by Dawson, Mark
Chapter Sixteen
The apartment that they allotted to Control was a decent size, furnished with the same minimalist zeal that was evident throughout the rest of The Lodge. It was, most importantly, impregnable to everything other than a full-scale infantry assault. It was on the fifth floor of the accommodation block. The lobby was staffed by two armed guards, and there were another half dozen in the barracks connected to the building by a short covered walkway. There was a sniper team on the roof 24/7. The block was at the top of a steep rise, ringed on all sides by a ten-foot fence that was both electrified and topped with razor wire. The forest on all sides had been cleared so that it was impossible to make a covert approach.
It would have made an excellent prison.
Control had conceded that Jamie King had a point, and he had started to carry the Glock that he had provided, even spending time on the range to sharpen up skills that had he had allowed to atrophy over the years through lack of practice.
He had just returned from the range now. He took off the shoulder holster and dropped it and the Glock onto the bed. He took off his shirt and unbuttoned the Kevlar vest that he now wore whenever he was outside. He would have liked to be able to open the window to let the cool air circulate around the room a little, but the windows were bulletproof and sealed shut. The bulletproof glass and the vest were measures that would make it more difficult for Beatrix to go after him with a long gun. Control knew enough of her capabilities to know that those precautions were not superfluous.
He flicked on the TV, gazed morosely at it for a moment and then flicked it off again in favour of the radio. He scrolled through the presets until he found an internet station that was playing “Dark Side of the Moon.” He let it play, went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. He took the glass, returned to the lounge, sat down in the stylish but impractical armchair and thought hard.
Control was a patient man. He had always prided himself on that. He had a temper, a fact to which everyone who had ever worked under him would attest, but that was almost always triggered by incompetence. When a job required a careful approach, he could lie in wait until the right opportunity presented itself.
A man did not last long in his business without endurance and perseverance.
He had gone to war more or less unaware that he had it in him. He had been young and callow, unaware of himself or of what he might go on to achieve. Before he went, those who knew him would have said that he was headstrong and impatient. He came from a background of privilege, a repressed upper-middle-class vacuum that had done nothing to test him, provided no mould into which he could pour his character.
His war had been Ireland. The Troubles had provided incidents that put into doubt his suitability for a career in intelligence. Yet they had also provided others that suggested that, with a little seasoning, he might suit it perfectly. His inexperience was illustrated by his handling of a source who had played him like a cheap fiddle, using him to lure a patrol into an ambush during which three soldiers were murdered. His ruthlessness, cunning and base instinct for self-preservation had seen the turncoat assassinated in short order and the situation dressed up as an intelligence failing from which he emerged as a hero.
Belfast changed him. It could have broken him, and God knows, it broke plenty of his colleagues. He saw it every day: kids like him, fresh out of university and barely ready for their careers in MI5; experienced soldiers who already had experience in shooting wars. The battle with the Provos had been a proving ground. It killed men and ate others up. Control had risen above it. He had used it. It was the crucible in which his character had been forged.
He had looked around himself and learned. He had changed and adapted. He had served in Belfast for four years, and at the end of it, he had a résumé to be proud of. Some of it was even true. He had parlayed his record into a posting back home, and then, when the time had come, he had engineered a transfer into the department which would become Group Fifteen.
Those early years, he thought while idly listening to the music, had been the perfect finishing school for the role that he would eventually fill. He had never seen a dead body before he arrived in the province. He had never been around death in any capacity. That double-cross and ambush, and the three dead squaddies, had been his first experience of bloodshed. He had been the first to find them, face down, executed with bullets to the back of the head. He had no idea how he would react before it had happened. He had speculated, considered it empirically from the safety of the sangar, their fortified position, but there was no substitute for real experience. Some men would have folded up and broken. Perhaps he would have been like them?
He wasn’t.
His first reaction upon seeing the soldiers in that dingy house on the Falls Road was of curiosity. This was what death looked like. It was a thing. A state of being. A simple noun. Something to observe, to analyse, to consider.
His indifference towards it might have been termed callous, or even sadistic, but it was the quality that had made him so resilient over the years. He was a dealer in death. It was his stock-in-trade. There was no room for sadness or regret or any other tawdry emotion that might impede the successful completion of his objectives. He reviewed his targets, planned their ends and then dispatched the men and women who worked as his emissaries, sent them all around the world, carrying with them his orders and the promise of a final exit for those unfortunates whose files had come across his desk.
He had been the head of Group Fifteen for more than a decade. He had outlasted his superiors in MI6, foreign secretaries and prime ministers. He was as resilient as a cockroach. Plenty of files had been passed to him for action during that time. He didn’t know exactly how many. He had stopped counting when the count reached four figures.
