They were standing in the middle of a sizeable barn which, in turn, stood next to a broad patch of woodland a few kilometres into the countryside to the east of Göd. From the outside, the barn appeared innocuous, ramshackle even. Just another abandoned shed in a field. Inside was a different matter. A separate, secure, internal shell had been constructed and the interior was equipped for training including weights-machines, fighting mats, punchbags, straw-men, equipment maintenance tools, and a workbench. The forest outside concealed a hidden hatch to a small buried concrete bunker. Jack hated having to go into it, but the lure of the location’s comprehensive arsenal, hidden therein, helped him muster sufficient motivation to bully past his phobia. Handguns and personal weapons were permitted at the apartment. Everything else stayed here until needed.
“Looks like you’re buying then,” Nick rumbled.
Even for a bulky bloke his voice was surprisingly deep. He spoke only in fragments, almost coughing the words out, and Jack couldn’t help but visualise a nightclub bouncer he’d once found himself befriending near the barracks in Tidworth. It wasn’t a job Jack would fancy: being a bouncer at a nightclub frequented by soldiers... Not the easiest job in the world...
“What next?” Nick interrupted his thoughts.
Jack hadn’t been sure how he’d react to having another agent assigned to him. He’d been on his own for a long time. He didn’t really welcome having to take, even small, responsibility for another soul. Not again.
Fortunately, Nick appeared to be as fucked-up as he was.
One more, super fast, beer in that tiny backstreet bar – Jack hadn’t wanted to linger, or draw attention to his dislike of enclosures – had somehow morphed into a five a.m. stumbling ramble back to the flat and a complete loss of much of the next day to sledgehammer hangovers. The intervening days had been more professional, though the nights had become an unbroken sequence of friendly alcohol consumption sessions. He’d missed having social company. Nick didn’t say much, but what he did say made it clear he was going to be trustworthy if they found themselves in a corner. Call it chemistry or something, but Jack liked him.
More than that, Nick had a lot of skill. Jack had been roundly battered when they’d first tried unarmed combat, and the student had rapidly become the master of the floor mats. His hand-eye coordination was spectacular and Jack had watched, awestruck, when Nick had collected his pack from the railway station left-luggage lockups and unpacked both his stiletto-rig and, even more impressive, Vengeance.
The composite bow had looked like some random Meccano kit when Nick had peeled back the soft bundle on the apartment’s wooden kitchen table. He’d then watched the big man’s hands deftly assemble one of the most complexly beautiful killing devices he’d ever seen.
“Does it work?” he’d foolishly asked at the time.
“I’ll make some arrows and show you,” Nick had replied.
“Make?”
“In pieces it’s transportable,” Nick explained. “Arrows aren’t so easy. They can draw too much attention.”
A few hours in the barn, at the workbench, had yielded several steel-shafted arrows. A few minutes in the woods saw these violently impaled into three plump pigeons – two of which were on the wing – and a few hours later the carrion were sat on a plate in front of him.
Yep. His new buddy could cook too.
The local burger shops would be struggling to replace his trade.
“Come on, buddy,” he said to his waiting partner. “Let’s go and find you a better gun.”
~~~~~
Constanta
Azat Sikand stormed into the flat and slammed the door behind him. “We can’t keep this up much longer,” he stormed. “It’s time to get out of this shit-hole, and go home!”
Murat Nagpal sat impassive, on one of the old battered chairs, amongst the litter of the small derelict flat. He knew that they had to move on at some point. He also knew that they couldn’t go home. Not for a while. The heathen Turkmen political leadership were still kowtowing to the infidels. Friends there had privately confirmed that they were still subject to intense scrutiny from the security forces. Going home would prove disastrous.
Ebrahimi jumped up from his threadbare mattress. “You go, Azat!” he shouted. “I’m sick of the sight of you! Leave me. I’ll wait.”
Sikand struck like a coiled viper, grabbing the young man by the throat with one arm and propelling him backward across the room until he slammed into the mildewed wall with such force that a lump of damp plaster broke loose and tumbled to the floor from above Sergei’s shoulder.
