by Rob Aspinall
“You could have stolen any car,” I said. “Why this piece of shit?” I pointed at the central console. “It’s not even got satnav or MP3.”
“No immobiliser or tracker either,” Philippe said. “That’s the great thing about pieces of shit.”
“Oh, right.” I said. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“You’ll see.”
By you’ll see, did he mean, you’ll see when we get there and it’s a ditch or a basement or an abandoned quarry lake that he’d either bury/dismember/drown me in? Or did he mean, you’ll see, as in we’re going to a five-star luxury spa with an unlimited pizza buffet? I think I could guess which one, but for now I went along with it. Not like I could bail out of the car at eighty miles an hour in the middle of the motorway.
“At least there’s a radio,” I said, reaching for the power button.
Philippe shot me a look that said, I’m tolerating you for now, but keep pushing and see what happens. I turned the radio on anyway. This might have been my only chance to listen to some tunes before the next instalment of the living nightmare that had become my life.
“What music are you into?” I asked.
“I’m not really—”
“How about this?” I asked, landing on a dance-music station.
Philippe pulled a face, so I tried another. “How about this?” Metal. I didn’t like metal, so I moved on, tuning in to a station playing indie music.
“Ah, I love this song,” I said, grooving around in my seat to the jingle-jangle guitars.
“Why?” Philippe asked, turning up his nose.
I rattled my lips like a horse and turned the dial again. Static. Talking. More static. And ugh, Abba. I hated Abba. I know we were in Sweden, but did they really have to play this toss?
“This is good,” Philippe said, knocking my hand away from the radio and cranking the volume up.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said. “This? Only middle-aged mums listen to this. You’re right, you don’t like music.”
The radio DJ interrupted the end of whatever totally pants, melodic, well-written song we were listening to and cheerfully announced that we were one ditty into a non-stop triple blast of Abba hits. The opening strains to “Take A Chance” came on. Philippe was singing along under his breath to himself. And, I realised, so was I. Oh my God. I liked this shit. I really liked it. This was the worst new taste I’d developed yet. As the music kicked in, I found my body straining at the leash to bop around, secretly loving every minute of the cheesy lyrics, the overblown production and the power-pop beats. It was terrible. Fortunately, just as I was being forced to enjoy the romping intro to “Waterloo”, we passed a sign for a motorway diner.
“Hungry?” Philippe asked. “I’m hungry,” he said, flicking on the indicator.
Okay, I guess we were hungry. Who was I to argue with a trained assassin? As long as he didn’t make me eat smørrebrød.
The diner was like one of those American ones you see in films. Dark-red booths by the window and a long white counter with tall stools. The place smelled of sizzling bacon, warm pastries and coffee. Suddenly I was hungry. Starving.
“Steak and eggs,” we said at the same time as a nerdy blonde waiter with hipster specs arrived to take our order.
“How would you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled,” we chorused.
“And your steak?”
“Medium,” we replied.
The waiter scribbled on his little pad. “Steak and eggs, scrambled, times two … You want coffee?”
“Black,” we both said again. The waiter looked at us like we were a couple of first-class berks playing a game on him. He sighed and scribbled. His eyes darted to my neck. Probably thought I was into kinky strangle sex.
“It’s nothing kinky,” I blurted out like a total mentoid. “It’s a hormone thing,” I said, trying to rescue the situation. “It flares up sometimes.”
“Sure,” the waiter said. He went and got us our coffee.
Coffee. I hated coffee.
Yet now I had a sudden hankering for it. Me and Philippe both took and shook a packet of sugar. Tipped it into the coffee and stirred three times, clinking the spoon twice on the side of the cup.
“Shouldn’t you be eating healthily?” he asked, pointing at my chest.
“Shouldn’t you?”
He ignored my question and sipped on the red-hot coffee.
I fired a few more at him. “Who are the hell are you, anyway? What happened in the barn? You still haven’t told me.”
He carried on sipping.
“And how are you even alive?”
“You’re not going to stop asking me questions, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, what if I just kill you right here?” he said, glancing around the diner.
“Fine. Not knowing is killing me anyway.”
I sat back against the booth and folded my arms, as if to say, Well, I’m waiting. He regarded me like an annoying little fly, sighed and put down his cup.
“You’re one of those JPAC assets,” I said. “I guessed that much.”
“The term is Type A.”
I had a vague memory of Nathan mentioning Type A’s in the Oslo murder barn. “So, you’re like the people who tried to grab me at the hospital?” I asked.
He seemed offended by the comparison. “I hardly think so.”
“What’s the diff?”
“Type A’s don’t fail.”
“But you do change your minds,” I said.
He stared into his cup, wrapped in his long, olive-skinned fingers, as if he was still wrestling with the decision.
“I don’t know, I couldn’t—”
“Just like you couldn’t kill that pregnant woman?” I asked.
His head jerked back in surprise. Black caterpillar eyebrows scrunching together. “How do you—”
Two plates slid into the conversation, heavy with greasy thick meat.
“Two steak and eggs,” the waiter said with a nasally sigh. “Enjoy.”
