Forgive No More

by Seb Kirby

  Weston was trying to remain strong. “I’m a British citizen. You can’t just trample on my rights. I’m out of your jurisdiction.”

  Bedford leaned forward. “Then we’ll have to ask you to place yourself in our jurisdiction.” He reached under the table and stabbed the syringe deep into Weston’s thigh and pressed the plunger. Before Weston could protest, Bedford whispered, “It’s a lethal dose of digitalis. Causes death in thirty minutes. Twenty in some cases. We have the antidote back at base. If you shout out or make any other move to alert anyone, we walk and leave you to die. What’s it to be? Do you want to place yourself in our jurisdiction?”

  Weston struggled not to shout out at the pain as the syringe was withdrawn. “You mean you’re giving me the choice?”

  “Isn’t that what it’s all about? The kind of freedom to choose you and the hacker crowd vent about so often?”

  Weston stood and disguised the pain in his leg as he walked out with Bedford and his men.

  Bedford was pleased. He had a captive to show Maynard.

  Back at base in the Haymarket, Weston was agitated. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he was pleading for the antidote. “It’s been too long. I need it now. Do you want me to die?”

  Bedford was enjoying this. This was better than pulling the Glock on him. This was real power. And there was satisfaction in delivering the punch line. “Didn’t I tell you, Adam. The syringe was filled with distilled water. Pure and simple. You won’t need an antidote for that.”

  Weston lowered his head. “What is it you want?”

  “Just what we asked. Take the chance we’re offering you.”

  “To lie and deceive like you?”

  “No, Adam, to do the right thing for once in your life. Or do you prefer Huntsville? It’s your freedom to choose.”

  Chapter 27

  There was no point in denying it. Alessa Lando was aware she would have to take matters into her own hands, no matter how much she wanted Matteo to take control of the affairs of the family. Perhaps it was Sollicciano that had blunted his understanding of the dangers out here in the real world. She hated to think that, after all, Alfieri was right and their son was destined never to amount to anything. No matter what, she knew it was time to act.

  She placed the call to Tijuana and waited. When El Romero picked up he sounded as if he’d been expecting a call. “Senora Lando. It is always a pleasure.”

  Alessa showed her customary caution. “The line is secure?”

  “As always, Senora. How else can we do business?”

  It was El Romero who had first alerted her to the consequences of the events at Town Lake. She was ready to take his advice once again. “Then tell me what can be done to reduce the risk to our business.”

  He did not need to pause to find the answer to her question. “I have thought of little else since we last spoke, Senora. The threats are real. Our resources are not as great as those ranged against us. But we have certain things on our side, like the power and influence of the Lando family.”

  Alessa determined to not be distracted by the obvious flattery. “So I can help?”

  “Senora, indeed. Since we last spoke, Town Lake has stabilized to an extent. The greatest risk now is not from outside but from within. The protectors we have always depended on may no longer be at our side.”

  “You mean the FBI?”

  “Without them our couriers cannot make it. And if we can no longer deliver, others will move in. The rival cartels here in Tijuana will be on our backs.”

  “I understand but I still don’t see how I can help.”

  “Make peace. A woman of your standing could succeed.”

  “With who?”

  “With Agent Craven.”

  Chapter 28

  There was no sign I was being followed from Covent Garden. The more I checked, the more I was certain Adam Weston had planned my escape well and I’d lost them in the crowds leaving the area. I knew now it was the FBI who’d sent the squad after us. That could mean Craven was on to what I was doing here and I knew it was now ever more unsafe to be in London.

  I took the train to Guildford.

  Julia had spoken little about her adoptive parents in all the time we’d been together. They were prosperous, middle-class. Her father, William Morley, was a dental practitioner. He’d made good money drilling teeth and retired at fifty-five. Julia’s mother, Constance, was a fashion model in her early years and settled into life with William in prosperous Guildford with ease.

  There had been nothing but secrecy regarding the adoption. People were less enlightened then, it’s true, but Julia’s parents had been even less forthcoming than most. They concealed her origins from Julia until she was sixteen. While this would have thrown many youngsters, Julia adjusted well to the knowledge that William and Constance were not her biological parents. Yet it must have been painful for her to know she hadn’t been trusted with the knowledge of her origins until so late in life. It led her to be defensive, to downplay consideration of everything to do with her relationship with her adoptive parents. Their relationship was civilized and polite more than warm and understanding.

  I’d always had the feeling there was more behind why Julia’s adoptive parents weren’t forthcoming with her. And the only way to test this was to talk to them.

  They’d never liked me. Whatever future they’d imagined for their daughter hadn’t included me. To say the least, this was not going to be an enjoyable meeting.

  I took a taxi from Guildford station and asked the driver to set me down at the end of the street where the Morley house stood. It was tree-lined and elegant with large well-kept shrubs in well-kept gardens that led up to large well-kept properties that signaled wealth and status in the reserved manner regarded as so essential by the English upper middle-class.

  When I rang the doorbell to the Morley house, it was Constance who answered.

