SEVENTEEN
The telephone rang eight times, seven more than she expected as she counted each ring. Just as she convinced herself that something was wrong, and that somehow they had traced her location, Mark answered the telephone in his usual abrupt way.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Agent Mulligan calling in.” The sound of the name made Ben feel uneasy as she sat next to him in the car, talking to Mark, his best friend and worst enemy. He still couldn’t believe Mark to be fully responsible. There must have been pressure from the Agency. There must have been for him to do that. They must have forced his hand. “We have an issue.”
“What issue? Are you at Headquarters yet?” Mark asked.
“There has been a car accident involving our vehicle. It was compromised and our GPS is down. Sir, I am…” He didn’t let her finish. His voice sounded edgy on the telephone and she was trying to read it as he spoke. To her, he almost sounded excitable.
“Yeah we know about your little accident.” Panic immediately set in. How could he know? There was no accident? She felt her heart racing. She remembered her training and began counting in her head to slow her heart rate in order to relax and shield any anxiety in her voice that may betray her. But knowing he held her son captive didn’t make that easy. She fiddled with her trouser button. It didn’t help. “We realised that we lost your signal. Thought you had slipped off the grid for a while. But it doesn’t matter. Just get in here. We’ve got him.” She swung round to look at Ben, and he felt an immediate injection of anxiety.
“You’ve got him? Where?”
“East of the city. He got a long way. Don’t worry about it though. It’s over Catherine. Come in. You’ve earned your freedom.”
“Yes, Sir.” She looked at Ben, knowing that it must be her intended plan falling into place, the transmitter back at the cottage emitting its signal. If they were tracking this it would mean all resources would be out of Headquarters, if she knew Mark as well as she thought she did. He would have them all heading east to claim their bounty. There was no chance Mark would take the stationary target lightly, or the prospect of letting Ben go free again. If she had judged Mark correctly, he would send every agent, every hit man, and any set of hands that stood a chance of catching Ben to bring him in. He would have gone himself if he didn’t know he was so useless. This time, there would be no faith in the system. There would be no trust in a junior officer. He would want that body on his doorstep, head on a stick or over a barrel. He would want to see his body to believe they had captured Ben. But the fact that Mark had detected the signal meant that they were on a countdown. The clock was ticking. It was time to move. Time for delay, for consideration, or for anything other than setting her foot back into Headquarters and executing her only chance to save their son, had passed them by.
As Ben drove the car away in the direction she indicated they remained silent with the only interjections her instructions as she guided him. Ben wanted to ask questions. He wanted to know timings and locations. Where should he park the car? What should he do if somebody came to him? Would she let him keep the gun he was wearing? Should he use it? Ideas raced through his mind like the whirling and swirling cars of the Waltzers at the local fair. Nausea washed over him as he drove along the road, and more than once he wanted to stop the car to throw up. Instead he kept a steady pace and with a tightly clenched fist across his mouth, stifled that feeling. There was no way in the world he would stop now.
But Hannah looked calm. She held her hands delicately in her lap, almost as if she were meditating. Every now and again she would pull out her gun and check the magazine, all the while making sure that the safety lever was engaged. The only giveaway of her nerves. But the way she handled it was expert, her hands moving smoothly and freely over the weapon, her fingers trained and precise.
She holstered the gun for a final time. She pulled down the sun visor and wiped her eyes clear of smudged mascara with spit on her fingers, and swept up the loose hairs that had escaped. As she pushed the sun visor back into place, she held out her left hand and instructed Ben to pull into a small lay-by, tucked into the edge of the pavement.
“Just pull in there,” she said as she waved her hand out to the left. “Take the first space so that there is nothing in front of you, and leave a bit of room in front too.” He followed her instructions without question and left at least three feet in front of him where he could easily swing the car out if necessary. He turned the key in the ignition, shutting down the engine. As it slowed into silence, he knew this would be the moment that she would leave him. Potentially this was the last moment he would see any of the people from his old life.
“Hannah, what do I do now? Just wait? Just wait here?”
“Yes, Ben.” She nodded, her words calm and cold as if she were talking to a stranger. The void between the woman he knew as his wife and the woman sitting before him seemed to grow wider as she slipped back into her role. She snatched at his hand, held without emotion as nothing more than an access point to view his watch. It was a quarter to five, and the first shadows were beginning to appear as the sun fell. “Ten minutes, and I’ll be calling you. When I do, drive straight up this road and take the last right. I will be with Matthew on the pavement walking towards you, away from the glass fronted building with all the steps. Don’t stop the car until I am next to it.” He nodded in agreement, desperate to emit an air of steadfastness, commitment and belief. But his fear of failure would not leave him. It’s heaviness in the air made him feel like he was choking, and yet Hannah seemed to suffer none of the same difficulties. She was composed and calm. Ready to move.
“What do I do if you don’t call me?” His words were small, and apprehensive. He wanted to take them back as soon as he had said them, as he bowed his head away from her. He had hoped to hide his fear, but he could not. She took his chin in her hand and gripped his face.
