Closer, page 11
And in a perverse kind of a way, that was perhaps the most touching thing anyone had ever said to me.
11. Cassie
Matthew didn’t understand. How could he ever understand? This wasn’t his world. The rules were fundamentally different to anything he considered normal, or proper.
That was understandable.
She was the freak, not him. She’d seen the look on his face. The disbelief and then horror when his brain had finally processed the awful things she’d told him.
The moment of understanding that she was a killer. A closer.
She was a monster to him. An aberration.
Maybe that would finally shock him into his senses and make him leave.
And if he was no longer on the scene then perhaps he could no longer be considered a loose end that required tidying up.
She needed to stop thinking like this. She was not a monster. She was a professional in a very rare niche. What she did saved lives and kept people safe. It was necessary.
She wished he would just go.
Everything would be so much simpler then.
She would get over it. People did, didn’t they? People had broken hearts, they got over them, they moved on.
She’d never felt like this. Never truly understood what it meant to say your heart was broken.
In training, they’d been taught techniques for dealing with pain. Mind control tricks that had been scientifically proven to control the production of endorphins in the brain, natural painkillers that would help you deal with a gunshot wound or a broken limb or on-going torture. Mental tricks that shifted the focus of your thoughts away to anywhere but the pain.
Cassie could do all that. When she’d been shot in Turkey she’d carried that bullet in her shoulder for three long weeks before she’d managed to get out of the country and back into the hands of Section Eight. It had taken all the mental resources at her command to deal with that pain, but she had managed to do so.
This, though...
This was different.
This broken heart thing. This heart that kept on breaking.
He came to her, as she stood there on the rocks at the edge of the water.
He took her in his arms and held her, and only then did the pain start to subside a little.
With a fingertip, he delicately smudged the tears away from her eyes.
He’d ruined her. Fragmented her professional veneer. Undermined every strength she had thought she had.
And she never wanted him to let her go.
“Leave.” One last try, the word muffled against his chest.
“No.”
He really didn’t understand. One word, so easy to say and yet it put him right in the middle of this mess. She had her orders. She knew what she must do.
And Matthew Scullery had just turned into the biggest complication she had ever encountered.
§
“Tell me. Who you are. What you are.”
They sat facing each other on one of the big flat rocks by the loch, their knees not quite touching.
Cassie had already told him. She was a killer. A monster. But she understood he wanted more than that. He wanted to understand.
She hesitated. How many lines was she crossing simply sitting here with a man so closely associated with her target? If Napier was a threat to national security, then by close association so too was Matthew.
“I work for the security services,” she said. Keep it in summary form. Don’t name names or departments.
“MI5?”
She shook her head, but didn’t tell him she was assigned to Section Eight. The name would mean nothing to him, in any case. The name meant nothing even to most of those in government or security, unless their clearance was very high and their need to know essential.
“My department,” she started, then paused, struggling for the right words. “We operate on the fringes of what’s strictly legal to protect national security. Sometimes if you wait for legal processes to catch up, it’s just too late...”
“Terrorists don’t wait,” Matthew said, nodding slowly. “But why here? Why Napier?”
“There’s a watch list,” Cassie said. “At one end of the spectrum are the international terrorists, the criminal masterminds who would not be allowed to survive more than twenty-four hours if they set foot in this country.”
“And at the other end of the scale?”
“People with a high level of significance, for one reason or another. High-profile politicians. Billionaires. Media stars. People who need protecting because losing them could lead to all kinds of instability and knock-on effects.”
“People like Napier.”
She nodded. “I was assigned to monitor and protect him. Only a few days ago, I saved his life.”
“And now you’ve been ordered to end it.”
“Sometimes there’s a very fine line between the national interest being served best by protecting someone or removing them.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He was clearly struggling with this. Hearing these words coming from Cassie’s mouth.
“What did he do? To cross that very fine line?”
Cassie shrugged.
“Don’t you care?”
She didn’t know how to explain. “What I do... Lives are at stake. Often the lives of an awful lot of people. Field agents like me don’t act alone. We’re part of an extensive network. Analysts, advisers, specialists. We each do our thing, and we have to trust the rest of the team. I’m not an analyst. I don’t make those judgment calls.”
“Don’t you worry that they may be wrong?”
She shook her head. “I’ve killed people,” she said, cringing at the look of renewed horror on Matthew’s face. “And sometimes I don’t know why, and I don’t see the outcome – the changes resulting from those hits. But I know of enough cases where one life ended has led to hundreds, maybe thousands, saved.”
“But what if you’re all wrong?”
She bit her lip. Now was not the time to debate the numbers game, the simple equation that all those thousands of lives saved were worth extreme – and risky – actions.
“Okay...”
He paused, then. Cassie could see how hard he was struggling simply to think things through. This so was not his world.
