“Don’t hurt me,” whispered Alex, as Malchus opened up the cut on his neck a little wider.
Malchus put his face close to Alex’s, so their noses were almost touching. He could feel Alex’s breath coming in hard short bursts, and see the terror in the younger man’s eyes. “It won’t hurt,” Malchus answered softly. “Not for long.”
Alex tried to push Malchus away, but he was no match for the bigger man’s bulk.
“Be calm, now,” Malchus murmured, his face only an inch from Alex’s. “He is your shield and helper.”
“What?” Alex whimpered, pressing his body as far back into the seat as he could to get away from the blade. “What are you on about?”
“And your glorious sword.” Malchus continued in a soft tone, leaning closer to Alex, lowering the knife so it was level with his chest.
“I made a mistake,” stammered Alex his eyes wide with terror. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Your enemies will cower before you,” Malchus continued, feeling a rush of gratification at the mounting horror he could see in Alex’s eyes, and the expanding damp patch staining the crotch of the young man’s jeans.
Placing the razor-sharp tip of the blade between the third and fourth ribs to the right of Alex’s sternum, he held it there, pushing it so it pricked him.
“What are you doing?” stammered Alex. “Please, God—don’t.” His breaths were coming in anguished rasps.
“And you will trample down their high places,” Malchus concluded quietly, slamming the blade in forcefully, leaning against it with all his weight, pushing it hard through the thick intercostal muscles and deep into Alex’s hammering heart.
If Alex had ever read the Bible, he might have recognized Malchus’s words as Moses’s dying speech from the book of Deuteronomy.
But he had not. So the last words he heard as his life slipped away were meaningless gibberish—spoken quietly by a man he had realized, too late, was quite insane.
Picking up the twelfth sheet of vellum from the folder and placing it into the archive box with the others, Malchus did up the string fastener and put it all into Alex’s rucksack along with the envelope of money.
Closing the car door carefully behind him with his gloved hand, he slipped on the rucksack and tightened the straps.
Without turning to look back, he pulled off the silicone gloves and stuffed them into his pocket, before heading down the street to join the anonymous crowds jostling around King’s Cross railway station.
——————— ◆ ———————
The Malet Arms
Newton Tony
Nr Salisbury
Wiltshire SP4
England
The United Kingdom
Ava sat down by the large inglenook fireplace.
There were no chairs—just a pair of worn oak benches. They had probably been church pews once, she thought. Still, they fitted effortlessly into the small five-hundred-year-old pub, among its gnarled black wooden roof beams, low plaster ceilings, and irregular dark corners.
There were no television screens, arcade games, or speakers chirping out canned music. It was a traditional cosy country inn on the Plain, hung with old horse brasses, prints of rural scenes, and occasional items of hunting memorabilia.
She spotted Ferguson the moment he came through the low door. He ducked to avoid banging his head on the ceiling, and made his way straight over to her.
She had tried to call him from her mobile, but it had been out of battery, so she had used the payphone in the pub.
She had been wondering what she was going to say to him when he arrived. She knew she would have landed him in hot water with Prince by ditching him at Stonehenge. She would not like to be in his shoes when he made his report.
Even though it was summer and there was no fire lit in the grate, a large fawn-coloured English mastiff padded over to the space in front of the fire and flopped down on the tiles.
She scratched its ears absent-mindedly as Ferguson approached.
“I see you’re ahead of me again.” He nodded at her half-finished drink. “You’re making a bit of a habit of that.”
“Cider?” She was not quite sure what he meant.
“Being ahead of me. Where did you get to today? You missed the rendezvous.” He looked like it had been a long day.
She was not sure how much to tell him. Instinctively, she wanted as little leakage back to Prince as possible. But she was not going to lie to him.
“I had an opportunity to get close to Malchus, and I took it,” she answered truthfully.
“That’s it?” he asked, when it was clear she was not going to elaborate any further.
She nodded. “Probably best to spare you the details.”
“That’s a nasty looking cut you’ve got there.” He pointed to her left eye.
She put a finger up to it, and felt a scab where Malchus had jabbed his rosary’s sharpened hexagram pendant into her face. She had not noticed it before, but found it was tender to the touch. “It’s nothing,” she answered dismissively. “I got a tree branch in my face.”
