In Cold Blood (5 page)

“Beatrix, it is.”

He smiled. Michael Pope had been in post ever since Control, the man Pope had replaced, had fled the country. Beatrix and John Milton had destroyed half of the Group in Russia and served notice that they were coming for the man next. Beatrix knew Milton better than she knew Pope, but the things that she did know about him suggested that he had been a very fine soldier and that he would make an excellent commanding officer of the off-the-books death squad of which she had latterly been the prime operative.

“How are you?”

“I’m good.”

He waved an arm at the view. “Nice place you have here.”

She brushed it off with wry disdain: “All thanks to the government’s money.”

“How much did you get out of them?”

“Two million dollars.”

He shook his head in wry satisfaction. “The least they could do after what Control did.”

“Yes, it was. But his debt is nowhere near paid.”

“No,” he said. “I know it’s not.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Not about him, not yet.”

“So?”

“It’s about the others. One of them, in particular.”

She motioned for him to sit and followed him across the roof. On cue, Mohammed climbed the stairs with a platter that held a silver pot of sweet-smelling tea. Mint tea was central to Marrakech culture, and he took special pride in his old family recipe. There was a spearmint plant in the courtyard and he stripped handfuls of leaves from it every morning; the leaves, sugar and a good tablespoon of gunpowder green tea would have been added to boiling water and left to steep before he brought it upstairs. “Miss Beatrix?” he said as he approached.

“Do you want some green tea?” she asked Pope.

“Please.”

Mohammed set the glasses down and poured the tea from a height so that a thin layer of foam settled on the top.

“Thank you,” Pope said.

Mohammed ducked his head; he looked at Beatrix and she gave a slight, barely perceptible nod. He carried one of her Glocks in a holster beneath his
djellaba
, and, had she shaken her head, he would have taken it out and shot Pope there and then.

“Is there anything else, Miss Beatrix?”

“No, Mohammed. That’s all. Thank you.”

With a watchful look back at them, he smiled thinly and went to light the candles in the lanterns that were set around the roof. When that was done, he went back downstairs. Beatrix knew he would be waiting just below.

“Who’s he?” Pope asked.

“An old friend,” she said, and that was true. She had worked with him on an assignment ten years earlier when he was a corporal in the Moroccan Royal Guard. She had saved his life and it was to him that she went when she moved here after leaving Hong Kong. She had asked him if he could recommend anyone to run the house for her and had been flattered when he had insisted that he would do it himself. He was a good man and she trusted him implicitly.

Pope sipped his tea and replaced it on the table.

“How is your daughter?”

“She’s well.”

“How has it been—the, well, you know—the time?”

“Since I saw her? It’s been difficult.”

He spoke carefully. “Does she remember what happened?”

Beatrix tightened her grip on the glass a little. “She remembers me. I haven’t pressed her on the rest, but I think she does. I don’t know how you could forget something like that, no matter how young you were.”

Watching your father shot in the head.

Your mother shot in the shoulder.

Your mother stabbing a woman in the throat.

“No,” he said, seemingly uncomfortable with the subject he had raised.

She had no time for his awkwardness. “It’s been a year, Pope.”

“They don’t want to be found, Beatrix. And they know how to hide.”

She had no time for excuses. “What have you got?”

“I’m not sure you’ll like it.” She gave a terse gesture that he should continue. “None of them are going to be easy to find—you know that—but we’ve located Joyce. He’s had an interesting career since he left the Group. He worked as a mercenary for the first few years—Iraq, Afghanistan, all the usual places. That seemed to get old for him and so he switched to private security instead. There’s a company based in North Carolina called Manage Risk. Branches all over the world, hundreds of ex-forces men all around the world. They have contracts for all kinds of things, including nautical security. They get paid by the big shipping companies to sit on their freighters so they can put up a fight if pirates attack.”

“So, he’s in America?”

“It would be a lot easier if he was. Look at this.”

