Last Line (14 page)

John thought he might do that anyway. They didn’t indulge in public displays of affection, but to hell with that. His heart felt swollen and sore with the need to put things right between them. God knew what Michael had been through in Zemelya. Halfway to forgiving him anyway, John had felt the rest of his anger drain as he had listened to Webb. No wonder the poor bastard was screwed up. It half killed John to think of him trapped, imprisoned at the mercy of creatures like…

The BMW’s passenger door swung wide. The car was too small and low-slung to accommodate a man of Anzhel’s size comfortably, but he swung out with easy grace and stood looking up and down the street as if he owned it. The breeze caught his hair and turned it into an aureole, then a silk flag. Heads turned on the street. John couldn’t look away either. He watched unwillingly as Anzhel went to stand by Michael on the pavement.

Whatever they were discussing, Michael wasn’t enjoying it. He stood passively for a while, hands still resting on the car roof, head down. Then he straightened up and made a gesture of warding off, of passionate denial.

John had seen enough. Abandoning his paper and sandwich, he got up and edged his way out of the noisy, crowded café. But by the time he’d crossed the street, Michael had reached the top of the HQ building’s steps and was pushing open the door, Anzhel following after with long, loping strides.

Chapter Ten

To capture Lukas Oriel wouldn’t be enough. John, perched on the edge of the briefing room table, watched the door through which Webb had just limped out. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “He just asked us to make a hit, right?”

Five people had sat through Webb’s briefing. All apart from Anzhel were among Last Line’s longest serving agents: Michael, Diane Shaw and her partner Nick Skelton, a grizzled army veteran who set off Shaw’s beauty picturesquely. All three sat in silence for a moment. The question hung in the air. Then Diane shrugged. “Problem for you, Griffin?”

“Isn’t it one for you?”

Diane made a wry face. She shot a sidelong glance at Skelton. “If it was, we’d have been out of here years ago.”

Not a first for you, then
. Automatically John looked at Michael—to share the moment, gauge it by the expression in his eyes—but Mike’s attention was fixed on Anzhel, who had casually set a vicious-looking semiautomatic on the table and begun to break it down into parts. Anzhel smiled at Diane in approval. “You have to see your superior’s point,” Anzhel said. “Your government’s too. Dress it up how you will, a British finger pushed the button when the bomb dropped on my city. Oriel knows whose. Knows which US interests controlled that finger. He’s too inconvenient—on both sides of the Atlantic—to be allowed to live.”

John glanced around at his colleagues. “Or look at it another way. He’s a freedom fighter, a man who—with good reason—tried to rebuild his nation and take revenge on the people who destroyed it.”

At last Michael turned to him. There were shadows under his eyes. He hadn’t taken time to shave before leaving the house—Christ, had it only been that morning?—and his hands were knotted tight on the surface of the table. “You wouldn’t be concerned,” he said hoarsely, “if you knew the half of what he’s done.”

“And you do, right? You do know what he’s done, Michael?”

Michael swallowed. He opened his mouth as if to reply, but Anzhel cut across him smoothly. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “If Oriel is here, I assure you
he
won’t. If you want your first clue to his presence to be a dirty bomb in the middle of London, you go ahead and sit here wringing your hands, Agent Griffin.”

“So we’re going to track down Oriel and kill him? I’m not questioning the necessity. I just want to be clear on what that old sod just told us to do.”

Nick Skelton, who until now had sat in thoughtful silence, looked at him levelly. “The old sod pays for the privilege,” he said. “Did you think it was all for nothing, John? You must’ve known that one day he was gonna ask you to leave your conscience behind in your locker.”

John ran a hand into his hair. “Jesus. I feel like I’m trapped in a bad modern version of
Faust
.  No, I understand, Nick.  I’ve done dirty work for him before. Just—”

“Just not an assassination,” Anzhel Mattvei finished for him, completing his inspection of the gun and snapping a clip into its chamber. He smiled up at John with a brilliance that, if he didn’t know better, would have made him believe all was right with the world, and Mattvei the very angel his name echoed. “Don’t worry, zaichik. The first is the worst. After that you’ll hardly feel it at all.”

