MERCURY'S SECRET

by Tobias Roote

  I also had other concerns. The people they had sent against us were good, but they weren't top calibre. Not what I had expected. Either they weren't who I thought they were, or the quality of training had fallen in recent years. Either way the poor quality of their operatives gave us a distinct advantage. I didn’t really trust that either.

  Still, we needed every bit of help we could get right now.

  CHAPTER 14

  Hi Dan

  By now you will have got away from the Island and hopefully somewhere safe with Alice where you can read and digest this. Attached is a copy of the list of safe houses and other assets we have around either placed by us, or close friends.

  We are both very sorry to have dropped you in it. Abbey and I had little time to organise things and to be honest you could not stay where you were either, as you would have been eliminated by our enemy as part of their clean-up. We had no choice but to put you and Alice together and hope you could both get out of the firing line.

  Oh, and about that.

  You already know the story about me, what you don't know is who the enemy is.

  Orlov Dubianko was head of the KGB during the Cold War when I was at my most active. His chief Assistant was a woman called Irvana Bejenski who was the handler for most of the top Russian spies. She turned a few of ours during her career, but in the end, unbeknown to Dubianko, I managed to turn her.

  We let him think that she had turned me so that we had reason to meet, but the information he was fed and what we retrieved from her involvement with Dubianko in the end contributed greatly to bringing down the Iron Curtain. It was an eventful time.

  At the end Dubianko had strong suspicions about Irvana being turned and we both got out of Russia just as a manhunt for both of us began. It has never really stopped since. The old politburo members memory of the USSR is forever, and their thirst for revenge will never be quenched. Putin rules them with an iron fist, but they still have their resources and friends in high places. They are as dangerous, if not more so, today as they ever were.

  Abbey IS Irvana. She has been my love since forever. I knew her and loved her three years before we worked together to finally bring an end to the Cold War era. We had a love-child, but because of her situation we had to hide the little girl as she would have been used to make Irvana do things against her will. Dubianko was never to be trusted and would rather force his will on others by any means possible. We smuggled her out of the USSR without any of her, or my people knowing a thing and I and my first wife, Jennifer, adopted her - we called her Alice.

  Jennifer had no knowledge of Irvana, or our relationship although I think she suspected I had someone else. She didn't know about my work and never knew that Alice was actually my child. Alice has no idea either and its now for you to decide what you do and who you tell.

  The reason Alice had to go underground is obvious, she would be targeted by Dubianko if he found out the truth, and I wouldn't put that beyond him even now. Even without that knowledge she would be used to draw me out and thus expose Irvana which I cannot do.

  I am sorry, old friend, I have rather dropped you into a hornets’ nest of revenge and retribution, I hope you will forgive me. Keep yourselves safe, use the information on the memory stick if you need to. It will buy yours and Alice's freedom if used right. If you do have to use it please know that we allowed for this possibility and accept it as the price we have to pay for Alice's safety.

  Go with our love and our hopes for you both.

  John and Abbey

  I put the letter down on the laptop keyboard and looked back into the bedroom where Alice was sprawled naked across the bed, a sheet entwined giving her some modesty, but not a lot; still asleep and completely unaware the extent of the game going on around us, of which she was a key player. I had no doubt at all that she was a major target of Dubianko and that in all probability he had guessed at her heritage and would not stop until he had her, or killed her in revenge. I still had not ascertained which of the outcomes they were working towards.

  I now believed that John and Abbey's enemy was also directly Alice's and this meant that their efforts to find her were going to be relentless now just as in the past with her parents.

  How on earth I was going to secure her safety in this I didn’t yet know. I knew I could not take on the might of the Politburo and was ill equipped to deal with the shock-troops that were probably even now gathering somewhere in anticipation of a kill, or three. They would be all out for retribution once they realised they had just lost one of their teams.

  I appreciated the precautions John had taken to get us away as well as the safe houses they had set up. He had done his level best to give us a fighting chance and was probably even now drawing them away from us. Had John hoped that I could spirit her away into another identity using my old contacts, I wondered? It didn't seem likely.

  I had never felt so out of my depth as at this moment. I knew I would have to get a handle on the situation quickly if we wanted to survive. My feelings for Alice, so much more than a few days ago, made me want to bury the both of us somewhere deep and safe forever. However, experience and I both knew too well the futility of that kind of thinking.

  Alice awoke, I could see her stir from my seat in the cockpit. She was going to have to read this letter, I thought, as I placed the list in my wallet. She would have to know the truth, I could not keep something like this from her. Her head came up looking for me, then flipped to one side her hair falling over the pillows as she tried to gauge my mood. The sun shone through the porthole in the bedroom giving her a background glow God! She was lovely!

  Sitting up and watching me, she pulled on her shirt and shorts and came through the galley towards me, my look obviously sending messages of concern to her. She came up and kissed me, sensing the something, but not the what and trying to understand if it was her, me, them, or something else.