He handed her a copy of the
Times
from the previous day. The above-the-fold article on the front page reported upon the hijacking of the crew of a freighter off the coast of Somalia. “What about it?”

“He was aboard.”

“Security?”

“Yes. The Somalis have put skiffs out all the way up and down the coast and they’ve been trying their arm with the big freighters. It’s like pilot fish trying to take down a whale, but something must have gone wrong with the guards on this one. They got on board somehow. We don’t have any intel on that yet.”

“What do you know?”

“That they took the crew back to Somalia.”

“Where?”

“We don’t know. They’re still at sea. They’re being tracked, though. We’ll know when they make land.”

“That’s good.”

“Good? How?”

“Because when they do land, I’ll know where Joyce is.”

He smiled patiently. “He won’t be there for long.”

She was incredulous. “They’re not going to pay the ransom?”

“No. The ship has Americans on board: the captain, a few of the officers. It’s not the first time this has happened and the government has had enough. These boys are al Shabaab. Very militant al Qaeda. Salafist jihadism, strict sharia, all that. They make bin Laden look like a choirboy. There’s no possible way that the Americans can be seen to be dealing with them, so the administration has decided it’s time to make an example out of them. They’re going to send in the SEALs who got Osama to get the hostages back and take the pirates out.”

“When?”

“It won’t be long. They’ll find out where they are and plan off that. I’d guess three days, but they’re not keeping us in the loop. We have our sources, of course…”

Beatrix was already planning how it might go down. Somalia was all the way on the other side of the continent from Marrakech. It would take a week to drive. That was obviously going to be too long. Could she fly? She could get a charter flight to somewhere nearer and then drive the rest of the way…

“Beatrix,” Pope said, interrupting her line of thought. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about going to Somalia?”

“If that’s where he is, that’s where I’m going. It’s been a year and that’s the first lead you’ve found for me. I can’t afford to let him get away.”

“Let the Americans get him out. We’ll track him afterwards.”

“What if he dies in the raid?”

“Then he’s dead. Move on to the next one.”

“No. It has to be at my hand. I’m going to be the last person he sees.”

Pope protested. “The SEALs are very good, Beatrix. They’ll break him out and he’ll go back to wherever it is he’s been hiding, only now, we’ll know. I understand why you want to be the one who pulls the trigger, but if you get yourself killed, the others will get away with what they did. You’ve got to pick your moment. This isn’t it.”

“You don’t think I can do it?”

“I didn’t say that, but this is a big risk.”

“Thank you, Pope. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Would anything I say make any difference?”

“No.”

Because I don’t have forever to find them.

BEATRIX WARMED a little to Pope as the evening drew in and, eventually, she decided to invite him to stay for dinner. She would benefit from a better relationship with him and, so far, his cooperation had been won by threats as much as anything else. She still retained copies of the evidence of his predecessor’s duplicity and she had threatened to release it if he did not offer his assistance in tracking down the agents who had been at her house that particular afternoon. The four surviving agents plus the man who had sent them after her.

He accepted her invitation and they moved to the dining room. It was painted a deep chocolate with dusky blue velvets and was lit by three large candle lanterns. The ceiling was painted with a mural of the desert’s midnight sky and the furniture was handmade from dark wood. Beatrix and Pope had gin and tonic and Isabella, when she eventually joined them, had a large glass of orange juice.

“You must be Isabella?” Pope said as she sat down.

She looked at him shyly.

“Isabella,” Beatrix said. “Mr. Pope is working with me. Say hello to him.”

“Hello,” she said, bashfully.

Mohammed’s wife, Fatima, worked in the riad as their cook and she prepared a tajine, bringing the conical earthenware pot to the table and serving it in front of them. They had chicken served with olives, preserved lemons, parsley and saffron and it was, as Pope confirmed after clearing his plate and a generous second serving, delicious.

Isabella had a glass of mint tea with them and then went up to her room as the two of them enjoyed glasses of wine.

