Phoenix Page 5

  She had decided at the weapons cache that it was already past time for them to go their separate ways. The information that Koralev had just provided was another reason why that was necessary: they had no choice now but to split up.

  “And then?” Milton asked.

  “If he makes it, get him out of the country, as per the plan. If he doesn’t make it, get yourself out. Call London. Keep them in the picture.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have two sets of orders. Get Igor. Done that.”

  “And then?”

  “Find answers.” She looked up into the bright morning sky. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  12

  They left the Vivaro in the parking lot and stole two replacements. Milton took a Ford Explorer and Beatrix a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Koralev was still alive when they carefully loaded him into the back of the Ford, but Beatrix did not expect him to make it. He was losing blood, his breathing shallow and pitiful. But she decided that they would try to save him, however futile the attempt.

  Beatrix transferred the equipment from the Vivaro to the Jeep and then watched as Milton pulled out of the lot. She followed behind. Milton raised his hand as he turned to the north. Beatrix returned the gesture, doubting that she would see him again. She turned in the other direction, to the south.

  * * *

  Cortada de Maturín was thirty minutes south of Caracas and just twenty minutes from the parking lot of the hotel. Beatrix was careful to stay at the speed limit. She had the MP5 on the seat next to her and she had no intention of being stopped by the police for driving too fast.

  She exited the Autopista and followed a narrow road that ascended into hilly terrain. Cortada was a small hamlet, not even big enough to be described as a village, and she passed through it until she was on the northern boundary. She continued for another minute until she saw a turning to her right. It was little more than a dirt track through the trees. She slowed down and turned onto the track, grateful for the rugged vehicle as she bounced and jumped across the uneven surface. She followed the road for a mile, just as Koralev had instructed.

  She slowed to a stop. The track ascended higher into the hills, bending around a lazy curve as it climbed. There was a switchback above her, and, nestled within the serpentine left-hand swing of the track, she saw a house.

  * * *

  Beatrix parked the car within the shelter afforded by a cleft in the track and, following the treeline, moved to within fifty metres of the property. She scouted ahead with the binoculars from the cache. The house was compact, with the windows on the first floor suggesting two or three bedrooms. There was a garden with a raised vegetable patch. A child’s colourful paddling pool. The property stood in a position that afforded it a panoramic view into the valley through which Beatrix had approached. It looked small and pleasant.

  There were two cars parked next to the house. Beatrix focused on them: one was an old Peugeot; the other was a Cadillac Escalade with blackout windows.

  Beatrix waited, surveilling the cars with the binoculars. The Peugeot was empty, but the door of the Escalade opened and a woman stepped outside. Beatrix was too far away to make out fine details, even with the binoculars, save that the woman was wearing a skirt and jacket. She crossed the space between the Cadillac and the house and knocked on the door.

  Beatrix pressed the glasses to her eyes and held her breath.

  The door opened. Another woman stood inside the threshold; again, detail was hard to make out, but Beatrix could see that she was older and wearing an apron.

  A conversation took place. Beatrix watched for a moment: the woman in the doorway shook her head, raising her hands in front of her as if to deflect whatever it was that the younger woman was saying.

  Beatrix thought that she saw something from the Escalade. She quickly turned the binoculars back to the vehicle as a door on the opposite side of the vehicle opened and a man stepped out.

  She looked back to the conversation at the front door just as the younger woman reached a hand into her jacket and then extended her arm straight out in front of her. Beatrix saw the flash of a gunshot and then heard the muffled report from a suppressed pistol. The older woman fell back into the house, just her legs visible as they poked out of the door.

  Two more men emerged from the Escalade.

  That made four enemies: the woman and three male associates.

  The woman went inside, followed by the three men.

  Beatrix waited a moment to compose herself. She adjusted the MP5 on its strap for better accessibility and then started toward the house.

  13

  Beatrix stayed in the cover of the treeline until she was adjacent to the house and then paused again to take stock. One of the windows on the ground floor of the house faced her, and she was able to look inside with the binoculars. She saw a flash of movement as a figure wearing black moved around inside.

  She reached down for the MP5’s pistol grip and scurried across the track until she was able to press herself against the side of the Escalade. She paused in its shelter, hidden from the house, and listened hard. Nothing, just the singing of the birds. She peered around the open door of the Cadillac so that she could see inside the cabin.

  The vehicle was empty.

  She edged along the body of the SUV until she was at a vantage point that allowed her to look around the rear to the open door of the house. The body of the older woman had been moved farther inside. A man in black clothes moved across the open doorway; he had a weapon in his hand.

  Beatrix waited until he was out of sight and then crossed the space between the vehicle and the house. She pressed her back against the stone wall next to the door and listened. Cradling the MP5 in both hands, she took a deep breath and then put her head around the edge of the door so that she could look inside.

  It was a kitchen: there was a table, an American-style refrigerator, and an old washing machine that had seen better days. The old woman’s body had been dumped next to a kitchen table, her legs splayed, her arms limp at her side, blood running from the fresh wound in the centre of her forehead.

