Mum is crying again.
I reach up gently, lifting the various tubes which trail from my arm, to place my left hand on the side of her downturned face – it’s about the only movement I can make – and she lifts her face toward me. Mascara is making dirty rivulets down her cheeks. Her charcoal grey eyes are red-rimmed. I hate seeing her like this, but I must probably look the same.
I am crying too.
“It was a lovely service,” she is saying. “The whole village came out and the vicar made a wonderful sermon about the gift of life. About how much joy the two of them brought to those who met them. About how much joy they brought to you...,” and she’s consumed with another wracking sob.
I nod and grunt, I hope encouragingly.
“They buried them together in a simple plot in the graveyard. Very unusual nowadays, for graves to be set aside within the main church grounds,” that’s more like mum – rambling around, getting off subject – but this isn’t some pleasant chat, is it? Not when your mum is having to tell you about your family’s last journey together. Not when she has to tell you because you’re still utterly immobile and couldn’t be there yourself. “The vicar said he’d made arrangements for you.” She stops again for a moment. “You know... For when it’s your time... To be together again...”
It’s too much for her. Her shoulders are lurching under my hand but I need to hear this now. In one go. I need her to get it over with. I grunt again and she seems to steel herself.
“The coffins were both so tiny,” she says quietly. “We did as you asked, and gave the things to the undertaker.” I’d written down the objects I wanted buried alongside the scant human remains recovered from the scene. Precious objects that I knew they’d want to be with for eternity. My beloved Iuli would never be without the necklace I had presented on the first day we had shared and then nervously whispered our love to each other. My daughter would have her most treasured possession, her little teddy. She could never sleep unless she had it clutched tightly in her tiny arms... She used to suckle on his nose...
God, this hurts.
Sleep well, Elizabeth. Cuddle up with Teddy. This cruel world can’t touch you any more.
No nightmares, my little Princess.
~~~~~
Cordova, Spain
“Forty-two, Forty-three...”
Shoulder length brown hair, mottled with blonder naturally sun-bleached highlights rose up above the lounge table top. Then disappeared again.
“Forty-four...”
Jack Vittalle, born Dominic Millerstone, glanced to his left as he pushed himself upwards on powerful arms and broad shoulders and his deep forest-green eyes spied the full can of beer sitting, unopened, on the edge of the coffee table.
“Forty-five...”
He’d let himself have it at one hundred, he decided.
The beer was not alone on the table top. There was very little free space at all. Besides the half-empty takeaway boxes, well-thumbed magazines and a few discarded cans, the majority of the surface was occupied by a stripped down nine-millimetre Browning L9A1 pistol laid out neatly on its heavily used cleaning mat. Beyond this clutter, his plain looking but heavily encrypted cellphone sat precariously overhanging the far edge. The phone started ringing and the vibrations sent it clattering onto the bare wooden parquet floor.
“Shit!” Vittalle mumbled, scrambling round the table on all fours, still in his prone press-up position, like some enormous six foot two inch, muscle-bound toddler. He grabbed at the phone as it continued to propel itself gently across the floorboards and pressed the answer button. “Tin,” he said simply.
“Go,” said the voice and Vittalle’s already exercised heartbeat went up by about another sixty beats per minute.
“Orders?” He asked.
“In your drop box.”
The line went dead.
~~~~~
London
“So, for the record. Please explain, Chief Superintendent, why you felt it necessary to strike the suspect with the butt of your weapon?”
She knew it was procedure. A standard, internal, independent enquiry to ensure police powers were not being abused but this was becoming yet another disabuse of such protections, for the benefit of the very people she was supposed to be prosecuting.
The small, fat, bald Investigating Inspector looked across at her expectantly and in the silence she could hear the tape machine whirring on the desktop. He nodded toward the device impatiently.
“The other option was to shoot him dead,” she said coldly. “I know...,” she smiled across at the ugly pig. “I picked the wrong one.”
His face turned angry. “Chief Superintendent,” he began, with a hint of exasperation in his voice, “just the facts please, not your opinions!”
Sharinda ‘Shaz’ Manjeethra sighed to herself. “My officers were in the process of apprehending the suspect, who was lying in the back garden of the suspect’s rented property, having thrown himself out of one of the upstairs windows. He was lying face downwards when I first saw him.”
“How were your officers ‘apprehending’ him, exactly?”
She stared dispassionately at him. “He appeared to be writhing around. They were seeking suitable restraining points of contact. It would have been inhumane to grasp a broken limb, wouldn’t it?”
