The Lynx Assassin (The Society Book 2) Read online

  3

  Eva’s harassed minder stopped in her headlong charge along the corridor and accused her. “The meeting’s about to begin.”

  Not really a meeting, was it? Eva wouldn’t mind attending a meeting. She kept her slower pace, pretending it was because this was the first time she’d been summoned to the Houses of Parliament, and not that she was rehearsing answers again to whatever they might ask her.

  “Here we are.” The woman knocked at a wooden door and opened it, ushering Eva in.

  “Eva Janssen.” She announced, closing the door as if she thought Eva might bolt and be unaccompanied in the hallowed corridors.

  Eva squared her shoulders against the room’s intimidation. Dark green-edged tables mirrored its squareness, making the space claustrophobic despite the ridiculously high ceiling. Maybe it was all the wood panelling that reached above her head and the heavily patterned orange wallpaper far above that which made her feel insignificant rather than the weight of the room’s history.

  Four faces looked up at her entrance from one side of the quadrangle table. The fifth was focusing downwards on the tablet he was holding.

  “Afternoon, Eva.” Gordon Stamford, head of the unit she wanted to join welcomed her. She smiled at her ally as he made the introductions, gesturing with his glasses at each of the people sitting with him. “I think you know Julian Fairweather.”

  Knew of was a better way of describing it. Few in British Intelligence had probably met the Deputy Director of MI6, even though most knew his name. He was the only person, apart from Gordon and herself, who knew it was The Society she was asking to join.

  “Nice to meet you.” She smiled at the man on Gordon’s right whose leanness made Gordon appear even broader than he was. He nodded back.

  “Edward Markham,” Gordon introduced the Foreign Secretary, a pudgy man in a black suit still entranced by his reading material. It was odd seeing him there in front of her, not on a TV screen. He’d been in the news non-stop since his appointment, so she felt like she knew him.

  “Sandra Locke, Thomas Pryor.” Gordon completed the introductions with the other woman in the room and the man representing something of diversity compliance.

  Eva returned their nods of greeting. The last trials were held in this building in the early nineteenth century, she reminded herself, it just felt like a firing squad today. They couldn’t hurt her, except by denying her the future she wanted. As she reached for the chair placed in the middle of the floor space, she pulled her hand back. With an awkward side-step she turned and sat instead behind the table opposite the panel.

  Fairweather began. “A reminder for those not privy to meetings here that what is said within these walls stays here.” He looked at Eva, but he didn’t need to reinforce the secrecy. She’d signed the Official Secrets Act twice now.

  “Ordinarily, your application would have been dismissed, given recent events, but you have quite an ally in Gordon. He can be very persuasive, hence we find ourselves here.”

  Where she had to shine. She flashed a thank you smile at Gordon, but he was watching Markham.

  “Why Eva Janssen? Why didn’t you take Charles Buchanan’s name when you married?” Edward Markham looked up from his tablet.

  How was that relevant?

  “A lot of women choose not to, I was one of those.” She wouldn’t tell him that keeping her father’s name was a way to stay closer to him. That was nothing to do with anyone there.

  “Did you have a good relationship with your husband?”

  “While he was my husband, of course.” Eva realised where this was going.

  Markham went straight there, for the kill. “Can you explain then how it’s possible you had no idea of his intentions towards the former President of the United States and most of the G20 leaders?”

  Perhaps he was so abrasive so no one would remember he was young to hold a ministerial post. Maybe it was just an unfortunate personality. She could understand why Gordon didn’t like him.

  “Are you married, Mr Markham?”

  He shook his head. “Only to my career.”

  “Do you have a significant other?”

  “I’m not the one being questioned here.” His hand reached up as though he was going to run it through his hair. His slicked back style was held in place by so much gel it was almost the glossy blue-black of ravens’ wings. As if thinking better of it, he instead patted the back of his neck.

  “They’re rhetorical questions.” Eva said. “You can be as close as partners to someone and not know everything about them. Trust is an important element of every relationship. I trusted my husband was the man I thought he was. And, yes, I made a mistake that he wasn’t. He never told me our supposed ally had trained him to activate against us and why would I ever think to ask that?”

  Fairweather leant around Gordon to address Markham. “As a point of clarification, we’ve ascertained that it was a personal vendetta that made him act, rather than him being activated against us.”

  It probably wasn’t the best time to point out that it didn’t matter to the thousands who’d died. “Because of what happened last October,” Eva rushed past the catch in her voice, hoping the panel hadn’t noticed it. “I’ve identified a pool of sleeper agents trained in America’s so-called charm schools. We can’t rule out that these agents won’t be activated to act against British interests at some point. They’re very well hidden, there will be others I’ve not yet found.”

  “It’s difficult to stomach,” Markham said, “far-fetched one might say.”

  “As is the idea that India and Pakistan would sign an accord agreeing with each other over their border, yet that’s what they’ve just done, thanks to you.”

  “Are you trying to flatter me into voting for you?”

  “No, Foreign Secretary, I’m stating fact. It’s a remarkable achievement, something many had said was impossible to realise, far-fetched even.”

