Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

‘Sorry?’

‘“If by some chance they did use a plane.” Why they ?’

Nick frowned as if he’d just been confronted with a tricky question in a pub quiz. ‘Yes, I did say that. I suppose I just assumed…All the CIA stuff I’ve read – Laos in the seventies, central America in the eighties, Afghanistan, Iraq – it’s always teams. Isn’t that how they do it? Same with the rendition thing. How many did they use for that job in Italy?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘And that was just to pick up one guy. And it wasn’t wet work. Which Forbes was.’

‘OK, I’ll look. But it’s a long shot.’

‘I know.’

‘Chances are, they drove there. Or flew separately, on commercial.’

‘But you’ll look? I owe you one, Dan.’

With that, Nick du Caines returned to the battered Nissan that served as his car: not old enough to be retro, just plain old.

But, like all those who see themselves as observers, eyeing the world through binoculars or an SLR lens, neither Judd nor du Caines imagined that, at that very moment, they were themselves being observed through a long lens.

The watchers being watched.

Aberdeen, Washington, Friday March 24, 18.23 PST

Maggie concluded the meeting with a few of the bureaucratic questions – accompanied by much earnest note-taking – that she thought Ashley Muir, life insurance agent, might ask.

‘What about his parents? Are they alive or deceased?’

‘Both dead,’ Principal Schilling answered. ‘Robert’s father died even before he came to the school. Perhaps that’s another thing I should have noticed: the absence of a father figure. I would approach a boy like him very differently now.’

‘And what about Robert’s mother?’

‘She died long ago. More than twenty years, I think.’

‘Besides the debating, was there anything else that might have made Jackson stand out as a student?’

‘He was bright. You’ve got to remember that: before Stephen Baker appeared, Jackson was in the top bracket of the school. Not a star, but accomplished. He was interested in world affairs, in politics. He was a good linguist; almost fluent in Spanish.’

Maggie was scribbling in her notebook.

‘I guess,’ the Principal offered, ‘that Robert was what today’s students would call a “geek”.’

‘A geek?’ Maggie smiled.

‘It’s funny, how much you remember when you put your mind to it. He was fascinated by computers. No one had computers in their homes back then, of course, but Robert was very knowledgeable. I seem to remember he started a school computer club. Though that petered out after, you know, the change in the debate team.’

Maggie wrote it all down, along with the social security number and now-defunct home address Mr Schilling gave her.

‘You’ve been very generous with your time.’

‘I hope it’s helped. And Ms Muir? If you find out what happened to Robert Jackson, be sure to let me know.’

By the time Maggie had pushed through the swing doors and stepped outside, twilight was setting in. She looked at her watch: six forty local time, twenty to ten on the East Coast. The day had begun with a five-hour flight, a two-hour drive: the thought of driving back to Seattle now – her original plan – suddenly lost its appeal. She was exhausted. Safer to find a motel in Aberdeen and make tracks in the morning.

She was walking towards her hire car when she froze.

There, standing in the gloom right beside her car was the outline of a person: man or woman Maggie couldn’t tell. The figure was standing, quite still, facing towards her, as if waiting for this moment. Was this how it had happened to Stuart: a man in the shadows, standing quite calmly, waiting for the moment to strike? Maggie felt her fist clench, an involuntary and useless gesture – one that made her realize she was unarmed and therefore utterly powerless.

Then a voice, carrying over the empty asphalt of the parking lot: ‘Am I glad to see you!’

A woman. As Maggie stepped nearer, she could see that she was older, early sixties at a guess. She felt her shoulders drop in relief. Either a veteran teacher or a grandmother of one of the pupils, Maggie guessed. Grey-haired, bespectacled and in a terminally unfashionable coat. A less frightening person it was hard to imagine.

‘Gosh, I am so relieved, I can’t tell you. My battery’s dead – again! – and I desperately need someone to give me some help.’

Something in the woman’s voice gave Maggie an instant ache, taking her back to evenings just like this one: after school, dark and cold, being met by her mother. It didn’t happen often: she and Liz usually walked or got the bus. But on those rare afternoons when it did, when she would see her mother’s smiling face there by the gate, it would fill her with warmth. And with something else, too – a sensation she now longed for so deeply it caught her by surprise. There was no immediate word for it, but it belonged somewhere between safety and love. She had, she realized, moved so far away from that house she grew up in.

‘Of course I’ll help. Mind you, I’m not sure I have any jump leads. This is a rental.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, dear. My son gave me everything. I have it all in the trunk. All I need is another car that works!’

Maggie watched, impressed, as the woman went around the back of her silver Saturn, opened the boot and emerged carrying two cables, red and black. She then lifted the hood on her own car, talking throughout.

‘If I’ve made that mistake once, I’ve made it a thousand times. The same thing, again and again. I park the car, I collect my handbag and then-’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Maggie, hovering close by, watching with admiration as the older woman placed the crocodile clips on the plus and minus nodes of her car battery. ‘You left the lights on.’

‘Oh no, dear,’ the lady said, looking slightly affronted. ‘I learned that lesson a long time ago. No, this was a different mistake. I left my key in the ignition.’

‘And that gives you a flat battery?’

‘It does, yes. It runs the radio or something, I don’t know. My son is the mechanic in the family. He knows about these things.’ She suddenly turned away from the engine, looking mildly alarmed. ‘You won’t tell him, will you? About this?’

Maggie smiled, remembering the way her mother had acted when she had started learning to use a computer for the first time. She had forgotten one of her key lessons – closing down all the programs before switching the machine off – and had turned to Maggie with the same expression. ‘You won’t tell Liz, will you?’

‘No, I won’t tell him. I don’t know who he is. I’m from out of town.’

‘Are you really, dear? You’re not a parent at this school, then?’

‘Just visiting.’

‘What a shame. You could have met my Mike. He’s a parent at this school.’ She paused. ‘Single parent now.’ She paused, as if absorbing that fact. ‘Now, let’s get your car moved alongside mine and then get that hood open.’

Maggie clicked the car door open, sat in the driver’s seat, fired it up, then drove it in a near circle, so that it ended up facing the Saturn, nose-to-nose. Then she turned the engine off and began looking for the latch for the hood. Feeling in the dark under the steering wheel column eventually revealed a small lever. She pulled it, heard the click and then watched, impressed again, as the woman didn’t wait for help but hoisted the hood up to full height by herself.

‘OK, don’t turn the engine back on just yet! Wait for me to give you the word.’

As Maggie waited, she thought again of what she had heard from Mr Schilling. ‘An obsession like this only ends in destruction,’ he had said. Even three decades ago, when Robert Jackson was a teenager, Schilling had become convinced that something dangerous and fateful was brewing in him. Jackson will either destroy Stephen Baker – or he will destroy himself.