The Ultimate Truth (25 page)

He’d backed up against the wall now and was struggling to hold on to Evie. She was lashing out at him like a crazy thing – twisting and writhing, stomping on his feet, flinging her
head back into his face. When he saw me coming, he suddenly let go of her and pushed her away and started reaching into his jacket for his gun. But instead of moving away from him when he shoved
her, Evie quickly spun round and hammered her fist into his chin. It was a perfect left hook, and it caught him right on the sweet spot. His eyes rolled, he staggered to one side, then his legs
turned to rubber and he toppled over and slumped to the floor.

I watched him for a second to make sure he wasn’t getting up, then I looked up at Evie.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked her.

‘Fine,’ she said, smiling.

I held her gaze for a second, then turned round to see how Mason and Lenny were getting on.

I was just in time to see Lenny finishing off Red Hair, effortlessly slamming his head into the wall. But when I looked over at Mason I could see that he was in trouble. He was still on his
feet, and still squaring up to Winston, but he’d obviously taken a bit of a beating. His mouth was bleeding, he was swaying a bit, and his left arm was hanging down at his side. He lurched
towards Winston and threw a punch at him, but there was no power or speed in it, and as Winston stepped back, the punch missed him by a mile and Mason stumbled forward and almost fell over.

Winston could easily have finished him off then, but he seemed reluctant to do anything. He just stood there, calmly watching Mason stagger around. I started running then, and as Winston glanced
over and saw me coming, he didn’t hesitate for a second. He moved so fast that I wasn’t even sure he’d hit Mason until I saw Mason double over and drop to his knees, grimacing
with pain and clutching at his side. And by the time I’d reached Winston, he was already moving towards me, holding his hands up, as if trying to strike a truce.

‘Hold on, Travis,’ he said quickly. ‘Just listen to me—’

I launched myself at him, swinging a right hook at his head, but he saw it coming and batted my fist away.

‘For God’s
sake
, Travis,’ he spat. ‘I just want to—’

I went for him with another right hook, only this time, as he went to fend it off, I ducked down and hit him in the belly with a shuddering left uppercut. He groaned and doubled over, and I
hammered my fist into the back of his head and then brought my knee up into his face.

It was a vicious combination, and he should have gone down. But he didn’t. He staggered back a couple of steps, holding his face in his hands, then he straightened up, wiped a stream of
blood from his nose, and smiled at me. His lips were all smashed up and bloody.

‘Not bad,’ he spluttered, nodding his approval. ‘Not bad at all.’

I glanced quickly at Mason. He was trying to get up now, but he was clearly in a lot of pain. From the way he was leaning awkwardly to one side, I guessed he had a broken rib or two.

I looked round, wondering where Lenny and Evie were, and when I saw them standing side by side, staring back down the corridor, I knew it could only mean one thing. With a sinking heart I looked
down the corridor and saw Shaved Head, Gaunt Face and Muscleman moving rapidly towards us.

As Lenny and Evie stood there waiting for them, I turned back to Winston.

I’d only been looking away from him for a moment or two, but I’d forgotten how fast he could move. And when I turned back he was standing right in front of me, his bloodied face
staring right into my eyes.

I don’t know what he hit me with. I didn’t even see him move. At least, I don’t remember seeing him move. All I remember is a sudden impact, a black light exploding in my head,
and then nothing.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a young man in a black tracksuit sitting on a white settee. He had a longish face, short black hair, and hauntingly dark eyes.
Mason and Lenny were sitting on the settee with him, and Winston was standing just to one side. Mason and the young man were talking about something, but the settee was on the other side of the
room and I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

I didn’t understand it.

I didn’t know where I was.

I didn’t know why my head was throbbing.

And I didn’t know why the young man in the tracksuit seemed so familiar.

I closed my eyes and tried to think about it, but nothing would come to me. Nothing at all. I just couldn’t get hold of anything. My head was all fogged up.

I didn’t want to open my eyes again.

I didn’t want to see things I didn’t understand.

It was too confusing.

But then I felt a hand on my arm, and a gentle voice whispered my name, and I opened my eyes and saw Evie peering into my face.

