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

car they had used would be wiped clean and left in another area with the keys in the ignition. It would be stolen within the hour and would most likely be someone’s illegal taxicab within a few days.

The man from MI6 had driven Caroline in the Land Cruiser. He was an amiable man, tall and athletic with wavy blonde hair and young to have had ten years’ service at around thirty. He drove steadily, but they made timely progress. The SUV was equipped with large all terrain tyres and sailed over the numerous potholes with ease.

Caroline unloaded the Beretta as they drove. She was careful and meticulous to clean her fingerprints off the pistol with an oily rag she had found in the boot. She wiped both magazines as well, then placed the weapon and magazines in a carrier bag Ryan had given her. The men’s mobile phones went in too and after she had cleaned the knife and folded it using the cloth, she dropped both the knife and the cloth in as well and tied the handles.

“I’ll get rid of all of that,” Ryan said.

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to go to the police and tell them what happened?”

Ryan Beard shook his head. “The station chief was adamant not to let you get into their system,” he said. “If I could make it look like a crime and extract you cleanly, then that was what I had to do.”

“And the fact that MI6 is bailing out one of MI5’s agents won’t hurt them in the future,” she said. “Money in the bank.”

“I see you’ve been around long enough to know how it works,” Beard commented dryly. “Hey, I don’t make it up, I just do my job.”

She nodded. She knew how it was, who made the decisions and why. She also knew there was always an angle. MI6 would exploit that angle later. She looked at the bag in the foot well, already deciding it would come with her when she reached the hotel. Her DNA would be on it, and she imagined it winding up in an evidence bag under the British Embassy in Pretoria until someone deemed it useful.

She watched the road ahead widen. The shacks were trading every half-mile or so. She could see the highway slicing through the brush in the distance. She turned to Beard. It was nagging her, twisting her gut. She needed to know. “The photo I showed you,” she paused awkwardly. “You called him The Reaper.”

Ryan Beard watched the road ahead. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You’re close,” he said. “Judging from the pose.”

“He’s my fiancé.”

“Congratulations.”

“You called him The Reaper,” she repeated.

“I don’t think I should.”

“I’m not stupid,” she cut in. “Or naïve. Alex worked for MI6 for more than a dozen years. I know he’s killed people in his work, he’s been all over the Middle East, in all sorts of dirty wars and secret missions for MI6…” she trailed off. She had seen him kill, seen him show no mercy. But she had also seen his compassion, his kindness. King wouldn’t blindly follow orders, he would usually disobey them and follow his own lead, partly one of the reasons he was often out of favour with the top tier of MI5, but Ryan Beard’s expression when he had seen the photo, his sudden recognition of him, the nickname even, denoted there was more, something notorious.  It didn’t sit well with her and she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“I only knew him as The Reaper,” he said.

“His name is Alex,” she said. “Alex King.”

Beard shrugged. “Names are sometimes best left out of it. I knew he was an asset, would be told where to meet him, what sort of assistance to give. I saw him three times. I won’t say where, but they weren’t the nicest places on earth. He was quiet and unassuming, but I guess you already know that better than most.” He glanced across at her, but she remained impassive. “In recent years the men have changed. Much of what the dirty tricks departments sanction now in the middle east is done by heavily tattooed and bearded security contractors who are full of bravado and bullshit. Ex-special forces mercenaries who have made a fortune doing the things the CIA and MI6 don’t want to be tainted with in Iraq and Afghanistan, Syria even. Half their back story is bullshit, I even doubt half of them were in anything more than the regular army. The TA more like. But they’re deniable and expendable,” he paused, swallowed to clear his throat. “But he was old school. He would make contact, pull the file and the next thing you would know, the target was eliminated, and he was gone. He would infiltrate and work his exfiltration on his own. No favours asked, no involvement requested. It was good for the embassy, because the handlers ended up knowing nothing incriminating. There were never the calls for help in the middle of the night, or a lift to the airport to get recorded on CCTV. It was clean.”

“And, The Reaper tag?”

Beard shook his head. “He just breezed through, and it was done,” he said. “Nobody stood a chance. Like the Grim Reaper touching you. Your time was up.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said. She was finding it difficult to listen to and put it with the man she shared her bed with. She had only seen King kill in conflict. Since her previous boss had recruited him into MI5 to search for a missing nuclear warhead and eliminate an Islamic extremist group, much of his work had been intelligence gathering. She knew King had a past, but he never talked to her about it. Now she felt that she had betrayed his trust, gone fishing for something behind his back.

“I don’t know,