The Black Art of Killing

by Matthew Hall

  Quinn’s eyes were glazing over and he was no longer fighting for breath. Black placed his circled thumbs and forefingers over his open mouth and attempted CPR. The air filled Quinn’s mouth but penetrated no further. His constricted lungs refused to inflate. Black tried again and again, but the airway was closed tight shut. He switched to chest compressions, pounding Quinn’s sternum with the flats of his hands, hoping that by some miracle his nervous system could be rebooted at the point of death.

  Five minutes and several hundred compressions later, Black paused to wipe away the sweat dripping into his eyes and noticed a solitary fly land on Quinn’s lower lip. It paused, as if to assure itself that all signs of life had departed, then crawled inside his open mouth.

  Black stared at the corpse, scarcely able to comprehend. One minute the prisoner had been alive and complaining and the next he was dead.

  He had done what he had hoped never to do again.

  He had killed a man.

  Crouched over the lifeless body he waited for something to happen. It occurred to him that his mind might implode under the weight of his conscience. But it remained clear and strangely absent of emotion. Dust circled in the shaft of light coming from the doorway and outside the birds continued to sing.

  Black rose to his feet in a strange state of almost peaceful detachment, rolled his stiff neck from side to side and turned his attention to Clayton. He pulled off the ear defenders and hood. Clayton winced and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. His clammy face was blue with stubble and his thinning hair plastered to his skull. He was weak, dehydrated and quite probably in more pain than he had ever known.

  ‘I’m afraid your colleague didn’t make it. Asthma.’

  Clayton followed Black’s gaze to the body lying eight feet to his right. Black watched his eyes widen in alarm.

  ‘I take it you would like to see your family again, Mr Clayton?’

  Clayton’s gaze remained fixed on Quinn’s lifeless form.

  He was good. Black guessed that he was still in sufficient possession of his faculties to be able to calculate that being the only one left alive, he was unlikely to suffer the same fate. And this in turn would give him hope and strength to resist, or at any rate, prolong his ordeal.

  Black was in no mood for waiting. ‘Excuse me, Mr Clayton.’

  He walked over to Quinn’s body, untied the remaining rope attaching it to the auger, then hoisted it over his shoulder. Adjusting to the heavy weight, he made his way slowly to the door and leaving it open so that Clayton could follow his progress, carried it outside. He made it as far as the first pond and heaved it over the edge. He stepped back and watched it sink slowly beneath the thick layer of green sludge. A few residual bubbles rose to the surface and then the dense mat of algae closed in again.

  The demonstration was effective.

  Black returned to find Clayton suspended from his bound wrists, his knees tantalizing inches from the ground. His face was a picture of unbearable pain. Still Black was aware of a disconcerting absence of pity or sympathy. He regarded his prisoner with the same clinical curiosity with which a surgeon might appraise an anaesthetized patient.

  ‘In a moment I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth, Mr Clayton, and if you wish for it to remain off, you will give me the name of the person to whom you have been passing information in exchange for payment. Will you do that for me?’

  Clayton clamped his eyes tight shut and nodded.

  ‘And when I have that name I will let you sit and you can give me your full statement. Only when I have that statement will I return you to your family. If you choose not to cooperate, you will be joining Mr Quinn. Do I have your assurance that you will cooperate?’

  Another nod. His eyes were pleading and pathetic. He was broken.

  Black took hold of the tape and gently peeled it away from his mouth. Clayton’s head lolled backwards as he gasped in relief.

  Black closed his hands around Clayton’s throat and applied the slightest pressure to his Adam’s apple. ‘Your contact’s name.’

  He felt Clayton tense, the sinews protruding from his neck. The last show of resistance.

  ‘Drecker,’ he whispered. ‘Susan Drecker.’

  A woman. Droplets of blood from three assailants, two male, one female. Towers’ report of Finn’s post-mortem had included the surprising fact that one of Finn’s killers was female.

