by Mick Herron
‘Gut shot, well, same again. I’ve seen people live for hours with a bullet in the belly. Well, I’ll rephrase that. I’ve watched people die for hours with a bullet in the belly. That’s assuming lack of medical intervention, of course. But that won’t bother you one way or the other, will it? Because you’ll be dead. You and him both.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘And, well, anywhere else . . . You’re not planning on shooting to wound, are you?’
She shook her head.
‘Fine. If you were, I hardly need tell you . . .’
‘I’d be dead,’ said Zoë flatly.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Me and him both.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you want to take those two steps back now? Because I’m not asking again.’
Amos Crane took half a step back, and half a step forward again. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘Shoot him!’
‘I know you don’t, or you’d never have got in the car.’
‘Shoot him!’
‘I was on the train. I watched you walk past. You were carrying,’ he said dreamily, ‘a cup of coffee and two packets of sandwiches.’
‘I’m counting to three now,’ Zoë told him. ‘One.’
‘And you know the really funny thing?’
‘Two.’
‘I dreamed about you,’ said Amos Crane – a fact both absurd and utterly true, though he never knew whether it was the patent absurdity or simple truth of it that caused Zoë’s eyes to flicker when he spoke, a flicker long enough to allow him to drop . . . And Amos Crane did not drop like other men. There was no stooping, no bending of the back. One moment his feet were on the floor, and the next – the next, he might have had no feet at all, and it was certainly true, he knew, it was certainly true that whatever came of this, his knees would never be the same again, not after allowing his whole weight to come down on them on a dusty stone floor. In a disused chapel. In the middle of nowhere. Reaching for a gun. All of it so unnecessary, when he had his own gun, strapped under his right armpit, but it had been too thrilling, too edgy, to walk in here empty-handed, and see what the gods dealt out . . . a woman in a red top, who would certainly shoot but would probably miss. All of which Amos Crane was not precisely thinking at that moment; he was feeling, rather; just as he felt the floor hit his knees with a crack, felt the gun jump into his hand. He had never had trouble with guns, Amos Crane. Never met a one he didn’t like. This one would do just fine. This was the gun he would reach and point, and once he’d shot the woman, he’d take longer over the man, because this was the man who had killed his brother. Michael Downey was going to die slow . . .
But Zoë didn’t hesitate.
And Amos Crane ceased to be a problem.
He arrived at the grubby little clearing – limping – to find Sarah waiting for him: a shotgun in her hands like she was Annie Oakley. His own gun more or less dangled from his wrist. He had fallen, doing something pretty unpleasantly painful to his knee in the process, and now had the nagging feeling that nothing was going the way it ought to. That some kind of rewind needed putting into operation, so he’d be back at his desk in London, reading about this through others’ reports.
But he was pretty sure he’d heard a shot back there. Whichever way you looked at it, loose ends were being clipped.
Sarah said, ‘That’s far enough.’
Howard stopped, because he wasn’t a fool. He said, ‘It’s okay, you know. It’s all over. More or less.’
‘Drop the gun.’
‘I’m not going to hurt you. See?’ He tossed the gun into the trees. ‘You can put that down too, if you like.’
Sarah didn’t loosen her grip on the shotgun.
He said, ‘You want to see my card? I have ID.’
‘Not particularly.’
‘You just got involved in –’
‘I know what I got involved in. I got involved in bastards like you covering up toxic wargames. Chemical weapons? Out in the African desert? Am I ringing bells?’
‘None of that had anything to do with me.’
‘Oh, sure.’
‘I’m serious. Frankly, it pisses me off too. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t. But you know what really gets me? That you used a child, a four-year-old child as part of your cover-up. First you poison her father. Then you kidnap her as bait!’
‘Her father –’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Her father was no better than a war criminal. Did you know that?’
Sarah didn’t answer.
‘Same as your friend Downey. Shooting unarmed prisoners. Sound like the sort of thing he’d do? Think about the island, Sarah. What happened on the island. He’s a bloody maniac. You must see that.’
‘You used him as a guinea pig.’
‘He volunteered.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I think you do.’
Oh, she could believe him. Howard saw that right enough. She would believe anything right then. Up to and especially that she was in a coma, and this the fevered dreaming of her damaged mind.
