Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Milton awoke and reached out for his watch on the bedside table. He scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and checked the time: it was nine. He let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes again. He was tempted to go back to sleep but it was already later than he had intended and he had plenty to do. Anna was still in her bed, and he got out of bed slowly and deliberately, careful not to wake her. She was lying on her front, the sheets pulled halfway down her back. Milton had laid her there, still dressed. Her breathing was deep and very relaxed. He wasn’t sure how long the effect of the Temazepam would last but he figured that he had a little while yet. She would be able to guess where he had gone but he would have a head start, at least. He hoped that he could find Beatrix Rose before she could get there.

He went into the bathroom, dressed and then quietly left the room.

He took a taxi to Chungking Mansion and made his way to Syed Bukhara again. It was ten when he took a seat at the same table in the restaurant as before and started what he suspected would be the first in a series of cups of tea.

But he didn’t have long to wait.

“Hello, Milton.”

He turned: there was a woman behind him, and, for a moment, he didn’t recognise her. It was eight years, that was true, but even so. She was thin, the structure of her bones easily visible through a face that had far less shape than Milton remembered. Her skin looked brittle and dry, like parchment, and her eyes, which had once been bright and full of fire, were dull and lifeless, obscured by a film of rheum. She looked ill.

“Number One,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not any more. And not for a long time.”

There was a wariness in her face as she regarded the few other diners in the restaurant. She moved gingerly, as if it gave her pain, and, as she came around the table and passed directly in front of him, Milton saw with dismay that the emaciation in her face was symptomatic of a more general malaise; she had been beautifully curvaceous before but that was all gone now. She was wearing a flimsy blouse with short sleeves and as she braced her arms on the table to lower herself down into the seat he could see the bony protuberances of her elbows and the shape of the bones in her wrists. She moved with deliberate care, as if it gave her pain. It was as if she had aged thirty years in the space of ten.

She had a bag with her and, as she sat down, she arranged it in her lap and slid a hand inside.

“I’ve got a gun,” she said. “It’s aimed right at your balls. Ten seconds, Milton. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Point blank. She wouldn’t miss.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Five seconds.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Did Control send you?”

“No,” he said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“This has nothing to do with him. Or the Group. You have my word.”

“Better make me believe that, Milton. I’d rather not shoot you.”

Milton was calm. “Control doesn’t know where I am,” he said. “He doesn’t know where you are, either. If he did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? I would already have shot you.”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “No, Milton, you wouldn’t. I’ve been following you since you came here to look for me yesterday. I’m disappointed. I taught you to be observant and I’m very out of practice. Go on, why are you here?”

“I’m here of my own accord. I’m out of the Group. I quit. I told Control a while ago. Can’t say he took too kindly to the idea. He’s already tried to kill me twice.”

“Keep going.”

Milton didn’t demur. He told her everything that had happened. He started at the beginning, all the way back to what had happened in London after his last assignment in the Alps, because he knew she would need to have the context to understand what had happened next. He told her about his argument with Control.

“So you resigned,” she said.

“I tried. It wasn’t accepted.”

“You know you can’t…”

“Yes,” he interrupted. “So he kept telling me.”

He explained about the attempt to murder him in London that had very nearly been successful, how he had been shot by Callan and how he had fled to South America. He told her about Ciudad Juárez, and Control’s second attempt to bring him back in, and about how he had escaped and fled to San Francisco.

“So you’re a wanted man?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Control isn’t the sort of person you’d want chasing you.”

“He certainly is relentless,” he said with a wry smile. “Is that enough for you?”

She withdrew her hand from the bag. “For the time being.”

“So what about you?”

Her posture stiffened. “What about me?”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s a long story.”

The waiter looked over at her with a friendly, knowing smile. “The usual, miss?”

“Please.”

She put her hand back into her bag and, for a moment, Milton thought she was going for the gun again. She rummaged for a moment, unable to find whatever it is she wanted.

