Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

When she’d climbed over the rail he took her elbow lightly and led her to the Toyota. He opened the door and scouted around. The interior smelled of stale cigarette smoke with an overlay of pine air freshener. Nothing in the glove compartment or under any of the seats.

At the Mercedes he opened the passenger door and gently pressed her inside.

‘I can put that in the back,’ he said, indicating the violin. But she strapped herself in and held the case across her chest. Fair enough.

He stowed the Glock in the glove compartment, and the Heckler amp; Koch under his seat. As he pulled away into the rain and the steady flow of cars, he saw the red, blue and white flashing lights approaching the spot behind him in the distance. No sirens yet. Those would come later.

*

‘Your name’s Nina Ramirez. Mine’s Darius Pope, but people just call me Pope.’

He’d thought about bluffing, pretending he was simply a passerby who’d happened to stop at a parked Toyota saloon by the side of the road and happened to spot two men chasing a young woman across a distant field and decided to intervene. But he knew she wouldn’t buy that.

At first she’d stared straight ahead through the windscreen, but now her gaze was turned on him. He could see it on the corner of his vision even as he drove. Large eyes, cheekbones high and fine, delicate nose and chin. The way she carried herself convinced him that she was one of those rare people who genuinely didn’t realise how attractive they were.

‘You’re heading to Washington. To find someone there, I wonder, or maybe just to get away from those men.’

‘Who — ’ The word barely rasped out and she swallowed and tried again. ‘Who were they?’

That was interesting. She was asking who they were, rather than who he was. It suggested she trusted him a little. Perhaps not much, but enough to be starting with.

‘CIA. There’ll be more of them.’ When she drew in a breath, he said, ‘I won’t say “don’t worry”. But I’ll protect you. You can survive this.’

‘They killed my friends.’

‘Back in Charlottesville? What happened there?’

‘They started following me this afternoon. Maybe before, but that’s when I first noticed them. I went to my friends for help. They broke in, shot them dead. I jumped out the window.’

Pope watched the road in silence for a full ten seconds, then said: ‘You did well. If you’d stayed, they would have killed you.’

‘Why?’

He’d rehearsed several different scenarios, played them out to their possible conclusions, keeping in mind at all times that you could never fully predict how human beings would behave or how conversations would run. He was having to modify his approach now based on the information he was getting from her demeanour, her body language.

‘Nina, I’m going to ask you an odd question. Humour me. I want you to think back to when you were a child. Eleven years old. Tell me what you remember of that time.’

‘Who are you?’

She’d asked it, then, finally. And it had been the strangeness of his own question that had triggered it.

‘Just let’s focus on you at eleven — ’

‘Who are you.’

Sharper this time. He’d have to give her something.

‘I have a connection with your father.’

Interstate 95, Outside Washington D.C.

Tuesday 21 May, 12.15 am

The adrenaline had begun to drain from her limbs like fuel from an engine, leaving her feeling inert and immobile.

There’d been the terror of the advancing men, the shock of seeing the sprinting figure coming up behind them, then the awful physicality of the violence which had followed. Nina barely remembered picking up the rock and heaving it at the gunman’s head, but she remembered being utterly confused as to why he then dropped to his knees, shaking, until she understood that the newcomer had shot him.

The blasts had set up a high whine in her ears which hadn’t gone yet.

She watched the man beside her. Pope, he called himself. He sounded British, and educated, though she didn’t know much about distinguishing British accents. His profile was impossibly handsome, movie-star quality.

And, unbelievably, there was something familiar about him.

His phrases were like sharp jabs form a needle, one after the other so that she barely had time to register the shock of one before the next came.

CIA…

There’ll be more of them…

They would have killed you…

And then the one that stuck, lingering: I have a connection with your father .

Somewhere in the middle of it all he’d asked something about her childhood, but perhaps she’d imagined that; imagined she was undergoing therapy of some kind.

The highway droned by outside, the monotonous beat of the windshield wipers like a pendulum lulling her under.

‘What connection?’ she heard a thin, distant voice say. Her own. ‘Did he send you?’

‘No.’ Was there the trace of a smile in his voice? ‘Not exactly. Though indirectly I suppose he did.’

Their exchange was too elliptical, too many-sided, for Nina to find a clear way in. She sat in silence once more.

He said, softly, ‘When you were eleven, Nina, you lived on an island, didn’t you?’

She blurted, almost cutting him off: ‘I know you.’

This time he looked across at her, and did smile; though the smile was touched with sadness.

‘In a sense, you probably do.’

*

It’s an afternoon, clear and bright, mountains of cumulus (she’s learned about clouds this week; her mother’s taught her) towering overhead. This is a few weeks before that night when she heard the screams and went out to look under moonlight.

She’s playing alone on the lawn outside the house. Her mother’s inside, resting. Her father’s at work, his car gone. There are no other girls or boys on the island. When will they be going back to their real home, she wondered again this morning. Soon, honey, her mother whispered in her hair.

The gate’s closed but the wall’s easy to climb. Bored, she shins over it, dropping to the dirt. Across the road, the Box sits in the heat like the brownies her mom bakes.

In the daylight, when it’s silent, it doesn’t frighten her.

She crosses the road (looks both ways carefully first, as she’s been taught, though there are no cars) and approached the Box. She’s never been this close before. Her mom and dad have told her never to go near it.

A voice, loud and angry as an animal’s roar, makes her leap in the air and freeze at the same time. She turns, her heart like a drill. It’s the tall man, the one her father calls Taylor. She doesn’t like him. He’s always bad-tempered, even when he laughs. He’s not laughing now.

He’s running over to her from around the side of the Box, yelling. Using words her mom told her she should never say, words with F and Jesus’s name. He even calls her a little B. She’s too scared to run. He grabs her shoulders and shakes her.

‘Get away from her.’

She remembers the words, and the voice, clearly. The words because they’re so calm; the voice, because it sounds a little odd, like he’s not American or Spanish. He’s standing behind Taylor. She doesn’t know his name, but she sees him around sometimes. He doesn’t look angry.

Taylor turns round and starts using that sneering voice, asking the other man who the F does he think he is. He stands close to the other man (she thinks it’s called “getting in his face”). The other man says something so quietly she can’t hear. Taylor Fs and MFs some more and goes away.

The man whose name she doesn’t know comes over to her. She’s not tall yet, though she’ll grow in the next year. He hunkers down on his heels and asks her if she’s okay. She says yes. He helps her back to her home, saying a lot of other stuff which she doesn’t remember.