Zero kill, p.10
Zero Kill, page 10
Saint’s attitude was becoming a problem. Elsa had worked with him several times before. He was a conceited big mouth, and invariably got shitfaced at the end of a job, but he’d always been utterly professional. But during their time holed up in the apartment, he’d been distracted and abrasive. When the three of them went into Apartment 7b, it was critical they could trust each other with their lives.
‘Come on,’ Saint said at the front door. ‘Let’s get this over with before I piss myself.’
‘Once more with feeling,’ said Elsa, trying to break the tension. Carragher nodded, but didn’t look at her. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d managed to look her in the eye, and she was just as bad.
In the evening, Carragher once again briefed Camille, Klimt and Antovic on their own roles, before the team ate together – Klimt prepared the food on a portable stove in the derelict kitchen – and everyone retired to their rooms. Some evenings, Elsa lay in her camp bed listening to Camille and Carragher having noisy sex in the room opposite.
Elsa wanted to talk to Carragher about what had happened between them, but there was nowhere they could get any privacy, even if Carragher had been willing to communicate. When they weren’t training during the day, he avoided her – and Camille never strayed far from his side. If he didn’t want Elsa here, why had he even asked her to join the team?
Antovic spent all day and long into the night watching the live laptop images of the target apartment door, the building’s reception, and the street outside. When he saw any activity of interest, he’d log it. Elsa had tried more than once to engage him in conversation, but his monosyllabic replies and dead-eyed stare didn’t fascinate, and she gave up.
Checking and counter-checking the real-time feeds with online databases and regional facial recognition systems, he built up a detailed picture of all the people who lived in, worked in, and visited the building on a regular basis. He knew the resident of each apartment: how long they had owned the property, how often they were in residence, and when.
When pressed on the identity of the owner of Apartment 7b, Carragher said the precise ownership of the apartment was shielded behind a complicated trail of proxy owners and shell companies, which bounced across the world several times. In other words, if he knew he wasn’t going to say.
As the days stretched deep into the second week, the operation was imminent. And on the evening of the twelfth day, Elsa heard Carragher tell Camille, ‘Get everyone together.’
There was a rap on the door of her room, and Camille poked her head in. ‘Hey.’
‘I heard,’ Elsa said, and Camille raised an eyebrow, as if to say, this is it, then.
When Elsa followed Camille into the living room, Carragher was there with Klimt and Antovic – but Saint was missing.
‘Where is he?’ Carragher asked impatiently.
‘He’s not in his room,’ Camille said.
‘He left.’ Antovic turned from his precious laptops. ‘Said he needed a walk.’
Saint had complained about being trapped in the apartment since the first day. ‘It ain’t right, being imprisoned here,’ he’d said. ‘It’s criminal in a party town like this!’
Carragher had never been the kind of man to let his emotions show; his cool demeanour was one of the reasons Elsa was attracted to him. His expression didn’t change when Antovic spoke, but she saw rage flare behind his eyes.
‘Everybody wait here.’ He walked to the door. ‘I’ll find him.’
Camille followed. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No,’ he snapped, and pointed at Elsa. ‘You.’
Elsa avoided Camille’s surprised look. By the time she closed the steel door to the street, he was already moving quickly along the vereda – the sidewalk – heading towards the centre of bustling Recoleta.
She sensed the fury pouring off him, saw it in the way he moved quickly, with big, rolling strides, arms swinging purposefully below his wide shoulders. There was a solidity to Carragher, such power in his body, which was all muscle and hardened scar tissue, that Elsa imagined that anything unfortunate enough to get in his way, a bike, a car, a tank, would be torn apart on impact.
People swarmed about them as they approached the main tourist drag. The warm, twinkling lights of the many bars and restaurants were inviting in the dwindling light. They both knew Saint would be attracted to this neighbourhood like a moth to a lamp.
‘Steve.’ Elsa struggled to catch up with him. ‘Hold on.’
