The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  He met with Hezbollah officials in Lebanon in the run-up to the 2006 war, and documents found in the wreckage of Muammar Gaddafi’s former intelligence headquarters proved that de Lacey had a commercial presence in Libya and aimed to increase his dealings there.

  He was ruthless and amoral.

  A fresh contract supplied the Tutsi militias in Congo. Millions of civilians were massacred. If his complicity in their deaths preyed upon his conscience, it was not apparent. De Lacey bought a palatial retreat in the south of France. He filled the garage with supercars, commissioned his first yacht, and purchased a Gulfstream to take him to and from his business meetings. Tactical Aviation grew, employing several hundred people and leasing nearly fifty planes.

  But his success brought him to the attention of the authorities. MI6 took an interest and, when he was described in the House of Commons as a “merchant of death” following the discovery of a shipment of arms to the Tutsi militants, it was decided that something needed to be done. Discussions were undertaken in conference rooms in the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of MI6. Intelligence mandarins considered the benefits and disbenefits of de Lacey’s continued activity. Chief among the latter was the fact that he was a British citizen and that he was working against British policy in some of the most flammable areas of the world. A decision was made and a file was created. It was sent to the shabby building nearby that was the base for Group Fifteen. The file was passed to Milton. Usually, those files spelled the imminent death of the men and women whose lives were laid out within those pages, but, when it came to de Lacey, a different course of action was proposed. He would be taken out of circulation another way.

  Milton had found that curious, but it wasn’t his place to ask questions.

  He was responsible for putting the plan into effect.

  De Lacey was to be set up and put in prison.

  MILTON COULD hear the sound of Isko’s light snoring as he slept. The man was close; Milton could have reached out and touched him without stretching his arm. He shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t press up against the tender spots all over his body. It was impossible; the mattress was too thin and he had bruises everywhere. He rolled over onto his back, folded his arms across his chest and looked up at the ceiling. The light in the cell was off, but the illumination from the lights outside meant that it wasn’t close to being dark. He heard the sound of conversation from the nearby cells and, higher up, the sudden shrieking of a man in pain.

  Milton closed his eyes. He tried to think. He would need to be smart if he wanted to stay alive. He would need all of his experience.

  His thoughts slowed, and, eventually, his mind became fogged with sleep. He saw Fitzroy de Lacey swimming in the sea as Milton watched from his yacht. Jessica was there, too, lying on the deck in a bikini with a cocktail close at hand. She looked up at Milton and smiled.

  He allowed his breathing to deepen and, finally, he slept.

  38

  JOSIE DIDN’T get much sleep.

  She woke from a light doze and fumbled for her watch on the nightstand next to her bed: it was six thirty. She blinked her eyes, slowly bringing them into focus, and saw her pistol on the nightstand, too.

  It all came back to her.

  She wasn’t in her own bed.

  She wasn’t in her mother’s apartment or even in Alabang.

  Last night had been awful. Her mother was stubborn and cantankerous, but she didn’t demur when Josie told her that they had to leave. It was a family joke that Josie was slow to panic, and she must have seen her alarm and heard the urgency in her words. Both women had packed small cases and then they had packed a third case with Angelo’s things.

  Josie had woken her son, scrubbing the fright from her face as she told him that he needed to get dressed for an adventure that she and his lola were going to take him on. He was too lost in sleep to protest and had fallen asleep on her mother’s lap as Josie went outside to bring the car closer to the door of the apartment building. She had loaded the cases into the trunk and then she had waited for her mother to scoop Angelo into her arms. Josie led the way down the stairs with her Glock in her hand. She went outside first and waited anxiously while her mother carried her boy to the car and strapped him into his seat.

  They had driven north, continuing for thirty minutes until they reached Taguig. Josie pulled over outside the city and, using her mother’s phone, found a suitable place to stay, calling ahead to ensure that they had a vacancy and that they would be able to check in after hours. The place was on Labao Street, and Josie had entered the address into her phone and followed the directions. It was called the Napindan Castle. It was a budget B&B, clean and tidy, and she had enough money in the bank to afford two rooms for a month or two.

  She scrubbed her eyes and turned over. Angelo was still asleep beside her, his breathing slow and even. The boy had been confused by the night’s activities, but, once they had settled into the room, he had very quickly burrowed against her and drifted back off into a carefree sleep.

  Josie wished that she might have done the same thing herself, but she couldn’t; she remembered the fire at the hotel, the bullet with the picture of her boy, and the black car in the street outside the house.

  She had been given a message, and its meaning was clear.

  Her continued investigation into the death of the girl at the hotel had been noticed.

  She was being warned off.

  She lay back and closed her eyes, trying to maintain her composure. She needed to be rational.

  She had spent hours last night trying to work out who might have been responsible for the threats that she’d received, and, as much as she tried to steer her thoughts in another direction, ultimately she could not.

