Ellie put on linen pants and a t-shirt and pulled her hair back into a damp, messy bun. She hadn’t lied to Tenby. She never skimmed or went into a meeting unprepared. She had many failings, but a lack of diligence wasn’t one of them. She would read the briefing when she returned. Maybe after the party.
Arjuna would be back here in three hours. She wrote down an address and slung her bag over her shoulder, then hesitated. The guns were locked in the room safe and her Kevlar vest hung in the cupboard, next to the tuxedo she had brought for the evening function. Redmond had implored her not to be sartorially provocative; Sri Lanka was contradictory in its conservatisms.
Ellie had replied, ‘Shelling children is okay, but androgynous evening wear is not?’
‘We shell children too. Stop judging them.’
‘I judge us all,’ she had retorted as she hung up.
She touched the vest now. They didn’t always work, and the extra bulk would be a hindrance for what she meant to do. She left it next to the evening wear and pulled the cupboard door closed. Foolish perhaps, but sometimes she liked to tempt fate.
She strode out of the hotel lobby into the afternoon heat. A reluctant breeze sloped in from the ocean and shifted the still air. She pulled a light scarf from her bag and casually threw it around her hair and shoulders. The nearest doorman darted forward.
‘Taxi, madam?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. Just going for a walk on the Green.’ She paused on the circular driveway, under the canopy that protected the Taj’s guests from the sun. She scanned the parking bays for any familiar vehicles. She didn’t recognise any, but her heart rate quickened. Years of active duty had given her a sense for when she was being watched.
Unable to identify where that sense was coming from, she walked out onto the road, hailed a tuk-tuk and thrust the piece of paper at the driver. The old man recognised the address and raised his erratic eyebrows. He opened his mouth, revealing betel-stained, gappy teeth. She pulled out a 1000 rupee note. The old man turned off the meter and took her in the direction she wanted to go.
•
Ameena Fernando’s office was situated on the second floor of the Bishopsgate Building, precisely 1.4 km away from where she was shot dead a mere 280 metres from her home.
Three days after the journalist’s death, the entrance to the building had become a shrine to her. Flowers and garlands, large photographs of Ameena, anointed with holy ash, sandalwood paste and blood-red kum-kum powder, the sacred adornments she might have worn on her wedding day. Cards, posters and messages of love and anger. Candles half melted in the sun, their waxy bodies finding each other and merging into a shining mass.
The main door of the building was locked. Ellie looked up at the second-floor windows. Surprisingly, they were not barred. The Lanka Herald had suffered repeated break-ins by paid government thugs or soldiers dressed in civilian clothing, with instructions to intimidate the staff, destroy property and hurt Ameena—a little, but not a lot. But Ameena had apparently refused to imprison her staff inside their office. She was quoted in her paper saying: ‘Words, language and speech—they should be free and so should we.’
Ellie paid the tuk-tuk driver and sent him on his way, despite his protests.
‘I will wait here, madam. No extra charge. It’s not safe. Poor Ameena,’ he had lamented, picking up the edge of his sarong to re-tie it around his waist. He pulled the dirty cloth off his shoulder and wiped the sweat from his neck.
She waited until the tuk-tuk had turned the corner and checked again to see if anyone was following her. A motorcycle, its rider in full leathers, drove past her, a flash of red on its exhaust pipe. It turned at the same corner as the tuk-tuk. She waited a few more minutes, then walked around to the side alley, and down the small stairwell that led to the basement.
She put latex gloves on and tried the basement door. Locked, but thankfully with something simple. There was no reason for her to be here, not without a local police chaperone and Ministry of Justice permission—which had been denied when Redmond made the request from DC. Arjuna and Tenby would never sanction her next move: she pulled out her pins and needles kit from her satchel and opened the door on the first try.
Ellie looked around the musty room. No internal CCTV so far. She waited and listened. Nothing. At the second floor, she took a small retractable knife from her P&N kit and slashed the police tape away. Three more needles and she was inside The Lanka Herald.
She pulled her scarf back and surveyed the room.
Look, but don’t touch. Find something but not too much, had been Redmond’s instructions. Show the family in San Francisco we care.
She was terrible with instructions.
Walking among the debris, knife in one hand, torch now in the other, Ellie found Ameena’s office quickly. Everything was upturned, drawers smashed and pulled apart, secret compartments suspected and searched for. The whiteboard behind Ameena’s desk was cracked but still whole. It had fallen off one of its brackets and now tilted precariously on the wall. The filing cabinet had been prised apart. Three locked drawers were now open and empty. The desk was the same; nothing but the stationery and a paperweight remained. She picked up the bronze obelisk paperweight. It was engraved:
The Lanka Herald, for fearless journalism
Thomson Reuters Justice Award
South Asian Sector, 2007
Ellie crouched to pick up a broken photo frame, and was relieved that Sathyan wasn’t in it. Annoyed that she would have been jealous if he was. The photo instead showed Ameena, three children and a man. Her ex-husband. They were leaning against the rickety hull of a fishing boat, their arms around one another, palm trees towering behind them. One of the children, the older son, was tickling the younger one, their bare feet buried in the warm sand. They were happy together.