He thought of his best agents.
John Milton.
Michael Pope.
Beatrix Rose.
His angels of death.
Funny how things changed.
Now he was the hunted.
Not the hunter.
His angels were coming for him.
He got up, walked across to the window and looked out at the desolate swampland beyond the border of the accommodation block.
He saw his reflection in the glass. He looked older now. The grey in his hair was more pronounced, and there was less of it. More wrinkles, etched into the spaces around his eyes. It was worry and fear, carving their marks into his face.
The music played on. He stared out quietly. His eye was drawn to a smudge of black in the air fifty feet away. He focussed on it. It was a Cooper’s hawk. He saw its black cap, blue-grey upper parts and white underparts with the distinctive red bars. It was circling on the thermals, a series of lazy loops as it surveyed the terrain below it.
Control exhaled.
His real name was Lucian Finnegan, although no one called him that now. No one had called him that for years. He had been Control for so long that “Lucian” had been subsumed into his new persona, and even he rarely thought of himself that way. His wife called him by his given name, but that had been before they had separated, and they didn’t speak now. His children called him “Father.”
Maybe he should be Lucian again?
No, he thought. Lucian is dead. Lucian was Control’s first victim.
He was disturbed by the buzzing of his cellphone. He fished it out of his pocket. It was Jamie King.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Anything?”
King clucked his tongue in dissatisfaction. “She didn’t stay on the call long enough.”
“She’s no fool. She won’t get caught out as easily as that.”
“We triangulated to within fifteen miles. She’s in the area.”
“She’s not bluffing, Jamie. She’s
coming for me.”
He watched as the hawk beat its wings, holding position.
“And we’re ready for her. It’s one woman. I know how good she is. Christ, I’ve seen what she can do. But it’s just one woman, and we have an army. She doesn’t have a chance. Not a chance.”
The hawk folded back its wings and plunged down to the swamp. It flared at the last moment, exposing its talons, and as it beat the air and began to rise again, he saw something small and helpless writhing in its grip.
He looked away. “What about the rendezvous?”
“It’s deserted. Hasn’t been used for twenty years. No one goes there anymore. It’s not a bad place for her to choose. Good sight lines. Long views. It’ll be difficult to surprise her.”
“Difficult?”
“I’m working on it. Difficult, not impossible. I’ve got two fire teams now.”
“She’ll expect that.”
“You’d rather they weren’t there?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Do you think she’s working with anyone else?”
He thought about that. “I wouldn’t rule it out. John Milton, perhaps. And he’s just as dangerous as she is.”
“I don’t care how dangerous they are. If she turns up there, she—and anyone else dumb enough to be there with her—is going to be outmatched and outgunned. You have my word on that.”
“And my daughter?”
“We’ll get her back.”
He looked back out of the window and watched as the hawk carried its prey away into the gloom.
“Alright,” he said.
“It’s nearly over.”
“Thanks for calling.”
King meant well. He was saying all the things that he was supposed to say, but none of them meant very much. They were not reassuring. It was nearly over, but they did not offer him hope that it would end in his favour. No doubt King meant it. No doubt he was sincere. But he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen the things that Control had seen.
The oligarch who had barricaded himself inside a fortress and surrounded himself with a private army.
The defector who had retreated to the bosom of the Chinese secret service.
The playboy arms dealer aboard his yacht out at sea, miles from shore.
The government minister in the heart of Baghdad.
Beatrix had passed into their lairs like a spectre.
She had eliminated all of them and dozens more besides.
And she would be waiting for him tomorrow.
One way or another, it was all going to come to an end.
Chapter Seventeen
Beatrix opened the door to the veranda and stepped outside. It was cool and fresh, and the air on her hot and clammy skin was a relief. She knew that she looked wan and frail, and the darkness offered her a chance to hide that, too. She rested her forearms on the balustrade, stared into the black spaces between the trees and then closed her eyes. She was tired.
“Mummy?”
“Hello,” she said.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Beatrix said. “I’m fine.”
“You look . . . you looked . . .”
“Just a little bit tired, Bella,” she interrupted gently. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Getting some fresh air.”
Isabella was quiet. She settled in next to her mother and nestled close. Beatrix extended her arm to loop it around her shoulders. It was an effort, and she frowned her disquiet at this, wiping the expression away as Isabella tilted her face to look up at her.
“We need to talk about what’s going to happen,” Beatrix said.
“About what?”
“Tomorrow.”
Isabella didn’t respond.
