by Karen Guyler
Nora shook her head. “Too soon. I won’t insult you by telling you not to worry, but we’re working on it. Why weren’t you on the plane?”
“I saw—what happened to Luke, Luke Fox? Did you get him too? They knocked him out in the hangar. He needs medical treatment.” She looked around as though he might have materialised next to her.
“The guys only got you, Eva.”
“Someone needs to check on him.”
“Finish your whisky, give yourself five minutes. We’re all playing catch up here.”
Eva downed it, a longer shudder rippling through her that made Nora laugh. “Still not a fan?”
Eva tried to smile back. “I’ll stick to G&T.”
“Tell me about the plane, we might be able to get it grounded when it stops to refuel.”
“It belongs to Addison Clark, maybe to the Clarke Foundation, rather than him. Luke Fox was with us, the guy knocked out in the hangar. He’s been working with Addison. Flight crew, I’m not sure how many were on the flight deck, one steward. Charles had some ridiculous idea that it was too dangerous to take a commercial flight, that there’d be a border alert for us. He got us fake passports.”
“Since when does your husband practise tradecraft?”
Eva spread her hands, steadier now. “I have no idea. It seems that I don’t know him at all. He has secrets I can’t even guess at.”
Nora laid a hand on Eva’s arm, her bright red nails stark against the black of Eva’s fleece. She squeezed in an ‘I’m here for you’ way. “We all have secrets.”
But Eva’s weren’t going to get them killed. “How did you know where I was?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” Nora smiled at the age-old joke, underlining that, as at home as she felt right then, Eva was an outsider. “What’s the plane’s destination?”
“Chennai, India. Three stops on the way.
“How’s our guest?” Gordon filled the doorway of the meeting room.
Eva tried a smile. “As good as you’d expect.”
“We’ll get our best people on it, we’ll find them.”
Eva nodded. She was lucky, she had access to resources that would help find Lily. In the meantime she could punish herself with the worst imaginings or she could give back.
“Use me while I’m here. You’ve got me as a captive audience, let me do something. I can free up someone else so they can find my daughter.”
Gordon smiled as he slapped a folder down between them and sat opposite her.
“Am I so predictable?”
“Not quite, bit longer and Nora would have won our bet. She thought it’d take another hour before you offered.” There was something comforting about being around people who knew you better than you knew yourself. “There’s been another high-profile incident today, Aleksandr Oblov, collapsed in a London street.”
“The Russians are killing off their own?”
“He’s not dead, as far as we can gather, but we’re not in the loop on it. This is Five’s territory. Oblov’s bodyguard took him home and there’s been no reports of emergency services attending the property, we assume he’s there, recovering.” Gordon slid a piece of paper towards her, his fingers holding it face down. “Eric wanted to ask you about this, still time to walk away.”
Eva made a spiral motion with her right index finger, and he turned it over. She emptied her mind, pulling on her analyst’s training. Lose the preconceptions, the bias. What could she see in the copied photo? A row of shop fronts, a high street. Three Union Jacks fluttered to the right, obscuring some shop names.
“You have a magnifying glass?”
Nora produced one, watching while Eva ran it up and down the picture in regimented rows, taking in the thatched cottages, yellow hatched markings on the road that led to an out of shot school. A perfect English village.
The contents of the shop windows told her what they were, a butcher’s, bakery, post office, outside of which was a red pillar box, neighbouring a pub. The Red Lion, the most common pub name in Britain, it could have been anywhere in the country. A row of little cottages marched off the edge of the page.
It looked a nice place, a safe place, far away from assassins. Eva shut down the panicking spiral in her mind. What was she seeing?
Gordon passed her another photo, a small garage with two petrol pumps, a hairdresser and corner shop in that one. A building that could only be a village hall ran off the page on the right. The flags waved to the left, the other side of the street.
A man and woman walked along the pavement, but the image’s resolution wasn’t good enough to make out their faces.
