Closer, page 9
A message came through from Section Eight as she was driving back to her hideout, instructing her to call Connor.
“Sir?” She sat on her flat rock again, savoring the chill bite of the breeze that came in along the loch from the sea.
“Cassie. It’s time to close this one. Napier. You understand?”
“I do.”
Something had changed. Her role was no longer a watch and protect brief. The balance had tipped, and Napier had been confirmed as a significant threat to national security.
It wasn’t Cassie’s place to have to understand the rationales behind such decisions. She knew large teams of specialists were constantly assessing these things, a vastly complex game of chess with players from all the various policing and security services scattered across the board. Section Eight was part of that complex game, operating on the murky fringes of legal and illegal.
She did understand at least part of it, though. She’d been close to Napier for long enough to have observed the shift in his profile, and the way he was maneuvering – and being maneuvered – for greater things. She knew he was involved in negotiations over a hostage situation, and that his role had been ‘leaked’ into the public view – all this just at a time when the leader of the Way Forward movement, Bernard Bowler, was teetering in the polls on the back of another revelation about his financial wheeling and dealing. It was a situation that could easily be engineered for Napier to sweep in, and she’d thought that was what they wanted: a good, and manageable, man in charge, a return to some semblance of political stability.
But someone had clearly decided otherwise. Perhaps that Napier had more value as a martyr for the populist cause, ready for someone else to sweep in. Maybe even for Bowler to be propped up, weakened and therefore more easy to control. Or perhaps the whole hostage situation had been manufactured to trap Napier into exposing his links to malevolent foreign powers.
It was messy, but not atypical for modern politics.
And anyway, it wasn’t Cassie’s role to evaluate things at this level. She had to trust that the right assessments had been made – that was the only way a field agent could operate.
Cassie was merely an implementer, and in this case, a closer.
“Timescale?”
“It’s not time-sensitive, but within seventy-two hours.”
So soon, but not tied to a particular event.
“And, Cassie?”
“Sir?”
“Make it clean. Make it tidy. And leave no loose ends.”
“Sir.”
The line went dead.
She understood exactly what he meant.
No loose ends, and the ends don’t come much looser than Matthew Scullery, a long-time confidante of Napier who must almost certainly know too much...
8. Sunday Names
Napier and I retreated to the library, our glasses topped up with eighteen-year-old Highland Park.
“You really want this, don’t you?” I said. I was still somewhat taken aback to see how much my old friend was reveling in this shift in the political balance. He had a chance to rise perhaps as far as any politician could do in this country, and he was loving it.
He shrugged, trying only half-heartedly to dismiss my suggestion. “Bernard’s a liability,” he said. “He gets distracted too easily. He makes mistakes. Our country needs someone with a steady eye on the greater good, to steer us through increasingly troubled times.”
“Did you write that, or one of your speechwriters?”
He laughed.
“Piss off, Mattie darling,” he said. “Of course I want it. All this selfless philanthropy has to have a pay-off, doesn’t it?”
I smiled. I hadn’t seen him having so much fun in a long time.
“So what’s your next move?” I asked. “After you’ve stormed the terrorist cell, saved your hostage, and lapped up all the public acclaim, of course.”
“You make it sound so seedy and choreographed,” Napier protested. “We’re talking about the life of an innocent man, here.”
I just held his look for a few seconds, before he turned away.
“There’s a Syrian national being held at a Naval base not too far from here,” he said, eventually. “I may be able to pull a few strings, transmute his detention into a repatriation.”
“An exchange?”
“Call it what you will. It meets a key demand and gets our man released, and because the Syrian’s detention has never been acknowledged, our side of the transaction will never be public. To the world at large, our man’s release will simply be a gesture of goodwill, negotiated by a skillful and charismatic man of the people.”
He said it as if he almost believed his own PR.
I sat there shaking my head, still smiling.
I had to admire the way he’d got himself into this position. Napier may be a devious, manipulative bastard, but he was still a damned sight better than any other politician I could think of. And if he managed to ride this populist movement and knock off a few of its nastier edges, then maybe even that could be a good thing.
“So do I have your vote, Mattie?”
I laughed, waving my glass at him. “It’d take a few more of these before I’d even consider it.”
“Fair enough,” he said, with a laugh. “To tell the truth, I’m not sure even I’d vote for me. I’m too honest.”
“Maybe that should be your slogan. Too honest to vote for.” It actually had a ring of truth to it, after all. By the standards of modern politics, Napier was a better and more honest person than any, and he had the decency to acknowledge when he was being manipulative.
I shook my head. “It’s late,” I said. I didn’t know how late, but it certainly felt so. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
As I stood, Napier rose from his chair, too.
“Take care, Mattie,” he told me, suddenly serious. “All this business with Cassie... it’ll all be no more than a bad memory before you know it, you hear me?”
He’d seen through my bluster. Was it that obvious, how much I was hurting?
