Identity X (25 page)

He limped upward and Hannah backed away
as he sat himself down on the computer.

“Show me what you are doing.”  He clicked
on an icon on the screen and tapped out a series of numbers.

“Do you have your access card?”  She
nodded and reached inside her pocket. “I need the numbers from it,” he said as
he took the card from her.   “It needs two people to override it.  My access
code and that of another agent.  It’s supposed to make the person inside the
bunker safer.”  He copied in the numbers as they appeared before him.  As he
pressed the enter key, she heard the mechanism inside the door clicking into
life and after what seemed like an age, she saw the green light appear and the
red one shut down.

As she stood up behind him, her eyes
caught sight of the pile of files on the desk in front of her. Instinctively
she recognised Ben’s handwriting on a sheet that was slipping out to the side,
teetering on the edge of falling.  She pulled the first file towards her and
opened it up. Seeing it was Ben’s notes, she turned to look at Mark.

“Why do you have these here?” She pushed
for an answer, encouraging it out of him with the tip of her gun in the base of
his neck.

“I’m still a scientist, Catherine.  It’s
really quite remarkable, although I don’t understand it all just yet.  He, and
NEMREC really are quite brilliant.”  His praise tasted like the false success
of a cheated victory, and she wanted to shoot him all the more.  Instead she
gathered the files close to her and took the telephone from her back pocket. 
As Mark tried to step forth from his seat, she pushed the gun back towards his
head.  “Wait there,” she said as she dialled the number for Ben. Without even
one ring he answered, and she could sense the desperation in his voice.

“Oh God, Hannah.  Are you there, shall I
come now?”

“No not yet.  There has been a delay.”
She could see Mark watching her, itching to know where Ben, the scientist and
friend who he loved, hated and admired in equal quantities was located.  She
could see his hatred chipped into the wrinkles around his eyes as they became a
little more prominent as he listened to them speak.  She wondered who he hated
more, Ben for his brilliance, her for her deceit, or himself for his failure to
see the operation through to what he would describe as a successful end.

“What? Do you have Matthew?”

“Wait, listen to me. There is a change of
plan.  Meet me at the docks.  You are looking for dock two.  Look for the boat
from earlier, and get on it.  We will meet you there.  Bring the documents.”

“But Hannah, wait.”

“No Ben. Things got fucked up, and you
need to meet me there instead.  No questions.  Go now.”  She hung up the
telephone, not giving him time to question her instruction. 

She heard the latch of the door handle to
Mark’s office engage as somebody placed their hand the other side.

“Careful!” Mark shouted as he too
realised that somebody was about to enter and wanted to warn them about his
trigger happy captor.  The door flew open as Captain White put the full force
of his boot behind it.  Hannah fired off a couple of shots, hoping to put some
delay between her and their approach, and dropped to the floor concealing
herself behind the side of the desk.  She saw Mark cower behind the desk as
Captain White returned fire, and the bullets struck the wall sending small
clouds of plaster dust tumbling across the regulatory furniture.  Hannah fired
off a few return shots and then wedged her back up against the side of the desk
whilst trying to keep an eye on Mark.  She grabbed a smoke bomb from her inside
pocket and taking the lighter placed a spark on the homemade fuse towards the
base of the bomb.  She waited impatiently with all the hope of a faithful nun
for the first plumes of pink smoke to appear, before hurling it towards the
entrance door.  Soon the plumes of pink smoke occupied the office, and she saw
Mark trying to scramble over the desk to safety and into view. He was shouting,
‘don’t shoot’ repeatedly, and she knew that under no circumstances would
Captain White risk firing a misplaced shot into his boss’s chest. She knew Mark
wanted to get to them so they could fire at will aimlessly into the office and
remove her like the remainder of an unbalanced equation, and she lit another
smoke bomb to buy her more time.  As she threw it towards the door, she pulled
back hard on Mark’s leg, buying herself another few precious moments as he
yelped in pain.  His fingers were gripping the far edge of the desk, and as she
exerted a polar force, further opening the shredded wound beneath his shoulder
and along his ribs, it was enough to bring him tumbling back towards the
chair.  She paid no attention as he slumped into a pathetic heap clutching the
oozing wound.  She squeezed the trigger again and a solitary bullet left the
gun, before she heard the click of an empty chamber.  Tossing it to the side
she gathered up the files, and crawled along the floor to where the entrance
door to the bunker lay.  As she snatched up her access card she heard the first
of the random bullets sailing her way as Mark gave the order to fire at will.  Keeping
low, she pulled herself as fast as she could into the open space of the
doorway, shoving in Ben’s files first.  The bullets continued to rain in her
direction, quick whipping sounds as the metal pierced the air, followed by the
blunt thud as they struck the reinforced walls.  As she forced the door behind
her, she could just hear Mark shout the instruction to
get to the docks,
number two
.  As the door closed it brought with it near silence, with the
only sound the occasional hollow thud as a random bullet struck the other side
of the wall.  They seemed subversively like a faraway danger as she relaxed
into the safety of the wall between her and the bullets.  She collected the
files into a neat pile, and counted ten, each filled with Ben’s written words,
and scattered across the pages she saw the word NEMREC.  It was a small victory
and one that in no way could powder over the cracks of what was lost, but she
hoped that the reclamation of the files would be a comfort to Ben and more
importantly prove her allegiance.