“Okay, Napier’s on your watch list. A prominent figure worthy of protection. Until now. You haven’t been told why that’s all changed – it’s not your role to know why, or to care, just to trust the judgment calls made by your superiors. Have I got it right so far?”
Cassie nodded, said nothing.
“So what does your gut tell you? You’re clearly not new to this, and I know you always think things through. You must at least have a hunch about what’s going on.”
Earlier, she’d told him he didn’t know her, which was true: the Cassie he’d fallen for was a fiction. And yet... in many ways he understood her better than anyone had ever understood her.
“Musical chairs,” she said. In response to Matthew’s puzzled look, she went on. “Political games. Jockeying for position. The country’s political system is more volatile than it’s ever been and the vultures – the foreign powers, the billionaires, the international crime syndicates – are closing in. Political ambitions and careers flare and fizzle overnight, and yet Napier is one of the constants, a steady hand on the rudder, always behind the scenes.”
“Until recently.”
She nodded again. “Now he’s more visible. Part of the Way Forward movement, which is shaking everything up, but probably the least volatile figure in that movement.”
“Not hard.”
“Populist movements thrive on chaos.”
“And someone is maneuvering Napier into an ever-stronger position.”
“And someone else has identified that as a threat to national security.”
“So you kill him?”
“If those putting Napier into position are the wrong people, yes.”
“The wrong people?”
“The vultures. The foreign powers trying to destabilize us. Organized crime. We’ve seen it repeatedly in other countries – either successful or thwarted by national security services.”
“Thwarted... that’s a nice way of putting it.” He paused, then started again. “Okay. I may not like what you’re saying, but I’m not naïve enough to believe this kind of thing doesn’t go on all the time. Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment, okay? So tell me, how would you feel if it was all the other way around? What if Stewart Napier is actually our savior? What if he’s exactly that figure of stability who might bring some semblance of order to the current chaos? What if the threat to national security is someone higher up your command chain, giving the order to kill him to protect other interests?”
She stared. She would never have suspected Matthew of paranoia like this. Conspiracy theories of corruption within the country’s security services.
She’d have dismissed it altogether if he hadn’t just touched on a doubt that had been nagging away at her ever since Connor had passed on her instructions.
What if they’d got it wrong?
What if she was now the threat to national security?
“Maybe there’s a rationale to it,” she said. “What’s the alternative to Napier?”
“Bernard Bowler.” Charismatic and unpredictable leader of the Way Forward movement, he’d been undermined recently by speculation about his financial wheeling and dealing.
“So maybe someone’s decided that a weakened Bowler would be easier to control than a strong and independent Napier?”
“That’s politics, not national security.”
“People die because of politics,” Cassie said.
At that, Matthew just raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
People die... people get killed.
“So... you simply follow orders. Is that it?”
Until now, it had always been that way. Why did everything seem to be cast in terms of ‘until now’?
“Let me make a call,” she said.
Matthew nodded, and in that moment she thought he got it, at least partly.
You can’t debate every command. You have to trust.
That was how it was in her world.
Until now.
§
“Sir? It’s Deane. Can you talk now?”
“Go ahead.” In just two words, Connor managed to sound wary – he’d clearly picked up on something new in Cassie’s tone.
She stood a short distance apart from where Matthew sat on the flat rocks overlooking the loch. He didn’t need to hear this.
“I’m just... seeking clarification. The order is to kill Stewart Napier?”
There was a pause before Connor answered. This was about as close to insubordination as any Section Eight operative ever came, Cassie supposed.
“It is. Have you encountered a problem?”
She knew he would be thinking fast, trying to work out if she was making this call under any kind of duress. If she’d been compromised in any way.
She glanced at Matthew. She didn’t even understand herself why she was talking to Connor.
“I...” She didn’t know what she was saying, hadn’t thought this through before calling.
“Doubts?”
“A little.”
“Did you get too close while you were embedded?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then learn from your experience. Don’t make mistakes.”
“I know, sir. I just...”
“Every one of us hits this point, Cassie. We hesitate. We overthink things.”
“Sir.”
“I knew your father, Cassie. I promised him I would look out for you.”
She hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t even suspected it. Connor had known her father? She thought back to that day, when the men in suits had taken her father away.
“Your father made mistakes, Cassie. Don’t be the same as him.”
Her father had been an agent. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but knew it was pointless. Connor would tell her nothing beyond what he’d chosen to say already. He’d only told her this much to shock her back into line.
Now, she couldn’t work out whether her superior was threatening her or gently reminding her of the gravity of every choice she made.