“Don’t you dare think that way, Ben. It’s not an option for me not to be there. It’s not an option for me not to call you. In ten minutes time I will be walking out of that building with Matthew in my arms and towards a new life together. A real life, where I don’t have to lie to you anymore. Don’t you dare imagine that not to be possible.” She didn’t wait for his agreement. With her hand on the door handle, she stopped only as she felt Ben’s hand against her arm. As she turned to tell him to let go she felt his other hand on her face, holding her, his fingertips brushing past her ears. He placed his lips against hers, and kissed her passionately, his lips never once breaking contact. It felt like the first time, but knew in reality it might be the last.
“I love you, Hannah,” he whispered to her, his words like drops of heaven to her ears. She closed her eyes as she heard him say the words, words that she had feared she may never hear again. Yet here in the intensity of their situation she felt his forgiveness, and faith, and promised herself that she would live up to it. She promised herself that she would make his sacrifice count.
PART THREE
EIGHTEEN
The last ten minutes of Mark’s life had been like the polar ends of two magnets. When Captain White told him that Agent Mulligan and her team had slipped off the grid, he was certain that could only spell trouble. It took only a quick glance at the screens in his office to confirm the news, and he wasted no time in dashing to the Surveillance Centre. He slammed open the double doors, immediately casting a silence over the room.
“Forrester? Forrester, where are you?” A small in stature man stood up from amongst a large collection of monitors in the amphitheatre shaped room. He was short and hunched over, a result of sitting at a desk for fifty years. He had lived almost his whole life in secrecy, often not leaving Headquarters for weeks on end. But his years on naval warships operating radar had left him partially agoraphobic, and so the Agency served him well. Some people wanted to hide from the rest of the world.
“Sir.”
“Forrester, what has happened to the signal from Mulligan’s vehicle? Ho
w the hell could you have lost them?”
“Sir, I have run every test that I have, and all of my equipment is fine. I have every other system tracked and identified. On my last count I have one hundred and six agents all accounted for. Five agents, one of which is your trusted Miss Mulligan, have simply disappeared as if their signals have been, shall we say, deactivated.” Mark looked to Captain White, who was shuffling uncomfortably on the spot. “There is no logical explanation from my point of view as to how I can lose one vehicle and five individuals who are all travelling together, and not have lost another agent if it is my system at fault.”
“Agent Mulligan would not turn off the tracer. It’s unthinkable. Find the error.”
“Sir, you don’t seem to understand me. It’s unthinka……”
“Find them,” Mark bellowed. “You have everything at your disposal. Wherever they are, you find them. I don’t want to hear about another member of this agency failing!” Mark turned in Captain White’s direction, who felt the eyes from around the room fall upon him. He prayed for time to stop, for the seconds to stop ticking, so that he could escape his own discomfort unnoticed and slip away from their judgment.
Forrester sat back down in his chair. Mark could hear whisperings coming from the workstation, but he didn’t know if it was from Forrester or another colleague. Short of watching the red flashing lights on the screen, he was lost when it came to tracking his agents. He relied on everybody to do their job. If they failed, so did he, and failure was not an option he wanted to consider.
“Sir, could you take a look at this please,” a small voice called out from behind a computer screen. Mark watched as Forrester straightened himself up, before shuffling towards the voice. Mark watched him, his irritation growing with each slow step.
“What is it, Thorne? What do you have?” he said as he approached. He rested his hands down onto piles of paperwork that in Mark’s opinion would have been better off being filed appropriately. It reminded him on Ben’s handwritten notes, and he didn’t want to think of either of those things right now.
“Well, Sir, I thought I’d scan across different channels and look at a few different frequencies. By doing so I picked up a weak signal. I have tracked it with GPS and triangulated it to a position on the river, east of the city. The trace has the same signal as Stone’s mobile phone.”
“Forrester?” Mark’s attention had been gripped by the mention of Stone’s name, and he almost ran towards them. “What have we got? Have we got him?” Forrester ignored Mark as he crouched down to look at the signal with his own eyes, recalculating the position of the signal for himself.
“Good work, Thorne. Well done.” Forrester turned to look at Mark. “I’d say that we have a strong chance of having found our target.”
Mark turned to Captain White. “I want you to get things moving. I want every agent we have got at that location. Get him here now.”
“Sir, I can’t pull everybody. What if it’s wrong?”
“White, are you questioning my authority? My decisions? After what happened with Sadler? He has slipped through everybody. Wait,” he said as he stopped to answer the telephone that was buzzing on his belt. They all stopped to listen as they heard their leader announcing success, before it seemed to Captain White that it was even within reach. He slipped his telephone back into his pocket before looking back up to Captain White. “I don’t want to take any chances. Anyway, that was Mulligan and her team is accounted for. They have had an accident and it screwed up their signals. There is your answer, Forrester. Now, get that location downloaded to every GPS we have, and get our agents on it.”
