by Dawson, Mark
“She will,” Pope said.
He was certain about that.
Chapter Five
She opened the door with the sign that said “La Villa des Orangers” just after eight o’clock. The medina was noisy and clamorous, but when she closed the oak door behind her, it was as if she had been transported into a peaceful idyll. Here, instead of raised voices and the angry horns of cars and vans, she could hear the tinkling of water into the fountain and the sound of meat sizzling on a grill. She dropped her bag and slumped into one of the chairs that overlooked the pool. She let her head hang back and looked up. Her home here was a riad, a traditional Moroccan house with an interior garden. The four walls of the structure made a square of the darkening sky, now shot through with a dozen different colours in the dying sun’s last grand gesture. The stone retained the cool, and she closed her eyes and was almost on the point of sleep when she felt eyes upon her.
“Mummy.”
She opened her eyes. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, Isabella, was standing between her and the pool.
“Hello, sweetheart. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mummy. You look tired.”
“I am.”
“Did you do it?”
“Yes. I did it.”
“How?”
“With a bomb.”
The girl slipped off her sandals and sat down by her side, dipping her dusty feet in the cool blue water.
“Good. Did you speak to her?”
“Yes.”
“So she knew it was you?”
“She did.”
“Good.”
“I know where the next one is, too. He’s in Iraq.”
“When are you going?”
“Soon. Two days.”
“You can’t stay longer?”
“I wish I could, but the information won’t be good forever, and he probably knows I’m coming now. The longer I wait, the more time he’ll have to prepare. That will mean it is more dangerous.”
“I understand, Mummy. It’s just . . .”
“I know. But once this is done, we’ll be safe. And we can be together all the time.”
They sat quietly for a moment. The only sounds were the music of the fountain and her feet splashing in the water.
“I’ve been practising,” she said. “Five hours every day. Ask Mohammed.”
“I believe you.”
“He says I’m getting better and better.”
“That’s good, sweetheart. I have something for you. Something else for you to try.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a surprise. It’s being delivered tomorrow.”
Isabella went to bed, and Beatrix was about to follow her example when Mohammed came out of the kitchen with a silver salver on which rested a teapot and two clear glasses. He set the tray on the table and hugged her.
“How was it?”
“It’s done.”
“You look troubled,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Perhaps a glass of tea will help.”
She smiled and nodded that perhaps it would. Mohammed was rightly proud of his grandmother’s recipe for mint tea. He stripped leaves from the spearmint plant in the courtyard every morning, added a handful to boiling water, sugar and a good tablespoon of gunpowder green tea. He took the glasses and poured the tea from a height so that a thin layer of foam settled on the top.
“Thank you,” she said.
Mohammed was the nearest person she had to a friend in the world. They had worked together on an assignment ten years earlier when she was Number Two and he was a corporal in the Moroccan Royal Guard. They had taken out an al Qaeda cell that had been planning a car bombing in the capital, and in the vicious firefight that had followed, she had saved his life. He had helped her buy the riad, and when she said that she was looking for someone to look after the place, Mohammed and his wife had volunteered. Men didn’t come more honest and trustworthy, and she was grateful every day that he had agreed to help her.
“You know I would never want to intrude, Miss Beatrix, but I think you should consider telling her.”
“Is it obvious?”
“It is obvious that you are unwell. Beyond that? No, it is not obvious. But she is not a stupid girl.”
She would have been irritated to have been told what she should or should not do by almost anyone else, but there was something so calming and inherently good about Mohammed that she didn’t mind.
“I know,” she admitted. “I know I should, but it’s difficult. What do I say? How do I say it? She’s only just got me back again, and then to go and tell her . . . I don’t know, Mohammed. It’s going to be difficult. Very difficult.”
“That I do not doubt.”
They sat in silence for five minutes. She sipped her tea and enjoyed the cool breeze on her skin.
“How is she doing?”
“She is a natural. She has been working very hard. I suspect that she wants to impress you. Her aim is excellent.”
“And if she needed to rely on it?”
“It is difficult to say. It is one thing to shoot a target, but quite another . . .”
He didn’t finish.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Mohammed noticed her empty glass. “Would you like another?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I better not. I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Very good, Miss Beatrix.”
“There are some things that we need to do tomorrow.”
“Whatever you need.”
“There’s going to be a delivery in the morning. A few things we’re going to need.”
He knew what she meant. “I will make the arrangements. Would you like me to put them in the armoury?”
“Yes, please. And can you have the jeep ready? I want to take Isabella out into the desert.”
“Yes, of course. Anything else?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up into the square well that was formed by the riad’s walls. “We are going to need to improve security. I want cameras up on the roof and in the alleyway outside. And motion sensors, too. Do you know anyone?”
