The Phoenix

‘OK,’ said Gabriel calmly. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is.’

He nodded. ‘We’ll go now.’

They walked in silence back to the car. Opening the door for Ella in an uncharacteristically chivalrous display, he waited for her to buckle up before getting behind the wheel and starting the engine.

‘Dix will be sad you didn’t say goodbye,’ he observed as they headed back along the narrow lane towards the main road.

‘I’ll miss him,’ said Ella. ‘He’s a good man. Please tell him I’ll keep practicing the techniques he taught me, and that I’m very grateful for everything he did.’ Wistfully, she pulled the earpieces the professor had given her the day they met out of her pocketbook and laid them on her lap. ‘At least I’ll still have these to remember him by.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Gabriel, holding out his hand. ‘We’re going to need those back.’

‘What? No,’ said Ella, snatching the earpieces away. ‘These are mine. Dix gave them to me.’

‘While you were working with us,’ said Gabriel. ‘Anything conceived and/or manufactured in our labs is proprietary technology. You must return them.’

‘And what if I don’t?’ said Ella. She was growing heartily sick of Gabriel’s musts. ‘What are you going to do about it? Call the police? Report me for theft?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ she mocked him. ‘Of course you aren’t! Because you know as well as I do that the authorities will be a sight more interested in what you and your friends are doing up in those forests. Brainwashing people and half starving them and having them sign their lives away to a cult that sends them off to commit crimes and get murdered and calls that “justice”.’

With a scream of brakes and a terrifying spray of gravel, Gabriel brought the car to a halt. Turning off the engine he turned on Ella in white-lipped fury.

‘Is that really what you think? That we’re a cult? After all this time, after all that’s been done for you and shown to you and shared with you?’

Ella wanted to shout back that she hadn’t asked for anything to be ‘done for’ her. That all she wanted was to be left alone, to grieve for her family and get on with her life as best she could, in peace. But something about his face, his hurt, angry, ridiculously attractive face, held her back.

‘Do you think Professor Dixon is the kind of man you can brainwash?’ he demanded.

Ella had to admit that she didn’t. ‘But Dix is an exception.’

‘No!’ Gabriel roared. ‘Not an exception. Exceptional, yes. Brilliant. Committed. Honorable. Brave. But then so are all of our operatives, in their different ways. Michael Dixon had a life and a career back in England, Ella. He had endless opportunities to make money and an academic name for himself. But instead he chose to sacrifice those things for a greater good. He devoted his gifts to the good of others, to the betterment of mankind, to something bigger than himself.’

‘So you keep saying,’ Ella shot back, taking comfort in her own cloak of righteous indignation. ‘But what “greater good” are you talking about? You never explain it. You never explain anything, not really. Instead you ask me to put my life on the line for a “cause” without a name. Why should I, Gabriel? Why should I?’

Gabriel looked away for a moment. He was under direct orders not to divulge anything to Ella until the mission was underway. Until she was in the air, en route to the target, committed. Until it was too late for her to turn back. Gabriel had gone along with it up till now, but it had felt wrong from the beginning. Her question was a good one. Why should she go, based on nothing but trust and platitudes? She deserved an explanation. Not the whole truth perhaps. But she deserved something.

‘Everybody joins The Group, and takes these risks, for their own reasons,’ he began. ‘In my case it was a woman.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ said Ella, but the look on his face told her instantly this was not a time for quips.

‘When I was in college, I took an internship with a technology firm in India. I spent six months in Bangalore,’ said Gabriel. ‘I became close friends with a young woman there. Her name was Mira. Mira Saluja.’

Ella listened intently.

‘Mira was five years older than me. Brilliant, very beautiful, from an educated Punjabi family. We dated for a few months but her parents didn’t approve. They had already decided on a husband for Mira. I think maybe she would have gone against them and stuck with me if I’d made a commitment to her,’ he mused. ‘If I’d proposed marriage. But I didn’t. She thought I wasn’t serious about her.’

‘Was she right?’ asked Ella.

Gabriel looked pained. ‘No! I loved her. She was perfect. But I’m not the marrying kind.’

Ella nodded understandingly. ‘Me neither.’

‘In any case it didn’t matter in the end because, six weeks before my internship was up, Mira was brutally raped and murdered.’

He said it so matter-of-factly, Ella was shocked. ‘By whom? The Indian husband? Or his family?’