“Cigarette?” Milton offered.

“You still smoke?”

“Tried to stop,” he said.

“It’ll kill you.”

“So will lots of things. I decided I might as well have one vice. They let you smoke in here?”

She looked at him with mild amusement. “Seriously, Milton? Look around. You can do whatever you want.”

He took the unfinished packet from his pocket and offered it to her.

She took it and held it up. “Winstons?”

“Afraid so. They’re not great.”

“You want to tell me why you’ve got a packet of Russian cigarettes?”

“I was in Moscow the day before yesterday. That’s why I’m here.”

She took two, leaving one on the table. Milton took out his oxidised Ronson lighter, thumbed the flame and held it out for her. She dipped her head to it, the blouse falling open at the neck and revealing the angular points of her clavicle. Milton took one for himself and left the packet on the table.

She leaned back and inhaled hungrily. “So who’s the pretty girl?”

“Her name is Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko.”

“Where is she?”

“At the hotel.”

“She looked unwell last night.”

“You were at the restaurant?”

“Outside. What’s wrong with her?”

“I drugged her.”

“How chivalrous.”

“I wanted to see you on my own.”

“What is she? Russian intelligence?”

“SVR,” Milton said.

She drew down on her cigarette. “So what does a pretty Russian intelligence agent have to do with you?”

He leant back in the chair and drew on his cigarette. “She was sent to recruit me.”

Isabella cocked an eyebrow at that. “For what?”

The waiter returned with two cups of Indian chai tea. She thanked him and waited until he had returned to the counter before she spoke again.

“To recruit you for what, Milton?”

“They wanted me to find you.”

She shook her head sharply. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

“Just hear me out.”

“Do you think I’d be somewhere like this if I wanted to be found?”

“Just let me give you a little bit of background first. I’ve come halfway around the world to find you. Humour me.”

She settled back in the chair and fixed him with a steady glare. She moved her hand close to the mouth of the bag again. “Give me another fag.” He did as she asked. “You’ve got five minutes and then I’m gone.”

“Do you remember my first assignment?”

Her eyes narrowed just a little. “Of course I remember it. It was a disaster.”

“You remember the two targets?”

“Yes,” she said carefully.

“DOLLAR and SNOW. We never knew anything about them.”

“What’s your point, Milton? We never knew anything about any of them. They’re just names.”

“DOLLAR was Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko and SNOW was Pascha Shcherbatov. They were both Russian agents. Turns out Shcherbatov is a colonel in the SVR now.”

“Where are you going with this? It doesn’t matter that they were spooks. I killed my fair share. You would have, too.”

“I know. That’s not the point. Semenko and Shcherbatov weren’t targeted because they were spooks. They were sent to London because the Russians had a tip-off that Control could be bought. They had assets inside the Iraqi government who said he was introducing arms dealers to the right people. So Semenko set herself up as a dealer, said she wanted an in with the Syrians. Control said he could arrange that for her – for the right price. They had him. Photographs, financial records, everything they needed. They were going to flip him or they were going to burn him. He’d proposed a meeting to talk it over. They were going to see him when we hit them. He set the whole thing up. The whole operation was all about him trying to save his own neck.”

She listened intently, her brow occasionally furrowing, chain-smoking her way through another two cigarettes. “How do you know this?”

Milton told her about his trip to Russia to meet Shcherbatov and the story he had told him in the dacha. She didn’t look surprised by any of it.

“And what does this have to do with you?”

“Shcherbatov wanted me to find you.”

“But why would you do anything for him?”

“There’s another agent. Michael Pope. You won’t know him, he joined after you disappeared.”

“No, I do remember him,” she said. “Tall, dark hair? We looked at him before we chose you,” she said, punctuating the words with an absent stab of the cigarette.

“He was made Number One after I got out.”

“How did he end up in Russia?”

“There was a job in the south of France. Control sent him after Shcherbatov again. He got caught. If I don’t help him, he doesn’t have much of a future.”