  I returned her kiss and put my hand up to caress the side of her face, loving her with every fibre of my being. She placed one arm around my neck as she went to sit on my lap. Seeing the letter on the keyboard, the envelope bearing my name in her Father's handwriting, she stopped half sat, curiosity immediately gaining her full attention.

  Picking the letter up by its corner she lifted it towards her face to steal a peek at its contents, suddenly letting go of me and leaning instead against the cockpit control panel she took the letter in both hands and began to read. I watched her face change as she read down the page, and I could tell when she reached the part about her.

  She cried out, putting her clenched white knuckles into her mouth to stifle more of them and refused to let me near her while she continued to read until she got to the end of the page.

  Then, silently taking the letter and walking past me, she briefly touched my arm with her hand in a gesture of reassurance and made her way onto the deck. I saw her sit with her legs dangling over the bow, looking out to sea, back towards me and the rest of the world while she absorbed the full impact of her Father's confession.

  She was strong enough to absorb all of this, I decided, and if I was right she would be sitting mentally dealing with each piece of the truth, following each thought through, sifting out lies she had been told to protect her all these years. In the end she would shrug even this off, and then...

  CHAPTER 15

  The smell of scrambled eggs and toast wafted up from the galley as I came out from under the deck having inspected the engines and greased bearings. It had been all of three hours, I was impressed! Wiping my hands of grease remover and checking my arms for spots I had missed, I walked around until I reached the cabin door.

  I could see Alice beavering away as I stepped through and looked at two plates she was piling with food. A feast. I could smell something was afoot, it was not just the bacon.

  “Sit! Eat! We have to talk,” she said calmly, but emphatically, her attitude clearly indicating she would accept no argument.

  No, I knew when to keep quiet, this was an
other of those thousand things you learn about women as you get older. When to let them wear the trousers! I could sense from her positive controlled moves that Alice had developed purpose. I had an inkling what it was going to be and grimaced.

  Ten minutes later the empty plates were stacked in front of us, the mugs of coffee refilled. Alice, I could see had come to a decision and wanted to discuss something. I waited until she was ready.

  “These people want something from me, us,” she waved her hands between us to include me.

  “Either they want me as a bargaining chip, or want to kill me to get back at Mum and Dad.”

  Her acceptance of Abbey as her Mother was a good sign and pleased me, because I felt that I understood how hard it must have been for Abbey particularly, to never let on about the facts. Accepting a secondary role for the good of her daughter must have been very difficult.

  Alice was watching my eyes, looking for signs of agreement. I had momentarily been giving her a blank stare and it had put her off. I smiled at her “I think you are right, they will try to kill me and take you, if they cannot do that, they will kill us both.” This reassured her, I watched her face relax again as she saw I was on her wavelength.

  “Then we need to start fighting back, but we don’t even know who, or where they are,” she raged her coffee spilling as the frustration in her forced her muscles to contract.

  I caught and held onto her hands, prising them away from the mug forcing her to relax them. Then watched as the tension fell away, travelling up her arms until she shrugged her shoulders to loosen them realising what was causing her to stiffen and ache.

  “There may be other issues involved, but I think you are right. We should do more than just run until we are in a corner with no exit strategy. We still have to run, but only until we can find a place to stop and fight.”

  “What do you suggest?” she asked realising at once I was for her plan, but now wanting to commit me to a course of action. I was happy to oblige as I had been feeling a need to go on the offensive, but without her desire and commitment to put herself into danger I was reluctant to place us anywhere, but beyond reach.

  “We are too isolated on this boat, we need to gain some serious flexibility and also be able to vanish or hide in plain view. None of this is possible now they have identified the boat, and will be monitoring all the major, as well as some of the minor harbours along the coastline. We cannot avoid detection if we make for land, even if we travelled a thousand miles from here.”

  Alice nodded, her action indicating she was keeping up with the game plan.

  “To get ahead of the game we need to ditch Alice II, and I think your Dad has given us just the right incentives,” I said as I removed a folded list from my pocket that had been with his letter.

  “This list has three safe houses, a couple of money caches with change of identities. Marseilles looks favourite and is obviously closest to the sea.”

  Taking the list she read it, paying attention to locations and detail. After a minute she handed it back. I was sure she had memorised it all.

  We finalised our plans over coffee dregs, poring over maps of Marseilles as we defined our escape from any surveillance until we wanted to be found.

  We decided to wait one more day. Then our intention was to move onto land and try and organise some support.

  Alice, I discovered, when faced with a threat to her and hers, would come out fighting. I knew this, of course, from her explanation of her time in Africa, much more of which had come out in our conversations between lovemaking, something which seemed to consume an inordinate amount of each day.

  Through all of this I had come to accept that she would not falter when it came to having to do whatever we needed to do and she insisted that she was not going to accept any fate drawn up by some old has-been Russkie out of vengeance for what happened twenty five years ago.