***

“Get a team to the docks,” Mark screamed
at Captain White as he pulled him through the open door through a nightmarish
haze of pink smoke.  “Dock number two.”  Captain White was more interested in
the wound that Mark had sustained to his shoulder, and whilst praying that it
was not attributable to his own hand he focused his efforts on trying to get
some pressure on the gaping hole which was oozing with a fine trickle of blood
from the rear exit wound.  It was a fact that would have satisfied Hannah a great
deal should she have seen it after Mark had pulled himself across the desk,
further stretching the delicate fibres as they separated and shredded like fine
sheets of tissue paper. 

“Sir,
you need to lay back.  Come on Sir,” Captain White said as he tried to exert
some pressure to force him to lie down whilst holding his shoulder from behind
in the slippery mess of broken bone and flesh.  Mark slumped against the
outside wall of his office no longer able to sustain his protest, and with his
right unwounded shoulder he mobilised it to punch his frustration against the
wall behind him, striking it three times in short succession.  “Get a medic
here,” Captain White called to one of the office workers who was rounding  the
corner after hearing the commotion and being attracted like a magpie to silver
as the plumes of smoke rose up and billowed out through the office door.

“White,
get the teams moving.  They cannot let him get away.”

“Sir
all the teams are across the other side of the city.  They are almost half an
hour away.”  Mark recalled with reprehensible self-reproach his decision to
send every agent chasing after the cottage that had proven to be nothing more
than a false transmission, an elaborate wild goose chase that he had relished
with abandon. 
Idiot! 
“Get that door open.  I want that bitch back in
here to answer to me.  Me!  You hear that.  She shot me!  She’s a fucking dead
woman.”

“But
Sir, you need to rest.  You are bleeding heavily.  You must stay here,” Captain
White said, as he postulated that his silent prayers had indeed paid off as it
was confirmed that the hole in Mark’s shoulder was not the result of one of his
stray bullets.

“Get
that door open.  Now.  And get the teams on the way.”  He pushed Captain
White’s hand away and motioned for him to re-enter the smoke filled office and
work at getting the door open.

“Sir
you know that there is a delay.”

“Just
get on it.  When it’ll open, I want it open.”

Captain
White stood to his feet and took his telephone from his belt clip to call to
the Surveillance Centre.  Mark listened as he relayed the instructions to get
the teams en route to the docks, and followed by asking them to work on getting
the bunker door open.  As Mark pulled his chin back to get a better glimpse of
the entrance wound on his chest, he reached his fingers in a spider like
fashion across his shoulder in order to perform a fingertip investigation of
the bullet’s exit route.  He discovered an irregular corrugated edge to an
otherwise warm cavity which made him think of Ami.  The hot poker-like pain
seemed implacable, and he could smell the faintest whiff of burnt skin, which
reminded him of fat as it dripped into the hot charcoal of a barbeque.  He
promised himself that there was no way in the world that Catherine would get
away with what she had done.  Capturing her and seeing her lose her life would
now almost be as satisfying as watching Ben do the same.  In his propensity for
gleeful revenge, he never once considered Matthew, the bounds of The Agency
within which he worked, or how it might be that he could learn to live with
himself after the consummation of the heinous plan that was forming in his
mind.   

