CHAPTER NINE
I was still wondering when I left Ros's flat whether I had done the right thing in burdening her with the enigma of Sugarhorse. All I'd really achieved was to offload part of my own anxiety about Harry onto her. Belatedly realising that I'd been selfish – especially after her recent ordeal – I'd stuttered an apology that she had cut short.
"Don't be an idiot. You were right to tell me." She had made a pot of coffee and we had sat for well over an hour trying to piece together the disparate clues we had. I thought Ros looked dreadfully tired, but she was like a terrier hunting a rat in a situation like this, and she just threw me a scornful look when I suggested that she might need to rest.
"Stop flapping. We need to think." She reached to refill her coffee cup and muttered in disgust at the two reluctant drips that emerged from the pot.
"I'll make some more," I said, in response to her expectant look. I washed our dirty supper things up while I was waiting for the coffee, but when I returned to the sitting room I found Ros's exhaustion had finally got the better of her. She was fast asleep, and I knew that she was unlikely to stir now unless I woke her.
Quietly, I went across the hall and opened the only closed door. Then I stared in sheer amazement. The rest of Ros's flat was furnished in a style that I thought of as 'minimalist chic' – neutral colours, straight lines and sharp edges. The bedroom was in complete and unexpected contrast. Fluffy sheepskin rugs were scattered over the floor. Long, deep crimson curtains framed the windows, and a quilt cover on the bed bore a bright, intricate geometric pattern that I thought was probably Peruvian. A rocking chair, of all things, stood alongside the bed, and at the foot of it was an ottoman draped with a thick black and white striped, woven blanket.
I was stunned. I could have been in a different house altogether. A rocking chair? I couldn't imagine the Ros Myers I knew sleeping here. The whole room was cosy, warm, pretty … all the things I might have associated with Elizaveta, but never, ever with Ros.
Never judge a book by its cover, Lucas. It was one of my father's favourite rebukes. He had also taught me it was rude to stare, and I shook myself back into movement. I picked up the cushion from the rocking chair, and threw the blanket from the ottoman over my arm. I was just about to leave when the chest of drawers on the far side of the room caught my eye. Two large photographs stood on the top: one of a laughing Adam Carter, perched on a wall somewhere, and the second of a younger Ros, maybe in her early twenties, smiling awkwardly. She stood with her arm entwined with that of a well-dressed, short man with sharp blue eyes. From my reading of articles in the papers, I recognised Sir Jocelyn Myers.
I've only ever loved two men in my life. He was one of them. Suddenly, I realised just how much I was intruding. This was private Ros, the one she never allowed anyone else to see. It was as if she'd taken the softer, warmer part of her personality and hidden it away deliberately behind this firmly closed door where no-one else could guess at its existence. I knew for certain that with the possible exception of Adam Carter, nobody but Ros had ever set foot in here.
I closed the door and slipped back to the living room. Carefully, I draped the blanket over Ros and eased the cushion behind her head. She mumbled something and snuggled deeper under the blanket and deeper into sleep. Thankful for the photographic memory that had enabled me to memorise her security codes after a fleeting glance, I had slipped out of the flat. Sugarhorse could wait until tomorrow.
oOoOoOo
In fact, it had to wait for almost two weeks. When I suggested to Ros that we confront Harry about it, she vetoed the idea instantly. His decision, she snapped. We wait.
The waiting finally ended on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, when Harry explained what Sugarhorse was. Ros's face was completely impassive; you would have thought she'd never heard of the word. I felt myself go cold at Harry's assertion that the operation had been considered utterly secure 'until recently''. I leaned towards him.
"Until I told you the Russians had interrogated me about it."
The implication of that was shatteringly clear. For me it was a sickeningly personal blow too. It meant that someone, one of our own, had not only betrayed the Service but also delivered me, like a gift-wrapped parcel, into the hands of the Russians. I felt Ros's eyes on me.
"Yes," Harry confirmed. His expression was tense. "I'm expecting intel from Moscow. When it comes, I will be able to expose a mole within MI-5." He paused for a beat. "I'll need your support."
He made it a flat statement, but somehow it still sounded like what it was: an appeal. I responded quickly.
"Whatever you need, Harry."