I heard the waiter mumble Weirdoes under his breath as he walked away. I dug straight in, stomach rumbling hollow.
“How did you know?” Philippe asked again.
“Oh,” I said, mouthful of juicy, salty steak. “Turns out I didn’t just get your heart. I got some of your memories too. One or two of your skills. Though it’s a bit hit and miss … Are you any good at science?’
“Physics,” he said, cutting into his meat. “That explains a lot. At first, we thought you were MI6. A rookie agent with a baby face.”
MI6. Little Lorna Walker? What a hoot!
“So what is it?” he said. “Cellular memories?”
Don’t tell me Phone A Friend was an expert in that too. I gave him a quick rundown of the memory dreams.
The desert.
The Hamptons.
The masquerade ball.
His untimely death.
The contact lenses in the confession booth.
I left out the hotel sex bit.
“Maybe you can tell me what I’m mixed up in,” I said. “What’s the big deal with this list?”
“I don’t know much,” he said. “But some of those dates and locations were marked in my schedule.”
“Type A’s have work schedules?”
“Of course,” Philippe said, his fork paused mid-air, holding a clump of egg. “It’s too early to be issued with any case files. But I can tell you,” he said, glancing and around the room and leaning in conspiratorially, “it wasn’t all wet work.”
“Wet what?”
“Assassinations.”
He shovelled the last of his meal into his mouth and wiped off with a paper napkin. “And there’s only one other thing they give me that isn’t wet work,” he said.
“Dry work?” I asked.
“BFPs … Black Flag Protocols.”
“Oh yeah, like Red Flag Protocols.”
“Yes, but on a bigger scale. Planes being shot down
. Presidents being killed. Usually a mass casualty incident, but anything that dominates the global headlines.”
Philippe sipped on his coffee and ran his tongue around his teeth, seeking out rogue chunks of food.
“Something big is coming,” he said, looking out of the window, as if the big thing was sitting impatiently in the carpark. “Whatever it is, I intend to be as far away from it as possible.”
He turned his attention back to me. “And so should you.”
Like Giles, Philippe seemed to talk his own language. But, by the sounds of it, Project Maelstrom didn’t exactly sound charitable. It was like Extreme Hangman. The blanks were starting to fill themselves in and spell DOOM.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Can we recap?”
Philippe sat back in his chair with his coffee.
“You’re a Type A,” I said.
“For JPAC, yes. The Joint Peace—”
“… Alliance Committee, I know. How come I haven’t heard of them?”
“Because very few have.”
“Don’t they have a website? A Facebook page? A logo? Everyone has a logo.”
“They don’t exactly advertise.”
“Then how did you get the job?”
Philippe picked up the dessert menu. “You like ice cream?” he asked, signalling to the waiter. “I like ice cream.”
5
Park & Ride
Two ice-cream sundaes later, I was stuffed and Philippe was in the gents toilet. I tossed my serviette in the empty glass ice-cream bowl and leaned back against the booth cushion, considering my next move. I decided to stick to the plan I’d worked out with Giles. I still had those six thousand euros in the account he’d set up in my new false name, Katerina Alaverdy. I also had my drugs and the new passport, the designer shades I’d stolen off the girl at the Trafford Centre and the dress I’d ordered off Amazon folded up inside my bag. Now that Lorna Walker was officially dead in the eyes of the world, I could move around without looking over my shoulder. Which led me to the question, why was I still hanging around with one of JPAC’s finest? It seemed like a dumb idea. The further I was away from him, the further I was from the events of the previous few days.
“Anyway,” I said as Philippe returned to his seat, “it’s been nice.”
I grabbed my bag and slid out of the booth.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Before we took the exit, I saw a park and ride a little further down the road. I’ll get the bus into … Where are we again?”
“Just outside Stockholm.”
“I’ll get the bus to Stockholm, then take the train out of here. I think it’s better if we split up from here, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well I do, so …”
Philippe shrugged in acceptance. “I suppose it’s a free country.”
I walked a few feet before I stopped and turned back. I felt I had to say something. I mean, we had been through a drone chase together.
“Something wrong?” Philippe asked.
“I just wanted to say thanks for not totally suffocating me with that plastic bag.”
My timing was lousy. The waiter dumped the bill on the table just as I said it. He gave me the look to end all looks.
Philippe smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Thanks for the memories. See ya.”
It was a fifteen-minute walk along the path by the side of the motorway to the park and ride, which was just off the slip road before the diner. It was further than I thought. When I got there, the carpark was pretty empty, save for a smattering of cars. Luckily for me, there was a silver bus with a big green swoosh down the side. It was one of those hybrid ones and sat quietly filling up with a few passengers. It said Stockholm on the front. This was my ticket out of here. I hurried over to the door and stepped on board. I asked the chubby, cheery driver for a single to the city centre. He told me it would be four euros. I dug in my bag for my purse. Funny – it wasn’t where I’d left it. I smiled at the driver. He smiled back. I put down my bag and rooted through the contents, pulling out my dress, my shades, yada, yada, until I hit bottom. No purse. No passport. My cheeks flushed. My heart galloped. Shit, don’t tell me I’d lost them. Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the driver. “I’ve lost my purse.”
