Saint Death

No sign of Milton.

Plato went out in a taxi the next day. They followed him. He picked up the empty Accord in the car park of a maquiladora on the edge of town. He drove it back home. They saw him take a rifle from the back of the car and lock it in a gun cabinet in his garage.

The gun that killed González?

It didn’t matter.

They had struck out.

Milton was a ghost.

Gone.

* * *

A

It did.

“My garden is full of weeds this year, the herbicide isn't working.”

“Perhaps you should use a shear to clip the weeds.”

“Shears are too indiscriminate; besides, weeds must be pulled out by the roots.”

“Thank you,” the operator said. “Please wait.”

After a moment, the call was transferred.

“A

She held the mouthpiece close to her mouth. “Hello, Roman.”

“How is Mexico?”

“Hot.”

“Did you find the man?”

“We did, but then we lost him again.”

“And now?”

“He is still lost. They are looking for him.”

“Are you still working on the case?”

“I believe so.”

“And do you think you can find him again?”

“It depends on him doing anything foolish like allowing himself to be fingerprinted.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Maybe. I have a better idea where he is headed now. And I know where he has been in the last couple of weeks. There might be something there that I can use. So maybe.”

“Shcherbakov wants to talk to you about him.”

“The colonel?”

“Your trip to Moscow is postponed. He is coming to speak to you instead.”

“In London?”

“Next Monday. Be at the usual place at eight. You will be collected.”

Now she really was nervous. The colonel was coming to London? “Fine,” she said.

“The man — you saw him?”

“Very briefly.”

“What did you make of him?”

“He had been beaten. But there is something about him. He is not the sort of man you would want to have as your enemy. Why is he suddenly so important?”

“The colonel will explain. But an opportunity has arisen that requires a special kind of operative. Someone just like him.”

“You know he won’t work for us?”

“We think he will. We have something — someone — that he wants.”

EPILOGUE

The Coyote

63

Milton looked up into the sky. It was midnight and the stars, spread out across the obsidian canvas like discarded fistfuls of diamonds, burned with a fierceness that was more vivid than usual. The Milky Way was so clear it looked like a soft footpath that had been placed with great thought between the constellations. He thought of those stars, dead for millions of years, their light only just now reaching the Earth. He paused for a moment to straighten out a kink in his boot and, realising that he was tiring, dropped his pack and allowed himself to sink back down into the sand. He sat and gazed up, lost in the glorious celestial display. The black blended away into infinity and unbeing and he felt utterly, and completely, alone, as if he was the only man in the universe. It was a sensation that he recognised, one that had been with him for most of his adult life, and certainly for the last ten years.

He was comfortable with that.

Part of his solitary journey through South America had been to give himself time to come to terms with what, he knew, was the only possible way that he could live out the rest of his life. He had done too many bad things to deserve happiness and, even if he could have accepted that he did deserve it, he was too dangerous to allow anyone else to drift into his orbit. That had been demonstrated to him in spades in London, with what had happened to Sharon and Rutherford. Burned half to death and shot in the head, all because they had allowed him to cross their paths. Death followed him, always close at heel, always avid, always hungry. And now Control had found him again and flung his agents at him from half a world away. What if he had allowed himself to draw closer to someone, perhaps one of the women whose bed he had shared over the last six months? What if he had allowed himself a wife? Children? The thought was preposterous. The Group would offer him no quarter and anyone who was found with him would be executed. It would have to be that way. What might he have told them? What secrets divulged? The shoe had been on the other foot before, and he knew what the orders would be. No loose ends.

No.

There had already been too much i

He could only ever be alone.

He took off his boot and massaged his heel. He had been travelling for thirty-eight hours straight. He had taken a couple of naps in the car, parked on the side of the road, but that was it. He was as tired as a dog. It was absolutely still, the quiet so deep that it was all-consuming, enough to make you wonder that you had gone deaf. As he listened to his own heartbeat keeping him company, he wondered whether death could possibly be more serene.

He had returned Plato’s car, left it in the car park of a maquiladora at one in the morning. The rifle was in the back, hidden beneath a travelling blanket. He exchanged it for a stolen Volkswagen and crossed the city. He drove carefully for fear of attracting attention, only accelerating properly once he was among the scrubland and the start of the desert. He had followed the highway for two hundred miles and then he had pulled over to the side of the road, soaking siphoned diesel into the upholstery and tossing in a match. With the heat of the burning car braising his cheeks, he turned to the north and set his face to America.

He walked.

Big Bend National Park was ahead, the Chisos Mountain range welcoming him to the border. Milton picked the distinctive shape of Emory Peak at the end of a deep valley as his waypoint. He walked. It hardly seemed to draw closer at all, but distance was almost impossible to judge, that was the way of it in the desert, and especially so at night. Milton was not concerned. He had navigated through bleaker landscapes than this.

He was close.

He walked.

The path led towards red-headed buttes at the foot of which red-headed vultures pecked at the carcass of a desert fox. He came across an abandoned railway track, an idle row of orphaned boxcars daubed with graffiti across the rust. The dawn was coming up now. The darkness was weakening, lilac blooming at the edges of the horizon, the light fading the constellations, the herald of the glorious golden desert sunrise that would be on him all too quickly. Somewhere on the mesa, a coyote howled. The long, mournful wail was followed by a yipping chuckle until it almost sounded as if the dog was laughing.

He kept walking.

John Milton trudged across the border as the light turned from black to mauve, the sun coming around again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Dawson works in the film industry. He lives in Wiltshire.

DEDICATION

To Mrs D and FD.