Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (13 page)

Only the other night she’d needled him about
his college courses yet again, then made noises about leaving
Boston when her stipendiary finished.
Did he like Spain? The
lost poetisas of al-Andalus cry out to be discovered!
What on
Earth would
he
do in Spain? He’d reacted badly,
counter-attacked. But she
was
obsessive about her work these
days, and
was
devoting less and less time to him!

His aromatic cassoulet had saved them from a
full-scale row. Her favourite dish and not too easy to find even in
Boston’s diverse restaurants; it had taken him months to learn the
perfect recipe for the Québecois style of the dish. But later,
conversation was stilted and sex mechanical, almost embarrassing.
Yet he still loved her, yearning for moments of shared joy that
might already be history, certainly
would
be history if her
domineering father used his wealth to shield her. He knew he wasn’t
approved of at all, and suspected that previous boyfriends in the
same position, possibly
all
of Abigail’s boyfriends, had
found impossible barriers to a relationship mysteriously appearing.
Perhaps the manipulative old tyrant had offered to fund an extended
research trip to Spain.

Abigail appeared, at the Radcliffe doorway
where they’d often rendezvoused before sharing a late lunch
together. One of the few times their schedules could regularly
overlap. Yet she hadn’t wanted to meet him today.
Important
appointment. Critical research.
That evasive tone he was coming
to know so well had cut through his love and loyalty, to reach raw
anger beneath.

It had to be another man! Why else would she
keep stuff from him?

Abigail paused to assess the weather. She was
wearing her red retro-coat with the big belt. Good, an easy beacon
to follow. Staying well back, he followed his love. He noticed that
Beige-jacket-man was also on the move. Perhaps the guy had been
stood up after all. Terry sympathised.

Almost immediately, something felt wrong.
Abigail was walking far faster than she usually did, and took
apparently pointless turns. Where was she headed? Had she realised
he was behind her?

After a zigzag through several streets, it
became obvious that the beige-jacket guy was following her
too
. Utterly perplexed, Terry dropped back a little.
Fortunately the stranger didn’t appear to have spotted him. But who
the hell was he? Another cheated boyfriend resorting to the same
plan as himself? Was everything he thought he knew about Abigail
completely wrong?

Confusion temporarily overrode Terry’s other
emotions. In a quiet side-street, Abigail glanced behind her. After
that, Beige-guy stayed much further back and was more cautious at
corners. Terry was obliged to fall still further behind, following
the follower rather than Abigail herself.

Whatever was going on, Abigail had kept him
completely in the dark. Terry’s fists clenched and his teeth ground
as he walked.

They ended up at Porter subway station. It
was tough keeping them both in sight through to the platform, but
Terry’s seething emotion kept him sharp. Clever Beige-guy pulled
level with Abigail, but some distance to her left and hidden by a
knot of students. Her continued glances behind, usually made from
her right side, would never pick him up.

Terry risked the same carriage as Beige-guy,
one behind Abigail’s. He kept his head down, nevertheless feeling
as though everyone in the packed space was aiming a stare directly
at him, probing his debased mood and exposing him. An alien desire
to scream his frustration, and lash out at other travellers, was
surprisingly difficult to suppress.

In a narrow field of vision threaded through
a dozen intervening bodies, Terry saw the mysterious follower take
off his jacket and discreetly turn it inside-out. Now he was
Blue-jacket guy, silently mocking Terry for his lack of knowledge
or expertise. Terry thought about pushing up the aisle and
challenging him right there, but then the train screeched to a halt
and Abigail had hopped off on to the platform.

Back Bay,
Boston, Massachusetts: May

He clung to them both through a change of train and
the exit from Copley station, but covert pursuit was much harder
among the swarming shoppers and tourists in central Boston. In only
a minute or so, he lost them. Sweating and desperate and dropping
all pretence of subtlety, he barged through the crowds in an
attempt to catch up.

Then he slammed right into someone. They both
tumbled to the hard pavement, though Terry landed on his hands and
knees and was up again in a moment. The other man was face down,
possibly winded, struggling to rise.