The driver’s smile faded. He thought I was having him on.
“No really,” I said. “Don’t suppose you could, just, let this one go. Give me a free ride?”
He shook his head. “There’s no such thing, I’m afraid.”
I looked down the aisle, trying to meet an eyeball or two. Hoping one of the other passengers would take pity. Nada. Not a flicker of sympathy. It was too early in the morning for that. And too many people were running late, tutting impatiently.
“I’ll have to ask you to alight the vehicle,” the driver said.
“Yeah, but, I—”
“Alight the vehicle, please.”
Reluctantly, I stepped off the bus. The doors shushed closed and it drove off with a hum of electric motor, pulling out of the carpark and swinging out of sight around a roundabout. I plonked myself on the cold metal bench inside the bus shelter. So that was that. How was I going to travel? How was I going to live?
Sex worker, my inner devil told me. Not that you’d get much.
I suppose I could wait for a Good Samaritan to park up in their car and offer me some money for the fare. But supposing I made it into the city. What then? The wind whistled across the carpark and chilled me to the bone. It was more exposed here. I wished I’d stayed in Philippe’s shitty Volvo, underneath the hospital blanket. Now he’d be gone, off down the motorway, with money and a semi-operational fan heater. I bent over double, clinging on to my own arms and staring at a lonely crisp packet on the ground, both of us stranded and emptied out. I heard Auntie Claire’s voice telling me to put something warm on. A jacket and a scarf. You’ll catch your death, she always said to me. The memory of her made me want to cry. I fought back the tears. Then I thought I heard a girl’s voice on the wind: Am I dying? Okay, that was the second time I’d heard that. It sounded real. It was starting to creep me out.
I don’t know how long I sat there before I heard the next car pull into the park and ride. It stopped in front of me on skinny old tyres, engine clanking. Was this the moment when I got picked up by a pimp? A motorway psychopath? I didn’t want to look. I heard the driver’s door open and close. His feet clomped round the car and scuffed to a stop in front of mine. Black boots. Military style. With office pants over the top. I looked up. A man in a pink shirt. It was Philippe, looming over me like Death himself.
“You didn’t really think I’d let you go, did you?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything. Just stood off the bench, got in the car and buckled up. Philippe climbed in behind the wheel.
“You took my money and passport?” I asked.
“They’re in a safe place,” Philippe said. “As far as JPAC are concerned, I’m dead. I can’t have you compromising that.”
“Okay,” I said. “This seems like a good spot. Get it over with. Just make it quick, okay? None of that plastic-bag shit.”
Philippe stared at me like I was mad. He shook his head and put the car in gear.
“You can have your money and passport when we get home,” he said, steering us out of the carpark.
“Where’s home?” I asked.
6
Night Raid
It was 01:00 according to the dayglo digits on my commando watch. It woke me up as I snoozed in the passenger seat of the Aid International van. Clarence stirred behind the wheel and Inge stretched and yawned in the seat behind us. I shoved my door open and stepped down into the layby we’d parked up in, my boots crunching lightly in the gravelly dirt.
The Congolese wilderness was true black. Light virtually zero, apart from when the sky flashed neon blue and silent over the horizon from a storm happening somewh
ere else. You expected the night to be cool, but it was as warm as a summer day in England. It was close, too. The humidity had been building all day and now the storms were coming.
I shut the passenger door behind me and pulled a small torch from a belt around my waist. I was dressed differently now. Where my linen aid-worker getup would have stood out against the dark, my new outfit was one with the night. The sort of gear the Navy Seals or SAS might wear. I shone the torch on the bottom right of the bodywork next to the wheel arch and tugged at the edge. A plastic film rode up between my fingers. Walking from front to back, I peeled away an entire vinyl sticker from the side of the van. I repeated the trick on the driver’s side, the rear doors, the front and the roof until the van all but disappeared into the night. I shone the torch over it. Green and black camouflage paint. I screwed the vinyl stickers up in a ball and threw them into the long grass by the side of the road. Clarence opened the rear doors from the inside and tossed me a set of night-vision goggles. I strapped them around my head and slipped on a pair of gloves. I noticed Clarence was wearing face paint that went with the night-time jungle. Me too. Inge stopped short of the makeup, but sat in front of the monitors, checking the view from our night-vision cameras. As we moved, the split-screen images on either monitor moved too. I jumped in the back of the van and closed the doors behind me. We each slipped in an earpiece and ran through a comms check as Clarence spun the van around and drove with dipped headlights towards the village. He killed the lights altogether as we stopped under the cover of a large tree canopy, a hundred metres from the road up to Mobutu’s place. I locked and loaded a couple of assault rifles. You could tell it was specialist kit. Lightweight but powerful with a night-vision lens, green laser guide and a long, fat silencer barrel screwed onto the end.
Inge stayed put, working the screens.
“Don’t wait up,” Clarence said.
