Agents of the State

by Mike Nicol

  Had raised his head to glance at her, smiled. ‘Then something personal. I thought that after your tête-à-tête and while you’re trying to get the stricken Linda on side, you might like a short diversion to Germany. Meet someone in Berlin for a chat, an elderly fellow, not the perfect gentleman. Detlef Schroeder is his name. A long-time associate, diagnosed with liver cancer. Such a shame.’ Henry Davidson looking out over the Twelve Apostles, pursed his lips the way he did after a pronouncement. ‘Terrible thing this cancer. Like a plague really.’ Snapped back to her. Vicki noticing his wig shifted slightly. ‘So you have a little talk with Detlef, after that you make contact with Linda again. Persuade her to come home to the protection of our bosom.’ A dab of the paper serviette at the corner of his mouth. ‘Nice little assignment, don’t you think? Jetting about the Continent. Dropping in on the old spy capital. Lovely little diversion in your routine. Some of your colleagues going to be jealous. The Queen would want your head.’

  Vicki’d ignored the reference. Asked, ‘What’m I meeting him for?’

  Henry Davidson had put his finger to his lips. ‘Shh, this is a secret. A family secret.’ Sat there importantly like the March Hare. All she’d get out of him.

  A family secret. The only family that’d ever been in Europe was her aunt. Assassinated by a knifeman in the Paris Metro back in the Struggle days. Stories that she’d been in Berlin, too, living on handouts. Been to most of the major cities in the service of the liberation movement. Could only be about that. Typical of Henry to dangle some bait. Like he got some perverse pleasure out of it.

  Vicki flicked her attention back to Schiphol’s here and now.

  The next black woman into the area to the side of Bubbles Seafood and Wine Bar had short pointy dreads, very cute. Nah, Vicki thought. Not this one. She took long odds, and won. Same with another three who circled through the area, went into the toilets or went off elsewhere. Caught in the restless swirl of in-transit.

  Right on the dot there was a leggy woman with braids, skinny jeans, boots, roll-neck top, a coat with mock fur edging the hem and cuffs. The coat open showing off a tight figure with a tight waist. Could be, Vicki thought. Figure like that she could be a model. Back home definitely. In Schiphol you could have higher odds. Decided to go three to one this was Linda Nchaba. Could hear the bookie saying, Come’n, sweetheart, where’s your money? Vicki reassessed, went for two to one in favour. And won.

  7

  The woman came up to her, asked if she was who she was.

  ‘I am,’ said Vicki Kahn. Left it there, waiting for the woman to take it up.

  ‘My name’s Linda Nchaba,’ said Linda Nchaba, not offering to shake hands.

  Sat down next to Vicki, dug in her leather bag, showed her a flash drive. Silver thing with an orange top. Didn’t give it to Vicki, kept it locked in her right fist.

  Vicki glanced from the woman’s fist to her face. Linda had lovely skin. Expensive skin. Skin with a sheen of health, youth, clean living. Skin that knew beauty treatments, nightly emollients of brand-name care products. Vicki thought, probably we use the same lotions. Could ask her: What moisturiser do you prefer? The two of them going into girl talk about creams, lipsticks even. A way of approaching the reason they were there: the flash drive, the business of Linda Nchaba returning home. A way of getting Linda Nchaba to relax. Because for sure Linda Nchaba was not relaxed.

  To look at her, the shape of her, her deportment, Vicki could see Linda Nchaba on the catwalk. Not much of that in the file though. If that was the legal way she earned her bucks, it should’ve been good money. No need to freelance.

  The woman sitting there with the flash drive clutched in her fist. Sat there hesitant, her eyes everywhere but focused on Vicki. Vicki watching her anxiety, waiting, not offering anything. The girl well spooked. Licked her lips, scanned the concourse, the people hurrying through to their connections.

  Vicki took a moment to consider the scene. No one hanging around who looked like they were hanging around. Then again, a place like this, could be anyone sitting on the couches, even in Bubbles, eating oysters with a dry white, who could be Linda Nchaba’s nemesis.

  ‘Please,’ said Linda. And got no further.

  Vicki Kahn leant forward, the movement causing a tenderness in her breasts. She said gently, ‘You want to give me that flash drive?’