"Anything at all," Ros added quietly.
"Thank you." Harry sighed. "Now the bad news."
Ros and I exchanged glances. Wasn't that it?
Harry smiled wryly. "Alas, no. You'll be delighted to know that our government has decided to take the lead in tackling the consequences of yesterday's … unfortunate incident … in the Middle East."
Ros groaned; she was clearly ahead of me. Harry looked sympathetically at her.
"Sorry, Ros. Emergency peace conference, convening in 72 hours. Preliminary co-ordination with the JIC in … twenty minutes."
Ros's face was like thunder. She muttered something about the Middle East and the Marianas Trench, got to her feet and strode out. I looked at Harry.
"Harry, about Sugarhorse - "
"Not now, Lucas." He nodded outside to where Ros was beckoning impatiently to me. "Multitasking is over-rated. Let's handle this hot potato first."
oOoOoOo
The potato got a great deal hotter when, two days later, Ros's call interrupted my attempts to settle the UN negotiator, Claude Denizet, into his hotel. Malcolm had been alerted to the fact that a kid who shouldn't even have been aware of the existence of a very sophisticated and classified piece of military equipment was trying to sell it on the Internet, and Ros was furious.
"Just what we need," she fumed into my ear, "two plane-loads of Middle Eastern egomaniacs with a desert-full of grudges apiece strutting around London and the army's new wunderkind on the loose in bloody Lambeth." I had to smile; Ros and political correctness were like oil and water. "Get it back!"
The estate was one of those fine examples of urban blight designed by an award-winning architect careful to live in a thatched cottage somewhere in Surrey. But the information was correct; I recognised the weapon immediately. Dean Mitchell - one of those swaggering, street-wise kids with a lot of lip – ignored my question about where he'd got it from, and the arrival of two cars with four heavily-built, scowling men in them prevented me from taking the issue further. His mother was still twittering her protests when I shoved the two of them out of the back door seconds before the new arrivals smashed in the front.
I had a split second to savour the pleasure of hot-wiring and stealing their vehicle, but it didn't last long. When I contacted Ros she ordered me to avoid Thames House head for a safe house instead, via Surrey Quays shopping centre, where Jo and another car would be waiting.
By now, every antenna I had was on alert. This was meant to have been a simple mopping-up job; it was already a lot more than that, and there had been an unusual tension in Ros's voice. I needed to find out more, but for the moment, at least, I wasn't going to get it from her. At the shopping centre, I dispatched Dean's mother, whose whining protests from the back seat had been like tinnitus in my ear ever since we left the flat, to buy some essentials, and cornered her son.
This is classified military kit. Where did you get it?
Predictably, all I got in response was the insolent brush-off typical of the breed. Unluckily for him, I wasn't a bobby on the beat who didn't dare raise an eyebrow, much less a hand, for fear of disciplinary measures. Dean Mitchell wouldn't have lasted a week in Leshanko. It didn't take more than a quietly spoken threat – which by then I sincerely meant - to leave him and Mummy to fend for themselves to elicit that the little know-it-all had seen the weapon in use and knew what it could do. But then I spotted the pursuers I thought I'd lost elbowing their way across the food court. Shit. How the hell did they track us here?
Shoving Dean ahead of me, I grabbed the car keys Jo Portman tossed to me and pushed a coded note for Malcolm into her hand as we passed on the escalator. I couldn't help noticing, as we dodged through ambling shoppers infuriatingly indifferent to our need for haste, that this obviously wasn't the first time young Dean had made a fast getaway. He was weaving through the crowds a lot more easily than I was, and by the time we reached the car I wasn't sure who was leading whom.
Jo had instructed me to go to Venue 7 – a terraced house was scheduled for demolition and that we were meanwhile using as a temporary safe house. The street seemed quiet enough, but I still chivvied them to get inside. There had been a welcome lack of questions in the car this time; I think Sarah was too petrified to ask any, and the re-appearance of the heavy mob seemed to have convinced even Dean that taking orders from me was preferable than getting entangled with them. Inside the safe house, he meekly accepted both my instruction to make sure the windows were fully boarded-up, and the roll of masking tape I threw to him for the purpose. Then I did my best to reassure his mother; not easy when I didn't have a full picture of what was happening myself, wasn't allowed to give details about what little I did know, and couldn't even be entirely honest about who I was. Ironically, it was Dean who saved me from having to try; he shook his head urgently over Sarah's shoulder when she asked me what he'd done, so I shrugged and muttered something vague about 'clearing a few things up'. Then I distracted her by suggesting she might like to try and make us something to eat, reflecting as I did just how withering a comment Ros would have made about my sexist attitude had she been there to hear me.