  It had to be Bruno Mendoza.

  There was no question that he was involved.

  He had transferred Smith to Bilibid.

  The owner of the bar had died the night after meeting him.

  Josie knew too much about him. She knew that he ran a death squad out of the station, a group of officers who prosecuted the president’s war on drugs with a spree of extrajudicial executions. Killing the owner of the bar would have been a simple matter for him. He could have sent any one of his flunkies. The same could be said for the fire at the hotel.

  She doubted that he would have any compunction in doing away with her, too, if he decided that her investigation was dangerous to him.

  And he knew everything about her: that she had a son and where she lived.

  She had done the right thing in leaving and coming here.

  But now they were here, what next?

  She had given thought to calling in sick and staying off work, but she decided that that would not help her. She was never sick, and to be away from the station now would signal to Mendoza—and anyone else involved in the conspiracy—that she was frightened. And that might suggest that she had something to hide.

  No, she concluded once again. If she stayed away, she would be telling them that she had a reason to be fearful. She couldn’t afford to do that.

  She needed to go to work.

  39

  ISKO WAS already up when Milton awoke the next day. He heard the sounds of exertion and, as he opened his eyes and looked over at the old man’s bedroll, he saw that he was working through a set of push-ups. He had taken off his shirt and Milton could see his ribs, a corrugated pattern visible through his parchment-thin skin.

  Isko noticed that Milton was awake. “Good morning,” he said between push-ups. He performed another three to complete the set, dipping down so low that his chest touched the bedroll and then pushing up again. “How did you sleep?”

  “Not bad,” Milton said.

  “The noise did not wake you?”

  “What noise?”

  “There was a fight last night. Two men in the cell along from this one. I saw through the door—one of them was hurt. They took him out on a stretcher.”

  “Does that happen much?”

/>   “It is not unusual,” Isko said with a shrug that suggested it was mundane.

  The old man rose to his feet and put on his shirt.

  “What time is it?” Milton asked.

  “A little after six. We will have breakfast soon. How do you feel?”

  Milton assessed the damage. He had been hurt, but it was superficial. His bones appeared to be intact. His face was tender and his body was sore from the kicks and punches that Tiny had delivered, but that was the extent of it.

  “Better than last night,” he said.

  “You look worse,” the old man said with a grin that exposed his disastrous teeth.

  Milton managed to get his feet beneath him and pressed himself upright. He winced from the effort as he slowly straightened his back.

  He heard a sudden clattering from the corridor.

  “Rancho!” came a shouted call.

  “What’s going on?”

  Isko stood. “Breakfast.”

  Milton heard the squeak of unoiled castors as the breakfast cart was wheeled down the corridor and the rattle of chains as the prisoners who were still restrained started to rouse themselves. The cart was attended to by a prisoner who, under the lazily watchful eye of a guard, deposited a bar of soap and a metal billycan of food for each inmate. There was a small opening at the bottom of the bars, and a second inmate slid the cans inside with dexterous flicks of his feet.

  “We’re not going to the mess?”

  “Not today. Sometimes they prefer to keep us in the cells. Not a bad thing for you, perhaps.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Milton said.

  THEY SLID the breakfast cans back out of the cell so that the inmates could collect them and stack them on the trolley as they made their way back along the corridor in the direction that they had arrived.

  Milton took a moment to close his eyes and think about the Steps. He wished that he still had his copy of the Big Book. It had been left behind in the hotel room when he had been arrested. The book had accompanied him around the world. It was well thumbed, the pages turning to particularly familiar passages when he let it fall open. The margins were decorated with his annotations, and the text was garlanded with underlining and highlighted passages. He doubted whether he would ever see the book again.

  One of the guards walked down the corridor, shouting out a word that Milton did not understand.

  “What is he saying?”

  “Exercise,” Isko translated for him. “We have an hour in the sunshine.”

  40

  THE CELL doors were unlocked and opened and the men were allowed out into the corridor. They did not dawdle, immediately turning in the same direction and setting off. Isko waited for Milton to join him outside and then led the way.

  “You know anything about Bilibid?”

  “Nothing.”

  “They built it eighty years ago,” the old man explained as they descended the stairs to the ground-floor lobby. “It was made for two thousand men. In twenty years they had eight thousand. There was trouble—riots, murders—so they tore it down and built again. It made no difference. There are still many more men here than there should be. You will see.”

  The wall of the corridor was replaced by a wire screen that allowed them to look at a row of eight cells, each sealed by iron bars. There were men inside the cells; there was no indication that their doors were to be unlocked.

  “What have they done?”

  “They are the bitay,” Isko explained. “They have been convicted of crimes serious enough for them to be killed. They are kept here until it is time for their sentence to be served.”

  “Death row?”

  “Yes. They will be taken to the room where they have the machine that will kill them.” Isko put his index and middle fingers together and mimed an injection, his thumb serving as the plunger.

