Don't... 04 Backlash (54 page)

Noise came from
by the door and, hands in pockets, Jan came and rested against the
doorframe. “I miss him, you know,” Jan said gently.

Martin groaned,
hands now running through his hair. “Get him the fuck away.”

Gray shifted,
damn scared for Jan who covered the distance to Martin and held him
against the wall, his touch placed either side of Martin’s
head.

“Miss you,
martial arts guy, you hear me?” Jan said quietly before roughing up
Martin’s lips with a hard kiss. “Miss you so fucking much.”

Martin jerked
in the instance Jan’s lips touched down, not responding, then he
went quiet as Jan withdrew his kiss.

“Buh-ballsy,
Breakdown.” His tone was quiet, but the words, tear, and slight
cross-over there had Jan roughly cupping Martin’s face and forcing
their heads together.

“
Yeah,
he’s still there, all right,” said Jan, eyes screwed closed. “You
feeling that, Martin? Jack? Why he walked away saying
you’re
welcome
?”

The tear
running free from Martin answered Jan where his silence tried not
to.

Jan stroked at
the tear. “What happened... it happened to your mind... to your
body too. So Jack... he’s saying he’s doing just fine now, that
he’s giving you your time to heal.”

Jan gave him
such a long kiss, one that Martin frowned into.

“
He’s
looking after you now, Martin. And he’ll keep saying
you’re welcome
to you for every wrong you do,
or for every cry of hurt. Because he knows it’s one step closer to
healing you, and he’ll be back.” That’s why Jan’s smile was so soft
at the table, and now. “He’ll be back. So I’ll look after you.
Greg, he’ll look after you, Ed—Gray. For as long as it damn well
needs, that for every wrong that you do, we’ll follow it with
a
you’re welcome,
Mart
.”

“
I’m
not the fucking soft shit of a nut case.
” Martin slid down the wall and Jan
followed. “I’m not anyone’s pity pet.”

“Time out,”
whispered Jan, pulling him close. The crossover to Jack had been so
near, and it was affecting Martin.

Gray went over
to the barred window that had been installed and he opened it up,
letting the warmth of what should have been a chilly winter play
with the shadows cast into the Oval. Then he sat down next to Jan
and Martin.

Things could
only get better, they all knew that, but sometimes, when life hit
hard, life needed shutting down for a while.

Because for a
moment, just for a moment, Jack was there. Almost.

Jack hadn’t
just trusted Gray with falling, he’d trusted him with Martin too,
and that... it tied Martin close to him and Jan in ways Martin
probably wouldn’t ever understand.

As much as Gray
would make the best bleed for touching them, he was here to push
life away until they were ready to face the hurt again. And that
included Martin now.

Gray woke up
only once that afternoon to find they’d pulled Martin into bed.
He’d tried to get out at one point and the sedative had kicked in.
Now Jan shaped him one side, Gray the other, and this had been the
first time they didn’t need to cuff him to the bed. But it was his
mobile that woke him and he reached over to tiredly pick it up as a
message came through.

Subject 639. Case closed.

Merry
Christmas.

Nhad

Gray read
the last part of the message again, then deleted it before
returning it with a simple
Thank you
.
In his line of business, there were some messages that would never
be seen in the public eye, not in Jan’s eyes, not Jack’s. That was
one of them. Elena had been silenced. Case closed.

One more
remained outstanding. But he was patient. It would come, and it
would be his choosing.

His call.

Two Months
Later

As Kes
made his way through the
Chêne Pointu
estate, part of
Clichy-sous-Bois
, a ghetto in the eastern suburbs of Paris, a mass of
overpopulated high-rise flats and concrete entranceways offered him
limited shelter from the rain soaking his hair.

Most of
the youth who avoided him had the sense to wear hoodies. It
protected them from the elements but also marked the mood of how a
lifetime had been spent staying hidden from the slum landlords
wanting rent. Other suburban areas of Paris homed Arab, African...
Muslim minorities; here it was mostly African, or the poor youth,
descendants from two generations of even poorer grandparents.
Forty-percent of unemployment came from these areas, the dividing
lines coming in the form of eight lanes of road known as the
périphérique,
which circled Paris. It was one
walkway most Parisians never crossed. The success of Paris was
separated from the ethnic minorities of the ghettos, earning the
contradicting terms of those found in the
banlieue aisée
—the comfortable suburb—to those of
the
banlieue
défavorisée
... the
disadvantaged.

The lift that
would take him up to the high-rise flat he’d managed to rent wasn’t
working, but then neither were many of the others. Pulley systems
rigged from the highest windows down carried most of the burden
behind shopping, and it bypassed the writing on the wall that
yelled out “Fuck the police.” The reaction wasn’t surprising.
Britain and the USA had an open-door policy that promoted
hands-across-the-world for most cultural diversity. Open doorways
had always brought easy threats, with terrorists moving freely
across borders. France thought they’d solved the terrorist threat,
its crackdown on multiculturalism helping to close the border door.
Only they forgot about the diversity locked inside. Potential
threat came from within, how the borders were now strictly
controlled, a risk of isolation for those who carry non-French
surnames now fed the fuel to extremism. And small terrorist attacks
made big news here, in its own way handing out any calling card to
a terrorist who wanted to gain maximum coverage with minimal
effort.

