A Loyal Spy (50 page)

Down down down …

It felt as if she was in a vice. Her ears were agony. She equalised, pinching her nose and blowing. She felt suddenly light headed, which was followed by a sensation of darkness closing in from all sides, like travelling down a long tunnel. So this is drowning, she thought, this is how my life ends.

A shape materialised out of the shifting silt, a looming cave. She was swept inside. Her first thought was that they were monstrous cocoons, dark grey tubes of muscle and matter stacked in rows, waiting to erupt. And then she realised that she must be inside one of the holds in the broken back of the
Montgomery
. She reached out, and as she passed her hands brushed the casing of the nearest bomb, dislodging clouds of rust. Then the current had her again and she was being carried along the top of the stack, through lines of fluorescent white detonating cord converging out of the darkness. She was buffeted from all sides, sucked down and then just as suddenly propelled upwards. Above her the detonating cord formed a single braided cable as thick as her wrist, rising from the stack towards the cargo hatch. She shot through the hatch and was swept along the top of the deck.

There were more cables twisting out of the darkness, forming a knot of explosives tethered against one of the masts, linking all five of the ship’s holds in a single explosive circuit, a ring main. And as she rose alongside the mast, she saw that at the centre of the knot, hanging suspended in the water with his arms outstretched, was Nor’s lifeless body.

She surfaced beside the buoy and grabbed at it. She held on for a few seconds, gasping for air between each crashing wave. Then she looked up and saw it, just within reach, the ignition assembly: a clear plastic box containing a bundle of explosives, detonators and blinking circuitry, and feeding into it the twin ends of the cable. With the last of her strength she pulled, tearing the cable away from the box, unravelling the charge …

It was done. She was swept away.

Miranda dreamt that she was on land with her back to the sea and something was slithering across the mud from the water’s edge. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t turn around. Something had risen from the depths and was coming for her, slowly and deliberately. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t run. She was filled with ancient dread. The thing was right behind her. It had been searching for her for ten long years and she knew that it would be the most dangerous thing that she ever had to face. Saliva spooled from its open jaws. There was a foul smell and a child’s voice at her ear saying,
Mother, I’m here. I’m here.

She woke up.

She was lying face down in the mud, in corpse pose. Rain was pounding the earth beside her and water was lapping at her ankles. All around her, she could hear the storm raging, but where she was, on a worthless spit of land, there was an eerie calm. She scrambled to her feet and sloshed through the mud and the reeds away from the crashing waves, away from the water’s edge, away from her son’s voice.

Walk.

The first part of the walk was the most difficult. There was the rain and the mud. Several times she sank to her thighs in the mud. Each time she had to pull herself out by grabbing fistfuls of reeds, and each time she felt herself growing weaker. She was forced to wade across a narrow creek. On the far side she pulled herself on to the remains of an ancient earthwork and lay there breathlessly. She was tempted to close her eyes again but it didn’t seem like a very smart idea.

Are you tough, little bird?

‘I’m tough,’ she said, as she always did when her father asked. ‘I’m Isaaq.’

Then hit my fist.

She looked up and for a moment it was if the curtains of rain parted and a couple of hundred yards away, across a stretch of marsh, she could see a pylon line. Pylons lead to plugs, she thought, transmission lines lead to houses. She was genuinely glad to see the ungainly metal structures.

Are you tough?

‘I’m tough.’

She took a few deep breaths and set off again through the mud, pulling herself forward with fistfuls of reeds. She was cold but she hardly noticed the rain now.

She heard the sound of a helicopter from somewhere behind her and, turning, saw the long white beam of light sweeping the marshes, searching the barren ground.

‘I’m here,’ she shouted, but no one heard.

Beyond the pylon line there was a raised hard-core track full of ruts and potholes. It made her think of Jura, of the long walk to Barnhill from the end of the country road. Walking, that was what she did. There was a rhythm to it. It was what she’d done every day since she discovered that Omar was dead. It was what she was: a forked animal, following a track one step at a time.

‘I’m tough,’ she said, but it sounded hollow in her ears. The helicopter had wrecked her concentration. ‘Damn it, get a grip of yourself.’

Walk.

She came to a cattle grid, with a locked wooden gate beside it. Who would lock a gate here, where there were no fences? Rather than cross the steel bars of the grid or risk her footing in the surrounding marsh, she climbed over the gate, falling across it and tumbling on to the wet earth beyond.

She stood up again. The rain was falling in horizontal sheets. She was blinded. She took several steps and sank to her thighs in the mud. She had lost the track.

Omar was there walking beside her. Sixteen years old. He was almost as tall as his father. She was no longer afraid of him.

‘I don’t think I’m going to make it,’ she said.

I know.

He smiled sympathetically.

‘Am I going to make it?’ she asked.

Follow me.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you so very much.’

I love you too, Mom.

Ahead there was a metal structure, a dilapidated lambing shed with sheets of roofing metal flapping in the wind. He had led her through the marsh to the only nearby shelter. He was a determined and resourceful boy.

I’m going now.

‘Come back soon,’ she said. She was so glad to have seen him, so glad that he had turned out so well. She struggled towards the barn. Soon she would be out of the rain and somewhere that she could lie down and rest until Omar woke her.

As she approached a man that she did not recognise at first stepped out of the shadows at the entrance to the barn and lifted something towards her.

He was pointing at her.

It was Richard Winthrop IV. She knew immediately that he was accusing her of something. She had done so many wrong things.