  Beatrix crouched low and slipped inside. She could hear people upstairs: the sound of feet on creaking floorboards and low voices. She crossed the kitchen to a door that opened onto a hallway but, before she was halfway there, she heard feet descending a flight of stairs. She diverted, sliding behind the open door. The kitchen counter was to her left and there was a knife block within reach. She left the machine pistol to hang on its strap, took a large chef’s knife and held it in her right fist.

  The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs and came toward the kitchen.

  Beatrix gripped the knife tight and raised it to head height.

  One of the three men came through the door and into the kitchen. He was wearing a shoulder rig, the leather straps crossing over his back with the holster and a magazine pouch beneath his armpits.

  He didn’t see Beatrix. She ghosted out of her hiding place, reached up to snag his hair with her left fist, yanked back on his head to expose his throat and then, before he even had time to draw the breath for a warning shout, she brought her right hand up and sliced through his throat with the blade. His body went limp; Beatrix dropped her left arm so that she could loop it beneath his left shoulder and clasped him around the chest. She dragged him to the side so that he wouldn’t be visible from the open doorway through which he had just emerged.

  One down.

  Three left.

  Beatrix left the bloodied knife on the counter and crept back to the doorway. There was a hallway, with two doors to the side and a flight of stairs that ascended to the first floor. She quickly cleared the ground floor rooms: there was a small sitting room and a bathroom, both empty. She came back into the hall and started up the stairs.

  And then she stopped.

  A noise.

  Distinctive and unmistakeable.

  The sound of a baby’s crying.

  She paused, trying
to place it. The noise was muffled, as if passing through a closed door.

  Beatrix held her breath.

  The baby cried out again.

  Upstairs.

  She started to climb the stairs again, pausing just before she reached the top.

  The stairs opened onto a landing. There was a door to the right and two to the left.

  She risked a glance around the corner. The door to the right was open, and the room beyond was empty. It had bare floorboards and there were empty cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall.

  She swung back behind the wall, took a breath, and readied herself.

  She switched the machine pistol to three-shot burst mode and gripped it hard, almost as if she was twisting both hands to keep her elbows tight into her torso. She stepped out of the stairwell, turning to the left and holding herself in a line-backer stance, one foot slightly ahead of the other, and squared up to the two open doors.

  Two bedrooms.

  One of the men was in the bedroom to her right and the other was in the room to her left. The one on the left was facing away, and so she took aim first at his colleague. She held herself in a strong stance, her right foot slightly behind her left for the additional support that she needed when firing. Beatrix pulled the trigger. She had the luxury of an aimed burst, and all three rounds found their target. The man went down.

  Beatrix swivelled and took aim at the second man. The rattle of the MP5 had startled him into turning, and he was halfway around as Beatrix fired again. Her stance was solid enough that she was able to hold the machine pistol with no muzzle rise, and that ensured that her accuracy was good. She fired a second three-round burst: he was side-on, showing a narrow profile, and two of the shots found their mark. The third missed, blasting through a window, the glass falling down into the yard below.

  Beatrix heard the baby’s cry again and advanced toward it, moving carefully into the room where she had just shot the second man. It wasn’t a bedroom, she realized: it was a nursery. A crib sat beneath a mobile of fluffy miniature animals that turned in the breeze that was blowing in from the shattered window.

  The woman was there, in the corner. She had a baby in her arms. Her pistol was in a shoulder holster and her grasp of the baby to her chest meant that she was unable to reach for it.

  “Don’t move,” Beatrix said.

  The woman stepped back until she was against the wall, with nowhere else to go.

  “Who are you?” Beatrix asked.

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Beatrix glanced at the man on the floor. One of the two bullets that had struck him had caught him in the side of the head; he would have been dead before he hit the floor. Beatrix couldn’t hear anything from the second bedroom. That man, too, could be safely assumed to be incapacitated.

  Three down.

  One left.

  It was just her and this woman now.

  “Put the baby down.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” the woman said. She spoke in a clear, uninflected voice. No accent that Beatrix could place.

  Beatrix’s mouth was dry and she felt a moment of weakness that was unfamiliar to her. She swallowed, trying to get moisture into her mouth, but it was no good. The baby gazed at her.

  “Put the baby down.”

  The woman stared at her. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Last chance. Three.”

  “Who sent you?” the woman asked.

  Beatrix ignored the question. “Two.”

  “Speak to them,” the woman urged.

  “One—”

  “Okay, okay,” the woman said

  She started to lower the baby to the crib, but, before she reached it, she dropped the infant the rest of the way and reached for her pistol.

  Beatrix pulled the trigger for a third time. The room was small, and Beatrix was too close to miss. All three bullets peppered the woman in a diagonal from the right shoulder down to the left hip. The impacts staggered her. She fell against the wall and then slumped down to a sitting position.

  Beatrix approached, the muzzle of the machine pistol aimed at her head.

