by PJ Adams
“Why him? Why now?”
“You will be fully briefed in the morning,” said the seated Company man. “But we do have strong intelligence: the University, a major hit on March sixteenth, the day Bowler is here. You’ll have full protection and back-up, and you will never be alone on this one. So what do you say?”
As if he had any choice.
Still, he resisted the inevitable. “I’m not a bodyguard, especially for a piece of crap like Bernard Bowler. Why are we protecting him anyway?”
“Please don’t confuse our protecting him with any kind of approval,” said Halliday, fixing Mitchell with a look that was suddenly intense. “We don’t care about Bowler in the slightest. We just don’t want them killing him here. He can take his shit elsewhere.”
It was uncanny, seeing and hearing Halliday like this. The look in his eye, the almost imperceptible shift in his manner from wooly academic to precise, to the point, delivery. The way he so casually talked about matters of life and death, national security.
“Let’s just hope he’s worth the effort,” said Mitchell.
“One last job,” said Halliday. “That’s all we’re asking.”
Until the next one.
7. Alex, a month earlier
He shut the door behind him, leaned back against it. Ground the back of his head against the ridged wood until he feared his scalp might bleed.
The sleet had become fine drizzle now, forming a cold film across his upturned face.
He reached for the door, as if to go back in.
Stopped.
Forced himself to find that island of calm again. The control.
Concentrate on the breathing.
Empty the head of distractions.
Feel your heartbeat slowing.
He’d been in worse situations, although right now the prospect of a gun in the face, a knife to the throat, an angry, scared kid with a hand grenade... they seemed nothing to this.
He pushed away from the door, pulling his suit jacket around himself. He’d left his winter coat inside.
You don’t necessarily think to stop for your coat when you’re rushing away from a moment when you could so easily have drawn a gun on your cheating, deceitful girlfriend and the man whose subsiding dick had still been inside her as Mitchell backed away from the bedroom doorway.
The town was busy, traffic stop-starting along the narrow streets as rush-hour kicked off. The days were getting longer now, and it was still nominally daylight, but that kind of gray day that seemed more like perpetual twilight.
He dipped his head and walked, fists deep in jacket pockets.
Two streets away, he stopped, turned, was right on the point of going back to confront them. He wasn’t a man who ran away.
He slammed his hand against the wall, the end of a row of houses. Only at the last moment did he choose to open his fist, changing it from a knuckle-breaking punch against the bricks to a painful slap.
Spinning away, he met the frightened look of an old man who had stepped out into the street to get past him.
He shrugged apologetically, which appeared to do nothing to ease the man’s fears.
He turned and walked again. Still heading away.
Confrontation would win him nothing now. Anger.
They’d say things that would only make it all worse. Things that might make something broken into something beyond repair.
§
Who was he trying to kid?
What, exactly, did he think might be salvageable from this situation?
There’s cheating and drunken one-night stands, and then there’s walking in on your partner impaled on another man’s dick in your own home, your own bed.
Just which part of that major league fuck-up are you going to stick the Band Aid on?
§
She’d killed a man for him once.
How many guys can say that about their girlfriend?
Their ex-girlfriend. Because even though now, two hours of cold, wet walking and then a retreat to his now-empty office later, Alex Mitchell could think of nowhere to stick that Band Aid, no way to turn this around. Even though he struggled to think of Laura as his ex-girlfriend, at some point on that walk he had crossed the line where it had become even harder to think of her as his girlfriend.
They’d been out among the back streets of Adana in Turkey, a little over a hundred kilometers from the border with Syria. They shouldn’t have been out unaccompanied, shouldn’t have followed that connection to a possible informant that could easily have waited until they’d had some guidance from London, could easily have been ignored altogether.
But when you’re young and you’re in love and the hormones are raging, you think you’re invincible. You forget the rules, the principles you’d thought burned into your soul.
Had he egged her on, or she him?
It was usually Laura. Pushing at the boundaries. Taking the risks. But in truth, he couldn’t remember if, that sweltering night in Adana, she’d been the one who’d pushed hardest to go after that contact, or if it had been Mitchell, bullish and showing off – that colorful bird strutting his tail feathers.
He did remember the guy, though, the look in his eye. That was fixed in his brain like a photograph, or rather, a slow-mo clip from a movie. One of those things where a moment that was little more than a second or so seemed to draw itself out in your perception. When you see him step out from the shadows, see the look in his eyes, the recognition, and you understand that he recognizes you, that this whole thing had been a set-up, a trap that the two of them, in their over-confident state of mind, had run right into.
That moment when he meets your eyes and you realize his arm is raised, a heavy, old- fashioned revolver aimed at you, turned on its side gangster-style as if he’s seen too many bootleg movies.
When you understand the intent. You’re just a scalp to this guy. A kill. The enemy.
And you know he’s made a fatal mistake. He’s seen the two of you and dismissed the skinny, chestnut-haired girl as a nothing, identified you as the main threat, perhaps the only threat, and so he barely notices when the non-threatening little redhead whips a compact Glock out from her purse, swings it up and fires in a single, fluid movement.