She waved that away. “Those are the breaks,” she said. “He would have known the risks.”

“True,” he said, “but he saved my life once. And I can’t leave him there.”

She knocked a long ash into the empty teacup. “You haven’t explained what any of this has to do with me.”

“Shcherbatov thinks you took evidence from the car.”

She shrugged. “So?”

“Did you?”

“No,” she said dismissively, although he saw the flinch before she spoke.

“Beatrix?” he pressed. “Did you?”

“I said no,” she said sharply, although he registered the movement in her eyes and he knew that she was lying. “I can’t help you, Milton.”

“And I can’t leave Pope to rot in a gulag.”

“That’s very valiant but there’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

“I need your help. Please, Beatrix.” The respect between them was old, frozen by the passage of time, but he hoped there was enough of it left for her to consider helping him. “Pope needs you.”

“I can’t.”

“I think you need me, too.”

Now her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “Why would you say something stupid like that?”

“Beatrix,” he said carefully, remembering her temper. “Look at where you are. Look at yourself.”

“Fuck off, Milton.”

She waved an impatient arm at him and the motion caused her sleeve to ride a little up her arm, revealing the lower part of a cursive tattoo that he remembered. The fragment said ‘—ABELLA” and Milton remembered seeing it before, and asking what it meant. He took a breath and thought about what he was going to say. He knew it would be inflammatory but he didn’t have any other cards left to play.

“The tattoo,” he said, pointing, “on your arm. You told me that was for your daughter, Isabella. Do you remember?”

She stood up.

“What happened to her? Where is she?”

“We’re finished,” she said. “Don’t try and find me again. I don’t want to be found. Do you understand?”

She stalked away from the table without a backward glance.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He stayed at the table for thirty minutes, smoking a couple of cigarettes and worrying about the content of their conversation and how weak and ill she had looked, and how little he had achieved. He was about to settle the bill when Anna arrived. Her eyes flashed with fury; with him, and, he guessed, with herself. He had played her very well yesterday, persuading her that he was warming to her to lower her guard just enough that he could put her out of the way for a few hours. He had brought it to an expert conclusion at dinner. He knew that she would feel embarrassed; she had offered herself to him and he had not only rejected the offer, he had turned the tables completely and used the detente between them as a means to incapacitate her. She was a beautiful girl; he doubted that she was used to being treated like that. There might have been some consolation for her if he had admitted that he found her almost irresistibly attractive, but he did not. He guessed, from the steeliness in her eyes, that she would have hit him. He would have deserved it, too.

“You’re going to have to get over it,” he told her. “It was necessary. She would never have come out if we were here together.”

“What? You met her?”

“Yes,” he said. “Forty minutes ago.”

The anger drained out of her. “And? Will she help?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no. She’s not in the best shape, Anna.”

“That’s not good enough, Milton. You can’t give up.”

“Who said I was giving up?”

“Where is she?”

“I can guess,” he said. “I’m going to go and see her now.”

“I’m coming too.”

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

“You’re forgetting…”

“She’s been hiding here for the best part of a decade, Anna. She’s paranoid. And you should remember what she used to do before she came here. How do you think she’ll react if she thinks Russian intelligence have started to follow her? No, don’t answer, I’ll tell you – she’ll shoot you, and then she’ll likely shoot me.” She started to protest again and he held up a hand to forestall her. “I’ll go and speak to her again. I think I can persuade her, but you are going to have to trust me.”

“After what you did?”

“Even after that. If I can get her to cooperate, then you can meet her. That’s the only way this is going to work, Anna.”

* * *

He didn’t need to follow her; he knew where she was going. He got lost amid the commotion as soon as he reached the ground floor and only found the familiar corridor an hour later. The same man was behind the desk, an illegal feed of Premiership football on the television. Milton gave him another hundred dollars and went through into the corridor that led to the rooms.

