The Girl Who Ran

by Nikki Owen

  Patricia bites her lip. ‘They’re not real travellers, are they? Oh, God.’ There is a shake to her words. She chews on a nail. ‘You think they’ve seen us?’

  Chris risks a glance. ‘Maybe… Fuck.’ He slips out his phone, sets up a fast proxy, starts tapping on a screen I cannot see. ‘Let me… Hang on.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask, but he shakes his head, taps his phone and does not reply.

  I scan the shops to calculate the best route forwards. By the entrance of a chain of toilets, a toddler is squirming in a ball on the floor screaming while his mother flaps around him, coils of hair springing up, shored by sweat, the father nearby, scratching his head, tutting into a smartphone that’s stitched into his hand. The noise of it all ricochets around my brain.

  ‘Doc,’ Patricia whispers, ‘should we get out of the airport?’

  ‘No.’ I take a breath, try to count the noise away. ‘We must board our flight and travel to Zurich as planned.’

  ‘You think that’s wise? Won’t they know where we are going?’

  ‘Negative.’ I swallow. Someone make the toddler be quiet. ‘We look different. Our email tracks have a high probability of being invisible.’

  Chris, head up from his phone, points. ‘They’re moving.’

  Patricia bites down harder on her fingernail. ‘Doc, I’m bloody shitting it.’

  ‘If you soil yourself, you could impede our escape.’

  She ceases eating her hands.

  The billboard with the perfume advert on the pillar is a rolling one. I observe it. Every six seconds, there is a change of posters, promoting gilded watches, branded clothing, vintage bottled cognac, champagne and truffles, and each time a new poster flashes, the entire board moves from side to side creating one small yet significant space behind it, a scooped out hole. A blind spot.

  I turn to my friends. ‘There is a place to hide, there.’ I point. ‘It will provide us cover to plan the next move. When I say go, we all go. Do you understand?’

  They nod.

  ‘Does that mean you understand?’

  Two frantic nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I will count to three. On three, we will run to the billboard.’

  ‘We won’t be seen?’ Chris checks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ His eyes flick ahead then back to me, a breath billowing from his chest. ‘Go for it.’

  ‘Okay. On my count: One…’

  Patricia slaps a hair from her face, mutters, for some reason, what I believe is a slang word related to a man’s genital area. The billboard begins to revolve to the side.

  ‘Two…’

  Chris taps his foot. He shields his phone screen with his hand as his eyes dart left and right in the glare and bustle of the concourse beyond.

  ‘Three. Go!’

  We run. Lights, sounds, sharp slaps of heat and noise. They all fly through my ears as we weave in and out of the crowds. The men do not immediately follow us and yet still there is something about the way they move, about the assurance of their steps.

  We reach the billboard. ‘Which way?’ Patricia whispers.

  To our right is a concourse of cafés and shops, people spilling out of them in various states of speed and urgency. To our left is the open floor, shining, twinkling in a yellow brick road that leads off to the departure gate announcing cities and flight numbers. My brain photographs it all. Istanbul, Melbourne, Washington, Paris, locations that span the world across data lines that lie hidden underground.

  ‘They know we are here,’ Chris says. ‘I’m certain now.’

  I whip round. ‘What?’

  He turns his phone to me and my heart starts to race at an alarming speed.

  ‘I hacked into the Madrid police database,’ he says. ‘You know, to be on the safe side, get some firm intel. I found this.’

  ‘Oh, holy fuck,’ Patricia blurts. ‘It says wanted. It’s us!’

  There are pictures of all three of us. My mouth runs dry so fast that I have to lean against Chris to steady myself.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘you okay?’

  ‘They have us in different wigs,’ Patricia says. ‘Shit – they’ll know what we look like!’

  ‘I have put you in danger.’

  ‘Huh? What? Oh Doc, no. None of this is your fault. Doc, it’s okay.’

  ‘Er, no,’ Chris cuts in. ‘It’s not okay.’

  We both look to him, mouths open.

  ‘Why?’ I say.

