by RR Haywood
‘No, just to meet her in the portal room. I said if she is going to execute me to do it now . . .’
Harry rises from his chair. ‘There’ll be none of that now,’ he rumbles.
‘I said . . .’ Emily says, feeling a rush of emotion. ‘I said . . . I said I wanted to say goodbye if I was going . . .’
‘She wouldn’t,’ Safa says firmly, shaking her head, but then glancing at Ben with worry in her eyes. ‘We just did a mission together . . . You had a weapon and . . .’
‘I mean, if she is going to do that, then . . .’ Emily’s voice breaks as she fights the urge to cry. ‘I’m the enemy and . . . But . . . I’d rather die here than . . . And Mother told them to kill me. If I go back, they’ll kill me . . . I . . . I like it here . . .’
‘Ach,’ Harry says, deeper and stronger as he moves towards her, seeing the tears spilling down her cheeks.
‘I’m an agent.’ Emily’s voice, trying to inject some firmness in her tone, but just sounding more scared. Miri walks back to her office, listening intently and spotting the pistol is where she left it. She rolls her eyes and tuts softly. ‘I know the risks . . . But listen, thank you for being my friends . . .’
‘Hey, no, stop that.’ Ben’s voice. ‘She won’t do that . . .’
‘Like fuck she will.’ Safa’s voice, the aggression rising. ‘I’ll ask her . . . Where is she?’
‘Safa, no.’ Emily’s voice, speaking quickly.
‘She’s not doing anything to you.’ Safa’s voice.
‘She might have to.’ Emily’s voice, full of emotion, quavering. Miri listens, knowing exactly what Emily is feeling because she orchestrated it. Emily thinks of herself as a highly trained agent, but has simply been exposed to a level of manipulation she has never experienced before. ‘Listen, I’m an agent . . . If Miri has to do it, then . . .’
‘No,’ Safa snaps.
‘I can’t just stay here forever, Safa,’ Emily says. ‘And if I go back, then Mother will kill me . . .’
‘Can’t just execute someone because . . .’
‘You would have done it,’ Emily says.
‘I didn’t know you!’ Safa’s voice. ‘I’m telling you right now I won’t let her . . .’
‘If Miri says it’s the right thing, then it’s the right thing,’ Emily fires back. ‘She must know why Mother ordered me to be killed. Tonight must have been a test or . . . I don’t know! I just . . .’
‘Oh my god, what the fuck?’ Safa says, her voice rising with disbelief.
‘No.’ Ben’s voice, calm and assured. ‘It’s not that. Stop panicking. It’s fine.’
‘You know something.’ Safa’s voice. ‘Ben, what? What’s happening?’
‘It’s fine. Just go with Miri. You’ll be fine.’
Miri smiles again. Who polices the police? She likes Ben.
‘WHAT?’ Safa shouts. Miri chuckles.
‘I said it’s fine. Emily, you must have worked it out by now.’
‘Worked what out?’ Safa shouts again. ‘What? Ben, for fuck’s sake . . .’
‘Oh my god! Seriously? She’s outside with us when we attack the house. That’s why her side were told to kill her. They saw her. They saw her outside. It’s bloody obvious. She comes with us when we help the us in the house.’
Silence. Miri laughs softly at the vision in her head of the others’ faces.
Time to move. She pulls the earpiece out and strides from her rooms up the corridor to the heavy metal door and pauses to listen to the voices inside.
‘Oh my god,’ Ben calls out. ‘I just said she won’t kill you.’
‘I would,’ Emily says honestly. ‘You might be wrong, and in this situation I would execute . . . And if she sends me back, then I’m dead anyway because Mother will . . .’
‘What?’ Ben asks in disbelief.
Miri tuts softly. This is why the woman is still a Two.
‘Tango Two,’ she calls out, opening the door.
‘Coming now,’ Emily says quickly.
‘Are you going to kill her?’ Safa asks, glaring.
‘Oh my days,’ Ben groans.
Miri stays as Miri is. Expressionless. Revealing nothing. Reading everything. Seeing all. ‘Has the agent cultivated you?’ Miri asks as bland and flat as ever, and all the more striking for it.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Emily insists.
‘That,’ Miri says quietly to Safa, ‘is what cultivating is.’
‘MIRI,’ Safa shouts, her face flushed with anger.