  “How are you going to cope in the field being a single mother?” Sandra Locke joined the questioning.

  Was she allowed to ask that? Play the game, Eva reminded herself, but still she challenged it.

  “Do you ask that of fathers in their application process?”

  “If it’s applicable, yes.”

  The panel didn’t need to know about Eva’s sleepless nights, the frantic arguments she’d had with herself. The guilt she already felt over Lily, for wanting, needing, to make some kind of atonement for what Charles had done. For wanting to make a difference in the way her own father had through his journalism. For still wanting to make him proud of her.

  “Do you have a significant other to look after your daughter?” Locke insisted.

  Eva had to hold her mouth closed. In the four months since her husband had betrayed her, she was supposed to not only have wanted to find a new partner, but one she trusted enough with Lily? She might be eleven and believe she didn’t need looking after, but letting her go back to their flat and be alone for the tiny window between her getting out from school and Eva getting home pushed the boundary of what she felt comfortable with every day.

  Her reply was clipped. “I have childcare in place for my daughter.”

  “You were an analyst before, why not return to that post?” Locke nailed it.

  “I know I can make a bigger difference in the field. I have a lot of skills, I’d like to use them in that way.”

  “Why do you think we’re reluctant to appoint you?” Markham gestured at Gordon, his honesty a dart in Eva’s hopes. “Stamford here talks an excellent case for you, but we only have your say so that you had nothing to do with your husband’s genocide.”

  And the fact she’d got the word out to warn the people of Marrakech that Charles had poisoned the water. And that she’d orchestrated handing him over to the US Marshalls to answer for killing their President.

  The panel didn’t need to hear the safe words she’d been practising. She had to win them over as her otherwise the offer would mean nothing. Be
more spider, it was time to jump.

  She held his belligerent gaze. “I imagine you’re reluctant to appoint me for the same reason your opponents argue that you have no chance in the leadership race to become the new Prime Minister.”

  One panellist let out a small gasp, loud in the stunned silence.

  “You’re untested in that position,” Eva pushed on. “A good record as Foreign Secretary won’t mean much at number ten when you have to be decisive and act. Past performance is no judge of future and that’s why we’re here. You know you can do that job, I know I can be good in the field. We’re both in the position of trusting that those making these decisions about us will honour our self-belief, take our past achievements as a guide that we can do better.”

  Eva could feel the weight of the panels’ increased scrutiny flushing her face. Gordon studied his hands resting on the table in front of him. Probably wishing he had a whisky.

  As Fairweather drew breath, Markham cut across him. “The most extreme scenario I’d face as Prime Minister isn’t the same thing as putting your life on the line for your country. You’re prepared to leave your child an orphan?”

  Were they really so worried about Lily’s welfare, or was it a handy way to reject her?

  “As my father did me. I managed, I got past it.” Eva kept her gaze away from Gordon, sending him a psychic message to not call out her lie. “Obviously I don’t wish that for her, but I almost lost her when she was in the care of her father. I could as easily be run over by a bus,” a tiny falter. That was a bad example, Charles had nearly made that happen to her. Eva swallowed, making sure her words stayed unemotional. “We can’t let our better selves not act out of a fear of what if or maybe.”

  Markham gestured at the file in front of Fairweather. “What do you think your psyche evaluation says about you?”

  The pages and pages of psychometric tests and online assessments she’d completed had been the easy part. More off-putting had been the people who’d watched from the back of the room during fight training, while she shot so many bullets at targets that she fired guns in her dreams. She’d like to think it all reinforced that she was worthy of their trust and confidence.

  “Foreign Secretary.” Julian Fairweather fired a warning. “Those results will remain confidential.” He looked at Eva. “What do you think of your performance this morning in the hostage scenario?”

  “Are you familiar with Star Trek?” she asked.

  He shook his head. Eva looked at the other panellists. Thomas Pryor was the only one nodding.

  “Then you’ll have heard of the Kobayashi Maru?”

  He smiled, his teeth very white. “I have. You believe the scenario was as unsolvable as that?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  He laughed, a high-pitched delight. “The Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario given to test the mettle of prospective captains in the sci-fi series Star Trek. After failing it twice, our intrepid Captain Kirk, realising it was unwinnable, changed the computer program to give him an option to win. That was what your flak jacket was?”

  Eva nodded at Pryor’s question, aimed her answer at Sandra Locke. “To reiterate, I understand a field agent’s job can be dangerous, it’s in everyone’s interests for me to mitigate that risk as much as I can. I intend to give the Intelligence Service a good return on the time and money invested in my training so I can be an asset for a long time. I intend to come home to my daughter after every mission.”

  “No one told you to wear a flak jacket?” Gordon asked.

  Eva shook her head. “No one told me I couldn’t.”

  “Some might call that cheating.” Locke said.

  “Others might call it being prepared.” Eva tried to make it sound light-hearted, not a retaliation, nothing desperate there at all in her defence. But she could hear it behind her words.

  Julian Fairweather wrapped up the agony. “Thank you, Eva. No need to wait, you’ll know soon enough.”

