Identity X (27 page)

“But what if my escape is Matthew’s
ruin?  Or Hannah’s?”  Ben closed his eyes momentarily as if the mental image
that his mind had conjured up was playing out in reality and he couldn’t bear
to watch.  “It’s because of me that they are even at risk.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.”  The
boatman started to walk towards the edge of the dock and Ben followed
automatically, listening as he spoke.  “Hannah was involved in something that
she saw as wrong.  She tried to fix it.  We are here because of her actions. 
And her actions have done you good.  You’d be dead if not for her.”  The
boatman placed a set of keys which he had been rolling around in his fingers
into his jacket pocket and fastened the small zipper to prevent them from
falling out.  “If you die, all of it has been for nothing.”

“But if they die, it is still for
nothing,” Ben tried to remind him, again touching his arm, but this time
encouragingly rather than forcefully, in search of his understanding. 

“I am going to take you away to a safe
house as was planned before,” the man said, ignoring his pleas.  “From there,
you’ll wait.  When we can, we’ll get you and them out.”

“But they know now.  Before, Hannah was
relying on the fact that they had no idea that it was her helping me.  Mark
knows now.  He’ll kill her.  He’ll kill them both.”

The boatman listened, and whilst he
fiddled at the ropes of the boat for a distraction, he knew that somewhere
hidden within Ben’s plea there was truth.  Reluctantly, he knew Ben was right. 
If any of them died, everything was for nothing.

“He won’t let them go without me.  If I’m
gone, somebody will pay the price.  It will be Hannah and most likely Matthew
too.  I can’t be responsible for that.  I may as well be dead if that’s what
will happen.”

The boatman stopped untying the knots
that secured the boat and stood back up straight, turning to face Ben again. 
“The only way of getting them on this boat is if he has you.  Then Hannah will
feel that she has failed.”

“But what if there was a way to get them
on the boat, and for him to think that he has me.”

“If he thinks he has you, it’s because he
does have you,” the boatman scoffed.  “He might shoot you the second he see’s
you.”

“He won’t shoot me.  He’ll trade me in,
but he won’t kill me.”  Ben thought back to all of the times in their history
when he had stood at Mark’s side, or when Mark had stood at his own.  There was
a unity in their friendship, which he understood had been stretched to the
limits, but just like Hannah, who he knew beyond any doubt in the bounds of his
own love for her that she still loved him, he knew Mark could not look him in
the eye and take his life with his own hand.  It just wasn’t possible. 
The
past had to count for something.

“Ok, let’s say he doesn’t shoot you.” 
The boatman smiled a little at the willingness of his trustee, and prematurely
tasted the sweet flavour of glory that would prevail in the event of such an
impossible success.  “What do you suggest?”

Hannah had
purposefully
chosen a
long and winding route to the
docks in the hope of giving Mark the false impression that they were heading in
the direction of the new dock yard.  She regularly looked around towards
Matthew and made eye contact with him, smiling each time she did so and resting
her hand on his knee, where she could feel him trembling.  Occasionally she
would catch him staring at Mark, his hands gripped onto the seat, and his eyes
peering backwards in judgement of a man who he had both loved and trusted, and
it broke her heart to watch him learn the deceitful and fraudulent nature of
the human disposition.  She sensed the impressive scale of Matthew’s judg
e
ment as he stared hollowly at him, and
knew from the discomfort as Mark fidgeted in the chair and avoided looking at
Matthew that the scorn of a child’s condemnation was an unexpected and
unpleasant complication that he had failed to foresee.  His preoccupation and
mental torment had served Hannah well, and it was only as they passed the once
elegant gates to the old dockyard
that
Mark realised his mistake.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his
words sharp and dangerous, like broken shards of glass.

“The dockyard.”

“The old docks?”  He hit the door in
frustration and underneath her hand she felt Matthew flinch as Mark grunted
acerbic
self-berations
for his foolish lack of
thought.  Momentarily, Hannah enjoyed his displeasure, and praised the twist of
luck that his misunderstanding had bestowed upon her.  But she knew before long
that he would divert the agents towards them, and he was already reaching for
his telephone, but she just hoped that she had bought them enough time in which
to make their escape.  At least Mark was isolated from the rest of The Agency
for now, and it gave her a degree of hope.  On one hand she was praying that
Ben had already departed, and that upon arrival she would see nothing but an
empty dock, but at the same time couldn’t help but selfishly pray he had waited
for her.  For them.  

