Final Target

by E. V. Seymour

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand the nature of your question.’ There was truth in my lie. I knew what ‘Casper’ meant. However, my relationship with McCallen was impossible to describe.

  ‘You’re an extremely intelligent man,’ he said. ‘I find it difficult to believe that you cannot answer a simple question.’

  ‘There is nothing simple about it. I’m not emotionally literate.’

  ‘And yet you risk your life for a woman you barely know.’

  ‘My way of giving something back to society,’ I said, knowing he wouldn’t buy it.

  He observed me for a few moments, as if giving serious consideration to what I’d said.

  ‘Benz,’ he said, bringing the conversation back to where he wanted it to be. ‘She didn’t ask you to kill him?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘You seem emphatic.’

  ‘Because it’s the truth. Has something happened to Benz?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  He got up, walked to the window and, as if remembering that the shutters were closed and there was no view to admire, returned to his seat and sat back down. He gave me a square look.

  ‘Titus.’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  I feigned shock.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Your patch.’

  ‘I don’t have a patch.’

  ‘I think you do and it’s here.’

  ‘I had no reason to kill him.’

  ‘Casper’ said nothing. His penetrating gaze continued to lock onto my eyes. A glance at my watch told me that they’d consumed two of my precious hours. ‘You have somewhere you need to be?’ he asked.

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘That’s good, because this could take time to resolve.’

  ‘There is nothing to resolve. McCallen came to see me. I did her a favour –’

  ‘You travelled to Berlin.’

  ‘We’ve already established that,’ I said, indicating there was no point wasting both our time with meaningless and repeated diversions designed to trip me up. ‘And then I came back.’

  ‘And met with Titus.’

  ‘Only because he invited me.’ I said it with a smile that ‘Casper’ returned as if we were two old mates sharing an amusing anecdote.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In London.’

  ‘What did he ask you to do?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Try.’ His voice raised a semitone.

  I leant forward. ‘You already know. You sanctioned it.’

  He hesitated. A smile glanced across his lips. No, he didn’t know. Titus had been working his own number. ‘Casper’ repeated his original question and I obliged with an honest answer. Push-pull.

  ‘He asked me to find McCallen.’

  ‘Unorthodox.’

  We were in agreement. I didn’t think he knew about Titus’s more unconventional methods of gleaning information and I didn’t enlighten him. His next question slayed me.

  ‘Who do you think killed them?’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Titus and McCallen.’

  I felt as if someone had taken an ice pick to my guts. A bitter taste was on my tongue, crackling interference in my head. ‘You’ve found a body?’

  ‘We generally don’t in our line of work, do we?’

  I didn’t care for the ‘we’. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ To my ears, my voice sounded thin and tinny and unconvincing.

  His expression was one of undiluted scepticism. ‘Missing for over two weeks? No kidnap demand? It’s a given.’

  I was in a dilemma. Was this the moment I told him what he wanted to hear? Was this my chance to request backup? But China didn’t want backup. He wanted me. One whisper to the security services and McCallen would be dead. For all I knew, China and his team had seen me getting picked up. They seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere.

  I spoke with a slow, weary delivery that only faintly replicated what I truly felt. ‘I suppose you must be right.’

  ‘Which is where you come in, only we don’t understand why.’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why you murdered them.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Forgive me, Hex, but you kill for money, right?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Who gave the order?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘Categorically.’

  ‘Was there a middle man?’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I did not kill either of your intelligence officers. I don’t know who did and I have no information about who is responsible.’ And every second you spend chasing the wrong lead is a nail in McCallen’s coffin.

  ‘There is also the small matter of a dead Russian.’

  I muted my natural physical response and looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘You know nothing about it?’ His voice was soft, melodious.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you comfortable?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a little cool in here. Would you like us to turn up the heating?’ His expression was solicitous. He thought he was going to drag out the truth with kindness. It overturned my previously long-held beliefs about MI5 involving dingy basements, beatings and water-boarding.

  ‘Did you accede to Titus’s request?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to help.’

  My interrogator stretched his legs. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I asked around.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Would you care to elaborate?’

  ‘I would not.’

  He inclined his head to one side as though I were a rare species in danger of extinction. Maybe I was. ‘You listened to the grapevine, kept your ear to the ground, on the lookout for chatter, is that right?’

  ‘Exactly as you do,’ I said. ‘We simply have a different clientele.’

  Again, the amused expression. ‘You talk a good talk.’

  ‘It’s not talk. It’s the truth.’

  ‘And you discovered nothing of interest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And yet you seem to have suffered for your trouble,’ he said, surveying the bruising on my face.

  ‘A common response when you ask too many questions.’

  ‘Only if one strays too closely to the truth. Did you press a nerve, Hex?’

  I fell silent. He was certainly pressing my nerves and my anger was on the rise.

  ‘Why do you think you met with a wall of silence?’

  ‘Because there was nothing to tell. Whoever killed your people most likely had a political axe to grind, unconnected to those I used to serve.’

