Identity X (14 page)

“Yes
Sir.”

“I
want you back at The Shop for immediate debriefing.”  He hung up the telephone
leaving no option for her to answer, argue, or barter her position.  She placed
the receiver back onto the base and she felt four sets of eyes resting upon
her, waiting to know what was coming next, and desperate to know that their
disloyalty of The Agency had not been uncovered.  She tapped her fingernails
along the side of the coffee cup and she thought about what to do next.  The
whole agency was searching for a dead man, who was already safely accosted in
one of their own cells.  She had the whole agency against her, and the only
thing in her favour was that they were yet to realise it.  She looked up at the
agents at her side. 

“Time’s
up.  Get him in the van.”

She had not been able
to listen as she heard her agents
shouting at Ben to get his own clothes back on, and she had taken herself
outside on account of it.  He had been screaming, demanding to talk to Hannah. 
They tried not to be too rough as they forced his stolen jacket back on.  After
shackling his hands and feet like a slave, which at least did him the service
of preventing the shaking of his nerve riddled hands, they forced a pair of
goggles over his eyes, blacked out with duct tape.  It served only to heighten
his sense of smell, a fact for which he was most ungrateful.  The splatters of
once hot blood on his jacket had now congealed into damp cold patches that
smelt stale and rusty, forcing him to suck his chest away from it by arching
his shoulders forwards.  With one agent either side of him they dragged him by
the armpits towards the door.  He heard the buzz as it popped open and they
swiftly marched him up the corridor and towards the central work room.

“Ben,
listen to me,” Hannah said as she greeted him at the door, his head jittering
left and right in search of her voice.  “We have no time left.  You have about
five minutes to make your decision.  We will have to kill you if you don’t
agree to the plan.”  He listened as she spoke in front of him, his ears his
only guide in his blacked out shackled state.  “Get him in the van.”

The
four guards trawled past her and pushed him into the same black van in which he
had left the underground station.  She went back to the building to close down
the computers and tracking systems at her desk.  She waited for them to exit
the room through the large sliding door, and then she collected the telephone,
wallet, and fake identity card that Ben had been carrying with him.  There
could be no trace of him left here.  They would find it.  As she picked up the
wallet she was stunned by the sight before her as it fell open in her hand. 
Inside the wallet was a photograph of Ben, Matthew, and her cuddled up
together.  She remembered it being taken one Sunday morning as they had lounged
around in bed, all three of them.  Ben had held the camera up in front of them,
and they had all squashed their heads in together in order to fit in the
frame.  Now as she held the wallet in her hands she realised that neither
Hannah Stone nor Ben Stone existed anymore.  Both identities had been wiped at
the onset of Phase One, and she would have to go back to being who she had been
before she met Ben.  Matthew was effectively an orphan, and the family that she
saw before her was dead.

“Ma’am,
we are ready to go.”  The voice from behind her requested her attention.  She
turned to face the agent, closing the wallet as she did so.

“I’m
ready.”  She walked out into the gentle April sunlight, the air cool as it
whipped against her skin, and she wondered how cold Ben might be in the light
clothes that he was wearing, ripped, damaged, and bloody from his time in the
underground station.  She took the handle of the sliding door, which was as
dense and heavy as osmium but bore none of its crystalline and elemental beauty,
and slid it into place.  The automatic locking code activated, and with the
last and longest beep, her base was officially shut down.  She pulled the
second original wooden door shut and flicked the latch before securing the
padlock, leaving no trace of what this building actually was.  Once again it
looked just like an average cabin in the woods.  As agreed, Ben was placed in
the back of the van with three agents, and Agent Smith sat in the front cabin. 
She found the small black device that was located on the underside of the van
and she leant down closely, pushing her weight behind it with her foot.  It
became dislodged from its position, dropping to the ground.  With a cautious
eye on the door of the van she fiddled her hand around in the mud until she located
the box and picked it up.  Brushing off the traces of mud, the soft earth
already starting to claim it as its own, she dismantled it, rendering it
useless.  She stuffed it into her pocket where it would stay until she found an
opportune moment for disposal, before stepping into the cabin of the van. 