She pulled the photograph from its frame—nothing behind it. No hidden message from the dead woman. She put it in her bag and was about to get up when the lights came on. She ducked down, cursing. They had to know she was in here. Of course, they knew she was in here—she had cut their tape.
‘Hello madam, Mrs American,’ a man called out. ‘Hello madam,’ he repeated. His colleague laughed derisively. They muttered to each other in Sinhalese, but Ellie couldn’t hear them clearly. ‘Can we help you?’ he tried again.
Ellie stayed on the floor, shoved her torch in her bag, and kept the knife poised. It wouldn’t go deep, but when used properly it could go far enough. Stun and slow down. Don’t kill. She hated killing. Other people had usually done it for her.
She looked under Ameena’s desk, her cheek hot against the cool wooden floor, and saw two sets of heavy boots, the ankles covered in Army fatigues, the tip of a bayoneted service rifle resting against the black shiny surface of his shoes. The room was secure and she was outnumbered. She pushed herself into the corner of the desk and weighed her options.
She could put the knife away, take out her ID and come out with her hands up. Looking up at the wall and the whiteboard, she cursed the absence of windows.
She noticed then that the board was plugged in. It wasn’t a whiteboard. It was a smartboard.
She followed the vein of the wire from the wall up to the dented body. Where the wire met the smartboard, there was a tiny black rectangular box, like a USB stick, still plugged into the port. It could only have served one purpose. She would not be allowed to leave with it. She might not be allowed to leave at all.
She took four deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, and placed the knife back in her bag. She relaxed her body from the centre of her forehead to her feet, located her inner energy in the base of her spine and visualised it coursing through her body.
She was ready when the first soldier came through Ameena’s office door, his gun poised over her.
She stood up in a fluid motion, grabbing the device from the smartboard, shoving it in her trouser pocket and then raising her arms to show she was not armed. She walked around the desk, her arms above her head now dropped to her chest with her hands open, relaxed but ready, protecting her centre line.
The soldier opened his mouth to call the other man but she shook her head, smiled and uncurled her right hand to reveal the small device. Confused by the co-operative gesture, the soldier leaned forward and dropped the tip of his bayonet just a fraction.
Ellie pulled down on the lug of the weapon. The soldier tensed and tried to keep his balance. She relaxed even more and redirected the hilt of the gun in a fast, sharp punch to his gut. He doubled over and she grabbed the obelisk and smashed it into the middle of his back. Another deliberately shallow blow to the back of his head. Stunned, two broken ribs—but not dead. She caught him as he slumped and laid him gently on the ground. She put the device in her pocket and crawled towards the door.
She couldn’t hear the other man, who should have been searching for his colleague by now. She stopped and listened again. Nothing. Something was wrong. She stood up slowly, hands above her head, just in case, and edged around the door.
Arjuna stood on the other side of the room holding a rifle that didn’t belong to him in one hand, his gun in the other. It had an eight-inch titanium hybrid silencer screwed in.
‘It seems you’ve learned very little in your time away,’ he observed, his tone even drier than she remembered.
‘I’m better at unarmed combat than I used to be,’ she replied, breathless.
‘Unarmed won’t help you in modern warfare. Unmanned, but not unarmed,’ he said, referring to the US drones that were always above them. ‘Let’s go, the Ambassador is expecting you.’
‘The other guy?’ She looked around for a body.
Arjuna led her by the elbow to the office entrance. ‘He should have been better at armed combat.’
‘Oh God, did you …’ The blood rushed to her head. ‘Arjuna—’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ He shook his head. ‘Or more stupid. You took a huge risk coming here, but the last thing we need is dead soldiers. There’s a Special Ops team on the way that wants to clean up your mess. Follow me.’
She opened her mouth but he cut her off.
‘I’ve told them to stand down. But we should get out of here before your new friends wake up.’ He led her down the stairwell, to the building exit. Outside, the sun was setting but the heat still felt oppressive. A movement caught Ellie’s eye and she saw a rider sitting on a motorbike, diagonally across the road from them. His engine was running, like he was waiting for something. She couldn’t be certain, but he looked very like the motorcyclist she had glimpsed earlier. Which would mean he was waiting for her. He could probably tell that she’d seen him. He had no intention of hiding. That was unusual for agents, even local ones.
The initial briefing with Redmond returned to her. Four motorcyclists were seen leaving the site of Ameena’s murder. Before she could mention this to Arjuna, he’d walked over to his car and unlocked the passenger door for her.
‘We’ve got to go, Ellie. Now. Solomon will want your head and probably mine. Your cover’s blown and you haven’t even got over the jetlag.’