He started to feel better about life. Even his knee stopped throbbing. ‘Mrs Trafford,’ he said, ‘Sarah. Hear me. Nothing that happened to your friend in the past had anything to do with me. With us. No matter what he did, what happened to him was a crime. And as far as I’m aware, those responsible were punished. They crossed a line.’ He shrugged. ‘You can’t always prevent such things. You can only clear up afterwards.’
‘But nobody ever knew about it. Those boy soldiers were killed –’
‘That’s the point. Nobody ever knew about it. You think people are happier knowing the truth, Sarah? About everything? You think they want to know what goes on in the margins of their democracy? They don’t. That’s my job. That’s what clearing up means.’
‘But you used a child –’
‘Who is all right, Sarah. She’s all right. You think we’d have let anything happen to her?’
‘Anything almost did!’
‘Right. On the island. But that was Downey’s fault, Sarah. Not ours. Certainly we wanted to . . . make contact. Bring him back into the fold. We weren’t to know he’d go haywire.’
‘You blew a house up. Somebody tried to kill me!’
‘Same agent. You want to hear me say I’m sorry? Well, I am. Believe me, I’m sorry. Especially about what he tried to do to you, but all we can say on that is, he paid the price. He went rogue, he paid the price. I don’t honestly think we can be held responsible for his actions, Sarah. We really have to be reasonable about this.’
But she was shaking her head, as if she weren’t convinced that they did.
‘Look, Sarah, cards on the table. There are two ways we can go with this.’ He spread his hands, palms up. ‘The first is, you put the gun down, come with me, and we get your life back for you. Simple as that. Obviously you’ll have to sign a few papers, official secrets, stuff like that, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. You put this behind you, start off like it never happened. And we can work out your husband’s difficulties. Sure, he’s been neck deep in some serious sins, but nothing we can’t straighten. Not with a little goodwill on all sides. Okay?’
‘And what’s the other way?’
He shuffled, humbly. ‘I think we should stick with way one. You know my speciality, Sarah? What I’m good at? Fixing it so things never happened. We can do that here. Trust me.’
‘And the other way?’
Howard showed how unhappy he felt, brooding on the other way. ‘You must understand me, it really is very important Downey’s story goes no further. And if you show yourself too, ah, intransigent on this point, well, everything gets blown out of proportion. That’s all.’
‘And the other way?’
‘The other way, Sarah, is you don’t put the gun down. You even use it.’ He shook his head and smiled shyly, as if it were a secret they share
d, that way two was never really going to be an option. ‘You use it. Obviously, lots of things aren’t going to matter to me at that point. I’ll be spread a little thin to worry then about what comes next. But you ought to bear in mind the consequences.’
Sarah didn’t say anything. He sighed deeply.
‘The consequences. I might not be around any more, but the, ah, department I work for will be. And I’m afraid they’ll have to go into overdrive at that point. Which means that you, your friend back there, Downey, the child, your husband, your old friend, er, Wigwam . . . Everyone you might have had contact with, really. Will all meet major accidents.’
‘I ought to kill you.’
‘That’s your choice. But you won’t just be killing me. You’ll be starting something you can’t stop. You’ve been lucky so far, you know. Very lucky. We’ve been a little stretched. Turn this into a full-scale emergency, and what’s happening in the Gulf right now will look like tea-time. Now, perhaps I ought to give you a while to think about this, but that’s hardly crucial, is it, Sarah? I mean, this isn’t a difficult choice you’re facing. Happy ever after, or let’s fuck everybody. Pardon my French.’
‘You’re not human.’
‘Compared to some of my colleagues, I’m a teddy bear. A teddy bear that’s been awarded the Nobel peace prize. Now, I really think you ought to put the gun down, Sarah. Before everyone you know and love gets hurt.’
And to his deep relief, he saw that she was considering doing just that.
He breathed in, breathed out. Somebody’s life passed before his eyes . . .
Howard stepped forward, and picked the gun from the ground where she’d dropped it, then took a number of steps back, and raised the barrel so it pointed at Sarah.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him.
‘Let’s not be obtuse.’
‘But you said –’
‘I said you could sign some papers. I’m sorry. I lied.’ He raised the gun and sighted down the barrel.
‘But –’
‘But no. I’m sorry. You’re brave. I’m sorry.’ He lowered the gun. At this range, he was hardly going to miss. No need to make a production of it.
‘But –’
‘I’m sorry.’
He fired.
And Sarah . . .
