Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (59 page)
Read Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) Online
Authors: Nicholas P Clark
22
Barry had being sitting tied to the chair for what seemed like hours.
The pain induced by the thin nylon rope that was binding his hands
behind his back, to the chair, may have altered his perception of time.
Regardless
of the reality
of time,
his
body and mind could not take
much more pain. The black hood that they placed over his head on the
way
out
of South
Africa was placed as much to cause confusion as it
was to hide the route to the warehouse where Barry was being held. In
truth, they had a free hand to do as they pleased in the country—driving around with a bound Irishman in the back
of their car, living
or
dead, it did not matter—they were above the law.
The hood was removed swiftly. The sharp pain that pierced his eyes
felt like hot
needles
being
driven into his
pupils. He flexed his head
sharply to
one side. More pain. This time into the back
of his head.
His
eyelids
had slammed shut when the strong sunlight flooded in
through the skylight above his head and it took a few moments before
he was brave enough to try
opening them again. When he eventually
opened his eyes he saw two men standing in front of him. One of the men
was tall and thin, and the other was short and fat—jolly fat, rather
than unhealthy and morbid. They were wearing suits. They were Chinese. The tall man spoke in perfect English. The short man remained
silent.
“I am happy to see that you are back with us, Barry,” said the tall
man.
“Fuck you,” Barry replied.
“It was your uncooperative attitude that landed you in your current position. Please moderate your language or we shall be forced to
leave you for a while longer until your manners improve.”
Barry longed to repeat the rebuke but the pain pulsing through his
body stopped him.
“Good
boy,” said the tall
man.
“Now,
down to business. My
government has been trying to establish business interests in
Africa and
the Middle East, and the old Western powers have been doing everything they can to stop us. We want you to help us persuade the British
government to stop standing in our way.”
“I’m Irish, you racist arsehole,” Barry hissed.
“I know what you are Barry, and I know that you have no direct
influence with the British outside sorting your little local difficulty.”
“Five hundred years
of
British
oppression is hardly a little local
difficulty,” Barry said.
“Aww, poor you. Every country has stubbed its toe at some point
in its history. Get over it.”
He paused for a reply from Barry. No reply came.
“You have no direct influence with the British,
but you
know a
man who does.”
“You’ll have to narrow it down. Like I said, over five hundred years
of oppression. The bastards are everywhere back home.”
“Good for you Barry, keep
on sucking that lemon, I’m sure it will
turn into candy someday. You know the man of whom I speak.”
“Jack,” Barry said. “Jack who is back in London right now, drinking tea, and kissing the Queen’s fat arse.”
“And
plotting the
next five
hundred years
of
oppression in Ireland,” said the man, mockingly.
“Closer to the truth than you might think,” Barry added. “Anyhow.
We want you to twist Jack’s arm. We want you to turn
him.”
“Huh?”
“We want you to turn him,” he repeated.
“To turn him into what?”
“An agent of the People’s Republic.”
Barry chuckled through the pain.
“You poor
deluded
man,” Barry
said. “You have no idea just how
crazy that
statement actually
check
on a target,
check again
and pointless.”
is. Next time you run a
background
before you
do something this stupid
The short man walked across the warehouse to a badly worn door.
He opened the door and then vanished through the doorway. A short
time later he returned. He marched a rather shaken
Alexa across the
warehouse to stand in front of Barry. Alexa was bruised and dry blood
stained the left hand side
of her face. She had
obviously
put up one
hell
of a fight at some point,
but
her
body language now was
of a
broken woman who had completely given up. What fight she had was
gone and both body and mind had been given over to a fate that was
beyond her control.
have already seen to that. She is now fully protected from the
poison. However, she is still not immune to bullets.”
The tall man took out a pistol. He pressed the gun to her head.
Alexa looked terrified.
“So Barry. What do you say? Will you help us to turn him? Or will
you watch her die and then help us to turn him?”
Barry swallowed hard.
It had been weeks since he returned to Scotland and no one from
London had been in touch with him. When he walked into his mother’s house unannounced hewas surprised to see just how much she had
aged. Her smile was warm and too large for her face, and her words
were scathing; why had it been so long since his last visit? Why hadn’t
he told her that he was coming? The rebukes were filled with love and
had she greeted him in any other way he would have been suspicious.
His childhood home seemed so small but it was more colourful and
alive than any
other house he lived in.
After his second night in the
house the background noise of the city
outside was as familiar and
comforting as ever—it was very different to London. He was home
and it was as far removed from his life as a spy as it could possibly get.
When he was acclimatised, with the help of his sister and her children, he began to venture out into the streets that he had once owned
as a young man. In all the time he had been away, and with all the
redevelopment that had taken place in the city over the course of those
many years, the place was still as comfortable to him as it had always
been and he knew immediately the reason why—the people.
As the weeks with
no
contact
from London
moved into a
second month he began to wonder if they would ever send for him. He
was still being paid but beyond that he was completely in the dark
about his future in the service. Perhaps this was what happened to
broken hearted spies—the service sent them home to their
mommies
and hoped that they would not spiral
out
of control? He had always
imagined that
early retirement would involve a bullet to the head or
some deadly
mysterious illness, not a heart attack brought
on by
his
mother’s rich cooking.
When he went to his local a few nights a week for a
drink with
old friends he always looked out for that face that
didn’t quite seem to
fit—at least it would be some kind of indication that his masters back
in London still knew who he was. The face never came. He struck up a
friendship with one of his sister’s friends from work. Julie was a great
lass. Her heart was warm and her laugh was filthy.
“Jack, you never talk about work,” Julie said, as they
sat
over a
couple of pints in the pub. “You have been all over the world. You have
seen so much. Would it kill you to turn a girl’s head with the odd wee
tale
of some
of the places you have been to,
or the adventures that
you
had as a big time oil man?”
She was not nagging; she was simply trying to make a connection
with Jack. It was clear that she thought the world of him and in her
head he could be someone who she could end up spending the rest
of
her life with. Jack wondered if all her
questions about his work were
merely
her roundabout way
of asking him if he was going to leave
soon.
“It really isn’t glamorous,” he said. “A
s for the adventures I’ve had.
Well most of those involved women of very low morals and are hardly
the kind of thing to bring up in polite company.”
“If they shacked up with you then they had no morals at all,” she
said, with a wicked grin.
Another
woman
would have taken offence at the mere mention of
other women,
even in a joke,
but Julie was different. She knew that
Jack had a past and she was comfortable with that. That she was so
comfortable with it
made Jack wonder a little about her
past too. If
things were a little different then maybe the relationship could have
gone a lot further, but things were what they were and the hole that
Alexa left in his heart was simply too large to be filled with another
woman, no matter how dirty her laugh was. At some level Julie knew
