Identity X

by Michelle Muckley

  “Well done, baby. Well done.” She cupped his face in her hands, turning him left and right, back and forth, pulling at the skin on his cheeks and around his eyes as if she would be able to find signs of trauma or pain in the freckles and curves of his face. “Are you okay?” He nodded, and with his confirmation she felt the surge in purpose, the need to fight. Sitting at this table was useless. She held him to her chest, feeling the rapid gallop of his heart drumming against her own. His face looked physically intact, but the muscles that held his eyes in place appeared to have relaxed, his mouth hung open just a little as if dumbfounded. “What is it baby?” she asked

  “Uncle Mark is a bad man, Mummy.”

  “Yes. He doesn’t want to help us. We have to run away from him. We have to run far away with Daddy where we will be safe again.” She stroked his face as he nodded his approval. “Stay here, Mummy has to find us a way out of here.” He hung on, staring at her.

  “You were going to hit him with that big thing you picked up from the desk, weren’t you.” His judgment of her actions hurt almost as much as the thought of the gun held by Mark in Matthew’s direction only minutes before. She saw him catch sight of the second gun on her hip which Mark had failed to discover. She wondered how best to answer, and had no idea what the right thing was. She took a chance on the truth.

  “Yes. I would have hit him because I knew that he was a bad man, and I didn’t want him to hurt us.”

  He nodded, smiled a little, and she knew that was the most she could ask for right now. She picked him up and sat his exhausted and apathetic body down on the table. She ran back into each room knowing that without the anxiety of Matthew’s absence she would find the methodical and rational approach to reveal another exit. It was impossible to consider that such a bunker would not have a secret and concealed exit installed, because without an exit it would simply be a waiting room for the inevitable ambush from above. She searched frantically, but with a calm caution to not miss some minor detail of importance. She searched all of the cupboards looking for concealed crawl ways and hidden doors.

  At first there was nothing, but as she ran into the final room, she realised that it wasn’t just a bedroom. It had the same single sized bed and pile of fresh plastic wrapped laundry at the end of the bed. But on the far wall there was an indentation which suggested the shape of a doorway. As she pushed against the recessed area of the wall she felt the slightest disturbance in its position, which only served to strengthen her instincts that this was a possible exit. She traced her fingers across the perimeter of the recess, searching for any discrepant bump that may indicate the presence of a button or concealed handle, but found nothing. As she repeated the same process on the wall to the side, her smooth fingers detected a small dimple in the plaster work, something pliable to compression. Wasting no time, she pushed the area in and sure enough the door opened outwards, and she saw light bursting through from the other side.

  She saw what reminded her of a multi-storey car park, with three black cars lined up facing a wall. She scanned her eyes around the room, allowing them to settle on a button which read ‘Activate’. Looking inside the cars, she could see that there was a set of keys in the ignition of the one closest to her, and after finding the door unlocked she turned the key. The overwhelming satisfaction of the engine’s roar couldn’t have offered greater fulfilment than the symphony of an orchestra. Smiling with relief, she ran back towards the central room for Matthew and Ben’s research files. Matthew was sitting where she left him and after scooping him up, and taking the files in her other hand, she ran as fast as she could back to the waiting car.

  The sound of the engine filled the small room, bouncing back from the walls like gas molecules in an airtight container unable to escape. She couldn’t hear her own footsteps, or those in pursuit behind her over the din of the engine. Opening the rear door she ushered Matthew inside and secured his seat belt. In the foot well of the front passenger seat she tossed the files and slammed the door shut. Matthew watched as his mother pushed the activation button and walked back towards the car.