The look of disbelief on the man’s face was a picture. “With their boots?” he snarled.
“What are you suggesting, Inspector?” she fired back, apparently angry. “Who said anything about boots?”
“The suspect,” he replied, somewhat less aggressively.
“Weren’t you listening?” Manjeethra spat back, pulling herself up in her chair. She was not a slight woman, and she knew it. She’d never needed to use the word ‘slim’ to describe herself, nor ‘overweight’. She was ‘well built’ and, in full dress uniform like today, she knew she cut an imposingly powerful presence. “I said, the suspect was lying face down on the ground.” Suddenly she knew she had the upper hand here. Time to close this out. “When he turned over, I’m sure your suspect also made it clear to you that he had been surreptitiously seeking to draw and brandish his sidearm at my men.”
“The gun wasn’t loaded.”
“Of course,” she said sarcastically and, seeing him wilt slightly, decided to chuck in a quick eyelash flutter to further imbalance the ugly little pug of a man. “Of course, my officers and I had lots of time to ask him politely to hand the deadly weapon over to us so we could maybe check it over for him? Perhaps we could have asked him to cock it for us, just to check that no bullets were actually chambered? Perhaps we could have asked him to pull the trigger randomly? Maybe whilst he pointed it at a few of us? That Kevlar is supposed to be pretty good, isn’t it? Even at point-blank range.”
The pug sat silent.
“No Inspector, of course not,” she continued. “My choices were: ‘A’ – shoot him dead on the spot, or ‘B’ – incapacitate him as swiftly as possible. For the sake of my own, and for my officers’ personal safety, I chose Option B. I’ll look forward to receiving his personal letter of thanks for saving his life.”
The pug reached forward to the tape machine. “Interview terminated 11:48,” he said and clicked stop. “Chief Inspector Manjeethra,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “Ma’am... You need to be aware: I think he’ll likely walk for this.”
Manjeethra stared at him, filled with disbelief and anger, as the pug stood up and shuffled back out of the interview room.
~~~~~
Cordova
He approached the bank’s enormous pillared portico apprehensively. He felt uncomfortable and out of place. His subtle pale-blue pinstriped suit sat snugly over his muscular back. The trousers comfortably concealed his athletic legs and well-skied thighs. The shirt wasn’t too tight around his hefty neck and it had only taken four attempts to get his tie done up. Better than his normal clumsy attempts for parade... But then he’d had his mates, his brothers, around to help him.
Jack climbed the steps, two at a time, toward the huge granite frontage and walked into the expansive lobby.
“Go straight to the concierge.” He remembered his instructions clearly. That had always been one of his skills, throughout training. Been one of the things that had earned him his slot in his unit, back when he was just a ‘regular’. Yep, they could always rely on Jack to remember the stuff he was told. It got stuck in his head. Unlike the boring school books he’d struggled with at the orphanage. He approached the impressively uniformed man standing patiently behind his lectern.
“I need to get into my safety deposit box, please,” he asked in English.
The Spaniard looked at him dispassionately, “Of course, sir. Identification, if you may?”
The concierge’s English sounded better than Jack’s and he felt pleased he hadn’t attempted to make his request in Spanish, even though he could have. “Here,” he said, handing over one of his passports.
The concierge thumbed, somewhat arrogantly in Jack’s opinion, to the photo page and held it up theatrically for a few moments while he compared the picture with the man in front of him. Then he handed the document back. “Thank you, Mr. Vittal. Please follow me,” he said crisply.
“It’s Vit-ah-ley,” said Jack.
“As you wish, sir,” said the concierge, disinterestedly. “Please follow me.”
Jack followed the concierge through a couple of heavily guarded doorways and down a short corridor. As he walked, he couldn’t help smiling to himself at the thrilling sensation of subterfuge. He liked being Jack Vittalle, even if people kept insisting on mispronouncing it. The name felt and sounded like it belonged to someone important, someone interesting and besides, as far as he was concerned, Dominic had died back there with everyone else.
They reached a sizeable, locked, metal door. The concierge keyed a long sequence of numbers into a keypad on the wall and the doorway opened automatically, sliding seamlessly to one side. Beyond was a simple, white, brightly lit, empty space with a solitary metal table bolted to the floor in the centre.
“We will bring your box to you here,” said the concierge. “You will have complete privacy. Press the buzzer when you want to leave.”
The thrills vaporised and Jack hesitated at the open doorway...
“Please,” said the concierge gesturing for Jack to enter the room.