“Yes, I do. A soldier I served with has started a home security business. I can ask him.”
“That’s good. Money isn’t a problem. We need to make it much more difficult if anyone decides to pay us a visit. It’s too easy at the moment. We can’t afford that.”
“How likely is it that they will come?”
She sighed, feeling the knot of tension in her gut. “They’re coming, Mohammed. It’s just a question of when.”
Chapter Six
Beatrix slept fitfully, her dreams stalked by fear. She woke several times, and with the clock showing four-thirty, the pain in her bones was such that she knew it was pointless to try and get back to sleep again. She took the blister pack of morphine tablets from her pack and swallowed two. There were only three left. She was going to have to go back to the doctor and get more. She sat in the bath for half an hour until the first infusion of dawn had lightened the sky that was framed by the walls of the riad. Then she dressed in black trousers and a black, sleeveless T-shirt with a thick, cable-knit jumper that she would discard when the temperature started to climb.
She stopped in the armoury. Abdullah had been as good as his word and the equipment had already been delivered. There were three crates of oranges and lemons stacked against the wall in the courtyard, and Mohammed was in the process of uncovering the weapons that had been hidden beneath the bed of straw upon which the fruit rested.
“Good morning, Miss Beatrix.”
“How is it?”
He spread his arms. “It all looks very good.”
He cleared an armful of oranges away and took out the TAR-21 that she had ordered. It was a
futuristic bullpup assault rifle that had been designed for the Israeli infantry. She took it from him and hefted it in both hands. The bolt carrier group was placed behind the pistol grip to shorten the length of the rifle without sacrificing barrel length. The size of the rifle was perfect for turning corners in urban warfare. It would be perfect for fighting in confined spaces, too.
Spaces like the riad.
They uncovered the rest of the order.
There was an MK249 with a dozen one-hundred-round, soft-pack ammo bags, together with three additional box mags and a Surefire suppressor.
A Mossberg 500 shotgun.
An M110 sniper rifle with bi-pod.
Three dozen flash-bang and fragmentation grenades.
A crate of Claymore anti-personnel mines.
“I’ll check everything,” Mohammed said.
“Thank you. Is the jeep ready?”
“It is in the usual place.”
“There was an MP-5 in the order . . .”
“It is in the armoury. Would you like me to get it for you?”
“I’ll get it.”
She went into the room that had once been the riad’s hammam, the traditional steam bath. They had installed a series of shelves and hooks and a large gun cabinet. The Heckler & Koch was on the workbench next to a box of ammunition. She took a Glock, shoved it into the waistband of her trousers and then took the submachine gun.
She left it on the table next to the pool and climbed the stairs to Isabella’s room. The door was unlocked. She opened it quietly and went inside. Isabella was asleep, lying with her arms spread wide and the sheets wound around her legs.
Beatrix crept across the room.
“Isabella.”
She woke at once.
“You’re dead. Right now. I killed you.”
“Mummy!” she protested.
“Is this what I taught you?”
“No, I . . .”
“You have to be alive to threats, sweetheart. All the time. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is. It doesn’t matter if you are awake or if you are asleep. What are you supposed to do last thing at night?”
“Block the door.”
“That’s right. Block the door. So what happened?”
“You’re home,” she said. “I thought . . .”
“That you’d be safe? You’re not safe. There are still three of them out there. Until we’ve eliminated all of them, they are still a threat. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Beatrix relented a little, regretting the harsh tone in her voice. “It’s alright. I’m only angry because I love you. And because the people we are dealing with are very, very dangerous. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Get dressed. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Mohammed had parked the jeep in the street into which the alleyways and passages eventually led. Beatrix had stowed the H&K, the cartridges and two watermelons in a nylon duffel bag. She unlocked the doors and slung it into the back.
“Where are we going?” Isabella asked as they pulled out into the quiet street.
“Somewhere we won’t disturb anyone,” Beatrix answered.
They headed south. It was a little after seven in the morning, and the city was still rousing from its slumber. The traffic was sparse, and they cleared the usual bottlenecks without delay, breaking out onto the wider roads that terminated in the city like the spokes of wheel. In an hour they were out into the desert.
Beatrix wondered, again, if she was doing the right thing. She had started to doubt herself, and the hesitancy was beginning to nag. She had spent much of the last year on Isabella’s training, accelerating the syllabus when she realised that her illness was progressing faster than it could be controlled. Her aim had always been to ensure that her daughter could defend herself, but lately she had admitted to herself that she had another motivation.
A selfish motivation.