In short,
nobody had the solution to terrorism, but the look on the young
African that Kes passed on the concrete stairway told how problems
kept on being ignored, in how voice and cultural diversity would be
lost under the cover of a hood or the build-up of rubbish in their
derelict area. The colour on Kes’s own skin made it a good place to
work, but his French passport gave him the freedom most here would
never see.

His latest
target was a self-styled Islamist radical, born to Algerian
parents. He’d been on the French radar for a while now, but as with
other ignored threats, this man roamed free-range, left to whisper
in the ear of one Lyle Forester, youngest son of the Dean of the
United States House of Representatives. The Dean held a
duel-passport with Israel, and his relationship was something
Mossad... valued. Young Forester had been detained on Israeli
shores for six weeks now, but only four days had been needed to get
a name.

Full permission
gained from the father, of course. In light of 9/11, having a son
going starry- eyed over radicalization could have been potentially
very awkward. As was having a trio of MI6 ops passing on
information to Al-Qaeda about Mossad operatives. Back there in
England, Kidon had lost one operative due to the information on
them that had been sold, and this forced Kes to go in to get one of
his own agent’s remains out. Once the codenames had been gained,
the close ties with MI6 over the past few decades gave him the
tools to find out the rest.

So with the
last name on the list out in the open, Kes returned the kiss, and
MI6 had now found their own operative’s body on British soil a
month ago, throat slit. Case closed.

Kes
paused by his apartment, checking the position of the lock. He left
it a half-turn to the left, even though it should rest in the
twelve o’clock position. The door would also only open for a half
an inch before a timing device was set off. Tension on the lever
acting as a doorstop initiated the countdown, and only the code he
kept in his head stopped the bomb’s detonation. It was enough to
kill a man, a little too obvious for his liking, but anyone
wanting
in
on a
slum was one dangerously disturbed individual.

The lock
remained where he’d left it, and as Kes eased the door open, the
lever broke, initiating the countdown. He had time to step through
and finger in the code on the desk to stop being blown to
pieces.

It wasn’t much,
just a room, a bed, a corner with a cooker and one worktop where
his coffee cup and kettle sat. The sink was next to that, offering
a will to piss on any fire but still send the rest of the slum up
in flames because of it. A two-seater settee coated more in the
stench of cat piss than foam almost tried to outdo the lingering
smoke and its stains that made a pretty, localized pattern up the
wall, onto the ceiling.

Kes came with
no weapon, always preferring to draw from his environment. And as
his target lived above him, both smoke stains and exposed wiring to
the cooker gave him all he needed.

He’d be here
for another hour, no more. Upstairs, his target was already home,
the yelling to his kids and dull thud on the ceiling having kept
Kes awake for two nights now.

Nobody seemed
to sleep here, even the night lit up with the grunts of sex that
had been made limp by the gut-full of alcohol. He was grateful he
could remove his hearing aid of a night although that deep thud
from music still thudded in his chest.

He paused
before he reached the unit with the kettle, now rubbing thick
fingertips into his temples. The lack of sleep was beginning to
show, as was his age. He’d not heard his own name called in a
lifetime, it seemed as distant as Israel, almost lost and distorted
on the heat rising from the pavements. The aging that his bones
counted down couldn’t be ignored. He was surprised Kidon hadn’t...
retired him years ago. It wasn’t a young man’s game, but not
exactly an old one’s either; he’d been doing this for thirty-five
years, making his career choice older than the young man on the
next floor. Add another twenty on with how his body ached, he was
one of the longest-serving Kidon agents alive. No retirement plan
came with this job, not with the secrets he knew, and it only
remained to be seen how much longer he’d be allowed to draw breath
before someone younger took him out.

Part of him
expected it to be Raoul, but Raoul was only one of many. You could
never tell who was out there. Watching. So precautions were always
taken.

He made it over
to the kettle, but a reach forward saw his hand distort slightly.
The slum swam and he shrugged it off, more than a little aggravated
at the noise playing around his walls. A move over to the rucksack
under the bed saw him pull out two paracetamol. The headaches
weren’t unusual; he rarely slept, more napped. But that spike in
the need to get out, that was something new.

The kettle was
his next stop, and he held it under the water, letting it fill.
Again life blurred, but this time the high-pitched tinnitus that
came with it had him looking down.

Drops of blood
mingled on the dirt-stained steel of the sink, and he lifted a hand
up to his nose. More stained his fingers, thicker, with a dark red
clot that rolled so easily between his thumb and finger.

He caught the
streetlamp just below. Next to that was the only offer of a
supermarket, its windows given glass bars and a door that stated a
firm 9:00 p.m. lockdown. In the top left hand corner sat a box,
small, no bigger than any normal house alarm. Only this alarm was
always aimed at a certain age demographic, and it came with a bite
to the hearing that earned its name: Mosquito device. He’d seen a
thousand in his lifetime, mostly offered in populated areas, where
teens would gather in gangs and run the risk of causing trouble.
This device had been designed to irritate, to get the teens to move
on, to produce a noise with a frequency high enough to—

“Son of a
bitch,” he spat in Hebrew, staggering back, and trying to tear his
hearing aid out.

Life blacked
out for a moment, but a calm grip under his jaw forced him up
against the wall. He tried to reach up, tear the grip away, but the
screaming sensation in his ears from the Mosquito device and choke
on blood wouldn’t allow any coordination, just a pathetic gurgled
noise that bubbled up from his throat as he tried to get air into
his system. The piss soaking into his jeans didn’t offer much
dignity either.