by Mark Dawson
‘Can you hear me?’
He was half on his back and half on his side, his right arm squashed beneath his torso. He could see someone’s body a few inches from his face, a blue shirt stained with a widening bloom of blood. He found the energy to roll to his left, freeing his arm. He laid his palm on the floor and tried to push himself upright. He didn’t have the strength. The effort sent him plunging into a spiral of dizziness and nausea; he bent over and vomited. Isabella reached her hands beneath his shoulders and helped him to shuffle back until his back was pressed against the barrier.
He blinked his eyes again and looked out. The hall – just a few seconds ago so bright and new – had been rendered unrecognisable. There were fires burning across the floor; flames climbed up the walls, unspooling coils of smoke that blackened the ceiling high overhead.
Some of the bodies on the floor were moving, a few of the men and women getting to their feet and staring dumbfounded at the hellishness into which they had suddenly been plunged. Other bodies lay still. There were three on the floor near to Pope. The blue shirt that he had seen belonged to a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority policeman, his uniform drenched with blood and his leg missing at the knee; there was a woman, the front of her dress torn away, a shard of metal in her throat; and, just beyond his outstretched leg, there was an elderly man draped incongruously over an upturned luggage trolley.
‘Can you hear me?’ Isabella said again.
Pope groaned.
‘The doctor is dead.’
Her voice sounded distant, as if he were underwater and she was on the surface.
‘I’m going after Maia.’
Pope tried to protest, but even the simplest words were beyond him. He mangled them together, making no sense.
Isabella slithered across him. Pope followed her with his eyes. She went to the dead policeman, unclipped the restraining strap on his holster and withdrew his service pistol. She released his handcuffs from their loop on his belt and put them, together with the gun, into a small bag that she found next to the body. Pope felt another wave of lassitude and struggled to keep his eyes open.
‘Isabella . . .’ he managed, her name little more than a whisper.
‘Keep your phone on. I’ll call you.’
She passed out of his line of sight. He grimaced from the effort of turning his head and watched as she picked her way across the bodies on the floor, passing through a cascade of falling sparks from a ruptured power line, and then through the open doors at the other end of the room.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Isabella hurried out of the hall.
Maia had a short head start on her, and Isabella worried as she turned out into the corridor beyond that she wouldn’t be able to see her. It was eerily empty. Most of the hundreds of passengers who would normally have swilled through this space, heading for the departures lounge or the food court or to meet new arrivals, had fled. One man was on the floor, another man astride him as he pumped rhythmically on his chest, trying to restart a heart that must have stopped from the sudden shock of the explosions. Baggage trolleys had been left, suitcases spilled across the floor.
Isabella looked left and right and then left again; a flash of movement and she saw the figure of the woman as she turned off the corridor.
Isabella ran.
The bag bounced on her shoulder as she picked a path along the corridor, following the route that Maia had taken. Isabella reached the doorway that Maia had passed through. It was a revolving door that opened on to the concourse outside the airport. There was a pedestrian bridge that spanned the Dulles Toll Road and Isabella held back as Maia climbed the steps.
Isabella followed, keeping as far back as she dared.
Maia reached the top and crossed the bridge, climbing down the steps at the other side and hurrying into the parking garage.
Isabella fretted as she quickly descended. If Maia had a car, Isabella was going to find it difficult to follow her. The taxis were on the other side of the bridge, and she doubted that she would be able to find her again if she had to retrace her steps and find one; that was assuming, of course, that the taxis would even be running now.
Maia turned into the garage and made her way to a parked car.
Isabella stopped at the foot of the steps and looked for a way that she could follow. There was a row of motorbikes and scooters immediately inside the garage. She crouched low and hurried inside, staying below the line of the parked cars until she was next to the bikes.
She heard the sound of the car’s engine.
The motorbikes were expensive and new; she ignored them in favour of an older TGB 49cc two-stroke moped. She took the cuffs from her bag and used the arm of one of the opened bracelets to pry off the metal ignition cap where the key would usually be inserted. She identified the battery and ignition wires and twisted them together to complete the connection, sending power from the battery to the moped’s ignition.
The engine started.
There was a top box at the back of the bike. Isabella forced the lock, took out the helmet and put it on.
The car was moving as Isabella climbed aboard the moped, kicked the stand up and turned the throttle towards her. The moped jerked ahead. Isabella steered into the nearest aisle and followed the car to the exit ramp.
Chapter Fifty-Five
The car headed east and Isabella followed.
They hit traffic at the interchange with I-495 and Isabella allowed herself to pull within ten feet. The car was a Chevrolet Cruze, old and battered. She glimpsed in through the rear window and saw Maia’s silhouette, the late-morning sun framing her in the dusty glass.
They drove east, passing through Arlington, crossing the Potomac and then following the Anacostia until they reached Deanwood. The car turned off and followed a new route that brought them on to Brooks Street. It was a quiet residential road on a hill with pleasant trees shielding neat and tidy houses. The snow had been cleared, but the asphalt was topped with a slick surface of ice that made it challenging to ride on. Isabella throttled back and concentrated hard.