‘Yes, I cultivated them,’ Emily says coldly. She smiles humourlessly and sighs. ‘Fuck it. Well done, Miri. We going then?’
‘Dear god,’ Ben groans again, slumping down in a chair. ‘I give up.’
‘My advice,’ Emily says to Miri, ‘from one agent to another . . . get professionals. These three amateurs aren’t capable or competent.’
‘Emily,’ Safa says, ‘stop it . . .’
‘With me,’ Miri says simply, pushing through the doors.
‘You three need to toughen up,’ Emily says, turning back at the doors to look at them. ‘I would have killed you all within a week . . .’
‘It’s been over a week,’ Ben mutters. ‘It’s been over three weeks . . .’
‘I would rather you killed me here, Miri. I don’t want to . . .’
‘Shut up.’
Emily blanches at the harsh rebuke, the sting showing in her cheeks. She tries to rally to keep going, but that same energy from Miri gets to her. Blagging or bluffing Miri just isn’t right. She follows the older woman into the portal room with her heart jack-hammering and her mouth growing dry.
‘I just want to say . . .’ Emily swallows to try and speak normally with composure and dignity as Miri arches an eyebrow, shakes her head and lifts the tablet. ‘I want to say thank you for the decency of . . . and the . . . I mean, the kindness you have bestowed and . . .’
‘Can you move silently?’
‘Pardon?’
Miri looks up at her as the blue light blinks out. ‘I said, can you move silently?’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘You will not make a sound. You will not speak. You will watch and we will talk after. Am I clear?’
‘What?’
‘Am I clear?’
‘Yes, but . . . Listen, Mother will kill me if I go back, so . . . I mean, it’s nice here and . . .’
Miri jabs at the tablet. The blue light comes back on. Bathing the room once again.
‘Move silently. Follow me,’ Miri says, placing the tablet down before going through the portal.
Emily blinks again, feeling as if she’s always several steps behind when speaking to Miri. She looks at the tablet, then at the light, and with her mind spinning, she walks through and sees Miri standing in the darkness with her finger pressed to her mouth, indicating silence. The stench of rotten, damp air hits instantly with an immediate impression of being underground. An absence of light. She looks round to bare concrete walls that drip and ooze gunk. The only light is from the portal bathing the corridor in an eerie glow.
Miri twitches her head for Emily to follow. The older woman moves off down the corridor, placing her feet carefully to avoid stepping on any of the debris left strewn about. Emily moves in the same way, lifting to place her feet with each step thought in advance to avoid scuffing or noise.
The corridor is long and the light from the portal fades the further they go, plunging them into deep shadow. Miri uses a small pocket torch to light the ground. Shining so they can both see where to tread. They reach a corner and move round to an old metal staircase. Miri goes carefully. Emily the same. Descending the cold metal stairs. Emily catches sight of Russian letters and symbols. An old Soviet installation. She wonders if the execution will be done here, but then realises she is not now expecting to be killed. She would have been shot the second she stepped through, and Miri is exposing her weapon side to Emily as they move.
At the bottom of the stairs, Miri again pauses to press her fi
ngers to her mouth. Emily nods. Miri reaches out with a warm, dry hand and gently takes Emily’s wrist. The torch goes off, and as the darkness hits, so Emily detects the essence of light coming from round the corner. A voice too. A male voice calling out angrily. Miri guides her on, moving from the stairwell into a wider space. Up ahead, Emily sees the bright, glowing lights coming from one of the cells and someone sitting outside on a chair. A man inside the cell talking.
They go slowly, drawing closer. Emily strains to see. To understand. Her eyes trying to take everything in at once. The realisation comes sudden and unexpected.
‘Okay?’ The voice comes out, as though the person on the chair is shouting towards them. Miri scrapes her shoe on the rough floor, creating noise.
Emily watches. Taking it in. Trying desperately to keep up with Miri’s mental agility and understand not only what she is seeing, but what it means and why she is being shown it.
A squeeze on her wrist. The torch comes back on as Miri leads her back to the stairwell and up the metal steps to the corridor bathed in blue. Emily follows. Stunned and silent. They go through the portal into the bunker as Emily sighs heavily.
‘Why did you show me that?’
‘Not here. Wait,’ Miri says. She picks up the tablet, turns off the blue light, keys in another destination, then activates it again. The light comes back. Miri nods at Emily to follow her and once more steps through.