  ‘Nationality?’

  ‘American … I think.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  ‘No … But she sounds American.’

  ‘And who does she work for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Mr Clayton.’

  ‘A company … That’s all I know.’

  ‘She works for a corporation, not a state? You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how much has she paid you?’

  Clayton swallowed. A sign that Black had hit a nerve. ‘One hundred thousand dollars.’

  Tears spilled down Clayton’s cheeks. It made a pathetic sight. The tears of a man whose life, once so full of promise, had come to nothing. He hadn’t even been well paid for his treachery.

  Black released the bonds from his wrists and let him slump to the floor, allowing him a moment to recover himself before they started on the statement.

  ‘Shall we begin?’

  26

  Freddy Towers glanced up from the hand-written statement. ‘You instructed him to return to work as normal on Monday and await further instructions?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What sort of shape was he in?’

  ‘No visible trauma. He’ll live.’

  Towers nodded and continued to scour the two sheets of paper for anything he had missed.

  Black had released his surviving captive in a street close to his home only forty-five minutes before, yet already the day’s events had taken on a surreal quality like something he had dreamed rather than acted out. They were sitting in the living room that doubled as a study in Towers’ Lancaster Gate flat. The decor was contemporary and the furniture comfortable, but the plain magnolia walls were absent of pictures. The only clue as to the personality of the apartment’s inhabitant were the titles of the books in the small bookcase – political memoirs, military biographies and a few light novels. It reminded Black of a government safe house and suggested to him that Towers had another home elsewhere.

  Towers looked up thoughtfully. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ He planned to drive back to Oxford and knew that one drink would lead to two, then more.

  ‘Pity about Quinn. Now he’s gone, they’ll suspect we’re on to them.’

  ‘Why not use Clayton to feed in a cover story? He can tell Drecker he’s been posted abroad. Covert ops.’

  ‘We’ll come up with something,’ Towers grunted, his mind already moving on. ‘I can’t believe Clayton was prepared to sell intelligence knowing so little about the buyer. If we’re to believe his story, she could have been anyone.’

  ‘Put yourself in his shoes. Sick wife, two young children, on his uppers. Meets an attractive woman at a conference, caves in to lust then faces the choice between selling secrets and destroying his marriage at the worst possible moment.’

  ‘All brains and no judgement.’

  ‘Like so many we’ve known.’

  Towers raised his eyebrows in weary acknowledgement.

  The banality of Clayton’s account was what made it so credible. Almost exactly a year before, he had been attending a weekend gathering of international cyber security experts at Edinburgh University. An attractive woman in her late thirties, who gave her name as Susan Drecker, seduced him at a party, assuring him that she was married to a colonel in the US Army and was interested only in a one-night stand. She told him she was a vice president of a major security contractor but didn’t specify which one. Clayton had half suspected that, like him, she was a government agent sent to listen to impen
etrable presentations and had gravitated towards a kindred spirit. Five weeks later he had been holidaying with his family and American relations in Cape Cod. He was stepping out of South Wellfleet General Store having taken his children to buy ice cream, when Drecker climbed out of an SUV and handed him an envelope containing a flash drive. Along with video footage of their antics in a hotel room it contained photographs of his wife and children going about their daily lives. There was a phone number for him to ring. He called later that day and Drecker issued her first demand for information. Over the following eleven months he had met with her five times, handing over a total of forty files. On each occasion he had been paid $20,000 by bank transfer. Among the files had been details of two of the four missing scientists. Clayton had been unable to say where they had gone or who had taken them, insisting that Drecker had told him nothing. He had been so easily duped that Black believed him.

  ‘Maybe he is as stupid as all that,’ Towers said. ‘It’s easy to forget how bloody feeble some of these young agents are. Promoted to sensitive positions with virtually no field experience whatever.’ He sighed and sipped diluted single malt from a cheap tumbler. ‘Doesn’t bode well for the rest of ’5. Doesn’t bode well at all. They’re a shambles.’

