Michael Parker: A Covert War

‘Would you like a coffee?’ Marcus asked her before he settled himself in the chair behind his desk. Susan glanced at the sorry looking corner where the kettle resided and declined.

‘Right,’ he said and rubbed his hands together as he sat down. He picked up a pen and held it poised above a notepad. ‘So, what is it you would like to talk about?’

Before answering, Susan wondered if she shouldn’t just make an apology for wasting his time and leave straight away. She had the feeling that this was developing into farce and wished she had never seen the advert for Guard Right Security in the first place.

The only positive she could see so far was that Marcus Blake was quite handsome. He had blond hair that was parted in the middle, but not too severely. It fell loosely around his ears and had a natural curl to it; the kind of hair some women would die for, Susan thought to herself. His skin looked smooth and slightly tanned. He was broad and muscular without the look of someone who worked on his physique. He was a lot taller than her, and she judged his height to be about six feet. Altogether he looked the kind of man Susan would happily meet for a dinner date. Once she had got to know him a little better.

‘Well,’ she began hesitantly, ‘I’m not sure how to begin.’

‘Why not try the beginning?’ he joked, trying to put Susan at ease.

She took a deep breath, drawing the air in slowly through her nostrils in an effort to steady herself.

‘I have a brother; a twin brother,’ she told him, ‘and I want to know if he’s alive or not.’

Marcus tapped the notepad with his pen and began doodling. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Well, David, that’s my brother,’ she added unnecessarily, ‘worked for an organisation known as The Chapter. He was a journalist.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, he is a journalist by profession and was working on an assignment for them.’ She hated herself for thinking of David in the past tense, but it was something she had slowly become resigned to. ‘About a year ago David was working at an orphanage in Afghanistan, at Jalalabad. He’s a journalist and was studying the work they do there. Orphan children,’ she explained, then mentally kicked herself for fumbling her words. ‘There was a massacre. Some insurgents attacked the staff and took the children. David was…’ She stopped and held back a sob. ‘I’m sorry.’ Marcus shook his head and made a slight, negative gesture with his hand. Susan continued. ‘David was shot. I was told by The Chapter that the survivors had been taken to a hospital. Some of them weren’t expected to live. I don’t know what happened to David; he just, well, disappeared.’

Marcus stopped doodling. ‘So what is it you want GRS to do?’

Susan, who had been looking down at her hands folded in her lap now looked up at him. ‘GRS?’

‘Guard Right Securities,’ he reminded her. ‘What is it you want us to do?’

‘Oh, yes of course. Well, I want to know where David is. I want to find him.’

‘In Jalalabad?’

Susan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Wherever he is, I want to find him.’

‘Are you sure your brother is still alive?’ he asked.

Susan nodded vigorously. ‘He must be, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

Marcus leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. ‘Miss Ellis, or is it Ms?’

‘Susan, please.’

‘OK, Susan. First of all you must understand that a lot of people who go ‘missing’,’ he emphasised the euphemism, ‘do so because they wish to sever all contact with their current lives and have no wish to be found.’

‘Not David,’ she insisted.

‘Of course not,’ he rejoined, leaned back in his chair and carried on doodling. ‘But how do you know, or why do you think your brother is alive?’

Susan opened her handbag and took out David’s report of what happened at the mission. She passed it across the desk.

‘This,’ she said and handed him the grubby notebook. ‘It came into my possession three days ago.’

Marcus took it from her and frowned as he opened the dirty pages. There was only the one entry there and he read it carefully, his expression darkening as the report changed from a declaration of a man’s love for a woman to an eye witness account of a violent execution. He closed the book slowly and slid it across the desk towards Susan.

‘Have you been to the authorities?’ he asked.

Susan retrieved the book and put it back in her handbag. ‘What authorities?’ she muttered. ‘It was a year ago.’ She looked up. ‘I don’t want retribution; I just want to know where my brother is.’

Marcus looked up towards the ceiling and began swivelling in his chair. He had the aura of a man who had switched his thoughts to something entirely different from the moment in hand.

‘You need a detective agency,’ he said eventually, ‘or the Missing Persons Bureau.’ He lowered his gaze and looked directly at Susan. ‘Why didn’t you ask David’s employers?’

‘The Chapter? I assume they would have searched for David.’

‘Don’t you know?’

Susan shook her head. ‘I didn’t find out about this until a few days ago.’

This drew a guarded response from Marcus. ‘How? What happened?’

Susan told him how Cavendish had phoned and arranged to meet her. She told him that Cavendish had been unable to offer any explanation as to how David’s notes ended up in the diplomatic bag.

‘So you see; I am left with a trail that is probably stone cold now.’ She opened her bag and took a tissue out. She dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but the more I think of how long it has been, the more I realise how little chance there is of finding my brother.’ She put her hands in her lap. ‘But I have to know.’

‘Have you thought about contacting this chap Cavendish again and asking for his help? After all, he brought you the news of your brother.’

She shook her head. ‘He made it quite clear that he knew nothing. What he was doing was simply a favour.’

‘How did he know about you?’ Marcus pointed towards Susan’s handbag. ‘There’s no mention of you or David’s connection with you in his notes.’

Susan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. To be honest I haven’t given it any thought. He seemed to know me as soon as I walked into Starbucks. Why, is it important?’

Marcus didn’t answer immediately. ‘Perhaps he learned about you through The Chapter,’ he said after a while. ‘Would you have been registered as David’s next of kin, do you think?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I keep saying no, or I don’t know; but David was away so often on so many different assignments, I rarely saw him. I just don’t know if he would ever have put me down as his next of kin. I expect he must have done, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t have any siblings, so I wouldn’t know.’

After a few moments of thought and relative silence, Susan asked if they could move on to more pragmatic things. She found the discussion of her brother and whether he was alive or not was becoming distressing.

‘Look,’ she began. ‘I have spoken to other agencies in the City but I’m afraid they are all far too expensive for me. What I want to know is what it would cost me for you to accompany me to Afghanistan while I look for the truth about my brother.’

‘You want a bodyguard,’ he said, ‘a minder, is that it?’

‘Yes, that’s it exactly. I would feel vulnerable if I went on my own.’

Marcus was quiet for some time. It was fairly clear to him that the young woman sitting opposite him was now down to the last noggins; the last scraping of the barrel. She had no money to speak of otherwise she would have taken on one of the bigger agencies. His own expertise extended little further than escorting celebrities, minor ones at that, and doing some courier work for other companies. What Susan Ellis was asking extended beyond his usual limits and would almost certainly end in tears, metaphorically speaking.