The Blue Ring (2 page)

"It's about Michael," the priest started.

"What about Michael?"

The
priest took a sip of beer and said, "It's Thursday and I know he's in
Malta today with George Zammit. What time will he be back?"

Creasy
looked at his watch. "He should have caught the seven o'clock ferry, so
he'll be back in half an hour. What is it?"

"It's
about his mother."

Creasy
looked astonished. "His mother!"

The
priest sighed and then said firmly, "Yes, his mother. She's in St Luke's
hospital, dying of cancer. Apparently she only has a few days to live."

"So
what?"

In an
even firmer voice the priest replied, "So she wants to see Michael before
she dies."

"Why?"

The
priest shrugged. "I got a call from Father Galea who ministers to the sick
and dying at St Luke's. She asked him about her son. She asked him if he was
still in the orphanage. She told him she wanted to see his face before she
died."

Creasy's
voice was as cold as a glacier. "She hardly saw his face when he was born.
She abandoned him...You know how she did that. You told me."

"Yes,
I told you."

"Tell
me again."

The
priest sighed.

"Tell me again, Father!"

The
priest looked at him and said, "The doorbell rang at night at the
orphanage of the Augustine sisters in Malta. One of the sisters opened it.
There was a basket on the doorstep covered with a cloth. A car was pulling
away. In the car the sister saw the face of a woman and the face of a
man...obviously the face of Michael's natural mother and the face of her
pimp."

There
was a long silence while the two men gazed out over the view, then the priest
said quietly, "Understand, Creasy. I have to tell Michael that she wants
to see him. That's my duty."

Harshly,
Creasy replied, "Your duty is to Michael. You raised him in the orphanage
until I adopted him. He never knew his mother but you and I both know that he
hated the thought of her. His mother was a whore, more interested in making
money than in her own flesh and blood. You also know that Michael has been
through hell. Why make it worse?"

Another
silence. The priest's glass was empty. He looked up at the man and said,
"Go and get me another cold beer. When you come back I'll tell you."

He
spoke in a tone of voice that few people would ever use, or dare to use, to
Creasy. For a long time Creasy looked at him through narrowed, slate-grey eyes.
Then he shrugged, stood up and went into the kitchen.

With a
fresh beer in front of him the priest talked quietly. He reminded Creasy of the
time two years before when they had sat together on the church steps and
watched a game of football between the orphanage and the village of Sannat.
Michael had been seventeen then and was the most talented and co-ordinated
player on the field.

Father
Zerafa ran the orphanage and coached the football team. Creasy had watched the
game intently and enquired about Michael. Enquired in detail. The priest had
explained that Michael's mother had been a prostitute in the Maltese red-light
district of Gzira. Michael had been fathered by one of her clients, almost
certainly an Arab, which gave Michael his dark looks. She had abandoned the
child at birth and he had been raised at the orphanage in Gozo. Two adoption
attempts had failed, then Creasy had watched him play football.

Father
Zerafa had been astonished at the adoption, for Creasy's wife and four-year-old
daughter had been killed only a few months previously, on the terrorist bombing
of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

Creasy
was a retired, legendary mercenary. The priest knew that his adoption of
Michael had been a cynical arrangement to bind a young man to him and train him
in his own image. To do so he had to enter into a contract of marriage with a
failed English actress, who had been subsequently killed by terrorists. He and
Michael had gone on to exact their own personal vengeance and in doing so had
forged a bond as close as two human beings could ever accomplish.

The
priest reminded Creasy of all this and of his own complicity in arranging the
adoption, knowing what was behind it. He had watched Michael as Creasy had
turned him into a finely tuned killing machine; waited while they went to the
Middle East and exacted their vengeance. He had seen them return to Gozo and
noted the extraordinary bond between them.

"Michael
is a man," the priest said quietly. "You made him so. He must make
his own decision. I made decisions for him in his childhood and you made
decisions for him in his youth. This decision he must make for himself."

