Ethan Justice: Origins (Ethan Justice #1) (20 page)

“You know, Savannah, I might just give it a go.”

For the next few minutes they chatted away like they’d known each other for years and Wilson talked more and felt better than he could remember in a long while.

*

It was chilly in the main office. Johnson reckoned that the evicted employees had turned off the heating before leaving. Who could blame them? Savannah nodded towards John but did not meet his eyes. They took their seats around a small circular table like four friends about to play cards. John sat opposite Savannah. She stared at the centre of the table.

As the senior agent, Johnson chaired and opened the discussions.

“Firstly, as promised before you guys went rogue on us, we will tell you as much as we can about Mark Bradshaw and his invention which is at the core of our problems.”

Johnson went on to explain how they had recruited Mark after he had completed his Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge University, his fourth year option being Experimental and Theoretical Physics. As Mark’s parents had died in a motorway car accident a year before graduation and he was excelling in the field of lasers, he had inadvertently ticked two very large boxes on Earthguard’s recruitment radar. John shook his head as he listened. It wasn’t the Mark he had known.

Around ten years ago they had been looking to develop a field weapon that allowed agents to avoid reloading issues. Apparently, a high percentage of deaths in the field resulted from this problem. While Mark was in the last year, Earthguard asked him if he thought lasers could be the way forward. At first Mark was adamant that it couldn’t be done because lasers required huge amounts of power and power supplies meant either cables or huge batteries.

“So that was why he went with nuclear power?” John asked.

“Exactly,” Johnson said. “Mark was obsessed with the project and promised that he could deliver a nuclear-powered laser firearm which would never require reloading.”

“Wouldn’t the agent get radiation poisoning?”

“No. That was the brilliance of Bradshaw. He encased the miniature reactor in a leaden handle and developed a converter so that radiation-free energy could be used to power the on-board laser.”

“I know nothing about nuclear power or lasers,” John said, glancing at Savannah whose eyes hadn’t moved from the table in front of her. She seemed determined to ignore him.

“Me either, but Mark made it happen. He made the gun adjustable so that it could also be used in a non-lethal capacity. Sure, the guns would need careful destruction after their useful life but the positives were beyond imagination.”

“So he’d completed the project?” John asked.

“No,” continued the agent. “There was one flaw that Mark couldn’t iron out.”

“Which was?”

“Occasionally, the prototypes, especially the earlier ones, would release their full capacity with one pull of the trigger. We’re talking a fifth of the blast size of Hiroshima with the ability to fire it from several miles away. We lost a few good people in the underground tests.”

John rested his head on one hand. It was unbelievable. “A terrorist’s dream produced by an anti-terrorist organisation.”

“The irony is not lost on me,” Johnson admitted.

There’s so much the general public doesn’t know,
thought John. “So because Mark wouldn’t give up the gun, he got murdered?”

“Yes and no.” Johnson shifted in his seat. “Mark was selling the weapon to pay off his gambling debts.”

That was the first thing said about Mark that made sense. “So Mark contacted the killer?”

“No. Somehow paperwork regarding the gun’s existence was handed by the Ministry of Defence to a high ranking SAS official. He happened to be on the lookout for a more reliable firearm. This paperwork was discovered by Gregory Fisher who broke into this guy’s office at SAS HQ.”

“A soldier? How did he know where to look?”

“He wasn’t after details of the gun. He was looking for evidence that the MoD had signed off on the abolition of the continuance policy.”

“What’s that?”

“It allowed special forces soldiers to serve up to the age of forty-five, an extra five years above standard army regulations. As Fisher was forty, he was one of the casualties.”

“So what does he want with the gun?”

“We don’t know for sure. Some form of payback for losing his job, perhaps?”

“So how did he get in touch with Mark?”

“The document must have given him the information required to track Mark down. From what we can work out, Fisher came up with three hundred thousand pounds by selling his home in Hereford. This, we assume was to pay Mark.”

“But Mark’s apartment alone is worth several million.”

“Mortgaged to the hilt.”