  I spoke first. “It’s Jim. Can I come in?”

  She stared and I thought for a while she was going to blank me. When she replied, she didn’t hide her reluctance to recognize me. “James. Why are you here? It’s not Julia, is it? She’s not in any kind of trouble?”

  I lied. “No, she’s fine. I was in the area. I thought I’d call in.”

  She was suspicious. “It’s just that we see so little of you.”

  “I know. It should be more often, but here I am.”

  She remained cold but opened the door further. “All right. Come in.”

  William was in the large rear garden seated at a table and chairs under a mock China gazebo. Constance walked me out to meet him. The introduction was formal, as if otherwise he might have had a problem remembering who I was. “Bill, dear, it’s Jim. Julia’s husband.”

  He looked up but showed no enthusiasm at meeting me. “James, to what do we owe this pleasure?”

  The conversation turned straight to Julia. Why weren’t she and the baby with me? William’s medical training was well to the fore. “The pregnancy, everything went all right?”

  “Of course. They’re both doing well. Everything’s fine.” I lied again. “You must come to visit us in Weymouth. Your first grandson.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You know we aren’t grandparents in the biological sense, don’t you?”

  This gave me my chance. “That’s why I want to talk to you. I’ve never felt Julia has been able to share with me enough about her background. It’s like a barrier between us.”

  “You’re not having problems?”

  “No. It’s just that the more I know, the more I’ll be able to understand her. Help her. Tell me about the adoption.”

  William was defensive. “What is there to tell you that you might want to know?”

  “Tell me about her birth parents.”

  “They’re unknown. She was delivered into the hands of the Catholic Church when she was just a few days old. Left in the crypt of the church in Waterville, in Ireland.”

  “And her sister? She was abandoned at
the same time?”

  Constance jumped with shock. Both looked as though the moment they’d feared for half their lives had just arrived. She spoke first. “You know about her sister?”

  I tried to make this as easy for them as possible. “Yes, I know she had an identical twin sister. It’s one of the issues that Julia has been trying to work her way through. She found out by accident she was a twin. No one had prepared her for that. She told me she’d always felt incomplete. When she met her sister, she realized what the feeling of absence was that she’d been carrying with her all these years.”

  “You mean they met?”

  I nodded. “She felt if she’d known about her sister earlier, things might have been different.”

  Constance was close to tears. “We couldn’t tell her. It was part of the agreement. That we didn’t tell her. That we couldn’t tell her about her sister. And we stuck to the agreement. You’re not here to criticize us for that, are you?”

  I tried to reassure her. “I just want to understand so I can help Julia.”

  William was still unmoved. “Why would she need help?”

  “I hoped you knew. I hoped Julia had told you. She found her sister, Emelia, after all those years. Within days, Emelia was killed. It’s left a scar on Julia’s life. She’s worked so hard to overcome this but there are times when it overwhelms her. It’s why I need your help. I want you to be as open and frank with me as you are able, given all this means to Julia.”

  “When did the sister die?”

  “Three years ago. The wounds still haven’t healed.”

  “Why is this the first we’ve heard?”

  “It would have been better to have told you. It was Julia’s wish that we didn’t.”

  They both seemed offended by the suggestion that Julia had been unable to confide in them. “You know, we’ve done everything for Julia.”

  “So help me understand.”

  Constance moved closer to her husband and took his hand. “Bill, I think we should tell him as much as we can about the adoption.”

  He placed his other hand on hers. “Perhaps it’s better this way.” He cleared his throat and began. “James, I want you to realize that adoption was not as well-organized back then as it is now. Childless couples like us could not get a child. It was heartbreaking to see families around us. We were as good as them. We had as much or more to offer a child but try as we might we couldn’t produce one. Then along came the Sisters.”

  “Sisters?”

  “The Sisters of the Carpasian Order. We received a message from our parish priest who knew we were seeking a child. There was a baby in Ireland and we could be considered for adoption. There were special conditions. We had to meet the requirements laid down by the Order. There was to be absolute secrecy about where the baby came from and the fact that she was a twin, and she had a sister.”

  “You weren’t considered for the adoption of both? You must have thought it was unusual to separate them?”

  “We were told not to question anything. If we asked too many questions or broke their rules we’d lose the baby. You can’t imagine what pain that would have brought when we’d come so close to fulfilling our dearest wish. We were told the first of the twins had been sent to Italy to be adopted there. This had been decided at the highest level by the Board of Deputies that had oversight of the Order, by the President of the Board himself.”

  Constance joined in. “We had to be interviewed by him to see if we were fit to have the child. He was thorough in questioning us to see if we were suitable parents. And if we were prepared to sign the agreement to promise that the arrangements made for the adoption would be kept secret.”

  Her husband agreed. “He left us in no doubt that if we ever broke the agreement once we’d accepted the child there would be consequences.”

  I knew I had to get this clear. “You mean he threatened you?”

  “Not in so many words. On the surface it was all about the agreement with the Order and how it would be enforced, through the courts if necessary. But the implication was that if we broke the agreement there might be something much more immediate.”

