‘Karen Hope killed my mother.’
‘Forget it, Rebecca.’ Silva’s father raised his head for a moment. ‘The Yanks will justify anything. Always have, always will.’
‘He doesn’t speak for them all, Dad. He’s gone rogue.’
‘You think so?’ Mavers was smiling. ‘You’re as misguided as you are naive. I’d have thought with a boyfriend in the Agency you’d have understood just how the world works, but then again perhaps his pillow talk kept to the script.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You’ve been played, Rebecca.’ Silva’s father was shaking his head. ‘Sean must be in on it. He’s sold you out.’
Her father spoke softly, but she felt the fury in his words. It was as if he was the one who’d been betrayed. She felt light-headed, giddy. ‘Sean, he wouldn’t—’
‘Enough!’ Mavers raised a hand. ‘We’re leaving.’ He motioned at the man with the gun and then pointed at Silva’s father. ‘Make sure he can’t get free. You’re with me, Rebecca.’
Mavers gestured at the door and for one moment Silva wondered if, alone with Mavers, she could escape. Her hopes were dashed when they encountered another man in the corridor. Like the first grunt, he had a gun.
‘After you,’ Mavers said. ‘And no tricks, no funny stuff.’
They went downstairs and outside. Parked round the side of the house there was a silver Ford van with diplomatic plates. Mavers slid the rear door open and the grunt pushed Silva in. Mavers stood by the door and glanced at his watch. Minutes ticked by.
‘What’s going on?’ Silva said. ‘What are we waiting for?’
‘That.’ Mavers turned his head and peered back at the house. The second grunt ran from the front door and down the steps. A high pitched repetitive beeping pierced the air. ‘Now we go.’
The grunt jumped into the van and started the engine. Silva strained to see what was going on. There was a glow from one of the downstairs windows. Yellow and orange light flickering. The shrillness of the smoke alarm over the crackle of flame.
‘No!’ Silva shouted. She leapt forward, trying to make for the door before Mavers could slam it shut.
The man in the back raised his gun, turning the weapon so he could bring the handle down on Silva’s head. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then nothing.
She woke to a moving light. A single bulb hanging from a piece of wire in the ceiling. A draught from somewhere moved the bulb and the arc of its shadow crept over the walls and swept her face. Silva rolled over, aware of a throbbing at the side of her head and a sensation of stickiness round her left eye. She raised a hand and a scab of dried blood fell away. The light bulb swung and flickered and she was remembering the fire.
They’d left her father tied to the chair in his room and torched the place. She imagined him sitting there as the flames rose around him, imagined the fear he must have felt. She closed her eyes and almost inevitably thought of her mother too. What evil could have conspired to take both her parents from her in a handful of months? And the only other person she loved, Sean, had given her up to the enemy.
That thought caused the throbbing in her head to pulse faster. Had he really done that? Put his loyalty to his country above her? She held back a sob. Perhaps he’d never really loved her at all, perhaps everything had been a sham. She remembered the times they’d spent together, the quiet, tender moments, the laughs… no he had loved her.
Had or did?
A wave of emotion hit her and it was as if she was falling into the weir at her mother’s house all over again. Sliding down the weed-covered sill and plunging underwater. No air. No light. Slipping down into the depths. She tried to take a breath but could do nothing but wheeze. She gagged against a constriction in her throat, fighting asphyxia.
Sean?
His face was distorted in a blur of tears and then she was biting her lip in anger, feeling pain, tasting blood.
She blinked, the copper tang of the blood snapping her back to reality. She was lying on a piece of sacking stuffed with straw. The light bulb illuminated four walls of crumbling bricks and mortar rising to a roof of asbestos sheeting. In one corner there was some kind of trough, and water dripped from a join in the galvanised pipe that ran from the trough to a stopcock halfway up the wall. Scattered in one corner were several piles of dried faecal matter. Silva looked closer, but couldn’t distinguish if the crap was animal or human. The latter would suggest she wasn’t the first to be brought here. Not the first to wait in trepidation of what was to come.
Did Sean know where she was or what fate awaited her? Would he really have turned her over to the American authorities? Then again, this was nowhere official. Not a prison or a police station or a military base. She thought of Afghanistan. There’d been places where al-Qaeda militants had been taken. Black sites. Deniable. Places where the Geneva Convention didn’t apply. American operatives had waterboarded suspects and worse. Not that the British were without guilt. Silva knew UK intelligence officers had been present when militants had been interrogated. Silva hadn’t much cared back then. The militants had to be stopped by any means necessary. Now, though, the tables had been turned.
Thanks to Sean.
He must have called Greg Mavers, told him Silva knew about Karen Hope and Haddad. She didn’t think he had any knowledge of what Mavers intended to do, but his loyalties were divided. When pressed, had he come down on the side of his country? Like Hope, Mavers would have appealed to his patriotism for sure. He’d have told Sean the very future of democracy was at stake, that there was