Hannah ran along
the unwinding
corridor, a brilliant white slope which
steadily descended, all the while still clutching the cardboard files to her
chest.   As she passed each door, she used her elbow and her body weight to
lever each handle unlocked in her search to locate Matthew.  She pushed each
door, slamming them open and shouting his name over and over in the hope that
she would see his familiar blond curls.  After a futile search through at least
six rooms as she proceeded along the corridor, she arrived at an atrium within
which there was a fixed circular table aligned with the central axis of the
room, with twelve satellite stools fixed in position around it, each sharing a
singular equidistant orbital plane.  Bursting into the room like a rogue meteor
from the depths of another solar system, she dropped the files onto the table
and continued searching the rooms that branched away from the central chamber. 
Indistinguishable in every static detail, every surface white, the only
variation to the colour scheme the beige trim of the folded up blankets that
sat neatly on the end of every bed, unused and sealed aseptically in a plastic
airtight bag.  The white metallic cupboards reminded her of school lockers,
with small slits across the front panel through which people would place anonymous
love letters on Valentine’s Day.  Room after room, the same scene was
repeated. 

As she turned back to the table after
exiting the last replica room, she couldn’t begin to see a way out.  More
importantly she had covered each room and her search for Matthew had proven
fruitless.  Each room was an isolated pocket, and the only corridor that seemed
to lead anywhere was the one that
went
directly back to Mark’s office.  She snatched at her telephone and prayed for a
signal.  There wasn’t even one bar.  Beyond desperation, she threw the
telephone down onto the table and slumped onto one of the small white plastic
stools beneath her.  She rested her head into her hands in an attempt to stop
them shaking, but instead found that the reverberation transferred through to
her elbows which in turn vibrated the surface of the table as if it too wanted
to shake her into action.  She suppressed her tears, determined not to allow
her desperate predicament to be the reason that her mind imperceptibly shut
down each cognitive function and sensible thought until the only surviving
capability to remain was that of panic.  She pressed her cheekbones firmly and
rhythmically, pressed her lips together to prevent the same vibrations from
working their way into her face, shaking out tears.  She told herself to think
logically and to formulate a plan, steadfast that somewhere in her mind lay the
education to postulate a solution that would give her purpose in her actions
and calm her nerves.  She nibbled at the skin around her thumb whilst she
subconsciously stroked the files on the table with the other hand.   In that
moment she felt something familiar brush at her side.  It was the gentlest
displacement of air in an otherwise static and sterile environment and it
indicated that she wasn’t alone.  It was a familiar feeling, followed by a grip
so gentle that nothing could replace it, and something that she could never
mistake.

“Matthew?”  She flew up and round in one
fluid motion, like a lazy sail whipped into life by a passing breeze on an
ocean tide, giving her a sense of renewed power and strength.  He stood at her
side, his hand resting onto her arm, his eyes wide as caverns and hopeful for
the security of his mother.  With no further words, she grabbed him and
squeezed him close to her chest, his natural smell a remedy for her fear.  “I
looked everywhere for you.  Where were you hiding?”

“I hid in the cupboard like Catherine
did.”  She dropped down to her knees to be at the same level, desperate to get
as close as she could to him.

“Well done baby.  Well done.”  She cupped
his face in her hands, turning him left and right, back and forth, pulling at
the skin on his cheeks and around his eyes as if she would be able to find
signs of trauma or pain in the freckles and curves of his face.  “Are you OK?” 
He nodded, and with his confirmation she felt the surge in purpose, the need to
fight.  Sitting at this table was nothing but useless.   She held him to her
chest, feeling the rapid gallop of his heart drumming against her own.  His
face looked physically intact, but the muscles that held his eyes in place
appeared to have relaxed, his mouth hung open just a little as if dumbfounded,
and his arms and shoulders hung at his side, compliant as a possum playing
dead.  “What is it baby?”