Mark turned to leave the room, and headed back to his office. He saw the first of the reserve agents running from their desks in order to coordinate the strike. He clapped his hands together, as if cheering on a child at school sports day, all the while shouting ‘let’s go, let’s go’. This was what he had been waiting for. Since the first day that he had taken this job, he had been waiting for the day when glory would land at his feet. He thought that it had happened yesterday, and it had hurt to learn that his celebrations had been premature. When he walked in through the main front doors yesterday he had been so convinced of his own success. He couldn’t wait to celebrate the fact that he now had in his possession the intelligence to engineer an army, a weapon, a warfare so advanced. His legacy would continue in war for generations to come. But he had been too quick to congratulate himself. Now it was time. It had to be.
He slammed the door behind him, his face overwhelmed by broad but cautious smiles as he walked into his office. They were the type of inappropriate smiles that make an appearance when you least want them to, when you hear a sad story but yet somehow still see the funny side. He died how? He was run over by a mobility scooter? The driver was drunk? How terrible, and then the smile that strips you of authenticity. You can’t hide it. You feel the shame but the smile is defiant. He needed a whiskey to calm his nerves, or excitement, whichever of the two it was that he could feel in his belly.
He loosened his tie, and pulling it away from his neck he threw it onto his desk. He breathed for what felt like the first time all day. Just half an hour to wait, no more than that. He would have word that Ben had been picked up. Once he knew he was bound in plastic grip ties, with muffles across his ears and blacked out goggles strapped to his face, he could relax. Once they had him secure, Mark would order his execution.
He poured a generous amount of whisky into a neat little glass and took a large sip. He pulled out the oversized desk chair and slumped into the cushioned leather seat. The padded backrest massaged his knotted-up muscles as he leaned back. He hung his head backwards, before rolling it left and right to ease the tension in his neck. He took a large glug of whiskey and set the glass down on his desk and opened the drawer underneath. He flicked the small latch and pulled open the drawer to the left of his knees. He took out Ben’s, no wait, my files, and placed them down onto the desk next to his whisky. Inside the drawer there were other beige carton files that had nothing written on them, the only exception the emblem of The Agency; a small black triangle with an old Latin phrase. ‘Serviamus Humiliter’. He had always thought it a rather inadequate description of the provisions offered by the Agency, and was not a motto that he lived by. He did not aim to serve humbly, as the phrase suggested, and he had preferred his own motto of achieve and succeed to govern the rules by which he would live.
He pulled out the first of the unmarked files from the drawer and dropped it on the desk in front of him. As he turned the cover, facing him was a small picture of Catherine Mulligan. It had been taken many years previously, before she had known Ben. The file and photograph were dog-eared and tatty. The picture had been taken on her registration day as a fully trained agent. There was no hint of a smile on her face, as there had been when she had graduated university. There was no father at her side, proudly smiling in awe of his child’s success. Just Catherine Mulligan, wearing a black polo neck sweater, her hair tied back without care into a tight ponytail. She stood emotionless, as she had been trained to do, her face disclosing no secret or fact. She didn’t even have an identity, for it was this day that she had chosen to forego her own.
He leafed through the extensive file. Inside it contained everything that one may wish to know about the life of Catherine Mulligan. It detailed how she was born in Ireland, and shortly afterwards travelled to England once her father’s return was demanded by his home country. Her early memories were happy, according at least to the psychological researcher that compiled the earliest of personality assessments and history recollection. Her training was extensive, at first in driving, and then in weaponry. After her first homeland assignment, she had made a request to work as an Operations Officer. She hadn’t wanted to work in homeland security, but rather spread her wings and move around the world. She wanted to be the agent who worked with local dissidents, collecting assets in the shape and form of other humans that strived for an alternative w
orld to the one in which they found themselves. Her degree in economics and fluency in several foreign languages had made her an excellent choice, and she was set to go on her first foreign mission only two weeks after Mark read her file for the first time and changed everything.
When Mark first read this file and saw that her mother had died after one of her father’s missions became compromised, he knew she was the right choice. Catherine had been present in the house when the back door flew open. She had heard the first gunshot and scream. She heard her father’s words stream into her head. Catherine, if ever you are scared, do as I tell you, OK? She did exactly as her father had instructed. She didn’t make a sound as she crept silently into the nearest hiding place. She opened the cupboard door in the dining room and sat inside, concentrating hard to control her breathing, fiddling with her buttons. She heard the footsteps of the intruder pass by the cupboard door. She waited in fear, surrounded by the scent of wet paper and urine until somebody came close enough to the door of the cupboard and knelt down, telling her to release the internal lock.
She had been there for two days, and it was after this point that they secluded themselves away with her grandfather. That was the longest summer of her life, wondering where her mother had gone, and why she didn’t want her anymore.
Mark knew firsthand how the death of Ben’s father had both simultaneously destroyed and cemented Ben’s life path. He believed that this shared grief would secure their partnership, and provide an authenticity to her placement that the previous attempts had failed to achieve. She was beautiful too and he knew that Ben would like her.
He closed the file and picked up his glass of whisky. He pulled the glass up to his lips and knocked back another measure, the warmth of which slipped down his throat, burning him with a sense of masochistic pleasure. It was impossible to think of Catherine without thinking of the man he once called his best friend. He couldn’t think of Ben without admitting to the sense of loss and guilt that hung over his success.
Identity X Page 16
