Surveillance reports? Ella bristled. So they’ve been watching me. The fact of it didn’t bother her so much as the realization that she’d had zero idea she was being tailed. She hadn’t even thought to check, in fact. It was embarrassing, after everything she’d learned in the field, that she’d allowed herself to switch off like that. To go back to the naïve young woman she had been before Gabriel, before The Group, before any of it.
But Redmayne’s next message quickly jolted her out of her self-reflection.
In your view, then, the deception has been successful?
And MacAvoy’s reply. Yes, sir. EP unaware, you are good to go tomorrow. Good luck.
Ella’s stomach lurched and a shudder of nausea ran through her. For a moment she feared she might vomit, but thankfully the physical sensations passed. Mentally, however, she was still in shock. She re-scanned the messages twice, to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. But no, the words were there in black in white.
Deception.
EP unaware.
What ‘deception’ was she ‘unaware of’? What the hell was going on?
‘So sorry about that.’ Mark Redmayne glided back in before Ella had a moment to process what she’d read any further. ‘An urgent business matter, I’m afraid. Now, where were we?’ He frowned, belatedly noticing how pale Ella had gone. ‘Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Ella, deliberately reverting to the exact tone and manner she’d been using before Redmayne left the room. ‘I felt a little nauseous earlier but it passed.’ Clearly she’d made a huge mistake over these last weeks, letting her guard down and forgetting her training. She wouldn’t let it happen again. You’re angry and concerned about Gabriel, she reminded herself.
‘We were talking about Gabriel.’ She leaned forward in a mildly confrontational manner.
Redmayne stiffened. ‘Were we? I thought we’d moved on.’
‘You may have,’ said Ella, forcing what she’d just read out of her mind for the moment. ‘I’d like to know when I’m going to be able to see him. We developed a way of working that—’
‘You will not be working with Gabriel again,’ Mark Redmayne cut her off, bluntly asserting his authority. ‘Ever. You are simply too important an asset. I can’t allow those sorts of risks to be repeated. I’m sorry.’
Like hell you are, thought Ella. But something about his tone gave Ella the sense that she must tread very carefully from here on in.
‘Is he really in London?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing.
‘Of course he is. I already told you.’ Redmayne played the ball back with a straight bat.
‘You haven’t hurt him, have you?’
‘Hurt him?’ Redmayne did his best to sound appalled. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Good God. Why would you ask that? What on earth has he been telling you?’
Unfortunately, nothing, thought Ella. Nothing concrete anyway. If only Gabriel had shared more with her about his life and background, she might have been able to find him herself. And help him if he needed it, which she increasingly suspected he did. Instead, she was being forced to rely on the word of a man whom she now knew for a fact had deceived her; and who was still deceiving her, with The Group’s active help, although about what and to what end, Ella wasn’t yet sure. In the past she’d questioned Gabriel’s portrayal of Mark Redmayne as some sort of duplicitous, power-hungry, stop-at-nothing fanatic. She’d assumed he was exaggerating. But now, her antennae were well and truly up.
‘Gabriel is in Londo
n, Ella, I can promise you that,’ said Redmayne, adopting a more conciliatory tone in the face of Ella’s sullen silence. ‘And, as far as I know, he’s safe and well, although his current mission is a challenging one, something he knew before accepting it. But I didn’t ask you here solely to talk about Gabriel.’
‘I understand that,’ said Ella, deciding it would be a smart move to back off a little herself. At this point she wanted to keep Redmayne talking. Perhaps he would unwittingly give away the nature of The Group’s ‘deception’? This secret that he and Katherine MacAvoy and God-knew-who-else were keeping from her.
‘Before we start thinking about your next mission for The Group, I was hoping you could debrief me in person about exactly what happened on Mykonos,’ said Redmayne. ‘A minute-by-minute walk-through, if you like, from your arrival on the island, through to Athena’s termination and finally your escape.’
‘But surely Gabriel walked you through all this already?’ Ella asked.
‘He did,’ acknowledged Redmayne. ‘In fact he turned in a very thorough written report, I’ll give him that. But Gabriel wasn’t in the room when Athena died. Things can get missed. I’d like to hear your first-hand account, Ella, if you don’t mind.’
Ella didn’t mind. She didn’t trust Mark Redmayne as far as she could spit, but it was still a release finally to go through everything hour by hour, moment by moment, laying it all out for another human being without emotion or self-judgment or omission, but as a story, a chronological sequence of factual events. Redmayne listened, calmly but with visible intensity. Occasionally he made notes in a small, Moleskine notepad that he brought out from a dresser drawer, but most of the time he simply sat still while Ella spoke.
Only when she reached the very end of the story – relaying Athena’s final, gasped but emphatic ‘no’ – ó?? – did the dynamic between them change.
‘I have been wondering about that,’ Ella mused. ‘Why do you think she said “no” when I asked if she remembered Rachel Praeger?’
‘Who knows?’ Redmayne gave a nonchalant shrug. But Ella had picked up on the stiffening in his neck and jaw. He was unnerved by the question. ‘Perhaps she was confused by the poison. She was dying, after all.’