  ‘Ah, used to.’ Again the slow, droll smile.

  ‘In the past, yes,’ I said.

  ‘Someone like Dieter Benz, for example?’

  I agreed with my eyes. ‘It’s a fair bet that if you’re after him he will be after you. Maybe you should pay him a visit.’

  ‘We may well do that. Thanks for the advice.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ I changed position, as if I were about to stand up and leave.

  ‘Until we do, you will stay here.’

  ‘Why? You have nothing on me.’

  ‘We have nothing on a lot of people. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have blood on their hands, which is why you will remain.’

  I flinched. I didn’t like to be reminded of my many crimes. ‘What happened to innocent before proven guilty?’

  The man I’d christened Casper leant towards me. ‘That’s for the hoi polloi and lesser mortals. Men like you,’ he said with a slow conspiratorial smile, ‘are in a different league altogether.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ‘I want a lawyer.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Casper’, or whoever he was, had slipped into another room, and I was lef
t with the guy who’d brought me in.

  ‘I have a right to make a call,’ I insisted.

  ‘This isn’t a game show. You don’t get to phone a friend.’

  I protested loudly. When they took my phone I told them in the strongest possible terms that they had no right to keep me and promised to sue the arse off them. Inevitably, my voice ran out of road and I was bundled back upstairs.

  Locked in a back room with boarded up windows, all I could do was count the second hand on my watch as it ticked by. In a couple of hours, my phone would ring and I would not be able to take the call. Nothing I could do about it. Even if I escaped there was no time to source a gun. Without a gun the rescue mission and McCallen were doomed.

  I kicked the walls and the door with frustration and yelled. It didn’t raise a flicker of interest. They seemed to have so little on me and yet, in the absence of a more obvious lead, the security services had elected me for the role of public enemy number one. There was a weird irony that I was indeed guilty of murder, but not those of which I was now standing accused. Perhaps it was divine justice.

  Noise penetrated the film of silence, the sound of three car doors opening and shutting followed by the throaty growl of an engine turning over and, next, the change of engine note, followed by the spit and crunch of tyres on gravel. It meant that some of them had more important matters to deal with than me. My mind simmered with possibility. How many men would they leave behind? Based on experience, I estimated that there was one man between freedom and me. And that one man, in all probability, had a gun, something I needed. Envisaging a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ scenario, I smiled.

  Desperate measures.

  I ripped off my jacket and, tearing off my shirt, unwound the bandage from my left arm. The wound was still a mess and the simple act of removing the dressing reopened it. Bracing myself, I messed with it and squeezed until the blood flowed freely. Smearing this around my neck, I let several large drops drip directly onto the wooden floor. Every nerve ending screamed in tortured protest. Sucking as much air into my lungs as possible, I let out a terrific, unholy scream and dropped deadweight onto the floor, making as much racket as I could.

  Within seconds, a set of footsteps pounded up the stairs, the key plunged into the lock and the door flew open.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ the guy let out, squatting down, thinking I’d slashed my own throat.

  I kept my eyes wide open, staring up to the ceiling.

  As he bent over to put a finger to the pulse in my neck, I struck.

  Shooting up, I grabbed his windpipe and squeezed the larynx hard and fast. Clamping both hands over mine, he clawed, eyes popping, throat choking, pain exploding through every pore in his body. I clung on and rolled him, pinning him to the floor, my knee on his chest. Still, he resisted, jerking and twisting in an attempt to dislodge my hold. Any increase in pressure could prove fatal and I had no desire to kill him, only to knock him out. It wasn’t easy. Needed balance. Tricky when someone is trying to rip the skin off the back of your hands. Maintaining my grip, I held on, vice-like, until I felt his body sag and the fight leave him. Finally, eyes rolled, he lost consciousness and keeled over.

  After a quick check to make sure he was still breathing, which he was, I put him in the recovery position. Removing a Glock from his waistband, I ran my fingers through his pockets, removing first his phone and then my own. I assumed they’d trawled my phone history, yet Caspar’s line of questioning seemed to indicate that it was of minimal importance. Perhaps they hadn’t had time to decode it or, more likely, failed to fully grasp the significance of the contents.

  Desperate, I tore downstairs, found a set of wrist-cuffs, probably the same he’d used on me, and returned to cuff him. Throwing my jacket back on, leaving the shirt in a bloodied heap, I locked the door and tore down the stairs and out under a baleful sky. A quick glance around me revealed that I was somewhere in a residential suburb, over a mile from where I lived and two and half from the car.

  Would my place be staked out? I didn’t know. But I had to get back home.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Lungs bursting, heart racing, I’d hammered along for the best part of two miles in pouring rain when the spook’s phone in my pocket went off. I stopped, doubled over, sucked up enough air from my diaphragm to speak and answered.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘All quiet?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good, Flynn wants to sweat him for the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘’kay.’ Flynn (Casper in my book) wasn’t wrong in that regard. Perspiration was dripping off my nose.

