The Gruinard Project chapter 10

[khandy]

Chapter 10

The Plaza On The Thames. 03.00

He couldn’t breathe; a band around his throat was being slowly tightened, cutting of his air supply. He gasped trying to take in air while he still could. In a moment he would lose consciousness, it was already beginning to go black.

The water was freezing that was his first thought. Christ didn’t they have any hot water in heaven either? Voices in Russian reached his ears, laughing and joking about him. Not in heaven still in Russia, he wasn’t dead then.

A man’s face came into view. It hovered above him.

“Are you ready to tell us about Operation Homeport, Mr North?”

Lucas kept his face neutral. They must have a mole high up if they knew about Homeport. Well they would learn no more from him. He remained silent. The man glanced at the guard and silently communicated something.

“Are you ready to talk Mr North?”

Not to you, Lucas thought, never to you.

He wondered if they would kill him. He had been here for several months and had not yet told them anything. He wondered how he was drawing up the mental strength to defy them. How much longer could he hold out? How much more pain could he tolerate before they broke him as they surely must?

The leather bit into his neck as the guard tightened it further, he felt dizzy and sick. His captor told the guard to maintain the pressure on his neck steady.

“Think about co-operating Mr North.”

These were the last words he heard before he dropped to the floor unconscious once more.

He had no idea how long he was unconscious. He came round barely able to move. His throat raw, his neck bruised. He must have come as he lost consciousness. He dragged himself to his dirty flea invested mattress and curled in a tight ball. Tears soaked his face as he silently screamed for Harry. He had given so much to the service. Harry had recruited him, trained him. Harry who had become a second father, showing him a side to himself he had never known existed. Where was he? Why had he left him here? The questions kept repeating themselves as Lucas lay silently begging to know why he had been abandoned.

“Harry!”

Lucas shot upright his breathing ragged, his body drenched in perspiration, his heart beat rapid. Kate’s arms curved round him.

“Lucas, are you ok?” she whispered.

Knowing he was about to puke Lucas didn’t answer he just forced himself to move to the bathroom. Collapsing to the floor, head hung over the toilet bowel he vomited repeatedly until he had nothing left. Once he was sure he was not going to vomit again he struggled to his feet. Filling the sink with warm water he sponged his sweat soaked body. He looked in the mirror; the image staring back at him was not the tall sophisticated secret agent but the ravaged, dirty prisoner. He scrubbed and soaped his skin trying to wash away the image but to no avail. Taking several calming breaths Lucas forced himself to stop knowing what he was seeing wasn’t real. He thought he had this image under control, obviously not; his feelings about Russia were more intense than ever.

This dream was a new one, he usually woke panicked unable to breath but with no sense of why. His memory of Russia was selective the deep traumas hidden away in his mind. The psychiatrist had said, it wasn’t because he could not remember, but because he chose not to. So why should he now have a dream of such startling clarity? He had remembered Sugarhorse because of the rain pouring on his face. It had forced a fleeting flashback. It was only at Harry’s request that he forced himself to remember the details.

Dr Maitland, the psychiatrist Lucas had been ordered to see at his debriefing, had told him that he was certain he had recalled this incident because Harry had asked him to. His complex relationship with Harry was what had allowed him to open the folder he had created in his brain. It had occurred to Lucas that despite blaming Harry for being imprisoned for eight years, he still wanted to prove his loyalty to the man who was like a second father to him. Deep down he trusted Harry, knew he was not the reason he had spent eight years in that Russian hellhole. Some sixth or seventh sense had told him Harry was incapable of such duplicity. So he had, as he had so often in the past, done Harry’s bidding. He had forced himself to remember.

None of which explained tonight’s vision. Lucas didn’t doubt for a single moment that this was an actual memory, not an ordinary dream. He had lived with the dual edged sword of his eidetic memory all his life so he recognised what was real and what wasn’t.

He had first become aware of his special memory when he was two. He had been sat with his older brother Marcus drawing. His brother had drawn him a picture of their house. It was a child’s image of a house; a square for the house, four windows and the door in the middle with a triangle roof. Lucas had been puzzled, his two year old mind realising that the drawing didn’t look like their house at all. An argument had broken out and in the end Marcus had told him to draw the house if he thought he could do it better. Although rough and unsophisticated, Lucas’ drawing had been undeniably their house and way beyond what the average two year old normally drew. Even the seven year old Marcus had realised this, running off with the drawing to show their mother.

She had been stunned and asked her son to draw other things. The detail the child showed was beyond normal. She began to realise that Lucas could do other things the average two year old couldn’t but what really stunned her was when she handed him Marcus’ school reading book and he had read it to her. He wasn’t three until August, how could he be reading? Who was teaching him?

