Neva wakes. For a moment she forgets where she is. Then the memories rush back in, changing her perspective of how this day will go. She is unhappy and frustrated.
It is a few weeks since she fled the Tower Bridge Hotel, and Solomon Granger threw his accusation her way. At that point she knew it was all over with Archive, before her work with them had even begun. A disappointment she hadn’t been prepared for because she’d wanted to work with Michael. She’d wanted to help them to bring down the Network.
As usual she disposed of anything that they could use to track her, like her phone. But first she sent Michael a text, telling him that she was being set up.
You’ve been playing me, he’d said by reply.
She had stared at her phone for a while, wondering what she had expected him to say. She was no expert in relationships, after all, for she had never felt anything like this before. Michael was her strength and her weakness. Being cut from his life left a gaping hole that Neva had no idea how to fill.
She went through a scenario of conversation in which she tried to persuade Michael to believe in her. Each time she saw him turn his back. It was disappointing that he didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt at first. But in the end, she didn’t try to change his mind. What was the point? Michael now believed she had been lying to him and Neva really couldn’t blame him. She was a child of the house and by the nature of their training, taught to lie with perfection.
Michael’s rejection hurt though. Even as Neva took the sim card from the phone, water leaked from her eyes: tears she hadn’t shed since the early days spent in the house.
She forces herself to go to ground because old habits die hard. When in doubt she retreats to safety.
Burner phone gone, passports that Michael had known about still need to be disposed of: Neva now has to find a new life when she had begun to believe for the first time that she had a chance at some form of normality.
She stares at Michael’s passport photo for a while, and then tears it in half. What a fool she was to ever believe they could be together, let alone be a married couple.
Neva berates herself for her weakness and her inner voice is that of Tracey Herod, her one time handler. You’re pathetic. It takes her a few days to even begin to function again.
Despite the ongoing shock of Michael’s mistrust, she sets the wheels in motion to establish a new identity, with the plan to leave London via the Eurostar. While she waits, her mind is in turmoil, she can’t concentrate properly. She feels lost.
After a week she realizes that she can’t go on like this. She has to talk to Michael. She has to tell him her side and somehow try to convince him that Granger lied. What possible motive he had for that, Neva doesn’t know. But she isn’t who he claims. At least… she doesn’t think she is.
Life, post-kill house, is sometimes confusing. Neva can’t be sure that she hasn’t been coerced, just as Michael once had been. He’d been a sleeper agent for the Network, raised and conditioned to live a double life. There is always the possibility that something is lurking inside her too, still waiting to be triggered. That something may well have been set in motion and she now has no recollection of it. No one knows better than her how the Network play with your mind and so she picks around her memories again, trying to see if anything was off. The thought horrifies her: after all the work she’s done on herself to break free.
Six months of Neva’s life had been in hiding during the time that Granger claimed she was acting as a double for the stewardess, Angela Carter. Neva recalls everything she’s done in that time and none of it involves a plane hijack. Or so she believes. But she can’t help thinking – what if it was me? What if I did these things and just can’t remember them?
She wants to get Michael back on side until they can learn the truth. Sometimes, she toys with the idea of letting Archive take her in, doing a polygraph. Proving she doesn’t know anything about Carter. But capture would just make her a sitting duck. The Network will send someone after her, and they will come in strong. It wouldn’t matter where they put her – the Network has allies everywhere. This is not a realistic or sensible option, no matter how much she misses contact with Michael.
She returns to Michael’s apartment block. She hangs out in the street in the hope that she can catch him alone. She doesn’t want to run until she has that one last chance to see him again.
During the wait for Michael’s return, Neva sees Janine’s apartment invaded by MI5: Michael has told them about her. They find nothing: Janine ditched that location and identity as soon as Neva had left the apartment with Michael. It is standard practice once a location is revealed to an untrusted party – in this case Michael. Janine never trusted Michael even when Neva had. Neva now concedes that Janine was right too: Michael has betrayed them. There is no doubt on that score. And it tears her up inside: he was the one person in her life that she truly believed in. When the truth dawns on her that he’s given her up to Archive, she wants to yell and shout at him. Perhaps even punch him in the face for it. She even imagines herself on her knees, begging for forgiveness for something she doesn’t think she’s even done. She hates feeling this way. All these irrational emotions make her weak when she has to be stronger now than ever. What good are feelings to someone like her anyway?