But he didn’t slow his relentless pace. After nearly two weeks of being treated like shit, she was tired of playing games.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ she shouted. ‘Stop!’
Carragher lifted his eyes to the sky, and spun on his heels to face her.
‘I’m struggling to understand what’s going on here.’
‘We have to find him,’ Carragher said. ‘Before he opens his big mouth to the wrong person.’
‘Not Saint,’ she said. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’
Hands on his hips, he stared at her accusingly. ‘Were you going to tell me? You thought I’d never find out?’
‘What are you…?’ But it was obvious what he was talking about. ‘How do you know?’
‘Oh, come on, Elsa, I probably knew before you did.’ He had access to the computer system of the clinic she’d gone to, or a contact; he’d been tracking her movements; he was spying on her. ‘Is it mine?’
Standing in the middle of the crowded drag, people flowing past on either side of them, they couldn’t be more conspicuous if they tried: a man and woman, both as tall as the Eiffel Tower, dressed in camos and armless vests, like they had both just dropped out of the back of a transport plane. Carragher was breaking all his own strict rules about keeping a low profile.
There was anger in his voice. ‘Are you pregnant with my kid?’
She didn’t know how to answer. Part of her had always intended to tell him. But not when his head was full of the mission, and certainly not while his wife was hanging off his arm. Maybe when they had flown home, in a few weeks, or at the end of the first trimester, when she was sure that everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know when, hadn’t planned that far in the future. Or maybe, she swallowed down the truth, she never planned to tell him at all.
‘What does it matter?’ she asked. Elsa was the one who had to listen to him and Camille having sex nearly every night, and who only ever got to see him sporadically in various crappy hotels and safe houses across the world when their schedules converged.
‘Because if it is, then…’
‘Then what, Steve?’ she demanded. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll leave Camille. We can be together, the three of us.’
She smiled sadly. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘I want to be with you,’ he told her grimly.
‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ she said. It was no fun having to listen to Camille’s nocturnal moans and screams.
He shook his head. ‘That’s Camille, not me.’
‘Come on, Steve, it takes two to tango.’
‘Once this mission is over…’ He came close, keeping his voice low. ‘We’ll bring up the child, our child, together.’
He’d made the exact same promise before, that he was going to leave Camille, more than once. He’d told her in Geneva and in Naypyidaw and in Paris; he swore the same thing as they hung out the back of a C-5 Galaxy flying low over the South China Sea. But nothing ever came of his promises, and she saw no reason to believe him now.
They had been seeing each other on and off for a year. If they found themselves in the same city, in Detroit, Tokyo or Kuala Lumpur, they’d hook up, two lonely travellers. But as they discovered more about each other, the relationship had developed into something more intense and intimate – to Elsa’s shock, because both of them were withdrawn, inaccessible personalities – until it became difficult for her to deny her deep feelings for him.
The affair left her bewildered and emotionally adrift, she’d never felt this way about anyone in her life, but she never expected it to last. It was a ridiculous notion that she and Carragher could ever be together. They both lived dangerous lives. Either of them could be killed at any moment, or disappear off the face of the Earth. Just vanish – killed on a mission, or more likely abducted by an antagonist and never seen again. In their game, you had to grab happy moments by the throat.
Elsa had found out she was pregnant three weeks ago, when she missed her period. She was terrified by the prospect, but recognized immediately that having a kid was the catalyst for the change she craved. If she couldn’t love another adult properly, maybe she’d be better as a mother; she certainly couldn’t do the parenting thing worse than her own mum and dad.
‘I love you,’ Carragher said.
She’d always been quick to end relationships with the handful of men and women with whom she’d been intimate before any of them ever uttered those words. Maybe the reason she hooked up with Steve Carragher was that she had always believed he would never in a million years dare to love her; she felt her world tilt sideways at his declaration. She opened her mouth to speak, but he pulled his hands down her arms.
‘As soon as this is over, I’m telling Camille it’s finished.’