  What appeared to be a normal wall withdrew into a recess, exposing a ramp and the last shards of daylight just visible in the distance. She sat down and turned to Matthew who was motionless behind her, resting his hands into his lap, staring at his mother. He regarded her in the same way in which Ben had regarded her earlier on in the day, when he realised that there had always been a side to her life that he knew nothing about. She looked like his mother, sounded and smelt like her, but yet was somehow different. The mother he knew didn’t carry guns for a start. The mother he knew didn’t attack people with heavy paperweights, or leave bullet holes in the chests of friends. The look in his eyes as his brows crunched together suggested that he was waiting for the real version of his mother to show up and expel the imposter. It was the same expression on Ben’s face at the safe house earlier on that day, when he had still thought that to shoot a man was the worst thing that could have happened to him. It was disappointment, and it hurt her more than any pain she had felt before.

  “We are going to get Daddy, and then we are going on a big adventure on a boat.” He didn’t say anything, but he nodded obligingly. He didn’t smile, but she chose to ignore it. “Mummy is going to drive quite fast, so I need you to hold on tight. Okay?” A small grin reached his lips, slight but she detected it, and it gave her hope that one day he might forgive her for the pain that she had caused him and Ben. Before she could turn around, she saw the smile on his face fade. She followed the path of his gaze and found Mark standing before her. She thought of running him down, but the knowledge that Matthew was with her made such an act difficult, and she had no choice but to wait to see his next move.

  He walked to the car with the steady controlled pace of the soldier that he never was. Each step was deliberate and well placed, but there was a sallow look on his face, and she couldn’t help but notice the blood streaking and seeping its way down his shirt. Hannah looked around towards the exit back to the all white bedrooms, but even as she looked she knew that there was no hope in that direction.

  “Keep your hands on the wheel Hannah, where I can see them,” she shouted. He was only inches from the car, and too close for her to pull the gun from behind her, the one that he had failed to consider as he had confiscated her other weapon. He was holding a matt black gun which she recognised as her own, and its sight was trained at her head. She doubted he would use it, because to use it now would end the hunt for Ben, but she appreciated the intrinsic risk in making assumptions like that when she was responsible for the bloody wound beneath his shoulder. She reprimanded herself about how she should have shot him in both shoulders, or better still, have killed him as soon as he had opened the door to the bunker. He opened the car door, and slipped inside next to Matthew. She knew that the wound must be hurting him.

  “I will let you go. Both you and Matthew,” he lied, “just as soon as I have Ben.” She knew he was lying, and it was only now that she considered the likelihood that the car was reinforced and that his bullets would not have penetrated the glass work had she refused to get out. She wished again that she had killed him, or at least ran him over repeatedly instead of blithely waiting for him to act. Her thoughts flipped back and forth between Matthew and her wasted opportunities to put this to bed.

  I should have killed him, she said to herself. He sat back into the car and closed the door. She saw Matthew’s face pushed up against the window, steam forming as his hot breath passed against the glass.

  “Come here, climb over,” she said as she beckoned him into the front seat. Mark raised his arm as if he was about to stop him, but she was quicker, and she blocked his reach. Matthew did as his mother said, stepping over into the front seat as if he had been sat on a spring ready and waiting. She reached over and fastened his seat belt, kissing him on the cheek, and stroking her fingers down the side of his face. She tried to place all of her fear, and all of her worry to the back of her
mind, and allow nothing but positivity and strength to move across her face in the warmest most honest smile she could muster. Matthew smiled nervously back, and she planted a soft kiss on the tip of his nose. She placed her hands over his ears, and just before she sealed them shut, she told him to close his eyes. He did so, and as she pressed down against his small ears she turned to Mark.

  “If you hurt a single hair on his head, I will fucking kill you. I promise you that.”

  “And yet it’s me that is holding a gun to the back of your chair. So I think it is up to you to do as I say.” She considered the concealed gun that she could feel pressing uncomfortably into her back, but realised there was no hope to use it now with Matthew in the car.

  Not in front of him. I can’t. I just can’t.