“Uncle Mark is a bad man Mummy.”

“Yes.  He doesn’t want to help us.  We
have to run away from him.  We have to run far far away with Daddy where we
will be safe again.”  She stroked his face as he nodded his approval.  “Stay
here, Mummy has to find us a way out of here.”  He hung on, staring at her. 

“You were going to hit him with that big
thing you picked up from the desk, weren’t you.”  His judgment of her actions
hurt almost as much as the thought of the gun held by Mark in Matthew’s
direction only minutes before.  She also noted that he had caught sight of the
second gun on her hip which Mark had failed to discover.  She wondered how best
to answer, and had no idea what the right thing was.  She took a chance on the
truth.

“Yes.  I would because I knew that he was
a bad man, and I didn’t want him to hurt us.” 

He nodded, smiled a little, and she knew
that was the most she could ask for right now.  She picked him up and sat his
exhausted and apathetic body down on the table, his legs once again dangling
over the side.  She ran back into each room knowing that without the anxiety of
Matthew’s absence she would find the methodical and rational approach to reveal
another exit.  It was impossible to consider that such a bunker would not have
a secret and concealed exit installed, because without an exit it would simply
be a waiting room for the inevitable ambush from above.  She searched
frantically, but with a calm caution to not miss some minor detail of
importance.  She searched all of the cupboards looking for concealed crawl ways
and hidden doors.  At first there was nothing, but as she ran into the final
room, she realised that it wasn’t just a bedroom.  It had the same single sized
bed and pile of fresh plastic wrapped laundry sat folded neatly at the end of
the bed.  But on the far wall there was an indentation which suggested the
shape of a doorway that had remained unnoticed in her initial frenzied search. 
As she pushed against the recessed area of the wall she felt the slightest
disturbance in its position, which only served to strengthen her instincts that
this was a possible exit.  She traced her fingers across the perimeter of the
recess searching for any discrepant bump that may indicate the presence of a
button or concealed handle, but found nothing.  As she repeated the same
process on the wall to the side, her smooth fingers detected a small dimple in
the plaster work, something pliable to compression.  Wasting no time, she
pushed the area in and sure enough the door opened outwards, and she suddenly
saw light bursting through from the other side. 

She saw what reminded her of a
multi-storey car park, with three black cars lined up facing a wall, which
again appeared as four solid walls with no discernible exit.  Undeterred, she
scanned her eyes around the room, allowing them to settle on a button above
which read ‘Activate’.  Looking inside the cars, she could see that there was a
set of keys in the ignition of the one closest to her, and surprisingly after
finding the door unlocked she turned it.  The overwhelming satisfaction of the
engine’s roar couldn’t have offered greater fulfilment than the symphony of an
orchestra.  Smiling to herself with relief, and thinking how soon they would
also be on the road following Ben to the docks, she ran back towards the
central room for Matthew and Ben’s research files, squinting as the bright
artificial lights bounced and reflected from the monochromic walls.  Matthew
was sitting where she left him and after scooping him up, along with the files
at his side, she ran as fast as she could back to the waiting car. 

The sound of the engine filled the small
room, bouncing back from the walls like gas molecules in an airtight container
unable to escape, becoming more and more energized.  She couldn’t hear her own
footsteps, or those in pursuit behind her over the din of the engine.  Opening
the rear door she ushered Matthew inside and secured his seat belt.  In the
foot well of the front passenger seat she tossed the files and slammed the door
shut.  Matthew watched as his mother pushed the activation button and walked
back towards the car, whilst what appeared to be a normal wall withdrew into a
recess, exposing a ramp and the last shards of daylight just visible in the
distance.  She sat down and turned to Matthew who was motionless behind her,
resting his hands into his lap and staring at his mother.  She wanted
desperately for the fear on his face to result from their enclosure in this
prison like room, or from the revelation as to the true nature of Mark and his
realisation that he was not to be trusted.  But she knew the way that he
regarded her was the same way in which Ben had regarded her earlier on in the
day, when he realised that there had always been a side to her life that he
knew nothing about.  She looked like his mother, sounded and smelt like her,
but the mother he knew didn’t carry guns.  The mother he knew didn’t attack
people with heavy looking paperweights, or leave bullet holes in chests of
friends.  The look in his eyes as his brows crunched together and his forehead
wrinkled upwards, as if he was waiting for the real version of his mother to
show up and expel this imposter.  It was the same expression on Ben’s face at
the safe house earlier on that day, when he had still thought that to shoot a
man was the worst thing that could have happened to him.  It was
disappointment, and it hurt her more than any pain she had felt before.