Elsa knew just how crazy Camille was about her husband. She’d be devastated, insane with anger; she’d want revenge.
‘But Camille—’
‘Fuck Camille,’ he said. ‘It’s you I want.’
‘When this is over, I’m getting out.’
Carragher nodded. ‘I’m with you. This mission is the end of a long, difficult road for me. We’ll go far away, bring up our family in peace. We’ll have the best life.’ His hand reached for her flat stomach, but she edged away. ‘How long?’
‘You tell me, Steve. You seem to know more about my pregnancy than I do.’ But she relented. ‘Paris.’
The last time she’d seen him. They’d spent four days in a hotel room. It had only been four weeks ago, and she hadn’t expected to see him again for months. But then he contacted her again to recruit her for Pilot Fish, and days later she arrived in Argentina.
‘Why is Camille even here?’ she wanted to know. ‘You told me she wouldn’t be involved. There must be someone else you could have used?’
‘A team member dropped out at the last minute and I needed a replacement. Camille’s RedQueen like you, and damned good at what she does. I can trust her to get the job done. But there’s nothing more important than us, Elsa. We will be together. If that’s what you want, too…’
She knew he wanted her to say those three words back to him, but she had never said it to another living person.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He scowled and looked away.
‘No.’ She took his face in her fingers to force his gaze back to hers. ‘I want to say it. I…’ Elsa had abseiled down skyscrapers, HALO jumped, broken into impregnable buildings and out of impregnable buildings, she had been airlifted onto nuclear submarines, but telling him how she felt was the hardest thing she had ever done. She didn’t know if she could say the words. Her heart pounded, her nerves crackled.
But to her own surprise, she found they came easily. ‘I love you, too.’
Carragher nodded gravely.
‘I’m pregnant with your child,’ she told him. ‘So I mean it, Steve, about RedQueen and the business, I’m getting out.’
‘We both are,’ he told her.
They stood in a sea of people, the evening crowd surging around them, both of them a little bit stunned, because they knew there was no going back.
Elsa didn’t know if their proposed life together was feasible. They both carted around so many secrets, and they had both survived for so long in the constant shadow of violence and treachery. Maybe stripped of their adrenaline lives, they’d find they had nothing in common. But she didn’t think so, and she sensed that Carragher had also tired of the strain of a dangerous life. Elsa didn’t have the faintest clue about how to live like an ordinary citizen; maybe it would be the hardest lesson of all.
They kissed hard in the middle of the pavement, oblivious of the crowd – but then Carragher stepped back.
‘What is it?’ Elsa heard an altercation close by, and a familiar voice.
She followed Carragher into the gloomy interior of a bar. Saint was standing at the counter, arguing loudly with a couple of men. There was a tall beer glass beside him, a row of shot glasses filled with bourbon. He jabbed a finger at the men, using his height and build to intimidate.
‘Maradona? Big fucking cheat. Hand of God, my arse!’
‘Sal de aquí!’ One of the men gestured at the door. ‘No eres bienvenido!’
‘Come on, then.’ Saint fluttered his fingers in an aggressive make me gesture. ‘No? Didn’t think so.’
He plopped one of the shot glasses into his beer, tipped back his head and downed it in one. Slammed his palm onto the surface of the bar twice.
‘Another one over here, señor!’ He nodded at the glass, but the guy behind the bar waved his arms low across his stomach, telling Saint that wasn’t going to happen. ‘Give me a break, it’s these dudes who’re making trouble, I’m trying to mind my own business.’
Carragher came up behind Saint and hissed, ‘Get outside. Now.’
‘Hey, man.’ Saint turned, grinning drunkenly. ‘It’s my old mates Steve and Elsie. Stay and have a drink, and buy one for me – no, wait, two for me – cos it don’t look like my credit’s good here.’
Carragher told him with quiet menace, ‘I said, outside.’