Slightly awkward, we embraced, Napier patting me heavily on the back before we stepped back.
“Now get some sleep and try at least not to look so damned miserable in the morning, okay?”
§
The guest suite felt strange.
Mostly, I’d managed to avoid it since Cassie’s disappearance, but now there was no choice.
Her things had been returned in my absence. Macpherson had kept the gun, but nothing else had been taken. Her clothes and shoes were back in the dressing room’s drawers and wardrobe. Her makeup things on the dressing table. And that bag, with the fake ID, the cheap cellphones, and the wads of money...
I checked the three burner phones, but there were no contacts saved, no information I could use to gain any more understanding of Cassie’s double life.
I went back through to the bedroom we had shared, the undisturbed bed.
I felt as if I were failing her. Betraying her. There had been nothing more than a perfunctory search after she’d gone missing – it was pretty clear she’d been here under false pretenses, after all. But what if something had happened to her?
I did a circuit of the suite, once again, before giving up, frustrated with myself. What had I expected to find? A note? Bloodstains on the carpet?
I stood at the bedroom window, looking out over the moonlit grounds of my friend’s estate.
I didn’t know what to do, either in the short term, or in the longer term. Where do you go from here?
I took off my shirt, my trousers, and shoes, and went through to the bathroom in my shorts and socks. I saw the toothbrush, and all of a sudden everything became too much for me.
That damned, silly toothbrush! Why had that come to symbolize the absolute intimacy we had shared?
I sluiced my face with cold water. Made myself brush my teeth.
Stood for far too long, hands gripping the sides of the basin, staring at myself in the mirror.
When had I become... not old, as such, but when had I stopped being the fresh-faced youth I still pictured myself as?
That thing, when you see something and you can’t unsee it. I was a grown-up, a proper adult. I couldn’t carry on just drifting through life.
Maybe that was the most important thing Cassie had changed in me. I had stopped drifting. I’d found what my life had been leading toward.
And lost it again, so cheaply.
I should have done something. I shouldn’t have simply believed the worst and given up on her.
I went back through to the bedroom and saw the screen of my phone had lit up. A message.
I thumbed it unlocked and then tapped the messages icon.
One new message, from a number I didn’t recognize.
You have to get away from here, Matthew. Things are getting dangerous and you can do nothing to change that. Just go.
I stared.
She was alive.
The message was anonymous, from an unknown number, but I knew.
Cassie was the only one who ever called me Matthew.
I put the phone down, walked a full circuit of the room, picked the phone up again and the message was still there.
I pressed the little phone icon to call the number back, even though I had no idea what I would say. There wasn’t exactly any protocol to prepare you for a situation like this, was there?
Nothing.
Not even the ringing of an unanswered phone, or a diversion to voicemail.
I keyed a message.
Cassie?
I pressed ‘send’ and a second or two later I saw an error message.
Unable to send message.
She must have used a burner phone, like the ones she’d left behind in her Go bag.
I didn’t doubt it was her.
Already, my mind had run through the other possibilities. Who else would send me a message like this? What was it? A warning that I was in danger and should flee? Perhaps a ruse to get me away from the place?
It could be from Louise Palmer-Layne, of course. The overpoweringly glamorous MI5 agent who seemed to know everything that was going on here at Auldbrigg Haw. But my cellphone would have recognized her regular number, and why would she use a burner? And why would she call me by my Sunday name?
Someone else... Someone with an interest in getting me away from Napier. But who? And again, why the Sunday name?
Three short sentences, but that message carried a lot of information to process.
Naturally, I’d focused on the use of my name, to start with. The desperate rise in my chest as I realized its import, the fact that surely Cassie was alive. And then, the focus on practicalities – trying to call her, trying to message her, forcing myself to step back and consider other possibilities, before concluding that, yes, I had been right in my interpretation to begin with: Cassie was still alive.
But there was more...
You have to get away from here.
She was here! Or not far away, at least. Somewhere nearby. Close enough that her natural choice of phrase was that I had to get away from here, rather than telling me I had to get away from there.
The warning that things were getting dangerous. Was that why she’d vanished? Had the escalation of danger somehow put her at risk, and she’d had to flee?
Behind it all was the implicit statement that she was in the thick of it all. She understood the dangers, she knew enough about the circumstances to see that the dangers were increasing. If the Go bag had not confirmed that Cassie was some kind of undercover operator, then this message surely did.
And, more than anything, it told me one more thing.
That she cared.
Whoever she was, whatever she was doing, and had done, Cassie’s love for me had, at some level at least, been a genuine thing. She didn’t want me exposed to danger. She wanted to save me. To protect me.
I was staring at the screen of my phone, the message still displayed.
Just go.
Surely she must know that the last thing I could do now was run away?
I went to stand at the window again. Was she out there somewhere, watching this place? Maybe she could see me, even.
She was here.
