by Mark Dawson
Logan had travelled all over the world, flitting in and out of expensive hotels like this one, carrying out his orders with scrupulous care, leaving barely a ripple in his wake. He caught sight of himself in one of the lobby’s big mirrors. His suit was expensive, but not so expensive as to be noticeable; his leather bag was just the same as the one toted by the man ahead of him, although Logan’s held a pistol and ammunition rather than a laptop; his features were blandly unremarkable, like those of a bored provincial accountant. He worked hard to maintain that air of dour, world-weary boredom. It was a veil behind which he could conceal his true self.
Logan passed through the promenade. He watched rich Arabs and Russians being tended to by burly minders and eager women. He passed an African family dressed in garishly expensive clothes. He paused in the elevator lobby to allow an elderly couple to emerge, the cologne and perfume that drifted off them in pungent waves as redolent as the smell of money.
He put his key in the elevator and rode it to the fourth floor. He went to his room, closed the door, and took out the burner phone that he had purchased at the airport. He opened Gmail and started to type.
IT’S DONE. I MET HIM.
He saved the message as a draft and then went to run a bath.
He refreshed the browser when he returned. His draft message had been replaced by another.
WHAT DID HE SAY?
He deleted and then typed.
HE WAS SURPRISED. HE WASN’T EXPECTING TO HEAR FROM HER AND IS THINKING ABOUT VISITING. I’LL SEE HIM AGAIN TOMORROW.
He went to turn off the taps and then refreshed the browser again.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
He typed.
GET THE GIRL READY. I THINK HE’S COMING.
4
MILTON SLID out of bed. His bedroom was cold and he had barely slept. He went through into the tiny bathroom, stepped into the bath and ran the shower. The cold had sunk into his bones and he stood under the hot water for fifteen minutes until the warmth had driven it away.
It wasn’t just the cold that had kept him awake. He had been thinking about what Logan had told him.
His memories of his second visit to Manila were patchy. He had been drinking heavily then and the alcohol had robbed him of many of his memories. He had been playing the part of an ex-soldier who was involved in close protection. One of Fitzroy de Lacey’s previous men had gone missing, an occurrence engineered by Milton so that he might apply to fill the vacancy. His experience in the Regiment, together with a fabricated history as a mercenary, made him the perfect candidate for the role and he had been accepted into the organisation.
De Lacey was a suspicious man, and the effort of maintaining the facade was something that Milton had found more than usually difficult. His days had been spent gathering the evidence that would eventually be used to put de Lacey behind bars. It was stressful, a long list of untruths that Milton had to remember, and he had returned exhausted to his hotel room every night, where he would empty the minibar and fall into his bed in a stupor.
Jessica Sanchez had worked for Tactical Aviation too. Milton had lost many of his memories of his time in the city, but he had not forgotten her. She was beautiful, dark skinned and with hair the colour of midnight. Her brown eyes were large and soulful, and they sparkled with a mischievousness that was at odds with the cool demeanour that was the hallmark of her work for de Lacey. She knew that she was beautiful, and she knew that de Lacey had placed her in a role where her beauty could be deployed to his best advantage, and, despite the unpleasant men that she was paid to entertain, she maintained a professionalism that never wavered.
Milton had been attracted to her the first time that he had laid eyes on her. He had always been a terrible judge of reciprocated feelings, and he had stayed back even after he was sure that she felt the same way.
The other men in de Lacey’s security detail spoke about her and the other women who were summoned up for the regular parties on his enormous yacht with no attempt to temper their lascivious thoughts. They also revealed that de Lacey occasionally shared Jessica’s bed, and that, more than anything else, was the motivation that Milton needed to retreat to the hotel and the oblivion he could find at the bar.
He scrubbed the water into his face, trying to shake away the worst of the dull fugue that had settled over him.
One night stood out in his mind more than all the others. Even now, years later, even though the years had been soaked in alcohol and most of his memories had been erased by blackouts, it was the scene that had played through his mind and kept him awake. Milton had been trying to sleep, the windows open to allow a little air into the stifling room. There had come a knock at the door. Milton had not expected anyone, so he had opened it a crack with his pistol hidden behind the frame. Jessica was standing there. Her face was bloodied and bruised. He had let her in and poured her a drink from the bottle of vodka that he had very nearly finished.
She had explained: she had been with de Lacey, and he had beaten her. There had been a contract with a supplier of weapons from Armenia. The man and his entourage had flown to Manila to seal a deal, and Jessica had been in charge of ensuring that they had a trip to remember. Something had gone wrong—Milton couldn’t remember what it was—and the man had left without signing the deal. De Lacey had blamed Jessica for the failure and had exacted his punishment with his fists and his belt. Milton had seen the evidence of his displeasure as the girl stepped out of her dress: there were welts all the way down her back from the top of her spine to her waist.
