by Dawson, Mark
Faik withdrew to the back of the cell. There was always violence just beneath the surface, but now it seemed dangerously close and ready to catch light. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the front when it started.
He didn’t have long to wait.
The guard with the shotgun went off shift, to be replaced by a man Faik recognised. No one knew his name, but since he had a cruel, braying laugh, he had quickly become known as hîmaar, or Donkey. He was a regular, and renowned for his sadism. He had spat into Faik’s bowl of rice on his first day inside, and there were stories of his particularly enthusiastic participation in the six-on-one beatings that the guards used to punish those inmates who had done something that they found objectionable. He was also a heavy drinker, and Faik had noticed that he was often drunk while he was on shift. Tonight, Donkey was sweating heavily and he reeked of alcohol again; perhaps that was why he misread the atmosphere.
One of the inmates stood up and walked over to the door. He was a young man called Abdul, just a little older than Faik, and of a similarly slight build. He would not have been the sort to arouse wariness or suspicion.
He called Donkey to come over.
The man swore in irritation, but raised himself from the chair and, with his shotgun held loosely at his side, came closer to the bars of the cell.
“What?”
Abdul grabbed Donkey by the collar of his shirt and yanked hard, pulling him onto the bars. His head bounced off the metal, and he grunted in pain and surprise. A second inmate, Abdul’s older brother Tarik, leapt to his feet and reached through to grab the guard’s flailing left arm, pulling hard so that he was trapped against the bars. He dropped the shotgun and shouted in sudden fear, but the other guards were in the guardhouse with a crate of Asrihah arak and oblivious to what was going on outside. Donkey kept his keys on a loop that hung from his belt, right next to his revolver. Abdul tore the keys from the belt and Tarik reached for the revolver. Donkey fought desperately, punching through the bars with his right fist and managing to hold him off.
But now Abdul had the cell door open.
“Come on!” he yelled.
Donkey freed his arm and staggered away from the bars. He thought about the shotgun on the floor, saw the open gate and the men who were pouring out of it, and fled.
Tarik hurried outside and took the shotgun.
The other prisoners hurried to get out.
Faik stayed at the back. He felt sick with fright. He was unable to move.
The engineer started for the door, paused, looked back at him and then pushed through the scramble until he was close enough to reach down and pull him up.
“Come on,” he said, urgently, his eyes flashing. “You can’t stay here. We have to go.”
“They’ll shoot us.”
“And what will they do if we stay?”
Faik looked into his face and saw resolution. He allowed himself to be pulled up and to the open door and out into the corridor beyond.
They tried to open the other cells first, but Donkey’s key didn’t work in all of them. They opened three, and so there were a hundred or so prisoners who made it out. That was still more than enough to overpower the drunken guards. They swarmed into the room where they were drinking their arak and piled onto them, burying them under a weight of numbers and raining a brutal shower of kicks and punches down onto them until all were either dead or unconscious. They took their revolvers and another shotgun and pressed buttons until they had unlocked the gate to the canteen. They surged inside, roaring with pent-up fury, turning over tables and throwing chairs. A fire extinguisher was torn from the wall and crashed down again and again on the toughened glass in the door that opened out onto the exercise yard.
Faik was jostled into the middle of the mêlée as the door was battered open and the prisoners spilled out into the cool night air. They had exited into the exercise yard. The dusty surface looked lunar in the illumination of the prison’s lighting, and the first few men started to sprint across the fifty feet of open space to the nearest wall.
Faik cowered in the lee of the building.
This all felt horribly dangerous.
“Come on,” the engineer urged him. “There is a weakness in the fence. Over there, it is possible to open it. I have seen. Come on!”
He ran, and Faik followed, slowly at first and then faster.
Maybe he could get out.
Maybe he could get back to Mysha.
Maybe they could leave town.
Maybe . . .
There came a crack that echoed out across the wide space.
There were several prisoners ahead of them, heading for the same weakness that the engineer had identified.
Faik watched in horror as the head of the man farthest from them jerked back at him, a pink mist spraying out. His momentum carried him forward for another step, but then he toppled backwards, landing with a heavy thud on his shoulder blades.
There came another, echoing report.
The second man of the pair was drilled through the neck. He stumbled onwards for a handful of paces, turning back to them with his hands clasped around his throat, before he slumped to his knees and then keeled over onto his side.
Faik stopped. He looked up at the guard tower that overlooked the main gate. One of the sentries was turned in their direction. He had braced his left forearm on the timber balustrade, the stock of his sniper rifle nestled tight between his sternum and his chin. He was gently obscured by a pall of grey smoke that had issued from the muzzle of the long gun, quickly dissipating into the night.
The engineer stopped, too.
There was a third sharp pop, and the engineer jerked from the middle. The shot turned him around, and he stumbled towards Faik, a look of incomprehension on his face. A dot of red appeared on his orange jumpsuit and then burgeoned, the edges pushing outwards until it bloomed wider than the span of the hands he pressed against it. He moaned, his eyes rolled back into his head and he toppled down onto his face like a felled tree.
