The Society by Karen Guyler (best ebook reader android txt) 📕

“We’ve heard the name more frequently.” Gordon said. “How does Charles know it’s them?”

Eva shrugged. It didn’t hurt so much, even after today’s extra bruises, perhaps the words would be easier too. “He owes them money. I followed him. He met her in the middle of the night to warn her about them, he said, but he didn’t say why they’d be after her. When she left, I followed her, but she was knocked over, then suffocated. The man tried to kill me too, but I was lucky. The police have the full details if you need them, you can use the e-fit I did with them.”

“Did you hear her speak?”

Eva shook her head, she’d almost called her. But she had called Tony, who was also dead. “Aleksandr Oblov, you said. Is it the Russian spelling A-l-e-k-s-a-n-d-r?”

Gordon nodded.

“They’re connected, Charles, this woman, an Aleksandr, the Russian spelling, and a man called Tony who just died. I don’t know his surname.” She thought back to the other names in Charles’ hidden phone. “Hunter, what are the chances it’s another? Rory, Ted, Duncan, people who mean something to Charles. This Society, they could be after all of them. What happened to Oblov?”

“We don’t know enough.”

Eva pushed the close-up of Charles and Nancy aside. Nancy, not such a British name. “Background on the woman?”

“Works for the European headquarters of a global mining company, not senior enough for leverage there.”

“And their shared history?” Eva forced herself to ask, to look at Gordon for the response.

“No intersects we can see.”

Which told its own story, given how they’d been together. How Charles had looked at her. “What do you think this is?”

“We’re not sure, but we have this.” He showed her another photo of the street, clearer resolution, and, in the zoomed-in image, not much had changed in the shop windows. The satellite shot showed a man just holding onto a thin ribbon of white hair at the back of his head, talking to Charles as he looked now. He’d been there not long ago.

“Is it a charm school?” Eva shook her head. “Twenty years ago, maybe?” She looked at the more recent photo. “But now?” That’s ridiculous.

She looked at Nora then Gordon.

He played devil’s advocate. “Even then, with globalisation, what need is there to train operatives to pass as British citizens?”

“Has it changed,” Eva asked, “their raison d’être? It might be old school spy craft, but the endgame of those running them must be the same: to infiltrate the enemy and operate incognito to further their own state’s interests? Question is, who’s our enemy here?”

“Indeed.” Gordon nodded.

Inklings made concrete, the way Charles had told Luke his fake passport name, Charles’ life or death phone call. “Jesus.” Eva breathed.

“Unlikely to be him.” Gordon said.

She could understand now why Eric had come to see her. During the Cold War, it had been one of their best kept secrets that the Russians had been training operatives to pass as American for years. But something about these photos was a bit off. Something Eva couldn’t quite place. Could it? No, but it was the only answer that made sense. But no sense at all.

What was that saying? Eva would bet dollars to doughnuts Eric had reached the same conclusion as her.

“It’s definitely not the Russians, there are too many flags. The Russians aren’t training there to be British, the Americans are.”

36

It would be quicker to walk. Charles was counting out notes for the fare when the battered taxi leapt forward in the jolting kangaroo style that seemed to be the only way the driver knew how to drive. Elbow on the lowered window, he smacked his palm on the roof of the car, his ring tapping out a metallic ‘and we’re off’ in time to the vehicle’s lurching.

Charles fanned his face with his passport. Funny how it didn’t feel strange to be travelling as Maxwell Peyton again. He knew it might raise troublesome questions, but it had felt too compelling to not use it when CJ had asked for his new name.

Lily looked everywhere. “Dad, look! Did you see that? Did you see it? An actual snake charmer, with a snake. They really exist. I thought it was a made-up thing. Dad, Dad, did you see it?”

“No, but I’m sure we’ll have time to come this way again.”

“You have to let me take a photo of it.” Charles’ smile at her enthusiasm felt wrong. A heavier thing than all the trickery and planning. He stared past palm trees and motorbikes and Eastern-influenced buildings, seeing only black curls and dark blue eyes, ringless fingers on a white tabletop, a heart-stopping smile. Hearing the hope held within the words ‘give me twenty-four hours’, smashed with Eva’s abrupt ‘she just died.’

The logical part of his brain saw the irony that his wife, whose heart he’d been preparing to break, had instead broken his. His other half raged at her—she should have saved Nancy, and at himself—he should have warned her earlier. Then he’d be as excited as Lily being there and at a future together.

His breath shuddered out, not now. Time enough to grieve if Terry let them in, gave him the space he needed. It was a small mercy being with Lily, Charles didn’t have to pretend so hard he was okay. And she wouldn’t ask him pointed questions he couldn’t answer.

“I wish Mum was here.”

Except anything about Eva.

“Well, you know her work.”

“I know, I’m not a kid,” she said as though she were. “I still don’t get why she couldn’t have said goodbye.”

“We had to take off right then, so we didn’t lose our slot.”

“We could have waited for the next one, then Mum might’ve been able to come too.”

“You see that?”

Lily followed Charles’ pointing at nothing.

“What?”

“Keep watching, we might see it again.”

“How can I look for something if I don’t know what it is?”

For then, at least, Charles had circumvented the problem of his excuses for Eva.

The driver stopped like he’d run into a wall.