  The woman looked up her, coughed up a mouthful of crimson blood, sighed once, and then was still. Beatrix closed the distance until she was close enough to remove the pistol from the holster. She put it aside and frisked the woman. There was nothing: no phone, no form of identification, nothing that might leave any clue as to who she was.

  The baby cried out again. Beatrix stood and looked down into the crib. The child was tiny. Beatrix was no judge, but she would have guessed that it was seven or eight months old, surely no older than that. A girl? She thought so. She had been lucky, landing on the blankets and, beneath them, a thin mattress.

  She reached her hands beneath the baby’s body, so small and fragile that her fingertips touched behind its back. She lifted it out of the bed; the blanket snagged and came away from the crib, too. The baby was warm and, as she dipped her face closer, she could smell it. There was no reason for it, but she was put in mind of warm biscuits and milk.

  Beatrix was buffeted by a dizzying sensation that took her completely by surprise.

  The child gazed up at her. She cradled it, holding out a finger. The baby reached for it, one tiny hand fixing around it. Beatrix looked down. It was definitely a girl. She was wearing a pink suit that left her arms and legs bare. She had a head of fine blond hair, round cheeks, and arms and legs that looked like fattened sausages.

  “What’s your name?”

  The baby kept looking at her. She didn’t smile, but they maintained eye contact for a long moment. Beatrix felt naked, as if the little girl were able to penetrate her deceptions, mistruths and diversions to divine her true thoughts. Beatrix found it unsettling, and for that moment, she was lost. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. She looked through the window, down to the base of the valley. Shifting the child to the crook of her left arm, she raised the binoculars with her right hand and saw a black SUV that twisted and turned as it negotiated the bends that presaged the climb up to the house.

  Reinforcements.

  Beatrix reached for the MP5. Clutching the baby close, and with the submachine gun suspended by its strap, she turned for the door.

  Part II

  14

  Beatrix Rose found herself kept waiting in the room outside Control’s office for the second time in a week. She had been asked to meet him for the usual debrief at three, and it was a quarter to four the last time she had checked her watch. Captain Tanner was his usual apologetic self, mouthing that he was sorry as he closed the door to the office behind him and retook his seat.

  For once, Beatrix didn’t mind. She had a lot to occupy her thoughts.

  The light above the door changed from red to green.

  “You can go through now, Number One,” said Tanner.

  Beatrix stood, straightened her jacket, and went to the door.

  * * *

  Beatrix went inside and closed the door behind her. Control was at his desk. There was another man in the room, too. He was sitting in one of the generous club chairs by the fireplace. He was in his sixties, with leathery skin and rheumy eyes that bulged behind thick-rimmed spectacles. He dressed badly, like a rural vicar: a tweed jacket and brown cord trousers that were frayed at the cuffs. He had a bound file in his lap. Beatrix recognised a copy of her report.

  “Ah,” said Control. “Good afternoon, Number One.”

  “Sir.”

  Control gestured to the second man. “This is Vivian Bloom,” he said. “Works for SIS. He was involved with planning the operation.”

  “Indeed,” Bloom said. “I wanted to hear your report myself. And to thank you for a job well done.”

  Beatrix regarded him more closely. His tie was stained and the collar of his shirt curled up at the edges. She had never seen anyone who worked for SIS who looked anything like him. “Thank you, sir.”

  Control tapped his finger on the bound docum
ent on his desk. “I’ve read your report, Beatrix. Very thorough, as usual.”

  “Thank you, sir. Can I ask about the attack at the arms cache? Do we know who that was?”

  “We don’t,” Bloom said. “We’re still looking into it. I know Koralev told you he wasn’t working for anyone, but, frankly, I don’t buy that. Doesn’t make sense. Our working hypothesis is that it was an attempt to get him back.”

  “So why wasn’t he protected? We were able to take him off the street with no opposition.”

  “I can’t answer that, Miss Rose,” Bloom said.

  “Seems odd that they would leave him unprotected and then go to such lengths to get him back.”

  “It does, I agree. As yet, we’re no closer to why that might be. We’re investigating.”

  “What about Koralev and Major Milton?” Beatrix said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Koralev died in the car before Milton could get him to a doctor.”

  “He was in bad shape,” she said.

  “Quite. A shame we couldn’t get him out.”

  Was that a slight? She ignored it. “What about Major Milton?”

  “Picture-perfect extraction,” Control said. “He made his way to Puerto Cumarebo and the Navy picked him up in a fast boat. Transferred him to HMS Lancaster and then delivered him to Aruba. He flew in yesterday.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I’m curious,” Control said. “How did you find him?”

  Beatrix had been expecting the question and had given it some thought. “I’ll be honest, sir. My first impressions were poor. He was flippant, and I think he might like a drink a little too much. But once we began the operation, he impressed me. He conducted himself well.”

  “What would you say if I considered him for the Group?”

  She thought about that. “I’d say I would want to watch him for a little longer.”