After we'd eaten some scrambled egg and washed it down with a mug of coffee that made the old joke about it being ground this morning seem uncomfortably accurate, I sent Dean and his mother to sleep upstairs and installed myself in a sleeping bag on the floor downstairs. I had tried to contact the Grid several times, but neither Ros's phone nor Harry's was responding. That, allied to the eerie, claustrophobic similarity of my surroundings to those of my cell in Leshanko, guaranteed that I spent the night awake, imagination working overtime and nerves jangling with every footfall that passed down the street. I was already up and making coffee when Dean slouched through the door, bleary-eyed and grumbling about the lack of proper beds. I handed him a cup.
"That's not why you didn't sleep, though, is it?" I asked. No response. "Why didn't you want your mum to know what you'd seen?"
He mumbled something about Sarah fussing. I shook my head. I'd seen how protective he was of his mother; under the hard outer shell, there was a decent kid in there somewhere. God knows where Dad was – long gone, I imagined. It couldn't be easy for the two of them, certainly not financially. I suggested as much, and for the first time got a flash of something other than hostility from him.
"You've seen her purse, man. She's got more credit cards than Beyonce."
I smiled. "Not with Beyonce's credit limit, though?"
He hesitated, and then grinned back. "You're not wrong." Now that he was dropping the tough-guy act there was a sudden charm in his face. He reminded me of Sasha, at Leshanko. I quashed the memory instantly. That was one I hadn't even mentioned to Ros, and it was the last thing I needed now.
He looked at me with open curiosity. "Where'd you grow up, then?"
I told him. Big house in London, public school indeed. Right guess, wrong spy, mate. That was Ros, not me. The thought made me check my mobile again. No call or text from her. Where the hell is she? Something was going seriously wrong here, and I hated not knowing what it was. Without her orders I had no idea what my next move should be.
"What, minister like in government?"
"Sorry?" I pulled myself back quickly. "Oh … no, minister as in Methodist. Methodist church," I added, when, incredibly, he looked blank. He seemed impressed. It was the first time he'd regarded me with anything other than scorn; the first time, I suspected, that he'd actually seen me as a person rather than the embodiment of the authorities he despised. But when he asked my father's name we were stumbling into forbidden territory. There were few offences an MI-5 officer can commit more heinous than disclosing personal details. I could have lied, of course. Should have lied - that was S.O.P. But this was the first trust the kid had shown in me, and I was afraid I would damage it if I did. So far he'd been cocky, insubordinate and uncooperative, but I sensed a rapport beginning to build between us now and I didn't want to lie. Besides, I had a feeling that in his sixteen years, Dean Mitchell had been lied to quite enough already. So it was perhaps fortunate that just then the letterbox rattled, interrupting the conversation.
I was jolted when Dean instantly recognised the man in the photograph the envelope contained as the one whom he'd seen firing the gun. At first he claimed not to have seen or heard anything more than he had told me already, and this time I knew he wasn't just being bloody-minded. The know-it-all, streetwise cool had given way to a panicky, frightened kid who was out of his depth. I was just beginning to feel dangerously out of mine, when he mentioned the rucksack he'd dumped when he stole the weapon.
That's it! Despite the gloom, broken only by a few pallid stripes of sunlight filtering through the boards on the windows, I felt as if someone had switched on a neon strip light. "Where is it? The rucksack?"
"I told you, I dumped it in a scrap metal yard."
"Take me there." I snatched up my coat, just as Sarah came in.
"What's going on?" Her voice was high-pitched with fright, and it rose several notches when I shooed Dean towards the door. "Where are you going?"
Need to know. She didn't, so I just snapped at her to stay where she was and wait. I didn't feel good about it. She looked so small and defenceless standing there on her own, wringing her hands, bewildered and terrified by the maelstrom she'd been sucked into. What had she said – he's all I've got in the world? It seemed cruel to separate them, but I had no choice.