  Under pressure of a lady who knew how to get answers to her questions, I had eventually told her some of my history with the service, no details only outlines of my work. I was one of only a few who had lived long enough to retire. This in itself caused problems for the Top Brass in Whitehall none of whom wanted anything coming back to bite them in the bum. So I trod a fine line between being retired and 'retired' and always kept an exit strategy up to date never further than a day from going under cover again.

  This encouraged Alice, but I made no bones about telling her we were in a big game which we were ill equipped to play. Nonetheless, give her solid brass balls, she insisted we give it a go, as in all probability we would be running for our lives either way.

  I hated to admit the idea of doing something besides run and hide suited me better. My fear for her safety tore at me constantly, and I wondered if, when it came down to it, I would actually let her walk into danger.

  Morning brought a last change of direction, we now headed directly to Marseilles. We would dump the boat and move inland. If they had tracked us this far it might cause them to move their people around. If not, we had only wasted a few hours.

  Alice packed together everything she needed, we were travelling light so it was backpack only. Mine was a holdall and backpack as I wasn't leaving much of the armoury behind. We arrived in Marseilles very early morning before people were out and about. I moored Alice II in a temporary slot knowing full well it would get attention from local authorities within the hour. We managed to join a group of people as they left the marina, amazed at how little security there was.

  With our new plan to try and fight back instead of running and trying to hide we wanted Dubianko to follow us, but we didn't need him right up our backsides. The trail though, had to be warmish and appear to represent real efforts to vanish. We hired a cheap white Renault that had seen better days from a backstreet car hire company, drove it a few miles then parked it in an underground car park.

  Making sure we were seen by street CCTV cameras, we caught a bus out of the city centre ensuring we were remembered by the driver. We got off outside the city, found a Café while we waited for another bus to take us back into the City. This time we did as much as possible to hide our trail. We wanted them looking for us close by, but not on our doorstep.

  Eventually we arrived in the western suburbs of the city getting on towards evening. We were shattered when we got off the local round-robin bus close to our destination. Humping around an armoury was not only risky in a place like Marseilles, but also pretty heavy.

  Another few minutes walk bought us to a white two-storey terracotta house behind a stone wall. As we approached I carefully scanned our surroundings for any local attention, seeing none I felt reassured and smiled across at Alice who looked drawn, her forehead pinched and furrowed as if concentrating on something in the distance. As I nudged her towards the front gate she suddenly realised we had arrived and smiled back. The worry lines instantly disappeared.

  Closing the unlocked gate behind us, we found ourselves in a driveway with surrounding land recently cleared perhaps preparatory to setting out a garden. I could see why this had been chosen; good visibility all around.

  Mercury raced off on a Silent patrol and in the time it took for us to walk up the short drive to the house he had done the circuit his wagging tail telling us it was all clear.

  The house was shuttered. Taking the key, as instructed, from under the pot half way up the drive we walked round the side to get to the main door. Passing an outside pizza oven and BBQ area we traversed a terrace that appeared to surround the whole house, I put the key in the lock and turned.

  It was dark inside, the evening light and the closed shutters combined to create a gut wrenching black hole that we had to walk into. Finding a light switch right by the door I was pleased to see the electric was on and we wouldn't have to hunt for the mains.

  I left Alice wandering around to find the bathroom, food and drink. With Mercury still on point, I traversed every room in the house, leaving shutters closed for the time being while we got our bearings. Once in the k
itchen, I went to the drawer nearest the back door and opened it. Inside there was a set of keys and a remote.

  Unlocking it and slipping the deadbolts, I walked across the terrace to the matching tile single storey garage that stood separated from the house. It had a double up and over door entry and a side access door. I chose one of the keys from the small bunch and in the increasing gloom unlocked the door and entered.

  There was less light in here with no ceiling just rafters and uninsulated roof tiles.

  In the failing light I could see a pull switch inside the door. Yanking it I was rewarded with flood lighting that illuminated a black Citroen saloon and a dark green metallic Mercedes Coupé. The incandescent light chased away all the shadows; I could see the cars and garage had been left spotless, the vehicles had not been here long, I decided.

  Each car had a set of keys tucked into their sun visor. When I turned on the ignitions and checked fuel gauges, both cars read as full. Superb! We were ready to roll.

  CHAPTER 16

  Back in the house, Alice had found plenty of food in the larder, a chest freezer full of pizzas and meat and vegetables, enough to keep us going for weeks. She was already making an evening meal. We still had to make do with powdered stuff for milk, eggs and potatoes.

  I spent some time going through each room to see if John had left anything behind. Surprisingly, there was no sign anywhere. The house seemed clean.

  I noticed that despite the house being bare of any personal belongings, on the back of a chair in the lounge which was traditionally styled and very outdated as if John had bought the place lock, stock and furnishings, there was a short sleeved jacket.

  It would have been missed by any cursory glance as just a discarded house coat. On checking the pockets I found a non-auto style key on a Mercedes key fob. On an inspired guess I walked back out to the garage, turning on the light and popping the catch of the Mercedes boot via the in-car remote, walked around and opened it.