Mia pauses for a second, unsure what to do. She studies the boy’s face. He looks harmless. He’d also called her ‘Mrs Charter’.
‘Who asked you to come?’ she asks now.
‘Oh. Sorry. Your husband booked me,’ says Jack.
Mia opens the door. In person Jack looks younger than he first appeared on camera. He’s just an ordinary young man, quite innocuous.
‘Hi,’ he says smiling. ‘I live down the street and was looking for part-time work. Mr Charter told me I could help in the garden. I brought my dad’s mower.’
Jack beams at her and Mia finds herself smiling back at the charming and somewhat entrepreneurial youth at her door. She likes him and it negates her surprise at Ben booking a gardener when he was partial to doing it himself when they lived at the farm. He’d spent many hours out on the ride-on mower, but now Mia wondered if that was why. An average garden wasn’t appealing to Ben now, or maybe he was deliberately fitting in with the norm for their new suburban lifestyle. He was, after all, a spy trained to fit in with any environment. In fact, Ben fitted in here too well. It almost made Mia think that this was a lifestyle he’d been more suited to and Ben was ‘undercover’ in their old life. All of which wasn’t that far from the truth despite what he told her now.
‘The grass is looking a little shoddy,’ Mia says. ‘Thank you Jack.’
Jack sets to work on the front lawn, mowing in neat rows as though he’s had a lot of practice at doing this. Then he takes the mower to the back garden and does the same.
When he’s finished, Mia offers him a cold drink. Jack accepts a glass of lemonade.
‘How much do we owe you?’ she asks.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘It’s been taken care of.’
Jack gives her a cheeky wink and then he wheels his mower back around the side of the house and out to the front. She doesn’t watch where he goes from there. But she’s left with the feeling that she’s just made a new friend.
Perhaps this is the first step to normalizing? she thinks. But then, he’s the first person she’s spoken to other than Ben, Michael or Freya in over two weeks.
Chapter Thirteen
Annalise
‘I’m going to call him Kai,’ Annalise says.
She stands over the cot looking down at the baby. He’s just over six weeks old and he has soft black hair and a mid-brown smooth skin tone that shows off his mixed heritage. Beside her is a short woman in a nurse’s uniform. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and she holds a very serious and professional expression as she gazes down at the child.
‘Is he making good progress, Matron?’ Annalise asks. ‘No defects?’
‘He’s adorable. And perfect,’ says Matron. ‘He’ll be an excellent asset.’
Annalise nods. In contrast to the plain Matron, her stunning white hair falls over her shoulders like a blanket of pure snow. She’s wearing a turquoise kaftan over her athletic, slim frame. ‘He must have the best of everything. I think he will even call me “Mother”.’
‘Of course, he will,’ says the nurse. ‘They all will.’
The nurse makes no judgement at this request, though she knows Annalise is 60. Because who would ever think this beautiful woman could be such an age with her timeless perfection?
Annalise glances around the nursery. There are seven cots in the room, all with tiny occupants. Three girls and four boys, including Kai. None as old as three months and all from a variety of sources.
‘Such a shame the mother of this one didn’t survive,’ Matron says. ‘But the others are providing him with the milk he needs.’
Annalise looks to the door at the side of the nursery. Yes, there on the other side of the building live the six women who supply sustenance for her children. Though willing recruits, they were separated from their children straight after they gave birth. The women are pampered and cared for, extracting daily the milk required to keep all seven children healthy. Annalise has a series of nurses that come in to take care of the babies, as well as Matron, who monitors them all.
The nurturing will be as efficient as always and as they grow, they will come to know Annalise as their ‘true’ mother. The one person who cares for them most. Not some unimportant biological sack who carried them for nine months.
As the others before them did, they will give Annalise their undying loyalty. And as they mature, they will train to be the best they can be, before becoming part of her small army.
‘Rest, little one,’ she says to Kai. The baby looks content, having never known any other life than this one.
Annalise leaves the nursing house. A large manor in its own right, built in the 100 acres of land that surrounds the building and which is also the home to her vineyards. She walks across a paved courtyard and enters the north wing of the château. As she passes through the kitchens, the cleaning and serving staff bow their heads but say nothing. It is how she likes it.
Annalise has spent years building this empire. And all through lessons she learned from the Network. Now she is almost ready.
She carries on through the house, passing now to the south side and out again onto yet another courtyard. The property is vast, and another manor lies on this other side. This one contains the school. A huge house, purpose built, with dormitories and classrooms, as well as a gym, a swimming pool and an outside arena to accommodate the training that her students undertake.
She enters the school via the back door and moves silently through the building, looking into classrooms. She’s proud of her children – all of them. For they are even now better than those churned out of the Network’s houses.
If only Beech had known what I was capable of, she thinks. How my kingdom will supersede his.
Twenty-five years ago, Annalise had seen the error of the Network’s ways. Led as they were by Beech, who was stuck in the old ways and not open to evolving even then. Beech had taken over the Network a few years earlier. Annalise had hoped he would improve things but what she’d seen, when the committee sent her to examine the schools, was a devolution from the time when she had been taken and trained by one of the finest houses: the French house.
