Hugh Miller - Borrowed Time

She opened her eyes, starting to feel desperate. She recalled something Philpott had told her, something she had subsequently written down. It was one of the chunks of advice he only ever imparted when he had taken a drink:

If ever you find yourself in a position where it seems possible you will damage UNACO, remember that it is worth any amount of effort, any measure of pain, and all the resourcefulness you can marshal to make sure that you deflect the harm away from UNACO, or undo the source of harm entirely.

Black marks against an agent were seldom erased. Sabrina had so far collected none. She had no intention of starting.

She shut her eyes tightly and tried again. She thought back further, saw the approach to the garage, the key in her hand extending to open the padlock.

She experienced a jolt now, realizing there had been something peripheral, something at the edge of her vision that should now register. She tried to freeze the image of her hand going forward to the lock and saw it slow down. Simultaneously she was aware of movement in herself, in her neck, the beginning of a reflex action.

Of course!

She had looked over her shoulder. She shut her eyes tighter and concentrated, inching through the recollection, aware that she had missed something, or at least she had taken no account of it. She saw again the shrubs and stunted trees at the side of the garage, with the yellow clay of the road dusted halfway up their trunks and stems.

A woman!

She had seen a woman on the other side of the trees, looking through a gap, her face impassive. She had simply been watching, doing nothing to raise the kind of curiosity that would get her remembered.

‘Yes, yes, yesss !’

Now that the image of the woman had been raised Sabrina could hold it and stare at it. In her early training with the FBI, she had learned that even if she did not consciously see something that appeared in her line of vision, it would be printed on her memory. Raising such memories was now something she could do five times out of ten. She put the image to the centre of her mind and worked at enhancing it.

The woman was young, perhaps twenty, with typically dark eyes and black hair; she wore a silver chain around her neck and she …

The recollection stalled there. Something needed to be noticed.

‘Come on, come on !’

There was an irregularity about the neck. A scar! There was a vertical scar, running down the midline of the larynx. It was an operation scar, perhaps an old tracheotomy, the thickened tissue raised and almost white against the surrounding brown skin.

The effort of finding a telltale sign had been so extreme that Sabrina heard herself pant. She kept her eyes shut and pictured the face again, imprinting it, making it a clear feature of fresh memory: small chin, wide upper lip, prominent cheekbones, rounded and deep-set dark amber eyes, hair combed back behind the ears.

Sabrina opened her eyes. She felt as if she had done a day’s work. She looked at the empty seat again. The thought of her bag being somewhere else right now, in other hands that might do unthinkable mischief, was like a goad behind her, prodding, shoving.

She jumped in behind the wheel, banged the door shut and threw the engine into gear. As she tore away along the road she had no idea where she was going, beyond knowing she had to start her search in the town.

People were staring. Women had their hands over their mouths, others drew their veils protectively across their eyes. The whole market had stopped to watch the commotion at the vegetable stall.

‘I do not speak English!’ the stallholder howled. He was an old man, and Sabrina had him by the front of his shirt. She held on with both hands and looked determined enough to pick him up and throw him across the market. ‘No English! I speak no English!’

‘You just spoke it!’ Sabrina rasped; falling into the character imposed by her unflattering clothes. ‘Now you’re going to rack your brains and answer my question or I’m going to drag your spindly old carcass down to the local clink!’

She had started out her enquiry much more gently, stopping by the old man’s stall, asking him if he knew of a young woman with a scar at her throat, a good-looking young woman that Sabrina was anxious to find. Then she noticed that the old trader had his hand in her jacket pocket. She caught him by the wrist, twisted his arm up his back and pushed his face into a pile of green chillies. She let him stay that way, howling, his mouth half stoppered with his produce, while she did a good enough impression of a crazy woman to keep the other traders at a respectful distance. When she finally released the man and grabbed him by the collar, she guessed he was scared enough to rat on his mother.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ she demanded. ‘Huh? Or do I beat you up and haul you off to the police?’

‘Please, no, do not hurt me, I beg you …’

‘Talk, then.’

‘You are looking for a woman called Phoolan Sena …’

‘Where do I find her?’

‘She lives with her son over there.’ He pointed to a clutch of small houses beyond the perimeter of the market. ‘Her house has a blue door.’

‘And you’ll have a black eye if I go over there and find out you’re lying to me.’

Sabrina let the man go and marched away. She pushed her way through the narrow lanes between the rickety barrows, past staring stallholders and their cringing customers.

Out on the bare ground at the rear of the market she paused and looked back, just able to see her car at the top of the narrow street where she had parked it. If the locks were as good as she had been told, it should be all right, although the way today had gone, she could not invest much faith in anything.

She found the house with the blue door and rapped on it, seeing paint fly off in little flakes under the impact of her knuckles. Feet shuffled beyond the door, then it swung open. For a split second the woman with the scar on her neck just stared. Then her memory kicked in and she jumped back, half turning as she leapt, getting ready to run for the back door.

‘Hold it!’

Sabrina caught her by the hair and tugged. The woman yelled. Pulled hair, like a kicked shin, can immobilize a person long enough for an attacker to get the upper hand. Sabrina swept her leg behind the woman’s knees and put her flat on her back.

‘You’re Phoolan, right?’ Sabrina knelt beside her. ‘Where is my bag, Phoolan?’

The woman looked hurt and frightened and surprised all at once.

‘I have a memory for faces,’ Sabrina told her, ‘even ones I haven’t really seen. So don’t give me any stories about you being the wrong woman. You do speak English, by the way?’

The woman’s stare was too mystified, too blank. She didn’t know what Sabrina was saying. She knew who she was, though. Sabrina stood up and pointed a warning finger. ‘Stay.’

The room was sparsely furnished; Sabrina could see at a glance that her bag wasn’t there. She went into the other room, much smaller, and found a little boy sitting on the side of a truckle bed. He was five or six years old and incredibly thin, with eyes that looked too big for his head. Sabrina’s bag lay behind him on the bed.

‘Hi, there,’ Sabrina said, making her voice soft. ‘How you doing?’

The boy looked wary but he stayed where he was. Sabrina ruffled his hair. She reached past him and picked up the bag. She pulled open the drawstring at the top and checked the wallet first. The cards were there, her WHO ID and papers of accreditation were there, but the money, five hundred dollars, was gone.

She looked at the thin little kid again and decided she wouldn’t make a noise about the cash. She pulled back the tab on the false bottom and there was the pistol. All in all, she could say she was in luck.