There was a loud bang and a blinding flash of light and she felt a tremendous shock. There was no pain, only a violent shock, as if she had been electrocuted, and immediately after it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The barn in front of her receded to a great distance. The next moment her knees crumpled and she was falling. Her head hit the ground with a thud which, to her relief, did not hurt. She had a numb, dazed feeling, an understanding that she must be very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

She tried to get back up again, but discovered that her legs would not work, they slid uselessly in the mud, and as she tried to lift herself up on her elbows a lot of blood poured out of her mouth. She sank back into the ooze.

There was no point trying to move. It was only then that it occurred to her to wonder where she was hit. She couldn’t feel anything, but she was conscious that the bullet had struck her somewhere in the front of her body. When she tried to speak she found that she had no voice.

Jonah saw the muzzle flash in the distance and started running, sloshing through the mud. He fell several times and each time got up again and forced himself forward.

The shape of a building emerged out of the rain. A long metal shed. There was a man running north along a raised dyke away from the shed.

Winthrop.

Jonah ran after him.

Several times Winthrop stopped and looked back, aware that he was being followed. Several times he fired his gun wildly at shadows.

Jonah kept on running.

For a mile or so the track and the pylon line ran parallel to each other and then began to converge as the land narrowed towards the end of the spit. There was water on two sides and water ahead. Winthrop was running out of options. He was at the end of the line.

There was nothing but rushing water, and unreachable beyond the Medway the blazing lights of the power station. He turned back and kept firing his pistol until he was out of ammunition.

‘What do you want?’ he screamed.

Jonah came roaring out of the darkness.

You did it.
Omar was kneeling beside her
. You saved a million lives.

Miranda laughed at the irony. ‘I really did.’

There had been several minutes during which she had assumed she was dead. It was interesting to note what her thoughts had been at such a time. It made her unaccountably glad that her son was so proud. It made her think that her father would have been similarly proud. Perhaps she had not wasted her life after all. Happy as she was, she began to cry because her father had not lived to see it.

She took a deep breath between sobs and as she exhaled the blood bubbled out of her mouth. She tried not to breathe deeply again. Short, shallow breaths, she told herself. Everything was very blurry.

Are you ready?

It was Omar again.

‘Ready for what?’

You know.

‘I’m frightened.’

And he was gone. This time somehow she knew it was for good. She had been searching for him all her adult life. In the end that was all there was, that was all there had been … the searching.

The helicopter passed directly overhead. It was close enough that she could see its oblong yellow undercarriage, lit up by red running lights, and for a moment her hopes were raised, but the searchlight swooped far off across the reed beds, away from her.

The searchlight abruptly went off.

There was no one there in the darkness. Not her father. Not Omar. Not even Jonah.

She heard the helicopter coming back.

It hovered about fifty yards away and the light snapped on again, reaching out through the prop-wash, to find her.

She shielded her eyes and through her fingers watched it land. A figure jumped down from its side and ran towards her through the searchlight’s beam, throwing a vast and hulking shadow across the marshes.

She heard the rotors slowing down.

The man walked up to her out of the glare. It was the American, Mikulski. He knelt by her side and cradled her in his arms.

She died.

It was about an hour after sunrise on the thirteenth and the morning sky was untroubled by aircraft. It reminded Mikulski of the days after 9/11 when the skies over New York had been completely empty. He looked around at the blasted landscape. There was water everywhere, bubbling in the rivers and creeks, and sparkling on the reeds and pylon lines and on the lambing-shed roof and the helicopter’s plexiglas windshield and rotor blades.

He watched a large man come slouching out of the marsh, dragging something behind him. After a while he saw that it was Jonah and he was pulling Winthrop by his ankle. Mikulski looked down and with his hand he smoothed the hair away from Miranda’s face. He had seen the tape. He had watched her as she recalled the events of her life, including the raw emotion on her face as she described the loss of her son. She looked peaceful in death. As beautiful as when he had first seen her, standing in the kitchen at Barnhill, just ten days before, but no longer harried. Jonah dragged Winthrop on to the track beside the lambing shed and dumped him there.

‘Is he alive?’ Mikulski asked.

Jonah nodded. ‘Just about.’

He walked over, looked down at Miranda, and then sank to his knees beside them. His face was battered and bruised and one of his arms hung uselessly at his side. He tipped back his head and let his mouth hang open. Mikulski looked away; he couldn’t bear to see the anguish on Jonah’s face. About a mile away a police Range Rover was bumping along the track towards them from Chetney Cottages. The police sniper had climbed out of the helicopter and was standing beside it, with his rifle in his hands, unsure of what to do. Mikulski waved him away.

It was a mess. Kiernan’s family were demanding justice. Various agency heads would have to draw strongly on their reputation for preserving public safety if they hoped to keep their jobs. There were people all over that would have to be arrested. Others, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, would disappear. Rendition protocols would be enacted.

Winthrop made a sound in his throat. A groan.

From what Mikulski had learned about Those Who Seek The End it seemed unlikely that Winthrop would ever make it to trial. He did not envy those who would find themselves charged with protecting him in custody.

‘You should go now,’ Mikulski said.

Jonah held his head up and gritted his teeth, and there was in the line of his jaw, visible for anyone to see, the determination, the refusal to fold under any circumstances, that had driven him this far.

‘Go on,’ Mikulski urged.

Jonah looked at him.

‘There’s no reason to stay,’ Mikulski told him.

Reluctantly, Jonah climbed to his feet and, after spending a few moments staring down at Miranda’s pale, lifeless face, he sucked in a deep breath, turned towards the marsh and staggered back into it, a solitary figure wading through dark vegetation.

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.