In the Beginning – Part 2
Back at his desk Lucas opened the file to find a picture of the girl which must have been taken when she joined the service. He wondered how old she would have been. 21, 22 at least surely but she looked younger with her long blonde hair tied into a ponytail, and large blue eyes staring innocently back at him. She was excessively pretty and reminded him of one of those girls that fill out the cast of American teen flicks – the ones who made up the cheerleader squad or were going out with the Captain of the Football Team.
He read through her application form.
A BA with Honours in History, Head Girl, popular with everyone apparently and a reference describing her as "one of the nicest people I have ever met." She clearly had a lot to recommend her but he wondered whether she was really suitable material for the ruthless world of MI5. "Nice" would be an asset in many jobs but was definitely a mixed blessing in her present role.
He scanned through her file, noting the steady progress shown on her performance assessments and reading through the periodical psychological appraisals and medical evaluations.
Towards the end of the file he opened a page which contained a debrief report supplied by the late great Adam Carter and began to read:
Post Operation Debrief Report
Filed by: Adam Carter, SD 938
Position: Senior Field Officer
Section: D Date: 19/12/2007
On the morning of Tuesday 18 December I was alerted to the presence of a group called the "Redbacks" in the UK by Bob Hogan, a contact previously active at the American Embassy. The group had previously captured and interrogated one of Section D's field officers in Tehran. Bob advised the group's purpose was to capture and interrogate intelligence officers, extracting whatever information they could from them, then onselling them to another client to allow further information to be extracted. The outcome for the officer was always death and for the individual involved the sooner this occurred, the better, given their methods.
On hearing of the threat I immediately contacted Malcolm Wynne - Jones and asked him to alert the rest of the section to the threat and step up our security. I discussed the matter with Harry Pearce who advised that he would take steps to raise the security level of our officers, but that he could not withdraw out officers from service due to the need to have all members of staff available to continue work on other urgent matters.
Approximately two hours after Bob Hogan had first alerted us to the threat, members of Section C confirmed that Joanna Portman's house had been broken into and that she was missing. We immediately suspected that the Redbacks were responsible.
Knowing that her capture would likely result in her death and the probable release of information which would undermine the security of our operations I was authorised by Harry Pearce to contact Bob Hogan to see if he could arrange a meeting with the Redbacks and provide cash in exchange for her safe return.
The deal backfired when Bob Hogan drew a gun on me and ordered me to remove my tracker, then handed me to the Redbacks.
I was blindfolded and handcuffed and taken to their south west London base. When I arrived I was locked in a cell and Jo was already present. She appeared unharmed and said she had not been tortured.
Our captors were Jean Boscard, a Frenchman and Eric Mulder, an American.
On arrival I reviewed the cell but could find no way out.
Jo and I remained in that cell for approximately two hours, anticipating that the Redbacks would begin their interrogation at any moment. After approximately an hour in the cell, Jean Boscard entered the room and spoke to Jo and it became clear to me at this point that he had raped her before my arrival.
Jo became progressively more anxious, and was clearly working herself into a state of complete terror in anticipation of what was to come. She begged me to kill her before the interrogation could start. I refused, saying that the money had a tracker on it and that she needed to hold out until the team could locate us.
Both the Redbacks then entered the cell with a buyer and discussed their plans to interrogate us, beginning with Jo. They left the cell to negotiate terms with the buyer and we knew that the interrogation was imminent.
Knowing that Jo was desperate, I told her to play dead and when Boscard entered the room and threatened me, she crept up behind him and successfully neutralised him. By this time CO19 had entered the house and captured and disarmed the other Redback.
Both Redbacks were dealt with and are now no longer a threat.
I am recommending that Jo remain on compassionate leave for some time until she is fit to return to work. I am concerned, especially in light of her age and her relative naivety that this will seriously affect her, particularly when it is combined with the loss of a close friend and colleague. I intend to offer her my continued support and I hope the service will also.