  “Why couldn’t you just walk away?”

  “We wanted a child. You can’t imagine how that feels. When Constance saw the baby, so beautiful, so small and fragile, there was never any doubt we would agree, no matter how threatened by that man we felt.”

  “The one you made the agreement with, the President of the Board, do you have a name?”

  “It was a long time ago now but it was a name neither of us could ever forget. His name was Lando. Signor Alfieri Lando.”

  The train journey back to London was filled with thoughts of what I’d discovered from Julia’s parents.

  The remainder of our meeting was inconsequential, overshadowed by the single revelation that Alfieri Lando had a determining hand in the destination of the twins. Julia to a middle-class family in Guildford. Emelia, as Julia and I knew, to the Rossellini family in Bari in Italy.

  I had to try to make sense of this. I knew from the events in Florence three years before that Emelia had been enticed to Florence by Matteo Lando under his father’s orders. It had appeared to be chance that Julia and Emelia were both in Florence at the same time. But now I wasn’t so sure. If Alfieri Lando had so much power over their lives when they were born maybe he was behind their being in Florence at the same time all those years later.

  And that raised the possibility that Alfieri Lando had somehow been behind the decision of Julia to go to Florence to survey the Lando art collection.

  Yet both Julia and myself had always known it was Miles who’d suggested she went there. It was Miles who’d made the arrangements for her to go. And it was Miles who’d suffered the shame and guilt of what had happened to Julia there.

  I needed to talk to Julia. I needed to ask her what she recalled about Miles’ role in the invitation for her to go to Florence.

  When the train pulled into Charing Cross, I left the station, crossed The Strand and walked up Bedford Street. As I walked, I used the pay-as-you-go phone to call Julia.

  It was not an emergency but I needed to talk again.

  Julia must have been waiting for my call. Her reply came back straight away.

  “Jim, are you OK?”

  “I’m safe, love. I’m well. How are things there?”

  We knew we needed to stay on the line for as short a time as possible to minimize the chance of being detected and Julia was keeping her end of the bargain. “No change. We’re being well protected.”

  But this couldn’t wait. “There’s something I need to ask. Where did Miles get the idea to recommend you go to Florence to survey the Lando paintings?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just trust me. It’s important.”

  “I’m trying to recall. It seems so long ago now. He knew I was looking for a suitable collection of works that might have been overpainted and perhaps conceal a masterpiece. Miles heard about the Lando collection through an intermediary. I’m struggling to remember which one but I think it was called the Arpeggio Foundation.”

  “OK. I’ll check it out.” I changed the subject. “By the way, I met your parents. They’re well. They send their love.”

  “Now I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

  We wished each other love and closed the connection.

  I’d reached Covent Garden and entered the HiTec store once more. I reasoned this would be one place they were no longer looking for me. I found a vacant machine and searched the Internet for information on the Arpeggio Foundation.

  There it was. Arpeggio Foundation. An obituary posted three years ago about their founder and patron: Signor Alfieri Lando.

  I didn’t want to call back to tell Julia what I’d just discovered until I had a clear idea of what it meant. But I couldn’t help thinking Lando had found a means of priming Miles with the idea that Julia should go to Florence and all along the Italian’s motive had be
en to ensure that Julia and Emelia were in Florence at the same time.

  If this proved to be the case I knew I’d need to take great care in breaking this to Julia.

  It was time to head for the East End and my appointment with Alex Bishop.

  Chapter 29

  The action was becoming stretched. Nate Craven had personnel he could trust out in the field. It was what the new team was for. But who could he trust with the black ops part of the business?

  Debbie Miller wouldn’t go to Hawaii. He knew that. He was sure he hadn’t telegraphed it when he’d agreed to her taking leave. She must be on her way to Tijuana by now to work out whatever agenda she had with Miles Blake. None of that would be favorable to Craven. But the merit of letting her go was that Miller would lead him to Miles Blake and, if he played his cards right, to what the Blake target was trying to achieve by being there. Yet, the problem was who to send after her.

  He’d thought about going himself. Marvin Bryce would cover the situation in London, deal with what Maynard was developing with Bedford and narrow the search for James Blake. Leaving Craven free to concentrate on Tijuana. But this wasn’t the best way forward long term. Craven was needed here at base and, if he were to go to Tijuana and was spotted there, it would make it too easy for Debbie Miller to see through the game plan. And he’d make no progress in rebuilding the black ops side of the business.

  It all came back to the same question. Who amongst the new recruits could be trusted to join him in the dark side of the business?

  He’d chosen the new team well. Still in the afterglow of the Intelligence Star, the Bureau had been keen to let him choose from the best it had to offer. While there hadn’t been as much time as he would have liked, he’d spent considerable effort looking through the career records of those available. Looking for those who were both effective and corruptible.

  Why did he dislike the sound of that last word?

  Perhaps because he’d hate to hear anyone apply it to himself.

  He looked over the list of possibles once more. One name stood out. Dillon Ashley. Ex-military, spotless record and expensive tastes.