Page 2 of Nobody's Hero
‘Ten years ago, you attended a meeting at this address,’ Tas said. He unfolded a piece of paper. Showed it to Stephen. ‘I want to know everything that was discussed.’
If Stephen had been standing, he’d have fallen over. It would be like the room had tilted. Tas hadn’t made a mistake. Neither had his client. He wondered who’d talked. It wasn’t him. He’d never mentioned the meeting to anyone, not even his wife.
There was no point denying it. That Tas and his client even knew about the meeting was proof enough that the thing that could never happen already had. The leakproof security arrangements had leaked. Despite the shock, he allowed himself a small smile. The fact he was strapped to a bench in an abandoned auto factory was proof that at least part of the security arrangements had held firm. They didn’t know everything.
It was a comforting thought.
He was about to die. It was inevitable. Tas couldn’t allow him to live, not with the stakes this high. But Stephen would be missed. He had a family. He had friends and colleagues. An employer. If he vanished, people would ask why. Tas knew this but had abducted him anyway. That meant he’d been forced to. It was a risk.
Stephen knew his life could be measured in minutes now, not hours. He had one job left: to provoke a reaction that ended with him dead and Tas no further forwards.
‘If you know anything about that meeting, you’ll also know I’ll die before I talk about it,’ he said.
Tas nodded. Like he’d expected him to say something like that. A seventh person came into view. He was a big man. Had so many scars on his face he looked like Frankenstein’s monster. He wore a long-sleeved plastic gown, rubber gloves and a face visor, like a doctor during the early days of COVID. He was holding a chain saw, casually, as if he used one all the time. Stephen’s mouth went dry. He started to hyperventilate.
‘This is Konstantin,’ Tas said. ‘My organisation does not have a human resources department, per se, but we take employee welfare seriously nonetheless. When he was a child, Konstantin’s brother died of AIDS. He is now terrified of contracting a blood-borne virus. But he also has an unmatched enthusiasm for this line of work. You academic types might call it a proclivity. Which is why we provide him with the personal protective equipment he is wearing now. It makes him feel safe.’ Tas paused a beat. ‘Does Konstantin’s PPE makeyoufeel safe, Stephen?’
Stephen shook his head. Didn’t even realise he had.
‘Tell me about the meeting,’ Tas said.
‘Never.’
‘Never is an awfully long time, Stephen.’
Stephen gulped. He wasn’t a particularly brave man, but he had never considered himself a coward. ‘Do your worst,’ he said.
Tas sighed. ‘Mr Konstantin, if you please?’
Konstantin stepped forwards, emotionless. He revved the chain saw. A burst of noise. It sounded like an angry lion. Exhaust fumes filled the abandoned factory. Konstantin pressed the tip of the spitting blade against Stephen’s bare ankle . . .
Chapter 2
Two years later. Hyde Park, London.
Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park is the oldest and most famous free-speech platform in the world. Karl Marx, George Orwell and Winston Churchill have all mounted soapboxes to debate the great issues of the day. So did Lenin, Vanessa Redgrave and Harold Pinter. Noteworthy figures all.
The unhinged, foam-flecked ranter currently occupying the soapbox wasnotnoteworthy. He was called Derek Bancroft, and he passionately believed that Denver International Airport was the secret headquarters of both the Illuminati and the New World Order. He claimed the artwork, sculptures and engravings in the airport were secret messages to those in the know. And Derek was in the know. He was less clear on why the Illuminati and the New World Order had revealed their secrets to a chicken sexer from Brixton, but if you were searching for lucid, well-constructed arguments at Speakers’ Corner on a Sunday morning, you were in for an unrewarding wait. Nonetheless, the enthusiastic Derek was being cheered on by a growing and not-a-little-hungover crowd. Enthusiasm was everything at Speakers’ Corner.
Derek was the warm-up act, though. The person everyone was waiting for was a prominent flat-earther. Maybe it was the irony of someone asking you to not believe your own eyes in the very place the author ofNineteen Eighty-Fourhad spoken, but the flat-earthers always attracted a good crowd. People would heckle and challenge and argue and throw eggs, and that was as it should be in a healthy democracy.
One of the people watching Derek was a well-dressed woman called Margaret Wexmore. She was in her mid-sixties but looked older. She was as thin as a pencil and fish-belly pale. Her hair was gunmetal grey. Margaret watched Derek with enjoyment. She seemed glad to be outside, as if it had once been an everyday occurrence but wasn’t any more.
While Margaret watched Derek, two Romanian pickpockets watched her. London had a problem with Romanian gangs. It had started with the 2012 Olympics. Organised gangs had brought in pickpockets and prostitutes and beggars to take advantage of the massive influx of visitors. Now pickpockets worked Speakers’ Corner all year round.
The Romanians watching Margaret were called Darius and Alexandru. They had been pickpockets their entire lives, but they weren’t like the loveable scamps found in Dickens’s novels. Darius and Alexandru were mean and aggressive and carrieddouk-douks, French-made pocketknives. They were usually assigned to Oxford Street. They hadn’t worked a static crowd for a long time. They were used to fast-moving, inattentive shoppers. People in a hurry. A crowd like this made them nervous. That they’d been given counterintuitive instructions hadn’t helped. Usually, they knew what they were looking for. People brandishing new iPhones. Men with Breitling watches, women with Prada handbags. Overt signs of money.
This time they had a photograph.
They were after awho, not a what.
Darius double-checked the photograph on his phone. The woman looked older and frailer now, but it was a good likeness. She was where they’d been told she would be, and she was alone. Darius deleted the photograph as instructed, then checked his watch. It was nearly time.
He glanced over his shoulder and checked if anyone was watching. Undercover cops sometimes prowled Speakers’ Corner. There was no one there. Just a homeless woman. Darius frowned. He didn’t like being watched. He glared at her, but she continued to stare. Her shoulders were stooped like a month-old daffodil, and she kind of shuffled without moving anywhere. She wore so much clothing she bulged. She could have been overweight, or she could have had the physique of a ballet dancer. It was impossible to tell. She wore a coat with a hood. The coat was stained with what looked like egg but was probably vomit. The bottom half of her face was covered with a surgical mask. It was blue and it was grubby. It looked like the kind of mask thatstartedglobal pandemics rather than ended them. She held a carrier bag in each hand. Darius wasn’t interested in what was inside them. Homeless people collected all kinds of shit and hung on to it like it was treasure.
The homeless woman continued to stare. Or maybe she was watching the crazy guy talking about the airport. It was hard to tell where she was looking underneath the mask and the hood. Darius put her to the back of his mind. Margaret Wexmore was important. The homeless woman wasn’t. Even if she saw what was about to happen, she wouldn’t go to the police. Homeless people never did.
It was nothing to worry about.