Cookie just walked up to him, wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck, leaving her head lying on his shoulder. Ax breathed her in, said nothing. Then they walked together down the hill, then up the stairs to Cookies bedroom. It smelled of Cookie, he thought. She sat on the bed and pulled him down to her. Tears fell down her face and onto his shirt. She lowered her face into his chest as she sobbed. He put his hand gently around the back of her head and whispered in her ear. “Cookie, no, Cookie…” She did not listen.
Did not care. This time she would have one time the way she wanted, the way she needed it to be. With Ax. Just once. She pulled a hand onto her breast, making him feel her nipple. She had one hand on his back, the other behind his head as she swayed back and forth, his hand rubbing against her nipple. Hours later you couldn’t tell where Cookie started and Ax ended as they lay sleeping in each other’s arms.
He could smell her perfume.
Girl, perfume. Breast, waist and girl perfume. He could fucking smell her.
He had talked to Lucy before leaving, but it had not gone the way the thought.
“You can’t tell me you don’t find her attractive,” said Lucy.
They were sitting together, Lucy on the sofa, Ax on a chair. Alone, but with Cookie’s spirit all around them.
“How many times to I need to say, it, she is not Jade, and Jade was a long, long time ago,” he said.
“Ha! I know, she was a long time ago, and that little bitch is not Jade, that I fucking know,” she said.
“Lucy, just leave it, O.K?”
“Leave what? I just asked a simple question, do you find her attractive?”
“You didn’t ask a question, you said a statement. You said to tell you I don’t find her attractive. Well, OK, I can’t. She reminds me of Jade. But not in the way that you will think. Cookie is alive. Jade is dead. They were sisters. So of fucking course she reminds me of Jade, what the fuck should I say?”
Lucy looked at her hands and started to cry.
“Stop that shit,” said Ax. “Fucking stop that shit. I chose you. Remember? I am with you, get it? I didn’t choose her. I chose you. And still you come with this shit. Fuck. This is shit.“
Lucy looked up, slowly. She said nothing. Just looked. She was a woman, and when a man talked about another woman that way then she knew. She fucking knew.
Ax put it all behind him. He had other things to think about now. He still didn’t know about Cookie.
It was a well known club for rich Arabs. There were many in London. There were many rich Arabs in London. Every night of the week you could find the famous and infamous doing all the things they were not allowed to do in their own countries. They all smoked and drank, bought hookers and cocaine. When they returned they would go to their Mosque and asked Allah to kill the infidels who were doing exactly what they had just done.
Ax watched, silent, “worrying won’t change things” he thought. He was deeply sad.
Nothing could change what he had to do.
Ax arrived in front of the club. Got out of his white Bugatti and threw the keys at a bouncer. “Get rid of it, “ he said in Arabic. He was dressed head to toe in Arabic clothes. Nobody would know who he was, but they would all be too scared of losing their jobs to demand. He walked straight up the steps as the ropes opened to let him in, closing swiftly behind him .
Loud music was playing in the club. American trash. People were trying to talk above the noise. People talk, that’s what they do, doesn’t mean they talk the truth, in fact, they rarely do…people say what they think they believe, what sounds good, what makes them look good…they rarely talk sense. Ax was rambling in his head. Was he losing it?
He walked up to a guy at a big table in the centre of the room. There were tables left and right, a small dance floor in the middle. This table spoke money. This table spoke position. Everyone wanted to be at this table. A big , fat Arab, smiled.
“Son of a goat! How dare you walk up to my table unannounced”. “Who the fuck are you!” he said in perfect Oxford English.
Ax looked at the table looked at the fat Arab, said nothing, reached over and picked up a glass. The fat Arab smiled. Staring at Ax.
Ax stared back. Blew the fucker a kiss. The fat man looked over his shoulder at what seemed to be a bodyguard and snapped his fingers. He gave a slight nod. The bodyguard shifted weight and moved towards Ax. Ax smiled. This would be fun. He could already see that the bodyguard was in no shape to deal with him. Oh, he was in good shape alright. He probably worked out in the gym for a few hours each morning, pushed weights and the like. But he did not know how to kill. Ax could see that. He was not a killer, not like Ax. Worst of all he was slow. Ax could see that.