From his expression, she could tell he did not believe her for a moment.
“Look, I understand you don’t want me around,” he admitted, dropping down onto the bench opposite her. “But why call and get me over here if you’re not going to tell me what’s going on? Why not just slip away into the night?”
Ava felt a little sheepish. “I understand if you want to say ‘no’, but right now I could do with a bit of help with something that’s come up.”
Ferguson looked nonplussed. He dug his hands into his jeans pockets and looked pensive, weighing up his response. “I’m not sure that’s going to be the best way,” he answered. “We need to think a bit more about this.” With that, he got up and headed over to the bar.
She watched him wander across the room and start a light-hearted exchange with the landlord as he ordered his drink.
He returned with a pint of beer, and sipped it thoughtfully as he sat down opposite her again, looking appreciatively at the mahogany-coloured liquid before turning his gaze back to her. “Anyway, you want a favour?” He left the rest of the sentence unspoken, but she got his meaning immediately—
even though you don’t want me around
. “I’ve got things to do, too, you know,” he continued. “And running around a hippie-trippie festival for six hours trying to find you isn’t one of them.”
She did not blame him for feeling resentful.
“But,” he continued. “I do owe you a favour.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You do?”
He took a sip of his beer before continuing. “To pay you back for pulling me off the boat in Kazakhstan.”
She would not have thought of it that way. What was the alternative? Leave him there to be gassed? Still, if he wanted to see it as a favour, that was fine by her. “So we have a deal?”
Ferguson shook his head. “Not so fast. Because you owe me a favour, too.”
“I do?” It was news to Ava.
Ferguson continued unabashed. “For the file on Malchus I pulled for you. I didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, you did,” she countered. “You guessed, correctly, that it was your best shot at getting me into your car this morning. You were just doing your job.”
“Well, yes and no.” He paused. “But I didn’t have to share it all with you. And I didn’t have to get you this.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to her.
She scanned it quickly.
It was a photocopy of a short typed letter on Foreign and Commonwealth Office notepaper, but bearing MI6’s Vauxhall Cross address and signed with a single initial—‘C’.
As she read it, her curiosity turned to increasing disbelief.
By the time she had reached the last line, her face had drained of all colour.
“Was this in the file, too?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Ferguson nodded. “I figured as it was a duplicate file copy, no one would miss it.”
Ava stared hard at the piece of paper, trying to make sense of what she had just read.
It was a copy of an official letter from the Chief of MI6 to the Director of Public Prosecutions—the head of the government agency in charge of bringing criminal prosecutions in the UK.
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
85, ALBERT EMBANKMENT
LONDON S.W.8
12th December 2002
Dear Sir,
Under the 1951 guidelines issued by Sir Hartley Shawcross and successive Attorneys-General, and as stated in the current
Code for Crown Prosecutors
, prosecutions for criminal offences are to be brought if they are in the public interest.
I hereby inform you that it is not considered in the public interest to contemplate any further investigation into, or prosecution against, the German national Oskar Boehme (also known as Marius Malchus) in connection with the death of Her Majesty’s servant Simon Curzon.
Yours, etc.
C
Ava’s insides knotted.
She read the letter again, just in case she had misunderstood it. But she had not.
It was clear.
General Hunter had been telling the truth.
But he had clearly not told her everything. He had said there was a
suspicion
Malchus was involved in her father’s death. Yet if the Chief was ordering a halt to all criminal investigations, it went way beyond a suspicion. This letter was an official whitewash—an unambiguous order not to ask any more questions.
And it came right from the top.
Ava was breathing rapidly, as the years of suppressed frustration turned into palpable resentment.
“Does it seem right to you?” She held out the paper. “Does it? I’m not naïve. I know the Chief signs orders like these to protect agents and operations. But I’m a relative. I was in the service. We were all family. Why on earth wasn’t I told? How could they keep this from me?”
She looked up at Ferguson, her eyes dark with anger. “Is this how they show their appreciation, after all he did for them?”
She knew she was speaking more freely than she had intended. She was angry with them. And angry with herself. She could not believe she had allowed herself to be fobbed off so easily. She should have put up more of a fight, and not just accepted that it was policy not to give family members details of deaths on operational duty.