“Let’s
go.”  She prompted Smith, who nodded his agreement, and after a quick look back
to his fellow agents through the small window that offered a view from the
cabin to the back of the van, he started the engine.  She too took a glance
through, but she paid no attention to the agents, but rather watched Ben, whose
head was tilted upwards, as if to render his ears a more effective acoustic
ability and improve his comprehension of what was happening.  She heard him say
her name, muffled as it was through the thickset glass, and she stifled her
feelings of guilt with the intention to remain focused on the task in hand.

They
drove away from the disused wood yard following a poorly trodden dirt track
that formed the only road to and from the building.  There was a small gate
that granted access and she activated it to open from a button inside the van. 
The white barrier rose, and as they passed through she pressed another button
which resulted in the closure of the gate.  They rattled their way over the
lumps of the road to a chorus of requests from Ben.  She could hear him
shouting from the back of the van, demanding to know where they were taking
him, as he banged his feet repeatedly against the floor of the vehicle with all
the insolence of a school boy.  She held onto the dashboard with her right hand
to steady herself as Smith negotiated the asymmetrical and changeable surface
of the road, whilst in her left hand she fingered the soft leather of her husband’s
wallet, all the while her focus on the image inside. 
She hoped so much that when presented
with the only option available to him, he would take it without question or
incident.  She could hear him in the back, shouting at his three companions,
and she hoped that he would manage to calm down by the time they drew to a
halt.  It would be a difficult task for any person to control him should he
choose to encumber the necessary steps of her plan.  His repeated demands to be
unshackled and released fell onto ignorance, and trained as they were, she knew
that her team’s patience would only stretch so far before the point that one of
them would remind the others that there was no reason to put their own lives in
danger for this man, even for her.  She wondered how much they would tolerate. 
Smith, currently focused on driving with the same degree of attention as a pack
of lionesses might offer a lone zebra, was by far the most patient, and she
could see a small bead of sweat forming on his temple, like a pure drop of rain
waiting patiently to fall given just the right push or pull, or a combination
of the two.

She
remembered her training, when unexpectedly one night she was taken in this way,
terrified and bound in the dark with no clue who it was that held her captive,
or where they were taking her.  She was interrogated for hours for facts which
she had purposefully been told in an effort to assess her strength and
commitment to The Agency. She had passed the test easily, never once giving any
indication to her captors of her level of fright and terror.  Not when they
punched her.  Not when they pulled the wrist straps tighter.  Not when they
burnt her with their cigarettes.  Not even when they threatened to take so much
more, slipping their filth covered de-gloved hands into the waistband of her
childish pyjamas.  Ben had received no such training, and she hoped desperately
that he could calm himself down in time for their destination.  She slapped her
sweaty palm on the metal wall between her and her husband leaving a visible wet
patch, and she wondered what it was that was making her sweat, the memories of
the past or the uncertainty of the present, but then she heard a break in his
demands and a moment of silence.

“Ben, stay calm.  We are nearly there.”

Smith, the agent that in her absence was
always the one in control of operations, and without whose support this change
in operation would undoubtedly not be taking place drove towards their
destination.  As they exited the forest, they proceeded along a small country
lane which found its way towards the circumferential border of what looked like
a lake, but if you followed it would lead directly to the sea.  The road was
good, and she knew it well.

“Smith, keep moving along this road for
another two hundred meters and then pull into the parking area.”  She pointed
to her left, indicating a small gravel paved clearing alongside a boat house
that you would never have seen from the road, and could have driven past
without being aware that it was even there.  The tyres skidded on the loose
surface as the van ground to a halt, and again she cherished the silence from
the back of the van, hoping that Ben had managed to compose himself, and
therefore curb his overenthusiastic protestations.  She pulled her telephone from
her pocket and held it up to her ear to make a call.  There were no sounds, not
even from Ben, and the silence of his uncertainty and anticipation felt almost
as smothering as his dissidence.

