The John Milton Series Box Set 4 Page 14

  Pope pressed the button on his radio.

  “WATCHER, I’ve got PAPERCLIP. Please send pickup to my location. Over.”

  “Copy that, Five. The others? Over.”

  “Gone. Have you informed the police? Over.”

  “I have. But it’s late. Minimal assets available. Over.”

  Pope knew it was a lost cause. Timoshev and Kuznetsov were in the wind. “Copy that, WATCHER. Out.”

  Pope ended the call and took his phone out of his pocket. He switched on the flashlight and shone the beam on the old man’s face. The blood covered his face from his scalp all the way down to his chin, and more was still pouring from the gash. Pope opened the camera app, snapped off two quick photographs, and emailed them to Global Logistics. Then, he put the phone on the ground, the beam shining up, and frisked the man. He found a wallet inside his jacket and flipped it open. There was a driver’s licence in the name of Vincent Beck. Nothing else of interest.

  Pope looked down at the old man. It had already been a rough night for him. That was a nasty gash on his forehead, but it was just an hors d’oeuvre for what was coming next. Pope didn’t envy him. His night was going to get much, much worse.

  Farnborough

  40

  It was two in the morning and the motorway was empty. Pope was driving the plain black Range Rover that had been driven to Winchester by one of the Group Three bloodhounds. Vincent Beck was in the back, his hands cuffed behind him. PAPERCLIP had regained consciousness not long after Pope had loaded him into the car. He had been groggy and had grunted and groaned in response to Pope’s simple questions.

  He followed the M3 northeast, approaching Farnborough on the way to Vauxhall Cross. Pope had pushed the speed up to a hundred and ten. The satnav suggested that they would be at their destination by three at the latest. There was no time to delay; Tanner had already relayed Control’s orders that they debrief PAPERCLIP as quickly as they could. Timoshev and Kuznetsov—and any other agents for whom Beck was responsible—would not be in the country for long. If they wanted to stop them, they would have to find them in the next few hours.

  “Where are they?” Pope asked, looking up into the mirror so that he could see Beck’s response.

  “Where are who?”

  “Come on, Beck. This isn’t going to help you.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are talking about.”

  “You know what’s coming. When we get to London—you know, right? It’ll be easier this way. Just tell me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr…”

  “My name doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I really do not know what you mean. I hit my head. I need to see a doctor.”

  Pope drove on, his knuckles whitening around the wheel. “You’re going to have an awful morning if we get to London and you haven’t given us anything.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  What was the point in talking to him? Pope doubted that it would be fruitful and, anyway, there was something to be said for letting him stew in his own thoughts. If he was the agent runner responsible for the two sleepers, then he would know the gravity of the situation that he had found himself in. Despite that, Beck remained composed as Pope followed the motorway. His age suggested experience and he was probably old enough to have a realistic fatalism about what would find him eventually. Death or capture. It came to them all, one way or another. Pope was very aware of it. Not many made it out on their own terms.

  They passed a sign for Fleet Services.

  “I’m sorry,” Beck said. “I need the bathroom.”

  “You’ll have to wait.”

  “I can’t. Please—I’m old. When I have to go… well, you know. I’m sorry, it’s embarrassing, but there’s nothing I can do. Please.”

  Pope told Beck to hold on, flicked the indicator and took the slip road off the motorway. He slowed down, turned into the car park and found a space next to the buildings. He got out, went around to Beck’s side, and helped him to get down, too. The old man’s hands were still behind his back. Pope stood him against the car and, for the second time, frisked him. There was nothing of concern. Pope took the key for the cuffs from his pocket and unlocked them.

  Beck rubbed his wrists. “Thank you,” he said.

  Pope gripped Beck’s elbow and led the way to the entrance. The car park was lit by the yellow sodium wash of the overhead lights and they could hear the occasional rush of cars on the motorway. Beck allowed himself to be led, reaching up to remove his spectacles as if to clean them. Pope paid no heed to it until Beck put one arm of the spectacles into his mouth and bit down on it. Pope reached for his hand and pulled it away from his mouth; the glasses fell to the ground and shattered, and, as Pope looked, he saw that Beck had chewed down hard on the arm so that a section of the plastic was missing.

  Shit.

  Beck was already gasping for breath. Pope manoeuvred him to a bench and lowered him down onto it. He grabbed the spectacles and examined them; the missing piece of plastic was a cap for the compartment that would have held a sodium or potassium cyanide pellet. The compartment was empty.

  “You stupid fucker,” Pope said.

  Beck stared up at him. He was already frothing at the mouth. Pope had been trained on the use of cyanide and knew precisely how it worked. The chemical affected the haemoglobin in the blood, compromising its ability to transport oxygen around the body. Cyanide led to death by asphyxiation. He might have been able to reverse the process with amyl nitrate, but he didn’t have any. Pope loosened the old man’s collar, but it was hopeless. His lips were blue and, as Pope leaned over him, his breathing grew shallow and, finally, stopped.