She looked back at the letter.
This changed everything
.
It was now clear there was a bigger picture behind it all. And the way she saw it, she should have been told. If there had been an ongoing operation, they could have involved her. It would have helped give her closure—helped her to feel she was doing something. But instead they had done what they did best—keep secrets.
When she turned to face him again, her voice was quieter. “Anyway, why are you giving me this? Did Prince tell you to pass it to me? Is this one of her games? To make me grateful so I let you further into my confidence?” Her voice was steady, masking the maelstrom she was feeling inside.
Ferguson shook his head slowly. “No. I’m on my own with this one.”
She stared hard at him, defying him to lie to her.
He shrugged. “I figured if it was me, I’d want to know.”
She examined his face closely for the first time, searching out signs of tension or conflict. But there were none. She wondered if he was an accomplished deceiver, like so many others who worked for the Firm. But she knew instinctively he was not. He was a soldier—more practised at bravado and banter than deception.
“In which case—thank you,” she replied simply. “It’s important to me.” She paused, aware her reaction had left no doubt of the fact. “But I guess you already knew that.”
“So what’s the favour?” he asked, changing the subject.
Ava took a sip of her cider and pushed the hair out of her face, as if to brush away what she had just learned.
“I need the details on a big Elizabethan country house about two miles west of here—who owns it, who visits it, anything known about it. The usual. Malchus seems to have an open invitation to treat it as his own.”
“No problem. I can get that for you. I’ve got the gear in the car.”
“Good. Let’s find out then,” she answered decisively, swilling what was left of her cider around the glass before draining it and putting the empty glass down on the low side table.
“Not quite yet,” he said, holding up a hand. “There’s still the favour you owe me.”
She had forgotten, but nodded.
Fair was fair.
“You think I’m in the way, and you don’t want me dragging around behind you. But I’ll be open with you—I’m not having much fun, either. So I’m going to stop trailing you.”
That sounded good. “But that’s not exactly me doing you a favour,” Ava replied.
“No,” he continued, “so here’s my request. Give me three days. That’s all I ask. Just three days, and then I’m gone if you say so. But in that time, tell me what you’re up to. Let me try and help. If, after three days, you still think I’m wasting your time, I’ll report back to Prince, tell her you’re going nowhere fast, and recommend she should forget about you and explore other avenues.”
He looked solemnly at her. “That’s it. Three days and we’re quits. But you never know, in that time you might find we make a good team.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked. “Why would you go back to Prince and get her off my trail?”
“I’ve got to give you some incentive to keep me around,” he smiled. “Because what you’re getting into looks way more interesting than anything else I’m likely to be asked to do.”
Ava weighed it up. “If you’re saying we’re quits in three days, and I can move forward without Prince and you on my case, that’s a no-brainer.”
“We’ll see,” he answered confidently.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she shot him a curious look.
“The mind is like a parachute,” he replied earnestly.
She raised an eyebrow at him, inviting an explanation
“Useless,” he smiled, “unless it’s open.”
“A bar-room philosopher, too,” she shook her head in mock bewilderment. “Then we have a deal. Let’s go.”
Ferguson leant towards her. “That cut really does look nasty,” he peered closely at it with a concerned expression. “You should clean it. I’ll see if the landlord has any antiseptic.”
Ava pulled back, and stood up. “Let’s get one thing straight.” She was speaking slowly and deliberately, her friendliness gone. “We may have an understanding. But that’s all it is. Leave the personal touch out of it.”
The look of concern melted from Ferguson’s face, to be replaced with a businesslike expression. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”
“Let’s go then,” Ava stepped past the dog. “We’ve got work to do.”
Ferguson stared for a moment at his pint of ale, barely touched. With a sigh he put it down and made for the door.
She headed to the bar and had a quick conversation with the landlord before joining Ferguson by the door.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“I just wanted some antiseptic for the cut,” she replied.
“But I thought—” he began, before Ava interrupted him.
“I’m not an idiot,” she smiled. “Last thing I need is a septic cut on my face. Now let’s go.”
Ferguson stared after her in disbelief as she stepped out of the door into the dusk.