  Linda Nchaba didn’t take the invitation.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said.

  ‘You’re here,’ said Vicki. ‘I’m here. You said you wanted to tell us something. To give us something.’ She looked around. ‘This is a good place.’

  Linda Nchaba shook her head. ‘There are no good places. You don’t know him. I thought he didn’t know I was here.’

  ‘He? Who’s he?’

  The woman frowned. ‘A high-up. They found me. His people found me.’

  ‘What d’you mean, found you?’ Vicki going for perplexed. ‘Who’re his people?’

  ‘Yesterday they called my cellphone. Told me they knew I was flying to Paris for a modelling contract.’ Her face contorted, her eyes filled. ‘That cell number only my grandmother knew. She doesn’t answer her phone anymore.’

  Vicki kept focused on Linda Nchaba’s eyes. The woman’s face collapsing into grief. Then a resolution coming in hard before the weeping could take hold as Linda Nchaba got her emotions under control. Took some strength to do that, Vicki knew. Linda wiping her eyes with the back of her fists, sucking in a lungful of air.

  ‘We have a protection facility,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Ah, sho,’ the woman waved it away. No rings on her fingers. ‘It is not for me. There are children. Young girls. It would be better for them.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Vicki. ‘What’s happening to them?’

  Linda Nchaba didn’t look at her, kept staring off at the people crossing to the departure gates. Forced a laugh. ‘They are being protected.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Vicki. ‘By whom? From whom?’

  ‘For whom. For important people.’

  Vicki shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I don’t know what we’re talking about. Why do they need protecting from themselves? That doesn’t make sense.’ She got no answer from Linda Nchaba. ‘Look,’ she said, swallowing to keep down a sudden upwelling of nausea, ‘I’ve come a long way to meet you. I am here to receive information from you. Important information. You can give it to me, it will be safe. You will be protected. Nobody will know we have met. Nobody will know we have spoken. We’re here, in transit in Schiphol airport. I don’t know where you’ve come from, until you told me I didn’t know where you were going to. I know you wanted this meeting. And up above my head, in the high offices, someone said okay let’s find out what Linda Nchaba knows. Someone reckons you’re that important. This is why I’m here with you.’

  Now Linda Nchaba looked at her. Vicki returning the gaze, seeing the fright in Linda’s face, the flare at her nostrils, her tight lips, the fear a darkness deep in her eyes. Wanted to reach out, touch the woman’s hand. But didn’t. Kept her own hands folded in her lap. A tightness gripped her shoulders and neck. She shifted on the couch to ease her tensions, crossed her legs.

  ‘A man answers my grandmother’s phone.’

  ‘What? I’m sorry? What’re you saying?’

  ‘A man answers my grandmother’s phone.’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘He tells me to come home. I can hear my gogo, my grandmother, crying.’

  ‘You said she doesn’t answer her phone.’

  ‘She doesn’t. The man does.’

  ‘How many times, how many times’ve you phoned?’

  ‘Five times.’

  ‘You can hear your grandmother crying? You’re sure?’

  ‘It’s her. It’s her voice. Shouting for me to stay away.’ Linda Nchaba with her face in her hands, shudders passing through her body.

  Vicki eased off. Again had an urge to comfort the woman, touch her, put an arm around her trembling s
houlders. But she held back. ‘Linda, Linda, listen to me.’

  The woman moaned. ‘They’ve got my gogo.’

  ‘We can find her, Linda,’ said Vicki. ‘We’ve got people who do this. Good people. They will find her.’

  Again Vicki watched Linda Nchaba collect herself. Had to admire the way she suppressed the sobs, the shaking, stopped the waterworks. Like she’d had plenty of practice.

  ‘They won’t,’ said Linda. ‘You don’t know these sorts of men. You don’t know this man who leads them. These men say they will kill her, if I don’t go back.’

  ‘But you haven’t gone back. You’re here. Now I am here because this is what you wanted. You wanted to give us information. You haven’t gone back to them.’

  Vicki angled slightly to see Linda Nchaba face-on. Linda turning to look at her, her face bland now, expressionless. ‘When I left, the night I ran away, my grandmother said to me, don’t come back. Never come back. She made me promise. Never come back. Never ever. Even if …’ Linda glanced away.