Before long, the car jolted as the wheels
bobbled over the grassy abandoned train tracks that Ben had crossed only half
an hour before.  The image of the old Caisson was cast in shadow, almost
invisible as it began to disappear and blend into the low light.  The moonlight
reflected in the broken windows casting anthropomorphic shadows in the derelict
old building, and as she passed them, she could see the black saloon car up
ahead close to dock two, lights still on.  The wheels of their car rolled
through the giant puddles, the heavy reinforced walls thundering
over
the broken ground.  As the distance
between her and the stationary car grew smaller she saw the passenger door of
the car had been left open, and that just to the side of it only feet from the
docks she saw the body of a man lying face down on the ground.  She tried to
stifle her shock, but she had reacted automatically before she had had the
chance to control herself and it alerted Mark to the presence of the body. 

“Pull up over there, near that body,” he
said, pointing his arm between the front seats.   Matthew tried to sit forwards
in his seat, urged on by his curiosity to get a better look.  Scanning the
ground where it lay, she looked at the beige jacket and flat cap, and by
estimating his size she knew it wasn’t Ben on the floor.  Relieved and saddened
but not in equal measures, she did as Mark instructed and pulled the car up
parallel to the dock side.  

“Turn off the engine.”  They sat for a
few moments in silence.  Hannah scanned the dark in search of Ben. 
He
should already be gone,
she thought to herself as her frenetic eyes caught
sight of the edge of the white of the boat bobbing in and out of view behind
the dock wall.

“Mummy, where are we?” Matthew asked, but
as she tried to reassure him, she heard Mark shush them both from the back of
the car with a sharp and spitty remark.

“Ok, Matthew, get out of the car.”  He
looked to his mother who was staring at Mark.

“What do you want from him?  Leave him
alone.”

“Shut up Catherine.  We are all getting
out of the car.  Come on, move.”  He gave his order and they both followed,
Matthew by clambering over the gear stick and into the security of his mother’s
arms.  As soon as they stood up and Mark had closed his door she felt the tip
of a gun poke into her side, and he grabbed her shoulder with his other
weakened hand.  She reluctantly stepped forwards as she felt him pushing her
with the nose of the gun, Matthew’s face buried into her chest
.  T
hey inched towards the prone body
,
near silence surround
ing
them, only the muffled sounds of loose
dirt under their feet and water lapping against the side of the boat breaking
through.  Tirelessly she cast her eyes out like a giant sea net, capturing
image after image, discarding each when no trace of Ben was found.  She
desperately searched for clues to explain the bizarre mirage in front of her,
which she was sure as she approached would transform into the horrifying sight
of her dead husband and proof of another betrayal.  She stared at the boatman
face down in the mud with the boat still moored at the side of the dock.  She
covered Matthew’s eyes as he struggled to take a glimpse, wriggling his face
out from her shoulder. 

“Who is it Catherine?  Do you recognise
him?”

“No,” she lied, not wanting to complicate
her situation any further than she knew it already was.  By choosing to help
Ben she had drawn a line underneath her involvement with The Agency, and there
was no choice for going back.  There was only one way out now.  There would be
no severance pay for her silence as had been agreed.  There would be no pat on
the back for her
excellent
service that had
resulted in
the most significant
development in warfare in the twenty first century, as Mark had promised her. 
NEMREC he had told her, reciting words that she knew to be a bastardized
representation of Ben’s own beliefs, would mark a turning point in biological
weaponry development, and a reclassification of the order of the human race. 
It would not be possible to consider the human race as equal anymore, he had
explained.  She understood now as they stood on the edge of the dock together
that he would string her up and publicly shame her, like a village Witch burnt
on an agency endorsed stake as an example to others.  She would become the face
of anarchy, the face that fought against The Agency in a foolish yet gallant
manner, but whose choices could always be seen as inappropriate and poorly
judged.  Her demise would be taught to future generations of agents as they
became familiar with their weapons and pledged their allegiance to a force that
they did not fully understand.  Only once they had learnt what being an agent
really involved would they remember the lesson of Catherine Mulligan
.  Her horrible death would be
the push to get them back into line
.

“Check him.  Is he dead?”  Hannah stepped
forward, temporarily freeing herself from Matthew’s grip and he stood on the
ground next to her.  He wriggled and squirmed to remain in her arms and once
she finally got him onto his feet, he clung to her leg, as if they were one and
the same.  He was forced to let go of her as she leant down to see the face. 
The mouth of the boatman was resting on the edge of a dockside puddle, and she
could see the ripples on the water as his breath brushed past the surface. 
Relieved to find him alive, she leant in a little closer to see his face.  As
she angled her gaze towards his, she saw the faintest of twitches in his eye. 
She knew from Mark’s position that her body would be blocking his view, and she
watched as one of
the
boatman’s
eyes
peeled open and turned to look at her.  She followed his line of sight as he
directed his open eye across the puddle towards his hand
,
in position just underneath his head. 
The boatman tapped his forefinger on the well concealed gun.  He held one
finger up and pointed to the direction of the boat, lying low over the dock and
unseen from this position.  With a sense of worry that she didn’t really
understand what was happening, and the simultaneous relief of believing that he
may be
implying that Ben was still
alive, she felt comforted in the fact there seemed to be a plan in place.  The
boatman’s apparent continuation to play dead gave her the sign that she too
should play along.  She placed her fingers on his neck as if to check for a
pulse.

