Sleeping Soldiers: (Tom Marlowe Book 1), page 2
The guard, however, wasn’t looking for knives; instead, he grabbed the toaster, yanking out the power cord and spinning around to throw it at Marlowe, or at least hit him with it. But Marlowe had already moved in, taking the box cutter’s razor-sharp blade and using it correctly, slashing from left to right, opening his opponent’s throat up in a vicious swing that covered Marlowe in a spray of hot, salty blood as the guard collapsed to the ground, the toaster slamming onto his now very-dead face. Which was a good thing, as Marlowe knew that would have hurt like hell if he were still alive.
Christ’s sake, I only just bought this top, Marlowe thought to himself as, after rummaging in the guard’s pockets and finding nothing but SUV keys, he wiped down his chest, ran to the door and picked up the other guard’s discarded Glock 17, checking this time to make sure it had at least one bullet within.
Nodding with satisfaction at the half-filled clip, he moved into the living room to find Robertson standing behind Marshall Kirk, a gun to his head, the tall, lanky bomber-jacketed driver to his side with a vicious-looking knife in his hand.
‘Drop the gun or I kill him,’ Robertson hissed. ‘I mean it, plod.’
‘Plod?’ Marlowe rose out of his crouch, the gun lowering slightly, but still aimed at the two men. ‘Do we look like sodding coppers?’
‘If you’re not plod then, who are you?’ Robertson shook Marshall Kirk as he snarled. ‘Because this old wanker won’t tell us.’
Marlowe looked at Kirk; he had a nasty gash on his temple, likely from the knife being waved at him by the driver. He’d also been struck in the face a few times and, judging from Robertson’s bloody knuckles, currently holding the gun to his head, the racist dickhole of a leader himself had done that personally.
‘Did you bring my saveloy?’ Kirk croaked, a smile loosening a globule of blood from his lip, running down his chin and dripping onto the carpet.
‘I gave it to a guy out there,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘Best you didn’t have it. Their cooking’s really gone downhill.’
‘Sorry,’ Kirk groaned in pain as Robertson pulled him up, moving behind him, using Kirk as a shield.
‘Yeah, me too,’ Marlowe replied as he fired the Glock, the bullet striking Kirk in the shoulder, but carrying on through, hitting Robertson in the upper chest. As he instinctively let go of Kirk with a shout of intense pain, the old man falling to the floor, Robertson raised his gun--
To receive two more bullets in the head from Marlowe.
As Robertson fell to the floor, Marlowe turned to the last standing member of the group.
‘You really want to do this?’ he asked.
The driver looked down at his now-dead boss, then back at the man facing him, Glock in his hand … and then finally to his own hand, holding nothing more than a short-range blade.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone—’
This turned out to be a feint, as the driver lunged forward in one last, desperate attack, but Marlowe, ready for this, fired the Glock one more time, the bullet striking between the driver’s eyes, the back of his skull shattering open, spraying what was left of his brains over the cabinet behind him.
‘Damn right you won’t,’ Marlowe muttered. ‘Shouldn’t have cut my mate.’
‘Oh, I’m your mate now, am I?’ Marshall Kirk moaned as he clutched at his shoulder. ‘Funny bloody way to show it.’
‘Shut your griping,’ Marlowe pulled the protesting Kirk to his feet, sitting him on the arm of a sofa. ‘Stay here. I need to grab our stuff. We need to get out before the police arrive.’
Kirk nodded as Marlowe pulled the surveillance equipment from the table beside the window, throwing the pieces carelessly into the two duffel bags they had underneath it. This done, he went through the pockets of the driver, pulling out his car keys.
‘The chip shop grassed us up,’ Kirk spoke it more as a statement than a question. ‘Shame. I liked their saveloys.’
‘Nobody likes saveloys,’ Marlowe complained as he pulled Kirk back to his feet, the two duffels awkwardly hung over his other shoulder. ‘They’re like limp dicks.’
