Nssm 200 - The Milieu Derivative
He showered long and disconsolately after the uncomfortable, sleepless night. The mission had failed and he’d come as close to facing death as he wanted. And there was something else. He felt ashamed, riddled with all manner of negative emotions over his treatment of Maria. How could he deceive her so cold and heartlessly? She had already given him the answer. Only a vile fiend could have behaved with such wickedness towards a vulnerable woman.
Within twenty minutes he’d readied for the long homeward journey. There was no time for breakfast if he hoped to make the flight time. A last sweep of his eyes confirmed he had left nothing behind and he bounded down the stairs and out of the main door to the taxi, expecting the boot lid to pop open. He remembered the keys and approached the adjoining villa to search the lower steps and surrounding vicinity hoping to spot a letter box. The door opened.
“You are leaving.”
“Yes.”
Maria towered above from the top step, hands clasped behind her back. The red-rimmed eyes suggested she had endured a sleepless night too.
“I thought you came for information?” she asked.
“I’ll find another way.”
The concealment of her hands made him nervous. Perhaps she had decided to shoot him after all.
“You will not say farewell to the children?”
“No,” he said, watching his foot nervously rub along the dusty ground. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” he added, looking at her worn and tired face.
“Then what did you want?”
“The keys,” he said, holding out his arm. “I was hoping you would look after them until the rep got here.”
Her left hand opened and they dropped into her open palm.
“Cheers,” he said.
He stepped towards the taxi. A cigarette stub flashed from the driver’s seat and the engine rattled into life.
“Matt?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. For Tessa,” she said.
Cheeks flushed red he mumbled a response.
“The least I could do.”
“Matt?”
For a moment he considered pretending he hadn’t heard.
“Yes.”
“The information you need is inside the villa.”
He stared up, mouth agape.
“I never told you what information I was looking for.”
“It is inside nonetheless.”
Her next sentence was spoken in her native tongue. The gear of the taxi engaged and it pulled rapidly away.
“What the hell did you say to him?”
“That he wasn’t needed.”
She turned sharply and disappeared, leaving the door open to encourage him to follow. Somewhat apprehensively he lifted the case and stepped cautiously through the door. He found her at the breakfast bar, sipping at a glass of freshly pressed orange juice. Unsure what to expect he stood quiet and motionless, waiting for the conversation to resume. Her steely gaze zeroed in on him through the bottom of the glass. He waited for her to finish, his impatience obvious. A pair of young arms grabbed at his waist.
“Are you going to play with us in the pool today, Matt,” asked the young voice.
“Of course he will, Tessa,” said a defiant Maria. “But first we must have breakfast.”
He looked aghast at the child’s mother. A few hours ago she was intent on ending his life, now she was behaving as though everything was normal, that nothing had happened between them.
“I thought you had information?”
“I do.”
“So give it to me and I’ll be on my way and leave you alone for good.”
“The children want to be entertained. Looks like you are going to have to wait.”
“Wait, for what?”
“Until the children have retired,” she said.
“Retired?” he snapped. “They don’t go to bed until after nine tonight?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“You have to be f ….”
Maria’s finger shot up to her lips.
“The children,” she said.
Yesterday there existed something of an electric, edgy touch to their shared glances and conversational exchanges. Today there was none. Cold, icy stares had replaced the warm gazes, physical indifference to the tactile rapport. The four children, grouped around the table waiting for service, had to be able to notice the difference. Maria returned to the counter for the remaining two bowls of cereal.
“Are you playing me?” he asked.
“No. I have the information.”
“Then why drag this out?”
“Penance,” she said. “Did you really think I would pass up the opportunity to make you work for it?”
The day had positively dragged, testing his patience beyond the limits of sainthood. Matt couldn’t believe how hours could pass this slowly. All the while he felt the watchful gaze of her eyes, concealed beneath a fresh pair of sunglasses even darker than those worn previously. It was almost as if she didn’t want him to be able to see her eyes, make visual contact with her plotting mind. Night had fallen. A brown envelope dropped into his lap as she silently took position on the adjoining sun bed, her face twisted in uncertainty.
“The children have retired?”
“Yes.”
Tipping the contents revealed a well read letter addressed to Maria from her late husband. Surely this couldn’t be the sum of what he had waited the whole day for?
“Is this it?”
“Yes.”
“You made me wait all day for a letter?”
“Read,” she said, sipping at the tumbler.
Maria,
This letter will be forwarded over a year after you have received the news I have been killed in action. It has to be this way. For the first six months they will observe you 24/7. Over the next six months surveillance will be reduced to waking hours though all communication you make or receive during this time will continue to be intercepted. I dare not take any chances. Once they’re satisfied there’s been no contact they’ll stop monitoring you.
It is vital you keep the package I gave you safe and never let it out of sight until a man called Matt Durham calls, though he is unlikely to introduce himself openly. Once he’s revealed his true identity you must hand it over, to him and to nobody else. He doesn’t know it but he is the only person I could trust with the package, because he is not part of our community. I’ve even kept my own people in the dark about the existence of this package as I’m uncertain how far our own organisation has been infiltrated. Durham will know what he has to do with it. He is a good man. He still feels, has a conscience. And I envy him.
I’m tantalisingly close to revealing the truth; naming those behind it all. Yet as I write the nauseous feeling something is about to go hideously wrong strengthens, like a repeating premonition if you like. I hope I’m off the mark, just being overcautious.
There is one thing I need to say. I know I have not treated you well, always putting duty to my country before all else. Despite this I want you to understand I could have asked for no better mother for my four children and, for me, this is the only important aspect of life.
Love, John.