Gordon handed her another page, the middle portion of the one she already held blown up beyond confusion. The surprise of a much younger Charles linked arm in arm with a dark-haired woman stabbed at Eva, their smiles hurting. It was her.
Focus, be professional. What did she see? Charles visiting the woman in her home village? She peered at his face through the magnifying glass. He looked so young; it had to be before his PhD, before he went to Uni even. He knew Nancy before he ever met her. She didn’t want to think about that.
“Any idea when it was taken?”
Gordon shook his head.
It was simple enough maths.
“Charles looks about 18, so it’s around the millennium. But it’s not. . .” she peered at the photo again, minutely inspecting their clothes, the things in the shop windows. They didn’t quite fit. “Where is it?”
“There were no satellite co-ordinates in what Eric dredged out of the archives.” Nora said.
She moved the photo to the side, unable to not ask. “Who’s the woman?” Trying for nonchalance.
Gordon spun the file round for her to see a closer shot, Nancy Seymour, the caption said.
“I saw her last night, she was killed right in front of me.” Eva touched her neck.
“Do you know why?” Nora asked.
“Charles has been. . .I thought he was being paranoid.” Knowing everything might help them find him and Lily so Eva asked. “Have you heard of The Society?”
“What’s that?” Gordon asked.
“A group of assassins after Charles.”
“Why?”
Eva blew out a breath. He’d told her half-truths, started sentences, but never finished them. She shrugged. “He wouldn’t say.”
“We’ve heard the name more frequently.” Gordon said. “How does Charles know it’s them?”
Eva shrugged. It didn’t hurt so much, even after today’s extra bruises, perhaps the words would be easier too. “He owes them money. I followed him. He met her in the middle of the night to warn her about them, he said, but he didn’t say why they’d be after her. When she left, I followed her, but she was knocked over, then suffocated. The man tried to kill me too, but I was lucky. The police have the full details if you need them, you can use the e-fit I did with them.”
“Did you hear her speak?”
Eva shook her head, she’d almost called her. But she had called Tony, who was also dead. “Aleksandr Oblov, you said. Is it the Russian spelling A-l-e-k-s-a-n-d-r?”
Gordon nodded.
“They’re connected, Charles, this woman, an Aleksandr, the Russian spelling, and a man called Tony who just died. I don’t know his surname.” She thought back to the other names in Charles’ hidden phone. “Hunter, what are the chances it’s another? Rory, Ted, Duncan, people who mean something to Charles. This Society, they could be after all of them. What happened to Oblov?”
“We don’t know enough.”
Eva pushed the close-up of Charles and Nancy aside. Nancy, not such a British name. “Background on the woman?”
“Works for the European headquarters of a global mining company, not senior enough for leverage there.”
“And their shared history?” Eva forced herself to ask, to look at Gordon for the response.
“No intersects we can see.”
Which told its own story, given how they’d be
en together. How Charles had looked at her. “What do you think this is?”
“We’re not sure, but we have this.” He showed her another photo of the street, clearer resolution, and, in the zoomed-in image, not much had changed in the shop windows. The satellite shot showed a man just holding onto a thin ribbon of white hair at the back of his head, talking to Charles as he looked now. He’d been there not long ago.
“Is it a charm school?” Eva shook her head. “Twenty years ago, maybe?” She looked at the more recent photo. “But now?” That’s ridiculous.
She looked at Nora then Gordon.
He played devil’s advocate. “Even then, with globalisation, what need is there to train operatives to pass as British citizens?”
“Has it changed,” Eva asked, “their raison d’être? It might be old school spy craft, but the endgame of those running them must be the same: to infiltrate the enemy and operate incognito to further their own state’s interests? Question is, who’s our enemy here?”
“Indeed.” Gordon nodded.
Inklings made concrete, the way Charles had told Luke his fake passport name, Charles’ life or death phone call. “Jesus.” Eva breathed.