“Sorry sorry, sorry,” Terry offered speedily,
torn between continuing his frantic search and ensuring that the
man was alright. But then realisation dawned as he took in the blue
jacket, the sandy hair.

The mysterious follower regained his feet,
immediately glancing off to his right instead of at the person
who’d just bowled him over. Terry followed the man’s gaze. Abigail
was there, some way off and with her back to them, standing
stock-still between rivers of faces, her head tilted back,
apparently hypnotised by the mirrored Hancock tower before her. As
though ignited by Abigail’s scarlet coat, Terry’s barely suppressed
fury flared.

Grey eyes now stared at him in annoyance.
“Watch where you’re going,
buddy!
” That last word
sarcastically. But then belated recognition widened the stare.

“
Stay away from her!
” snarled Terry.
His pent-up emotions burst out in a massive release, and he smashed
a tight fist as hard as he could into Blue-jacket’s face. The man
staggered backwards and hit the deck for a second time.

Shoppers scattered. Someone yelled for the
police. Fortunately, Abigail didn’t appear to have noticed. He
caught sight of her striding south down Clarendon. Sudden flurries
of rain split the whole scene with beaded curtains. He hurried
after her, still trembling with rage, but his knuckles stung and he
was more puzzled than ever. Blue-jacket guy had almost certainly
recognised him! What was going on?

Agent Leviticus struggled to a sitting position and
waited for the world to stop reeling. Then panic pierced his
confused state. His gun! He reached into the pocket of his jacket,
the special pocket that could be accessed from both sides of the
reversible garment. The hard outlines of his Sig Sauer P229 brought
immediate comfort. He recalled cub agent Nehemiah being drummed out
of the Service for losing his weapon to a suspect. Yet the comfort
was short-lived. There’d be hell to pay from Jack.

The stares and comments of a surrounding
crowd suddenly burst in on him. And he felt the warmth of blood
around his nose and mouth. Getting to his feet, he fished out a
hanky to clean up his face, then pushed through the ring of
spectators and quickly away. His embarrassment would be even worse
if he had to explain to slow-minded uniforms and expose the
business of ICE.

Welcome rain stung his skin and brought him
clarity. Abigail must have detailed her boyfriend to take out any
followers, which meant she was going somewhere important and he’d
missed it. There was no excuse. He’d anticipated an easy mission
and had been lax. Even recognising Terry Fox from his mug-shot,
just two seconds earlier, might at least have saved him from
complete failure.

He found a quiet spot and called his
much-feared boss on a Service mobile. Jack’s outrage nearly split
his eardrum.

South End,
Boston, Massachusetts: May

Somehow, Terry hung on to his fleeing love through
the twists and turns. But, as the shoppers looking for novelties
thinned, this became harder. Soon he shared the pavement with
Abigail alone, and the red of her coat both dazzled and frightened
him. He maintained a long distance, even losing sight of her
occasionally. He prayed he wouldn’t lose her permanently, and sure
enough the scarlet signal, desire and pain, always showed up
again.

For some bizarre reason she circled Union
Park, perhaps still hoping to catch out the likes of
Blue-jacket-guy, but Terry discovered he had a kind of instinct for
what Abigail would do at each junction, and it didn’t fail him.

She slipped into a brightly coloured café.
Café Lorca. Terry sheltered in a doorway across the street and saw
her take a table alone, fortunately near the windowed front of the
camp-looking joint.

Terry bet himself she wouldn’t be alone for
long. Confusion and suspicion constricted his throat so much that
he could barely swallow. His knuckles ached. Sure enough, a man
soon turned up, seating himself opposite Abigail. Terry moved in
closer, trying to look casual, edging up from behind the direction
of her gaze to get a good look at the guy. He took out his mobile,
pretending to answer it, giving him an excuse to loiter while he
mouthed Yes and Okay and Great to nobody.

The two were talking earnestly already, yet
neither the place nor the mood spoke in the slightest of important
academia. An obliging shaft of sunlight revealed a goofy smile and
curly hair. Not a match for the reversible jacket guy. Surely not
even a match for himself!

