by Dawson, Mark
He glared up at him through the film of water in his eyes.
“Where is she?”
“I do not know.”
“Are you sure about that, Mohammed? Are you absolutely sure?”
“Why would she tell me? I do not know. It does not matter what people like you do to me. I cannot tell you.”
“I don’t believe you, Mohammed, but I’ll assume that she didn’t tell you everything about her history with me. Allow me to give you the full picture. We used to work together. I was her commanding officer. She did things for me, and she was very good at doing them. Unfortunately for everyone, she put her nose in my business, and that is something that I cannot abide. I’m afraid I decided that the only way to protect myself and my family was to kill her. But I am embarrassed to say that what should have been a simple operation was botched, and she was able to escape. She had the good sense to keep out of my way for nearly ten years, but then, last year, she turned up again. Like a bad penny, you might say. Including the useless fool who failed to kill her at your riad, and who I must now assume is dead, she has eliminated five of my associates, and I know that I am her final target. So, bearing all that in mind, you’ll understand why I am keen to find her before she finds me.”
“I do not know anything of that.”
Control took his pistol from his holster.
“My war was Ireland,” he said as he ejected and checked the magazine. “Against the Provos. Vicious bastards, Mohammed. They had plenty of ways of disciplining those who they felt were out of line. Ways to keep their communities in order. They would beat you with baseball bats, hurley sticks or cudgels spiked with nails. But the one they liked best was the kneecapping. It wasn’t just the pain of it, although that was bad enough. It wasn’t just the incapacitation. It was a physical indication that the victim had earned their displeasure. It was a clear stamp of their authority, rather like prison, a visible sign of punishment.” He shoved the magazine back into the chamber. “There were variations. There was the ‘Padre Pio’, where they put a bullet through each hand; the ‘six pack’, where they put a shot through each knee, ankle and thigh; and there was the ‘fifty-fifty’, a shot into the base of the spine with a coin flip as to whether you were paralysed or not. But it was the kneecapping that they preferred.”
He took the gun. He smiled at Mohammed, but didn’t aim it at him.
He took a step to the right and pressed it against Fatima’s right knee.
“No!” Mohammed yelled.
“This really doesn’t give me any pleasure,” he said.
“No!”
He fired once, the bullet thudding into the woman’s joint, wrecking it, pulverising flesh and cartilage and bone. She screamed, a shrill and primal noise that rang around the room.
“Bugger,” Control said, looking down disdainfully at the splatter of blood that had leapt up onto the unrolled portion of his sleeve above his bicep. “Will you look at that.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and tried to dab it away, succeeding only in smearing it. “Disgusting.”
Fatima moaned.
“Please,” Mohammed begged.
“Again. Where is Beatrix?”
Mohammed looked up at him, his face twisted with anguish. “I swear I do not know.”
He put the pistol to Fatima’s other knee and, without further warning, pulled the trigger for a second time.
The pistol barked, the bullet thudded into Fatima’s knee, she screamed out again.
“Please,” Mohammed adjured, his voice high-pitched and reedy. “I swear I do not know. I swear it.”
“Another question, then. We’ve noticed that she looks ill. Thinner than she was ten years ago. Looks like she’s in pain. What’s the matter with her?”
“She is ill.”
“Cancer? The doctors we’ve asked think that’s possible. Is that what it is?”
He mumbled something, too quiet to hear.
“Does she have cancer?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
“How bad is it?”
“Very . . . bad.”
“Terminal?”
“Yes.”
“How long does she have?”
“Months. Weeks. I do not know.”
“Who is her doctor, Mohammed?”
The man mumbled out a name and, at Control’s prompting, an address.
“Very good, Mohammed. I feel as if we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“Please. That is all I know.”
“I doubt that, Mohammed. Is she alone?”
“Alone,” he said, forcing the word out through gritted teeth.
“Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”
He whispered again, “Alone.”
“What about her daughter? She was living here, too, wasn’t she? Where is she now?”
“She sent her away. She has family in England. When she heard that you had left the country, she knew she would be safer there.”
Control looked at him sceptically. That was feasible, he supposed. He knew that the girl had grandparents. Milton had ordered him to deliver her to them. It would be simple enough to check.
“You know something, Mohammed? I know you’re deceitful. I know. And there are ways I could prove it. We could have you renditioned to someplace where we have the equipment we need. We could make you disappear, you and your wife, swallowed into a black hole where no one would ever hear from you again. But I don’t need to do that. I’ve worked in intelligence for many years. And I’ve interrogated hundreds of men. You’re strong, but I’ve broken men who are stronger than you. I’ve broken Irish Republicans who would rather have killed their own mothers than give me the information I wanted from them. And I became very good at telling when men are lying to me. I know when they are withholding information. You’re good, but there are signs that you’d have to be a world-class liar to hide and you, Mohammed, are not a world-class liar. You know more than you’ve told me. I know you know more. You better start telling me before I start doing things to you and your wife that will make your last few moments on this Earth very fucking unpleasant indeed.”