I had a simple choice, I realized.
I could simply do as Cassie said, get away from Auldbrigg Haw on some pretext or other. Get myself safely away from any danger that was about to kick off.
That was what she wanted.
That was why she’d broken cover to send me that message.
It would be the sensible thing to do.
But it would mean giving up on the two people in this world that I loved. Abandoning both Cassie and Napier to whatever was happening here.
I should go to Napier. Tell him everything. The warning from Cassie. The meetings with Louise Palmer- Layne. Try to impress on him the sense that the wolves were closing in.
What was stopping me?
Napier himself, I realized. My old friend had always been the protector, the one in charge. If I went to him with just this – a text message and an admission I’d been consorting with the security services behind his back – he would insist that he was in control, and that his security team was second to none.
The other thing he would take from it would be my betrayal. The realization that he could never fully trust me again.
It was selfish, I know, and I was swinging wildly from choice to choice even as I thought through these options.
I wanted nothing more than to protect Napier and Cassie, but also I hated the thought that my actions might undermine my oldest friendship.
I needed to think it all through carefully. Objectively.
I knew so little.
Vague words of warning, no more than that.
I kept returning to the sensible option. She clearly knew more than me, and her judgment was that I should make myself safe. It would be foolish to do anything else, given how little I knew.
I stared out into the darkness, the lawns silvered by the moonlight. It was close to midnight and I was powerless. I could hardly do anything right now.
If leaving was, indeed, the most sensible option, then I would have to wait until morning, at least, to avoid awkward questions.
Alternatively, I knew I could go to Napier right now, regardless of the late hour, but with what?
I made myself wait until morning. Give myself the night to think it over – because sleep was hardly going to be an option now, was it?
I went to the bed and lay down. Stretching, I pulled my socks off and threw them across the room. Pulled my shorts off, and lay there naked in the bed I should have been sharing with Cassie.
I felt sick.
I felt scared.
I felt... angry. With the world, with Cassie, with my own powerlessness.
And then, at last, I did sleep, for a while at least.
§
I woke in the early hours, my head rushing with thoughts as if I’d never dozed at all.
It was getting light already outside, the hours of darkness short at this time in the year.
At some point in the night I had reached the conclusion I couldn’t simply walk away. I had to find her. I had to understand.
And now I knew where Cassie was hiding.
She was close enough for us both to be here, not here and there.
But she wasn’t actually here, not at Auldbrigg Haw. I didn’t see how that could be possible unless she was being held captive, in which case she wouldn’t be sending messages from a burner phone.
I had to try to put myself in her mindset.
She had been here at Auldbrigg Haw undercover. For some reason she’d fled, but had remained nearby.
The village was nearby. Did she have some kind of safe house there? But whatever she was up to, I had to assume she would want to be free to come and go, so hiding in a place where there were people was hardly the best option.
The forest? There were acres and acres of forest all around here. Plenty of places to hide. But anywhere near to Auldbrigg Haw would run the risk of being spotted if search parties had been sent out looking for her. Somehow I didn’t think she would have stayed quite so close.
So... close enough to still be here, but not right on the doorstep.
There were hikers’ bothies up on the hills, mostly old stone crofters’ buildings that had been renovated and fitted out with rudimentary sleeping benches for hill-walkers and climbers. Sleeping in a bothy would make sense, but again, it was somewhere public and exposed.
So where else?
One place stood out in my recollection. A passing oddity at the time, but now...
I’d picked Cassie up from the airport one time and we’d been most of the way back to Auldbrigg Haw, following the road that wound around the contours of the hills above the south bank of the sea loch. At one point I saw Cassie craning to look down the slope to where a cluster of buildings gathered by the water.
“It’s an old abandoned farm,” I told her.
She shook her head. “No, it’s an old navy facility,” she said. “There are lots of them along this coast.” Then she had stopped, as if she’d said too much.
I glanced at her, my eyebrows raised. “Well, I never knew that.”
She shrugged. “The things you pick up from Wikipedia,” she said, dismissing it.
“It’d make a hell of a bolt hole, wouldn’t it?” I said. Renovate the buildings, picture windows overlooking the loch – the perfect retreat.
We were past the place already, and she smiled at me. “It would, wouldn’t it? You could hide away from the world forever in a place like that.”
I’d thought nothing more of it. We often had conversations like that. The perfect home. The perfect retreat. I’d come to understand it was our way of skirting around something a whole lot bigger. An indirect way of talking about – and acknowledging the inevitability of – a future shared. A home together. Children, perhaps. The things it was still too early in our relationship to ever discuss explicitly.
But had there been another level to that exchange? I’d caught her looking at the place, and she’d responded with a private joke. She already knew about that group of abandoned buildings, knew what it had been. There must be a reason why she’d found out about it, and I didn’t believe now that it was just chance. Had she already had it earmarked as a place of refuge, if the need arose?