“Jesus,” John sighed, still beleaguered by how little he had known Mark. “So why did he kill Mark?”

“We think Mark’s conscience got the better of him. We never thought that Mark would actually sell the gun. He was only under additional security as a precautionary measure.”

“You mean he changed his mind?”

“As far as we can make out. We were on our way to check on him when he was killed.” Johnson threw Wilson a knowing look. Wilson’s gaze was firmly on Savannah. Johnson continued regardless. “Thankfully we arrived long before the regular police or you might now be behind bars.”

“At least I’d be safe.” A comfy cell didn’t sound so bad. “What about Parkes, the concierge? Was he in on it?”

“Not intentionally. He was paid five hundred pounds by Fisher to ensure that nobody disturbed him. He’s being held by the police for aiding and abetting a murder. It won’t stick but it’ll teach him a valuable lesson.”

John hoped they gave Parkes a rough time. “How come you didn’t pick up Fisher before it got this far?”

With his eyes fixed on his partner, whose attention still lingered on Savannah, he deflected the question. “Wilson, why don’t you take this one?”

Wilson turned and answered calmly. “We had no idea who we were looking for until the DNA match from the cigarette butts he left at the station. It was the first time he’d left any DNA behind. We suspect that he doesn’t know that his gene code is on record. The SAS doesn’t officially admit to keeping such information.”

“So the SAS owned up to the killer being one of theirs?”

“They alerted us two hours ago and filled us in on the stolen paperwork. Our edge is he doesn’t know his DNA is giving him away.” Wilson turned back to Savannah but she was in her own world.

“So you can pick him up easily?”

“I wish.” Johnson’s gaze hung on Wilson, who appeared to have lost interest in the conversation. Johnson cleared his throat. “When we were supposed to be observing Bradshaw, we left our posts. I’ve convinced HQ that it was because Bradshaw blew our cover, which we suspect may be true. But it doesn’t change the fact that we weren’t where we were supposed to be.”

John couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s why you weren’t there to save Mark, because you left your posts? Is that what you’re saying?”

Johnson didn’t even blink at the outburst, instead averting his gaze from his partner and leaning forward to meet John’s stare head on. The man loved a confrontation. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. But before you have a hissy fit think about this, Mark was planning to sell the weapon and once this was confirmed, my orders were to take him out.”

John held his ground. “But he changed his mind, you said.”

“We’re only surmising. Maybe he got killed because he upped the price. We know nothing for sure. Besides, our techies reckon that Mark had gone as far as he was going to get with the gun. His head was no longer in the game. His time at Earthguard was fast running out.”

“You would have killed him anyway?”

“No. What do you take us for? If he’d come clean about his problems on his own, there would have been help provided. I’m just saying that if we’d witnessed the meeting with Fisher, chances are we’d have been ordered to take them both out. Either way your friend would most likely be dead.”

John ran this around his head for a while and decided that Johnson was telling the truth. Why else admit to the screw up? “So where do we go from here?”

“Our controller is trying to set up a meet with Fisher’s commanding officer. Hopefully, this will happen soon and throw up some better leads. I have an idea to run past my partner which will lure Fisher out and point the blame at the SAS.”

“You would do that?”

“Our controller isn’t stupid. He knows there’s something I’m not telling him. He told me that the only words he was interested in were ‘complete deniability’. My job and my partner’s depend on it. The SAS trained this lunatic. It only seems fair that they take the blame. Now let’s take five.”

Johnson signalled to Wilson to follow him to the corner office. Wilson smiled at Savannah and complied. John guessed that Johnson was about to tear his partner down a strip. John welcomed the break as a chance to mend bridges with Savannah but she headed for the toilets without a word, leaving John to his own thoughts.

19: Sunday 25th September, 13:45

Exiting the ladies’ toilets, Savannah Jones had made up her mind to bolt.

She was a fighter, she had always been a fighter, would always be a fighter. She had realised this at the moment her mind recovered from the temporary shutdown it had experienced in the bathroom.

