Sean was so difficult to read accurately at the best of times, but now he was impossible. The other trainees stood and shuffled their feet. A few of the blokes were grinning like they were watching a Pit Bull terrier who’d been unexpectedly matched against a toy poodle.
Before I could form a plan, Sean lunged forwards. I saw the blow coming, but did nothing to avoid it. I guess a part of me wanted to know how far he was prepared to go with this charade.
I soon found out.
A moment later I was levering myself off the mat and wiping a trickle of blood away from the corner of my mouth. If looks could kill, they would have been zipping Sean into a body bag right about that point.
“Come on, Charlie. Your principal’s dead now. I’ve just disposed of you and I’ve stuck a knife in his guts. I let you out on the job and you’ll be dead inside a week. Get up. Do it again.”
I made it to my feet slowly and took up a stance. Going down the first time had sparked my ribs into grumbling complaint. I’d no desire for a repeat performance, but I’d no idea of the game plan Sean had agreed with Gilby. Until he’d brought me up to speed I knew I was going to have to play by the rules I’d agreed. The injustice of it burned.
Sean came at me again. This time I blocked him and slid out of harm’s way. Was it me, or did his movements seem more obvious than they once had?
The last time I’d done any serious hand-to-hand with Sean, he’d walked all over me, but that was years ago. I’d learned some hard lessons since then. And a whole host of dirty tricks. It dawned on me that if I was prepared to really let rip, if I stayed on the ball, and I was lucky, I could probably take him.
But what about the job I’d set out to do here?
The prospect of imminent humiliation battled against the danger of exposure. One or the other. There had to be a loser.
In the end, I let him take my pride.
When I hit the mat a second time, he graciously gave me a hand up. Glanced at his watch as he did so. “OK everyone, that’s it for this time.”
Nobody met my eyes as they filed out. As I went to walk past him, Sean touched my arm, but when he spoke, his voice was dispassionate, detached. “You should get that lip seen to,” was all he said.
I nodded, swallowed the hurt and angry words that were bubbling to the surface, and moved away without speaking.
Twenty-three
There was a short gap before we had to be down at the ranges for the next lesson. It gave me time to go up and mop at the cut on my lower lip with paper towel from the bathroom, and grab my jacket.
My lip seemed to have stopped bleeding anyway, but it was swollen in the centre like a collagen-enhanced starlet. I looked in the mirror and my pale reflection stared back at me, much bruised around the eyes. The sight of my own defeat annoyed me, put some steel back into my spine.
Sod this! You can’t get away with treating me like this, Sean.
What did breaking cover matter any more? Tomorrow, Venko was coming and if we didn’t work as a team we were going to be dead. Whatever game Sean was playing, when it came to the crunch I needed to know if I could trust him.
After their earlier attention, Elsa and Jan seemed to be avoiding me, but I would have ignored them anyway. I made my way back downstairs with brisk determination.
Sean was in the hallway, deep in conversation with Hofmann. If the hand movements and gestures were anything to go by, they were discussing some finer point of combat technique. It surprised me to note in passing from the big German’s body language that he was listening with an almost deferential intent. Neither man looked pleased when I stalked up between them.
“Mr Meyer,” I said, forcing out a smile through gritted teeth, “I wonder if I could have a moment of your time?”
Sean regarded me darkly for a second, then nodded with a show of reluctance that was a little too convincing. “If you’ll excuse me?” he said to Hofmann and followed as I marched out through the main doorway.
I carried on walking round to the side of the house where we were out of immediate sight, then wheeled to face him.
“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on here?” The anger forced a crack in my voice. I swallowed it back. Dammit, I would not cry in front of him!
Sean dropped a shoulder against the stonework and folded his arms across his chest. For a moment he didn’t speak and that infuriated me all the more.
“Come on, Sean!” I snapped. “You sent me in here. You wanted answers about how Kirk died. Well, I’ve done my part. I’ve found out what you wanted to know. What the hell have I done to warrant that kind of—”
“You lied to me, Charlie.” His voice was so soft, so quiet, but it cut me down better than any shout.
Oh. Shit.
My anger backed and died, dragging my shoulders down with it. I didn’t need to ask him to explain any further than that. I knew exactly the lie I’d told him, if not in so many words, then certainly by omission.
“How did you find out?” I asked in a small voice. I couldn’t entirely keep out the bite as I added, “Madeleine?”
Sean threw me a warning glance. “No, as it happens,” he said and his grim tone told me that Madeleine’s silence on the subject had not met with his approval either. Then he let his breath out hard through his nose. “Does it matter how I found out? What matters is that I know and you should have been the one to tell me.”
It was the note of accusation in his voice that did it. The pain in my body now extended right the way to my soul. Before I knew it I’d pushed Sean roughly against the stone at his back, with my arm across his throat and my face close in to his. He could have stopped me, but he didn’t do it.
“What did you want me to tell you, Sean?” I hissed. I wanted to hurt him, like he was hurting me. I bunched my fists into his T-shirt at the shoulder, gripped until my hands ached.
“Did you want me to just come right out with it? That the four of them beat me up, and then they held me down and they raped me, one by one?” I said, deliberate, my eyes fixed on his face. “When would have been a good time to break that kind of news, hmm? You tell me. Over a quiet drink perhaps? Dinner?”
He made an impatient gesture, a shrug like a horse trying to twitch off flies, then he stilled and I felt his muscles give.
“I don’t know how you should have done it, Charlie, OK?” he said, sounding unbearably tired, as though he’d been holding out some last slim hope that it had all been a mistake. “All I know is that you kept it from me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I let go of him, stepped back not meeting his eyes. It suddenly struck me how cold it was. My jacket wasn’t enough to keep it out and when I wrapped my arms around my body I discovered I was shivering.
“How could I bloody tell you?” I said. “At the time I thought you’d abandoned me, and then later you thought I’d accused you of rape because they’d thrown me out of the unit.” My voice cracked again. “You actually believed that of me, Sean. The army fed it to you, and you swallowed it whole.”
“I didn’t abandon you, Charlie, you know that,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone. “But how could I not believe them when all the evidence at the time was pointing that way?”
The anger clawed back up my throat like bile.
“Oh well, if you were working on evidence alone, I would have been twice damned, wouldn’t I?” I threw at him. “After all, the evidence was shown to prove that I decided to indulge in a gang-bang with the four of them, then panicked when things got a bit rougher than I was expecting. How’s that for fucking evidence? In more ways than one.”