  “Take us to the docks,” Mark spat. She looked down at her son, who was staring back at her and pushing back further and further in his seat and towards the door to keep as much distance as possible between him and Mark, a man who until only minutes before he had trusted implicitly. She smiled again, and as she released the handbrake and heard Mark’s sarcastic congratulatory remarks regarding her submission to his will, she thought of Ben. She hoped that he was already at dock two and waiting on the boat. She trusted the man in charge of the boat, and knew that he would do all he could to keep her husband safe. It was her time now to focus, and her only job was to protect Matthew.

  TWENTY TWO

  Ben drove the car towards the detailed Victorian gateway which marked the entrance to the old docks. Turning in through the red brick columns between which would have at one time stood a wrought iron gate he saw one of the last workers leave. The docks were quiet now, and had been for years, receiving only one or two small deliveries or exports a day. He knew that there was another dock yard across town, over half an hour away, and as he drove through the deserted road over the broken tarmac and labyrinth of sewerage covers, he couldn’t quite shake the thought that this might be the wrong place.

  As the car toppled over the bumps in the largely disused road, he passed the near derelict buildings on his right. The once terracotta coloured bricks were now thick with a layer of dirt, covered in the filth from the industry that once made this a thriving town within a town. Many of the windows were broken. There were remnants of graffiti left as the mark of wayward teenagers who would break in and stake a claim on the place overnight. In the centre of the building a striking tower rose up, the merlons and crenels that created the saw tooth pattern of the parapet more suitable for a medieval castle fortress than an abandoned dockyard. There was a small round space on the tower, free of grime where a clock had once sat, guarding the working hours. It had long since been removed.

  The manmade ground gave way to the natural landscape pushing its way up from underneath. In places the road had been smothered by a mixture of grass and moss from above, and Ben became lost in the thoughts of his possible mistake. There were no signs, no guidance. He pushed the occasional tormented theory that it could all still be an elaborate trap to the back of his mind and kept a look out for a signpost.

  Just as he began to contemplate the idea of turning back, the wheels of the car jumped as he drove over the old disused train tracks that led to the old wheat store. The looming image of an old Caisson, once used to close the mouth of the docks formed an impressive shadow as he drove past the wall of steel, rusted and defaced by more graffiti. As he passed the old ship, he finally saw a sign that read ‘Dock One’, and figured he must be on the right track. The light was fading so he pushed down harder on the accelerator and picked up his speed. Soon, after passing more broken lumps of concrete and discarded metal implements for which he had no clue of the purpose, he saw the sign for dock two. The car splashed through a series of puddles, and sure enough as he neared the end of the broken land, marked clearly with a series of steal lumps fixed solidly into the ground, he saw a small white boat, tethered onto a set of broken white railings. The same boat on which Hannah had saved his life.

  He pulled up the car a few meters from the edge and killed the engine. He picked up the three passports, and regarded the boat for a moment. There was utter silence in the dockyard, with not a single worker left to interrupt the peace. Everything around him was cast in a deep shadow, courtesy of the disappearing sun, making the whole scenario seem even more terrifying. Nobody questioned him, and nobody called out to complain at his intrusion. There was not a soul around but for a sole man on the boat, whom he had no idea if he should trust or not. From his appearance he guessed that it had to be the man who had delivered the car. His best option was to give him the benefit of his incredible doubt.

  Ben stepped out of the car, keeping his body behind the door, shielded from view. He looked down at the passports and squeezed them, taking courage from Hannah’s planning and help. Her track record in trust had proven to be less than flawless, and images of the four agents lying dead on the ground were at the forefront of his mind. But he reminded himself that he believed that she loved him. Without that belief there was nothing left; no hope for the plan to work and for them to find an escape, no hope for Matthew or his chance to savour another day with him, no hope at all for a future. Any future.

  He had lost NEMREC and the ideals by which he had lived his life for so many years had been idly stolen from him with barely a glimmer of conscience. Without his family he had nothing. He had to remain strong in his belief that she loved him, otherwise he was left with nothing but a past full of lies and a meaningless chance at a life without worth. He didn’t want to lose anything else. Or anybody else.

