Ghosts - 05 (3 page)

“So you say. But he went in pursuit of SNOW?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He never had a clear shot, not one he could take without a significant risk that he would hit a bystander. The rules of engagement were clear. This had to be at no risk.”

“I know what the bloody rules of engagement were, Number One,” he said sharply. “I wrote them.”

“If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I could’ve taken the driver out.”

Control flustered and, for a moment, Beatrix was convinced that he
was
going to blame her. That would have been alright. She had been a member of the Group for six years and that was already pushing at the top end of an agent’s average life expectancy. It wasn’t an assignment that you kept if you had something to lose. Beatrix had a daughter and a husband and a family life that she enjoyed more than she had ever expected. She had done her time and she had done it well, but all things had to come to an end eventually. She wouldn’t have resisted if he blamed her and busted her out of the Group. There would be something else for her, something safer, something where getting shot at was not something she would come to expect.

But he didn’t blame her. “It’s a bloody mess,” he said instead, sighing with impatience. “A bloody, bloody mess. The police have been told it’s an underworld thing. They’ll buy that, if only because the prospect of their own government sanctioning a hit is too bloody ludicrous to credit. No-one heard either of you speak?”

“It was all on the radio. And the only thing we left was Milton’s bike, and that’s clean. There’s no way back to us from that.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

He took his saucer and cup to his desk and sat down. He exhaled deeply. “What a mess,” he said again. He was frustrated, and that was to be expected, but the immediate threat of the explosion of his temper had passed. “Where is Milton now?”

“Training,” she told him. That was true. He had barely left the quarters where the Group’s logistics were based since the operation. The rangemaster said that he had spent hours with a target pistol, firing over and over until the targets were torn to shreds, then loading another target and pushing it further out and doing it all again.

“Are you still sure about him?”

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “When have I ever been wrong about a recruit?”

“I know,” he said, leaning back. “Never.”

He exhaled again and sipped at his tea. Beatrix looked beyond him, beyond the plush interior of his office where so many death warrants were signed, and out into the darkness beyond. London was going about its business, just as usual. Beatrix's eyes narrowed their focus until she noticed the image in the glass: the back of Control’s head and, facing him, her own reflection. She stood at a crossroads, with a choice of how to proceed: she could say nothing, and go back to her family, or she could do what she had decided she had to do and begin a conversation that could very easily become difficult.

“There was one more thing,” she said.

“What?”

“I pulled some evidence out of the car.”

He sat forward. “That wasn’t in the plan.”

“I know. Force of habit, I suppose. It was there, I took it.”

“And?”

“And you should probably take a look.”

She had travelled to the office on her own motorbike and had stowed the case in a rucksack. She opened the drawstring, took it out and laid it on Control’s desk. It had been locked and she had unscrewed the hinges to get it open; it was held together by one of her husband’s belts at the moment. She unhooked it and removed the top half of the case. There was a clear plastic bag with six flash drives and, beneath that, a manilla envelope. Inside the envelope was a thick sheaf of photographs. They were printed on glossy five-by-eight paper and had been taken by someone from a high vantage point, using a powerful telephoto lens. It was a series, with two people in shot. The first person was a man. He was wearing a heavy overcoat and a woollen hat had been pulled down over his ears. The picture had been taken in a park during the winter; the trees in the foreground were bare and a pile of slush, perhaps from a melted snowman, was visible fifty feet away. The man was bent down, standing over a park bench. There was a woman on the bench.

Despite the distance and the angle that the picture had been taken, it was still obvious that the standing man was Control.

“What is this?” he asked brusquely.

“It was in the case…”

“Yes,” he snapped. “You said. I have no idea why.”

“That’s you, sir, isn’t it?”

“If you say so.”

The atmosphere had become uncomfortable, but Beatrix couldn’t draw back.

“The woman on the bench…”

Control made a show of examining the photograph more closely.

“It’s DOLLAR.” He said nothing. “I don’t understand, sir…”

“Your job is not to understand, Number One. Your job is to follow the orders that I give you.”

He paused; Beatrix thought he was hesitating, searching for the words to say what he wanted to say, but he didn’t say anything else. He just stared at her instead.

“Sir?”

He indicated the flash drives with a dismissive downward brush of his hand. “Have you looked at these?”

“No, sir,” she said, although that was a lie.

“Very good.” He shuffled in his chair, straightening his shoulders. “I want you to keep a close eye on Milton. It might be that we were wrong about him—and we can’t afford passengers. If we were wrong, we’ll need to reassign him. Understood?” She nodded that she did. “That will be all for now. You’re dismissed, Number One.”

She stood, still uncomfortable and confused, and then turned for the door.

She was halfway across the room before Control cleared his throat.

“Look, Number One… Beatrix. Please, sit down again.” She turned back and did so. He had come around the desk and now he was standing by the mantelpiece. “You’re right. I did meet her. A couple of times. Looks like she decided she’d like some pictures to mark the occasion. I can’t tell you why we met and I can’t tell you what we spoke about, save to say that it was connected to the operation. The details are classified. All you need to know, Beatrix, is that you were given a file with her name on it. And you know what that means.”

“I do, sir. Termination.”

“That’s right. Is there anything else you want to ask me?”

She looked at him: a little portly, a little soft, his frame belying his years of service in the forces including, she knew, a distinguished campaign in the Falklands. He was looking at her with an expression that looked like concern but, beneath that, she saw a foundation of suspicion and caution. Beatrix was a professional assassin, Number One amidst a collection of twelve of the most dangerous men and women in the employ of Her Majesty. She was responsible for the deaths of over eighty people all around the world. Bad people who had done bad things. She was not afraid of very much. But Control was not the sort of man you would ever want to cross. She looked at him again, regarding her with shrew-like curiosity, and she was frightened. The thought began to form that she had just made a very, very bad mistake.