Faik dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms. He closed his eyes and waited.
Chapter Twenty
Bryan Duffy dropped the unconscious body of the protester in the shaded courtyard between the administrative buildings where Manage Risk planned its work in Energy City. There were a dozen men and a few women there already, all of them recovering from their forcible removal from the area near the gates. Duffy’s man had been jostled into him amid the crush, and he had pistol-whipped him across the forehead, knocking him out. He prodded him with the toe of his steel-capped boot and flipped him over onto his back. Blood was running freely from the deep gash in his scalp, and his head lolled on floppy muscles. The team would wait until they were recovered and then ship them back to the city. There would be charges for vandalism and public disorder, a quick trial and a long stay in the new al-Mina prison.
Duffy was responsible for security at Energy City. It was a demanding job, but that was why the company had been able to charge ten million a year to keep the place safe. Duffy had shares in Manage Risk, and it was in his best interests to project the right image. Tough. Ruthless. No pity for anyone who threatened the status quo. He took his job seriously, and he was good at it.
They had quelled the riot before it could get started, but he was not happy as he pushed open the swing door into the air-conditioned oasis that was the hub of the operation. He was not happy at all.
“McNulty,” he said.
“Yes, boss?”
“I need you to put a team together.”
“For what?”
“I thought I saw someone today,” he said absently. “In the crowd.”
“Someone?”
He waved a hand. “Someone I used to work with. A long time ago. I haven’t seen her for a while.”
He took out his phone, opened his photos and s
elected the one that he wanted. It was ten years old, the most recent one their contact in the Group had been able to find. The picture was of a smiling Beatrix Rose in the Sahara Desert with an officer from the Moroccan army who stood alongside her. She had long, straight, blonde hair; beautifully crafted features; porcelain skin; and a slender figure. Her eyes were an icy blue, the bluest that he had ever seen.
He slid the phone across the desk, and McNulty looked at the picture. “Good-looking woman,” he said with leering grin. “If it were me, I’d be looking for her, too.”
“No,” he said. “Trust me, you wouldn’t.”
Duffy looked at the photograph again. He remembered how attractive Beatrix had been.
Had he seen her?
If it wasn’t her, it was someone who looked very much like her.
Normally, he would have passed it off as a mistake or a trick of the light. But he knew what had happened to Oliver Spenser and Joshua Joyce. And then, just the day after he had spoken to her, someone had put a bomb under Lydia Chisholm’s car and detonated it with her inside. It was difficult to look at the trail of dead and not see the pattern.
Number Five: Chisholm.
Number Eight: Spenser.
Number Ten: Joyce.
He had been Number Eleven on that day, nearly a decade ago, when Beatrix Rose’s family had been torn away from her.
If it was her and she had a list, his name was definitely on it.
“Is it going to be a problem, skip?”
“I don’t know,” Duffy said, although he did.
If it was Beatrix Rose, “problem” didn’t even get close.
Chapter Twenty-One
Beatrix awoke with the dawn. The sunlight suffused the material that was hung on the walls, the fabric rippling gently in the early morning breeze that was blowing off the desert. She looked up at the ceiling, where the joists met in the middle, and remembered where she was. She had fallen quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep. The night had been cold, and she noticed with a pang, the girl had covered her with another blanket. She pressed against the ground with her right arm and raised herself to a sitting position. Mysha wasn’t there.
The pain returned as soon as she stood, falling over her as if it had just been waiting for the moment when she had almost forgotten about it. She fought against nausea and then the dizziness that followed in its wake as she stood. She wobbled and then shambled to the shack’s single rickety wooden chair. She fell down into it and was still there, breathing deeply, eyes closed, when Mysha yanked aside the tarpaulin and came inside. Her face fell when she saw Beatrix.
“Are you unwell?”
“I got up a little too fast. I’m fine.”
The girl was carrying the jerrycan, and it sloshed with water as she set it down. She must have been to the well. She lit the stove, filled the saucepan and set it to boil.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did. Thank you.”
Mysha prepared the spiced cardamom tea and brought Beatrix a cup. She sipped it, the spices chasing away the metallic aftertaste of the vomit that had crept up from her gullet.
“Where is the well?”
“The other village.”
“How far?”
“Two miles, there and back.”
“What time did you wake?”
“I get up at four,” she said. “I always have things to do.”
They both heard the single blast of a car’s horn from outside. Beatrix looked at her watch. It was seven, the time that she had arranged with Faulkner.
Beatrix finished the tea and gingerly levered herself upright.
“Are you leaving now?”
“Yes. I expect that’s my friend.”
