Cold Heart Read online

  Alex took a long, deep breath and desperately tried to calm his anxious woes. There were a dozen or so other workers scattered around the half-full café, from check-in staff to security workers along with another few baggage handlers.

  Out of nowhere a security staff member rushed into the cafe. She shouted hysterically over at two coworkers who were closest to the big TV screens up in the corner. She was shouting at them to change the channel from some dull muted soap opera to the 24-hour news and do it fast.

  For a brief micro-second Alex imagined that it might be about something else, some other tragic breaking news hysteria. But in his heart, he knew exactly what the news story was going to be about.

  “Put the news on quickly!” the woman cried again. “There's been a crash. A big fucking crash!”

  “Where? Here?” cried one worker.

  “Air traffic just announced they lost contact with a flight,” the security woman continued. “But the news is saying that one has gone down a few hundred miles off the coast.”

  The café of workers all glanced at each other, then up at the TV screens in utter shock and horror. Alex remained completely still and silent. He couldn’t even bring his eyes up to look for a second. He continued to nurse his coffee with his head bowed down. A few minutes later, Alex swiftly left the café and anxiously returned to the cleaning cupboard. He dialed the number on his phone again. The same mobile number for the woman holding his family hostage.

  The woman picked up but deliberately didn’t say a word. Instead, she waited patiently for Alex to say something first.

  “It's done. Now give me the damn address, you devil incarnate.”

  ***

  Alex, still wearing his airport uniform, drove into an old, derelict industrial estate on the south side of Cairo. The old gates out front were half-open, just like the woman on the phone said they would be. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around and it looked as if the place hadn’t been used or worked in for many a year.

  It had been easy enough for Alex to leave his work mid-shift. For a start, every single plane at the airport had been grounded indefinitely until the authorities found out exactly what had caused the Russian aircraft to be brought down midflight. Of course, they’d suspected a bomb right away and more security teams had been dispatched to the airport so that every other aircraft could be grounded and thoroughly searched for other such devices. It was a precautionary act that had to be followed to the letter.

  Alex waited impatiently in his car, nervously drumming his fingers on the wheel. When he wasn’t doing that he was violently biting at his nails, gnawing them down to the skin until they were red raw and even bleeding. If he hadn’t given up smoking at the turn of the year, he would have smoked half a packet already. When he wasn’t glancing in his rear-view mirror waiting for the woman and his family to arrive, he was gazing at a picture of his beautiful, smiling wife and son still stuck to the dashboard of his car.

  Suddenly another car pulled into the old warehouse and right up beside his own. It was the woman who had taken his family hostage. She was still wearing her balaclava and hoody, but to his disappointment, nobody else was inside the car with her. Unless of course she had them tied and locked up in the boot.

  The woman, leaving the engine running, opened her car door and stepped out into the scorching sun. Before Alex could say a single word, the woman spoke first.

  “Get into the car and drive.”

  “Where is my wife? Where is my son?” Alex cried.

  “You’ll see them soon enough.”

  “You said they were going to be here? Where the hell are they?”

  “I had to be sure you weren't followed. Now shut up. Get in. And drive.”

  Alex reluctantly climbed out of his car. He was going to take the picture of his wife and son with him but then thought better of it. He would see them soon enough.

  The masked woman climbed into the backseat of her car. She pulled out her gun and waited casually and patiently for Alex to climb into the driver’s seat directly in front of her. Alex hesitated. Was this really the right thing to do? he couldn’t help but think. Yet with a gun pointing right at the back of his skull and his family still in jeopardy, the British lady was holding all of the cards.

  Alex finally climbed into the driver’s seat and drove the car out of the warehouse in silence while the woman proceeded to direct Alex through the old back streets of Cairo like she had lived in the city her entire life. Alex felt surprised that she knew the old narrow roads so well. She had certainly done her homework to say the least.

  The more he drove in silence the more he wondered what she looked like, this woman. This mysterious, masked psychopath. Was she from Egypt? She didn’t sound like it. She had a strange British accent, but perhaps it was all just an act. Of what he’d seen of her figure, she’d had a firm, fit, and athletic body. Under other circumstances… Alex swiftly shook away his natural animalistic urges and wandering stupid thoughts, and focused on his wife and child instead. That was what really mattered now and not his easily distracted caveman imagination.

  Finally, the woman directed Alex to drive up and into an old, abandoned apartment building. They were just outside Cairo in a small, distant northern suburb, a place he didn’t recognize in the slightest but had briefly heard about in gossip. It was a very poor and derelict area. He was sure it had been demolished years ago and well on its way to renovation, but obviously not. Some of the ancient apartment blocks were still standing and had no signs of being taken down.

  Alex parked the car and turned off the engine. Both he and the woman exited the car, the woman climbing out first still pointing her gun straight at the back of his head. The woman then motioned for Alex to start walking in front of her and into the abandoned building. Alex did what he was told without question.

  Inside the elevator, its car was missing and a looming darkness took its place in the lonely shaft. It had probably fallen, crushing itself down in the deep basement below and a long time ago by the look of it.