BEATRIX HAD a house in a pleasant area of East London. There were estates surrounding it on all sides, but the grid of streets that included Lavender Grove was a peaceful and safe middle-class enclave that was, she thought, a good place to set up home. The house that she and her husband had bought five years earlier was a three bedroom terrace, slotted between properties owned by a kindly retired couple and a young banker who was often abroad. The front of the house had a narrow strip of garden that was separated from the pavement by a set of iron railings and they had fixed colourful hanging baskets on either side of the brightly painted red front door. There was a larger garden to the rear, long and narrow, just big enough for the chickens that Beatrix had always wanted. It was a warm house with plenty of space for her, her husband and their daughter.

They were talking about trying for a second child and the house would be big enough for him or her, too, although it would be a little tight. It just needed to get them through the next eighteen months. Beatrix had decided that she would request reassignment from the Group after that; she had been doing it more than long enough. You could reduce the risks involved with an assignment with excellent planning, and Beatrix was fastidious about that, but there was always the chance that something might go wrong: bad intelligence, something that could not have been predicted, a lucky shot. Look at what had happened yesterday. She had been tempting Fate for years and she knew very well that, eventually, that would catch up with her. She was going to get out before that could happen.

She slotted the bike into the nearest space to the house and killed the engine. She took off her helmet, angled her head and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked fine: the ride across London had given her some time to think and, now that she had taken a moment to consider it, she wondered whether she might have been overreacting to her conversation with Control. There was probably a very good explanation for the meeting he had taken with DOLLAR, whoever she was. It was entirely possible that he had been gathering intelligence prior to greenlighting the operation to eliminate her.

It was a pleasant day, unseasonably warm, and she was in a good mood as she crossed the pavement, opened the gate and then the front door.

“I’m home,” she called out.

There was no answer.

That was strange. Her husband, Lucas, was a web developer and he worked from the second bedroom upstairs. It was past four o’clock as well, and so their daughter, Isabella, should have been home from school. She took off her jacket and hung it up. Perhaps they had gone to play in the park. She unfastened the clasps of her shoulder holster and took it off. She unclipped the leather strap that held the Sig Sauer in place, withdrew it, and popped out the magazine. She laid the gun and the magazine on the table. She had a gun safe upstairs and would put them away just as soon as she had poured herself a glass of water.

She went through into the kitchen. There was a pile of unopened post on the counter. She flipped through them with idle interest: bills, junk mail, nothing interesting.

She took the glass of water into the sitting room.

She dropped the glass.

Lucas was sitting on the sofa. Isabella was next to him. He had his arm around the girl’s shoulders.

Number Five was sitting in the armchair facing them, a silenced semi-automatic laid across her lap.

Number Eight was standing by the door to the hallway, a silenced semi-automatic in his right hand, aimed at her.

She built a quick mental picture of possible weapons that were within reach: the letter opener on the sideboard; the paperweight next to it; a series of books in the bookcase, some of them hardback, some of them reasonably heavy; the switchblade in her right front pocket; the glass bowl that they used to hold fruit.

She was suddenly rabbit-punched in the kidneys; a sharp pain blossomed through her chest all the way down to her diaphragm. She stumbled forwards a step, bracing herself on the sideboard, before strong hands gripped her around the shoulders and spun her around. She glimpsed the cruel face of a third agent, Number Ten, as he drew back his head and then butted her in the nose.

She dropped down onto her backside, blood over her face.

She got to her hands and knees.

Ten kicked her in the ribs and she thudded into the sideboard again, sweeping her arm across the surface so that the lamp toppled over and so the letter opener fell between the furniture and the wall. She lay flat, her hand inches away from it; it was too far away to get it without noticing.

Kick me again.

She raised herself up again and Ten booted her in the ribs for a second time. She landed against the sideboard, reached beneath it for the opener and palmed it, reversing it and sliding the blade up into her sleeve.

“That’s enough,” Five said.

She bore her weight on one arm and pushed up.

“You’re going to play ball, right, Beatrix?”

She wiped away the blood.

“Because, you know, it’ll be so much better if you do. I don’t want to have to murder you in front of your daughter.”

She looked up. Her husband looked back at her with pained, confused eyes. He didn’t know what she really did for a living; he thought that she was still in the military.

Beatrix felt a pit opening in her stomach and, for a brief moment, the strength drained from her legs.

She mastered it quickly.

“I’m going to play ball,” she replied.

“That’s right. Are you armed?”

“No.”

“So where’s your weapon?”

“Outside. In the hall.”

“Any others in the house?”

“No.”

“Alright. Get up.”

She did as she was told and stood. She moved gingerly, her ribs blaring with pain; it felt like a couple were broken.

She looked through the window as another two agents walked down the front path. Number Nine and Number Eleven.

Five, Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven.

Five of them.

Beatrix knew them all.

Five’s name was Lydia Chisholm. She had joined the group after a career in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Its agents operated in plainclothes, often submerged in deep cover, and it employed a unit of forty women dubbed ‘the Amazons’ by a lazy and unoriginal commanding officer. Five had been the pick of the bunch. She tall and broad and muscular and Beatrix knew that her record had been excellent since she had transferred, with a series of flawlessly executed kills.

Eight was Oliver Spenser. Beatrix had supervised his training. He had demonstrated a lack of control and a propensity to aggression and she had recommended against his selection; Control had overruled her. His Special Boat Service background was more traditional for the Group. He was more of a blunt weapon; if Five was a knife, Eight was a cudgel. Both were dangerous.

Ten, the agent who had knocked her to the ground, was Joshua Joyce. Nine and Eleven, the agents who were just letting themselves into the house, were Connor English and Bryan Duffy. All three were SAS.