Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2) (7 page)

Chapter Fourteen

F
aik had spent the day twitching with nerves. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ahmed’s meeting with the governor had been scheduled for the morning. The guards came for him after breakfast, opening the door and
escorting
him away to the administration block. He clasped Faik’s hand before he left.

“Don’t worry, Faik. I can be a persuasive advocate. I can make a nuisance of myself. There is a saying: the squeaky hinge gets the oil. If I squeak enough, they will have to listen to me.”

It would have been an exaggeration to say that Faik was
reassured
, but he did feel a little more at ease knowing that something, at least, was being done. He had slept badly that night, and he was still dead tired. There was a little more space in the cell now that Ahmed was out of the way, so Faik stretched out as much as he could, rested his head on his folded arms and tried to relax. He thought of his mother and his little sister, and eventually it was her beautiful face that he remembered as he drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

Faik awoke in the afternoon feeling a little more refreshed. He pushed himself up so that he was sitting against the wall and looked around him at the cell. The striplight overhead had finally died, and now the gloom was lit only by a shaft of light from the
corridor
adjacent
to it. The other prisoners were either asleep or staring dumbly at the walls and the bars of their cage. Faik scrubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes in an attempt to wake up.

He looked around.

There was no Ahmed.

Had he been successful?

Where was he?

A guard was sitting in a chair in the corridor, a shotgun resting across his lap. He was snoring lightly, his sleep untroubled by the muffled cries of pain that could occasionally be heard from the direction of the interrogation block.

A group of six men sat together, and Faik eavesdropped on their conversation. They were talking about Ahmed, and he
gathered
that they were among the prisoners that he was representing. They noticed that he was listening, and once he had explained that he was one of their number, they invited him to join them. He picked his way over the out-flung limbs of prisoners who passed the
interminable
time in sleep and sat down amid them.

They introduced themselves: an oil worker, an accountant, a shopkeeper, two engineers and a driver.

“What do you do?” the accountant asked him.

“I am trying to find work.”

“What does your father do?”

“He was a soldier.”

“And you don’t like the idea of that?”

“No,” he said.

The men laughed.

“No indeed. A most dangerous profession.”

“I was at the oilfield. I want to work there.”

They scoffed.

“Good luck. Those jobs are not intended for Iraqis.”

The accountant indicated the busy cell. “We were wondering where our advocate has gone.”

“Maybe he has negotiated his own release and forgotten about the rest of us.”

Faik’s eyes went wide. “Do you think he . . . ?”

“Relax. It was a joke.”

“He is an honourable man.”

“Do you think he will be able to get us out?”

“I don’t know. But anything is worth a try.”

The guard outside the cell was listening to their conversation. He opened his eyes, stretched and yawned. “I wouldn’t set too much hope in your friend Ahmed,” he said. “He won’t be able to help you.”

“Why not?” asked the engineer.

“Because he’s not coming back, friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“The governor doesn’t take kindly to be lectured by
criminals
.” He spat the last word with eloquent distaste. “He sent the good lawyer to the interrogation block before lunch. I heard he had a heart attack and, well . . .” He allowed his tongue to poke out of his mouth and angled his head to the side.

“They killed him?”

“His heart, like I said. Tragic.”

Faik struggled to his feet and ploughed through the others to the cell door.

“Let me out,” he yelled at the guard. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I shouldn’t be here.”

He wrapped his fingers around the bars and started to rattle the door.

The guard rose from his chair. “Get back, boy,” he said.

“I’m not a criminal. They shot my mother!”

He shook the door again, the metal clanking loudly.

The guard reversed his shotgun and drove the butt, hard, against Faik’s fingers. His right hand flashed with sudden pain, and he let go of the bars.

The guard spun the shotgun again and pointed it at him. “Sit down, boy,” he said with naked menace. “You don’t want the same thing to happen to you, do you?”

Chapter Fifteen

T
he restaurant was rudimentary. They took a table near the window with a view across a parched lawn to the
concrete
blocks that had been deployed to stop car bombers from getting too close to the main building. The hotel was inhabited by plenty of Westerners, and it would have been a fine prize for the insurgents. Private guards, armed with automatic rifles, were
stationed
outside. Beatrix watched them for a moment and was not impressed. It would have been a simple thing to get past them.

To the left was the river, where motorboats and fishing skiffs churned through the sluggish brown silt. There was a freighter that had turned turtle off the main dock and bullet-marked buildings on the foreshore were reminders that this was until recently a cit
y at war.

They waited for the waiter to bring them their menus.

“What’s your story?” Beatrix asked him.

“What? Before the Group?”

“Sure.”

“Special Boat Service.”

“And before that?”

“Just a grunt. Did my time, here and there. Nothing special.”

“You must have something. You made Special Forces.”

“Must have gotten lucky.”

False modesty. She ignored it. “What have you done so far for Pope?”

“Nothing. I’ve been training for six months. This is the
firs
t thing.”

Beatrix had realised that he was green, but there was green and then there was
green
. She wasn’t interested in babysitting a rookie.

Faulkner must have read her concern.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said, a little indignantly.