Back then they’d taken some of Mendez’s work, but until Beech came along, the houses were free to develop their students in their own style. The houses competed with each other in their push for perfection. It was healthy. And then Beech changed it all when he insisted that all Network houses adopt Mendez’s methods fully. By then Mendez had honed his conditioning techniques to create automatons. Beech hadn’t wanted operatives. He’d wanted mindless robots.
But none of this mattered to Annalise, not until Tracey Herod had turned up, and demanded her daughter as a tribute for the Network. Annalise had kept her pregnancy quiet but someone had leaked the news to Beech. Perhaps because she’d refused to surrogate Beech’s own children a couple of years earlier, Beech had become – she was told – enraged by the fact that she had taken a long-term lover, and had subsequently given birth. Beech demanded her child and at the time, Annalise’s stronghold was only a vision she had for the future. She was faced with a dilemma: refuse and lose everything or send the child to the British house as requested.
But which child to send? After all, she had given birth to twins.
Chapter Fourteen
Annalise
Twenty years ago
Annalise had greeted Tracey respectfully. She was after all one of Beech’s most trusted trainers.
‘Can we fetch you some tea?’ Annalise asked.
‘Does your daughter have your colouring?’ Tracey said.
‘What do you mean?’ Annalise had said.
‘Your hair,’ Tracey said.
At the time, Annalise’s long locks were a luscious strawberry colour which tumbled over her shoulders.
‘I’ll show her to you,’ Annalise had said.
She went in search of the girls. One she’d called Fleur, the other was Fae. They were a few weeks off being 5 years old, born within seconds of each oth
er. Fae was the youngest and yet the toughest of the two. By then the girls had already been taught the basics of combat. Playing together, they learned Judo and Karate, and both were supple gymnasts.
Annalise found them with their tutor, sitting in the garden, drawing animals and flowers like normal children. She studied them both, trying to divorce herself from the position of ‘mother’. For the first time she began to appreciate what her own parents had gone through when they gave her over to the French house at a similar age.
Though twins, Fae and Fleur were not identical. They were similar and looked like sisters, but it was easy to distinguish them from each other, especially for her as their mother.
Their father, Valentin, had been killed soon after their birth. A tragic road accident Annalise had thought at the time, but now she considered the possibility that Beech had been behind it. Or someone else in the Network wanting to garner favour with him by teaching her a lesson. It was okay for them to take lovers, but they were not permitted children or long-term relationships unless they were given permission.
Annalise had known she was breaking the rules but the pregnancy hadn’t been intentional. She’d been at a clinic about to take care of it when she had a sudden epiphany: her child was special and it had to be born. She hadn’t known then that there were two of them growing inside her.
While Tracey waited in the château’s drawing room, Annalise had thought back to Valentin and the promise she’d made him.
‘Protect our child from Beech,’ he’d said before the girls were born.
‘I’ll always do that,’ she’d said.
But at that point, with Tracey there, she knew she had no choice. One of them had to be given over or she’d find her château swarmed with the Network’s assassins. If that happened Beech would take them both and Annalise knew she couldn’t fight them all off, despite her own, ever-growing, security staff. No, she was playing the long game and she had to remain impartial and strategic. She would have to put aside the feelings she’d developed for the girls – emotions she had thought herself incapable of – and let one of them go for the sake of the other one.
Annalise had looked at her children for a long time, and then, she’d taken Fae’s hand and led her away from the garden and into the house.
In her office, she snipped a piece from Fae’s hair and placed it in the top drawer of her desk, bound with a piece of string.
‘You’ll do me proud,’ she said to Fae. ‘Be strong, fight hard, and win. Failure for you is not an option. Remember who you are Fae, though they’ll try to take that from you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mother,’ Fae said.
She stared Fae in the eyes for several long minutes and then she took her hand again and led her to the drawing room. Tracey waited there, sipping tea as though she were a welcome guest instead of an unwanted intrusion.
When Annalise brought Fae in, Tracey stood and walked around the girl.
‘She’s… perfect,’ she said.
Tracey had been very happy with Fae, Annalise had noted, and it made her suspicious of the motive behind her visit. It was only later that she learned that Fae hadn’t been sent for by Beech. Fae had been a lookalike who filled a place in the house so that Beech never learned about Tracey’s failure with another child who had died during the conditioning process. Annalise wondered how many times this had happened before then. How many children had been changelings to cover up the fact that Mendez’s process was too harsh and sometimes had devastating effects? Annalise had been furious when she learned the truth, but then she realized what a unique opportunity she had. She now held something over Tracey, something that Beech would probably kill her for if he learned the truth. For operatives and handlers acting on their own was something he would never turn a blind eye to.
So, she contacted Tracey and insisted on an audience with her at the house. Tracey refused at first, giving the excuse that the house’s location was on a ‘need to know’ basis.
‘Ah, but of course, and so is the fact that my daughter replaced a child you killed with your process,’ Annalise said. ‘And Beech knows nothing of this, does he?’