You're an intelligence officer, not a social worker. Do what you have to do! I heard Ros's impatient voice so clearly that she might have materialised out of the shadows, and suddenly I very much wished she had.
"We'll be back." I forced myself to smile at Sarah Mitchell's woebegone little face. "You'll be fine." With that trite reassurance, we turned and left her.
oOoOoOo
The confidence – albeit edged with wariness - that the boy had begun to show in me paid off when we reached the scrapyard. We found not only the rucksack but also the well-armed, persistent bloody posse that by then I should have shaken off not once, but twice. I was starting to understand why Ros had cut all communications with me. We weren't being 'found' as much as stalked – and by professionals. I stuffed the USB key from the rucksack into my pocket and we fled, racing between the teetering walls of rusting cars, piping, scaffolding and shipping containers. Without hesitation, Dean took the lead; to my disgust he had the edge on me in speed. Still, I should have been grateful; it was only thanks to him unhesitatingly clubbing the man who pinned me down at one point with a piece of drainpipe, that we reached the car inches ahead of flying bullets.
I gave Dean the laptop and memory stick, then concentrated on putting as much distance as I could between us and the opposition. A hat-trick of close shaves in less than 48 hours was enough even for me. We needed to pick Sarah Mitchell up quickly and get to the safety of the Grid.
"Done it." Dean grinned triumphantly at me. "Told you I was good, didn't I?"
I couldn't help smiling. Conceited little so-and-so. Although I had to admit he'd broken that encryption with a speed that would have impressed even Malcolm. Maybe there was a future in the Service for the little sod. He had initiative, speed - and he could lie like a trooper.
"Who's that woman?"
I glanced at the laptop screen and the angry, intent face of the Foreign Secretary looked back at me. Shit. My palms were suddenly slippery on the steering wheel. Dean scowled. "I'm sure I've seen her before."
I leaned across and slammed the lid down. "You didn't see anything." I could hear my own tension. "Do you understand?"
His puzzlement turned to visible alarm, but he nodded. As he did, my mobile buzzed. Don't go home. Call now. Ros.
oOoOoOo
Another safe house. Any camaraderie I'd thought might develop between myself and Dean Mitchell had evaporated with his mother's abduction. I couldn't blame the kid for being stroppy with me; I was the one who'd left Sarah Mitchell alone and exposed. I believed Ros when she had assured me that she would get her back, but I couldn't convince Dean. During the brief meet where I had handed over the USB stick, Ros's eyes had skimmed over him as if he was invisible. This was Ros Myers at her coldest and most remote. For the moment, Dean Mitchell and his mother were merely potential threats to a sensitive operation. I knew she was right, but her indifference had left me trying to soothe an understandably sullen, aggressive and frightened teenager. Given the choice, I might even have preferred to be arguing the minutiae of diplomatic protocol with Claude 'l'Etat c'est moi' Denizet.
"Look," I'd said over and over, trying to be patient and reassuring, "your mum's going to be OK, Dean. That woman we saw keeps her promises. If she says she's going to get her back, then she will."
He'd just snorted. "How do you know? All you government people lie. She don't care about people like us, we just get in the way." His fear, plus the years of ingrained mistrust of The System and everyone in it meant that I couldn't find a way to reassure him, however hard I tried. Because I knew Ros, I could see beyond her ruthlessness, but to Dean she was just another arrogant 'posh bitch' who didn't give a toss for him or his mother.
In the end I'd put the television on and watched an old James Bond film with him for a couple of hours. Half-afraid he would try to do a runner on me, I dragged a couple of armchair cushions onto the floor and dozed uncomfortably between the sofa where he slept and the door.
It was a massive relief when Ros called early the following morning to tell me that Sarah had been released and that I should bring Dean to meet her. When he still glared at me suspiciously, I braved Ros's wrath and had her send a photograph of Sarah and herself to my mobile. Sarah was smiling shakily, and Ros's face looked like a distant relative of one of the heads on Mount Rushmore, but it finally reassured Dean. He grinned.
"That old witch as scary as she looks?"