What if the cancer made her unable to do what needed to be done? What would she do then?
The sun was climbing into the sky, and the heat was cranking up with every minute that passed. The landscape was spartan and homogenous, dunes as far as the eye could see, with the asphalt ribbon of the road the only sign of human interference. Beatrix drove for another ten minutes until she was satisfied that the long view in both directions would give her plenty of notice should anyone approach. She slowed, turned off the road and followed a narrow track into the dunes.
No time for doubt now.
She stopped, killed the engine and took the bag from the back seat.
“Come on,” she said.
They walked a little way from the jeep. She dropped the bag and opened it, taking out the watermelons.
“Wait here.”
She walked on, dropping the first watermelon on the sand fifteen paces from where Isabella was standing and the second another five paces farther. She walked back to her daughter, collected the nylon duffle from the ground and took out the MP-5, three full magazines and another box of 9mm rounds.
“Here,” she said, handing it to her daughter.
Isabella took it in careful hands.
Beatrix held up a magazine. “Show me how to load it.”
The girl hadn’t used an H&K before, but she was smart, and after fumbling the magazine in the receiver for a moment, she found the right position and snapped it home.
“This is an MP-5,” she said. “They are very powerful submachine guns. You need to get used to firing them.”
Isabella grinned with anticipation.
“What should I fire at first?”
“First of all, you need to set the gun to automatic. You know how to do that?”
The girl pointed to the selector on the side of the gun. “Here?”
“That’s right. Click it around to F.”
Beatrix watched as Isabella did as she was told.
“You know what some people say the F stands for?”
“Continuous fire?”
“Yes, that’s one meaning. The other is fun. Ready?”
“Yes. What am I shooting at?”
“The first watermelon.”
Isabella opened the retractable metal stock and took up a confident stance.
“It fires eight hundred rounds a minute. That’s thirteen rounds a second. Think about that before you pull the trigger.”
“I can do it.”
“Go on, then. Show me.”
She fired, the rounds going high and wide and throwing up little plumes of sand that jagged away in a rough diagonal.
“Bend your knees and lean forward. You can’t pussyfoot with it. You’ve got to manhandle it. Line up the sights on the watermelon and then hold the trigger down. Two seconds.”
Isabella straightened her shoulder, lowered her stance and pressed her cheek against the gun, sighting the target. She held down the trigger and sent twenty-six rounds up range. The watermelon exploded in a fountain of juice and wet flesh.
“There you go,” Beatrix said.
She looked at her daughter and the confident way in which she handled the weapon. She was so young, just barely a teenager, and yet she was completely comfortable with an automatic machine gun. Beatrix had given her that confidence, and she should have been able to extract a measure of pride from it, but that was not an easy thing to do. The doubts kept nagging away at her. At Isabella’s age, she should have been interested in innocent things: music or clothes or boys. She should not have been able to field-strip a pistol, arm and throw a fragmentation grenade, run ten kilometres in less than forty minutes or know the best pressure points to disable a man.
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a perversion of her youth.
And yet . . .
That she kne
w how to do those things spoke to the excellence of Beatrix’s tutelage. It meant that Isabella would be able to defend herself, if that ever became necessary. It meant that her likelihood of safety was improved.
But it also meant that the last innocence of childhood had been torn away from her.
Worse, it meant that it was her mother, who should have nourished and protected that unworldliness for as long as she could, who was responsible.
Beatrix’s exile, all those days and months alone with the memories of her bloody career, had imprinted on her the notion that she was an implacable killer with no room for emotion. She had thought that she was a machine.
She knew, now, that she was not.
Isabella had taught her that.
What had she given her in return?
It was impossible not to feel regret about the lengths to which she had been forced to go in order to protect her daughter. The cost had been high. She wondered, again, as she watched as Isabella leaned into her stance and raised the MP-5, if it had been too high.
Beatrix drove them back into town, and at the junction where she would normally have turned left, she impulsively turned right.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s only ten. I thought we could make a morning of it.”
“Doing what?”
“How about some shopping?”
“Shopping?” Isabella gaped at her as if she had suggested something outrageous.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“We’ve never been shopping together.”
“First time for everything. You don’t want to?”
“I didn’t say that.”
It had suddenly seemed like the most natural thing to do. The training had gone well, and Isabella had grown more and more adept with the MP-5. Her aim had graduated from chaotic to undisciplined, and by the time they had exhausted the ammunition, it had improved to reasonable. She had taken to the gun with impressive ease and was soon hollering with satisfaction as she started to nail the targets, her face full of wild joy.
Beatrix found that the image of her daughter with the gun was not one she wanted to carry in her head.