  Very slowly, he guides his eyes to the left. ‘Because they’re looking right at us.’

  Chapter 4

  Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

  Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 13 minutes

  ‘Oh, Jesus, they’re – they’re looking straight towards us,’ Patricia says, ducking behind me.

  I stare now at our faces on the police alert in Chris’s hand, and a feeling wells inside me, one of guilt, of shame and confusion. By making friends, have I done the wrong thing? Is life not easier, better, safer when we are on our own?

  ‘Doc? Doc, you alright? Should we go?’

  My head snaps up, refocussing. ‘Negative. If we move now it will alert the men. They have images of us. We must wait. We must prepare.’

  Chris tips his head to the left towards a landslide of bodies approaching. ‘What about them?’

  I direct my sight to where Chris points. A pack of students has entered the walkway, flooding the air with chatter in a melody of Italian and French, a river of language rushing forwards amid a sea of brown limbs, all long and lean and clad in assorted patchwork pieces of denim and cotton and hooded drawstring sweats. Tinny music, the tap of phones, beeps, rings. The sounds send my brain into red alert, and I am about to move when two teenage students stop almost next to me and kiss. I find myself staring, unable to look away, and when I inhale I detect bubble gum, washing powder, body odour masked by a sugary scent.

  ‘Hey, Google?’ A pause. ‘Maria?’

  I turn to Chris. ‘What?’

  ‘They’re all moving – the students. If we move with them, they could be good cover.’

  The teenagers pull away from each other, the girls smiling in a way I do not understand. The chatter rises, smacking into my ears, slap, slam. Startled, I look to Patricia.

  ‘It’s alright,’ she says automatically, trotting off what she’s had to say to me now so many times. ‘Deep breaths. It’s going to be loud and close, but I’ll stay right by you, yeah? Chris is right – the students’ll be good cover.’

  I nod, but my eyes are on the moving mass. ‘Their skin, their scent.’

  ‘Deep breaths.’

  Chris starts to move. ‘Let’s go.’

  We dart in and out as, ahead of us, the boarding gates appear. People, limbs, spit and sweat. Announcements hanging from the ceiling with flashing orange letters and numbers declaring the areas our flight is leaving from. Our feet brush the tiles as we surge forwards amid the slippery mass, sliding across the mirrored thoroughfare where the shoes of the students clomp down in hooves of plastic and leather, jostling, laughing, bumping into me. Head down, I bite my lip and try not to scream.

  Hidden by the human cloak, we remain out of direct sight. Some metres nearer now, the men move rapidly, steady, their presence two dark monoliths against the landscape of pick-a-mix colour. My heart rate rockets. We duck, weaving, as Chris keeps watch and Patricia spreads five fingers on her thigh, but every time someone’s arm or leg grazes me, I flinch. Every time I smell their burger breath, feel the heat of their perspiring skin near me – deodorant, talcum powder, flowers and musk – I want to scream at the top of my voice, curl up into a tight ball. It is impossible to switch off.

  We finally approach the flight gates, Patricia to my right, Chris to my left. We drop our speed as the students slow down lolloping and laughing at each other, and as I risk a small glance, I find myself fascinated by their ease with each other, their calmness, happiness even, transfixed at the way in which their
limbs seemingly absentmindedly intertwine, vines of arms and fingers interlinking as if all branches from the same tree. They oscillate and flutter, and I imagine a shoal of clownfish swimming over into a new anemone, relaxed, loose, just another day hanging in the reef.

  I unpick my gaze from the students and inspect the two men. They are talking to each other.

  ‘They’re calling our flight,’ Patricia says.

  The entrance to our boarding gate is drenched in sunlight from a vast glass and steel dome above. Glass, steel, huge masses of heavy concrete. I do the maths in my head.

  ‘If a bomb went off here, the glass would shatter and kill and maim the people beneath it.’

  Chris stares at me. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh shit. Shit!’ Patricia whispers. ‘They’re looking this way.’

  She’s right. ‘Walk.’