Tracey couldn’t argue, but she still fought back. ‘He doesn’t know you had a child,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we are both in a precarious position.’
‘I have a proposal. One which will bring us both a great deal of power,’ Annalise told her.
Intrigued, Tracey had agreed to meet and Annalise flew to England, a small, but strong, security detail in tow, and she had driven from Manchester Airport in a limousine to the house at Alderley Edge.
On arrival, Tracey, who had been running the house then, took her into an office off the huge hallway.
‘Tell me your proposal,’ she said.
And then Annalise had outlined her idea to build a new conglomerate that would one day take control of the Network.
‘But how?’ Tracey asked.
‘We build our own houses. But we do it better than Beech. We train warriors, we don’t condition them. We give them a purpose and a vocation. Through nurturing we generate love and respect and loyalty,’ Annalise said.
‘What you’re proposing is little better than Mendez’s methods,’ Tracey had said. ‘It’s radicalization by virtue of not knowing any different.’
Annalise smiled. ‘But so much better that your slaves believe they have free will.’
Tracey’s smile grew as she studied Annalise. ‘What role will I play in your new order?’
‘What role do you want?’ Annalise asked.
‘I will enjoy the benefits of your power. Money, security – above all no “retirement”. When I am put to pasture, I must be trusted to keep my secrets and be allowed to live to the age nature intends.’
‘An idea that should be granted to all who serve us,’ Annalise had said. ‘And yours by right as of this day.’
Tracey agreed. ‘Where do we start?’
‘Fae must not be fully conditioned. You’ll undo whatever Mendez does. She must be mine always,’ Annalise told her.
‘That won’t be easy,’ Tracey said, ‘and may bring suspicion on me. If she isn’t treated like all the others, then I might be replaced and will be no good to you.’
Annalise thought for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’ve heard that Mendez is using another method on Beech’s own children?’
Tracey is surprised that she knows about this and it shows on her face.
‘A new method. It might not work,’ Tracey had said.
‘Partial conditioning. A separation of themselves from the assassin they become,’ Annalise says.
Tracey blinks. Annalise feels a sense of satisfaction that her intel is correct.
‘He’s trying to make sleeper agents,’ Tracey admitted.
‘Thank you for your honesty,’ Annalise said. ‘Now let me propose this. Fae is given the same treatment in reverse. You will rename her Neva. Neva will be the dominant personality, acting as Mendez’s training would make her. But Fae will be there in the background. And only you and I will know how to activate her.’
Tracey looked down at her hands for a moment and Annalise saw them tremble. She read this as a sign that the proposition excited Tracey.
‘It’ll be dangerous. She might… break…’
‘It’s a risk. But… no one knows Mendez’s method’s better than you. Can you do this?’ Annalise asked.
‘I can,’ said Tracey. ‘And I will.’
After forming their alliance, Tracey had allowed Annalise to see Fae. The little girl was not pale and withdrawn as she had expected her to be. No, she looked vibrant and strong. Annalise knew then, she’d made the right decision as to which daughter to give. Whatever happened, Fae would adapt.
‘Mother,’ Fae said on seeing her. ‘I’m working hard, as you said.’
‘You’re Neva now,’ Tracey told her. ‘This is not your mother.’
Fae/Neva looked up at Annalise. The expression in her eyes was far more mature than her recent fifth bi
rthday afforded her.
‘I’m Neva,’ she said. ‘You’re not my mother.’
It hurt a little to hear the words from her daughter’s lips, but Annalise froze her heart and nodded as Neva was led away, back to the dormitory where she would continue her development in the name of the Network.
‘I want to see her progress at intervals,’ Annalise said. ‘I will send you the content that I wish to be programmed into her.’
‘Fine,’ Tracey agreed. ‘But you need to let me work on her for a while. Mendez has made a great deal of progress with Neva already. She’s pliable. But I’ll have to twist around what he’s done already, and it will be a slow process in order to make sure she isn’t damaged.’
Annalise accepted Tracey’s terms and she left giving very little thought to what they would do to her daughter as she climbed into the limousine and headed back for the airport. Annalise had always seen the whole picture: even as a trainee herself back in the French house. She knew that knowledge was important as well as strength and agility in order to survive the world that she’d been chosen for. All children were assets, hadn’t she been just such an asset for her own parents? A twin also, she’d been given over to the Network and she’d excelled while her sister led a pampered life, unaware of the choice her parents had made.
Annalise wasn’t placing all of her hopes on Neva’s success, however. No, she had another daughter that she would also train using her own experimental methods. It would be interesting to see how that panned out. Fleur would not be pampered. She would be treated as any trainee was. She would be inspired to be the best. Just as Neva would be.
Chapter Fifteen
Nicole
Present day
Nicole Sheridan switches on the shower before stepping inside the cubicle and pulling the curtain closed behind her. In the changing rooms, she hears the friendly chatter of the other women from the same spin class as she lathers up and washes away the intense perspiration generated by the exercise.
Kill a Spy Page 8
