Headhunters Read online

  It was dusk when they finally heard the hoot of the horn and, with that, they felt the jolt as the boxcars were heaved into motion. Milton had wedged the door open with the tyre iron and opened it a little more now so that he could watch as the train picked up speed. They crawled through the suburbs, but, as they broke out into the outback once again, the engine opened up to full power and they accelerated.

  It was more than seven hundred kilometres to Melbourne, and Milton estimated that it would take the train eight hours to cover the distance. They sat with their backs to the wall of the boxcar, the rumble of the wheels settling into an even and almost hypnotic rhythm. They had stopped at a garage shop on the way to the freight yard, and Milton took out the supplies he had purchased and arranged them: two bottles of water, packs of sandwiches and bars of chocolate. He tore the wrapper off a Cherry Roll bar and started to eat.

  “How long did you do what you did?”

  “Ten years.”

  “And why did you stop?”

  “Because I hated it.”

  “But only after ten years. You didn’t hate it before?”

  He thought about that. “I thought I was doing the right thing. The people… the targets… they were bad people.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t ask questions when I started. You didn’t. You got your orders, you carried them out, you were debriefed and then that was it. You had a break and then it started again. I was a soldier for a long time before I was transferred. You don’t question orders, not unless you want a court martial.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you stop?”

  “Because I did start to question my orders.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I haven’t spoken about it before, not to anyone.”

  He paused then, wondering whether he should go on. He hadn’t spoken about it, not to the psychologists who were employed by the British government to make sure the agents remained sane, or to the drunks who were in the meetings with him after he quit. But Matilda was watching him, her face open, softer than it had been since they had been abducted. He remembered the mantra that ran through every meeting: we are only as sick as our secrets. Milton had had too many secrets for too long.

  “There was a job,” he said. “There were two scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program. They were set up. They thought they were meeting someone who would supply material for them. But it wasn’t what they thought. They were meeting me.” He paused again, his throat dry, and took a swig of the water. “I was waiting for them. I shot them both, and then I shot a policeman who shouldn’t have been there.” He stopped again, looking to her face for a reaction, but there was none. “I went to check the car that they arrived in, and there was a kid in the back. A little boy. He was just staring at me. Standard procedure was clear: you didn’t leave witnesses. Didn’t matter who it was: no one who could identify you could be left alive.”

  Now she reacted; her lips parted a little, and there was the glint of something—horror?—in her eyes. “You—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. He reminded me of another kid I saw, just like him, years ago, with your brother. When we were in the desert.”

  “I know about that,” she said quietly. “The madrassa.”

  “Harry told you?”

  “He said you were nearly killed trying to save him.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Milton was silent for a moment, just listening to the rattle of the wheels on the track.

  “What happened next?”

  “I went back to London and told them I quit. They didn’t like it. They tried to persuade me it was a bad idea, and when I told them I wasn’t going back, they tried to kill me. More than once. It would have kept carrying on, with me hiding and them trying to find me, but my old commanding officer died and they replaced him with someone who trusts me. I thought I might get some peace, but then I ran into Avi again.”

  The train rumbled on. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. It was dark now, and Milton slid the door all the way back to let in some air and what little illumination was still in the day. When he turned back into the boxcar, he saw that Matilda’s eyes were closed. When he went over to check, he saw that she was asleep. The dregs of the sedative, perhaps. He took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and then went back to the open doorway and sat with his feet over the edge. He had bought cigarettes at the shop, too, and he lit one, blowing smoke out of the door. The smoke was torn to pieces in the slipstream.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  MILTON CAUGHT four hours’ sleep, but no more. He knew how long the journey should take, and, as dawn broke the next day, he was watching through the open door as Melbourne came into view. Matilda had slept through the night, another eight hours, and, when he gently shook her awake, she mumbled groggily and tried to go back to sleep. Milton persisted, his hand on her shoulder and, eventually, she gave up and allowed herself to be roused.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just coming into Melbourne.”

  The train started to slow when it was several miles from the yard. The wilderness became more and more urbanised, with scattered dwellings and farmsteads and then paved roads and denser concentrations of buildings. Milton had no intention of their being seen at the train’s terminus, and so, as it slowed still further, he told Matilda that they were going to have to jump.

  He looked ahead and saw a sharp bend in the track, and waited again as the driver braked and bled more speed away. The track passed through a deep cutting, with a short span of gravel and then a grass slope that was covered with heavy vegetation. Milton pointed to the short ladder that descended from the boxcar and waited as Matilda climbed down. She paused at the foot for a moment and then, eyes closed, jumped clear. She hit the gravel, tried to run, tripped, and fell onto her side. She bounced up quickly and waved that she was okay.

  Milton lowered himself to the bottom rung, aware of the huge steel wheels that were turning behind him, and jumped, too. His feet dug into the sharp gravel and he, too, very quickly found that he couldn’t match the train’s speed. His foot caught and he fell, rolling over the sharp stones, his hands and knees scraping against the rough edges.

