens. The moment when your own humanity was brought back into stark focus and you realized you couldn’t save the world. You couldn’t even save the ones you loved.

  His own faith left in ashes, setting him adrift. At the end of all dreams.

  The face of a woman, staring back at him from a photograph as flames licked at the paper, circling around and around her face until she vanished from sight, only the charred embers remaining. The embers of what might have been.

  But that was all in the past. . .or was it?

  Harry leaned back against the park bench, drinking in great gulps of air—his sides heaving as he reflected on Yassin’s words from the previous day.

  He had known the danger, coming here to Brussels—to Molenbeek. And he had come all the same, for he’d had no other choice. A wounded animal, on its last legs—seeking refuge from the hunters.

  And that’s what Molenbeek was. A refuge. The last place those who had once employed him would ever think to look—that he would be hiding, not in plain sight, but among the very people he’d made a career of tracking down. Hunting.

  But now. . .he closed his eyes, fighting back the pain—his right hand balling into a fist, the knuckles of his left whitening around the arm of the bench.

  Now he found himself coming to the inescapable conclusion that he had gravely miscalculated. Flown too close to the flame.

  Echoes of his past, come back to haunt him. And this time, there was no team. No fallback. No support network. No extraction.

  The pain seemed to pass over him and he opened his eyes to scan the park—searching, as ever, for threats. Overcome by the irony of it all.

  He’d spent years on his own, out far beyond the edge—

  prosecuting the “war on terror” in the dark shadows of the world.

  But he’d never been truly alone. . .until now.

  He shook his head, a bitter ghost of a smile passing across his face. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. . .

  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. . .

  4:53 P.M. British Summer Time

  A bookshop

  Central London

  He’d been coming to Cyril’s for something near thirty years, Julian Marsh thought, the bell ringing as he pushed open the door to the small bookshop—tucked down an obscure side street on the outskirts of London’s West End.

  Thirty years, and so very little had changed—the interior uncertainly lit, towering bookshelves extending back into the depths of the Edwardian building, creating caverns of shadow. Stacks of books spilling over the counter
and onto the floor. In recent years, Cyril’s grandson had succeeded in expanding the business onto the Internet, but the shop remained, if for no other reason than that Cyril himself was the only one who knew where each of his thousands of rare volumes were actually located.

  He heard the sound of footsteps from somewhere in the back, and then a voice booming out, “Julian!” as the proprietor himself appeared from around a bookshelf.

  He’d imagined Cyril to have been an old man when he had first darkened the door of the bookshop so many years before, but now, like his store. . .he seemed little changed.

  Eternally bald, only the thick mustache on his upper lip marking his passage through the seasons of life as it changed from brown to silver and finally the whiteness of snow.

  Or perhaps he had simply become more forgiving in his assessments of age as he found himself growing old.

  “It’s been too long,” Cyril said, greeting him warmly. “I’d begun to think you might have found another source for your collection.”

  “Never,” the former director-general smiled. The older man was one of his few genuine friends, a relationship which had taken root in their mutual love of rare literature—and one that had afforded him rare solace throughout the lonely years as an intelligence officer with Five.

  “Ah!” Cyril exclaimed, his face suddenly lighting up. “Your timing is, as ever, impeccable, Julian—I was about to e-mail you. Last week. . .I found it.”

  There was only one thing “it” could be referring to, and Marsh found himself nearly carried away by his friend’s exuberance. “The Pushkin?”

  “Yes! Or da, perhaps I should say,” the bookseller corrected himself, his old eyes twinkling with amusement. “Puteshestvie v Arzrum. The first edition.”

  Journey to Arzrum, Marsh thought. The nineteenth-century Russian novelist’s account of his travels to the Caucacus in the late 1820s. A volume he’d been in search of for over a decade.