Harry spoke again. “Pinchot’s the only one of the now former board I can’t find. You lot seem to have been the last to see him. That twat is good at disappearing, I’ll give him that – they teach them well at the CIA. I can’t find a trace of the guy anywhere on the planet and if I’m being modest here, I’m a fucking genius.”
“Just because you can’t find him doesn’t mean he’s not dead,” Eva suggested. “Tartarus could have found him and eliminated him.”
Nash leaned forward. “But they would have made it look like an accident like they did with the others, and made sure it reached the public. The fact there’s no trace of him leads me to believe he’s still out there somewhere.”
“He’s the one you let go?” Nancy asked.
“The very same.” Paul gave the camera a side eye which Nash suspected was directed at him. “It was believed an embittered ex-Tartarus employee could wreak as much havoc on his former organisation as we could. While we’re not allies, we now have a common foe.”
“Why did they turn on him?” Nancy asked.
“The…” Paul hesitated awkwardly, “head of Tartarus turned on him when he didn’t like the direction Pinchot was taking with the assignation for hire, drug dealing and whatnot. If you believe the brochures, Tartarus was meant to be a beneficial force, with the ability to strike when the established players were hamstrung by bureaucracy and government oversight. He was guiding the ship in the shadows until Pinchot let power go to his head and almost brought them down before they got going. That’s when,” Paul hesitated again, “the head of Tartarus emerged from the dark and took control.”
“That’s the second time you’ve done that,” his wife said. “You can say he was your father.”
Nancy said what none of the others were brave enough to. Ramsay Cavendish was the former director of MI6, who had retired many years before. Since then, he had recruited senior leaders from various secret service organisations around the world to form the board of Tartarus. He’d then directed them surreptitiously in the background to create the private spy agency without once revealing his identity. The discovery that the head of Tartarus was Paul’s estranged father was a fresh and open wound.
On the screen, all eyes turned to Paul. He didn’t see them, as he was staring at the ceiling.
“True.” He let out a huge sigh before his gaze turned to Nancy. “I can always count on my beautiful wife to get to the crux of any matter.” He rubbed her leg tenderly. “It seems with the board eliminated my father is now well and truly in charge. He’s our target now. He’d also know perfectly well that will be our aim. He’ll be ready for us. During his tenure at MI6, he garnered a reputation as an unparalleled strategist, a relentless tactician and a ruthless bastard to boot. We underestimate him at our peril.”
It was the first time Nash had seen Paul speak openly about his father as the head of Tartarus. The two hadn’t spoken for years, mainly due to Paul’s terrible upbringing and the fact the men didn’t get along as adults either. Nash could only imagine the torment his friend was going through. He also knew Paul well enough to see he was struggling to maintain his impartiality while coming to terms with the fact that his father was now one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
Out of all of them, Paul had the most to deal with. While Ramsay Cavendish had never been a loving father, he was still Paul’s flesh and blood. A millstone that was no doubt weighing him down.
“Where’s he now?” He turned to his wife, then added with a sad smile, “My father?”
“New York,” Harry answered. “He popped up on a few of my alerts yesterday. Not sure where or why, but I’m looking into it. I still have a few backdoor access points into Tartarus, but they removed a lot when they turfed Pinchot. I’m working on it. I’ll let you know if I turn anything up.”
There was a natural lull in the conversation. So much had been discussed so quickly, they all needed a moment. But Nash felt there was an aspect lacking in their discussion so far. A sense of purpose. He decided to take the lead.
“I see we have a few goals here.” He hunkered down in his chair, taking in each of their pixelated faces. “We stop Tartarus and clear our names. So far we’ve been unsuccessful at both and have gotten nowhere. So, here’s what I suggest. We’re going to split into two teams. Paul, Nancy, Harry, you’re all relatively close, you can be team Alpha.”
“I want to know why I’m on a team at all. I’m not a fucken’ spy.” Nancy frowned, but there was humour in it. “But I’m glad I’m on team Alpha. It sounds kickarse.”
Eva crossed her arms. “I want to be Team Alpha.”
Nancy poked her tongue out. “Too bad, kiddo, we’re already Team Alpha.”
“Fine.” Eva folded her arms. “We’re Team Kickarse then.”
“Wait, how come you get to be Kickarse?”
“There’s no Team Kickarse,” Nash growled.
“Awww, fucknuggets,” Eva grumbled.
“Can I be in Team Handsome?” Bishop asked.
“No. And now there’s no Team Alpha.”
“Hey!” Nancy sat up.
“Paul, Nancy and Harry, you’re now Team Ethel and the rest of us are Team Gertrude. That’s the end of it.” Before there was any more protesting, Nash went on. “Team Ethel, you’re the ones with access to technology, so I’m tasking you with finding out what Tartarus’s grand scheme is. The way Cavendish referred to it, this is the next phase, what he’s been leading up to all along. Whatever it is, it’s big. I had the sense it was what was going to give them legitimacy somehow. I want you to find out what the hell they’ve got planned. You think you can handle that?”
Three nods confirmed they could.
He went on. “Eva, Bishop and I will work on getting inside the head of Tartarus. We need to find out how it operates, who they’ve recruited in legitimate agencies and most importantly, how to bring it crashing to the ground. There’s only one person I know who can do that.”
Eva and Bishop’s mouths dropped open. Eva was the first to speak.
“Even if we could find him, we’re not going to turn Pinchot.” She shook her head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the last conversation you two had, didn’t he say the next time he saw you he’d kill you? He’s not exactly on our side, dude.”
Nash focused on Eva. “I thought you liked a challenge, Eva?”
“I do, but fuck me, there’s a difference between a challenge and an impossibility. You may as well ask me to get the Pope, Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama in a Gojira mosh pit.”
Chuckling, Nash went on. “We could turn him, maybe offer protection; they tried to kill him after all. They’ve murdered the entire board, people he worked closely with for years. He owes Tartarus nothing.”
“But equally, he owes you the same, Nash,” Bishop observed evenly. “In his eyes, you betrayed him, tortured, kidnapped and deformed him. Sure, you saved his life when you didn’t have to, but he’s not going to forget the rest of it. He’ll always hate you.”
Conceding the point with a shrug, Nash replied, “Possibly, but we’ll only know if we ask, and before we can, we need to find him. And aren’t we lucky that’s a Team Gertrude forte?”
In response, both Eva and Bishop rolled their eyes, but with enough good humour that Nash knew he had them onboard.
“We’re in the same time zone, so we may as well be in the same room. Got any suggestions where we should rendezvous? We’ll need a country close to us. Somewhere way off the beaten track, where no one will ever look.”
Eva practically beamed. “I have the place.”