The man looked at his wife, and something passed between them. A shared decision?
When he looked back at Control, the fire in his eyes had rekindled.
“What?” Control asked.
“Could I have one of those smokes now?”
Control took the packet and offered it. Mohammed took a cigarette, slipped it between his lips and allowed Control to light it for him. He drew down, deep and long, angled his head a little and blew a long jet of smoke up to the ceiling.
He looked around, indicating the door to the boat. “You think you are safe here?” he said. “On this boat? You think this will protect you from Beatrix?”
“I feel pretty safe, Mohammed.”
“Then why do you look so frightened?” He didn’t take his eyes off him. “You wanted to know where she is. I don’t know where she is now, but I know where she will be.”
The two guards stopped what they were doing and looked at Mohammed.
“Is that right?” Control said.
Mohammed’s eyes blazed. “I know it for certain. She will be wherever you are. Wherever you go, wherever you run to, wherever you try to hide, that is where she will be. She will find you, sir. And one day, perhaps as you wake up, she will be there. Standing at the foot of your bed with one of her knives.”
Control glared back at him, knowing that the man was right. He was frightened. He was furious with himself for it.
“You know, Mohammed,” he said, tightening his grip on the pistol. “I haven’t had to kill anyone myself since 1989. I find it distasteful, if I’m honest. Much better to have someone else do it, but now, today, I’m going to make an exception.”
He fired once, close range, and the man took the rou
nd in the forehead, right between the eyes. He turned to the woman. She spat at him, right in the face, the light in her eyes undimmed until he shot her, too.
Control wiped the saliva from his forehead.
“Throw them over the side,” he said.
Chapter Five
Beatrix knew that this would be the last time she would visit London. She had checked them into a twin room at Claridge’s, more expensive and ostentatious than she would normally have considered, but now, given the circumstances, it didn’t seem so extravagant after all.
It had been worth it to see the look of childish delight on Isabella’s face when she saw how plush her room was.
She had bounced up and down on the bed, and just for that brief moment, Beatrix had been able to see through the hardened carapace that the girl had created to shield herself from the unpleasantness of her upbringing. She saw through it to the innocent, youthful girl beneath. She was thirteen now, and older than her years, but her true nature was not very far beneath the surface. It warmed Beatrix’s heart to see it.
They had ordered room service and ate it on Beatrix’s bed as they watched trashy TV on the big LCD screen that rested on the bureau.
“So what do you want to do tomorrow?” Beatrix asked her when they had cleared their plates.
“I don’t know . . . We could see the famous bits, maybe? Buckingham Palace. I’ve never seen it before.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“How long can we stay for?”
“Just a few days,” she said and then, forestalling the girl’s protests, “but we’ll pack in as much as we can. And it’s not as if we’re going straight home, is it? New York is just as much fun.”
“I suppose so,” she said, brightening.
Beatrix looked at her watch. It was a little before eight. “I need to go and speak to someone downstairs,” she said.
Isabella looked at her fearfully. “Who?”
“Don’t worry. We’re safe here. They don’t know where we are. And it’s a friend.”
“Who?”
“Do you remember Mr Pope?”
“Yes,” she said. “The one who came to visit.”
“That’s right. I need to see him, just for a little bit.”
“What for?”
“I need to talk to him about what we’re going to do next.”
“Okay,” the girl said.
“I need you to stay here,” Beatrix said. “Is that alright?”
She said that it was.
Beatrix stepped out of the lift into the lobby. It was opulent, lavishly furnished, with no account of expense. She was dressed in sneakers, jeans and a white shirt, and she felt momentarily out of place. The feeling didn’t last. She had stayed in places like this all across the world and had never paid attention to matters of status or class. She had seen many people die, plenty of them at her own hand, and experience had taught her that it didn’t matter how much money or power you had. Those things were mere trappings, irrelevant in the end. She had killed Russian oligarchs, Taliban warlords and the lowliest conscripts. They all died the same way.
Michael Pope was waiting for her in the lobby.
“Hello, Pope.”
“Jesus, Beatrix,” he said. “You look terrible.”
She smiled thinly. “I’ve felt better.”
“Have you . . . ?”
“Have I seen the doctor? I think I’m past that, don’t you?”
“But . . .”
“I can still do what needs to be done,” she said. “When it’s finished, I can stop. But not before. Stop looking at me like that. Do I look like I want pity?”
“No.”
“So, you want a drink?”
“Sure,” he said, leading the way into the bar.