“It’s OK Matthew.  We are going to get
Daddy, and then we are going on a big adventure on a boat.”  He didn’t say anything,
but he nodded obligingly.  She noticed that he didn’t smile, but she chose to
ignore it.  “Mummy is going to drive quite fast, so I need you to hold on
tight.  OK?”  A small grin reached his lips, slight but she detected it, and it
gave her hope that one day he might forgive her for the pain that she had
caused him and Ben.  Before she could turn around, she saw the smile on his
face fade, and as his eyes averted from her gaze she followed their path to
where she saw the figure of Mark standing before her and pressing the
deactivation button.  She watched as the wall rolled back into a closed
position, blocking the light to the point that the exit was too small even for
the best driving manoeuvre.  She thought of running him down, but the knowledge
that Matthew was with her made such an act difficult, and she had no choice but
to wait to see his next move.

As the door closed shut, he walked to the
car with the steady controlled pace of the soldier that he never was.  Each
step was deliberate and well placed, but there was a sallow look on his face,
and she couldn’t help but notice the blood streaking and seeping its way down
his shirt.  Hannah looked around towards the exit back to the all white
bedrooms, but even as she looked she knew that there was no hope in that
direction, and that it led only to their apprehension.  She stopped herself
from thinking about this route as a potential option for escape, for she knew
it would only be temporary such were the inevitable consequences of her
betrayal.

“Keep your hands on the wheel Hannah,
where I can see them.”  He was only inches from the car, and too close for her
to pull the gun from behind her, the one that he had failed to consider as he
had confiscated her other weapon.  He was holding a matt black gun which she
recognised as her own, and its sights were aimed directly at her head.  She
doubted he would use it, because to use it now would end the hunt for Ben, but
she appreciated the intrinsic risk in making assumptions like that when she was
solely responsible for the bloody wound beneath his shoulder.  She reprimanded
herself about how she should have shot him in both shoulders, or better still,
have killed him as soon as he had opened the door to the bunker.  He opened the
car door, and pulled at her arm with his finger tips, keeping his elbow tucked
into his side.  She knew that the wound must be hurting him.  He had no
strength in this arm, a fact which was counteracted by the powerful extension
in his other hand.

“Come on, get out.”  She stepped out from
the car, and felt the gun resting in her side as she stood up next to him.  She
could hear faintly the whisperings of a scared little boy emanating from the
rear passenger seat and she tried her best to sound reassuring.

“It’s OK, Matthew.  It’s OK,” she said as
she steadied herself on the door frame of the car.  Mark paid no attention to
Matthew or her comforting words to her son.  He simply stared at Hannah and
motioned with a quick sideways nod of the head and a push of the gun barrel
into her ribs for her to walk towards the exit wall.  She walked sideways like
a crab, turning her body to see both Mark and the car, and Matthew’s wide eyed
stare as the white’s of his eyes shone brightly from the dark like two little
stars guiding her home.  Mark stood motionless staring at her through the gun
sight, as she backed into the wall.

“OK, now what?”

“I want you to stand right there.”  As he
spoke he opened the back door, and with a painful wince creeping across his
face as he twisted his shoulder he slipped himself onto the back seat next to
Matthew.  She couldn’t see through the windows properly, but she could just
make out the outline of his hair as Mark lent in towards Matthew to speak. 
Instinctively she started to walk towards the car, and quick as a flash she saw
him stand up, his body protected by the bulk of the vehicle.  He rested his
right arm onto the roof, stretching the gun out towards her, stopping her on
the spot.