  He came to a halt and checked himself over. Nothing damaged.

  Matilda appeared beside him.

  “You okay?”

  “All good.”

  “Not hurt?”

  “Just my pride.”

  They clambered out of the cutting. They were on the edge of the city, and, after ascertaining the direction they needed to travel, they walked for an hour. They came across an industrial park with a series of warehouses and depots. There was a parking lot that offered a place for the workers to leave their vehicles. Milton assessed it, found a space that was not covered by CCTV cameras, and walked along a line of parked cars until he found an old Nissan that he knew would be easy enough to start. He tried the door. It was locked. He could have been subtle about gaining access, but the lot was remote and unobserved and he was in a hurry. He found a rock that was the same size as his hand in the margin of rough ground at the edge of the lot and used it to punch through the glass. He reached in, unlocked the door and opened it.

  Milton swept the fragments of glass from the seat and opened the glovebox. There was a small pouch of tools there, including a flat-head screwdriver. He lined the tip of the screwdriver up with the ignition slot and gave it a firm strike with the palm of his hand. The screwdriver slid home, ruining the ignition cylinder, but, as Milton turned it, the starter engine fired and the car spluttered into life.

  “Subtle,” Matilda said.

  “You drive.”

  She looked at him with mild surprise, but didn’t demur.

  Milton went around to the passenger side and slid into the cabin.

  “Where to?”

  “You know the city?”

  “Never been here.”

  “I have,” he said, “but
it was a while ago.”

  He tried to remember the geography.

  “Head into town,” he said. “South.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THEY HAD jumped from the train a few miles north of Gisborne. Matilda drove them south, along the C705 through Toolern Vale and into Melton. They reached the interchange with the M8 and merged into the gentle flow of traffic, following the road east toward Caroline Springs.

  They were on the outskirts of Deer Park when Milton saw what he wanted.

  “Pull in there.”

  Milton pointed out the strip mall as they approached. There was a business that groomed pets, a hairdresser’s, a dry cleaner’s, an insurance office, a small supermarket and a bank. Victoria Savings & Loans. It was a local operation with branches around the Melbourne area.

  “Why?”

  “I need a bottle of water.”

  “Get me one, too,” she said.

  Milton had found a baseball cap inside the glovebox and a pair of sunglasses in the holder behind the rear-view mirror. He put them on as he stepped outside.

  Matilda leaned out of the broken window. “And a sandwich. Cheese and something.”

  “Okay.”

  Milton made his way across the lot to the entrance of the supermarket. There was a telephone in a booth next to the wall, and inside was a directory. He flipped through the pages until he got to H and then tore out two pages with listings for local hotels. He folded the pages and stuffed them into his pocket.

  He paused, looked back to check that Matilda was distracted and, seeing that she was, he continued past the supermarket and made his way to the bank. He had been thinking about what they were going to do for money on the train. There was no other way around it. Something like this was going to be necessary.

  He pretended to busy himself with a leaflet that advertised a new savings product. It offered five per cent on savings if the saver didn’t touch the cash through the course of the year. Whoever wrote the leaflet seemed to think that was a pretty good deal judging by the enthusiastic copy and the eager young couple who were beaming out from a big photo on the front. Milton turned the leaflet over and made a good show of reading it.

  But he wasn’t reading it. His attention was on the room.

  It was small. He had entered through an automatic glass door. Beyond that was a thin counter that ran down the centre of the room, separating the space so that customers at the glass-fronted counters had privacy from those waiting behind. The counter bore several collections of leaflets offering the bank’s products. Behind it were two offices carved out of the space by a glass wall. Milton saw stylised pictures of the Australian landscape on the walls inside the offices. There were two cashier windows, and only one was staffed. The cashier was talking airily with the customer before him. The man had asked for a transfer to be made between two accounts, and the cashier was trying to upsell him a new product.

  Milton checked again and saw the cameras mounted on the walls and behind the counter. There would be no way to escape being photographed, but he would worry about that later. It was impetuous, but he had to do something. They were out of money, and they needed funds to keep Bachman at arm’s reach.

  The man finally disentangled himself from the cashier’s attention and walked away.

  “Next, please.”

  Milton put the leaflet back and went forward. The clerk was a middle-aged man with ginger hair and a beard that needed a little attention. He had a half-eaten sandwich on the desk. Milton looked down at the badge attached to the man’s lapel. It said his name was George.

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m very sorry about this, George.”

  “About what?”

  Milton reached behind his back and removed the Glock. “You see this?” Milton said, giving the gun a little jerk. “It’s a Glock. It fires 9mm rounds. The bank probably told you that that glass is bulletproof. Trust me, it’s not. This close, the bullet is going to go through the glass and then it’s going to go into your head.” He nodded down at the man’s right hand, which was slowly crawling across his side of the counter towards his lap. “No alarms, George, okay? We do this nice and quickly and I’ll be on my way, no harm done. But if you give me any problems, any attitude, then I’m going to pull the trigger. Do you understand me?”