“Enough!” Nagpal barked.
Sikand raised his other fist.
“Enough!” he repeated. “Stand down, soldier!”
Sikand turned his head and Murat felt the force of his furious glare across the space.
“Stand down, Azat,” he said carefully. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“You can stick your job up an old-goat’s butt-hole. I want out of here.”
“We can’t abandon Jeyhun,” Sergei protested from the wall.
Nagpal waited patiently until Sikand reluctantly let go of the younger man. “Good,” he said in response to the momentary armistice. “The boy may well have forgotten the alternative meeting place, or perhaps failed to get the Icarus message? Sergei can stay with me so we can keep watch, and continue to alternate our daily visits to the Cazinoul building. Azat, I want you to go to the original rendezvous. Check in with our friends there. Make sure they are behaving. If the boy is there, then collect him and return here.”
“I’ll go,” said Sergei.
“No,” Murat asserted. “Azat will go. His Hungarian is better than yours and he needs a change of scenery. We cannot continue to monitor Cazinoul without being able to swap the duty between more than one of us. The sea front is becoming busier as the weather improves, but it will be some months until crowds build up to a point which would allow us to blend in easily with them.”
Sikand frowned angrily, “We’d better not still be here in summer.”
“We won’t be,” Murat continued. “But, until then, we must remain cautious.”
Sikand stepped back and walked ignorantly onto Ebrahimi’s mattress, grabbed the young man’s rucksack, and emptied it roughly onto the floor at his feet.
“Hey!” yelled Sergei.
“Your pack is better than mine,” the tall thug growled. “Want to try to stop me?”
Murat said nothing. Best to let Azat satisfy his petty need for small victory and dominance. What difference does a backpack make anyway?
~~~~~
Göd, Hungary
Jack is howling to himself in the shower as I step out of my allocated, shoebox-sized, bedroom. The resident of the larger double bedroom thinks he’s singing and, as usual, he’s left the bathroom door wide open. Now, as I stride as quickly as I can down the short corridor to the main room of the flat, it’s impossible not to glimpse his foamy male physique behind the shower-screen’s steam dribbled glass.
I always shut and lock the door.
I prefer my privacy.
The main room is furnished with a couple of well worn, yet comfortable, two seater sofas and a television clustered sociably at one end. This seating area is arranged in front of a full length wall of sliding glass: the doorway to a small balcony. In daytime it affords views of the river. At the moment this glass wall is backed only by the dark drapes of nighttime.
The other end of the room is taken up with a brightly lit kitchen and dining space. Small but functional. Shaz would get frustrated, but it’s fine for me. I suspect that Jack was relying entirely on the microwave till I arrived. The gaggle of boxes he’d hurriedly cleared away, when he finally sobered up on that first morning, paid testament to it.
Blimey, that was one hell of a hangover... I think I drank more beer that evening than in the whole of the rest of my life put together, and it feels like we’ve been trying to maintain the pace ever since. On the plus side, I’m developing a taste for lager and in the absence of steroids I’m glad for the carbohydrates.
I wander into the kitchenette and, as much out of habit as anything else, start loading the small dishwasher with the detritus from this evening’s meal. Other than for his good looks, Jack is not much like I’d imagined a secret agent would be but, based on his recent example, I now suspect that they’re all very capable of walking blindly past dirty dishes. Not that I mind too much. He’s a good laugh, and we seem to get on...
Suddenly I feel guilty.
Having him around has been fun. The challenge of training has escalated into open competition between us. Each of us trying to better the other. Every challenge ending with one or the other of us wantonly celebrating our tiny victory to the other’s obvious displeasure. Then in the evenings we have ventured forth, watched the world go by, drank copious volumes of ale and under a safety blanket of alcohol, slowly let our demons come to voice.
Amongst all the people in the world, we know that together we are alone.
“Trust no-one,” Jack had solemnly pronounced at some point during one of our evenings.
Perversely, it would appear that this doesn’t apply to the two of us.
We do seem to trust each other.
I don’t suppose we have any choice.