The man arrived beside Ax. He just stood there right beside him. “You, out,” he said. He actually pointed a finger at the door. Ax looked at the finger. What happened next was too fast. Ax formed a V with his thumb and first finger of his right hand and stabbed the guy in the throat. Then, his left hand rose from beneath, the back of his wrist smacking the guy just under his nose, flicking him off like an annoying fly to one side. He fell heavily down on a small glass table to the side, smashing it under his weight. Immediately four others came running. Ax stayed exactly where he was and did not move. The four ran at him, each probably expecting to be covered by the others. Four against one. Easy. But easy is how they went down. Finger to the throat, broken knee, broken arm, smashed nose. One after the other in four seconds. And still Ax had not moved. He looked at the fat man. He was not smiling anymore. “Get it? “ Asked Ax? Then he moved. Towards the fat man. The fat man shrunk back into the soft, red velvet of the sofa. He could not move. Where would he run to? Where could he run to? He was petrified.
Ax looked down at the fat man. Let him feel his intent. The fat man started to tremble.
Ax could see it in his fat face and feel his crap energy shaking.
“I will ask you one time. Just once. I know that you know the answer, so, if you lie to me I will kill you.”
The fat man just nodded.
“Good.”
“Where is Bakr?”
Twenty minutes later Ax was on another train. He was on his way to see “the old man”, as he was known. Probably the only living man Ax still respected. And with the exception of Ax probably the most dangerous man alive.
The old man had seen that look before. The man sitting in front of him was one of the smart ones. Your standard man just looked angry, confused. The smart ones, like this one, looked sad. You could see that in the eyes: they were remembering too much. They always came up short in their own estimations. The standard man, the normal man, did not care. They did not even know who they were themselves. The smart ones always knew who they were. And they always remembered. The smart ones got sad.
The old man knew the truth of such things. He knew if this smart man had searched him out he needed answers. Joe did not know if he had any answers left.
Ax looked at his hands. Then looked up. Then sideways. He crinkled his nose and looked off to the left. Joe just sat there and watched, waiting. Ax eventually turned his head and looked at Joe.
Joe spoke. “Truth? Tell me the truth, Ax. Why are you here?”
“Truth? The truth is I don’t know. They did Julie, they shot Lucy. I don’t know who to talk to. I think Rainbow are involved. Maybe even MI6. I don’t know who to trust, Joe.”
“O.K, that’s shit.” Joe looked at Ax. “Anything else?”
Ax looked back at the table before he said “Cookie is here.”
The old man took a long swig of his beer, said nothing. He just sat there looking at the bottle in his hand. A few minutes later he started to shake his head. He sniffed and a little smile appeared on his face. “Cookie, eh? You know, Ax? I really don’t think I have ever seen anyone who can do what you can do. Fuck, you even scare me.. But, Cookie? Really? Question. Do you know what she has done these past years?”
Ax smiled a half, wry smile. “Cookie,” he said. He was thinking it was good to be back here, talking to Joe. But he didn’t really know. He had gone back to Scotland to make a new life. He was among people again, the first time in a long time. It felt strange. He knew he would have to talk to them. Do the human-being thing. Drink with them in a pub, stuff like that. He was not looking forward to it. He never had. But he needed information so he needed to talk to people. Cookie? Na, was she hurting more that he thought?
This was his new life. He had come back to Scotland, the place of his birth, to find a new start. He would never, could never go back to that old life. Never. That was over. The killing was over. He thought finding someone to share this new life would make him happy. He would learn to be happy. He could learn to be happy. Other people did it. Why couldn’t he? Because you are not like other people, a little voice said. It would be difficult. This he knew. But it was do-able. “Easier than finding and killing a stranger?” asked the voice in his head? No. It would be more difficult than that. “Easier than sleeping with an ear and an eye open? Easier than falling into violence like a leaf from an old tree, tired and inevitable? Always falling? Half dead. Cold. Landing and rotting?”