‘Why do you smell of dope?’ Kirk muttered. ‘Were you getting blazed on the job?’
‘Every day, Marshall,’ Marlowe grinned. ‘It’s the only way I get through this.’
And this last comment out there, Tom Marlowe and Marshall Kirk left the apartment filled with dead far-right extremists, stumbling down the stairs to the car park where, after tossing the teenagers the keys to the second car, they took the nicer of the two SUVs and drove off into the London smog, back to Box and most likely another bloody bollocking.
1
INK BLOTS
NOW.
Marlowe leaned back in the leather chair, trying to find a position that was comfortable. The back of it was just that little too far behind him, the cushion under him was a little rounded, meaning he slid to the left or right, and the arms were just that little bit too high.
He knew this wasn’t deliberate, and the chances were he’d just found himself to be in a bad mood on this day in particular, but considering where he was, and why he was there, he couldn’t help wonder whether this was indeed some hell-scape chair, created by a department in the basement just to piss off spies in therapy.
No, this wasn’t therapy. It was a re-evaluation.
Yes, that made everything sound better, and Marlowe tried once more to relax into the chair, before giving up and perching on the edge, hands on knees as he stared across the room at Doctor Fenchurch, the middle-aged psychiatrist watching him with a degree of amusement from behind her desk.
‘Comfy now?’ she asked.
‘No, and you damn well know it,’ Marlowe replied as politely as he could, resisting the urge to snap.
In response, Doctor Fenchurch just shrugged.
‘Never needed to sit in it,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never been that side of the table before.’
‘You should try it,’ Marlowe smiled darkly. ‘We could swap places.’
‘Is that what you want, Thomas?’ Doctor Fenchurch was writing on her notepad. ‘To be in a position of power?’
‘Is that what you believe the desk to be, Sonia?’ Marlowe tried reverse tactics. ‘A way to give yourself power?’
Doctor Fenchurch chuckled.
‘Nice,’ she said, relaxing a little. ‘So, it’s been a month since we saw each other. How have you been?’
‘Bored,’ Marlowe replied matter-of-factly. ‘Just like I was last month. And the month before.’
‘The month before, you were in hospital,’ Doctor Fenchurch read from her notes.
‘That’s why I was bored.’
‘How’s your recovery going?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know,’ Marlowe admitted. ‘Until you rubber-stamp me, I can’t do the course.’
‘I didn’t ask how your physical wellbeing was, I asked how your recovery was going.’ Doctor Fenchurch clicked the top of her pen as she looked up. ‘Your mental health.’
‘My mental health would be a lot better if you’d rubber-stamp me and let me do the bloody course!’ Marlowe snapped loudly, instantly regretting it, loosening his black tie a little, and popping the top button of his shirt. ‘Sorry. Haven’t seen many people recently. Forgot what “indoor voice” sounds like.’
Doctor Fenchurch leant back in her chair, letting it rock backwards as she watched him.
‘And the wounds?’
Marlowe paused at this. In all the talks, the mandatory, go-if-you-want-to-continue-in-the-service talks he’d had here, she’d never once mentioned the bullet wounds he’d received.
‘What?’ he asked, uncertain where this was going, and hoping a couple of seconds’ delay would help him work it out.
Returning to the desk, the chair now upright, Doctor Fenchurch placed the pen down, placing her elbows on the desk as she linked her hands together.
‘Real talk,’ she said. ‘You were shot while on an off-the-books’ mission.’
‘I was escorting a prisoner.’
‘Who didn’t exist on record, and who escaped from your custody on account of operative error?’
Marlowe simmered at this; the escape of Karl Schnitter, AKA the Red Reaper, a serial killer with a belief in righteousness, hadn’t escaped because of any errors. He’d escaped because someone in Westminster, someone who didn’t like the small, off-the-books department of MI5 known as Section D and the links it had to Whitehall, had passed information to others in the shadows, allowing them to arrange Karl’s release as long as he did something for them.