What he could not have anticipated was the effect it had on Cassie. Rather than take his words as any kind of warning, she saw them as a reinforcement of her own confusion. For years she’d thought her father was most likely some kind of criminal or traitor, but now she saw that perhaps he had been just like her: some kind of operative trying to do the right thing – perhaps he’d made mistakes, or maybe he’d simply found himself pressed by circumstances, as Cassie was now.
“Don’t get this wrong, Cassie.”
“Sir.”
“You’re the agent in the field. Remember the import of that.”
He was reminding her now of one of the things that marked Section Eight out from the more conventional security services. Because of the way the section operated on the fringes between legal and illegal, agents often found themselves having to make sensitive judgment calls while they were in the field. No Section Eight agent blindly followed orders, because circumstances always changed.
A short time later, sitting with Matthew on the rocks, Cassie tried to put that into words without betraying any secrets.
“Right up until that point, I thought he was coming down hard on me, reminding me of my responsibilities and the need to follow orders. But then he said that about making sensitive judgment calls in the field. Using my discretion.”
“You think he was trying to tell you something?”
Was he?
“Do you think he might have been hinting that he wasn’t certain about the provenance of the order to kill Napier? Telling you to use your judgment, but doing so in a way that could never be pinned on him as a specific order?”
Cassie was shaking her head as Matthew spoke. Connor didn’t do subtlety or finesse. He was always blunt and to the point.
“So that’s how you operate? You’re trained to use your judgment in the field?”
She nodded.
“Then do it now. What does your gut tell you? Like it told you not to do away with me. What’s your call, Cassie? What do you think is the right thing to do?”
“No,” she told him. “What about your judgment? You know Stewart Napier better than anyone. Is he a good man, a man you’d trust with the lives of millions? Or is he a volatile danger, easily manipulated by outside interests, a threat to our nation’s peace and security?”
Matthew didn’t hesitate. He held her look and nodded – not to agree with her last suggestion, but to reinforce his words.
“Napier is a good man,” he said. “He’s been my friend for more than two decades, closer than any brother. He stood by me when I needed it. Protected me at great risk to himself – a gay adolescent just coming to understand his own sexuality hardly needed to make himself even more visible by defending the weak new boy, but he did so nonetheless because it was the right thing to do. He has integrity and standards, and an absolute sense of loyalty. I’ve never known anyone so fundamentally good and honest, even if he does annoy the tits off me at times. He’s a threat to no one.”
“Then that’s good enough for me,” said Cassie.
12. A Good Man
Cassie and I stood in each other’s arms on the rocks by the loch, as if we would never let go.
Napier is a good man. I hoped, desperately, that I was right.
Until these last few days, I don’t think I’d ever have doubted my old friend, but Cassie had changed everything.
When you know and love someone as deeply as I did Cassie, only to find out that person is not who you thought they were, then how can you ever have such confidence in another human being again?
It pained me deeply to feel this way, but there was no denying it.
To the outside world I gave my heart cheaply and often, was always in and out of love. But it was a truth I’d only recently come to understand that this was my way of keeping the world at a safe distance. Never letting anyone get really close before I moved on.
Napier and Cassie were the only two people who had ever broken through those barriers.
I loved them both, albeit in very different ways – the love of a brother, and that of a lover – and I could not bear to have my heart broken again.
Napier was a good man. An egotist, yes, and surely he was lapping up all the attention right now, but if anything his biggest flaw had always been that he was too positive, too naïvely trusting in the good nature of others.
Please, God, don’t let me be wrong on that one.
I held her. I never wanted to stop. Never wanted holding her to no longer be an option.
“Promise me,” I said, knowing that any promise extracted in such circumstances was unfair, but unable to stop myself even so. “Promise me that this is a beginning and not an end. That whatever happens you’ll never – not ever – vanish on me again.”
Her face had been pressed into my chest, so it felt that I was talking to the crown of her head, but now she arched her spine so she could tip her head back and meet my look.
“I promise,” she said. “I’ll always want this, Matthew. Always.”
She kissed me – briefly, delicately – and my heart flipped.
“Now go. Back to your friend.”
We’d agreed that I would return to Napier and tell him some of what I knew. That his life was at risk. That there were mysterious elements high up in the country’s Establishment that wanted to put a stop to his sudden rise. That he needed to take my warning very seriously indeed. Because whatever were the agendas of the various factions closing in on my old friend, the stakes were high, and they all clearly regarded him as a very significant player – this was beyond mere friendship: it was about national stability and security in some way I still hadn’t quite fathomed.
At first I’d insisted Cassie come with me – that her presence would sway him more strongly than the pleadings of his old, ineffectual, sidekick.
“I can’t,” she’d told me. “I’ve been given a direct command to eliminate him. I can’t just go up to him and not do that. At least if I’m not on site then I have the excuse that I’ve not got close to him yet – that gives us a bit of delay, a bit of breathing space while we work out what the hell to do next.”