And all at once everything came back to me.

The room we were in was a lot more comfortable than the other rooms in the building. It had two small settees (one of which I was sharing with Evie), an armchair, a table, a good-sized TV. There
were rugs on the floor, a couple of cupboards, a little kitchen area. Evie wasn’t sure exactly where the room was located. She’d been brought here at gunpoint with Mason and Lenny, she
told me, and I’d been carried here by Muscleman. So she’d had other things on her mind at the time, and she hadn’t really paid that much attention to where she was being taken.
But she thought we were probably somewhere near the front of the warehouse.

‘Winston’s explained everything to us,’ she told me. ‘And Bashir’s confirmed it.’

I looked across at Bashir Kamal. He was still sitting on the settee across the room with Mason. I saw Mason smile at something he said. He said something back to Bashir, miming a punch, and
Bashir laughed quietly.

Winston had noticed that I was awake now, and when he saw me looking at him, he nodded at me. It reminded me of the time he’d nodded at me in the church car park after the funeral. And it
was probably the memory of that that prompted me to glance at his suit jacket now and realise that the middle button looked slightly different from the other buttons, just as it had at the
funeral.

He was wearing the hidden camera again.

As I thought about that, I gazed around the room. Shaved Head was leaning against the wall by the door, and Goatee was sitting in the armchair with his legs crossed, staring idly at his
mobile.

The door to the room was open.

There were no guns in sight.

Everyone seemed very relaxed.

It didn’t feel right to me.

Nothing felt right.

‘Why’s it so quiet?’ I asked Evie. ‘Why aren’t the kids outside making any noise?’

‘Mason called them off.’

‘Why?’

‘We don’t need them, Trav,’ she said softly. ‘We never did.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ I heard Winston say.

I looked up and saw him coming towards us. Bashir was with him, and as they both stopped in front of us, I got the impression that they were reasonably comfortable in each other’s
company.

‘How are you feeling, Travis?’ Winston asked. ‘I’m sorry I had to hit you . . .’ He grinned, pointing to his battered face. ‘But you didn’t really leave
me much choice, did you?’ He turned to Bashir. ‘Travis does a bit of boxing himself.’

‘Yeah?’ Bashir said, nodding his head at me and glancing at Evie.

I stood up.

Bashir turned back to me and held out his hand. ‘I hear you’ve been looking for me.’

I shook his hand, not sure what to say.

He grinned. ‘Well, here I am.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘And as you can see,’ he went on, ‘I’m not tied up or chained to a radiator or anything. The door’s open. I could walk out of here right now if I wanted to.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s like I told your friends, I’m
not
a prisoner, OK? I mean, I appreciate your concern for me and everything, but I don’t need rescuing.’

As Bashir smiled at Evie and sat down on the settee beside her, I turned to Winston.

‘The British security services treated Bashir like dirt,’ he explained. ‘He risked his life for his country, but as soon as MI5 had no more use for him, they just threw him out
into the cold. The only reason they want him back now is because the CIA are after him, and MI5 will do anything to stop the CIA interrogating one of their informants, whether
they
value him
or not.’ Winston looked at me. ‘The CIA think Bashir’s a terrorist.’

‘I know.’

‘If they were to get hold of him, there’s no knowing what they might do.’

‘I’m aware of the situation,’ I said. ‘What I want to know is—’

‘No, Travis,’ he said firmly, ‘you’re
not
aware of the situation. If you were, you wouldn’t be here.’

‘I had to make sure Bashir was safe.’

‘He
was
safe,’ Winston said, sighing. ‘We had it all under control. No one knew where he was, he was guarded around the clock, and we were in the final stages of
arranging a new identity and a new place for him to live. We’ve also been gathering evidence to prove beyond doubt that, far from being a terrorist, Bashir was in fact an MI5 asset
who’d successfully infiltrated a terrorist cell.’ Winston stared at me. ‘Do you get it now? Once we convince the CIA that Bashir’s not a terrorist, he’s no longer of
interest to anyone. He’s free to start a new life without having to keep looking over his shoulder all the time. If it wasn’t for you, Travis, he would have been starting that new life
tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean,
would have been
?’ Bashir said, suddenly concerned.