  They climbed the dark and filthy stairwell instead with its boarded-up windows, all the way to the fifteenth floor. Graffiti, dirt, dust, bird nests, and bird shit followed them every step of the way. On the fifteenth floor, the woman motioned Alex towards the third of four boarded-up apartment doorways. The door they approached was unlocked. Alex entered inside the stale, dark old apartment. Anxiously, he glanced every direction possible as he stepped inside the dusty hallway, desperately searching for any sign of his family.

  The masked woman, keeping her distance with her gun still pointed firmly at his back, followed him inside. Alex peered into the dark living room first. He froze as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and he saw a large table filled with bomb-making equipment. Still, there was no sign of his family. Everything was so deathly quiet too, until he moved his feet again and the crunching sound of broken glass and layers of peeled paint on the floor, echoed out from beneath him as he walked.

  “Where the hell are they?” Alex cried. He couldn’t bare the silent tension any longer.

  “The bedroom. Back there,” the woman calmly stated, egging Alex further along the dark corridor.

  Alex walked into the dark bedroom. The windows were boarded up there too, yet with just enough light seeping in from the cracks to see the shadows and outline of the various shapes and objects inside.

  As his eyes slowly adjusted, he saw the dark shapes of his wife and son. They were lying peacefully still upon the old bed, seemingly sleeping and huddled up together. For a brief second, it crossed Alex’s mind that they had been given some kind of strong sedative to knock them out cold.

  That crazy, psycho bitch, Alex thought. What he wouldn’t give to have time alone with her inside a room without windows and doors and no dangerous weapons getting in their way. All he would need were his two fists. He’d enjoy that. Beating her over and over. Pounding her entire face until not even her own mother would recognize her. If she was indeed pretty under
that mask, then she sure as hell wouldn’t be by the time he’d finished with her.

  Alex snapped out from his thoughts of vengeance and approached his sleeping family. His heart was beating in his mouth with both excitement and dread that he’d finally been reunited with them. Whatever happened from here onwards in their lives, they could deal with it together as a family.

  “Salma... Ali? It’s me.”

  Alex crouched gently down beside them and hugged them both. Strangely, they were still unresponsive. But it could just be the drugs or whatever that bitch had given them. Not for one moment did he ever imagine they were both gone from this world.

  He shook them again, but still, they weren’t moving in the slightest. Alex shook them again with more force this time. Still nothing. Soon he was shaking them harder and harder. With a sense of dread, he realized that they were both a little unnaturally stiff. Their bodies not as soft and warm as they usually felt in his arms.

  “Salma? Ali?” Alex cried again. Tears filled his eyes. But he was panicking now and fearing the worst. In a furious rage, he frantically turned around to face the masked woman.

  “What is this? What the fuck is this? What have you done to them? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

  Without further words or hesitation, the woman walked right on up to Alex and shot him point-blank in the head.

  Chapter 2

  Estelle lifted Alex’s lifeless body with a resounding strength and ease for a woman of her shape and size. But with all her years of brutal training, she was fitter and stronger than most top athletes in the world.

  Gently, she laid his body down upon the bed, right beside the slowly stiffening bodies of his dead wife and son—both of whom she’d poisoned painlessly and effortlessly with a lethal injection only minutes after speaking to Alex on the phone for the very last time.

  She’d killed numerous women and children before. That was the cold hard truth of it. It was soul-destroying to her psyche the first couple of times she’d done it all those years ago. Especially the children. She’d been physically sick too in her earlier years after the first few times she’d had to leave a bomb in a busy African shopping center followed by a nearby embassy. Innocent people were always getting sacrificed for the so called greater good of her employers’ motives. God kills indiscriminately and so shall we—was the mantra drilled into her throughout recruitment. And for the first few years she hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time with her head full of horrors, haunted by her victims’ screams, both the innocent and guilty.

  But that was such a long time ago.

  Now she had become cold, hard, and immune to it all. All the bad shit she’d done, she’d somehow found a way to push it to the furthest, deepest, and darkest regions of her subconscious mind—a place that even her present-day psyche would have trouble finding. She knew she could never willingly kill anyone without being provoked in her free time.

  But when it came to work… When they told her to do it, trained her to kill without mercy or discrimination, she couldn’t refuse. And after a decade of killing she found it so effortless these days to just switch off her emotions and do what needed to be done. For the so called greater good of the world. Just like that.

  Estelle placed her handgun into Alex’s lukewarm hand. She then picked up a hidden can of petrol that she’d already brought over to the abandoned apartment block the day before and poured it all over the bed, the bodies, and the rest on the stale bedroom floor.

  Lastly, she pulled out a box of matches from her back pocket. Casually, she struck the match from the edge of the hallway and tossed it into the dark bedroom which swiftly engulfed itself with fiery orange flames.