The frustration and confusion return, but Emily dutifully goes through and immediately squints from the harsh daylight blinding her. A hand comes up to shield her eyes as she makes out Miri wearing sunglasses and lighting a cigarette in a huge, open field of thick grass. A blue sky overhead dotted with clouds. Powerlines in the distance. The rumble of heavy traffic somewhere far off. An old shed behind them, the portal shining in place of the open doorway.
‘Where are we?’ Emily asks, looking round, then back to Miri. ‘You smoke?’
Miri looks at her and lifts an eyebrow. ‘Obviously.’
‘I mean . . . Okay,’ Emily says, trying to order her thoughts. ‘What’s going on, Miri?’
‘Do you need more confirmation on what you just saw?’
‘What? No . . . I saw it . . .’
‘It hasn’t happened yet.’
‘What?’
‘Time machine, Tango Two,’ Miri says, blowing smoke into the air. ‘Damn, I shouldn’t smoke,’ she adds in the first really human thing Emily has heard her say. ‘Bad for you,’ she says, looking at the cigarette in her hands. ‘They banned yet?’
‘Er, yes. Yes, they are,’ Emily says weakly, her mind spinning.
‘Good. Black market strong?’
‘Yes,’ Emily says again. ‘Why am I here? Am I being released?’
‘Ben was right. Hell, I think he knew before me, or damned well suspected. He’s got a grasp on this. Your side tried to kill you because they saw you outside Cavendish Manor with us. Mother used a satellite to monitor the event. The time now is two days after that. You can leave. You can say you were held captive for two days and escaped, or be honest and say I let you go. I don’t care which.’
Emily moves closer, mesmerised by the words spilling from Miri.
‘If you are still concerned that your side saw you outside with us, you can disappear and start a new life, but if you walk away, then you’re on your own. I can’t protect you.’
‘But . . .’ Emily blinks and rubs her head. ‘Miri . . .’
‘If you go back to your side, you tell them what you saw just now. Tell them what you know. It will change the timeline, but I do not care. Time is not fixed, and I will bend it to my will. I will bend it to fix this. If you leave now, there is a very slight chance Mother will not kill you. At the very least, you will be tortured, but you know that. Damn, I love smoking. You ever smoke?’
‘No,’ Emily whispers, unable to take her eyes off Miri.
‘You want to go, then go,’ Miri says, nodding in the direction of the traffic noises. ‘But you tell your side that Maggie Sanderson says hi.’
Emily staggers back, her mouth open. Her stomach flips, heaves and twists. Everything fits. Everything makes sense. ‘You?’ she whispers.
‘Finally,’ Miri mutters. ‘Yes. Me,’ she adds with the bitterness of the years all showing on her lined and weary face.
‘Your son . . .’
The look comes; Miri’s head snaps up. Fury of a kind Emily has never seen before.
‘You have a time machine,’ Emily says, the words a gasp.
‘I am a professional,’ Miri spits.
‘You have Harry Madden, Miri. You have Safa Patel and Ben Ryder . . . You have me . . .’
‘You know shit, little girl. You know nothing of what an agent is. You play at it. What we did, we did first. Where we went, we went first. Go beg in a public square in Yemen for two months with camel shit smeared on your face so no man looks at you for a chance at a shot that some politician never green-lights. You do not speak of my son. You do not ever speak of my son . . . Mission first. Professional. Take an oath and stand by it.’
‘Miri, I . . .’ Emily falters, too many things in her mind at one time. Miri is Margaret Sanderson. Maggie Sanderson. The original Mother. The first. Undercover. Covert. Kill missions. Cold War. Africa. The Middle East. Harry Madden. Safa Patel. Ben Ryder. Maggie Sanderson. Every trick learnt, every practice, every policy, procedure and training package refers back to Maggie Sanderson because she did it first. She died in 2010 at her home in California. A multiple hit from forces working together that had spent years tracking her down. It only came out a few years ago, but her body was never recovered.