* * *

“Michael. Mike!” John, following his partner down the corridor, forbade himself to break into a jog to catch up. But Michael was ignoring him—or oblivious—his attention fixed on Mattvei a few strides ahead. Ashamed of himself, John shot out a hand and grabbed the back of his jacket. “Mike, for God’s sake.”

Michael stopped. He turned to John without irritation, only a look of mild surprise to find him there. “What is it?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking Mattvei to the gun room.”

“It looks to me like he’s already been.”

A flicker of amusement touched Michael’s face. “To turn that cannon in and get him something more in line with the Geneva Convention.”

“Okay. But I need to talk to you for a second, without”—John directed a hard stare down the corridor at Anzhel, who had stopped and was regarding them with interest—“without our new colleague.”

“All right. Mattvei, it’s in the basement. I’ll catch up with you there in a minute.”

Michael allowed himself to be steered into the nearest empty office. John closed the door behind him and leaned on it as if warding off evil. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“What? In general or…?”

“No. Pretty specific, actually.” John watched Michael settle on the edge of the desk and tried not to be distracted by the easy grace of the movement. “Why are you running round with that gun-toting Calvin Klein model out there? Do you trust him?”

“Of course not.”

That took the wind from John’s sails a bit. “Oh,” he said, then added lamely, “Good. Look, Mike, don’t…don’t you think we need to talk?”

Michael was nodding. “Definitely. Not now, though, mate. I’ve got to—”

“Yes, now.” Leaving his post by the door, John moved to stand in front of him. “Not about anything that happened last night. Forget that if you want. Listen, Webb talked to me after you left, and not just about my extravagant lifestyle. He told me what happened to you in Zemel Province.”

“He doesn’t know what happened to me there.”

“He does know some of it, Mike. It was in that file he had. He said you were caught up in some…bad shit, and Anzhel Mattvei was closely involved in it too. He said you were taken prisoner and tortured, though you don’t remember that part.” Michael made a faint sound in his throat. He tried to get up, but John put both hands on his shoulders. “No. Don’t run away from me. It feels like you’re a thousand miles off anyway. I don’t want you on this case, not while you’re so upset.”

Michael shook his head. “Upset…”

“Or not well, or whatever the hell this is.”

“I can’t believe he told you. I can’t believe I’m having to hear this crap again. John, when I came back from Russia, I gave MI5 a full and honest debrief. They didn’t like it, and they…practically dissected me to get at a truth that wasn’t there. That’s the only fucking torture I’ve undergone.”

“I’m sorry. But what if it
did
happen?”

“No! I won’t bloody hear it from you!”

This time John couldn’t restrain Michael’s surge to his feet. He stepped aside. Michael got as far as the door, then turned like a hunted animal and said, “Did he tell you the rest, then?”

“What?”

“The
bad shit
. Did he tell you what that entailed?”

“Yes. I didn’t believe it. I don’t.”

Michael stared at him. John saw all the anger suddenly drain from him, leaving him pale, looking ready to drop. “Oh, Griff,” Michael said unsteadily. He put out a hand.

John went to him in silence. He took the hand, pulled Michael close, and put both arms around him. “All right,” he murmured, feeling Michael resist him, then give it up and lean into the embrace, wearily returning it. “Whatever’s best for you.”

“God, I wish we could…leave all this. Go down to Glasto, lock all the doors and…”

“Is that what you want?” John stroked his hair. Footsteps came and went in the corridor outside. They were going to get interrupted any second, but he would sooner have died than let go. The feel of Michael’s grip on him now—formidable but passionate, fiercely tender—was the first point at which John’s fantasy of touching him had met with truth. “Let’s do it, then. Screw Lukas Oriel. Screw Last Line, for that matter. We can go.”

“You’d do that?”

“Say the word.”

Michael lifted his head. He met John’s eyes with a kind of yearning wonder. “Jesus, Griff. You’d pack it in? What about Quin’s school fees, and…and the car? Why?”

Tell him
. A voice screamed in John’s head.
This moment will never come back. Tell the man you love him.

But the words dried to dust in his throat. He had been able to bear—just about—the demolition of his dreams concerning sex with him. He had even found a place inside himself where he could lock up the memory of
no
not meaning
no
. If he gave up this last secret of his heart, though, and saw it fall on stony ground… “Ah, screw the car,” he said. He smiled. “Screw Quin, for that matter. He can go to the local comp.”