  Milton spoke with calm, easy confidence. The clerk looked back at him, transfixed by the Glock, his eyes wide and a nervous tic suddenly twitching in his cheek.

  “George?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Good. Now, nice and quickly, I want you to put all of your high-denomination bills into an envelope for me. Can you do that?”

  “Y-y-y-yes,” he forced out.

  “Start with the bills from the top of the drawer. Hundreds first, then fifties, and twenties last if you have room. Come on, George, let’s go. The sooner you finish, the sooner I’m gone and the sooner you can enjoy the rest of that sandwich.” Milton nodded that he should get to it, and then trained the gun on him as he started. “That’s it. Keep going. Fill it up all the way.”

  Milton looked over his shoulder. The branch was still empty and, in the lot outside, he could see the car with Matilda inside. He didn’t know how long it would take the police to respond to the alarm that George was going to press as soon as he was out of the branch, but he didn’t expect he would have much more than five minutes. He needed her to stay where she was. If he was left outside with no transportation in a town that he didn’t know, he knew it would be difficult to make it away. And if he was caught, Bachman would find out. And if he was in custody, he would be a sitting duck.

  “It’s full,” George said, shoving the bulging envelope through the opening at the bottom of the window.

  Milton took it and pushed it into his pocket.

  “Well done, George. No alarms, okay? If I hear police, I might have to come back in here again. You wouldn’t want that.”

  “No alarms.”

  “That’s great. Enjoy your lunch.”

  He turned and went outside. Matilda had the engine running.

  She saw him coming out of the bank, the gun in his hand. He opened the door and slid inside, putting the gun and the envelope on the dash.

  “You fucking didn’t…”

  “Shall we talk on the road?”

  “Seriously, Milton. You’re turning me into an accessory to a bank robbery now?”

  The hum of rush-hour traffic was split by the up and down shriek of an alarm.

  “Matty—drive, please.”

  She threw the car into drive and they lurched out of the parking lot and onto the empty road. In the distance, Milton heard sirens.

  *

  MATILDA GAVE him a hard time for the first mile and then, with a weary shake of her head, she let it go and concentrated on the road ahead. Milton didn’t know what he thought of that. He had expected worse. But, he reminded himself, robbing a bank was merely the latest in a series of unfortunate incidents for her. Her abduction. Being drugged. The things that she had learned about him.

  She drove with a determined set to her face. Milton knew better than to push his luck, so he said nothing until ten minutes had passed and they were away from the bank. He reached into his pocket and snagged the edges of the pages he had torn out of the directory. He unfolded them and skimmed the details. There was an old satnav in the glovebox. He plugged it into the cigarette lighter and tapped in the details of the hotel that looked most promising.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Hotel.”

  “We’re staying?”

  “We need a base. There are some things we need to sort out.”

  “Like?”

  “Like passports.”

  Milton had six fakes, but they were all in his pack, and that was back at the sheep station. Matilda didn’t have hers. Perhaps it was at Boolanga, too. There was no way they were going to be able to return—he knew Bachman would have left a team there in the event th
at they did something as stupid as that—so they were going to have to improvise.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  THEY STOPPED at the Harbour Town Shopping Centre and Milton sent Matilda inside to pick up some photo paper and a phone with a camera that they could use. There was a Vodafone branch inside, and she came back with a brand new cell phone. They drove on and reached the hotel after another ten minutes. It was part of a chain and was as soulless and anonymous as he had expected it would be. They could have been anywhere. That was fine. Milton wasn’t interested in a high-end establishment. Those places tended to be more careful about checking their guests, and the last thing he wanted was a clerk to identify him from the description of the bank robber that he expected would be broadcast on the local news. Far better to find someone who was badly paid and bored with their job to take care of the initial pleasantries. The clerk who took him through the procedure was just that kind of person, and she made no comment as Milton paid in advance with one of the stolen hundred-dollar bills.

  He spent half an hour on the Internet in the hotel’s business centre. He took out the phone and downloaded ID Photoprint, an app that promised to deliver passport photos, and used it to take a picture of Matilda. She reciprocated and took a picture of him. He exported the photos to the camera roll, connected the phone to a wireless printer and printed the pictures on two sheets of the photo paper. He waited for the paper to dry, cut the photos out and put them in his pocket.

  He called a cab and they waited for it in the lobby. Milton was nervous, much happier to wait inside and look out than stand outside on the street. His description would have been circulated by now. The police would be looking for him. Their car would most likely have been flagged, too, but he had parked that in the hotel’s underground lot away from the main flow of traffic. He was happy enough that it would be safe there and, in any event, they were not going to be here for very long.