  London

  41

  Milton woke up. He lay on the damp sheets and concentrated on his breathing—in and out, in and out—until he found a point of balance, some equilibrium, something stable that he could build upon. He didn’t feel nauseous any longer but, instead, he just felt washed out. His sleep had not been restorative; quite the opposite. It was as if the strength had been allowed to drain out of him, as if his resistance had been scoured away.

  He opened his eyes. The bedroom was a mess. He had undressed down to his shorts, and his trousers and shirt were strewn over the back of the wooden chair in the corner of the room. He reached across to the bedside table to his right, scrabbling through the loose change, his cigarettes and lighter until he felt the links of his watch strap. He took it, holding the watch close to his face until he was able to focus on the time.

  It was one o’clock in the afternoon. He tried to remember what had happened after he had left the property in Kings Worthy. He couldn’t recall what time he had made it back to his apartment, but, he knew that he must have been out of it for several hours. He turned over so that he could look for his phone; it wasn’t on the bedside table, which meant that it was probably still in the pocket of his jeans.

  He sat up, and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His head throbbed and he tasted vomit, stale cigarette smoke and alcohol in his mouth. He glanced around the room and saw the detritus of another lost night and morning. There was a bottle of gin on the floor, resting on its side; there was an inch of liquid still inside it, a damp patch darkening the carpet just beneath the mouth. He saw three crumpled tin cans in the wastepaper basket and a bottle of prescription sleeping pills, the contents spilled out over the floor.

  He put his feet down and gingerly stood up. A fresh wave of vomit bubbled up his gullet, and he stumbled to the bathroom to lower his head over the toilet bowl, just in time. His vomit was thin and acidic, followed by mouthfuls of bile. He spat it all out, rubbed the sweat off his face with a hand towel and then ran the shower. He stripped and stepped into the cubicle, turning his face so that the water could splash off him.

  He stood there for five minutes, scrubbing away the dirt of the previous day. A wave of guilt swept over him. He thought of the dream, of Callaghan, of the latest in the long
line of victims whom he had murdered. He thought of all the others, the men and women, more than a hundred of them. They all visited him in his dreams, the things that he had done replaying over and over again: a knife slashed across a throat, the muzzle of a gun pushed against a head, a chokehold cinched until life drained away. They visited him more and more often. Milton thought of them and imagined all the others that he would be asked to kill if he continued working for Control. How many more victims? How many more dreams?

  He felt dizzy and thought that he was going to be sick again; he spat out a mouthful of phlegm, but the moment passed.

  He needed to get out of the Group. He had known it before, a thought that drifted through his consciousness like a phantom, but it was tangible now. He couldn’t ignore it. He knew that it wouldn’t be easy—that it might not even be possible—but he knew, with complete conviction, that his career spent murdering for the government needed to come to an end.

  Milton towelled himself off and went back into the bedroom. He found his jeans, fished his phone out of the pocket, and checked the display. There were no missed calls. He didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad sign, but he put it out of his mind. He opened the browser and navigated to the page that he had bookmarked, the one that showed the details of the AA meetings in London. There was one near Dalston in an hour. He found clean clothes in his wardrobe and dressed, putting on his shoulder holster with the Group-issue Sig. He hid it beneath his jacket, pulled on a pair of boots and made his way to the door.

  42

  Milton performed careful counter-surveillance on his journey. He took a bus from his flat in Chelsea, riding it for ten minutes before hopping off and getting another that headed back in the opposite direction. He hurried down into the underground and changed trains twice before boarding the eastbound East London Line train that eventually deposited him at Dalston Junction station. It was a classic dry-cleaning run and now, as he emerged from the station onto the street, he was confident that he was black. It felt ridiculous to have to assure himself that he was not being surveilled by his own people, but this would hardly have been the first time that Control had assigned agents to follow one of his own. Control was paranoid, his neuroses bred in the suspicions of a divided Berlin, and Milton knew that he had to be careful.

  He walked east. St. Jude and St. Paul’s Church was on Mildmay Grove, a pleasant road to the north of one of the main thoroughfares that passed through this part of central London. It was a warm afternoon and Milton unzipped his jacket a little. Milton could see half a dozen men and women ambling toward the entrance of the church and he felt the same mixture of anxiety and nervousness as he had felt at the hospital meeting last night. He delayed, pausing on the bridge to watch a train as it passed through the cut. The church was ahead of him, on the junction of King Henry’s Road. There was a row of terraced houses beyond it that would once have offered accommodation to the workers who had made this part of London their home, but had now been forced out by rising prices that could only be afforded by the professionals who travelled into the city every morning. There were expensive cars parked in bays on both sides of the road, with a leafy canopy overhead. The tall spire of the church reached up high into the afternoon sky. Milton looked back to the entrance and watched as the men and women went inside. He looked at his watch: a minute before two. The meeting was about to start.

  He had come all this way. He wasn’t going to turn around now. He tried to rationalise it: he would go in and see what happened. He wouldn’t speak, and if he didn’t like it, he would never have to come again. There was nothing to lose.