Matt re-examined the interior of the buff envelope and found it devoid of content. A quick glance to his left revealed Maria sitting stonily silent, her gaze lost to the blackening sky. No doubt she was recalling in her mind every single word he had just been reading, picturing each piece of grammar to this solemn epitaph of what he now believed was a good man. He fought to suppress the impatient urge to get to the point and ask the obvious question.
“He loved you more than life itself.”
“You think so?” she said dispassionately. “Monogamy might have been a better way for John to display his apparent, and well-hidden, affection.”
“I don’t understand. Why …”
“You can read. He could trust no-one else.”
“But he was trying to kill me.”
“You can be
sure of this?”
“He got the jump on me, at the jetty on the Wolfgangsee, in Austria. He had his arm around my neck, throttling the life out of me. I thought I was going to die.”
“Did you never consider why he did just not shoot you? John was a marksman.”
“It was dark and there wasn’t time to search along the ground for a gun …”
His mind galloped back to that night, vividly recalling the struggle for life like it was yesterday. Tillman had taken him by surprise, so much so he would have had more than enough time to reach for the nearest available weapon and shoot before Matt could react.
“He never said anything to suggest his intention was any more than to kill me,” said Matt.
Her sigh was deep, filled with sadness.
“When he left us for Canada John wrote down on a piece of paper that he lived in constant fear of being overheard. I said he was being paranoiac. His written response was to say we were being listened to as we exchanged notes and that he had to be forever on his guard in what he said, to anyone. I took this to mean others constantly monitored his movements and communications.”
“Then why didn’t he tell me this instead of trying to kill me?”
“John had to play his part, to the end.”
His account of events enabled Maria to string the pieces of the puzzle together. Matt had yet to catch up.
“John did not wish you dead, only try to stop the release of the information you had in your possession until he’d fully infiltrated and discovered all who were involved.”
The truth finally dawned.
“Maria,” he muttered despairingly. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realise …”
“No, you didn’t.”
Speech deserted him, mind ablaze with wildly conflicting emotions about this surreal situation.
“But it is John’s letter, and only John’s letter, which has kept you alive,” she whispered.
Matt could feel his stomach churn.
“There are others,” she added. “Those who understood yet were content to allow events to happen. They must share the responsibility.”
“Except I am the one who pulled the trigger, and in your eyes that must make me guiltier than the rest,” he said.
“I will never forgive what you have done to me, to this family.”
His heart ached with remorse at what he had forced upon this woman. She had breathed fresh life into four beings and made no demands in return, only to be rewarded with loss, deceit and betrayal.
“You have one more task before I hand you the rest.”
He watched in cautious silence as Maria rose from her sun bed and paced towards him. In what seemed like slow motion she slid slowly down alongside where he lay to stare into his eyes before unexpectedly kissing at his lips, gently at first and then with greater urgency. His senses took temporary flight, retreating inwards in an attempt to suppress any sign of a physical response. There was no warmth or passion to her frenetic touch, just an irrational desire to feel anything other than loneliness. Maria’s frantic urgings halted on sensing his non-participation and she raised her hands to push him away, before rolling away and turning her back on him so as not to look at his face. Matt thought he heard the sound of a gentle sob but his natural instinct to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder deserted him, replaced instead by the empty words of cold practicality.
“This can’t be what you want?”
“No, this is not what I want,” she said softly. “Not what I want at all.”
Maria stood abruptly.
“Where are you going?”
“To wash your scent from my body,” she snapped.
The locket launched itself at his head, hitting him on the point of the chin, before dropping to the ground. Maria spun round and hissed her hate-filled contempt.
“What you need is inside. Take it. Take it and never show your face to me again.”
He watched her sprint for the sanctum of the villa and saw her sobbing frame head directly for the drinks cabinet. As he listened to her noise through the open window he manipulated a clip and the locket sprung open. He lifted out the photograph of Tillman and his wife. Behind it lay what resembled something similar to a computer chip. So this is where she had concealed it; all this time. Keep it close, her husband had asked. And she had done just that, waiting patiently for Matt to appear out of the blue and enter her life. Maria had been grievously hurt by Tillman’s indifferent treatment towards her and the children. How could she not be wounded? Yet still she resolved to do his bidding from beyond the grave. There could be no finer example of a woman’s love for a man.
The chip rested in the palm of Matt’s hand. There was a secret held on this piece of electronic wizardry, one which had his heart beating like crazy. It was that best-Christmas-ever feeling. The one where the nervous and excitable child ripped away the wrapping to unveil the present, the one you always wanted and you’d been angling for your parents to buy all year. The excitement he felt was palpable, unbearable. He couldn’t wait to get started.
He noticed the photograph, discarded with dismissive haste onto the cooling ground. Two happy, smiling faces filled the space, dressed for their wedding day. Maria’s smile shone like a beacon, since to be subsequently subdued by the darkness that would follow in her life. Matt gently picked up the shiny image and tucked it back into place, restoring the locket to its original composition. Though he had finally got what he was after it didn’t feel right. He looked again at the locket and realised there was something he had to do first; something that was required, necessary.
A trembling hand lifted the tumbler to her mouth as he entered the villa. She heard the footsteps of his approach and turned sharply, struggling to place the tumbler neatly onto the marble worktop as she glared at his uninvited presence.
“I told you to get out of my life,” she yelled.
He narrowed the gap and stood before the shaking frame. Her clenched fist jerked and swiped at his jaw, momentarily jarring him into senseless confusion. He recovered, and she threw up a second tightly clenched fist which he halted by catching her wrist. Her remaining arm followed suit but he caught that too by the wrist. And then the tears started to roll down her cheeks. There were no cries to the heavens, no wails out into the dark, just an endless stream of tears.
“I can’t stop the rain falling on to my heart,” she cried.
He pinned her arms around her back and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Resistance was minimal and brief.
“I’m sorry, Maria. I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered softly into her ear.
Chapter Seventeen
Alliance