“Might be better for him.” Michael returned the smile, but in it John thought he saw the ghost of a sorrow, a disappointment, a closing door. Michael eased back a bit, not letting him go. Gently he rested his brow against John’s. “No, mate. We can’t run away. We’ve got to find Oriel, and…”

“And kill him?”

“I don’t know. That’ll depend on the moment, the way it always does.”

“What about Anzhel? Mike, I don’t want you mixed up with him. I—”

“
Ssh
. Let me deal with Mattvei. Seriously, Griff. Stay out of his way.” Briefly Michael caressed his face. “I’d better go. He’s probably testing out sniper rifles from the roof by now.”

“Okay.” Reluctantly John released him. “Look, the old man reminded me, I’ve got another checkup for my back this afternoon, not that I need it. Will I see you later?”

“Yeah. I’ll be around. Listen, I’m gonna hold you to that promise one day.”

“What? Sheep farming in Glastonbury, Quin in the spare room, and a thirdhand Fiat Panda in the garage?”

“The very one. Does it sound so horrendous to you?”

No. At the moment it sounds like bloody paradise
. John shook his head. He couldn’t speak. He folded his arms and looked at the floor until the door’s faint
click
told him Michael had gone.

* * *

Michael was nowhere around HQ when John came back from his appointment. Neither was Anzhel. Webb’s office was closed and locked. He was at a meeting elsewhere, Ms. Pearce told John, as if he’d asked her to strip and dance a hula for him.

John had paperwork to do. About a month’s worth, if he thought about it, and he supposed he should be grateful for a few quiet hours. He went downstairs to the big shabby room where he and his colleagues kept informal desks and did their admin. It had once felt odd to John to spend an afternoon being shot at, then come back and fill in a form about it, but he’d got used to it.

He’d got used to a lot of things, he reflected, slumping down behind his half of the desk he shared with Michael. These days he didn’t blink when asked to burgle someone’s house for disks or documents or festoon it with invisible surveillance gear. He knew how to scare the crap out of a suspect without leaving marks. He had been shot twice and had himself shot dead eight men and one grenade-toting woman. On reflection, he couldn’t think why he had balked at the idea of an assassination.

Fuck it, why should he care? John had come to love the hunt. Tracking down and killing a man who had been instrumental in Michael’s torture would probably be enjoyable. Grabbing the nearest file, John went to work. If he kept himself occupied, he might be able to stop his abstract concept of
waterboarding
from becoming a practical demo in his head, with Mike strapped to the board.

When he next looked up, the patch of sky he could see from the office window had changed from cerulean to an ominous coppery pink. It was later than he’d thought and the weather was about to break, from the look of things. An oppressive heat had gathered in the room. Diane came in yawning. John asked her if she’d seen Mike anywhere about in the building and tried not to notice her look of penetrative sympathy as she said no.

No need for sympathy. No need for John to be suddenly prickled all over with foreboding, either, but he was. He didn’t need to ask Diane if she’d seen Anzhel Mattvei.

Michael wasn’t answering his landline or his mobile. John, taking the stairs to the car park three at a time, told himself sharply not to be so paranoid. Why shouldn’t Mike have taken Anzhel out to the pub, or whatever you did with visiting ghosts from your past? Somehow John couldn’t see the two of them together at a table in Pizza Express. He gunned the Jaguar out from the underground and into the traffic stream. It was raining heavily now. Holland Park was predictably snarled up. Lightning flickered as John executed a U-turn to get out of it, the thunder that followed partially drowning the outraged chorus of horns. Rattling the Jag down a cobbled alleyway that would get him onto the West Cross Route, he tried Mike’s numbers again, cutting the connection impatiently when he got his voice mail again.

The windows were dark in the Highgate flat. Nothing odd in that. Michael liked the evening sky and would often delay switching on the lights well past dusk. John couldn’t account for the sense of desolation that touched him as he got out of the car and stood looking up at the building. The last time he had been here, he supposed, he’d been high on the anticipation of fucking his beautiful, hard-to-get partner. On the way in, anyway. The differences since then might account for his feeling like lonely, exhausted crap now. He couldn’t believe only four days had gone by since then. It felt like bloody weeks.