That Karl was also betrayed and tried to take out the people behind that before going to the CIA and gaining a new life, was irrelevant.
‘Thomas?’
‘We were set up,’ Marlowe muttered, stroking his now-bearded chin. ‘We were set up and you bloody well know it.’
‘And how would I know that?’
‘Because I’ve seen your file,’ Marlowe, finally sick of this, replied. ‘I know you worked for Rattlestone, when it was a mercenary black-bag alternative to the security services, and that you transferred into MI5 when the police closed it down, and Charles Baker made his play for Godhood.’
‘I don’t think our Prime Minister would take kindly to your opinion of his character,’ Doctor Fenchurch replied coldly. ‘And I’d like to know how the hell you found my file.’
At this, Marlowe finally smiled.
‘Looks like I don’t have to be that side of the desk to have any power after all,’ he replied.
He could have told Doctor Fenchurch what she wanted to hear; how he’d spoken to Trix Preston in Section D, the resident cyber-hacking savant of his unit, and asked her to have a peek around Fenchurch’s private files, see if there was anything he could use in them to fast-track his signing off. Or he could explain that he’d seen Rattlestone in action, seen how Francine Pearce, their onetime CEO had used them as her own, private black-bag operation before making a deal with the Government.
He could tell her how Rattlestone became Phoenix Industries, the rebranded Rattlestone mercenaries now working for Trisha Hawkins, Pearce’s replacement, and a gold-star bitch if ever there was one.
And he could tell her with no doubt that it was Hawkins that not only set up the escape, gaining Schnitter’s trust beforehand, while using him to frame a City of London police detective in the process, but who also arranged an ambush in the middle of a country road, where masked attackers had taken out the van Marlowe had been driving, killing his colleagues in cold blood, and leaving him for dead, shot in the leg and the chest.
Shot by the people Fenchurch had worked beside, who Fenchurch had declared fit for duty.
He’d been found in time, luckily for him, and placed in the Royal Berkshire Hospital under a fake name. And even now, months after the incident, he still didn’t know who fired the weapons at him, who tried to kill him.
But he would.
Doctor Fenchurch pondered her reply, shuffling some sheets of A4 paper together as she played for time.
‘I get that you think we were bad,’ she said eventually. ‘But mercenary units, off-the-books contractors, all that stuff, we all start with the best interests at heart. And some of us join for the right reasons.’
She waved around the room.
‘If I wasn’t one of the good ones, would I be here now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marlowe shrugged in response. ‘Possibly. It depends who owes you favours.’
‘Is that how you see the world, Thomas?’ Doctor Fenchurch seemed saddened by the revelation. ‘That it’s black and white, good and bad, right and wrong?’
‘I find it keeps me alive, yes,’ Marlowe replied, wondering where this new thread would be going. ‘Shades of grey are great and all that, but I prefer a moral compass that keeps me going straight.’
‘Yet you went against orders.’
‘No, not at all,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘I wasn’t told not to deal with Karl Schnitter.’
‘And an omission doesn’t make a lie?’
‘If you don’t tell me to kill an enemy, how can you be angry when I let the enemy live?’ Marlowe shifted forward on the chair now. ‘I do what I’m told, following orders. If I’m told to jump, I jump. I don’t ask how high, or in which direction. Sometimes I don’t have the luxury of time to ask such a question. I rely on the fact you’d have told me a height or direction if these details were important.’
He looked around the room again as he spoke, checking out the trinkets and ornaments on the shelves.
‘You either backpacked, or you were in the field,’ he said, nodding at the walls. ‘You collect a memento from every location you visit. I’d say it’s the latter because you keep them here rather than at home, which makes me think your family doesn’t know about the missions, and explaining how a Tibetan prayer wheel happened to appear on your dresser is a question you’d rather not answer.’
‘Again, do asking questions like this make you feel you’re in control?’ Doctor Fenchurch wasn’t smiling as wide as she had earlier.