They passed Ward Memorial Church, a large modern construction with a tall spire that reached above the telephone poles that ran on either side of the street. They passed a collection of dingy one-floor buildings and two police cruisers that were parked opposite it. Isabella stayed behind, maintaining a steady speed, a van between her and the Chevrolet.
The car pulled over to the right-hand side of the road next to a house marked number 4269. Isabella rode on, passing to the side of the car, not even daring a glance to the right at the woman in the driver’s seat. She rode on for fifty yards until the road bent away to the left, and then she pulled over to the side and killed the engine. She flicked down the kickstand and, with her helmet still on, turned to look back to the house. She could still see it, just on the edge of the bend. A flight of stone steps led up from the pavement, offering access to a flagstone path that adjoined an overgrown lawn. Maia passed along the path and paused before a bright red doorway. She unlocked the door and went inside.
Isabella took off the helmet and stowed it in the top box. She collected her bag, put it over her shoulder and headed back on foot. The houses were detached, small wood frame and brick homes sitting on small plots of land. Some of them had been clad in painted clapboard. It was a working-class area, the impression reinforced by the cheap cars that had been parked on either side of the road. Drifts of snow had been pushed to the side of the road.
She reached the Cruze, passing close enough to it so that she could hear the ticking of the engine as it cooled.
Isabella walked back up the hill until she reached the adjacent property. Number 4267 was in the process of being constructed. The timber frame had been erected and there was a collection of materials and a Porta John in the yard. She looked up and down the street, checked the windows of the house that faced the new build and, satisfied that she was not being watched, hopped over the low wall and made her way to the back o
f the property. The rear yard was small and in a similar state to the front: debris from whatever had been on the plot before competed for space with material for the rebuild, everything covered in thick layers of snow. The yard only reached back for ten metres before it abutted the yard of the house on the street that ran behind Brooks Street.
Isabella pressed herself up against the fence and looked back to number 4269. She could see two windows on the first floor: one was boarded, like the ones in the front, and the other was lit. She crouched down low enough to obscure herself from the street, but still high enough to see over the fence into the neighbouring property.
She saw a woman pass across the open window.
She took her phone out of her pocket and dialled Pope’s number. The call rang and rang, but it did not connect and switched over to voicemail. She ended the call and put the phone back into her pocket.
Isabella reached into the bag and wrapped her fingers around the icy-cold butt of the pistol she had taken from the dead cop. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority issued its officers with Glock 17s. That was fortunate: Isabella had plenty of experience with that particular nine-millimetre. She drew it out of the bag and quickly chambered a round. She stayed below the line of the fence that divided number 4269 from 4267 until she was close enough to narrow the angle to the first-floor windows so that she wouldn’t be visible to anyone who might be looking out. She shoved the gun into the waistband of her jeans, reached up, grabbed the lip of the fence with both hands and hauled herself up. Her feet scrabbled against the wood, the effort dislodging the snow that had rested along the top. She found enough purchase so that she could push herself up and over.
She dropped down, bending her knees as she hit the ground to reduce the sound of her landing as much as she could. The snow muffled the sound. The yard was strewn with detritus: an ancient fridge that had been cast out to rot, an old sofa with tufts of discoloured yellow stuffing poking out of rents in the upholstery that looked as if they might have been carved with a knife.
She followed the line of the house, pressing up against the corner and turning around it, staying flush to the wall. She shuffled along until she was below the open window. She could hear the sound of running water.
There was a door to her left. She reached out and tried the handle. It was open.
She paused. She remembered very well what the woman inside the house was capable of doing. She had handled Pope with dismissive ease in Montepulciano. It would have been difficult for her to have been any more out of her depth than she was already. The sensible course of action would be to observe, to record, to contact Pope and, when he was able, to act in concert with him. Perhaps he would contact Atari for backup. Or perhaps he would contact the authorities and leave it all up to them.
But Isabella thought of her mother and what she would have done. Beatrix would have assessed the situation and reached a different conclusion: she was armed; she had the element of surprise; and, most importantly, the longer she waited, the greater the chance that she would be discovered or the target would leave. It would be almost impossible to conduct extended surveillance in a place like this with just one person. You would need a whole team, enough agents to change in and out so as to minimise the chances that the stake-out was made.
If surveillance was not possible, then there was only one other option available to her.
She would have to take the initiative.
She took the phone out again and tried to reach Pope for a second time. The call rang through to voicemail again. She left a whispered message this time, telling him where she was and that he should come as soon as he was able. She ended the call and put the phone back into her pocket.
She reached back with her right hand, clasped the Glock and brought it out.
And then, with her heart hammering in her chest, she put her left hand on the door handle and turned it.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Maia sat down.
She stared at the wall. She knew that she should not have returned here, but she didn’t know what else to do. She was beginning to realise the consequences of what she had done.
She wasn’t used to operating outside the carefully calibrated parameters of an operation.