Lucas put down the file and considered Joanna Portman from a new angle. An angle he was glad he'd never had to consider his wife or sister or a friend from.
He briefly tried to imagine what might have gone through her head on that day. The desolation of finding herself at first alone at the mercy of people who didn't operate by any of the standards of normal human decency, the shock of realising what Boscard wanted to do to her and the inevitability of the outcome of that encounter, the pure terror of trying to imagine the punishments her captors might carry out, and knowing enough to understand that these would become progressively more brutal until only death finally offered a way out. Her only solace must have been Adam Carter. He wondered how she would cope now he was gone too.
There were some similarities between her experiences and his first few weeks in prison. Some, but it was not the same. Clearly.
From an operational point of view her combination of both "nice" and damaged was probably not the best fit for her present position. The last thing they needed at the moment was an officer on board who was going to start falling apart when things got tough, as they inevitably would.
**
The next morning dawned bright and clear, and unseasonably warm. At home Jo surveyed herself in the mirror and frowned.
Her dress was black chiffon affair, reminiscent of the 1940s, with little puffed sleeves, and the flimsy material was somewhat see through with a satin underdress beneath it.
She'd brought it some time ago and had examined it critically for a good few minutes that morning, thinking that it wasn't really entirely appropriate, but had eventually decided it would have to do, given that there was nothing else suitable in her closet. Anyway, she thought as she unfastened a pin to clip back her hair, it didn't really matter what she wore. A dress wasn't going to change the fact that Wes Carter would be waking up again this morning with no father. And no mother.
She smoothed her hair back behind her ears, then moved to the kitchen to gulp down a cup of coffee before collecting her keys and heading towards the door.
**
In the church, Lucas thought about Elizabeta as the Minister droned on. She'd looked so similar to when he'd last seen her, only a little more tired, a little less fresh. He calculated how old she must be. 34 now. Her birthday was the 22nd of November. He remembered she liked to be taken to dinner on her birthday and to be given flowers – daffodils were her favourite. He wondered if her new husband knew that. Or that she liked to be kissed on her forehead, just beneath her hairline.
He looked over to his colleagues in the pew beside him. Malcolm was listening attentively, a sad smile on his face as the Minister talked of the fragility of life and how we had a duty to do good in the world while we had the opportunity to. Harry had his head bowed. He'd never been one for public demonstrations of emotion but Lucas could see from the way he was stooped over that he was clearly finding the service difficult.
On the other side of the church, Ros Myers looked as if she was about to display a rare lapse in her normally steely self control. He could see her mouth quiver and her hands quietly working themselves into a knot, and after a moment a solitary tear appeared, then gradually slid down her face. Sitting beside her Jo kept her attention focused on the Minister's words but her saw her right hand move and come to rest gently on Ros' arm. He was surprised to see Ros smile briefly to herself at this gesture.
Jo's attention gradually faded until the words began to wash over her like waves and the break from one to the next was no longer distinguishable. One phrase did stand out in her mind. "We are all part of God's greater plan."
She wondered cynically what plan that might be. That plan which four days ago had left a boy, not yet ten years old, who only two years ago had lost his mother, now without a father too.
The plan that had resulted in the death of a man who had saved thousands of innocent lives in his brief but distinguished career and who would have undoubtedly gone on to save thousands more.
The plan that had let her cheeky, charming friend with so much life in him fall into the hands of a man who would take pleasure in making him suffer in every conceivable way until he could take no more and they succeeded in quite literally squeezing the life out of him.
And she supposed it was part of the plan that that same man should take her and use her body like the worst kind of common whore and leave her shattered into a thousand pieces to be picked up and somehow stitched back together. She thought bitterly that even if the mending held, the tears would still show.
**
Hmm, still only part way through Adam's funeral – more of that next chapter.
Also - I want a dress like Jo's! And Jo has the same degree as me so says the Personnel Files where I got her application info from.