"I
know you," Michael said. "You are the woman on the wall."

She
smiled. A smile on the face of a skull. He knew that she was only thirty-eight
years old, but he was looking at an old woman.

A woman
with no hair after weeks of chemotherapy treatment. A woman whose yellow cheeks
had vanished into a face of skin stretched over bones. But he could recognise
the face that he had seen almost every week of his younger life. A then
beautiful face, framed by long black lustrous hair. When he was very young it had
been the face of a young woman, almost a girl. Over the years as he grew up the
face had aged imperceptibly, but had always remained beautiful. Now it was the
face of death.

"You
sat on the wall," he said, bemused. "Every Sunday. When we went to
church at eleven o'clock in the morning you were always sitting on the wall
across the road from the orphanage; and when we came back from church an hour
later you were still sitting there. We used to watch you from inside the
orphanage, wondering who you were. You always left at exactly twelve-thirty and
walked down the hill to the harbour."

She
smiled again. "Yes, to catch the one o'clock ferry."

"Why?"

"I
came to watch my son...to watch him grow up."

"Why
didn't you talk to me?"

"I
could not. I had given you to the priests. I could not take you back."

"Why
did you give me to the priests?"

"I
had no choice. No choice at all."

He
pulled his chair closer to the dying woman. His voice became hard. "Tell
me why you had no choice!"

There
were two prostitutes, the old, stooped priest and Michael by the side of the
grave. The two grave-diggers wearing denim shorts and dirty white T-shirts
lowered the coffin into the grave.

The
prostitutes crossed themselves, the priest intoned prayers and Michael threw a
lump of earth onto the coffin. Then they went away; the prostitutes to Gzira,
the priest to his church and Michael to Gozo.

"Count me out," Creasy said.

They
were sitting under the vines and mimosa, eating a hot lamb curry. Creasy had
cooked it two days before and it had matured into a rich, tangy example of the
quintessential Indian speciality. There was a wide variety of side dishes and,
of course, popadums. Creasy prided himself on his curries. Michael was an
enthusiastic consumer.

Michael
crunched a popadum and then forked some banana into his mouth to take away the
heat of the curry. He said, "I thought we were a team."

"Your
natural mother was a whore," Creasy said. "Face up to it. She
abandoned you the day after giving birth. Any woman who can do that is no human
being in my eyes."

"She
had no choice."

"That's
what they all say."

Michael
took a sip of cold beer. He was not frightened of Creasy, nor was he in awe of
him, even though Creasy was the hardest man he had ever known or would probably
ever know.

"You
taught me about vengeance," he said. "You taught me about
justice."

Creasy
sighed. "OK, so she told you she was forced into prostitution. Forced into
being a drug addict and forced to give you up. That was twenty years ago and
even if it's true and I doubt it what can you do? By nature prostitutes are
notorious liars."

Michael
was looking down at his plate. Quietly he asked, "Is Blondie a notorious
liar?"

Creasy
sighed again and shook his head. "No, Blondie always tells the truth. If
you talk to Blondie she will tell you to forget the whole stupid idea."

Michael
finished the last of the curry and said off-handedly, "By the way, my
father was an Arab. He was the one who made my mother an addict and sold her
off to prostitution."

"She
told you that?"

"Yes,
and much more." The young man looked up. His eyes were defiant. "She
came to see me every week...every Sunday. She sat on the wall near the
orphanage and watched me go to church and watched me coming back." Emotion
crept into his voice. "It must have broken her heart not to be able to
talk to me."

"She
was a whore."

Emotion
left Michael's voice and it took on the edge of a razor blade. "Blondie
was a whore and still owns a whorehouse; but Blondie is a great friend of yours
and you admire her."

"Blondie
is different."

Michael
stood up and stretched his frame and then began stacking plates. "Maybe
so," he said. "But tomorrow I go to Brussels to talk to her. She's
been around a long time, maybe she knows something. Maybe she can point me in
the right direction."

