Burning Angels

62

They’d ordered an in-flight meal and it proved surprisingly good. Pre-packed, frozen and microwaved – but for all that eminently edible. Narov had gone for the seafood selection – a platter of smoked salmon, prawns and scallops, served with an avocado salsa.

Jaeger watched curiously as she proceeded to push the food around her plate, rearranging it with seemingly exacting precision. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her do this segregation act. She didn’t seem able to start eating until each type of food had been moved into a place where it couldn’t touch – contaminate? – the others.

He nodded at her plate. ‘Looks good. But what’s with quarantining the smoked salmon from the salsa? You worried they’re going to fight?’

‘Foods of differing colours should never touch,’ Narov replied. ‘The worst is red on green. Like salmon on avocado.’

‘Okay… but why?’

Narov glanced at him. The shared mission – the sheer emotional intensity of the past few days – seemed to have softened her hard edges a little.

‘The experts say I am autistic. High-functioning, but autistic nonetheless. Some people term it Asperger’s. I am “on the spectrum”, they say – my brain is wired differently. Hence red food and green cannot touch.’ She glanced at Jaeger’s plate. ‘But I don’t much care for labels, and frankly, the way you shove your food around like a cement mixer makes me want to be sick. Rare lamb speared on a fork with green beans: I mean, how can you do that?’

Jaeger laughed. He loved the way she’d turned it right back on him.

‘Luke had a friend – his best buddy, Daniel – who was autistic. The Ratcatcher’s son, in fact. Great kid.’ He paused guiltily. ‘I said “had a friend”. I meant “has”. Luke has a friend. As in present and still very much with us.’

Narov shrugged. ‘Using the wrong tense doesn’t affect your son’s fate. It won’t determine whether he lives or dies.’

Were Jaeger not so used to Narov by now, he could have punched her. The comment was typical: lacking in empathy; a bull-in-a-china-shop kind of remark.

‘Thanks for the insight,’ he shot back, ‘not to mention the sympathy.’

Narov shrugged. ‘You see, this is what I do not understand. I thought I was telling you something you needed to know. It is logical and I thought it would be helpful. But from your viewpoint – what? I have just been rude?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Many autistic people are very good at one thing. Exceptionally gifted. They call it savant. Autistic savant. Often it is maths, or physics, or prodigious feats of memory, or perhaps artistic creativity. But we are often not very good at many other things. Reading how other – so-called normal – people tend to think isn’t our strong point.’

‘So what’s your gift? Beyond tact and diplomacy?’

Narov smiled. ‘Hardly. I know I am hard work. I understand that. It is why I can seem so defensive. But remember, to me you are very hard work. For example, I do not understand why you were angered by my advice about your son. To me it was the obvious thing to say. It was logical and I was trying to help.’

‘Okay, I get it. But still – what’s your gift?’

‘I excel at one thing. I am truly obsessed by it. It is hunting. Our present mission. At its most basic you could say killing. But I do not see it that way. I see it as ridding the earth of unspeakable evil.’

‘Mind if I ask a further question?’ Jaeger prompted. ‘It’s kind of… personal.’

‘For me, this entire conversation has been very personal. I do not normally speak to people about my… gift. You see, that is how I think of it. That I am indeed gifted. Exceptionally so. I have never met another person – a hunter – as gifted as I am.’ She paused and eyed Jaeger. ‘Until I met you.’

He raised his coffee. ‘I’ll drink to that. That’s us – a brotherhood of hunters.’

‘Sisterhood,’ Narov corrected him. ‘So, the question?’

‘Why do you speak so oddly? I mean, your voice has a kind of odd, flat, robotic ring to it. Almost like it’s devoid of feeling.’

‘Have you ever heard of echolalia? No? Most people haven’t. Imagine when you are a child, you hear words spoken but all you hear is the words. You do not hear the stresses, the rhythm, the poetry or the emotion of the language – because you can’t. You do not understand any of the emotional inflexions, because that is not how your brain is wired. That is how I am. It was via echolalia – mimicking but not understanding – that I learned to talk.

‘Growing up, no one understood me. My parents used to sit me in front of the TV. I heard the Queen’s English spoken, plus American English, and my mother also used to play Russian movies for me. I didn’t differentiate between the accents. I didn’t understand not to mimic – to echo – those on screen. Hence my accent is a mishmash of many ways of speaking, and typical of none.’

Jaeger speared another succulent chunk of lamb, resisting the temptation to do the unthinkable and add some green beans. ‘So what about the Spetsnaz? You said you served with the Russian special forces?’

‘My grandmother, Sonia Olschanevsky, moved to Britain after the war. That was where I was raised, but our family never forgot that Russia was the mother country. When the Soviet Union collapsed my mother took us back there . I got most of my schooling there and went on to join the Russian military. What else was I to do? But I never felt at home, not even in the Spetsnaz. Too many stupid, mindless rules. I only ever truly felt at home in one place: the ranks of the Secret Hunters.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Jaeger announced. ‘The Secret Hunters – may our work one day be complete.’

It wasn’t long before the food lulled both of them to sleep. Jaeger awoke at some stage to find Narov snuggled close. She had her arm linked through his, her head on his shoulder. He could smell her hair. He could feel the soft touch of her breath upon his skin.

He realised that he didn’t particularly want to move her. He was growing used to this closeness between them. He felt that stab of guilt again.

They’d gone to Katavi posing as a honeymooning couple; they were leaving looking like one.