"More so," I assured him, and clapped him on the shoulder. "But I've got protection. So let's move."
Even Ros cracked a faint, wintry smile when Dean and his mum were reunited. She looked strained though, and I guessed that the anodyne BBC report on the Middle East conference had glossed over a multitude of sins. What she clearly wasn't in the mood for was anything less than full and immediate acquiescence to the plan to get Dean and his mother safely out of the country. So when Dean started to argue, and protest that he would sell his story to the papers, her eyes flashed, and she cut him off with an exasperated injunction to 'grow up'. I winced.
"Dean," I cut in quickly, 'this is the best - "
He turned on me. "No, this is bullshit! I trusted you, man! All your talk … you're just like all the others! Everyone messes up, it's not fair!" With that he wrenched his arm from his mother's, span round and raced off down the walkway.
I sprinted after him, but the kid was angry and he was fast. I caught up with him only by suicidally leaping down the escalator three steps at a time.
"Dean!" I grabbed his arm. "Listen, it's not safe here."
"I'm safe! I'm faster than you, remember?" He darted towards the glass lift with me in hot pursuit.
I didn't even hear the bullet; just saw his body hit the glass wall and slump to the ground, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind as the lift began to rise. Sarah Mitchell's screams were already echoing down the shaft, her frantic pounding on the doors vibrating through the cage. When they opened, she threw herself at Dean, shrieking his name.
I managed to get to my feet to see Ros skidding to a halt beside the gaping lift doors. She was sheet-white, her eyes wide with shock, sheer horror etched on her face. I saw her lips move, but Sarah's piercing wails drowned her words. I was vaguely aware of heads starting to turn at the noise, and an increasingly insistent thud of running feet. Ros thrust her phone at me.
"Call CO-19. Now!" when I didn't react immediately. She turned and bent over Sarah Mitchell.
"Sarah. Sarah!" When she reached for the woman, Sarah turned on her like a wild animal, raining blows on her, trying to claw at her face, and screaming obscenities. I went to help, but Ros spat: "No, call back-up!" and wrestled Sarah away from Dean until she finally had her in a subdued, sobbing heap against the balcony rail.
Station security staff cordoned off the area, and when CO-19 arrived they started what I knew would be a futile hunt for the gunman. The sharpshooter – he had to have been one to have made that shot – was long gone. Ros turned Sarah Mitchell over to a pair of paramedics, and joined me as I removed Dean's body from the lift.
"You all right?" she asked.
I nodded, but kept my eyes averted. Ros dabbed a tissue on the still bleeding scratches Sarah had left on her face. There was a bruise emerging on her jaw, too, but she had snapped at the paramedics to leave her alone.
"You got too close, Lucas." There was no reproach in her voice, just a terrible sadness that I didn't expect, and surprise made me look at her. "He reminded you of someone, didn't he?"
"No," I lied. "He was just a kid … I should have watched out for him. I promised her he'd be fine."
Ros shook her head. "The fault's mine," she said bitterly. "I trusted someone." She made it sound like a crime. I watched as she flicked on her ringing mobile. "Harry."
I could hear his voice; Ros barely had any colour to lose, but her lips tightened as she listened.
"On our way." She shoved the phone savagely into her pocket.
"Angry?" I asked, unnecessarily.
"Livid," Ros said tersely. "Time to go." She glanced around. "What's that?"
I stooped to where she was pointing into the still stalled lift What looked from a distance like a piece of card turned out to be an old, creased photograph of a much younger Sarah Mitchell with a strapping black man and a child of about five. Dean must have been carrying it.
Silently, I held it out to Ros. She carefully wiped a smear of blood off before she scrutinised it. When she looked up, her eyes were sparkling with tears, and for a moment she half-turned away from me. The 'scary old witch' had gone. Suddenly I was back in the presence of the other Ros Myers – the one that cosy, warm, secret bedroom belonged to. The one who seemed to know about Sasha even though I'd never mentioned him.
"We'll keep it." Her voice was harsh, and she almost kept the quiver under control. "Teach us both a bloody lesson."
I nodded slowly. At least, unlike with Sasha, this time there was going to be someone who understood.
We turned our backs on the bloodstained lift and headed off together to face the music.
oOoOoOo
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