  He lapsed into gloomy meditation.

  Black was tired. He was eager for the meeting to be over and for Towers’ assurance that his obligations were at an end. He wanted to wipe today from his memory and lose himself in writing his paper.

  ‘What do you make of this woman, Drecker?’ Towers asked.

  ‘I’d have said CIA but for the way they murdered Finn. It was a bit messy for them.’

  ‘It may have been a feint.’

  Black shook his head.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘We’re still friends, Freddy. Despite everything. The politicians might fall out and insult each other but as far as I can see we continue to cooperate from top to bottom.’

  Towers appeared reluctantly to concede. Several decades of butting heads with American allies had left him with a level of mistrust which Black had always considered close to irrational. He suspected that the truth was that Towers had always been jealous of the US’s superior resources and the swagger that naturally accompanied them. On joint operations British officers were invariably forced to play second fiddle.

  ‘There was a woman’s blood on Finn’s body. What do you make of that?’

  ‘There’s no reason to suppose it’s Drecker’s,’ Black answered.

  ‘Suppose that it was and she’s not CIA. The pool of suspects narrows rather, doesn’t it? We’re talking ex-military or ex-CIA now working for an outfit with plenty of money and reach, not to mention ambition. And if you are such an outfit, who are you going to hire – only the best and most ruthless, surely? Now the pool is even smaller – a tiny group of highly mercenary, battled-hardened female operatives of American origin. In Britain we would struggle to produce even one candidate to fit that profile. I’m sure even the Americans wouldn’t have more than half a dozen.’

  Black felt the stirring of a memory. An exchange of fire in an Iraqi street during the chaotic free-for-all of 2005. Saddam was gone and every neighbourhood had seemed to spawn its own militia.

  Towers’ antennae twitched. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘Try me –’

  ‘April ’05. Baghdad. We had a tip-off that members of the Mahdi Army were going to rob a bank in downtown Baghdad. I led a detachment and threw up a roadblock to catch them. Finn was there.’

  Towers nodded, trying to isolate the engagement from a thousand others over which he had presided that year.

  ‘They came, but it wasn’t the Mahdis. It was a group of Western irregulars with more weapons than Delta Force. Eight of them, in two armoured pick-ups with heavy machine guns and RPGs.’

  ‘Rings a bell. Rogue security contractors, weren’t they? Moonlighting meatheads from Bush’s friends in Blackwater.’

  ‘Probably, though we could never confirm it. They got away and the Americans claimed the bodies of the two we shot. One of the fighters in the lead truck was a woman in her twenties. She was in the passenger seat with a Hechler and Koch. The only time I’ve faced a fully armed female combatant.’

  ‘You didn’t shoot her?’

  ‘Didn’t get a chance. We were outgunned and scattered.’

  Towers considered this for a moment, got to his feet and stepped out on to the balcony that overlooked a small garden at the rear of the block. Black remained in his armchair, uncomfortably aware that Towers was out there thinking.

  ‘I ought to be going, Freddy,’ Black said after several minutes had passed. ‘I’m sure you and your people will track her down.’ He stood up and shook the stiffness from his limbs. ‘I don’t like to press the point, but when can I expect payment?’

  He was met with silence. A brood. Always an ominous sign.

  ‘And what would you like me to tell Kathleen Finn? I’ll have to speak to her soon. She wants answers.’

  Still no reply. Black sighed impatiently and glanced through the doors to see Towers staring intently into space, the wisps of grey hair on his balding crown waving gently in the breeze.

  ‘Freddy?’

  ‘Hmm?’ His head shifted slightly but he didn’t look round. ‘Oh, yes. Tuesday. You can expect it Tuesday.’

  Black waited for some acknowledgement or word of thanks for his work. None came.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’ Black headed for the door.