  He reached down to his hip and patted the gun that he had placed there earlier and felt in some bizarre way reassured by its presence. As if carrying a gun was a normal thing for him. He thought back to the bag of weapons in the boot of the car, and wondered how a person might react, and in particular the man standing before him on the boat, if he opened the boot and pulled a machine gun as his backup plan.

  He closed the door and took a tentative step towards the boat, moving around to the front of the car. The engine felt warm as his hands rested onto the bonnet as he crept his way forward. The man on the boat remained cool and as motionless as an ice statue.

  There was nothing but open water ahead. The only interruption to the heaving mass of the endless ocean was the patches of sea foam, lit by the weak light of the rising moon. There were no street lights, and the first stars flickered into view above him. It was hard to make out if the man was holding a gun in the shadow of dusk, or if he just had his hands on the controls of the boat, but it unsettled Ben and he could feel himself hanging back. He knew he must look as suspicious as he felt.

  “Where is Hannah?” the voice called from the boat. It was a soft voice, firm but the edges were rounded into a southern Irish accent.

  “She got delayed in Headquarters. She told me to meet her here.” The man held his hand up and for a panic stricken moment Ben thought that his worst fears had been confirmed. Instead he raised his hand to his ear and Ben realised that the boatman was holding nothing more threatening than a telephone. He could barely hear the words as the man on the boat spoke quietly into the mouthpiece, but he was sure he could make out the name Hannah. Ben stood waiting at the car, not wanting to assume a rite of passage towards the boat, and not wanting to risk disrupting any plan that Hannah may have put in place. He was not supposed to be here on his own, and he reminded himself to tread with caution.

  The man on the boat tucked the telephone back into his pocket, before proceeding to climb from the boat and onto the dock. He walked fast, and straight towards Ben, almost as if he were set to embrace him and offer comfort. But as he approached he swerved around the side of him and headed straight towards the back of the car. He was heading for the boot which contained the concealed armament.

  He remembered Hannah placing the bag in the car, and he remembered quite clearly what was in it. The idea of this stranger suddenly having control of the multitude of weapons was a fr
ightening concept and a new thought came into his mind. It was strong and superseded all others in that moment. Escape. How am I going to escape? Into the water? The car? Under the car? Use the gun? He saw the lid of the boot open and the man from the boat disappeared behind it. Ben felt instant fear and became paralysed to the spot as if his toes had sprouted roots. His terror prevented him from employing any one of the random acts of restraint that had taken over his ideas of escape, and instead he watched as the man pulled the bag of weapons from the boot. He didn’t take out any of the guns or threaten him. He started to walk back around the front of the car towards Ben, whereby he stopped and stood in front of him to speak.

  “Hannah is in trouble. She's on her way and she has Matthew, but something is wrong. I think Mark is with her.”

  She has Matthew. This was the first thought that Ben processed, but the joy of the boatman’s words was short lived, and soon everything else that he had said registered. Hannah is in trouble. Something is wrong. Mark is with her.

  “What’s wrong? What did she say?” Ben was overcome by the need to protect his wife and son, and with renewed vigour he reached out and snatched at the man’s jacket sleeve. The man looked up, startled by the tenacity of the grip, but Ben stood his ground and he firmed up his hold of the man’s arm. His fear of this unknown character was outweighed by that which he suddenly felt for the safety of his family.

  “When I asked her if she was okay, she answered by saying yes twice. And quickly. It means she is in trouble, that something is wrong.” He paused for a moment and trained his eyes unsympathetically towards Ben. “Again.”

  As Ben caught sight of his face, he knew that he had seen it somewhere before. The cap pulled over his forehead and the light beige coloured coat reminded him of the underground station earlier on today, when he had shot the agent and agreed to go willingly with Hannah. This man had stood at the other end of the platform, relaying guidance and instructions.