  Vicki waited.

  ‘Even if they have taken her. That’s what she said. “Never come back, my child, even if they have taken me.”’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like to be told that? “Even if they have me. Never come back, my child.”’ Her eyes locked on Vicki, Vicki meeting them, seeing the despair. ‘Now they will kill my grandmother. Because of me. For ever I have to live with this. That because of me she was killed.’

  ‘She’s still alive,’ said Vicki. ‘You said you could hear her when you phone.’ Vicki thinking all her time as a lawyer hadn’t prepared her for this. All the Agency training hadn’t prepared her for this. How to deal with a situation like this. When your boobs hurt and a nausea hovered at the back of your throat. And in your head Henry Davidson was saying, Get the flash drive. Just get the bloody flash drive, woman. She wanted this. She’s got little kids on her conscience. Remember that. It’s why we set this up. To get the info. Then to get her to come home.

  Linda Nchaba said, ‘As long as I phone they won’t kill her.’

  ‘Linda,’ said Vicki, ‘why’m I here?’

  The woman opened her hand to reveal the flash drive.

  ‘What d’you want from us?’

  ‘To stop them. To stop him.’

  ‘Who? Stop who? Give me a name.’

  A phone rang in Linda Nchaba’s bag, the ringtone that of calling hadedas, their kwaak, kwaak, kwaak harsh in the situation. Schiphol airport. Two women on a leather couch. The insistent cry of the ibis passing overhead. Enough to make you laugh. If you were inclined.

  Linda scratched in her bag, came out with a phone.

  ‘An SMS,’ she said. Opened the message. Exclaimed as she read it, raising her head, her head swivelling about, right to left, left to right. ‘Where? Where’re they?’ She stood up. Took a step away from the couch. ‘They can’t …’ She turned to Vicki.

  ‘Can’t what?’

  Linda Nchaba held out the cellphone. Vicki took it, read the message. ‘We see you, sisi.’

  ‘You understand? You understand what I mean?’ Linda took the phone back, sat down. ‘They know. He knows.’

  ‘They’re scaring you,’ said Vicki. ‘They’re trying their luck. Playing a blind hand. They don’t know where you are.’

  The phone kwaaked again. One word on the screen: ‘Schiphol.’

  ‘They do,’ said Linda Nchaba. Held up the phone for Vicki to read the word on the screen.

  ‘They’re tracking your phone,’ said Vicki. ‘They’ve got a reading on it that’s all. They don’t know anything else.’ Sharp moves, though, by whoever was pulling them. Rattling Linda Nchaba no end. Had to have local cooperation. Which meant in-transit wasn’t quite as safe as she’d thought. Before she could say anything the hadedas cried once more.

  Linda Nchaba opened the message, gasped. Passed the phone to Vicki, Vicki reading: ‘The woman you are talking to is called Vicki Kahn.’

  ‘On the money,’ said Vicki. Thinking fast, if they knew her name, then someone back at the Aviary was in on it. Didn’t mean there was a watcher at the airport, it meant something worse. Someone close in was watching her. Keeping tabs on her phone. Why? Watching for whom? Bloody Henry’s need-to-know rule. Not telling her everything. Unless Henry didn’t know everything.

  Also they were good, these people tracking Linda Nchaba. Sending three SMSes, that was nasty. Really nasty way to up the paranoia. And it worked. Zipped Linda Nchaba into a state of high anxiety. Her eyes scanning the concourse, left to right, this way, that way, finding no one to pick out. Vicki all the time focused on the woman with the beautiful skin. How to get the flash drive from her.

  Linda Nchaba snatched back her phone, stood up. ‘This was a mistake.’

  ‘The stick,’ said Vicki. ‘Give me the stick. Give me a name, names. Tell me what’s on it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Linda. ‘Goodbye. I’m sorry. I can’t. He has my grandmother. He will kill her.’ Began walking off.

  Vicki called out, ‘Here, take this.’ She held out a business card.

  Linda Nchaba stopped, returned, took the card.