“Unlikely to be him.” Gordon said.
She could understand now why Eric had come to see her. During the Cold War, it had been one of their best kept secrets that the Russians had been training operatives to pass as American for years. But something about these photos was a bit off. Something Eva couldn’t quite place. Could it? No, but it was the only answer that made sense. But no sense at all.
What was that saying? Eva would bet dollars to doughnuts Eric had reached the same conclusion as her.
“It’s definitely not the Russians, there are too many flags. The Russians aren’t training there to be British, the Americans are.”
36
It would be quicker to walk. Charles was counting out notes for the fare when the battered taxi leapt forward in the jolting kangaroo style that seemed to be the only way the driver knew how to drive. Elbow on the lowered window, he smacked his palm on the roof of the car, his ring tapping out a metallic ‘and we’re off’ in time to the vehicle’s lurching.
Charles fanned his face with his passport. Funny how it didn’t feel strange to be travelling as Maxwell Peyton again. He knew it might raise troublesome questions, but it had felt too compelling to not use it when CJ had asked for his new name.
Lily looked everywhere. “Dad, look! Did you see that? Did you see it? An actual snake charmer, with a snake. They really exist. I thought it was a made-up thing. Dad, Dad, did you see it?”
“No, but I’m sure we’ll have time to come this way again.”
“You have to let me take a photo of it.” Charles’ smile at her enthusiasm felt wrong. A heavier thing than all the trickery and planning. He stared past palm trees and motorbikes and Eastern-influenced buildings, seeing only black curls and dark blue eyes, ringless fingers on a white tabletop, a heart-stopping smile. Hearing the hope held within the words ‘give me twenty-four hours’, smashed with Eva’s abrupt ‘she just died.’
The logical part of his brain saw the irony that his wife, whose heart he’d been preparing to break, had instead broken his. His other half raged at her—she should have saved Nancy, and at himself—he should have warned her earlier. Then he’d be as excited as Lily being there and at a future together.
His breath shuddered out, not now. Time enough to grieve if Terry let them in, gave him the space he needed. It was a small mercy being with Lily, Charles didn’t have to pretend so hard he was okay. And she wouldn’t ask him pointed questions he couldn’t answer.
“I wish Mum was here.”
Except anything about Eva.
“Well, you know her work.”
“I know, I’m not a kid,” she said as though she were. “I still don’t get why she couldn’t have said goodbye.”
“We had to take off right then, so we didn’t lose our slot.”
“We could have waited for the next one, then Mum might’ve been able to come too.”
“You see that?”
Lily followed Charles’ pointing at nothing.
“What?”
“Keep watching, we might see it again.”
“How can I look for something if I don’t know what it is?”
For then, at least, Charles had circumvented the problem of his excuses for Eva.
The driver stopped like he’d run into a wall. “Is here.”
They walked to the end of the street where it dead-ended in a series of stone bollards. Terry had always liked his privacy, being off-grid, foot access only would have sold living there to him.
A gaggle of people spilled out of a street food café, windowed walls covered in yellow paper, shouting animated streams of Arabic above the general din. Sun-bleached stone reflected heat back at them from the pavement and the road. It felt wholly foreign.
The passageway between buildings took them out of the direct sunlight into a cooler, hushed world, where their booted feet traced the footsteps of a thousand years of people. A handcart ahead of them made its jerky way, being pushed by a teenager behind, pulled by one in front. The one at the back, tall, skinny, white shirt pulled out over jeans, sleeves rolled up to show sinewy arms, turned around and smiled at Lily. Charles flicked a glance at her, but her stream of chatter didn’t falter. He checked behind them, it could just be that she looked foreign. It could be something innocent, nothing to do with Charles.
A woman in a doorway to their right dressed head to foot in dark navy, embellished with a silver pattern, paused in her hitting a rug against her yellow rendered doorway to frown and shake her head.
How had he not thought? He stopped.
“We there?”