“He’s dead.”  She turned back to Mark to
see that he was now stood with Matthew at his side, his hand resting on his
shoulder with the blood from the wound that she had inflicted following the
course of gravity and dribbling down onto Matthew’s jumper.  Looking at Mark’s
face revealed a pallor of sickly grey, and she assumed that from the visual
estimation of blood on his clothes, and the continued ooze from the wound, he
must have lost enough blood to have been severely weakened and his strength
compromised.  The thought of his blood on her son repulsed her, and she felt
the bitter taste of bile rising in her stomach.  She stood up and motioned for
Matthew to come towards her, but Mark held him back with the remaining strength
in his wounded arm, his bony knuckled fingers splayed out across his chest like
a cage, and Matthew stayed rooted to the spot.

“He stays here, Catherine.  Now where is
Ben?”  She could see Matthew struggling and squirming again, a mixture of fear
and anger on his face, his eyes scrunched together, yet his lips loose and
unable to speak.  

“I don’t know,” she said genuinely, tears
hovering on the edge of her lower eye lids as if all they were waiting for was
an introduction. 
This is Mark.  He has my son.  He wants to kill us.
 
“Please let Matthew go.”

“He’s here.  This is all part of your
plan
, remember?
”  He tapped the shaft of his
gun against his trouser leg just to remind her that he had it, and she was just
thankful that it wasn’t aimed at Matthew.  She could see from the complex
contortions of his facial muscles that Matthew’s squirming was eliciting an
inordinate amount of discomfort in Mark’s shoulder wound, and it seemed to be
this very motion that had reopened the once stemmed flow of blood.  Matthew was
forcing him to use his muscles in this arm and the loosely knitted tissues and
early clotting of the wound were being washed away by fresh sanguineous flow.  

“This isn’t part of the plan Mark.  I am
blind now.  It was never meant to be this way.”  She held out her arms and
pleaded with him again.  “Let Matthew go.  Let him come to me, please.”

“Ben!” Mark shouted.  “I know you’re here
Ben,” he said with a smug tone that reminded her of playground games that
Matthew should be playing.  “Come out come out wherever you are.  I’ve got your
son, Ben.  I’ll shoot him.  You know it.”

It was Matthew’s tears that finally
released her own, spilling over the brim of her eyes with enthusiasm, their
destiny finally fulfilled.  She could see a dark patch forming on the front of
Matthew’s
trousers, and she wanted to
shoot Mark right then and there for humiliating Matthew in the way that he
was.  With one mental hand already on the gun, she thought again how it might
feel to have your son watch you shoot somebody.  This time she promised herself
that she would take the pain of watching her son recoil from her, that she
would deal with his nightmares, and that it would all be possible as long as he
was safe.  She would accept his fear of her, knowing in her mind that she would
never be the one to harm him, and promising herself that he too would come to
realise that.  Faced with the situation there was no reasonable alternative. 
She began to reach her hand around her hip, Mark too distracted to realise. 
Just as she was about to rest her hand over the gun she saw Ben appear from
behind the dock wall.  He rose up, a gun held in both hands outstretched and
pointing at Mark.

“That’s enough Mark.  Let him go.  Let
him go to Hannah.”  Ben wanted to jump out of the boat and snatch Matthew in
his arms, especially since the rocking of the water made his aim less than
steady, but he tried instead to remain focussed, moving the guns in rhythm with
the movement of the boat, all the while his sights trained on Mark.  Mark found
the whole scene hilarious.  From his words to the guns, Ben seemed
to him
like a caricature of a movie
hero, a fancy dress version of Billy the Kid, water for bullets.  A full belly
laugh erupted, curtailed only by the pain of his bleeding shoulder.

“Daddy!” Matthew shouted.  Relief ebbed
onto his face like the tide of the ocean, washing over him in waves of cotton
soft froth before receding as he once again felt the grip of his captor from
behind.  A new fear, exclusively for his father took control.

“It’s OK baby.  Daddy’s here now.  I’ll
protect you.”  Ben felt every inch of his skin contract, from the soles of his
feet right up to the round mass that was his skull.  His flesh goose pimpled
and the small hairs on his neck stood to attention.  He wanted nothing more
than to run and hold him, cradle him in his arms and protect him from harm.  He
swallowed the wave of nausea and focussed on ignoring the continued laughter
from Mark.