The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story) (10 page)

‘Yeah, I know. It’s weird. But it’s okay.’

Natalia hesitated, then drank again, this time more deeply. She stopped after a few mouthfuls. ‘I do not want to take it all.’

‘You’re the only person in the world who’s still suffering from eitr poisoning,’ said Nina. ‘And you’ve had it your whole life. You need it more than us.’

The other woman shook her head. ‘No, you should keep what is left. Eddie told me that it may cure more than just the eitr. You might need it some day.’ She gently but pointedly pushed the silver jug back across the counter to Nina, who reluctantly accepted it and replaced the stopper.

‘It’ll still be here if you need more of it,’ Eddie assured her. ‘I suppose now we’ve just got to wait and see if you get better.’

‘That may take some time.’

‘Hopefully not too long,’ said Nina. ‘It was only a few weeks before I started seeing an effect.’

Natalia nodded, then glanced at the clock. ‘It is late. I should get to my hotel.’

‘You don’t want to stay for dinner?’

She shook her head. ‘I do not want to impose on you. And after what happened today, I think you will both want some quiet time together, no?’

‘You sure?’ Eddie asked.

‘Yes, thank you. But I will see you tomorrow, I hope?’ She gave him a little smile. ‘I am looking forward to seeing New York – as a tourist this time!’

He returned the smile with sympathy. ‘You’ve been through a lot too. Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ she decided after a moment. ‘I will be. Thanks to you – both of you.’ With that, she said her farewells, then left.

Eddie closed the door and turned, to see Nina standing in the centre of the room with an unhappy look on her face. ‘Eddie?’ she said quietly.

‘What?’

‘I’m
not
okay.’

He embraced her, holding her tightly. She was trembling faintly from the day’s ordeal. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s over.’

Her voice cracked. ‘It isn’t, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

She drew back slightly to look into his eyes. ‘I didn’t tell you earlier – I almost did, but something stopped me. I’ve only just realised what.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I’ve been having … nightmares. Well, one nightmare, singular – always the same thing. How Macy died. She was …’ A choked sob. ‘She was murdered, right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do. And I see it every night,
every single night
, when I go to sleep. So I hadn’t forgotten Macy. I couldn’t. It was just that … every time I wrote anything about her, or read back through what I’d written, I saw her die, all over again. So I cut, and I cut, and I cut, until … she was almost gone. It was the only way I could keep working.’

He hugged her again. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Because I thought I could work it out on my own. But I couldn’t. I was …’ A deep breath. ‘You were right. I
was
in denial. And it took being kidnapped by a frickin’ Nazi for me to realise it!’

‘Funny how things work out,’ said Eddie.

‘Yeah, I know. Of all the ways to get closure!’

‘You think this’ll stop the nightmares?’

A small, sad shake of her head. ‘No. I wish it could, but … no. Just talking it out like this won’t be enough. Not nearly enough. I’ll need a professional – a shrink.’ She sighed. ‘Oh God. Just what I need, telling all my problems to a total stranger.’

‘You can tell ’em to me too, whenever you need to,’ Eddie reminded her. ‘I’m not saying I’m on a par with Sigmund Freud, but I know what it feels like to lose someone.’

‘I know you do. Thanks. And I’m sorry for blowing up at you.’

‘What’re husbands for?’ They smiled at each other, then he struggled to contain a yawn of exhaustion. ‘God, I’m knackered.’

‘It’s been a long day,’ Nina agreed. A thoughtful moment, then: ‘But you know something?’

‘What?’

‘I think I might sleep just a little bit better tonight.’ She managed a genuine smile. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

On the street outside, a young man with dusty blond hair looked up at the apartment building, seeing Eddie draw the curtains in one of the windows. Had the Englishman noticed him, he would have felt a sense of recognition, after a moment remembering where he had seen him before: on the street at the Feast of San Gennaro, the man he had mistaken for Kroll as he chased after Nina’s abductor. But following his unexpected close encounter with one of the people he was tailing, the watcher was taking care to remain unobtrusive.

He regarded the closed drapes for a moment, then took out a phone and called a number. It took a few seconds for the international call to connect. ‘Yes?’ an American man replied. His voice was stern, controlled, yet with a hint of impatience.

‘Prophet, it’s Berman. Dr Wilde is back at her apartment. She seems unharmed. Her husband’s with her.’

‘Do you know who kidnapped her?’

‘Somebody with a grudge against her from an IHA operation, as far as I’ve been able to find out,’ the young man told him. ‘Whoever he was, he’s dead now.’

‘Good. We need her to find the angels – at least, our associate thinks she’s the best person to locate them. And considering that
he’s
got a grudge against her, that makes me believe he’s right.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Maintain surveillance for now. Once everything is ready, we’ll move in. It might take a few weeks, but Mr Irton will contact you when we’re set.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Berman, but the other man had already disconnected. The dismissal did not bother him in the slightest. He put away the phone, watching the apartment window until the light went out, then headed off into the night.

Out November 2015

Keep reading for an exclusive extract

The half-moon cast a feeble light over the desolate sand-swept plain. The region had been marshland not long ago, but war had changed that. Not directly; the islands spattering the expanse between the great rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates had not been destroyed by shells and explosives. Instead spite had drained it, the dictator Saddam Hussein taking his revenge upon the Ma’dan people for daring to rise against him following the Gulf War. Dams and spillways had reduced the wetlands to a dustbowl, forcing the inhabitants to leave in order to survive.