Beatrix was lying on the bed, breathing almost without sound. She was covered with a single sheet, the shape of her gaunt body visible beneath. The room was smokey and smelled sickly bittersweet. There was a joint in an ashtray, almost burned down to the filter, and it sent languid smoke drifting up to the ceiling. She was deep in sleep and yet she did not looked relaxed; her face was troubled and, as he watched, the muscles in her cheek started to twitch, the sudden jerk reflected and amplified by an unconscious spasm in her right leg. The air conditioning unit coughed and spluttered, gobbets of water falling from it and splashing against the wall and floor. The door was open and cold, harsh light from the lobby leaked inside.

Milton stepped all the way inside; the room was so small that he had to squeeze right up against the bed before he was able to close the door. He knelt down. There was an ivory pipe on the bed next to her head: the long bamboo stem was decorated with Chinese inscriptions along its length and it was fitted with a blue and white porcelain bowl. Milton picked up the pipe; the bowl was detachable and, as he unscrewed it, he saw a congealed brown paste gathered inside. There was wooden layout tray on the bed next to her knees complete with a funnel-shaped lamp made of nickel silver, a spare pipe and two extra pipe bowls. A small folded paper envelope was on the tray. Milton picked it up and opened it. There was half a gram of brown powder inside with the consistency of ground cinnamon. His stomach plunged. He had been to the East more than enough times to recognise opium.

Now he knew why Beatrix looked as bad as she did.

He knew why she had chosen to live in a place like this: you could find anything you wanted in Chungking Mansion, legal or not. Finding someone with opium to sell would be a simple matter indeed.

He took the tray from the bed and placed it quietly on the floor.

He let her sleep. It was another three hours before she finally awoke. She stirred, turning over so that she was facing him, and her shallow breathing altered a little. He saw her eyes open, staring right at him.

“Bella?” she said in a quiet voice, and then she closed her eyes again.

She woke properly twenty minutes later. She opened her eyes wide and gave a shudder.

“Beatrix,” Milton whispered. He put his right hand on her shoulder.

Her breathing accelerated and her right hand flailed, searching for something. It stabbed under the pillow and, when it emerged, it was holding a small pistol.

Milton reached down and caught her wrist in his hand. She was weak and he pressed her arm gently down against the mattress. “It’s me, Beatrix. It’s John.”

Her whisper was so quiet that he had to strain his ears to catch the words. “I told you,” she said. “I can’t help you.”

“That’s fine,” he said, his hand still on her wrist. “I won’t ask again. I’m here for you now. I want to help you.”

She laughed, weak and bitter, the noise tearing into a ragged cough. “You can’t.”

“Tell me what’s happened.”

“Leave me alone, Milton. It’s pointless. You can’t do anything.”

“Just tell me. Maybe I can.”

She shook her head and was silent for a moment. Milton thought that she had gone back to sleep again when she gulped and he realised that she was crying silent tears.

“Beatrix, where’s Isabella?”

Chapter Thirty

She gradually regained her strength and when she did, he helped her to stand so that she could go over to the cupboard. She was naked apart from her underwear but she was too vacant to be shy; she had lost so much weight that her ribs showed clearly and, as she turned and bent down to pull up her jeans, he could see the individual vertebrae in her back. He saw the tattoo with Isabella on her right arm and, as she turned, he saw more ink: eight bars of solid black, one after the other, running down from underneath her arm down towards her waist. She opened the door, picked out a clean t-shirt and put it on.

“You got any more smokes?”

He took out the packet and gave it to her. “Keep it.”

“I just want one.” She fingered one from the carton and lit it.

The atmosphere in the room was still heady and Milton felt the beginnings of a headache. “What do you say we get some air?”

She shrugged limply. “I don’t care.”

She put on the t-shirt and a jacket and allowed him to lead the way down to Nathan Road.

“There’s a bar I know around the corner,” she suggested.

“I don’t do bars. Somewhere else?”

