Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

She laughed and asked him if he’d like singing as part of the service.

‘As long as I can be Barry Gibb,’ he’d said.

She asked him to start with what set him apart as a person, what made him different. And he didn’t know what to say, so he said, ‘I’m not an atheist.’

She smiled and said, ‘At last, a live one!’

They got along well and she got him talking about a lot of things.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do or how honest he was supposed to be. His main criterion was that she was discreet. Jen had used counselling from time to time, when she felt she needed it, but she was a woman and it was expected among female cops. Amongst male spooks, they’d prefer you were on the piss, depressed and going brothel-hopping every night than openly seeing a shrink. You were either admitting you couldn’t handle it, or you were breaking open the entire psychological secret of covert fi eldwork – the secret being that no one could really handle it as well as they pretended, and all it took was a shock of violence or pain caused to a child or some other innocent party and you were in emotional la-la land.

Lydia had been quite clear about that. ‘Richard, if you knew how many cops, spies and soldiers I see in these rooms, you might relax a bit. It’s okay to need to talk,’ she’d said.

That was fi ne with Mac, but he still used a cover and paid in cash.

At the last session, she’d asked him to sum up a few things for himself. He hadn’t understood, so Lydia asked him to describe as honestly as he could what he was feeling when he sat there in the Sumatran jungle with a broken, bleeding girl in his arms.

Mac had shrugged.

‘Let’s try that another way,’ smiled Lydia. ‘You didn’t cry, did you.

Why not?’

They had sat in silence for three or four minutes.

‘Because,’ he said, like he was in a dream, ‘I was scared. And that made me ashamed.’

Mac collected Diane’s girlie things from the bathroom – the combs and brushes and little bottles. He looked under the bed and found knickers and a sock, checked the bedside table, the bathroom and her suitcase. He found two mobile phones in her handbag, but no Filofax.

Stripping, Mac threw his bloody clothes into the corner and had a long shower. He had the shakes in his hands and in his facial muscles.

Freddi was waiting in the living area of the suite, which made him feel safe, but there were things coming to the surface he thought he’d beaten.

Getting out of the shower, he grabbed some clean clothes from his bag and got dressed in Diane’s room. As he made to leave, he looked in one last place – under her pillow. It was there: a dark blue twenty-year-old Filofax diary. He opened it to make sure it was all there, and found that all the entries were in acronyms or about grocery lists, that sort of thing. He was snapping it shut, about to throw it in her leather handbag, when something caught his eye. In the front inside sleeve, a corner of something poked out. He pulled at it and out slid a photo. It showed Diane smiling at the camera, looking a little tired, in hospital blues and holding a baby to her breast.

‘Shit,’ he mumbled.

He turned it over and in Diane’s hand, in black ballpoint, was written Sarah, one day old.

He turned it back over and looked at the picture again. You could see from the foreground of the bed that the nurse or doctor had put down their clipboard on the bed in front of Diane before taking the photo. Mac put the Filofax in the handbag and found a duty-free carry bag and put Diane’s clean undies, bras and socks into it – she might appreciate them as she recovered.

As he moved through to the living area, Freddi looked up.

‘Thanks for that, Fred,’ he smiled. ‘Mate, you wouldn’t have an imaging guy downstairs would you?’

‘Of course.’

Images were a big deal at conferences. You spent all your time grabbing pictures of people, running them through the software to enhance them and run matches in the databases. They ducked into the back offi ce of the front desk and Freddi introduced Fanshaw, the junior intel guy, to Mac.

‘Cheers,’ said Mac. ‘Just want to check what this clipboard says in the photo.’

The bloke put the pic in a scanner, pulled it up on his laptop screen, used the cursor to defi ne an area and then double-clicked several times. He made adjustments in an enhancement box at the side of the screen, repixelating the image digitally, and within thirty seconds the German software had brought the top of that clipboard alive. Fanshaw pointed and Mac leaned in.

The girl’s surname was ELLISON. But it was her fi rst names, in smaller text, that shocked Mac to the core. Sarah McQueen.

Freddi peeled away to the gents as they closed on Diane’s room. Mac came around a corner, his mind racing, trying to get the timeline right for Diane’s – their – daughter, and walked into two men loitering outside the door.

One was the heavily muscled shape of a soldier Mac recognised from two years ago in Jakarta. Carl had been present when Mac and Diane had gone out for their last dinner together. He hadn’t changed much: his usual Levis and Hi-Tecs, a black leather holster-bag around his middle that Mac knew contained a SIG Sauer 9 mm and probably a fancy military micro-radio.

Beside Carl was a tall dark-haired MI6 operative by the name of Danny Fitzgibbon. Danny seemed out of place in the fi eld. In an early rotation in Singapore, Mac, Dave Urquhart and Danny were all stationed together. Urquhart and Danny had become friends whose conversation centred on the ministerial end of the job. Urquhart now worked liaison with the Prime Minister’s offi ce and Mac had assumed Danny was doing something similar in London.

‘Danny,’ he said, nodding.

Then, winking at the soldier, Mac said, ‘How’s it going, Carl?’

Carl smiled and nodded but Danny put his hands on his hips and made no attempt to get out of the way. ‘I was hoping you’d turn up, McQueen.’

‘It’s nice to be loved, Danny.’

‘Still a smartarse, I see,’ Danny sneered. ‘But that didn’t help her, did it?’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

‘Mate, I’m tired, okay?’ said Mac, not wanting this. ‘I’ve got some things Diane asked for -‘

‘Like what?’ Danny challenged, his beady eyes dropping to the handbag.

Mac turned to Carl, smiled. ‘You’ll come for the looks, stay for the personality, eh Carl?’

Carl tried to suppress a laugh, but couldn’t. The British diplomat bodyguards were smart, experienced guys plucked out of special forces and the metro police. They could be just as confused by the wankers from Six as anyone.

‘Don’t worry about him, McQueen,’ snarled Danny, moving forward and trying to get all the height he could out of his lanky frame. ‘The main game’s over here, mate.’

‘Okay, Danny, nice talking to you, I’ll be going in now.’ He moved half a step and Danny fronted him, did it so they touched chests, did it in such a way that if he was in Mount Isa or Kalgoorlie he’d be crawling around on the fl oor by now, looking for his teeth.

‘Where you think you’re going, McQueen?’

‘I’m sorry?’ asked Mac, wondering where he could hit him and not be reprimanded by the fi rm.

‘I asked you what’s in the bag.’

‘Just a few selected pictures of me with your mother.’

Danny’s pupils dilated and his lips went white as Carl expelled a snort of laughter. Mac was prepared to take one shot so he could give fi fteen and still claim in his report that he’d been attacked. Danny tensed and a voice came from behind Mac.

‘What’s up, Fitzgibbon?’

Danny’s nostrils fl ared as he stared into Mac’s eyes, his gaze fl ickering over Mac’s shoulder. ‘Freddi – how’s things?’ Danny croaked, his throat striated with wire-like tendons.