"Maybe
she'll tell you not to be a stupid idiot. Maybe she'll tell you that there are
whores and different whores...and that a whore who discards her child the day after
its birth deserves no thought or compassion from that child nineteen years
later."

Michael
gave him a belligerent look. A look that made Creasy realise that he was not
talking to a child; he was talking to a nineteen-year-old man, made wiser far
beyond his years. Creasy also realised that he could not let Michael just blast
off alone on some crazy path of vengeance. It also entered his head that he
himself had used Michael, and in a sense created Michael as an instrument for
his own vengeance. He took a decision.

"OK,
Michael. You want to be an idiot and expurgate this so-called duty...then I go
with you and hold your hand."

Michael
reacted very quietly. "I don't need you," he said. "You trained
me well. I can do it myself."

Creasy
looked down at the rough wooden surface of the table. His face was sombre, and
that mood was reflected in his voice. "Michael in a way I feel a great
guilt. You had no childhood. I plucked you from an orphanage and made you a
soldier. You were seventeen. You should have been able to live like any other
teenager, but you never had the chance. Now you're nineteen years old and seem
like you're forty...So that's past...Nothing to be done. But maybe you'd let me
help on this stupid thing you're doing? Anyway it will be good to see Blondie
again, and Maxie and Nicole...and I guess I need to be a chaperone between you
and Christine."

Michael smiled at him with an edge of affection.

"Somehow I don't see you in the role of a chaperone. Yes, come with me...but Creasy, understand
that this is my show."

Creasy sighed and nodded.

They landed at Brussels airport at eight p.m. They only had hand luggage and within
fifteen minutes were striding out of customs.

Michael
looked infinitely older than his nineteen years: six feet tall, jet-black hair,
cropped short; a long, lean face above a long, lean body. He wore black jeans,
a cream open-necked shirt and a black leather bomber jacket. Beside him Creasy
moved along with his curious walk; the outsides of his feet coming into contact
with the ground first. A bear of a man with his cropped, grey hair and scarred
face the colour of pale mahogany. He wore dark blue slacks, a light oxford
cotton shirt, a black cashmere sweater and a tweed jacket. An observer looking
only at his clothes would have deduced that he was an English or Scottish
country gentleman; but one look at the face would have dispelled such thoughts.
This was a hard man in a bad mood.

As they
came out towards the line of taxis Creasy suddenly stopped with a sharp grunt.
Michael turned to look at him and saw the pain on his face. It was not the
first time. Over the past months that short, sharp pain had recurred several
times. Each time Creasy had brushed it aside, muttering something about
indigestion.

"Are you all right?" Michael asked.

"Sure, let's go."

They climbed into a taxi and Michael told the driver, "The Pappagal, Rue
d'Argens."

The
driver twisted his head in surprise. "You know what that place is?"

"Yes,
a high-class brothel."

The
driver engaged first gear and pulled away, saying over his shoulder, "You
don't waste much time."

Michael
grinned at Creasy, then turned to look out the window, taking in the scenery,
remembering the last time he had been in Brussels, almost two years ago,
sitting in a taxi on the same route. At that time he had been with Creasy and
Leonie. The memory of Leonie brought a sick jolt to the pit of his stomach. He
had loved her as a mother. He remembered the tears he had shed when she had
been killed. He remembered Creasy tossing him a handkerchief in the room at
Guido's pensione in Naples and telling him in that flat voice, "Dry your
tears. You're a man now. It's time for vengeance."

Half an
hour later Michael pressed the doorbell of a discreet building in a discreet
side-street only a few blocks from the EC headquarters. They heard the click of
the tiny shutter set into the door and knew they were being examined from the
inside. A few seconds later the door opened. It was Raoul; tall, skeletal and
with a face dark enough to frighten strong men. He moved past them and looked
carefully down both sides of the street, then nodded. They strode into the
plush, carpeted hallway, dropped their bags and shook the tall man's hand.

"How
long will you stay?" Raoul asked.