  ‘I don’t have people, Leo. That’s what I’m for. People can’t be trusted. I cleaned up Quinn’s flat myself.’ Towers’ disembodied voice travelled through from the balcony. ‘The girl was fine, by the way. Poor thing was terrified.’

  Black exited the sitting room into the hall.

  ‘I’d appreciate your help, Leo. We need to find Drecker. The Committee will want it done quickly.’

  Black reached the front door and hesitated, fighting the urge to turn around. Then, in a flash of realization, he pictured himself as a dog that had learned to sit, stay and attack on his master’s command.

  ‘They’re mocking us. We’ve become weak. The timber’s so worm-eaten it’s about to crumble away. How many times did I say this day would come?’

  ‘There must be others, Freddy. I’ve had my fill of killing.’ He let himself out.

  Towers heard the sound of the door closing and felt the cool breeze playing over his face. He would have preferred a compliant Black, but there were still ways to achieve it. He would give him a little time to recover, then confront him with the inevitable.

  27

  Dr Razia greeted Drecker and Brennan at the entrance to the experimental facility with an uncharacteristic smile.

  ‘Making progress?’ Brennan asked.

  ‘Excellent, thank you,’ Razia replied. ‘All four subjects that emerged successfully from the surgical process have proved highly responsive.’

  Together with Dr Holst, he had established a test bed in a separate building from the main laboratories and was excited by the speed of their progress. Having assessed the members of his team in the days after their arrival, he had swiftly concluded that he and Holst were most suited to conducting the live experiments while Bellman, Kennedy and Sphyris were able to function best when allowed to remain in their intellectual bubbles, insulated from the practical applications of their work. The human mind was astoundingly capable of organizing itself into convenient compartments and only rare and exceptional individuals could tolerate the larger picture. He was undoubtedly one of them, and so, he was pleased to say, was his new colleague.

  He led them across the tiled floor to where Holst was standing at a long raised bench sited next to a window glazed with one-way glass. Beyond it was a small area occupying the far portion of the single-storey building in which a young woman dressed in a plain surgical gown was seated at a desk hungrily eating a lunchtime meal of rice, beans and steak.
The only clue to her recent procedure was a small shaved area on the left side of her scalp. Aside from her plate, the only other object on the desk was a shiny, steel hemisphere the size of a golf ball set in a disk of insulated ceramic material attached to the desk’s surface.

  ‘Dr Holst’s methods have proved extremely sound. He has worked hard to perfect them,’ Razia continued. ‘I have been more than impressed.’

  Holst responded with a modest smile. ‘The procedure is well established, as Ms Drecker knows.’

  Drecker’s expression remained chilly and aloof. ‘How soon until we can combine your work with Bellman and Kennedy’s?’

  ‘That depends entirely on the speed of their progress,’ Holst answered. ‘Their work is delicate, but we hope to conduct a live test within weeks.’

  ‘We are paying you to work fast,’ Drecker said. ‘We have customers waiting. The sooner we can close deals, the sooner we can all get out of here and move on.’

  ‘Nobody will delay a moment more than necessary,’ Razia said, thinking of the wife and children he hadn’t seen in nearly eight months. ‘Everything we have achieved so far assures me we are on track for huge success. Allow us to demonstrate.’

  He nodded to Holst.

  Taking his cue, Holst adjusted the voltage on the control unit sitting on the desk. ‘Twelve volts. Equivalent to the shock you might receive from a car battery.’ He pressed a switch which caused the object on the desk in front of the young woman to pulse with a green LED glow.

  Her hand hovered midway between her plate and her mouth as her attention switched away from her food and fixed on the half-round ball. Her hesitation was only momentary, however. She reached out with her free hand and gingerly touched its surface with her fingertips. The muscles of her arm spasmed as the current coursed through her, causing her to drop her fork but there was no hint of pain in her expression, only one of intense and instantaneous pleasure. She sat back in her chair, her shoulders relaxing and her eyes drooping as the dopamine coursed through her veins.