Winston looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Bashir, but our operation’s been compromised.’

‘
What?
’

‘Earlier tonight emergency services received an anonymous call about a serious disturbance in Sowton Lane. The good news is that the call was intercepted by one of our contacts, who
managed to bury it before any action was taken, so we don’t have to worry about the police showing up.’

‘What’s the bad news?’ Bashir asked.

‘The CIA have contacts in the local police force too. They intercepted the call
before
it was buried.’

‘So what?’ Bashir said, frowning. ‘I mean, the CIA don’t know we’re here, do they? So why does it matter if they know about a bunch of kids kicking off in Sowton
Lane? There’s no
reason
for them to connect that to us, is there?’

‘We have a contact in the CIA.’

‘So?’

‘So we know they’re not stupid. They monitor everything, they analyse everything. Their agents are trained to take particular notice of anything out of the ordinary. And forty-odd
kids from the Slade Lane estate besieging a supposedly empty warehouse is definitely out of the ordinary.’ Winston glanced at me, then turned back to Bashir. ‘According to our contact,
within two minutes of the emergency call being received, a CIA agent was dispatched to investigate the disturbance. He arrived at the scene ten minutes later, spent a further ten minutes getting
close enough to the warehouse to see inside, and then quickly reported back to his bosses.’

‘He couldn’t have seen me,’ Bashir stated, shaking his head.

‘He didn’t,’ Winston told him. ‘But he didn’t have to. He saw one of my men. He recognised him from an altercation we had with the CIA at Travis’s house in
Kell Cross this morning. I’m sorry, Bashir, but the CIA know you’re here.’

Bashir said nothing, just stared intently at the floor.

‘They’ve got the building surrounded,’ Winston said quietly. ‘There’s at least a dozen agents out there, maybe more.’

Bashir slowly gazed up at him, a look of disdain on his face. ‘You promised you’d look after me. You gave me your
word
.’

Winston shrugged. ‘These things happen.’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ Bashir said. ‘You’re going to give up without a fight? Just throw me to the wolves?’ He laughed scornfully. ‘You’re no
better than the rest of them.’

‘We’re heavily outnumbered,’ Winston said patiently. ‘We wouldn’t stand a chance if we tried to fight our way out of here. The only option we have is to
negotiate.’

‘
Negotiate?
’ Bashir sneered.

‘Why not? I know we still don’t have
undeniable
proof of your innocence, but we have enough circumstantial evidence to at least give the CIA something to think about. If we
show them what we have right now . . . well, who knows? By the time they’ve processed and analysed the evidence we’ve given them, it’s possible we’ll be in a position to
give them all the proof they need.’

‘And what do you think the CIA are going to do with me in the meantime?’ Bashir scoffed. ‘Put me up in a five-star hotel?’

‘Well, that’s one of the things we can negotiate—’

‘They’re
Americans
!’ Bashir hissed, spitting out the word as if it sickened him just to say it. ‘You don’t
negotiate
with Americans.’

His burst of anger took me by surprise, and as I turned and glanced at him it was hard to believe the sudden change in his demeanour. The easy-going young man who’d sat down on the settee
a few minutes ago had gone, and in his place was a hate-filled fanatic seized with venom and rage – his face livid, his eyes unbalanced, every muscle in his body strained to breaking
point.

Evie had clearly noticed the change too, and without making it obvious she was quietly edging away from him.

For the next couple of seconds, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

I saw Winston moving towards Bashir, a consoling look on his face. As he began to bend down and reach out, intending – I assumed – to give Bashir a reassuring pat on his shoulder, I
wondered why the look in Winston’s eyes didn’t match the look on his face. His face was a picture of sympathy – comforting, soothing, encouraging. But his eyes were ruthless and
razor sharp.

He leaned over a little more, extending his hand towards Bashir’s shoulder.

His jacket was unbuttoned. It opened at the front as Winston leaned over, revealing an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster.

I looked at Bashir.

He was already reaching for the gun.