Milton had been drunk. The booze, the attraction that he felt for Jessica, and the swirl of anger at what had been done to her, had all mixed into a cocktail of lust that had overwhelmed his professionalism and then his defences. In the back of his mind, despite the alcohol, he had known that it was a stupid idea, but he was unable to resist. She removed the rest of her clothes and joined him in his bed.
They had fallen asleep eventually, and Milton had stirred first. He remembered: he had been soaked through with sweat, with warm air riffling the blinds and slowly inching up the temperature in his room. His head pounded with an awful reminder of the previous night’s excesses, although that was far from unusual. He had slowly levered himself upright, his hangover had ratcheted up a level, and he had turned to see the girl laid out next to him. He felt sick at the foolishness of what he had done.
Jessica, disturbed by his movement, had woken with a start, and, as she realised what had happened, she had become frantic with worry. She told Milton that de Lacey was a jealous man and that they would both be in danger if he discovered that they had slept together. They talked. They had been crazy, they agreed. It was a stupid risk. But they could rescue the situation if they kept what had happened between themselves. There was no reason why de Lacey or anyone else ever need know.
So Milton had gone to work as if nothing had happened. De Lacey was on his yacht and he had asked Milton to take him out in one of the tenders so that he could swim in the deeper water. Milton remembered being swamped with anger. De Lacey was enjoying himself, laughing and joking with him as he undressed and dived into the clear blue water. It was as if what he had done to Jessica was of trivial importance, as if it were just another administrative task that he had attended to for the good of his business. Milton had thought how easy it would be to end him there and then. The two of them were alone, a mile from land. Milton was armed. It would have been simple to shoot him, weigh the body down and let it sink to the bottom.
But he couldn’t do that. He had very strict instructions. This was not a typical operation, ending with the death of the target and a clean exfil back to London and whatever came next. The aim of the operation was to have de Lacey arrested and, ultimately, incarcerated. It was more subtle than usual, more nuanced, and those strictures constrained his freedom to carry out his orders as he saw fit.
His pistol had felt red hot in his shoulder holster, but he’d left it there. Instead, he had helped de Lacey out of the w
ater, passed him his towel, and piloted the tender back to the harbour, his multi-million-pound yacht and his breakfast.
5
MILTON CALLED Logan on the number that the man had given him and arranged to meet him on the South Bank at two o’clock.
It was eleven. He had three hours before he needed to be there.
There was a meeting of the fellowship at the community centre near to Victoria Park.
He put on his coat, locked his flat, and set off.
IT WAS a thirty-minute walk to the meeting.
Milton followed Columbia Road up to the bustle of the weekly flower market. The narrow street was thronged with customers, clutches of them gathered around the tables as hoarse traders barked out their deals and offers, the street full of the sweet scent of lilies, roses, amaryllis, hippeastrum, shamrock, chrysanthemum, and brassicas. Milton passed by the old primary school and the old boozers that had been prettified by the relentless gentrification that had swallowed up this once rough neighbourhood. He continued to the northwest, going by Hackney City Farm and the empty BMX track at Haggerston Park; he crossed the canal and continued east until he reached the westward tip of the sprawl of Victoria Park. The meeting was in the community centre, an ugly 1960s brick building that had been put up to fill the gap caused by one of the Luftwaffe’s bombs.
Milton had never been to this meeting before, and, although he recognised a few faces amid the twenty or so who were here, he didn’t acknowledge anyone and took a chair, as was his habit, at the back of the room.
The secretary brought the meeting to order and opened by reading ‘How It Works’ from the Big Book. Milton closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. He knew that he would find a small margin of peace at the meeting, and, as the speaker began to tell her story, he let her voice lull him into the meditative place where he was sometimes able to decode the buzz of noise in his head.
Was he doing the right thing? He didn’t know. Common sense said that he should ignore the news that Logan had delivered, pack up his few possessions, and move away. He had finally begun to feel safe enough to live a semblance of a normal life, but now this unwelcome contact with the establishment had reinvigorated his desire to submerge beneath the surface again. The ease with which Logan had found him was disconcerting to a man whose entire adult life had been spent in the shadows. He had been thinking about returning to South America, and the idea of that—the opportunity to travel, to erase all evidence of himself in shiftless movement—was now much more attractive than it had been. There was nothing for him here. He would miss his job and the men and women who were connected to the shelter, but he didn’t consider any of them to be real friends. None of them would miss him if he was gone.
No one would miss him.
Yet, even as he had persuaded himself that that was the sensible move, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do it. The news that Logan had delivered had knocked him sideways. His memories of Jessica were fresher than he had expected, and he found that he was keen to see her again.
Yet, of course, it was more than that.
She had told Logan that she had had Milton’s child.
There had been women in Milton’s life, both during his employment and after it. He had been promiscuous when he had been drinking, and his behaviour with women had been one of the many reasons that had eventually coalesced into an overwhelming desire to find sobriety. He had met other women during his time on the road when he had been dry. Most of them had been transitory, and that had been as obvious to them as it had been to him. There had been a handful of relationships that might have grown into something else, had he allowed them the time and space to flourish. Ellie Flowers, the FBI agent that he had met in the Upper Peninsula, had been one. Mattie, the sister of a friend he had met during his time in the Regiment, had been another. There had been a connection with both women, enough for him to be confident that they would have at least tried to understand him.