A barrage of tests had followed, as Lucas saw paediatricians, psychiatrists, and psychologists. He had hated them, those strangers, with their stupid tests and questions. He wanted to be outside playing on the swings at the park not sat drawing pictures and answering questions. The thing he hated the most was being different being ‘special’. He was almost treated like a new toy, showed off to friends.

“Draw this Lucas, recite that poem Lucas”

He just wanted to be a little boy.

Marcus saved him in those early days treating him like an ordinary brother, alternately fighting and playing with him; treating him as if he were normal. If things were too intense he would dragging him off to play football or cricket. They would play make believe games and climb trees and make dens. To Marcus, Lucas was just his little brother.

The worse time was when he realised that his ‘special’ memory could make him famous. He had been five when Samantha Williams had been knocked over and killed. His mother and him had gone to collect Marcus from school. The driver hadn’t stopped and when the police arrived the scene was one of panicked distraught parents and frightened children. As so often happened, these traumatised people who had witnessed the accident were unable to give any meaningful kind of statements. Lucas was shaking, tearful, his mind replaying the scene over and over again. It was ten minutes after the police arrived he realised that they were asking questions about the accident. The variations in everybody’s recollections puzzled him. Had nobody else seen what he had? Seeing his mother was trying to calm down some other parents, he had slipped away unnoticed. He had walked up to the policeman who had seemed in charge. At first he had not wanted to listen to the small boy but eventually he relented. Lucas’ mum had approached thinking Lucas was missing and she had been relieved to see him with the policeman. One look at her son’s intense blue eyes made her realise that Lucas had seen something important and she convinced the police officer to listen. Though shaking and tearful Lucas described in minute detail what had happened. Then he forced himself to freeze the vision in his brain, right at the moment of impact so he could read the number plate. The policeman, who had only agreed to listen to the boy to placate his mother, listened in growing disbelief at the information that this little boy was giving him. The man was arrested later that day.

Lucas became a celebrity for a week. The press and TV cameras came to school; they had spoken to his family, teacher and friends. They had tried to speak to him but he was quiet, withdrawn and sullen. He had hated every minute of it, but what he hated more were the nightmares.

Every night he replayed the accident in his mind, the images never dimming. It wasn’t like watching on TV or looking at a picture, Lucas actually felt as if he were back there stood on the pavement outside school, watching Samantha die not once, but hundreds of times. He lay awake night after night too scared to close his eyes; silent tears running down his cheeks, just a frightened little boy, desperately trying to understand why he was different. When it became obvious that he was unable to sleep or eat his parents had taken him back to his psychologist. Lucas sat through more questions but the psychologist had no answers. He had no idea how Lucas could forget what he had seen. Eventually a month later Lucas worked it out for himself. The idea came to him as he watched the Doctor pull out his file, Lucas knew that when he had finished he would put the file away. Could he do that? Put the memory of Samantha in a file in his head. It took him a month but finally he did it. The memory did not go away he could recall it at any time, but it no longer just occurred; now he controlled it.

Over the years he had found a way to use his ‘gift’ but had always remained in control of it until he’d returned from Russia. Why, he wondered was he not able to control things?

“Lucas, are you ok? You have been in there an age.” Kate’s voice was soft and calm through the door.

“Yeah I’ll be out in a minute. I just want to brush my teeth.”

He undid the complimentary toothbrush and toothpaste and began brushing his teeth.

The mere thought of Kate brought a smile to his face. He had opened himself up to her more than anybody since he had been back in this country. He paused, toothbrush in mouth, as it occurred to him that he had opened up more to her than he had to anybody in his entire life, even his parents and certainly Elizaveta. He had done so without really realising, almost relieved to be sharing his troubles with another person. Why her though? What was it about her that had made it easy to talk? Once he had started he had been unable to stop. He continued to brush his teeth pondering this thought.

Kate paced the hotel room. Lucas had been in the bathroom at least half an hour. She had listened helpless, as he vomited repeatedly, unable to go to him as he had locked the door. She had heard taps running and then silence. She had paced and worried wondering what had happened.

It wasn’t his scream that had woken her; she had been awake before that. Lucas had gone rigid in his sleep his breath caught in his throat, his body slick with sweat. He had been gripped by a terrible nightmare from which she had been trying to wake him, when he had shot upright. At one stage he seemed to hold his breath for several minutes, while she desperately tried to wake him. Her relief when he shot up and screamed Harry’s name had been short lived, when he had dashed off to the bathroom.

She glanced at the clock three am, how many nights was he awake at this hour? The lock on the bathroom door clicked open and Lucas walked out, one of the dark blue hotel bath towels round his waist. He looked slightly pale small purple smudges under his eyes indicating how tired he was. His eyes, the windows to his soul Kate thought, a stormy grey blue, reflecting his inner turmoil.