“We’re here
,
”
she said into her telephone.
  Her words were like a quick
slap, delivered, rhetorical, no response needed.  She hung up, and nodded to
Smith to exit the van.

She walked immediately towards the
entrance of the boat house, where she was met by a man, small in stature and
with a full beard. He was wearing a thick jumper and burgundy corduroy trousers
that seemed too heavy for the April weather, even with the chill that hung in
the air.  Agent Smith stood by his closed door, watching the couple as the
stranger embraced his boss fondly and kissed her on the cheek.  He regarded her
as a grandfather would regard a grownup granddaughter, proudly, but with
perhaps a hint of sadness that the easy days of childhood had passed her by. 
She turned back and nodded to Smith, a signal that he should bring Ben forth as
she had instructed him to do.  He hit the side of his fist against the van
three times and he heard the footsteps of those individuals who rode in the
back moving their way towards the door.

The smell of the fresh countryside air
and the breeze on his face was a welcome relief to Ben, who under the mask, the
shackles, and the darkness of the back of a van felt claustrophobic and
vulnerable, and he cherished the cleanliness of the oxygen rich air.  He felt
two sets of hands either side of him which pushed him forwards, and he was
certain that he could sense footsteps behind him too. The sound of trees
rustling above him gave him the sense that he was still in the forest, and the
background lull of the water as it lapped against the shore gave him an
inappropriate sense of peace.  Knowing the condition of his clothes, and the
conspicuous clot of blood that adorned the front of his jacket, he was glad to
hear sounds that suggested his confinement to the countryside, but yet
simultaneously found himself longing for the presence of strangers who would on
his behalf be fearful, and perhaps alert the police or attempt a civilian
rescue.

“Bring him here.” Ben heard his wife’s
familiar voice as she demanded for him to be closer to her, and he felt calmer
for it.  The agents pushed him forward, and the sound of the shore intensified
as he was led in her direction.  He felt her reach up to remove the blacked out
goggles.  His face contorted and his eyes squirmed away from the overpowering
daylight which assaulted his sight following his prolonged captivity and
sensory deprivation.  As his focus came back into view his wife appeared before
him and at her side another unfamiliar man, all beard like a modern day Judas
yet wearing a casual knit jumper.  As she stood before a boat and the water, he
asked what would have seemed to most a fairly obvious question.

“What are we doing here Hannah? Who is
this?” He held up his shackled hands in the direction of the overdressed
boatman, who was stood only a couple of arms length away.

“Take these off now,” she instructed
Agent Smith as she pointed to the shackles.  As Smith lent down revealing the
back of his head, Ben encountered an overwhelming urge to strike the man, and
should he have had any heavyset object to hand that would have achieved the
desired effect of rendering him unconscious he probably would have done so
without thinking.  He leered longingly at the occipital bone at the back of
Agent Smith’s head, revealing the small soft area just beneath it, and Ben
considered the strength of two clenched fists combined, a mallet of human bone
and knuckle.   Ben couldn’t help but estimate that with a blunt object and a
strong blow he could likely snap the delicate spinal cord that sat unwittingly
unprotected in the soft part of Agent Smith’s head.  He knew such a thing would
land him in even more trouble, and he reminded himself that his position was
too precarious to be entertaining such wild and dangerous thoughts.  He thought
again of the girl with the chocolate who he would have happily tackled earlier
on in the day and mentally slapped himself to put a stop to his madness.  In
any regular situation he expected that he would find the absurdity of his
murderous cogitations quite upsetting, and he was alarmed at how natural it
seemed to him now to consider such an act, and he hoped that his activities
earlier on in the day had not served to change him irrevocably.  As he looked
up from the back of Smith’s head, he saw Hannah staring straight at him.

“Your choice is very simple.  You go with
this man, or you go with us.  Going with us only leads in one direction. 
Remember, in our world Ben, you are already dead.  Killing you isn’t a crime if
you don’t exist.”