“Are you in trouble?” Honor said it and she got that right. One thing was for sure and certain, North didn’t need her dragging him any further into her mess.
He warned her.
If you disregarded a warning, that was on you. Caution saved lives. Fact. Surveil the territory, assess the risk, decide your next action accordingly. Advance? Retreat? Dig in and send for reinforcements? If you were outnumbered and outgunned and there were no reinforcements a-comin’, it was sheer stupidity to advance. Retreat was not dishonourable when it was a strategic necessity. It was required.
North was leaving her to her fate.
The black cab was parked up on a quiet Westminster back-street along from a think-tank. Black cabs attracted no attention wherever they were parked. He’d called the cabbie an hour ago. Keys under the front wheel-arch on the driver’s side. Usual deal. A mutually beneficial arrangement that had served him well over the past five years. He bought the discretion of a cab and an official green badge to hang round his neck, while the divorced cabbie enjoyed three weeks in Florida with his new partner and both sets of kids. Win win.
The key turned clockwise in the ignition and the engine caught. For an intelligent woman, Honor Jones behaved like a no-brain fool.
He glanced at the clock. The flight to Washington had landed at Heathrow by now. Cleaners would be going through it for the turn-around flight back. If she’d listened to him, he could be driving them both to the airport instead of driving away and leaving her to certain death.
He turned the key again, anti-clockwise this time, and the engine died. What would she do?
He rested against the cabbie’s wooden-beaded seat relief. It annoyed him. He’d ask the guy to take it off next time. He was paying him enough. He checked himself – there wouldn’t be a next time. He was out.
Would Honor stay in the safety of Parliament?
He shifted around trying to get comfortable.
Impossible.
He just demonstrated safety didn’t exist in Parliament or outside it.
He gave up on the beads, sliding off the suit jacket and undoing the silk tie, rolling up his white sleeves, before tossing the clear glass spectacles out of the window.
Honor Jones MP. He wished he’d never heard her name. Or seen it, written in green ink on the back of a black and white photograph which showed her sitting with a man who was already dead. Never think of them as real people. Only as targets. Too late now.
A small groan escaped him.
She must have gone to the police about Peggy and got nowhere. Otherwise there’d be a hue and cry all over the news. He wasn’t surprised. The Board had centuries of experience at covering up their operations.
He pulled out the pay-as-you-go he’d picked up an hour ago. Margaret Boland.
Astronomer. 302,000 results. Newcastle University physics department. A professor with a list of incomprehensible publications to do with cosmology. Honor appeared to be right. Peggy was a genius. The professor stared out from his phone screen. Not to-die-for lovely like Honor, but striking enough with dark eyes, wild black hair and high cheekbones. The strong face of a capable woman who regarded life as a serious business. And if she didn’t before, she did now. He hesitated over a TED Talk she’d given a year ago – Listen: the earth is singing. She bowed her head as the applause started. Tall. An hourglass figure in a plain grey marl tee-shirt, jeans and dark jacket. Excited. Pleased to be there. Moving from foot to foot. She lifted her hand. Enough applause. North pressed the off button. What did it matter if the earth sang and Peggy Boland heard it. He didn’t need to listen because he was a free man.
He’d park the taxi up in long-stay. The darkest, furthest corner he could find in the most distant, shabby parking. He’d wipe it over, get a message to the cabbie. He never left it at Heathrow, and the cabbie wouldn’t be happy but he’d leave an extra grand in the glove compartment. For his time and trouble. The cabbie would get over himself. If he was lucky he’d get a good fare out of the airport back into the City. North himself would break up the gun and dump it in several bins. Then he’d catch a flight to Singapore and onwards where the spirit moved. With a passport in the name of Philip MacDonald and with one flight out of Changi airport every 90 seconds to 300 cities in 80 countries and with more than 50 million people through there a year, he had a good chance of getting lost, which sounded like a great destination in itself right this moment.
Eventually, he’d go to ground in the Caribbean, he thought. One of the smaller islands that attract enough of the affluent and idle to blend right in. White rum daiquiris and cracked ice? Too sweet. Whisky then. Yamazaki single malt, aged and almost, but not quite, ruined with ice. Ice in a ball this time. And the whisky not drunk alone, but in an infinity pool with a giggling woman with a heart-shaped face.
Freedom. It was within his grasp. He’d earned it. Several times over. He saved enough lives when he was in the Army – walked through a minefield to reach a wounded mate and got shot in the head in return. He was leaving Honor to it, and starting over.
He rested his head on his hands as they moved to grip the top of the steering wheel. He should strap himself to it, tie himself with thick jute ropes. Let the storms rage. If he waited here, quiet and peaceable, in this street with its pretty Queen Anne houses, in an hour or maybe two, he’d hear the sirens. The metropolitan equivalent of the tolling bell marking the death of Honor Jones MP. Because that was about how long she had left to live. He should sit here, mourn briefly – he barely knew her after all – and drive into an apricot sunset and just reward. Wispy clouds scudded over the roofline as he peered upwards through the windscreen. There was enough in his account to buy a boat and sail between the islands. A ketch – something with good lines that handled like a dream. He’d carve the name into a piece of wood and hang it on brass chains from the stern. “Honor”. Twists and ringletted oak blowing away in the trade wind. No – that was a terrible idea. He would call the ketch “Liberty”.
He turned the key in the engine.
Surely Honor was too smart to stay. She set herself up this morning for a particular reason – to catch him. She wouldn’t do it again because she was on a mission – to find her friend, and dying would put a real crimp in that.
No. She would run. Hide out while she kept looking for Peggy. However reluctant she was to follow his advice, it was her only real option. He ran through the encounter in his head. The sweep of the passport into her handbag as she kept talking. If she caught a plane to the US, she could have a Cosmopolitan in her hand by nightfall. She could drink a cocktail and thousands of miles away he would drink whisky and rest easy, with a soft woman who looked nothing like Honor Jones. Freedom could still be his.
He pulled out, ignoring the crunch as the hard-rubber tyre caught the arm of the discarded spectacles crushing them, plastic and glass splintering, the frame left mangled in the gutter.
The problem was the only thought in her head when she walked away was going home. And if there’s one place you don’t go, when people are trying to find you and kill you, it’s home.