  4

  Eva walked back to Gordon’s unit. No need to wait, did that mean the obvious? Did she just need a simple majority? She knew she could count on Gordon’s vote, maybe he’d get Julian Fairweather onside too. But the others? She’d managed to alienate the Foreign Secretary, and the woman. Thomas Pryor, had there been a connection there so he’d vote for her? Never suppose, her father’s words reminded her.

  At the top of St George’s Grove, she hesitated. Nora would want to know how it went. Eva wasn’t ready for those questions yet. She walked on to Vauxhall Cross instead. Approaching the boxy building that squatted alongside the Thames, one of the most overt intelligence headquarters in the world, always thrilled her. Today she felt it more desperately as she swiped through security. But they hadn’t taken away her temporary access yet.

  In the lift she sagged against the wall. She should have stuck with the answers she’d rehearsed.

  Eva jabbed at one of the lower floor buttons. Hiding in plain sight, it was a genius move, the surreptitious addition of floors below ground level far from public scrutiny. Most were harmless, a gym where they could train without attracting attention in the combat classes, studios in which to practise weapons training. She still had the bruises from her last session.

  But -3 was fast becoming her favourite.

  Movement sensitive lights welcomed her into the austere space. Eva pressed the doorbell beside the series of heavily locked cabinets that flanked one wall.

  “What will it be?” A disembodied voice asked.

  “Glock 17 please.” Eva’s choices were limited to two and a rifle wouldn’t do what she wanted today.

  One of the locker doors popped open, giving her safety glasses and ear defenders and the Glock with thirty bullets. Enough to work out her stress.

  She swiped through the door to a longer space, colder in there beneath bright lights. Cut into half a dozen cubicles, the open ends led to a run of what could have passed as bowling alley lanes. Apart from the lack of polished wooden floors and the human figure cut-outs at the end.

  Someone was in the far lane, so Eva took up position in the middle. The first time she’d held the preferred handgun for use in the field, the weight of it had surprised her. Now it felt good, solid. But she hadn’t had to trust it to save her life yet. She took up a two-handed stance.

  ‘You’ll never be in an optimum firing position in the field’ her instructor’s most repeated advice was her mantra.

  She shot and clipped the edge of the cut-out.

  ‘Your blood will be pumping’ she hit the cut-out.

  ‘Your heart will be racing’ another shot, closer.

  ‘You’ll probably be being fired upon’ better.

  ‘Add to that adrenaline spike the pounding of the life-or-death split decision you’ll have to make, it’s nothing like it is here’ a closer hit.

  ‘Fire, don’t fire, kill shot or not’ Eva emptied the magazine and reloaded.

  One-handed this time, she shot almost half with her right, switched to her left.

  She shouldn’t want this.

  Left was improving. She looked to have scored a couple of body hits close to the heart.

  She should be happy at a desk, for Lily’s sake.

  Her best shot yet with her left hand.

  But it was her life, too.

  A bullseye through the paper heart.

  Two bullets left. Would this be her last time in there? A good time then to nail the shot her instructor had told her was a visual effects cheat in movies. Hitting the return the cut-out button, she ducked down, counting. She sprang up and fired in one motion, one shot, her last.

  Still missed. Dammit. She ripped the cut-out down and tore it into three.

  In the ante-room a slim guy in his mid-thirties with brown hair and hazel eyes, wearing a black shirt and expensive suit, waited.

  “That’s a tidy score. I wouldn’t look so upset about it, you’ve only been at it five minutes.” Luke Fox grinned at her.

  “When did you get back?”

>   “Last night.”

  A locker door popped open, and she pulled out the empty magazine of the Glock and laid it on the cloth inside.

  “That looks sore.” She nodded at his face.

  He shrugged. “Just a scratch, I’ve had worse. Perks of the job. How’s it going?” He gestured at the space around them as if that was where they worked.

  “I’m about to find out.” Squeezing on the bar that held the slide in place, Eva pulled it forward off the top of the handgun and laid the bottom half alongside the magazine.

  “If it helps, I gave you a glowing reference.”

  “They called you as a witness?”

  He nodded. “I was on the ground with you in Marrakech. I saw your reaction to everything that went down, that’s what they wanted to know about.”

  “Why can’t they just believe I had no idea what Charles was planning, what he’d do to get back at Jed Carson? It was only luck Lily wasn’t poisoned, after all.” She pinched out the spring that held the barrel in place, disengaged it and laid the parts beside the others, then pressed the door closed.

  “I’m sure the new US President thanks you, as will whoever gets the PM position and all the other leaders new in post. They just can’t say so out loud.” He looked more serious. “They’re not what you expect as a master, the government. You’ll see.”

  Tiny matter that they had to accept her first.

  5

  “Good morning, sweetheart, you sleep okay?” Eva put Lily’s favourite breakfast in front of her, a plate of pancakes drenched in lemon and sugar.

  “You’re in a good mood.”

  Eva’s pretence was working. No messages from Gordon or his right-hand woman, Nora, had more to do with her being up early enough to make them both a decent breakfast than good intentions. She hadn’t been told not to go to St George’s Grove so she would, hoping it wasn’t for the inevitable debrief if they were kicking her out, something else to sign, her pass to give back.