Beatrix collected her jacket and her Oakleys and checked her reflection in the mirror that was hanging next to the door. There was a picture of a man and a woman tucked into the brass frame. Mysha’s parents. There was a hijab on a hook next to the mirror. It must have belonged to Mysha’s mother.
“Could I borrow this?” she asked.
“Yes,” the girl said with a nod.
Beatrix wrapped it around her head.
“Thank you,” Beatrix said. “And thank you for the tea.”
She stooped to hug the girl.
She still had her clasped in an embrace as she reached her right hand back into her pocket and took out the rest of the notes that she had brought with her. There were five or six hundred dollars in all, Beatrix couldn’t remember how much exactly. She flicked the tight roll with her index finger and propelled it onto the chair in which she had been sitting. It bumped once, twice, and settled against the cushion. Mysha was still in her embrace and didn’t notice. Beatrix put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and moved her a step backwards.
“If I get your brother, you have to promise me something.”
“Yes?”
“Stay away from the protest. It isn’t safe. Do you promise?”
“Yes,” she said. “I promise.” She looked up at her with hopeful eyes. “When will you be able to find Faik?”
“I’m going to start right away.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Duffy shut the door to his office and opened the encrypted videoconferencing app on his laptop. There was a delay of a few seconds as the connection was made, and then the screen showed the inside of another office, bright sunshine streaming through an open window. He waited for moment, listening to the sound of conversation off-camera, until the man he wanted to speak to sat down at the chair in front of the camera. He was a little plump, with bushy eyebrows that topped eyes that seemed caught in a perpetual glower. His face was lined and worn, and the beard that he wore was shot through with more grey than Duffy could remember. He did not know the man’s real name. None of them did. His designation within Group Fifteen had always been Control, and it had stayed the same despite the fact that he had fled his previous employment in disgrace.
They all had that much in common, at least.
“Yes?” he said curtly. There was something of the public schoolmaster in the way he spoke to his agents. He was supercilious, abrupt and short of patience. Duffy did not like him, but he did respect him. He was an operator of the highest order, a master strategist, and he had connections throughout the world. Colonels and admirals, spies and spymasters, they all answered his calls.
Duffy was not afraid of many people.
Control was different.
He spoke carefully. “We may have a problem.”
“I hope not,” Control said irritably. “We’re coming up to renewal. That nonsense with the protesters hasn’t gone down well with the Iraqis. We cannot afford to have anything else like that.”
“I know,” he said, taking a deep breath. “That is under control, I told you.”
“You said that before.”
“It was then, and it is now. That’s not why we need to speak. It’s something else.”
Worse than that.
“Out with it.”
“It’s Rose.”
Even with the buffering on the call, it was obvious that this had rattled Control. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I think I saw her.”
“Where?”
“There was another protest yesterday. Not as bad as before; we kept it under wraps, but I saw someone in the crowd. It might have been her.”
“You think? It might? You need to be sure.”
“I’m not sure. I know I’ve been thinking about it a lot since we talked about her, about Spenser and Chisholm and Joyce, and I know it’s possible I’m seeing things when there’s nothing to see. But I’m pretty sure I saw a Western woman, medium height, slender build. Blonde hair.”
“You think?” Control said again.
“There was another sighting. One of our patrols, just outside
the facility—they pulled over an SUV with a blonde woman inside. She had papers for onward travel, but they had been faked. She said she was a journalist. BBC.”
“And?”
“And so I checked with them. They don’t have anyone in Basra. They haven’t had anyone here for a month. I showed the men who pulled the SUV her picture. And they think . . .”
“I need something better than that!” he snapped.
“And they think, high probability, that it’s her.”
Control glared into the camera. “I’m not going to pull you out of there on the basis of that. It’s not enough.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to pull me out.”
“So why are you bothering me with this?”
Because you asked.
Because you need to know, too.
Because if she crosses a line through my name, you might be next.
Duffy bit his lip. Control’s temper had been much worse since Milton and Rose had wiped out the team in Russia and forced him into hiding. That was understandable enough. If Rose was working her way through a Kill List, then his name was right at the top.
“Look, I just wanted you to know,” he said. “If it is her, at least I’m forewarned. We’re forewarned. I’m not going anywhere. She won’t be able to get the jump on me like she did with Joyce. We’re looking for her now. The shoe is on the other foot. We know she’s coming.”
“Have you started?”
“I’ve got men at the hotels. We’ll try them all. She has to be staying somewhere.”
“It won’t be as easy as that. She was good, Duffy. The best until John Milton. Maybe even better than him.”
And she’s just one person in a place that we control, Duffy thought. A place we have flooded with soldiers. And we know she’s coming. It doesn’t matter how good she is.
He paused. “Did you find anything out about where she went after Somalia?”
Control frowned. “Only two leads. Someone who looks very like her flew out of Kenya. There were only a handful of flights out that day. Fuel spill on the taxiway shut the airport down. Casablanca or Durban look like possibilities. We’ve got men looking into it.”
