A Thousand Suns

Chapter 16 Watched

Chris walked out of the rear entrance of the motel towards the quayside parking area. He was halfway across the parking lot on his way towards the Cherokee, weaving his way between two ‘Runcies Fish’ delivery trucks parked side by side, when he saw them.

He surprised himself with his sudden paranoid decision to duck back into the evening shadows between both vehicles. That telephone call yesterday out of nowhere from the mysterious ‘Mr Wallace’ had definitely done a number on him. He was getting jittery. Another week in Port Lawrence and he could see himself hugging his knees in a closet and wearing his favourite tinfoil hat.

The two men stood beneath one of the bright floodlights that lined the jetty. A sharp pool of white light picked them out in stark clarity. His first impression was that they had the appearance of ex-military types. Both were physically fit. They looked like they had the kind of whippet-lean musculature that comes from decades of genuine fitness, not the bloated Mr Universe-like bulk that any fool can build up in a few months with the help of a fitness instructor and a supply of steroids.

He had seen idiotic thugs like that in virtually every bar in Sarajevo. Pumped up wannabee-John McLanes, some of them ex-soldiers, many more who had never been, all attracted like wasps to a Coca-Cola can, looking for mercenary work. Not for the money, but for the thrill. Most of them had signed up to fight for the Kosovans.

Chris had done an assignment with FHM magazine, for an article entitled ‘The Shooting Gallery’. He had photographed quite a few of these thrill-chasers for the piece. Most of them had revelled in the attention, posing in their combat fatigues, brandishing their guns for the camera and enjoying the temporary celebrity status. They had boasted openly about the action they’d seen, their kills, or ‘frags’ as some of them casually euphemised the act of killing. They discussed their bloody business like excited trainee managers after a paint-ball game.

It hadn’t taken him very long to work out that he was dealing with the poseurs, the weekend warriors, big boys playing at being soldiers, and he soon learned to take with a pinch of salt most, if not all, of their Hollywood-inspired combat claims.

He’d moved on to find the genuine mercenaries in that wrecked city and had the shit kicked out of him on one occasion when he’d pulled out his camera in a bar. The three men that had cracked several of his ribs, split his lip and trashed his camera, they’d been the real deal. They had worn smart casual clothes — sports-casual, not combat fatigues — and they’d looked a lot like the two men across the quay, standing patiently under the light.

Chris watched them. They were talking and looking around, looking for something or someone. There was no mistaking their furtive manner; no mistaking the fact that they looked like pros… not just a couple of ‘scroats’, as an old police buddy of his used to refer to suspicious-looking civvies on the street, up to no good.

Chris found himself debating whether cowering here in the shadows between these two trucks was paranoia gone too far or a sound precaution. On the one hand, he felt there was already enough to this bomber story to speculate that even after sixty years some agency out there might want to ensure it wasn’t splashed across tomorrow’s newspapers. On the other hand, whatever happened, it all went off sixty years ago. Who would possibly care now? Who would care enough to send out a couple of heavies?

Chris shook his head. It probably was paranoia on his part, and he was glad Mark wasn’t here. The bastard would relentlessly take the piss out of him for wimping out like this.

His phone chose this moment in time to vibrate enthusiastically and trill the Simpsons’ theme.

In the relative silence of the jetty, it carried effortlessly across to the two men standing near the edge. They both spun sharply around.

‘Shit!’ Chris cursed as he fumbled to pull his phone out of his jeans and kill it.

He looked up to see the men walking warily towards the trucks. One of them gestured to the other to check out the right-hand side of them, while he veered towards the left.

Chris, panic beginning to grip him, finally eased the damned thing out of his front pocket, only to let it slip through his fingers and clatter noisily to the ground.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he whispered as he squatted down and patted the gravel in search of it. The shrill theme tune came to an abrupt end, which was a small relief, but the damage was done. The two men were almost upon him. He looked under one of the trucks; there was enough space to slide beneath, but he dared not leave his phone on the ground for them to find. As they drew close enough to hear their footfalls, Chris redoubled his efforts, feeling the uneven ground for the phone.

But it was no good, and they were too close.

He quickly dropped to a prone position and crawled as quietly as he could under one of the trucks just as one of the men appeared as a silhouette in the space between both of the vehicles.

A shaft of bright torchlight illuminated the ground beside Chris, throwing into sharp relief the scuff and drag marks he had left in the pebbles; a telltale sign of Chris’s hasty scramble for cover. Chris could now see where his phone was. It nestled just behind the front tyre of the truck opposite, half in, half out of view.

Shit.

All he needed now was for the previous caller to try his number again.

The beam of torchlight moved up and down the narrow gap between the trucks with a slow and steady thoroughness.

‘No one,’ he heard one of them say.

‘Check in the drivers’ cabs,’ the other said.

The torchlight flickered wildly, and shadows leaped as the beam was aimed into the cabs of both trucks in turn.

‘No one inside, but there’s a phone up here on the dash. See it?’

‘Yeah. Maybe that was it.’

‘Shit, that was a loud ring.’

The torch snapped off, and he heard the crunch of feet on gravel as the two men slowly headed back down towards the jetty’s edge. Chris watched them as they returned to where they had been standing, resuming, it seemed, a vigil.

They’re waiting for Will’s fishing boat to come back in, aren’t they?

Yes, it looked like they were. Word must have got around that Will had taken out a couple of divers to the plane wreck; that’s how McGuire had found out in all likelihood. The old boy had been talking for sure, then.

With great care, Chris eased himself out from beneath the truck and hastily reached out for his phone. His fingers quickly located it and before it could ring again he switched it off, letting out a sigh of relief as he did so.

It was nearly time to meet ‘Wallace’ at Lenny’s. He looked anxiously back at the two men down by the jetty. If they really were here to keep things quiet, then not only were he and Mark potentially in danger, but this poor old sod Wallace too.

And hadn’t he already sounded a bit uneasy on the phone when he’d called you out of the blue?

Wallace could be dangerous. He may be a harmless old man with the best of intentions to blow the whistle on some wartime secret, but if there were spooks like these watching him from afar, then he was leading them, albeit unintentionally, right to Chris.

Not exactly an encouraging thought.

Shit, Chris, you muppet. If the CIA or whoever wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.

Fair point. He made his way towards Lenny’s, casting one last glance back over his shoulder as he crunched quietly out of the parking lot, and walked briskly up the dark cut-through between a couple of buildings and onto Devenster Street.