She wasn’t used to thinking for herself.
She wasn’t used to being alone.
She needed to keep busy while she considered what to do. She removed her clothes, laid them out on the bed and checked them over. There were small splashes of red across the front of the shirt and a half-inch fragment of bone had pierced the denim cuff of her trousers and snagged there. She plucked it out between thumb and forefinger and rubbed the tip of her index finger against it.
She felt strange. It was difficult to describe.
She held up the piece of bone. It was just a physical sensation, the serrated edge of the fragment prickling against her skin. She felt the same way about the bloody patches on her clothes and the stickiness when she touched each of them. Nothing prompted any sort of empathy. She had been trained from an early age to think purely in neutral terms; that neutral and placid state of mind was reinforced by the cocktail of drugs that she took.
She touched the patches of blood and wondered if any of them had come from Aleksandra. Probably. She had been close when the bomb had gone off. She raised her hands to her face and looked at her fingers. The tips were discoloured, as if rusted. She had touched Aleksandra’s bloodied face.
She suddenly felt sick. She hurried into the bathroom, bent over the dirty pan of the toilet and threw up. She stayed there for a moment, her hands braced against the porcelain, spitting out acrid phlegm and fighting the wave of vertigo that washed over her.
The dizziness passed, and she rose to her feet. There was a dusty mirror on the wall; she stood before it and checked herself over. She was unmarked. She flexed her muscles, watching the bulge and feeling the power in her biceps and shoulders, and saw a swatch of blood on her neck just above where her collar would have been. She took a handful of toilet paper, moistened it under the tap and then scrubbed the blood away.
The second bout of nausea overtook her so fast she didn’t even have a chance to get to the toilet. She bent double and retched, a hot stream of vomit rushing up from her gullet and burning her throat and her tongue, then spattering on to the floor and against the walls.
She crouched down, trying to breathe. She had to bring herself back under control. She had to think.
She took a towel and mopped up the vomit, then reached behind the shower screen and twisted the tap. It was tepid. She would leave it for five minutes to warm up. She decided to go down to the kitchen to get rid of the soiled towel and have a glass of water so that she could wash the taste from her mouth.
Maia descended the stairs and went into the kitchen. She dumped the towel in the bin and ran herself a glass of water.
She turned to go back upstairs again and found that she was not alone.
Isabella Rose was in the hall. She was facing Maia. She had a pistol – Maia recognised it as a Glock 17 – and it was pointed dead at her.
‘Don’t move.’
Maia had seen the girl at the airport with Pope. She had assumed that she was dead. She would have checked this, but she’d concluded that the odds were very good that both her and Pope had been killed, and she’d not had the luxury of time to confirm that that was true. She could see now that she had made a miscalculation.
Maia was naked and unarmed. Isabella was young and didn’t have Maia’s advantages, but she evidently knew how to handle the weapon. She had the upper hand. Maia found, to her surprise, that this did not concern her. It was almost a relief to have her freedom of action curtailed, however temporary that might be.
‘Put your hands up.’
Maia did as she was told, raising her hands so that they were at the height of her sternum, the palms outward to face her.
‘This way. Into the lounge.’
Isabella backed away, the gun kept level with Mai
a’s head. They made their way into the corridor. Isabella stepped back from the open door and waved the gun to indicate that Maia should go inside. She did, and Isabella followed.
‘Turn around.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to cuff you. Turn around.’
Maia did as Isabella asked. The lounge was as unpleasant as the rest of the house. There was a sofa, a table standing on three legs and a wooden chair. The windows were without glass, the apertures covered by boards that had been nailed on to the frames. Isabella told her to go over to the wall. Maia looked for something in which she might be able to watch Isabella’s reflection, but there was nothing.
‘Kneel down next to the radiator.’
Maia knelt down. The radiator riser led down beneath the floorboards.
‘Cuff yourself to it.’
The girl threw out a set of police-issue straight bar cuffs. They slid across the boards and rested against the outside of Maia’s lower leg. The metal was cold.
‘Do it. I’m not fooling around.’
Maia snapped one of the bracelets around her right wrist and clipped the other to the riser. Isabella looked down at her. She looked frightened. That was reasonable, Maia thought. The riser was made of thin copper pipe, corroded where it joined the radiator. It would have been easy enough for Maia to snap, yet she found that she didn’t want to do that. She was content to stay where she was, leaning against the cold metal, looking up at the girl and into the muzzle of the Glock that was aimed at her.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Isabella sat down in the seat opposite the radiator. She laid her arm on the armrest of the sofa with the pistol clasped in her hand, the weapon trained on the woman. There was enough distance between them; even if the woman was capable of freeing herself, Isabella doubted that she would be able to before Isabella had time enough to shoot her.
But the woman looked quite happy to stay where she was, her back resting against the radiator and her legs curled beneath her. She didn’t speak. She didn’t try to free herself. She did nothing. Instead, she closed her eyes and her breathing became shallow. She might have been asleep.