“I’m sure you do,” she said, although she knew from experience that a career in Special Forces and a career in Group Fifteen were very different things. The former did not adequately prepare for the latter. It provided minimum baselines for physical and tactical
capabilities
, but active service in the Group required a certain
mental
state, an ethical flexibility, that came only with experience. It was something that was absorbed, the way that radiation seeped into the bones, slowly mutating the cells until the agent became something else entirely. It was a contamination. Faulkner, young and used only to stark blacks and whites, would not yet have been exposed to enough of it. She would have to remember that.

He was looking at her curiously. “What happened in Russia?”

“How much do you know?”

“I know half the Group were killed.”

She nodded.

“And that you were involved.”

She looked at him, as he was looking at her, and she nodded again. “Group Fifteen had a serious problem with vermin. An
infestation
. The man who was Control before Pope was the worst of all. He tried to kill me. He killed my husband and kidnapped my child. He tried to kill the agent who was Number One after me, too.”

“John Milton?”

“That’s right. You’ve heard of him?”

He gaped. “Of course I have. He’s a legend.”

Beatrix smiled. Green
and
starry-eyed.

“How many did he send?”

“He sent six to take us out. We sent six back in body bags. I expect Pope is working hard to replace them.”

“He didn’t say very much. I knew something had happened, but it’s not like what I’m used to. There’s no banter. I haven’t even met any of the other agents.”

“And you won’t, or at least not very often. You work alone most of the time.”

The waiter appeared with their menus. There was an ex-pat in the kitchen, but he was hamstrung by the selection of ingredients that were available to him. They ordered steak and chips, and when the food came, Beatrix found she was very hungry.

She set about her steak. “I need equipment,” she said between mouthfuls.

“The Group has a quartermaster operating out of Basra. He’ll get you whatever you need. We’ll go first thing tomorrow.”

“And then?”

“I thought we could take a drive out to Rumaila. Take a look around.”

They ate in silence for a moment.

“Do you want to tell me what your plan is?” he asked her.

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t even know exactly what you’re here to do.”

“Two things.”

“I know what I’m here to do: get Mackenzie West out of Iraq.”

“That’s the first thing. What do you know?”

“Just what Pope told me: that he wants to go public about the way Manage Risk are behaving with the locals. And that we want him to do that so he can cause them a headache.”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s Pope’s agenda, isn’t it? The government’s? What are you here for? The second thing?”

“The vermin problem.”

“There’s a rat here?”

She nodded. “A particularly nasty one. A man who works for Manage Risk. Bryan Duffy. He and I have unfinished business. I need to be alone with him for five minutes.”

“The kind of meeting where two people go in and one person comes out?”

“You’ve got the idea.”

“Alright, then. That’s all I need to know.”

“You’ve got no problem with that?”

“I wouldn’t be in the Group if I did, would I?”

“No,” Beatrix said. “You wouldn’t.”

Let’s see
, she thought.
Let’s see if you still feel that way when it’
s time.

“Which order do you want to go after them?”

“I don’t think it makes much difference. Duffy knows I’m co
ming.”

“So what’s first?”

“Let’s have a look around tomorrow. I might get an idea.”

They had a drink after their meal, and then Beatrix excused herself and said that she needed to rest. Faulkner stayed at the table, finishing his beer. He paid the check, stood and, making sure that she had gone up to her room and wasn’t waiting in reception, went outside to the parking lot. He got into his Freelander and drove the short distance into downtown Basra.

He parked on the Corniche al-Basra, near the Lion of Babylon square. The area was busy with people, and traffic rolled alongside, impatient horns sounding. The buildings nearby were pocked with bullet holes, and there were deep, untidy piles of rubble all about. The street lamps overhead flickered on and off, casting intermittent puddles of light down onto the sidewalk.

The passenger door opened and Captain Michael Pope slid into the seat. He was wearing a white
dishdasha
, a long Iraqi robe that reached down to his ankles. A scarf was pulled up over his mouth and nose. He pulled the scarf down.

“Good evening, sir,” Faulkner said.

“How did it go?”

“Fine. I picked her up and brought her across.”

“How is she?”

“Combative.”

“I know that, Twelve,” Pope said impatiently. “Physically?”

Faulkner was puzzled. “She looks alright. Why?”

“You don’t think she looks ill?”

“She’s thin,” he said, “but ill? I don’t know. Can’t say I noticed.”

“Keep it in mind,” Pope said. “You’re going to spend time with her. More than I have. Something’s not right and I can’t put my finger on it. And if I’m right, I need to know about it. Alright?”

“Yes, sir.”

He shifted, the robe tightening so that Faulkner could see the shape of a holstered weapon beneath his armpit. “What’s your plan for tomorrow?”

“I’m going to get her equipped, and then we’re going to go and have a look at the oil field. If I can persuade her to go after your man first, I will.”

Pope nodded his approval. “Keep her focussed on that.
Promising
that she would get him out was the
only
way I could have this cleared. I cannot afford for this to go wrong.”

“I understand, sir.”

Pope pulled the scarf up around his mouth again.

“Keep me on top of everything and if you need me, call. But
no one
else can know I’m here. As far as SIS is concerned, I’m in London.”

“Yes, sir.”

He opened the door and disappeared into the busy night.