She went to the fridge and poured him a glass of American Dry Ginger.

She smiled at the question in his eyes.

“Ginger it’s helpful if you are feeling nauseated. Sip it slowly.”

Lucas took a sip.

“Aren’t you going to give me the third degree?” he asked quietly.

“No, I think you are still trying to work out what happened in your own mind, however know this Lucas, when you need to talk I’m here,” she said.

Placing the glass down he pulled her towards him, lightly kissing the top of her head.

“Thank you.”

“You are very tense, what do you normally do following a vision?” Kate asked.

“Run, I normally run.”

He crossed to the window and looked out over the river.

“I know the embankment like the back of my hand, I have run along it so many times since I returned to this country,” he explained.

His eyes were drawn to a fleeting flash of light; a match being struck and discarded. Lucas watched, waiting for the person to move on but they didn’t. He scanned the area in front of the hotel all was in darkness. He turned and picked up his mobile and hit the speed dial button for Ros Meyers.

She answered promptly.

“This had better be bloody important Lucas,” she grumbled.

“Have you got somebody watching the hotel?” Lucas asked.

Ros sighed. Would he be mad when she confirmed she had?

“Yeah I do.”

“Well he’s either an idiot, asleep or dead,” Lucas told her.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well he has either, just lit a match, and given his position away, so he is an idiot. Or it’s not our man I can see watching the hotel. In which case our man is asleep on the job because he has not spotted him or he has seen him and is now dead. Contact him, find out which? If he is not at the front of the hotel over to the right concealed by some shrubs, we have company.” Lucas hung up, turning he glanced at Kate’s frightened face.

He pulled her into the safety of his arms.

“Hey it’s alright I‘m here,” he reassured her.

Kate looked up at him, where had the troubled vulnerable, man gone? In the space of a second he had been replaced by a calmly efficient agent, who talked about somebody possibly being dead as though he was discussing the weather. The turmoil in his eyes replaced by a keen intensity, a man in control and in charge.

His phone vibrated.

“Ros?”

“It’s not our man, our man hadn’t seen him, but he is on him now. It’s a good job I’m miles away , there’s no telling what I might do to him.”

Lucas winced. He had no doubt she meant that.

“What do you want to do Lucas?” Ros asked.

“Stay put tonight. He hasn’t moved I think he must be on surveillance detail. If we move now he will know he has been rumbled. Tell your man we need photos. Let’s ID him,” Lucas hung up.

Lucas moved back to the window, hidden behind the half drawn curtain, he waited. Five minutes had passed when he saw a slight movement in the shadow opposite where the man watching them was. The MI5 agent had this other man in his sight now. Lucas remained where he was making sure the young agent had not been seen. The man watching the hotel stayed where he was. Lucas turned away from the window wondering who the man was watching, him or Kate?

Kate had sunk to the bed her legs trembling, struggling to take in what was happening. She wasn’t stupid she realised that this was what espionage was like, she knew that it wasn’t comfortable and cosy, after all she was in a room with a man who had admitted that he had killed for his country. It was just knowing something because you are told it happens and knowing because you are involved, were two totally different concepts. Was it really just two days ago that she was an anonymous microbiologist working for the health agency?

Lucas came and sat by her side. He placed an arm around her shoulders pulling her close, her head naturally resting against his shoulder. He felt her tremble, nervous reaction he guessed.

“It’s a lot to get your head round now you’re in the middle of things?” Lucas guessed.

“Yeah, it just occurred to me that I’m scared Lucas,” she whispered.

“That’s a relief, I am glad I’m not alone in being scared. Kate the day this job stops scaring me is the day I die or quit. Being scared is what gives us our edge, lose your edge and you’re on borrowed time. Being scared is not a weakness. Acknowledging our fears and confronting them defines who we are. You made a decision to come this far and now you will make a decision whether you stay and continue. There is no right or wrong decision; there is only your decision. The rules have changed again, we were dealing with pieces of paper but the threat has moved on, we are now dealing with a person. That makes it seems more real,” he told her.

“What happens now?” Kate asked.

“Well, our agent will watch him tonight. Follow him if he moves away. In the morning we will leave separately so I can see who he is watching,” Lucas explained.

“Oh you mean he could be watching me,” Kate realised.

“Yeah, it’s unlikely but we have to check it out.” Seeing her worried look he continued trying to reassure her. “Don’t worry; an agent will accompany you to work. I promise you will be ok.” He tipped her chin up and kissed her softly. “Now we should get some more sleep,” he said.

“I’m not sure I will be able to sleep, too wired at the moment,” Kate said.

“What do you want to do then?”

“You need to ask.” Kate said.