Terry was on the point of sneaking a
phone-photo when shame stung him. This was Abigail! Why would he
need evidence? He felt dirty. Yet despite his lack of trust and
despite his ignoble action today, he still oscillated between the
bitterness of exclusion and the rage of jealousy.

He swore foully, not realising this was out
loud until an old couple passing by stared apprehensively at him.
An image of Abigail cuddled up to him in bed escaped from his
memory with
such
reality. He could feel her warmth and
softness again, could almost smell her scent. Confused still
further by the gentle spirit this evoked and feeling like a kicked
dog, he slunk off towards home.

Tehran, Iran:
May

“In Rome, this says beware pickpockets on crowded
trains.”

“We have zip pockets. Our jackets have.”

The four men were speaking in English for
practise, surrounded by the dozens of country maps and guide books
and city plans they’d been studying for months now. Ali, Amin,
Bashir, and Muhammad. One of the fluorescent strips in the
windowless room began to flicker. Bashir picked up the internal
phone and in Farsi demanded a replacement tube, then closed his
eyes protectively, or because he was tired.

“Which two of us will be chosen?” mused
Ali.

“As God wills,” replied Muhammad.

“And the extent of our knowledge,” added
Amin. “And a medical.” He rubbed his shoulder. “The gym aches me
today. But the pain is of fitness.”

“In London,” said Ali, “
knowledge
is
the name drivers of taxis say for a test about which routes are
fastest. Soon we have knowledge together of half the world!”

“And half that knowledge,” said Bashir, “will
be no use, when one is sent only west or only east.”

“Would you only memorise half the Qu’ran
because you might die half way through reciting? Two of us might
fall ill before the chosen day.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Downtown Boston,
Massachusetts: May

The article burned into Jack’s brain as though the
text was made from fire.

ICE around Roxbury mosque
, it
declared.

His neck flushed, his hands trembled with the
effort of maintaining control. The familiar rage that had kept him
tirelessly fighting on the front-line as a soldier of God, and a
defender of the country’s borders, occasionally let him down too.
He pulled back the top-right drawer of his desk and slipped his
hand inside, gripping the solid comfort of the Bible there.

Gradually, his muscles relaxed and his
heartbeat slowed till it became the steady drum of a march again, a
march filled with God’s purpose. His vision cleared and he
contemplated how orderly his office was: to the right thick carpet,
traditional wood, expensively framed pictures and awards above rows
of leather-bound books. The desk where he sat was polished oak. To
the left, computers fed two dominating wall-screens that gave him a
sense of power and control; his eyes and ears. Those screens and a
couple of lamps provided the only light; he could concentrate much
better in a dim environment and never opened the blinds.

At least the article was only on page five.
Nevertheless, it could cause him a lot of trouble. There’d be
public pressure, and the legal department would suddenly find a
conscience again. For a few months at least, he’d have to stop
monitoring visitors to the mosque. This could mean a serious loss
of intelligence. Illegals or conspirators would be warned; the
latter would meet elsewhere.

So one point to Abigail Leclaire. He had
little doubt she was the
reliable source
quoted, even if the
reporter had managed to gain surreptitious confirmation from within
ICE itself. This was due to his own misjudgement in letting slip
the information as part of his pressure on her, at Elephant Walk.
Yet he’d really thought she’d crumble, not fight back! Undoubtedly
there was strong stuff inside the girl; but
why
was she
fighting?

He’d crushed many a liberal idealist who’d
unwisely decided to turn and nip at the ankles of authority, yet he
sensed there was more to Abigail’s resistance. She knew stuff; she
might be seriously involved. If not directly recruited by the
agents of
Eagle Teacher
, then at least an indirect tool.

Direct pressure on Abigail wouldn’t work.
She’d only clam up, or fight harder, and neither did he have
anything on her, as yet. She might call for big industrialist daddy
to help too, and that’d mean some serious heat, maybe an ultimatum
to lay off. Already he’d been denied a tap on her mobile. ‘We don’t
want to offend Canada,’ the high-ups had said. More likely, they
couldn’t afford to offend daddy and his powerful friends in the
U.S. Her landlines, on university property, were altogether a
different matter…