No. He would start again. And it would work.
The trouble was that his memories no longer corresponded to what he saw around him. He remembered Aisha, the half Japanese, half Yugoslavian hooker, from the days when they had a Yugoslavia.
Joe looked at the man remembering. He felt real pity for the men he would find and finally admitted that he, too, had been scared of this man in front of him. Sure, he had trained him. But people were not supposed to learn “that” well. Joe shivered.
“What is it you need?” he asked.
They had met in a bar. “Hey, Joe? You remember Aisha?” Joe looked at Ax and shook his head before saying “Where the fuck are you, mate?” Joe looked like a big cuddly bear. But he feared this man like no other. Ax was looking at him, a big cuddly bear with claws. And teeth. A big cuddly bear you wouldn’t actually cuddle because it might rip your head off. A big cuddly Joe bear. But Ax needed to talk. And Joe was the only one he knew. He picked up the glass and downed the whiskey. He knew he was talking shit. He knew he was wasting time. He knew Joe was waiting.
As he held the warm glass in his hand he remembered going with Aisha to the sushi shop, just before closing on a Sunday. She would get a huge assortment of sushi. Sushi that would be thrown out a few hours later if she did not take it. She got it for free. The owner knew she was a hooker. He knew she would never actually buy his food. He also knew she would never be in his bed, that he would never get her knickers or anything, so he just gave her the food, better than throwing it out. He still had standards, and after all, she was extremely pretty. Ax had not chased her because of her prettiness. It was her pretty heart. She cared about the food that would be thrown away. She would rather eat it, get fat ,than have it thrown away. Maybe she remembered hungry days in Yugoslavia before it became a bombed out fuck-hole. Ax loved the way she would get drunk and talk about “the old ways”. The old ways were stories of drunk men beating up on women. Apparently Aisha still felt as if she belonged there. Ax was jealous. She, at least, had some kind of belonging. He pictured her as he had known her - sitting across the table in one of the Hell’s Angels bars. Long, dark curly hair falling half way down her back. Tiny short skirt. Long golden legs. Dark eyes heavily made up. Dark-blue nail-varnish like a bruise. Nothing was the same any more.
The old man took a sip of his beer, placed the glass carefully down on the table. “Ax? Dreaming of better times?” Joe smiled. “Hey, time to come back.”
Ax looked at his empty glass on the table. Nothing against dreaming. Nothing against remembering. He turned and signalled the barman for a whiskey, then looked up at the old man. Looked up at Joe.
Ex- S.A.S. He never talked about it. If you had been in, you didn’t talk about it. Simple. If they told you they were S.A.S, or had been in the S.A.S then they weren’t and hadn’t.
You never really left. Anyone from the old unit called, you went.
That was the trouble. Ax would not go if and when he was called. He had finished that part of his life years ago. Now, he was totally finished, he was not S.A.S. He was Rainbow, and that was part of his problem. Ax had not been in the S.A.S since he was twenty. He was forty-three now and much, much worse than S.A.S. Ax was Rainbow and Rainbow did not exist. Every government used them. Nobody admitted they knew them, but everyone paid them. Paid them a lot of money. To do things they couldn’t do themselves. Not legally, anyway.
The old man was watching Ax. He remembered the younger man, preferred it. “Hey, remember Ziffer?” Even the younger man had been less dangerous than this.
Ax smiled. “Oh yes, he drawled, “that was one evil son of a bitch. Remember what they said about him, about him and the dog, how he killed it?”
The old man shook his head. “Yep, three bullets, up the ass left and right, then straight through. Evil son of a bitch is right.”
“Why?” said Ax.
“Why Rainbow?” said Joe. “You know? Ax? One thing I know is this: you can run from others but you can never run from yourself. You have, fuck, what should I call it, a talent? I have never seen anyone do what you can do. You have a gift. You were born with it. To hide that gift? For me that is a sin. You will always be The Rainbow Man, and you know it.“
“Where was Cookie all those years?” Suspicion.