He asked what she wanted. She told him to get a whisky, rocks, and crossed the room to one of the empty tables at the back. He meant well, she knew, but she had no interest in his pity. No energy for it, either. She had a limited fund, and if she was going to do what needed to be done, she would need to marshal it jealously.
She sat and watched as Pope ordered. He was tall and muscular, a soldier’s build, but there was a sharp intelligence in his eyes that marked him out. Beatrix had fled from the Group by the time he had been selected from the SAS, but everything she had heard about him subsequently had been good. John Milton spoke highly of him, and that was a recommendation that she knew to take seriously.
“Here you go,” he said, placing her drink on the table in front of her.
She took it.
“Cheers,” he said.
She touched glasses with him and sipped the whisky.
“I hear Bryan Duffy’s wife is making a lot of noise about what happened,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t think you’d leave a loose end.”
“She had nothing to do with any of it,” she said. “And I’m not an animal.”
“You know Manage Risk sent investigators out to look into it? I’m sure they got plenty out of her.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. You’re a little out of date, Pope. Connor English saw me while I was exfiltrating. They came after me in Marrakech.”
“Came after you? What does that mean?”
“A Black Hawk and ten men.”
“A Black Hawk?”
“Yes, a fancy one. Quieter than usual. Didn’t matter. I wanted them to find me. I let them trail me from Basra, and I was hoping they’d try and take me out. The place was rigged up for it. Made a bit of a mess, but it served its purpose.”
“Jesus. They must be desperate.”
“I would be, if I were them. There’s only one left now.”
“English was there?”
“Yes. But he’s dead now. He was helpful before that, though.”
“What did he say?”
“Everything I need to know.”
“Like where you can find Control?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“He’s in America. The company has a place there.”
“I know. We’ve had a couple of friendly faces working for us there for a while. I didn’t know he was there, though.”
“Lying low.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Her lips twitched upwards a little.
They both sipped their drinks, a quiet moment.
“Did you want anything?” he asked.
“Just to say thanks. You’ve been helpful, and not just in Basra. I’m guessing you’ve gone further than you should have gone?”
Now he smiled. “A little.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I did,” he said. “You sort of had me over a barrel, remember.”
She smiled. “I know.” She coughed, sudden and hard, and it took several moments to stop. “I’m alright,” she said, waving away his concern.
He waited a moment, and then, slowly and carefully, as if unsure whether he was going to cause offence, he asked, “How long do you have left?”
“They told me a year, but that was a year ago. The chemo stopped working a couple of treatments back. I think it just makes the cancer angry now. There’s no point trying it anymore.”
“There’s nothing they can do?”
“No,” she said. “So it’s probably not very long now. But it’ll be long enough.”
“What can I do to help?”
“One thing. If something goes wrong, if I can’t do what I need to do, I’ll need you to do one thing for me.”
“What?”
“My daughter is thirteen years old. I want you to make sure that she disappears. Everything on her needs to be wiped. No birth certificate, no records of the time she spent in care, nothing in the Group’s files—nothi
ng. Once Control’s gone, that ought to be the end of it. I’ll be dead, too. But there are people I went after while I worked for him, people I killed, and some of those people have relatives with long memories. If anyone finds out that I had a daughter, she’s going to be in danger. I want you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“That can be done. Where will she go? When . . . you know?”
“Better not to say. The fewer people who know, the better.”
“Alright. I’ll do what I can.”
She finished her drink and stood to leave. The effort was painful, and she wasn’t able to keep the flinch of discomfort from her face.
“Are you sure I can’t . . .”
“I’m fine, Pope. Really. Making Isabella invisible when I’m gone is more than enough.”
He got up, too.
“I’m serious,” she said. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me. It would have been more difficult otherwise.”
“You would’ve found another way.”
“Maybe. But I might not have had time.”
He extended his hand and she took it.
“I won’t see you again, will I?”
“Goodbye, Pope.”
“Goodbye, Beatrix. Good luck.”
Isabella was asleep when Beatrix got back to the room. She went over to the bed and pressed the covers snugly around her and brushed the blonde hair away from her face. She sat on the edge of the bed for a minute or two, just watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest and listening to the quiet susurration of her breath. She thought of the last year, the time that they had been able to spend together. It was a gift that she had not expected to receive.
The cough came on her almost without warning. The first was deep, hacking and wet, as if there was fluid in her lungs that she couldn’t clear. She got off the bed and hurried to the bathroom, not fast enough to beat the second wheezing fit that swept over her. She shut the door and turned on the shower to try and mask the sound, then bent double over the toilet and coughed again and again, harder and harder, until it felt like she was going to rip her lungs. Her mouth was full of warm fluid that tasted like copper pennies, and, eyes closed, she spat into the bowl.