  We stride, not running, not wanting to create attention. Backs straight, footing as sure as we can make it, we mimic three busy work colleagues eager to catch their business flight. Soon we reach the gate. Patricia’s face is pale. Chris’s fingers are tapping his phone.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ the flight attendant says, his eyebrows two tapered caterpillars. ‘Boarding passes, please.’

  We hand over our travel documents, fake IDs, as from my peripheral vision I see the two men searching through the students, casting them to the side, one after the other. The lights above shine bright, a traffic of chatter and laughter pummelling the air. I count to stay calm.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Patricia mutters, but, just as the line begins to move again, everything stops.

  The flight attendant looks to us. ‘Could you step aside for a moment please?’

  ‘But we’re getting on the flight,’ Chris says.

  My teeth start to grind. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. The men are moving towards us in the pile of students washing up near the gate.

  ‘We have to run,’ Chris whispers.

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Yes,’ he insists, stronger now. ‘The attendant’s stopped us.’

  ‘They are nearer now,’ I say.

  Patricia’s eyes go wide. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘God has nothing to do with…’ I halt. Something is not right. The men have stopped. Their movements – why are they now so still? Keeping my head as rigid as I can, I check the CCTV cameras, their small domed lenses, dark black caps, blinking in the nearby areas. All seems as it should, all cameras facing the correct way, all security staff, in the immediate zone at least, carrying on with their duties as before.

  Patricia shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Shall we peg it? This is fecking MI5. Shit.’

  I trace the outline of the officers. They may have been trained, like me, to prepare, wait, engage. Is that what they are doing now? If I were them, what would I do next?

  ‘Doc? Doc, I think we should move.’

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Chris says.

  I look to him. He is staring at his phone. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve just…’ A shake of the head. ‘No way. It’s—’

  ‘They’re coming!’

  We look up at where Patricia is staring. The second man, the one with the slightly narrower shoulders, is touching his ear, scanning to his right and moving slowly forwards. I track his eye line, wincing at the sharp clatter of some tray that is dropped in the distance, my assaulted brain just about keeping it together. What is he looking at, the man? What can he see?

  I force my brain to focus, think clearly. Maybe Chris is right – maybe the flight attendants know who we are and have been informed to keep us back and make us wait.

  I turn to Chris and Patricia. ‘We must go.’

  Chris points to his phone. ‘You have to see this email.’

  ‘Not now. We must leave first.’

  We all turn, ready to duck from sight and out of the airport, my mind already fast forwarding to a next plan to hide, when the flight attendant calls to us with a bright white smile beaming on his face.

  ‘Hello? I’m so sorry about the short delay.’ We hesitate. He gestures over to us. ‘If you’d just stand to the side and allow our late wheelchair passenger through, who we were waiting for, then you can board. Apologies for the inconvenience.’

  We look to each other, the three of us, our chests visibly deflating, eyes blinking in what? Shock? Relief? I cannot tell, but we watch a wheelchair board the ramp and, with one nod of the attendant, we follow it fast through the final doors that lead to the plane ahead.

  Outside, the Madrid air hits me. Aviator fuel, warm concrete, the roar of jet engines, all of it colliding in my head. I grind my teeth and blink at the blue sky that swirls through clouds spun with cotton. I stay close to Patricia.

  As we reach the door of our Zurich-bound plane, Chris stops me.

  ‘I got an email.’ He swallows, catching his breath. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before.’

  My heart rate shoots. Alarm bells sound. ‘From who?’

  An attendant smiles. ‘Welcome to the flight. Boarding passes, please.’

  I thrust her my pass, ignore her and turn to Chris. The woman frowns.

  ‘Who is the email from?’

  Chris pauses then, lowering his voice, he tells me what I didn’t expect to hear.

  ‘It’s a reply from the UK Home Secretary – from Balthus’s wife.’

  Chapter 5

  Deep cover Project facility.

  Present day

  I’m not certain how I feel when I see Patricia held and behind the screen. Shock? Fear? Nothing? I am too scared to answer.