Ax belonged, in every sense of the word, to the Rainbow group. Rainbow were above all governments, above all laws, and if you as a corporate head or a lesser entity like a government official wanted someone disappeared? Dead? Gone? No trace? You called in Rainbow. Expensive. Satisfaction guaranteed. No questions asked.
Rainbow took the best men from any and all secret black-ops groups worldwide. They had ex-persons from everywhere including The Mossad, French Foreign Legion, S.A.S, Delta. You name it, Rainbow had it. Yes, even Mossad. Everyone knew Mossad were a law unto themselves and if you were in you never got out, alive, anyway. Rainbow did contract work for Mossad, but no Mossad man or woman ever worked for Rainbow unless he was on loan from Mossad. And he or she would go back. Always. Fucking Jews, he thought.
Rainbow took only the best ,the fittest. Then they trained them to do the impossible. They were trained by experts in all the ways of killing and martial arts. Rainbow “agents” were experts in Aikido, Dim Mak, Tai Chi. They were experts with a knife, with a hand, a leg, shoulder or finger. Rainbow were trained to kill. They did not wound. They were the best of the best but it was not only because they were trained that way. No. They were the best of the best because they were chosen from the best. Rainbow only took those with natural talent. The best talent. They took the strongest, fastest and smartest. If you were not already strong and fast, fit and smart you would not even be considered. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. And in times of extreme doubt, selective drugs. Tailor made for the DNA of the user. If you wanted someone dead, you called Rainbow. They were death at the end of the phone. No survivors.
Rainbow “agents” were neutral. They had no beliefs. They did not hate. They did not love. They just killed, on command, perfectly. For money. This was the fault in Ax. Somewhere along the line he had started to care and to hate.
He hated Islam. Not because it was Islam. He hated stupid people believing in a grey-haired old man called god. He hated the preaching of radical Islam and the sheeple who followed. He hated the Catholic church for the same reason. He hated Zionists and, well, he just hated them all. He was a smart man. He’d grown up on the streets of Glasgow, seen first-hand how the world worked. The strong took from the weak. Gangs killed Jade, his Jade. He had killed the gang. That was life. That was the only law. Get even. He had known this from school. He’d watched as big Robert had started a fight at school. He watched as Robert’s gang formed a circle. Robert lashed out. The other boy stumbled back. Into a flurry of fists and feet from Robert’s friends. The guy didn’t stand a chance. Everyone saw it. Everyone knew it. Nobody did anything. Only Ax. Nobody touched Ax. Because the one time it had started like that Ax had not fought back. He had just waited. He had taken the beating and waited. The bell for class rang and they all went back inside. Ax left school early that day. He walked down the little lane that led to where Robert lived. Robert walked down the little lane alone. Going to his house. Ax was waiting for him. Robert never touched Ax again. Neither did anyone else.
But Islamics, they had this other thing. A group thing. And Ax hated groups. He was a natural loner. He hated groups. And radical Islamics functioned as a group and for Ax it was the worst kind of group. Even before they had started to take over Europe he had predicted the Muslim invasion. He was a trained killer and despised people who hid a bomb behind a long, black robe. He despised cowards who walked into a crowded area and blew women and children to fine pieces of dead meat.
Ax was a trained killer. He would study, stalk, then kill. No mess. Nobody else. Just the target. Clean.
Ax caused death, not pain.
It was not their killing. It was their stupidity. They were doing this because their “god” told them this was correct. If their “god” needed them to kill in his name, then, thought Ax, what kind of a “god” was he? No. If you were going to kill, then you accepted your own responsibility, and did not need to use the excuse of some, remote “god” to explain your actions. Ax knew he was fucked. He thought too much.
The old man spoke again.
“So, you thought you were doing good? Cleaning the world of the bad man?” Ax half smiled, his sad eyes tracing the lines on the table where his hands rested. “I thought I was making a difference, yes”, he said.
Without moving his head, he lifted his eyes and looked at the old man. The old man was smiling, but he had no eyes. Just dark holes that emitted no light, no hope. Impossible to read.
“Then, you have, indeed, become a fool my friend,” he said.”You could have been one of the good guys. “You have no idea. You avenged Jade? What did you make of Cookie?”