  The gates that separated the churchyard from the pavement were open, and the blue cardboard sign that had been tied to the railing fluttered in the gentle breeze. Milton reached up and took it between his thumb and forefinger: it was a blue circle with a white triangle inside it and, inside that, two white As. Milton released the sign, watched it twist in the wind, and then, swallowing down on a dry throat, he pushed the gate open and walked up the path to the door.

  There was a lobby just inside. The church was built from stone, and it was cool here out of the sunshine. It reminded Milton of a crypt, but it also felt peaceful and calm. A table had been folded open and a large urn of hot water had been set up. There was a collection of dirty cups, a handful that were still clean, and a plate of biscuits. The table was unattended; the woman who Milton guessed had been responsible for the refreshments was making her way into a small hall to the right. Milton followed.

  The hall wasn’t large, and had rows of stacking chairs along the stone walls. The chairs were almost all taken; Milton guessed that there were twenty-five men and women here. They were talking quietly to one another, the meeting not yet started. There was a table with two chairs behind it. There was a lit candle on the table and a poster had been blu-tacked to the front of it. The poster was made to look like a parchment scroll, with twelve separate points running from the top to the bottom. The poster was headed THE TWELVE STEPS TO RECOVERY.

  Milton had hoped to take a seat at the back of the room where he could melt into the background, but he could see that that would be impossible. The chairs were arranged so that they all faced into the middle; there was nowhere that Milton could go where the others would not be able to look at him. The arrangement spooked him, and he was about to turn around and leave when he felt someone behind him.

  He turned.

  “Hello.”

  It was the man that he had spoken to outside the meeting yesterday evening. He tried to remember his name, but couldn’t.

  The man saw Milton’s confusion. “It’s Michael. We met yesterday.”

  Milton definitely wanted to leave now. This was a bad mistake. He shouldn’t be here.

  “You want to sit over there?”

  There were two chairs together on the opposite side of the room. Milton was about to say no, to make his apologies and leave, but Michael was in the way and some of the others were looking up at them.

  “Take your seats, please,” a woman in the middle of the room said. “Hello. My name is Laura, and I’m an alcoholic. Let’s get started.”

  Michael put his hand on Milton’s shoulder. “Just stay and listen,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  Milton flinched at the touch of the man’s hand, but he didn’t try to leave. He flashed back to the dream again, and the drink and the drugs that he had abused in an attempt to keep his memories at arm’s length, and he knew that he had to try something else. His method wasn’t working. More than that, it was making things worse; he knew that he would kill himself if he continued on the same path. He was here now. He was black, no one knew who he was, and no one needed to know. Michael was right; he would sit down and listen. What harm could come of that?

  43

  Milton found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed the meeting. There was a formal structure to it, with the woman who had spoken first—Michael leaned over and whispered that she was the secretary—introducing the speaker who was going to share her story with the others. The speaker was in her forties, Milton guessed, and looked like any one of the women who could be seen with their babies in expensive prams outside the coffee shops in Highbury and Islington. Milton had expected that her story would be dull and have no correlation to his own and, at least in content, he was right. She spoke about a boring life, the tedium of looking after two small children, and a career that she had abandoned for her kids but that she now missed terribly. Milton’s first conclusion was that she had nothing to offer him, but, as she spoke about why she drank, he started to see the points of similarity. She had guilt: she loved her children but didn’t feel that she was a good mother, and drank a bottle of wine every night to push that toxic thought to the back of her mind. She resented her husband for his career, his friends, and the normality that she feared that she would never see again.

  Milton found himself nodding as she made her points.

  Guilt.

  Resentment.<
br />
  Fear.

  He knew them all.

  The woman finished her story after half an hour and was applauded for it. The secretary opened the floor to those who wanted to share their own experiences, and Milton listened to them, too. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket as the meeting drew to a close, but ignored it. After a moment, the buzzing stopped.

  The secretary brought the proceedings to an end with housekeeping matters, and a plate was passed around for donations. Milton reached into his pocket for a crumpled ten-pound note and dropped it onto the plate with the coins and other notes as it made its way around the room.

  He got up and waited for those ahead of him to filter through the door.

  Michael got up with him. “How was that?” he asked.

  “It was good.”

  “That was your first meeting?”

  There seemed little point in lying. “Yes,” Milton said.

  “And?”

  Milton paused.

  “Did you get anything out of it?”

  “I don’t know. It was peaceful. I needed that. But anything else? I don’t know. The speaker didn’t seem like she got any answers. No one offered their opinions.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Can I give you some advice?” Michael paused for a moment, but Milton could see that he was going to give it no matter what he said and so he managed a nod of assent. “We share our stories here, but it’s not a conversation. Cross-talk isn’t allowed. You share your story, you spill your guts, and everyone else just listens. You reflect on what has been said and look for the ways that their experience is like yours. And then you thank them, maybe share your own experiences, you listen some more, then you leave. That’s it.”

  “But no discussion?”