Saint didn’t look intimidated in the slightest, and stepped forward. The two men once again stood nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball. Saint’s manic, glassy expression suggested that a confrontation – a brawl, fistfight, or fight to the death – would be just the thing to clear the air, if that’s what Carragher wanted.
But Saint was drunk, his reactions compromised, and somewhere in the small cave at the back of his mind where he was still able to think logically, he must have realized he didn’t stand a chance in his current condition, not against Carragher.
But he didn’t step back, lower his gaze, or show any kind of weakness. Instead, he laughed, and swiped his hand across the counter, sending the beer and shot glasses smashing to the floor.
Saint told the bartender, ‘Your beer is overpriced.’
Then he walked outside.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ said Carragher, following him out. ‘You’ve put everyone at risk!’
‘No harm done.’ Saint loped down the street, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. ‘Just a bit of handbags.’
‘Which part of stay in the apartment don’t you understand?’
‘Being trapped in that rotten place was doing my head in.’
‘Look at the state of you.’ Carragher grabbed him by the shoulders.
‘Careful, Steve.’ Saint smirked. ‘People are looking.’
‘You’re no good to us, you’re no good to anybody. You’re going home.’
Saint blinked. ‘I can do the job.’
‘You’re a drunk.’ Carragher looked disgusted. ‘And a liability.’
Saint’s fists balled at his side, and Elsa thought he was going to take a swing, but instead he winked. ‘I’m just a sociable person, chief.’
‘You’re out, I’m putting you on a flight home.’
Carragher pushed him away and began striding back to the apartment building.
Saint tried to keep up. ‘You need me.’
‘You’re muscle, that’s all you are, and I’ve got plenty of that already. One of the others will take your place.’
‘He can still do a job,’ insisted Elsa, trying to calm the tension.
Carragher didn’t look at her. ‘You’re sticking up for him?’
‘Yeah.’ She made a face at Saint, don’t let me down. ‘He’s going back to the apartment to sober up, he’ll be good to go tomorrow.’
‘Sure I will.’ Saint made the sign of the cross on his chest. ‘Won’t touch another drop, I promise.’
Carragher stopped walking and turned to Saint. The others waited tensely for him to speak. ‘I’m putting you on the roof.’
Saint grimaced. ‘But all the training we’ve put in!’
‘You follow my commands, or you go home.’
Pressing his lips together to stop himself saying anything he’d regret, Saint gave a tiny nod of acknowledgement.
‘And after it’s over, you’re finished, I’ll make sure everyone knows that.’ Carragher snapped a glance at Elsa as he walked away. ‘Make sure he sobers up. The incursion happens tomorrow.’
16
The kitchen was an absolute tip when Zoe got home that afternoon.
All she wanted to do was enjoy a cup of tea, change her clothes and then wait for Elsa Zero to make contact. But the counters were cluttered with plates, glasses and bowls; washing-up was piled in the sink. A tower of clothes had been dumped on the floor in front of the washing machine, because neither her husband nor her son had bothered to open it to toss their smelly socks inside, fully expecting that in Zoe’s absence the Housework Fairy would do it for them. Cleaning up other people’s mess was not how she imagined spies psychologically prepared themselves to bring hunted operatives in from the cold.
‘Seriously, Jim?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you even have managed to fill the dishwasher?’
He looked up from his newspaper as she dumped her bag on the table. ‘Everything okay at work?’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ she said, bustling around.
Housework would at least be a distraction from the enormity of what Plowright had told her about Elsa Zero. Zoe didn’t condone the agency’s plan to liquidate her, but she understood now the reasoning behind the extraordinary decision. If there was even a small chance that Elsa was working with hostile forces, or that a foreign enemy got to her first, the repercussions would be catastrophic. Zoe itched to tell Jim to pack a bag and take Charlie far away, the further the better, but there was no way she could. If Zero’s disappearance leaked into the public domain, the consequences would be enormous. It would cause mass panic. And, anyway, if she told him she had offered herself as an intermediary between SIS and a dangerous fugitive, he’d only become anxious.
