The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

prison,” he said. “For manslaughter. I had served a year, then one day I got a visitor.”

“That man?”

“Peter Stewart. Former Parachute Regiment, then SAS before he turned MI6 special operations officer. He trained his men, even worked with them on assignments. He told me what he could do for me, what my life could be like and I went with it. I’d made some enemies when I lived in London, and again in Portsmouth. I did some unofficial boxing matches, won when I should have lost, threw a fight when I should have won. I made a lot of money on the side bets, but the wrong people lost a fortune. I was a marked man. And there’s no place worse than prison for a marked man. They always get someone to you and you can’t get away. My time was running out, so I leapt at the chance. I was busted out of Dartmoor Prison, the body of a homeless man who died on the streets of hyperthermia was dressed in my clothes and dropped in a bog on Dartmoor and the autopsy of that poor fellow was passed off as one Mark Thomas Jeffries…”

Caroline reached out and touched his hand. “But you’re a different man now, Alex. And you’ll always be Alex to me.”

“Am I different though?” King didn’t take his eyes away from the fire. “I’ve killed people, done terrible things.”

“For your country, though. A soldier in secret wars. Wars which could cost our country everything,” she paused. “Look at your first mission for MI5, with Charles Forrester. There wouldn’t be a country now, had Zukovsky got his way.”

King sighed. “I can’t leave Mark Jeffries behind. He’s always there.”

“No,” she said. “Alex King is always here.” She squeezed his hand. He was on his way to maudlin, and she wasn’t having him do that. “Tell me about that man, Stewart.”

King nodded. “He was my recruiter, my mentor. I spent so long thinking I owed him my life, that he betrayed me, and I just couldn’t see it.”

“Betrayed you, how?”

“It was before I worked for Five. Some people furthering their private business interests using government funds and assets thought I knew too much. They persuaded Stewart to come down on one side of the fence or the other. He was nearing retirement, needed the security, and sold me down the river.” He shrugged. “We’re all collateral in the end, I should have been ready for it.”

“But you trusted him. In your mindset, he rescued you and changed you. He undoubtedly had a part in creating the man in front of me today, the man I fell in love with. A man with a sense of justice and duty, of doing the right thing, no matter what path must be taken to get there. So, his betrayal was everything to you. You wouldn’t have seen it coming, and it wouldn’t have been easy to get over,” she paused thoughtfully. “So why the hell is he here now?”

King took a drink, draining a third of the glass. He placed it back on the glass table and shifted in his chair. The alcohol and the fire were making him tired. He decided he’d had enough to drink for tonight. He looked back a Caroline and said, “Last year was madness, it created a large footprint.”

“Footprint?”

“In South Africa. You confided in that man Ryan Beard, the MI6 contact who helped you out after you had your run in…”

“I was abducted and driven to somewhere they could kill me and get rid of my body. I killed two men!” she said harshly. “And then I was ambushed and only just made it out alive…”

“There’s no medals in this game,” he said sharply. He caught her expression, softened his tone somewhat. “Whatever happened, MI6 caught wind of my existence. When Forrester took me on, I wasn’t too bothered about using my name. Everybody involved in my last days in MI6 were either dead or retired. There were only a few people who even knew of my existence. I underestimated two things. The first was that a young man who literally drove me to an embassy on two occasions would be handed a picture of me and actually remember my face.”

“And the other?” Caroline was irked. She had known from King’s initial reaction when he found out what she had done, that she had made a mistake. She had just hoped it would be ok.

“And the other thing was I went too far off the reservation last summer. Searching for you, faced with the game Milankovitch forced me to play, I created a trail. That trail would have been fine, but for a loose end I failed to sever almost three years ago…”

“Peter Stewart,” she said quietly.

“I was intent on killing him for what he did to me,” King paused, casting his eyes to the fire. “But when the crunch came, I couldn’t see what difference it would make. The man had become a father-figure to me over the years. I walked away. But I had no idea that he would come back out of retirement. He was desperate for recognition within the new MI6. He had no contacts worth a damn, but when MI6 found the link in South Africa, he must have stepped up and volunteered what he knew. Now MI6 have the Milankovitch affair hanging over Director Amherst, who in turn, has sent me up here on this fool’s errand to clear up things for MI6. Amherst has his balls in a vice, and the new director of MI6, Villiers, is slowly turning the key.”

“And Stewart killed the person who tried to kill you?”

King’s mind filled with the image of the man’s face blowing out, the sight of Stewart standing behind him, casually lowering his gun. No chance to overpower the man, get some answers out of him. King had