“You don’t want a drink?” she asked. “I want a drink.”

“It’s not that I don’t want one … it’s just that … well, I don’t.”

“At all?”

He nodded ruefully. “You’re looking at a new man,” he said.

“You were a soldier, Milton. I’ve never met a soldier who doesn’t drink.”

“Long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.” They were passing a coffee shop. “How about here?”

She shrugged and they went inside. Milton ordered two strong coffees and two apple doughnuts. Beatrix had found a table at the back of the room and had taken the seat that was facing out, into the street. She was extremely careful, Milton thought. Old habits died hard. He took the coffees and the doughnuts over and sat down opposite her.

“Get this down you,” he said, sliding the plate across the table.

She picked it up and took a big bite.

“What’s going on?”

She stopped for a moment, as if hesitating at a crossroads, considering each possible choice and the consequences that might flow from it. Milton waited, listening to the sound of cutlery ringing against crockery, the low buzz of conversation and the electric hum of the city outside.

“What Shcherbatov told you. About the operation. It’s true.”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a briefcase in the car after we hit it. It was just habitual. I saw it, I took it. I went back home before we debriefed and I opened it there. Those things you said: the photographs, the flash drives. They were in the case.”

“Did you look at them?”

“Just the photographs. They were enough for me to know something was wrong. Control is not a field agent, Milton. In all the time I worked for him, the only time I saw him away from his desk was for that job. I’d certainly never seen him meeting a target before. That didn’t make any sense at all. I knew that something was wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“I copied the flash drives and hid them and then I went in with the photographs. I asked him to explain them. He couldn’t, of course. He tried, but it was all bullshit. I was about ready to quit before that assignment, like you, and that was just the final straw as far as I was concerned. I played along with him, gave him the answers that he wanted to hear, and then I went home.”

She paused and swallowed, her skinny neck bulging once and then twice.

Milton pressed gently. “What happened?”

“He’d sent five agents. They were waiting for me. They had my husband and daughter. They had a gun on my little girl.” She looked down, her eyes closing. She stayed like that for twenty seconds, her chest rising and falling with each deep lungful of breath that she took. When she looked up again her eyes glistened with tears. “I knew if I didn’t do something they’d kill all three of us so I waited for my chance and went for them. My husband was shot, I got a round in the shoulder but I managed to fuck one of them up pretty good. I don’t know. If she wasn’t dead she’d be smoking these”, she held up the cigarette, “through the hole I put in her throat. The other one got my daughter.”

“Got?”

“Grabbed her. They—”

The words choked in her throat. She stood up and went to the counter for more cigarettes. Milton remained at the table, staring at the half eaten doughnut, unsure quite what to say.

She returned, tossing the cigarettes onto the table. There was fresh steel in her face.

Milton started, “You don’t have to say…”

“It was a stalemate,” she said over him. “I had a gun on them, they had her. What was I going to do?” She tore off the cellophane wrapper, opened the carton and took out a cigarette. Milton lit it for her. “The only thing I could do was run. I got on the Eurostar, went through the tunnel and then kept going. Got on a plane in Barcelona and came here. It seemed as good a place as any to stop. That was nearly ten years ago. Been here ever since.”

“Where is she now?” Milton asked. “Your daughter?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They emailed a picture a week after it all happened.” She took a slim wallet from her jeans pocket, opened it and took out a photograph. She laid it on the table and Milton took it. The girl had a happy, open face, a ready smile and a cascade of brown curls that gathered on her shoulders. The picture had been taken in an anonymous room, the little girl sitting in front of a large TV with beige walls in the background. She was playing with a doll. “She looks fine but I know that was a reminder. A warning. Control will have her in care somewhere. She’ll be alive. He knows that as long as he has her, that’s the one thing that’ll stop me coming back and tearing his throat out.”

“The tattoos on your ribs,” he said, pointing to his own trunk. “That’s one for every year, right?”