That destruction was, ironically, making the mission of the trio of CIA operatives crossing the bleak landscape considerably easier. The no-fly zone established over southern Iraq gave the United States and its allies total freedom to operate, and the agents had parachuted to the Euphrates’ northern bank earlier that night, their ultimate objective the toppling of the Iraqi leader. Had the marshes not been drained, they would have been forced to make a circuitous journey by boat, dragging it over reed-covered embankments whenever the water became too shallow to traverse. Instead, they had been able to drive the battered Toyota 4×4 waiting at their insertion point almost in a straight line across the lowlands.

‘Not far now,’ said the team’s leader, Michael Rosemont, as he checked a hand-held GPS unit. ‘Two miles.’

The driver, Gabe Arnold, peered ahead through his night-vision goggles. He was driving without headlights to keep them hidden from potential observers. ‘I can see the lake.’

‘Any sign of Kerim and his people?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Might have known these Arabs would be late,’ said the third man, from behind them. Ezekiel Cross was using a small flashlight to check a map, focusing it on an almost perfectly circular patch of pale blue marked
Umm al Binni
. ‘Nobody in this part of the world can even do anything as basic as keep time. Savages.’

Rosemont let out a weary huff, but let the remark pass. ‘How close is the nearest Iraqi unit, Easy?’ he asked instead.

‘Based on today’s intel, about nine klicks to the north-east. Near the Tigris.’ Cross’s pale grey eyes flicked towards his superior. ‘And I’d prefer not to be called that.’

‘Okay,
Cross
,’ Rosemont replied with a small shake of his head. Arnold suppressed a grin. ‘Any other units nearby?’

‘There’s another fifteen klicks north of here. Forces have been building up there over the past week.’

‘They know Uncle Sam’s gonna come for ’em sooner or later,’ said Arnold.

Cross made an impatient sound. ‘We should have flattened the entire country the day after 9/11.’

‘Iraq didn’t attack us,’ Rosemont pointed out.

‘They’re supporting al-Qaeda. And they’re building weapons of mass destruction. To me, that justifies any action necessary to stop them.’

‘Well, that’s what we’re waiting on the UN to confirm, ain’t it?’ Arnold said. ‘Got to give ’em a chance to give up their WMDs before we put the hammer down.’

‘The United Nations!’ Cross spat. ‘We should kick them out of our country. As if New York isn’t enough of a pit of degeneracy already, we let a gang of foreign socialists and atheists squat there telling us what to do!’

‘Uh-huh.’ Rosemont had only known the Virginian for a few days, but that had been long enough to learn to tune out the agent’s frequent rants about anything he considered an ungodly affront to his values – which, it seemed, was everything in the modern world. He turned his attention back to the driver. ‘Still no sign of Kerim?’

‘Nothing – no, wait,’ replied Arnold, suddenly alert. ‘I see a light.’

Cross immediately flicked off the flashlight, dropping the off-roader’s interior into darkness. Rosemont narrowed his eyes and stared ahead. ‘Where?’

‘Twelve o’clock.’

‘Is it them?’ said Cross, wary.

The CIA leader picked out a tiny point of orange against the darkness. ‘It’s them. Right where they’re supposed to be.’

‘On schedule, too,’ added Arnold. ‘Guess they
can
keep time after all, huh?’ Cross glowered at him.

The lake came into clearer view as the Toyota crested a low rise, a black disc against the moonlit wash covering the plain. Arnold surveyed it through his goggles. ‘Man, that’s weird. It looks like a crater or something.’

‘That’s the theory,’ Rosemont told him. ‘They think a meteorite made it a few thousand years ago; that’s what the background data on the region said, anyhow. The lake used to be a lot bigger, but nobody knew that was at the bottom until Saddam drained the marshes.’ His tone turned businesslike. ‘Okay, this is it. I’ll do the talking, get the intel off Kerim. You two ready the weapons for transfer.’ He turned to regard the cases stacked in the Toyota’s cargo bed.

‘And after?’ Cross asked.

‘Depends on what Kerim tells me. If he’s got new information about the Iraqi defences, then we call it in and maybe go see for ourselves if HQ needs us to. If he doesn’t, we give the Marsh Arab rebels their weapons and prep them for our invasion.’

‘Assuming the UN doesn’t try to stop us,’ said Cross scathingly.

‘Hey, hey,’ Arnold cut in. ‘There’s something by the lake. Looks like a building, some ruins.’

Rosemont peered ahead, but there was not enough light to reveal any detail on the shore. ‘There wasn’t anything marked on the maps.’

‘It’s in the water. Musta been exposed when the lake dried up.’

‘Are Kerim and his people by it?’

‘No, they’re maybe two hundred metres away.’

‘It’s not our problem, then.’ Rosemont raised the M4 carbine on his lap and clicked off the safety. Cross did the same with his own weapon. They were meeting friendlies, but those at the sharp end of intelligence work in the CIA’s Special Activities Division preferred to be ready for any eventuality.

Arnold brought the Toyota in. The point of orange light was revealed as a small campfire, figures standing around the dancing flames. All were armed, the fire’s glow also reflecting dully off assorted Kalashnikov rifles. To Rosemont’s relief, none were pointed at the approaching vehicle.

Yet.

The 4×4 halted. The men around the fire stood watching, waiting for its occupants to make the first move. ‘All right,’ said Rosemont. ‘I’ll go meet them.’

The CIA commander opened the door and stepped out. The action brought a response, some of the Ma’dan raising their guns. He took a deep breath. ‘Kerim! Is Kerim here?’