For one split moment Sarah was standing at the end of a long long corridor, watching a bright light rushing towards her at one hundred miles an hour. With it came a noise, something like an angry wind or a whole gang of lions roaring at once, and it changed colour as it approached: now red, now green, now red, now white, now red. In the end it was all red and it swallowed her up just as the noise vanished, and it was like having a telescope she was looking through shatter, leaving her disoriented but exactly where she should be. Then the noise came back, only this time without lions: just a high-pitched scream which scaled the trees, looking for a way to break the sky.
Sarah took a deep breath, and knew she was alive.
The man lay on his back a few yards away, the appalling stump of his right arm gushing blood, though he gripped it by the elbow with his left as if that might help. Sarah had never heard another human issue sounds like this. It was what people meant when they spoke about banshees. His face growled at her, all his features colliding, as if the bland disguise had dropped away, showing the child of darkness beneath. The darkness, though, was mostly made of pain.
The shotgun was a twisted mess of metal at his feet.
She opened her mouth to say something, but found nothing to be said.
After a while she undid her belt and knelt by the screaming man; slipped it round his arm below the elbow, and drew it tight. His remaining hand clawed at her face but when she pushed him down, he subsided. The scream became a whimper. All around his mouth was a thin white paste. The belt looped his arm four times before she could fasten the buckle, and even then, as far as she could see, had no effect whatsoever. But she was no nurse, and you did what you could, that was all . . . The word haunting her was cauterized. But he’d have to take his chances.
‘Listen to me.’
Her own words, transmitted from somewhere outside space.
‘Are you listening? You have to lie still. Thrash around, you’ll bleed to death.’
Lie still, you’ll also bleed to death, she thought. Listen: whose fault was this anyway?
‘I’ll bring help.’
He spat: a bright gob of phlegm which spattered his own shirt front. In his eyes, she could read approaching death. It was like looking down another tunnel, whose distant light was an oncoming train.
‘God forgive you,’ she said.
When she stood, Michael’s denim jacket flapped loosely in the breeze. Dipping into its pocket, she scattered the last of the shotgun shells; gold droppings fell to earth like magic goose shit. Though as they winked at her from their brand new hiding places, Sarah was thinking not of them but of the bright red plugs tidy Michael had tucked in his pocket. One fragment of which she could see now, poking blindly from the wreck of the shotgun stock.
And back she walked through the trees, sunlight dancing in her footsteps. Back she ran, actually, filled with sudden fear: for Zoë, for Michael . . . Most of all for Dinah, whom she’d come a long way to lose in a hurry.
I came all this way to find you, and I do remember why. Because we’re survivors, the two of us. We survive.
Alive, she ran through the trees, then; and in an astonishingly short while reached the chapel: old stone, straggly bushes, blue 2CV. Her legs almost gave way at that point. As if she were faced with an unexpected hurdle, Sarah found herself weak in the calves; almost stumbled, almost fell; had to reach out and steady herself with both hands on the roof of the tinny car. Through whose window she looked down to see Dinah, looking up at her.
She opened the door. The child wasn’t crying. Something of a miracle. On the other hand, all she’d been through, well: she’s probably tougher than me, Sarah thought. Probably is. Not that I ever set out to prove anything.
For a moment, she felt a jagged memory intrude: of a cat seen through a window, mocking her from the far side of the glass. Then it went.
She reached down and took Dinah in her arms. The child thought about it, but didn’t struggle. Opened her mouth to say something, but must have changed her mind.
Sarah reached for words of comfort, while behind her a door opened, and someone stepped lightly into the sun, flicking a cigarette lighter.
‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ Sarah said. Then she turned and smiled at Zoë.
‘. . . it is theoretically possible to develop so-called “ethnic chemical weapons”, which would be designed to exploit naturally occurring differences in vulnerability among specific population groups. Thus, such a weapon would be capable of incapacitating or killing a selected enemy population to a significantly greater extent than the population of friendly forces.’ US Army Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center, Decontamination of Water Containing Chemical Warfare Agent (Fort Belvoir, Virginia, January 1975)
‘. . . we should do well to remember that in the field of chemical and biological warfare once a thing has been shown to be possible, it has generally been done.’ Harris and Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing (1982)
Acknowledgements
The extract from A Higher Form of Killing by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, published by Arrow, is used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
The extract from ‘Toads Revisited’ by Philip Larkin is reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber.
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