  ‘Phone me,’ said Vicki. ‘Get a new SIM card first, okay. And shut it off now, your phone. Take out the battery.’

  Linda Nchaba frowned. Mumbled something that Vicki didn’t catch, might even have been about to release the flash drive. Vicki broke their eyelock, dropped her gaze to Linda’s hand, went back to her face. Linda hesitating.

  ‘You’ve got to give it to me.’

  ‘No. No, I can’t. He … He … You don’t know what he will do.’

  ‘For the children’s sake.’ A last throw. Vicki watched a zigger of pain tighten Linda’s face. Shifted on the seat, about to reach out, but Linda Nchaba struck at her hand, walked away. Vicki didn’t go after her, stayed sitting, waiting to see if anyone made a move towards the woman. No one did. At the Bubbles counter Linda stopped, spoke to the attendant. Then she was gone, hurrying down the c corridor where Vicki had no line of sight.

  Shit, Vicki thought, now what? Should she phone home, tell her boss the woman showed but didn’t say anything that made sense? Wouldn’t give her the stick. Blazered Henry would snort and chort, shift the placement of his wig. Damn it. She could hear him. ‘You let her walk away. She has this flash drive for you and you let her walk away. For Christ’s sake, Vicki, why?’

  To which Vicki would have no answer. Except that she didn’t want to make a scene in case they were being watched. How quickly the paranoia transferred. There’s no one watching, she thought, grimacing at the pain in her chest. They were tracking Linda Nchaba by remote. Spooking her.

  And she’d failed. First foreign mission, she’d failed. Hadn’t got the information. Hadn’t prepared the woman. Wasn’t going to bring her in.

  What a stuff-up.

  8

  Vicki took out her cellphone, was about to key through to Henry Davidson. Glanced up, there was a waiter bending towards her, offering a bottle of mineral water and a glass on a tray. ‘Madam, your water,’ he said. ‘Five euros please.’

  Vicki about to say, what? No, I didn’t. Saw the flash drive on the napkin. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Paid the waiter.

  She had less than an hour until the Berlin connection. On the info screen the check-in sign flashed next to the flight number. Vicki took out her notebook, slotted in the stick. A couple of folders of photographs of Linda the model. Location shoots: beaches, arty shots in derelict buildings. One file password-protected. Nice one, Linda Nchaba.

  She phoned Davidson.

  ‘And so?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got the flash drive.’

  ‘That’s a start. So far so splendid. Have a good girlie chat?’

  ‘She’s scared.’

  ‘Umm.’

  ‘On the run.’

  ‘Really now. I had gathered that. And?’

  ‘And her grandmother’s being held hostage.’

 
‘This is a complication. What’s on the drive?’

  ‘Some photographs, personal stuff. A protected file.’

  ‘Nothing’s protected, Vicki. Nothing is hidden.’ A Henry Davidson homily.

  ‘I haven’t got software to crack it.’

  ‘No matter. It can wait. What story did she unfold?’

  ‘Apart from her granny’s kidnapping, no story. Except that her former buddies are powerful and dangerous men.’

  ‘So much we know. She’s important to us. Vital. You make a second date?’

  ‘Jesus, Henry, no, there wasn’t time.’ The churn of failure in her gut.

  ‘What next then?’

  ‘We’ll meet. We’ll stay in touch.’ Vicki not at all sure about this. Staying in touch totally in the hands of Linda Nchaba.

  ‘You had better. I want her back, Vicki. I want her here. Anything else?’

  ‘There is,’ said Vicki. Brought in the surprise: ‘Someone knows I’m here. Someone in the Aviary.’

  A snort. ‘I would hardly think so.’

  She told him why she thought so. Henry Davidson let a small fortune of airtime tick by before he said, ‘Interesting.’

  Interesting! Vicki poured water into the glass. Bloody Henry and his say-nothings.

  When he next said something, it was, ‘Do you not have a flight to catch?’

  Vicki said the check-in sign was flashing.

  ‘Off you go then. Give my regards to Detlef. He might be sick, but watch his hands. Enjoy Berlin. Make contact with Linda Nchaba tomorrow. Let me know.’

  ‘And?’ she said, resorting to a Henry Davidson-type prompt.