‘It was on the landing.’ Miri forces the anger from her voice, which resumes the dull, hard, emotionless state she has perfected over a lifetime of service. She winces as she drops to a crouch to stub her cigarette out and puts the butt in a small plastic bag taken from her pocket. Her body hurts. Everything hurts. ‘You’re the Brits. The good guys, right?’ she stands slowly, looking up to see Emily still hanging off every word said and the look of almost comic shock etched on her face. ‘Someone has a time machine. The Brits have to secure it because they’re the good guys, right? You were fine with that. You go to the house and commence the attack. You were fine with that.’ She turns to face Emily with utter, vicious power dripping from every word spoken. ‘You find opposition and you are fine with that, but at some point during that fight, you stopped being the good guys.’ Miri points at her. Holding her entranced. ‘You had so many. We had so few. You had gunships. We had pistols.’ She runs her fingers over the top of the bag, securing the ziplock. ‘When that flash-bang was thrown, you saw an old man and an old woman trying to get a young man away from dozens of armed attackers. You realised it was wrong. Do you remember you stopped attacking us before the order to kill you was given? Maybe you had it in mind to go through the portal and try and work from within. Maybe negotiate. Maybe spy. Maybe cultivate. Maybe hell knows what. Damn bullets flying everywhere. Who can think in that chaos? I never could, and sure as dammit nobody else can. Maybe Ben. Ben is rare. I do my thinking after. That’s what I always did. I think. I plan and I execute to make sure that shitstorm can’t happen again.’
She pauses, before looking back at Emily. ‘At some point in every agent’s career, they start an ethical debate within their own mind. Black and white becomes grey. The agent thinks it is the world that changes. It never is. The individual evolves. Seen it. Had it. You are younger than average, but that’s all it is. Damn.’ She takes another cigarette and lights it. She coughs from the smoke, her face flushing from the exertion.
‘You should stop,’ Emily says quietly.
‘Tell me what to do young lady,’ Miri says, glancing at Emily, withering, contemptuous, full of furious energy.
Emily closes her eyes as the frantic thoughts whirling in her mind start to settle and find order. ‘You bugged us,’ she says after a time.
‘I bugged every damned room in the bunker. Are you surpris
ed?’
‘No,’ Emily mumbles. ‘Safa is a good person,’ she adds, speaking louder.
Miri rolls her eyes, frustration showing at the agent for her emotional needs. Agents can’t afford emotion. She goes to snap, to voice the anger, but swallows it down. Be softer. Be easier. Emily is not you. ‘So are you, Tango Two, which is why you do not have a bullet through your skull. I heard every conversation. You had a half-assed attempt at cultivating, but Safa won you over. Gotta love that girl. Wish I had her years back. Half the shit wouldn’t have gone down if we had Safa.’
‘I didn’t cultivate,’ Emily says, needing to say it, needing to be believed. ‘I mean . . . I was going to. I was. I thought about Ben first, but the chemistry between him and Safa put me off. Then I got to like Safa and didn’t want to do anything with Ben, so then I thought about Harry. But it felt wrong . . . Then I thought about the doctor, but he’s so old and he squelches when he eats and . . . and I . . . I just . . .’ She trails off, quiet and thoughtful as Miri bites the frustration down.
‘I left the door open for you. I left the portal on for you. The only thing I didn’t factor was Harry being outside. Tell me, what made you stay?’
‘I like them,’ Emily says quietly. ‘I actually really like them. They’re so different to anyone else . . . I didn’t have friends before . . .’
‘Safa held off five of you on her own. She went into that house tonight before you, and I even blinked. You ever see anyone else do that?’
‘No,’ Emily admits honestly.
‘Me neither. I need Safa. Ben too. He’s smart. He doesn’t panic. I need that.’
‘Ben’s exceptional.’
‘I need Harry. The man is fearless. You see him throw those men?’
‘Tell me what you want, Miri. Tell me what to do.’
Miri smokes and looks over at Emily, then round at the beautiful English countryside, so different to what she is used to in California. Tell me what to do? Hell. She’s never heard an agent say such a thing. ‘You want to go?’
Emily thinks. She looks round at the field and the hedgerow and up to the blue sky that should all feel like home, but it doesn’t compare to the sterile bunker and the Cretaceous sky they have on the hill that looks down into the valley. She should be homesick for this, for here, but she sat outside on a balmy evening and ate strawberries and chocolate. She told Safa she would cut her hair. She smiles at the thought and being called fuckstick, spy, shithead and twat every five minutes. She’s laughed more in the last twenty-five days than the last ten years. She has introduced Harry Madden to Harry Potter, stood with him under an umbrella in the rain and played a game to see who could draw faster. She did that.