  The caller checked out. I checked out. That was it.

  My car was exactly as I’d left it and I jumped inside, glad for shelter, and floored the accelerator. I didn’t go straight home, but left it in a car slot in a bay of spaces in front of a short parade of shops minutes from my door.

  The watchmaker usually closed up around seven in the evening and we had a prearranged signal that acted as an early warning system. If someone had been at mine, he would leave a teddy bear alone in the window. To sound the all clear, a pocket watch was planted in the teddy’s lap. Sure enough, the pocket watch was in place. Pushing eight, it left an hour unaccounted for. In theory, someone could be waiting, or on stakeout.

  I went around the back first, the ‘tell’ I’d left still there. It was the same around the street side, the crisp on the step, close to the front door, unbroken. I burst into my own home a shade after eight.

  Peeling off my leather jacket and slinging it across the banister, I rushed upstairs to the bathroom. Redressing my wounds took longer than expected. I now had badly lacerated hands to add to the gouges on my arms. Everything hurt. I felt sick. Adrenalin dump made my legs feel like concrete and my heart rate soar and had given me a nasty dose of the shakes. My only consolation was the loaded pistol. I couldn’t have chosen better. Extremely accurate and, with minimum recoil, there was no bullet drift on repeat shots. I only hoped my injured hands would be steady enough to fire and hit a target with accuracy.

  With no word from China, I packed a torch, rope, bolt cutters and bandages into a holdall and dashed back to the car, dumping the tools on the passenger seat. Driving the Z4 around the rear and into the carport, I reversed it in, prepared for a fast getaway. Back inside, I made myself a brew of strong tea with little milk and plenty of sugar, and washed it down with a cocktail of painkillers and B vitamins recommended by the gym. Once I felt stable enough, I beat up four raw eggs and downed them. I had no idea if it would work, but I began to feel better.

  When my phone rang I didn’t snatch it up. I waited, breathed deep, took my time, ice cool.

  It was Jat. Excited, he rattled off a load of techno-stuff concerning web-based email accounts, usernames, passwords and draft folders.

  ‘I get it. What did you find?’ I said.

  ‘It’s cryptic but it appears to be a list of times and jobs that stretch back eighteen months, including six shipments that never made their destinations.’ Drugs deals gone bad. ‘Airports are mentioned in three countries, including Heathrow.’

  ‘Let me guess, Berlin and Paris.’

  ‘Got it. There’s also a list of names.’

  ‘Read them out, Jat.’

  He did. They included Chester Phipps, Faustino Testa, Daragh Dwyer and Simone Fabron. ‘There’s an asterisk after Fabron’s name with a note that says “pending”.’

  ‘Any Germans mentioned?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Mathilde Brommer, Lars Pallenberg, Dieter Benz?’

  ‘Benz is mentioned.’

  ‘On the list with the others?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where does he figure?’

  ‘In contacts.’

  I scratched my head. ‘And where do I figure?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘What? Not at all?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Is Joe Nathan included?’

  ‘No.’ />
  ‘Joshua Thane.’

  ‘Who?’

  I repeated the name.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Any mention of locations as we discussed?’

  ‘Nada.’

  ‘Keep looking.’

  I cut the call, stretched, flexing the muscles in my calves. Why wasn’t I on the list? What was China’s connection to Benz? I had no time to think about it because, for a second time that evening, my phone rang. But it wasn’t the call I expected.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Simone, I’m sorry, I can’t talk.’ I needed this like I needed root canal work without anaesthetic.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m on my way out.’

  ‘But I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why?’ I sparked. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No.’ She sounded plaintive and lost.

  ‘Are the boys treating you all right?’

  ‘Sure. They are very sweet.’

  ‘Good. Stick with them.’

  ‘You really cannot talk?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Now I really must go.’

  ‘We will speak tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Au revoir.’

  By midnight, I’d heard nothing, the silent phone at my side goading me. Every time I checked, I was reminded that McCallen’s life lay on a knife-edge – if she wasn’t dead already.

  Flynn’s question about our relationship whistled through my head. He had unwittingly probed my heart and it had deeply unsettled me. McCallen was a force of nature. The first time I’d clapped eyes on her I knew in a flash that our paths were inextricably linked, and sensed that she’d be important to me, although not in the way I first thought. The fact is, anything unattainable – whether things or people – I’d conditioned myself not to want. I could never envisage a relationship with her because it wasn’t possible. She was way out of my league. She’d pretty much said so herself. If I were brutally honest, it was why I’d gone for Simone. Lust is a good substitute for love.

  And yet …

  I must have fallen asleep in the chair. I woke with a start. Three in the morning, I was muddy-eyed with fatigue and my phone was blaring.

  It could only mean one thing. Time to roll.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Astounded by the address given to me, I ran out of the back door, through the garden and, throwing myself into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and tore onto the road. McCallen was being held prisoner two or three streets from where I lived. I could hardly take it in.