“You’re going to see things on the news and in the newspapers about me. About what I’ve done and what I’m going to do. They’ll have stories, and those stories won’t always be true. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“They’ll say I was a terrorist. You know what that is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not right. That’s not what this is about.”
“I know that, Mummy.”
She breathed out. “Good girl,” she said. “You know I . . . you know . . .”
What was she going to say?
You know I’m doing this for you?
How much of that was true, and how much was the story that she wanted to believe?
How much of it was a self-serving justification for what, she knew, this really was—revenge?
Pure, simple revenge?
She was struck dumb by a moment of confusion.
“They deserved what you’ve done to them,” Isabella said for her. Her tone was clear, certain and confident. “And he deserves it most of all.”
Beatrix felt the catch in her throat again. She swallowed it down. “Listen to me,” she said. “Whatever happens tomorrow, good or bad, I want you to get straight to the airport. You call Mohammed and you leave.”
Isabella looked away.
“I’m serious, sweetheart. You mustn’t stay.”
“But we said . . .”
She took her daughter’s shoulders and held her, facing her square ahead. “I mean it, Isabella.”
“But we said, if you can’t, if it goes wrong, if it . . .”
“I was wrong about all of that.”
“What about my training? That was what it was for. You said: if it goes wrong, I have to finish it. That’s my job. That’s why I’m here. I take care of all the loose ends.”
“No,” she said, firmly. “That was wrong. I was wrong.”
“So what was it all for if it wasn’t for this?”
“I was wrong, Bella. This has nothing to do with you. It’s my fight. It always has been my fight, and I should never have involved you. Your training is for you to defend yourself, if that’s ever necessary. It isn’t for this.” She waved her hand at the darkness, meaning it to encompass Control and Manage Risk and what she had resolved to do. “As soon as it’s over, I want you to get away, as far as you can, whatever happens.”
Her daughter frowned.
“Do you understand, Bella?”
She didn’t look at her. “Yes.”
“Isabella?”
“I understand.”
“Good girl.”
“Now,” she said, changing the subject to the other thing for which she needed reassurance. “You know about the money?”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “I remember.”
“It’s in your name. All you’ll have to do is visit the bank with your passport, and they’ll give you access to it.”
“I know, Mummy.”
“There’s a lot. A million. More than you’ll need.”
“I know,” she said. “I know all of this.”
“I just want to make sure. I’ll sleep easier.”
They stayed out on the veranda, quiet with their thoughts. Beatrix hugged her daughter close to her, feeling her warmth against her flank, smelling the citrus notes from the shampoo that they had found in the cabin’s bathroom. She closed her eyes, and soon the sound of the television that Cassidy was watching inside was lost to her, and all she could hear was the chirping of crickets and the rustle of the breeze as it stirred the leaves and branches all around them.
They stood there, peaceful and calm, and she allowed herself to imagine another life, a different one, one in which there was no cancer, no revenge. One in which there was a future. The thought of it, so tantalising, seemed almost real, and she hugged Isabella closer. A spasm of pain flickered like summer lightning along her nerves and into her synapses: a glimpse, a little reminder, that her dreams were mirages,
siren songs that would lead her to her doom if she paid them any heed. Reality crashed down, weakness and pain and the sure promise of the end, and she had to bite her lip to stifle her sob.
Isabella knew. She slipped her arm around her mother’s waist and squeezed gently. She laid her head on her shoulder, and Beatrix could do nothing to staunch her tears.
She didn’t sleep that night. She knew it would be impossible, and so she didn’t try. The pain was constant now, and there was nothing she could do to alleviate it. She had grown used to it. It helped to keep in mind the fact that it would all be ending soon enough. One way or another, it would come to an end. She stayed in the sitting room, huddled in the glow of a small standard lamp and warmed by the logs she tossed onto the fire.
She thought about her life and the things that she had achieved.
She addressed her regrets and acknowledged the things that she would have done differently.
She thought of Lucas, her husband. He had been South African, had installed high-end AV systems, and he had been her opposite. Where she was fiery and impetuous, he had been calm and dependable, with soulful brown eyes that shone with patience and compassion. She knew very well that she had been difficult in the early years of their marriage, that she had put her career first and that, when she was at home, she had been prey to quicksilver mood swings that were triggered by the frustration that other agents were in the field, living the life, when she was not. She had been selfish. She had lied to him about what she did, and even though she knew that he was too wise to be fooled, he had never pressed. She thought of the weeks she spent abroad and how she would close herself off to him when she returned home. She had failed in her vows, and yet he had always stood by her and she had never been in any doubt that he loved her.
She remembered the look he had given her before Lydia Chisholm had shot him.