“That’s right. Eight years. It’ll be time to add another one next month.”

“But you can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

He leant forward and spoke urgently, “Because I found you. Shcherbatov knows where you are. If I can’t persuade you to help them he’s not going to give up. He wants what you have about Control. He’ll just send someone else who won’t ask as nicely.”

“You didn’t find me, Milton, I found you. And that threat doesn’t work if you’ve got nothing left to lose.”

He pressed ahead. “What about Control?”

“What about him?”

“If he finds out where you are, you know what will happen. He’s still there. He hasn’t stopped.”

“Look at me, Milton. You’re not listening. Do you think any of that frightens me? Shcherbatov. Control.” She shaped her fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed the tips against her temple. “You think the gun’s for defence? You know how many times I’ve wanted to put a bullet in my head and lost my nerve? Every day.” He felt his stomach turn and he reached across and took her wrist; there was no resistance in her arm as he gently lowered it and held it against the table. “I can’t even do that. I’m fucked up. They come over here and do it for me, I’m telling you, they’d be doing me a fucking favour.” She sucked down on the smoke and gazed out into the street. “My life is over. My husband is dead. I lost my daughter. I’ve got no money. I’m a drug addict. I’m done, Milton. Finished. How do you think this is going to end?”

“There must be something you can do.”

“You got any ideas? I’m all ears.”

“Something, anything. It would have been better than coming here to all … this.”

“This?”

“The opium, for a start.”

“I don’t need your morality,” she said, glaring at him. She took another cigarette from the packet and lit it.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she snapped. “It helps me forget how I’ve fucked up my life.”

“It doesn’t work, though, does it?”

“No? I don’t think about very much when I’m high. You should try it.”

“I have tried it,” he said. “That’s the reason I don’t drink any more. It works for a while until it doesn’t. And then it’s much worse.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re in a program?”

“A.A.” Milton said. He smiled wryly.

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s the first time I’ve admitted it to anyone who wasn’t already in the Rooms.”

“Yeah? Well, good for you, but I still think it’s bullshit. There’s no point trying to persuade me to do something stupid like that. The first thing you need is to want to stop, right?”

Yes…”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“You’re not…”

“There’s something else, Milton. The other reason I do it.” She took a deep breath and laid her hands out on the table, palms down, fingers splayed. “It’s a palliative.”

“For what?”

“I have cancer.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I told you. I don’t need your sympathy.”

He shifted uncomfortably; the conversation had veered hopelessly away from where he thought it might go. “How bad is it?”

“Bad. Breast cancer, stage four. It’s in my liver and my lungs. I found out three months ago.”

“Have you had treatment?”

She shrugged. “What’s the point?”

“So you haven’t?”

She waved a hand disdainfully. “There’s a doctor I know, discreet if you pay him enough. He’s given me two rounds of chemotherapy. I might’ve had a third but I’ve run out of money. Don’t do anything stupid like offer to pay for it. I’m alright with it. We’re all going to die, Milton, especially people like us. I just know I’ll be sooner than most.”

“How long do you have left?”

“He can’t say for sure. All they can do is manage it now. No more than twelve months.” She smiled bitterly. “So I eat like shit and I smoke and I drink and when the pain gets too much I smoke heroin so I can’t feel it any more. And one day, when I can’t take it any more, I’ll shoot up enough to bring an end to it. You think about it from my point of view, it’s not a bad way to go.”

Milton laid his hands flat on the table. “What about your daughter?”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t.”

“You don’t want to see her again? Before…”

“Before I die? Yes, Milton, of course I do. I want that more than anything. But if Control gets even the slightest hint that I’m in the country again he is going to think I’m coming after him; and if he thinks that, she isn’t safe. I can’t take the risk. I can’t go back. You see, Milton? This can’t be fixed.”

He stared right into her face. “No. You’re wrong. Everything can be fixed.”

“Not this.”

“What about if I said I could get her back?”