But he couldn’t do it.
There were things in his history that he knew he would never be able to reveal, not to anyone. Any kind of relationship needed firm foundations of truth and honesty, and Milton couldn’t offer that. There would be no rock to build upon; all he could offer was a shifting sand of lies and deceit. So what was the point? It wasn’t fair. He had treated women badly before, and he had forced himself to stop drinking so that he might be a better man. Encouraging a relationship when he would have to hold so much of himself back and lie about his past was beneath him now. It wasn’t something that he was prepared to do.
So he had always forced himself to move on.
But a child?
Did that change things?
Milton couldn’t even begin to process how he felt about that.
He felt a gentle nudge on his arm and opened his eyes. The woman to his right was holding the collection plate. Milton smiled at her, took the plate, dropped a five-pound note onto it and passed it along the row to the man on his left.
The secretary led the meeting in the Serenity Prayer and brought proceedings to a close. Milton stood up, waited until the woman to his right had stepped into the aisle and then, with as friendly a smile as he could manage, he left the room.
6
MILTON WALKED to Mare Street, took the 254 bus south to Whitechapel and then boarded the District Line train to the Embankment.
He was outside the Royal Festival Hall thirty minutes before the time of the rendezvous and used the extra time, as was his habit, to look for anything that might lead him to suspect that the meeting might be observed. He walked north along the promenade, passing by the under croft, with the kids on their skateboards and bikes, the walls covered with a dazzling array of graffiti’d designs. He carried on toward Waterloo Bridge and paused beneath it for five minutes with his elbows resting against the metal railing, looking out at the grey expanse of the water, the commuter taxis and pleasure boats slicing through the waves, and then at the impressive array of buildings on the opposite bank. He looked up and down the pathway, but saw nothing that gave him any reason for suspicion. He set off back to the south, the wheel of the London Eye visible above the trees. The hall was hosting the Festival of Love, with a multicoloured temporary entrance leading into the building.
Milton bought a latte from EAT and took it out to one of the covered tables.
He saw Logan at the same time as Logan saw him.
The man came down the steps from the promenade and sat at the table.
“Good morning.”
Milton nodded.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Milton said tersely.
“What have you decided?”
Milton didn’t answer.
“You have questions?”
“Why does she want to see me now?” Milton said. “I haven’t seen her for years.”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t go halfway across the world without more information, Logan.”
“No,” he replied. “Of course you can’t. Would it help if you spoke to her first?”
“It might.”
“Can you get online this afternoon?”
Milton had several hours before he needed to be at the shelter. “Yes.”
“She says she’ll talk to you on Skype.”
Logan took a discarded freesheet from the adjacent table and scribbled on it. He tore out the page and pushed it across the table. “That’s her username,” he said. “They’re seven hours ahead of us. She can speak after two thirty our time.”
Milton looked at his watch. It was ten minutes after two.
“I think the child will be in bed,” Logan suggested as a reason for the particular time.
Milton thought about that. “The child,” he said, the word sticky in his mouth. “I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“A boy,” Logan said. “But she didn’t tell me anything more than that.”
Milton exhaled. “I don’t know why she’d do this now.”
Logan rested his arms on the table, steepled his fingers, and leaned forward. “Look, you must’ve thought it, so I’ll just put it out there. Maybe she needs money. Maybe she’s managed to bring him up without any help, but now something’s changed. Or maybe she just wants to shake you down.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t know her. All I can do is speculate. But one thing I do know—we have to come up with something to keep her happy. Her involvement with Attila could be a problem. There are assets who worked on that job who are still in theatre. She could cause trouble, and that’s not something that the FO will let happen.”
“What do you mean? She’d be a threat? She’d be in danger?”
“I’m not saying that,” Logan said unconvincingly. “But just because there’s no more Group Fifteen doesn’t mean that there aren’t protocols in place for when British interests are threatened.” He paused, saw Milton’s glower, and added, “Look, what I’m very clumsily trying to suggest is that it would be better for all concerned if you make her feel better about things. The government will fly you out there and, if it is money that she wants, it’ll step in and take care of that, too. You just need to find out what she wants. And… I don’t know—maybe she’s just reaching out now because her boy wants to meet his father. Maybe you’d like to meet him, too.”
Milton looked away from the table and gazed back to the promenade, to the steady stream of joggers and the pedestrians and tourists ambling along the pavement. He looked down at his watch again. It was two twenty.
“At least speak to her,” Logan said. “Find out what she wants.”
Milton stood.
“You’ll do it?”
“I’ll call her. And then I’ll think about it.”
“Let me know when it’s done.”
Milton walked away without replying.