  They reached an antechamber similar to the one that Milton had been brought through on his way to the cell. Bright sunlight streamed inside, revealing a guard lounging back on a picnic chair with his billy club in his lap. He glared at them as they went outside.

  Milton felt the warmth of the sun on his face and immediately felt a little better. He looked up into the purest of blue skies, an infinite vault that was clear and cloudless for as far as he could see. The prisoners were corralled by a tall wire fence within a wide space. Guards with rifles patrolled outside the fence and the two watchtowers that looked down on the yard were staffed by guards who stood at attention, unlike some of their colleagues.

  There would be no opportunity to escape today. Milton put the thought to the back of his mind. He would be watchful and take the chance to consider how the security functioned, but he would concentrate on enjoying the sun and the opportunity to stretch his legs.

  Men were circulating around the perimeter. Isko joined the flow and Milton followed.

  The old man turned and pointed back at the building. “The cell house is like a prison within the prison,” he explained. “We have three types of prisoner: the castigados, those who have been convicted of serious crime and who await death, and political prisoners, like me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I am a member of the Communist Party. I was convicted fifteen years ago. I have been here ever since.”

  “How long is your sentence?”

  “For as long as they wish to keep me,” he said. “Nothing has changed. My organisation is still forbidden. They still see us as a threat to the country.”

  “Do you have anyone on the outside?”

  He shook his head sadly. “I had a wife. She was put in prison at the same time as me. She died five years ago. The last time I saw her was at our trial.”

  “You couldn’t appeal?”

  “This is not like your England. Things are different here. You can appeal, but it would be a waste of time. A judge does not go against the regime. He would not be a judge for very long if he did.” The old man put a withered hand on Milton’s arm. “It is all right. I have grown accustomed to my life here. I don’t know what I would do if I was ever released. Time has moved on. I have been forgotten. There are people I know here. I have friends. Perhaps you will be another.”

  Milton was taken by Isko’s sense of calm. He had seen it before in the meetings, the serenity that he, too, had sometimes found when he had accepted that he was helpless over his disease and there was no sense in pretending otherwise.

  They continued around the yard.

  “You said that Mr. Fitz set you up.”

  “I think so,” Milton said. “I think he had a friend tell me a story that would make me come here, arranged for me to be drugged and then made it look like I was guilty of murder.”

  “What will you do?”

  Milton glanced left and right. There were no other inmates or guards within earshot. “I need to get out.”

  Isko shook his head. “That will not be easy.”

  “Has it happened before?”

  “Yes, many times. But they don’t last long. The government rebuilt this prison to be a symbol of law and order. It has a reputation that they wish to maintain. There was a man, a year ago, he managed to climb over the wall. There was a weakness at the back of Building No. 3, a blind spot where the guards couldn’t see you from the tower. He climbed the wall with a rope and got away.”

  “And then?”

  “And then they hunted him down. They told us what happened to him. They had guards with dogs. They found him hiding in a ditch. They let the dogs have their way with him, and then they shot him. They showed us pictures. It was a warning. They were telling us that the same thing would happen to us if we tried to escape.”

  “This blind spot—”

  “It has been fixed,” Isko interrupted. “And, John, please. You must think carefully. You are not a Filipino, and this is not Manila. There is jungle around the compound, and then there are villages where the locals would never have seen a man like you. You would stand out. They would call the police. They know tha
t the regime would punish them if they did not.”

  Milton knew that Isko’s concerns were well founded. It would be difficult to escape on his own. He would need help.

  “I need to deliver a message to a friend,” he said.

  Isko shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t be easy, either. You are new. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll let you send letters when you have been here a few months. But they will open the letters and read them.”

  “What about my lawyer?”

  “Perhaps. But you will be fortunate if you can find one who will break prison rules for you. If they are found out, they would be punished. Perhaps they would join us here.”

  Milton frowned and looked down at the sandy surface of the exercise yard. It was baking, waves of lambent heat quivering as they rose into the air. He felt stymied. He knew that he couldn’t stay here, but, at the same time, it wasn’t obvious how he could leave.

  “Your trial, perhaps,” Isko suggested. “That will be held in public. Perhaps that would be an opportunity for you to say something. Perhaps they will let you speak to your embassy.”

  Milton glanced over and saw a guard coming toward them.

  “You,” the man said, pointing his truncheon at Milton. “English.”

  Isko and Milton both stopped.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Come here.”

  “Do whatever they say,” the old man said. “I will see you later.”

  Milton walked the short distance across the yard to the guard.

  “Come with me.”

  41

  MILTON WAS taken back to the latrines.

  He was thrown inside. The guards waited at the doorway, blocking his way out. It didn’t matter. Where would he go?

  He heard the sound of feet approaching along the corridor. The guards parted and Tiny made his way inside.

  “You again,” Milton said, backing away to put a little space between them. “You didn’t get enough last time?”