The stupor had begun, not with the gunshots whistling past her ears and threatening instant death, but with the realisation that she was glad Christos was dead. No, that wasn’t true. It was far more than that. For a second she had wanted to scream out with glee, sling on her shoes and to stomp a narrow heel through his unseeing eyeball, covering it with ruptured eye entrails and skewered brain matter. For someone who had never wished anyone dead, not even in jest, this revelation had tipped her over the edge.

When the agents had offered to ‘take care of’ Christos in return for her assistance, her brighter mood felt justified. She had passed on the responsibility and would never have been witness to the outcome of what ‘taking care of’ might have meant. Even so, she had realised that there was a part of her surfacing that she neither liked nor knew existed.

Her mother had always told her, ‘there are no good or bad people, only shades of grey and mixtures of fortune’. Savannah had always taken this to mean that even the kindest of people could do the evilest of things if put in a set of particular circumstances. Maybe it was true, she really didn’t know anymore. She did suspect that her recent exposure to violence was at the root of her lack of empathy at the death of Christos the Greek. If she could remove herself from this influence, she would return to the person that her mother had strived so tenaciously to raise.

The toilets were behind Savannah, opposite the lifts which, with the stairwell, made up the centre of the building. A fire door stood between her and the stairwell and then, before she knew it, the door was behind her and her right foot was on the first stair downwards. A shiver passed through her and she froze. Was she leaving because of her mother and the moral dilemma or was it because of the danger to her life? Or was it because of Smith?

Truthfully, she told herself and so therefore it must have been true: John Smith was not really her type. So what was her type? She had never been a good judge of partner material. All she knew was that she had made poor choices and that she knew enough about Smith to understand he was a continuation of this trend. Why couldn’t she get him out of her head?

Savannah’s left foot eased down onto the second stair to freedom, her hand gripping the cold metal railing like a separate entity which refused to follow her feet. A plethora of jumbled thoughts exploded in her head rooting her to the spot.

Was freedom just a staircase away?

Out there was a maniac who had already attempted to spread her limbs and organs around the inside of a luxury Mercedes. The danger to her person existed whether she fled or stayed. What if her mother had been wrong? Why shouldn’t she take comfort in the bloody death of a man who was literally willing to sell her backside for profit?

Why hadn’t Smith wanted her? Maybe he was gay? No she had felt the passion in his kiss and through his jeans. Yet, he had deliberately upset her, hadn’t he? Did he already have a girlfriend or was he actively pursuing someone he had feelings for? John Smith, John Smith, John Smith... Why did it keep coming back to John Smith?

Whatever his reason for snubbing her advances, she couldn’t fault his chivalry. What had her mother raised anyway? A victim? A coward? An idiot? Her mother’s teachings hailed from the Valleys in Wales, where small, close-knit communities rallied around one another. This was modern times in the big city and victims, cowards and idiots were the fodder for London’s criminal community. Savannah was no longer the victim, would no longer be prey to the scum that sought to crush her spirit. She shared her mother’s spirit and that was gift enough.

John Smith, damn him, had taught her to stand up for what she wanted. Not just wanted but
deserved
, and so what if he didn’t want her? Her chances were better with him. The decision had nothing to do with feelings, she told herself truthfully.

Savannah Jones turned and headed back to the main office.

*

Johnson and Wilson faced the outside window to ensure they were not being watched from the main office. There were two men on a pulley-operated platform replacing the shot-out windows of the Ritz. All destruction required repair.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you, Wilson?” The force of Johnson’s breath misted the window in front of him. He rarely swore and he was surprised when he heard the bitterness in his question.

There was the same calm in Wilson’s voice as when he had addressed the meeting. “I don’t know what you mean, Herb.”

The tall agent resisted the temptation to turn and face Wilson, fearing that he might draw his gun and shoot his partner on the spot. Now was not the time. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so on edge. He clenched his teeth so hard he imagined they might shatter.

“You’ve been staring at the girl like she’s family, and you’re acting like your head’s in the clouds.”