  ***

  Estelle drove her rickety old car into a vast, deep, and hidden forest dirt track, way out in the northern outskirts of Cairo. Way out in the desert countryside and well beyond most life and civilization. For a good half hour, she drove along the single old forest dirt track. A sorry, pathetic excuse for a road that looked like it hadn’t seen a car in decades. Finally, she pulled up beside another vehicle. A smart black BMW hidden underneath some nearby trees and in amongst some thick bushes to the side of the dirt road.

  Estelle climbed out of her car. She took off all her clothes, hoody, trousers, gloves, balaclava, and even her stained white bra and knickers. She didn’t have the slightest qualms about exposing her naked body to anyone in any place, public or private. Not one. And where most people of the western world couldn’t even bare the uncomfortable humiliation of exposing their naked bodies to their nearest and dearest without a combination of dim lights and alcohol—feeling themselves at their most vulnerable—that wasn’t the case for Estelle. And on some occasions, hidden away in her dark, mysterious past, to expose her raw nakedness without a second thought had actually given her an advantage that she normally would never have been able to attain.

  But they were stories for another day.

  At first physical glance, Estelle was an average, run of the mill plain Jane kind of woman, sometimes pretty when she made the effort, although never strikingly so, which helped in her line of work to fend off any unwanted male attention when she least expected it.

  Estelle wasn’t one for wearing makeup at all. Unless it was necessary to a mission assigned to her. Which was rare. Plus, her employers had other more suitable women who they could deploy for that line of work. It was just something that she despised with a real passion; hated putting anything on her face that disguised her real appearance just to make herself look more pleasing to the opposite sex. Thankfully though, this particular mission required her to wear zero face paint.

  She had more of a firm, slim, tomboy figure with a washboard stomach and not too many curves to boast about that would interest any unwelcomed admirers. A combination of big and small scars too littered her athletic body and face. Most noticeable of them all was a long, faint old slash wound on her left temple running down to her left upper cheek. A half Glasgow grin, some would call it; where in Glasgow they would just call it respect.

  It was just one of her too-many-to-count war wounds, all received in the line of duty, all in the name of her off-the-beaten-track bureau that employed her to do their biddings. A powerful underground agency with possible ties to western governments or perhaps not. Maybe the people she worked for were the real governing bodies of the world.

  All she truly knew about them was that they were a collection of unknown but powerful people from all corners of the globe who weren’t really meant to exist. Like little invisible puppeteers, pulling the strings of the global economy to make the world move and turn just the way they wanted it to.

  Estelle had only one single tattoo on her entire body. It was a petite mark of identification more than anything else, given to every single person or so-called agent in her line of work and knew of the existence of her employers. Even they themselves had the tattoo somewhere on their persons, or so she’d been told, although she had never actually seen a single one of them with her own eyes before. It was a small and simple tattoo of a black bird on the inside of her upper forearm. And most of the time she simply forgot that it even existed.

  Estelle wasn’t a smiley person either. A resting, cold, hard bitch face was her most commonly worn expression. A steely scowl that kept even the friendliest of people and charming of men well away.

  Her hair was a dirty, shoulder-length brunette but kept in a neat pony tail and always well out of her line of sight. She’d prefer to shave the whole lot off if she were entirely honest, but her employers would not allow it. And wigs were just an annoying distraction that always seemed to get in the way once the action started.

  Still standing comfortable in her raw nakedness, Estelle poured petrol all over the inside of her old car. The last drop of petrol she poured over her old clothes, which were bundled together upon the back seat. She took her box of matches again, this time from the dashboard glove compartment, and set her worn clothes on fire first. Very soon the blaze rapidly spread
and the entire interior of the car exploded into a raging bonfire.

  Estelle walked towards the slick BMW. She opened the back door and pulled out some new underwear along with a smart business suit that were all lying folded up and waiting for her on the back seat.

  With no great hurry Estelle began to get dressed. When she was ready, she climbed into the driver’s seat of the BMW, started the engine and slowly drove back down the old dirt trail of the secluded forest, with nothing but the sight of the thick black smoke and burning car in her rearview mirror.

  Estelle drove up towards the Northern Egyptian coast, then along the beautiful and stunning coastline towards Alexandria. She wasn’t heading into the ancient city though. No, she was driving straight for a row of large luxury beachfront hotels nicely spaced along the coastal trail outside the city.

  Estelle parked underneath her large hotel complex inside an underground car park. Once she found a space she climbed out of her car and took the stairs up into the main reception lobby. She noticed immediately that the main foyer was unusually crowded. Her gut instinct told her why that was: most of the people in the lobby were all crowded around the huge TV screen situated in the seating area beside the reception and over, beside the main hotel bar too.

  One of the young hotel porters noticed Estelle coming in from the car park entrance. He turned towards her with an eager puppy-dog look as she casually strolled right through the lobby without a care in the world. All she wanted to do was get up to her room as quickly and as quietly as possible and have a relaxing long shower.

  “Have you seen the news, Mrs. Murphy? There's been a plane crash!” The young hotel porter called out to her, more excited to be spreading the word of the tragedy than caring one iota, like most people in the room, about anyone involved in the tragic event.

  “Oh my, that's just awful,” Estelle replied without even making eye contact with the young man and continued walking towards the lift.