Jack could do a lot of things easily. A lot of things that less athletic, less military, less aggressive men would really struggle with. Unfortunately, small, closed rooms wasn’t one of them. He liked being outside, under the open sky. Tight spaces, well...
‘Some bloody covert-agent I am,’ he thought to himself. If he couldn’t maintain cover here, picking up his orders, then he had no chance. Mike’s bloodshot eyes suddenly appeared in his head, staring up at him, begging him. ‘Okay mate, just for you,’ he thought, steeled himself and stepped into the room, turning to the concierge as he went, and snapping irritably, “Don’t keep me waiting.”
The concierge nodded, a fraction more respectfully, and the door slid shut with a gentle thud.
The room was a simple cube, lined with seamless polished marble on the floor and walls. The distant ceiling also looked like it was stone-lined but it was difficult to see past the veritable battery of halogen down-lighters which peppered its entire surface. Vittalle looked away and blinked at the swirling bright etches burned temporarily onto his retinas. No cameras visible, nor any visible aberrations in the marble to suggest there was anything concealed behind it. Mind you, optics come very small nowadays.
The single metal desk was simply four legs with a large, flat, circularly machined, steel top. There was no other furniture and only the one door.
Jack placed his hands on the table’s cool surface and closed his eyes. ‘Exit: back through the door,’ he thought to himself. ‘Two guards have a full field of fire, so move fast. No chance for stealth. Shoot both quickly, move fast, and drop into the second entranceway to reduce hit chances. Two more guards to dispose of, then through into the atrium and go immediate left. Avoid the main door and look for an exit, somewhere along the side...’ He sighed. “No f*cking chance,” he muttered to himself. This place had no viable exit strategy available. It was a good job he didn’t need one...
A hissing clunk announced the reopening of the door and he span around.
“Mr. Vittalle,” announced a tall, slim, woman dressed in one of the bank’s smart, blue and orange piped, corporate skirt and jacket combinations. “Here is your box, Señor.” She placed the box on the table, smiled pleasantly at him and turned and left the room. The door hissed closed again behind her.
Jack expectantly span the metal box around on the table. In every movie he’d ever seen, these boxes would be stuffed with cash, jewels and weapons. This was the first real one he’d ever encountered so he was excited to see what treasures might be packed inside.
He lifted the metal cover...
A plain A5-sized manilla envelope lay at the bottom of the large metal receptacle. It was so thin-looking that it was doubtful it contained more than one sheet of paper. One sheet of paper which would almost certainly need to be burned the minute he’d read it.
Jack sighed again, pocketed the envelope, and buzzed on the door to get out.
~~~~~
London
I’m still sleeping a lot. Long, dream-filled sleeps. Dreadful dreams. The ghosts won’t leave me alone. I can see you. I can see little Elizabeth. You’re beckoning to me from the end of your long dark tunnel.
“But the light is this way,” I shout, and beckon for you to come to me. “Come on. Come to me.”
But you don’t move...
You just stand there.
I take a step forward. I want to run but each step hurts too much. The pain becomes excruciating.
“I can’t get there!” I yell into the dark maw and I can see you turning away. Lizzie looks back over your shoulder and waves her little arm...
Then Grey Beard appears at my shoulder, startling me. His gruesome torn face leers toward me with what might possibly be a smile on his bloody lips. “Do the right thing,” he says in a rasping breath, then streaks away, down the tunnel, until he’s alongside you both.
Then Dad’s there, touching my shoulder, leaning in and whispering. “Do the right thing.” Then he’s also with you, and you’re a tiny group of three adults and one swaddling babe in the far distance. You are somewhere I can’t get to, looking back at me over your shoulders. Watching me standing alone here, stranded, as you slowly walk away...
~~~~~
Cordova
Jack was impressed. His expectations had been comprehensively exceeded.
The manilla envelope had contained three whole sheets of wafer-thin paper which were laid out neatly on the coffee table in front of him.
He sat back on the solitary battered sofa for a minute, and glanced round at the piles of rubbish which he’d swept brusquely off the tabletop and which now lay scattered over the surrounding floor.
He’d had more comprehensive orders for cleaning out the latrines than he had here...
Then again, three sheets were better than one.
Four targets had been identified. They were travelling independently across Europe, heading generally east. He had been allocated one of the four, and these few sheets were dedicated almost entirely to him.
The target was expected to cross the border into Northern Spain sometime today. Heading slowly southward toward the Mediterranean.
One of the sheets was a collage of photographs, and he stared into the eyes of the man he had been ordered to kill, while he considered what to do next.
~~~~~