“You have a scarf?”
“You cold?” Lily laughed. “You know I do, we just came from winter.”
“Put it over your hair.”
“You’re kidding, it’ll be boiling.”
“It’s accepted practice that women here don’t show their hair. Put it on until I can get you a summer one.”
“You don’t—”
“Lily, it’s discourteous not to respect local custom. We’re the outsiders here, so we will follow what’s accepted. You need to cover your head.”
“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to.” She pulled it out of the pocket of her coat she was carrying, a silver glittery wool scarf. Poor kid.
Charles set his holdall down between his legs, pressing his calves against the bulk of it to hold it while he helped her wrap the scarf on. She accused him with a paler version of his own eyes while he tried to tuck away her long hair.
“It’d be easier if I just wore my hat.” she sulked.
“Good idea, not much further.”
“Better hope I don’t pass out with heat exhaustion before we get there.”
He stopped himself calling her out on all the times she’d gone out in an inadequate cardigan or denim jacket in the rain or freezing cold. Instead, he took her hand to hurry her past the two teenagers who’d stopped to watch them.
“How long till we get to the hotel?”
“We’re not staying at a hotel, we’re going to your uncle’s.”
Lily didn’t pick up his distinction, going to was very different to staying with. He had to hope the years between them had mellowed his brother enough to at least let the past remain there. He knew he couldn’t count on Terry being open to them staying in the same space while Charles got his bearings, his future settled. But a payment should be enough of a sweetener.
“I don’t have an uncle.”
“You’ve never met him, my brother, Terry.”
“Uncle Terry?”
“Yes, Lily. Uncle Terry.” It sounded strange. The most unlikely person to be an uncle. Left here or right? The labyrinthine streets, Terry’s defence, were almost proving beyond him. The street view he’d memorised kept wavering away behind dark curls, the parting kiss of fingertips.
/> “Why didn’t you or mum tell me I have an uncle? Do I have any cousins, and an auntie too? Can I take this off yet, I’m super hot.” She looked behind them. “There’s no one here to see me.”
That was where she might be wrong. Charles turned them right, trying to follow a circle as he’d learned, but in the boxy alleyways it was difficult. He was sure they weren’t being followed. And the proximity of the surrounding buildings was its own defence against spying drones.
Could they mobilise so quickly? The second the pilot had filed Charles’ revised flight plan, the stop watch timer had restarted until The Society found him again. But getting people there, that would take even them time.
“We’ve been down here already.” Lily pointed out the obvious.
“I’ve gone wrong, I remember now where it is.”
“Dad.”
“Come on, aren’t you looking forward to meeting your uncle?”
It would be an interesting reception for both of them.
Back to the junction where he’d taken them in the opposite direction on purpose, still no sign of anyone. It was eerie, in such a noisy, busy city in these narrow paths being cocooned in a subdued silence. But the buildings carried a weight, beyond the bricks and cement, concrete and stone of which they were constructed. The possibility of spying eyes weighed heavy.
The doorway was tiny, easy to walk right past. It was the red tile painted with the out-of-place words that stopped him at ‘Riad Lucky Eight’. Set at the bottom of three steps down from the path, a wooden door was fastened by a padlock. Charles’ luck was holding, with Terry out, he could get what he came for and leave without having to see him. Best all round, everything considered. Charles placed his holdall down to open the combination lock. Terry, did you still believe?
8, 2, 8, 4, 8, 8, good luck numbers according to the Chinese and Terry’s superstition. Charles pulled on the padlock. Good luck for him too - it clicked open.
“In you go,” he gestured to Lily to proceed him.
They walked through a dim entrance hall that opened out into an interior courtyard, an oasis in an urban landscape. Lush tall plants leaned against a terracotta painted wall on one side. The middle was taken up by a hexagonal plunge pool; the inside painted an inviting brilliant blue. The riad climbed two floors above their heads on the four sides of the courtyard.