  Stepping forward, I observe my former friend as if she were a specimen in a lab. On her head are fresh red lacerations. Deep bruises strangle her neck. Her body is clothed in a dirty grey t-shirt, ripped trousers hanging from her legs that lie crumpled at odd angles. She raises her eyes and calls out my name, but the officer kicks her in the stomach and her middle folds in, body collapsing flat to the floor. I want to slap my hand to my mouth, but something tells me that would be a bad thing to do right now.

  ‘What do you see, Maria?’ Black Eyes says, a crackle of something indefinable stepping across his voice.

  ‘Patricia,’ I say, quick, as steady as I can.

  ‘This O’Hanlon woman – she is not your family.’

  ‘No,’ I respond, ‘she is not.’ Patricia is looking at me with big eyes, but when before they were blue and clear and shining, now her eyes seem dulled and bloodshot.

  He regards me, holding my face with his sight and I so desperately want to tap my finger, my foot, anything to help my mind deal with the intensity of the attention.

  ‘You had two fathers,’ Black Eyes says, ‘adopted, biological. Now both dead.’

  A heartbeat. ‘Yes.’ My sight remains locked on Patricia.

  He folds his arms across his chest, watching the scene behind the screen. The officer is hauling Patricia up, but her body must be weak, because her rib-caged torso keeps buckling, her legs bending, feet toppling.

  ‘I lost my father, too,’ Black Eyes says, sight on the screen. ‘I was fourteen. He was in the SAS.’

  Beyond the window, Patricia whimpers. We observe, Black Eyes and I, riding for a moment in a slow seesaw of sound left, right, left, right.

  ‘Why is she here?’ I dare myself to ask.

  ‘She is here because she is the enemy. You do understand, don’t you, that after everything that’s happened, she is no longer your friend?’

  Friend. I roll the word in my mouth, feel it, test it out. For a long time, I never really understood what having one meant.

  ‘You made the only choice you could, Maria, by being here. Here is where you belong. Patricia O’Hanlon is the enemy because she does not agree with the aims and objectives of the Project. She does not agree with you being here. Yet this?’ He stretches out his arms to the room. ‘This is where you belong.’

  ‘This is where I belong,’ I say, the words marching out of my mouth of the
ir own accord.

  ‘That’s right. And you don’t need people like Patricia O’Hanlon when the Project is our only friend.’

  He reaches forward and presses a button. The grey blind rolls down slowly, one centimetre at a time, but the movement of it must jolt Patricia awake as, suddenly, she raises her head, staggering up a little. She begins screaming.

  ‘Doc! Doc! Help me!’ She wobbles forwards. ‘Don’t listen to them, Doc! They’re lying! They’re all lying! They’re going to—’

  The officer hits Patricia on the skull with the butt of his gun and she crumples, falling unconscious to the tiles. Without thinking, I slap my palms to the screen, startled, as before me the officer starts dragging Patricia’s clubbed-seal body out of the room.

  ‘Where are they taking her?’ I ask fast, pressing my face into the glass trying to see round the corner. ‘She needs help.’ I turn to Black Eyes. ‘Why did he do that? Why?’

  I gulp in air, as to the side of me Black Eyes rolls back his shoulders, snapping the bones that puncture his spine one by one. He regards me as I stare at the screen as the blind descends, then he steps to his desk and picks up the photograph that sits on it.

  ‘When people we love die, it is often hard for us to cope with. Would you agree?’

  I blink, the image of Patricia still fresh and raw in my head, not fully comprehending what is happening or why. Black Eyes holds the frame in his fingers closer to his face and as he does, I find myself staring at the picture of the two people in it, my brain prodded by some odd curiosity, a vague, foggy notion that they look familiar. Both female, the oldest appears to be in her thirties: slim, caramel skin, hair in long black cascades down a suited back, wide collar, wire-rimmed spectacles clutching high cheekbones and resting against thick branches of brows. Beside her is a girl, young, at estimate under ten years old, the same hair as the older woman, same features, just softer, plumper, the sharpness to her cheeks not yet defined, still hidden under an infantile cushion of baby milk and bread.