Just as Mitchell would forever remember the look in the guy’s eyes an instant before he would have pulled the trigger, he remembered the sound of that big body as it hit the ground. Not the noise of Laura’s gunshot echoing in the street – he’d heard that many times – or the ringing in his ears that followed, but the crumpled thud as the body hit the street, and the soft gasp as the impact pushed air from the already dead man’s lungs.
They’d run.
They’d run like hell, until they were on a main street Mitchell recognized and they were getting too many curious looks, the obviously western couple running. Laura always stood out with that hair. She should have dyed it but refused. It was a risky trait for an agent to want to stand out from the crowd. But it was so Laura.
The lesson Mitchell had taken from that night was that this fling they were having might be something more, that two agents operating on the fringes of what was right and legal might somehow be able to fashion some kind of life together, something beyond the working partnership foisted on them by the Company.
With hindsight, perhaps the lesson he should have taken was that Laura would never be the one to take a deep breath before rushing in. It had saved his life that night, but maybe also it had been the thing that would ultimately undo what they had found.
§
Of course Sunita would be there. How could a day like today not choose the more complicated and twisted turn, instead of keeping things simple?
He’d called Terry Regan, a manager in Estates who was responsible for security of campus buildings. Ex- Forces, there was a kind of solid reliability about Terry. A recognition, perhaps, between the two of them that even though they weren’t close friends, just sometimes there would be shit in your life when you needed a drinking
buddy who understood the darkness and the silences and didn’t feel the need to find explanations.
Before meeting Terry in the bar, Mitchell had been thinking about her, as he sat alone in his darkened office. Sunita Chakravarti.
Thinking about that moment when he’d realized not only that she was interested in him, but that a part of his mind was responding, exploring, even as he rushed to close that door. Why so much guilt about that fleeting instant?
Had he known?
Had things got so bad with Laura that he’d feared any hint of even entertaining the possibility of infidelity might be too much?
Only yesterday it was Valentine’s, for god’s sake! Laura’s card for him was on the floor somewhere, lost in the shadows of the unlit office. Together Forever. It was only now that he read those words as much as a threat as a promise, or at best a perfunctory acknowledgment of their situation, a statement ambivalent of all emotion.
The red rose he’d left her. The dinner, chatting and laughing as if nothing was wrong.
The fumbled kiss on the doorstep.
The tired excuses from both of them before anything more might occur.
He’d known. He’d read the signs. And that was why he’d felt so guilty about Sunita.
It was like that moment on the back street in Adana. A part of his mind had intuited they were walking into a trap, had picked up all the hints and early signs, but it was only when he was confronted with the reality of that gun in his face that he fully understood.
And so now... a part of his mind had known, had read the death gasp of his relationship with Laura, but it had taken her to pull the trigger.
§
She hadn’t tried to call. Hadn’t sent any messages.
More than two hours since he’d found her skewered on that guy and Laura hadn’t even bothered to chase.
She knew too.
Knew it was over, as sure as if she’d pulled a trigger for real.
§
Sunita Chakravarti was there, in the SU bar by the river where he’d gone for a silence- filled drink or three with Terry Regan.
A pint of Ghost Ship and a Glenmorangie chaser signaled intent. Terry just raised his eyebrows as he eased himself onto a stool next to Mitchell and said to the girl behind the bar, “I’ll have what he’s having, cheers.”
They drank in silence, until the whisky glasses were empty and the pint glasses just had a good mouthful left.
“That bad, eh?” Terry downed the rest of his beer.
“Worse.” Mitchell emptied his glass and signaled for more of the same. “No. Maybe better. I don’t know. Long-term, better. Short-term, totally fucked.”
Terry Regan nodded, but didn’t dig. He had always been a good judge of when to ask an open question, and when to let things ride.
Mitchell downed his second whisky in two, wincing at the burn in his throat and stomach as it hit.
“Might need somewhere to crash tonight. I can always use the Travelodge, but...”
“My lumpy, threadbare sofa has your name on it, Al.”
More silence, the bar emptying around them, as the post-work, post-lectures drinkers drifted away and before the main student evening crowd built up.
That was when he saw her.
Sunita.
Over at a corner table, nestled into the scuffed leather bench with a couple of friends – colleagues, perhaps, or maybe she’d brought out a couple of her postgrads for drinks after a lab session, if that was a thing they did.
Just then, one of the women – a tall black woman with hair scraped tight back from her face – glanced up and raised a hand in greeting. For a moment Mitchell wondered where he knew her from, then he realized it was Terry Regan she was acknowledging, not him.
He glanced across at his drinking partner, recognized the look. “Well you’re a dark horse,” he said.
“Ask Tasha,” Terry said. “She’ll tell you I’m a fucking stallion.”
Mitchell took another drink of his beer. He was no stranger to crudity – he’d spent four years in the Army, and another five in the Company – but right now he had no desire to visualize Terry Regan’s stallion- like qualities. He’d had too much already to visualize today.