I’m not sure he remembers, but he has talked about his mates, and someone called Julie, and the loss, and the pain, and I have felt quite honoured to be granted a glimpse of the deep and bitter regret that his momentarily moist eyes shamelessly betrayed. In these conversations I have needed to be more circumspect, though I’ve been no less honest, and he knows I have lost a lot as well.
So, in a short time, we have become all things for each other: coworkers, relentless training coaches, counsellors, and gradually friends.
This is where the guilt comes from.
How can I be enjoying even slender happiness in another’s company? Is it betrayal? I suspect it isn’t, but the rush of sickness I feel bubbling into the pit of my stomach whenever I think of you and Lizzie provides something raw for me to cling onto. There can be no real pleasure for me, no real friends, no communion with humanity. I am severed from these things. Broken at my very core.
Only joining you can make this better.
Only death.
I slam the dishwasher closed and switch it on, then move back to the lounge section. Jack has turned off the shower. I can hear him banging around and humming to himself. It sounds like he’s coming this way.
The toneless racket gets louder until he shamelessly appears in the doorway, stark naked, body glistening and dripping with water. He’s clutching his towel uselessly in his right hand. My eyes drift over his athletic body and, briefly, down to his brazenly uncovered manhood which is swinging pendulously between his strapping thighs. I can’t help but look.
He notices, and scoops up the impressive appendage with his free hand, “Can you see why the ladies find me irresistible?” he says as he gesticulates with it in my direction.
“Your sparkling wit and repartee?” I mutter.
He barks his barking laugh and spins away, tight muscular buttocks flicking droplets of water in every direction.
I turn away, angry at myself, but he’s still there, reflected in the huge windows as he ambles slowly into the kitchen area toward the fridge.
“Beer?” he asks over a broad slab of shoulder blade.
I need to think about something else...
I focus on that ancient gloss-black bollard; call to mind the scudding grey clouds; the last glimpse of buggy-enshrouded, knitted, pink, bobble-hat; the sight of you smiling, waving, vanishing into a cloud of smoke and fire...
“Come on Nick, get your arse in the shower, let’s get out on the pull, give the Hungarian girls a glimpse of the best of British!”
I snarl to myself, and pull the patio door and his lush reflection to one side – out of sight.
“Where are you going?”
I step out onto the balcony.
“Nick?”
There are two small, rusting, patio chairs out here. I climb onto one of them. Then up onto the top of the rickety table which permanently separates them.
“Nick, you crazy fucker, what are you doing?”
Then onto the narrow balcony rail.
“NICK!”
Then leap into the embrace of dark space...
I am flying. Arms outstretched like faux-wings on either side. The wind is streaming over my face, fingers, body as I fly forwards and down. Down toward the hard, unforgiving, ground...
“NICK!”
His voice is loud behind me. He must have rushed out onto the balcony.
I can feel the airstream tugging at my jeans and my shirt and just for a moment I am free, but there is no escape here, no freedom, no brutal hard flat concrete to end it all. No, the cold grey Danube waits patiently for my arrival.
The air curls itself around my outstretched fingers and the pristine arc of my stretched body.
I have no idea how deep the river is here. It crawls beneath me as a grey sheet of marbled flatness. Perhaps the river is full of refuse? Most rivers seem to be. Maybe there’s a nice sharp pylon waiting for me? Waiting there in the wet blackness for relentless gravity to drive it through my pitiful torso?
Death, however, does not appear to be close and neither are there any ghosts in sight, so at the last moment I curl, tuck, roll and crash – backside first – into the deluge with a mighty splash. The surprisingly rapid current pulls me under and the world turns to brackish grey. For a moment I wonder whether the cold hands of the river will grab hold of my flailing limbs and drag me down to a watery doom but, sadly, the filthy water has no interest in me and spits me, like a little yellow rubber duck, right back up to the surface.
I gasp a lungful of air as I erupt from the water and shake my head to clear my eyes and ears. As I bob along I can hear him shouting from the rapidly retreating balcony.
Mainly swear words as far as I can tell.
I keep swimming downstream and tack over toward the far shore.
It will be a long wet walk back, I suppose.