“Have you heard from Milton?” she asked him quietly.

“No,” he said. “But I don’t really expect to.”

“You don’t know where he went?”

“No. And I’m not going to try and find him if he doesn’t want to be found. He’s been running long enough.”

Pope took out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. She took it, and pushed across one of the Lalique ashtrays that had come with the place when she bought it.

“Look,” he said. “What about Joyce?”

Her tone became colder. “What about him?”

“Are you really serious about going to get him?”

“I don’t joke about things like that.”

“Then at least let me help you.”

“I’m all ears.”

“How are you thinking of getting there?”

“I haven’t really decided yet.”

“Surely you have to fly?”

“I know. I was thinking about getting a charter to Kenya.”

“You can’t take weapons on a charter.”

“I’ll find them at the other end. Have you been to Somalia before, Pope?”

“No. But you have?”

“Once.”

“Where?”

“Mogadishu.”

“What for?”

“You remember President Farrah?”

Pope nodded. Farrah was a warlord who had declared himself President of Somalia in 1995. “I know he caused plenty of problems.”

“Until he got shot.”

“That’s right, I remember. He died of a heart attack on the operating table.”

Beatrix smiled. “That’s what they said.” She made a syringe with her thumb and forefingers and mimed the plunger being depressed.

He looked surprised. “Seriously?”

She shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

“Well, I’ll be. I didn’t know that.”

“Believe me, Pope, if Somalia is anything like it was then, it won’t be hard to find an AK.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have your own?” He swept an arm out in the direction of the courtyard. “I’m taking it you have some here.”

“Of course I do. And, yes, I would. But I’ll do what I have to do. If I have to be flexible, that’s fine.”

“Look—how about this? The RAF flew me in today. It wouldn’t be such a big deal to divert on the way home. I’m sure someone back in London could come up with a reason why we need to stop off in Kenya on the way home. That way, you can bring your own gear with you. I might be able to arrange transport for you at the other end, too. At least it will get you to the border.”

“If you could, that would be helpful. But you’ll have to be quick. I’m going tomorrow.”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll make a call tonight. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

He sipped his wine and, again, his open face betrayed his unease.

“What is it?”

“What about Isabella?”

“She’ll stay here. Mohammed and Fatima live here, too. They’ll keep an eye on her.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he floundered. “What about if—”

“If I don’t come back? I am coming back, Pope.”

“But if you didn’t—”

“—then she would manage very well. She’s lived most of her life without me. That was one thing Control taught her—how to be self-reliant.”

The conversation was a little stilted after that. Of course, the possibility that Beatrix might be robbed of the scant time she had left with Isabella had crossed her mind. It wasn’t as if she had an indeterminate amount with which to play. Each minute was precious, but it needed to be balanced against the desire for vengeance that she had fostered during her eight years of exile. She had nurtured that from a spark to a blaze and now there could be no possibility of extinguishing it before time. There was more to it than her own satisfaction. Once she started on the path she had chosen, Isabella would be in danger. Once she started to eliminate her targets, she had to assume that the others would realise what was happening and the danger that they were in. They would retaliate—she knew that she would, if the roles were reversed—and they would know that Isabella had already proven to be a valuable disincentive to violence on the part of her mother. They would come for Beatrix and, if they couldn’t find her, they would come for Isabella instead.

Pope was looking troubled. “Wouldn’t it be better to just…”

“Let bygones be bygones? Would you do that, if you were me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. If I had as much to lose.”

“Then we are going to have to agree that we’re just different people. I have my reasons. Revenge is just one of them.”

He ran his finger around the rim of the empty glass. “I respect that. And I promised that I’d help you. I’ll stick to that promise.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He put the glass back down on the table. “It’s late, I should be going.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” she said. “We’ve got more guest rooms than we know what to do with.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. Mohammed will show you up.”

“What about you?”

Thinking of her targets stirred martial thoughts. “I’ve got things to do,” she said.