Despite her rational mind chewing away at the stupidity and futility of her turbulent heart, Neva can’t stop herself from riding this terrible rollercoaster. She has no one to talk to about it. No one to help straighten her out, or put things in perspective. She may be a mature killer used to dealing with the harsh reality of death, but to her relationships are new and confusing. Neva doesn’t know how to process this abject sense of loss or how to mend the hole inside her that it’s created.
Since MI5’s raid on the flat, Neva has avoided any contact with Janine, even though they can reconnect through the web at any time. Like Neva, Janine has bolt-holes all over Europe. She doesn’t know where Janine has fled to anymore than Janine knows where she is. Even so, there’s comfort in knowing she’s out there, ready to be called back should Neva want her. For once Neva imagines talking to her associate on a girl-to-girl level. But what would she tell her?
‘Janine, I’m in love…’
Neva gives a harsh giggle at the thought of saying such a thing to Janine. All they ever talked about was assignments. They are not friends, not really. Neva explores what she feels about Janine, but the pain of losing Michael blocks out all other emotions.
With her new identity in her hand, Neva can no longer use it as an excuse to stay. She says goodbye to London and, subconsciously, to any chance of speaking to Michael as she boards the Eurostar to Amsterdam.
She thinks about Janine briefly when she’s settled. Neva has no use for a double now. the last thing she needs is to be ‘seen’ anywhere. She has to remain hidden. At least until she knows for sure that she isn’t a sleeper agent. What will I do if I am? A chill shivers up Neva’s back followed by a whirl of paranoia. If it’s me then I’ll have to deal with it.
To convince herself that she is in control, she takes to recording and monitoring her movements in the apartment she now lives in. Every few days she skips through the footage. So far, nothing out of the ordinary has occurred, as she sees herself doing exactly what she remembers doing. But still she doesn’t feel secure.
She calls herself Mila Jansen. This identity was a real person once, except that Mila Jansen died at the age of 8. The death record, however, has been expunged and Mila was ‘reborn’ a few years ago with a new life. A life that Neva had occasionally dipped into. She’d done this frequently to free herself from her handler, Tracey, using Janine in her stead. On such occasions, Janine, armed with Neva’s phone, would live in an apartment in London and she’d also take on hits that came in during that time. Neva would take 20 per cent off the top and Janine would get the rest for doing the wet work. It was a situation that profited them both, and it also gave Neva the opportunity to be free of the Network’s control. When Janine wasn’t working for Neva, she worked freelance, taking jobs that were being farmed out, or which she gleaned from the dark web. Neva didn’t know, or care, how Janine spent her down time. What she did care about was that Janine disguised herself. Neva had trained her well, and trusted that she did. Neither Tracey nor Beech ever got wind of her exploits, and none of it ever came back to Neva, and so for a few years Neva and Janine had a good arrangement.
On paper, Neva’s new personality is a student and as such she dresses the part. Casual jeans and sloppy slightly grungy tops. Make-up-less for the most part, she ties her hair back in a scruffy bun. She doesn’t hang out in the student bars and she is quiet. So, her busy neighbours don’t pay too much attention to her. She is, as always, hiding in the plain sight of normality because she knows this is the best way not to be noticed.
After showering and dressing, Neva checks her security footage, sees nothing unusual, and then she packs a small holdall. In the bag she stows a Glock 17 with several cartridges. On her wrist she has her usual knife holster, ready with a mere flick of her hand to use when needed.
After weeks of waiting, her hacker source Elbakitten has at last sent her a very important lead which is the only reason she would take a risk now to venture out of Amsterdam. Crossing borders is risky, but to catch up with Beech’s former chauffeur, Eldon Fracks, the danger is worth it. Last time she had a lead on Fracks, the Network had set a trap for her in Brighton. Even now she doesn’t know if Fracks was ever genuinely there and had somehow skipped away before she arrived and before Network operatives had tried to capture her. She thinks of this as she prepares for her mission now. She will be extra vigilant, just in case he’s been used to lure her in again.
Packed and armed, Neva leaves her apartment and sets off on her journey to face Fracks. She pushes down the dancing excitement that tries to surface, forcing herself back into the coldness that an assassin of her calibre has as a default setting. But after all she’s experienced, going back into that stark cold place once more isn’t easy. She stops trying to quell the anticipation. Letting it lift her up and out of the constant sadness she’s felt since leaving London. It’s not the thrill of a potential chase that makes her adrenaline surge, but the thought of something tangible to aim for after weeks of inertia. Or the thought that she might learn something that could redeem her in Michael’s eyes. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate prize?