Terry stood and raised his pint glass, indicating the corner table. “I think I need to study me some more biology,” he said.
Mitchell followed him across. He met Sunita’s look instantly, cracked a smile and immediately saw how bad a job he must have made of it from the look on her face. When he sat, she just did that pursing of the lips thing that somehow people immediately recognized as a question.
He shrugged, a gesture he hoped anyone in the vicinity would immediately recognize as a Don’t ask... just don’t ask.
“Good day?” he asked, turning it to her.
“Weird.”
Now he merely raised his eyebrows, and waited for her to go on.
“Oh, just strange conversations. People on funding bodies wanting to get too involved in my work – the second call in two days, just too eager. I think I’m being head-hunted. Like I say, weird. Dull. You don’t want to talk about that kind of crap. What about you? How was your day?”
He just looked at her. No idea what his expression must be saying to her. No idea where to start, or even whether he should.
“You don’t want to know,” he said. “You really don’t want to know.”
8. Alex, Friday morning, a month later
“–the Paris Metro system has now fully reopened after a day of chaos, with the French capital’s transport infrastructure paralyzed. President Macron praised the work of the nation’s anti- terrorist police in a speech delivered on–”
Alex Mitchell reached out and hit the radio alarm’s snooze button, then lay back, rubbing at his eyes. He let one arm fall into the cold space at his side. He heard movement from the upstairs apartment, a groan and rumble from the pipes, the sounds of this new place still unfamiliar.
He’d get used to this. Soon, probably. He’d had this apartment for two weeks, moved the last of his things out of the old place a week ago before dropping the keys back into the agents’ office. He hadn’t had much to move out, truth be told. Travel light through life. Anyone who’d lived the kind of life he had until recently learned that rule. You need to be ready to move immediately, no impediments, no physical attachments. No stuff.
Laura had learned that lesson, too.
She’d removed her few possessions the day after he’d found the two of them. No fuss. No complications. Her things had simply been gone when he got home from work that day.
He didn’t know if she’d moved in with her lover, or with friends, or simply found a room somewhere and started over. He didn’t even know what she’d done about her job at the hospital. Was she commuting if she’d moved away, or had she just walked out? Probably the latter.
Apart from a couple of perfunctory text messages about the logistics of their separation, he’d heard nothing from her. Certainly no attempt to explain or excuse. All those words beginning with ex ...
She’d moved on. Extracted herself from the situation.
He needed to do that, too. Stop dwelling on it. Get through all those stages of emotional processing everyone goes through after a break-up, as Sunita had told him.
What were they?
Anger was one of the stages. Definitely anger. He’d managed that one, all right.
Denial. That one had made him laugh when Sunita told him. There wasn’t much you could exactly deny when you’d walked in on Laura and her lover in the state they’d been in. A full-on fuck-fest like that was hardly a blip you could simply explain away.
Blame. Oh yes, blame. Now where to start with that one?
Grieving. Sure, he’d grieved. He’d cried into his pillow. He’d felt flat, and yet been quick to anger at the most trivial things to the extent that he knew Maggie had commented to others in the office before word had got round.
Madness – the flipping of moods, the manic obsessions wi
th things, the suspicions about what people were thinking and saying. But then, that was hardly new for Mitchell: welcome to the world of post-traumatic stress, after living a life where paranoia and suspicion were part of the fabric of your day.
Guilt and sympathy. He hadn’t expected that. The flip side of blame. The possibility that things weren’t entirely black and white, that Laura’s deceit was an escape from a life she could no longer bear. That her actions might somehow even be justifiable to an extent. Had he driven her away? How would he have felt in her place? Or rather, how would he have felt if he’d been perceptive enough to actually read the signs and see that their relationship had nowhere left to go?
And finally, acceptance and moving on. Apparently that was the final stage of the process. So he’d been told.
Now, lying alone in his new bed, his arm stretched out into the empty space beside him, he wondered if Laura had gone through any of these stages. Maybe. Maybe she’d been going through those stages in the weeks – months? – leading up to their split. Her point of no return had clearly come long before his. Her point of acceptance and moving on, too.
He made himself move, rolling over onto his side and then pushing himself into a sitting position.
He needed to snap out of this. Needed to be a Company man for just one more day.
He stood, stretched, went for a shower, just as the radio sprang back into life, a Scottish woman with far too perky a voice giving a rundown of the day’s weather.
§
After yesterday’s snow, today was full-on spring. Blue sky, a gentle breeze, sunshine that actually conveyed real warmth as Mitchell followed the path by the river toward campus. What seasonal flowers had survived the previous day’s snow seemed to be reaching for the sun this morning.
Sunita would be able to tell him what those flowers were, she had an almost idiot savant flair for putting names to things in the natural world. He’d call her later, maybe arrange to meet for coffee at the end of the afternoon so he could tell her about his day with Bernard Bowler.
