Either way, that wasn’t Mrs Hartwell on the surveillance footage, entering the sorting office and showing the clerk a receipt. The man never showed the camera his full face, and he was dressed very differently. But there was no mistaking that sandy beard Steve had first seen in Shoreditch.
Three weeks ago, Nigel Marsh had travelled all the way to Slough to collect a package that just happened to be the right size for a personal quadcopter drone. Steve isolated an image from the footage and dialled Andrea Thomson’s direct number.
69
Wherever it was, she couldn’t find it.
Bridge had covered every inch of ground within fifteen minutes’ drive north of the settlement. Then she tried to the west, and to the east. She even drove south, doubling back toward the Russian site where it had all gone so wrong, the place from which she’d escaped.
They place from which they’d escaped. Together. She knew that now.
Late in the afternoon, something glinted on the horizon and she sped towards it, leaving a thirty-foot dust cloud in her wake. It wasn’t a mirage; she knew what those looked like. It was something metal, something here in the desert, and it was in more or less the right place, though further west than she’d expected. It would give her answers, maybe a bizarre sense of closure.
But it didn’t, because it wasn’t the jeep. It was something like a section of fuselage, blackened and twisted by violence. She almost cried, then, to come so close only to be frustrated again. Instead she let out a wordless shout, pulled the Grach, and fired two angry bullets into the fuselage. The vast sound was lost in the desert’s emptiness, emphasising her isolation. It was enough to motivate her to get back in the drivers’ seat and resume driving.
But now, as the sun slowly descended to the horizon, the jeep coughed to a halt. Only one canister of fuel left, enough to get her back to Homs if she was lucky. If she was unlucky…
She kicked the side of the jeep, cursing her stupidity, her naivety, her failure.
“Did you honestly think I’d still be here?”
Adrian sat on the tailgate, relaxed and casual, in his fatigues. “Maybe,” she said. “The Russian jeep’s still there, just about.”
He smirked. Just like the real Adrian had, three years ago. “They got blown up. Whereas you abandoned me sitting upright in a more-or-less working jeep.”
“I didn’t abandon you. I had no choice, you were already dead.”
“Tell me about it. Doubt I was out here a week before someone nicked the jeep and left me to the scavengers. Or burned me to the bone.”
Bridge sighed. “No, don’t sugar-coat it, tell me straight.”
“Look who’s talking, BB.” He winked. “Anyway, what were you going to do if you found me? Collect the bones and take them home? ‘Anything to declare, Miss?’ ‘Only a three-year-old half-eaten corpse, Mr Customs Officer.’”
Bridge slid to the ground, her back against the jeep’s rear wheel. He, that is to say her own subconscious, was right. Had she been seeking some kind of validation? She’d found and killed the mole. Neutralised his handler, too. MI5 would mop up at home, Exphoria would be scrapped. Her mission was, all in all, a success. And not a single person would thank her for any of it.
“Aw, diddums,” said Adrian, now sitting beside her in the dirt. “Did you want a medal? Tea at the Palace?”
“How about my own brain not playing tricks on me? Or is that unrealistic, too?”
They watched the sunset in silence for a while. Then Adrian said, “At least you got the bastard who killed Ten.”
“I’d rather have Ten still alive,” said Bridge.
“Well, that makes two of us. Fuck it, why not make it three? It’ll be days before Giles sends anyone to look for you, months before they find you. Drive back to the breezeblocks, hide the jeep in there, then eat the Grach, and they may never find you at all. We can both be out here, lost forever in the desert. You and me together, BB. Comrades in fuckedsville.”
She took out the gun and turned it over in her hands. What was it all for, anyway? What was the point? If it wasn’t the Russians, it would be someone else. If it wasn’t Exphoria, it would be something else. Ciaran’s game of whack-a-mole, never-ending and ultimately futile. They might win a battle here and there, but the war would never be over.
“Might as well press the big red button and have a nuclear war,” said Adrian. “Start all over again. Couldn’t be much worse, could it?”
“That’s not what I was thinking, and you of all people know it.”
“Don’t know why you bothered fighting Novak, really. Izzy and the kids will all die eventually, anyway.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve made your point.”
“In a hundred years we’ll all be dust, right? Everything we’ve done will be forgotten, lost to history. People won’t even know we existed.”
“Will you shut up?”
“Probably should have just shot Izzy yourself while you had the chance, spared her the angst.”
“Fuck off!” Bridge raised the pistol at Adrian’s head. But he wasn’t there. She looked around for him through tear-blurred vision, but saw only the horizon devouring the sun, darkness swallowing light, unstoppable and inevitable; a universal truth.
That was why she’d come here. To prove she didn’t need her mind to hide things from her, to mask the pain, to make things hurt a little less with lies and deceit. To own her failures, and press on anyway, because while nature was inevitable, people weren’t. People could change.
And that was the truth.
70
The building manager unlocked the door and stood aside, watching open-mouthed as a dozen black-geared Armed Response officers swarmed into the lobby. Four remained there, rifles trained on the elevator doors, while the others executed a perfect cover-and-climb procedure up the stairwell.
Andrea Thomson waited in a car parked on the street, listening to command