‘Wasn’t a question,’ Marlowe risked the chair again, forcing himself to relax in it, ignoring the urge to shift around on the cushion. ‘I was stating an observation. You tell field agents if they’re well enough to go into the field, but at the same time you’re a onetime field agent who left it.’
‘Did you get that from my file?’
‘No,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘But I got your love of spicy food from it.’
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small, red bottle.
‘Here,’ he said, placing it on the desk. ‘Wiltshire Chilli Farm. The people who do Regret. This is their new one, not out in the stores yet, twelve million Scoville’s. You’ll love it.’
‘You’ve tried it?’
‘Christ no. I’m not a masochist,’ Marlowe backed away from the desk, and the small bottle of chilli sauce. ‘I wanted you to have it, because they gave me one, and I remembered.’
‘Turning me into an asset will not help you get into the service again,’ Doctor Fenchurch said as she took the bottle, clicking the lid open and taking a small sniff. ‘Nice.’
‘No underhand reasons,’ Marlowe opened out his palms in surrender. ‘I want to be back in, sure, but I’m also aware you wouldn’t have any kind of agenda keeping me benched.’
Doctor Fenchurch secured the lid with a sigh, placing it back on the desk.
‘I don’t have an agenda,’ she said. ‘But there are people in Westminster that do. There are some in Whitehall that don’t like you. Don’t like what Section D stands for.’
At this, Marlowe laughed.
‘All of Whitehall hates us,’ he corrected. ‘They get pissed off when they try to hack our servers.’
‘Because they can’t get through?’
‘Because our computers expert launches DOS attacks on their own servers and brings them down,’ Marlowe finished. ‘One thing MI5 doesn’t like is being schooled.’
‘Technically, you’re still part of MI5.’
‘Then tell that to MI5,’ Marlowe snapped, no longer smiling. ‘Because as far as they’re concerned, the “D” in Section D stands for “Disavowed”, and we’re nothing more than the screw-ups they can’t fire.’
‘And you don’t think that’s true?’
‘I think they haven’t managed to fire any of us yet.’ Marlowe rose from the chair now, pacing the room. ‘But that doesn’t mean they haven’t tried to end us.’
He punctuated this by tapping his chest where, under the shirt, was a bullet-shaped scar.
‘You think MI5 did that?’ Doctor Fenchurch asked.
‘No, I think Rattlestone did.’ Marlowe stopped pacing now, facing Doctor Fenchurch from across the room. ‘And I think they all rejoined MI5 happily when the walls fell down.’
‘That’s paranoia.’
‘Only when it’s not true.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘Say, hypothetically, you’re right,’ Doctor Fenchurch eventually said. ‘Say there are people in the security services that not only don’t have your best interests at heart, but are working for their own agendas, rather than for Queen and Country and all that.’
‘Okay.’ Marlowe relaxed, his hands in his trouser pockets now. ‘Go on.’
‘Now, say there’s someone, maybe a field agent who went against the grain, perhaps helped in things that embarrassed Whitehall, one who’s making noise and causing them headaches. Are they going to be happy with him?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘And, when he’s benched after an off-the-books Op goes wrong, are they going to go out of their way for him?’ Doctor Fenchurch leant forward. ‘Or are they going to do their best to make sure his air supply is cut and he’s left out in the cold?’
Marlowe shuddered at the term air supply is cut. To have your air supply cut off was a terminology for being burned. And this, regardless of what television shows stated, wasn’t fun. A “burn notice” was an official statement issued by intelligence agencies to other agencies. Sometimes allies, often enemies. It stated an asset or intelligence source they used was now unreliable for some usually unexplained reason, often fictional, and must from that point be officially disavowed in all aspects.
This was effectively a directive for the relevant agency or spy to disregard, to “burn” all information received from the agent currently in the crosshairs.
Once you were burned, once your air supply was cut off, you were gone. Any agency could gun you down, and your country would turn the other way and go “oops”.
‘Hypothetically,’ Marlowe replied slowly. ‘Have you heard something I should be aware of?’
