Chris Anderson had a brief scare at Vigo’s Guixar station. The Spanish lady police inspector appeared to recognise her. It had taken her a few seconds to realise the policewoman was only admiring the bag. She’d have to watch that in the future. The North African terrorist who’d arrived ten minutes earlier than the police hadn’t noticed her at all. He’d soon left and a couple of minutes later, Anderson heard some gunshots near the large rubbish bins where she’d left some of her clothes, or those of Kim Samuels, on her way to the station.
The train down to Portugal was not as comfortable as the ones she’d become accustomed to in Spain. The train was packed with mainly English-speaking tourists, including some from South Africa, journeying around the Iberian peninsula and who probably didn’t realise Spain is an hour ahead of Portugal thanks to General Franco and his desire to be in the same time zone as Nazi Germany.
In Vigo, Anderson bought some blue shoes with red patches on the heels and liked the feel of them. The shoes had small holes just above the soles, to allow the feet to breathe, which would be fine here in a warm climate, but back home they’d just let the rain in. Anderson felt on guard now, all the time, and so preferred watching her fellow passengers to reading her book.
She wondered what to do next. She only had one identity left, the one she would use on her return to the UK. This might cause a problem. Should she confront her pursuers or cut her holiday short and fly home from Porto and disappear?
She decided she couldn’t cut the holiday short as she’d promised to see the mission through to the end, that was her professional pride shining through. She wasn’t finished yet. If she was honest, Anderson wasn’t sure how many pursuers there now were. She presumed it was the colleagues of the men she’d killed in Santiago and the lslas Cies, people from the American secret service, and the Spanish police, helped by their colleagues in Portugal. The more the merrier. Confrontation it was.
The police would try to take her into custody, the Americans might try, and the terrorists wouldn’t bother, they’d kill her straight away. This was the expected behaviour. Would any of these three groups kill any of the others? They might, which would help no end, if it reduced the number of people following her. She hoped no harm came to the police as they were only doing their job.
Reluctantly, because it went against her training, she decided to make it more obvious where she was going, starting with her visit to Braga from Porto’s lovely old station of Sao Bento in a couple of hours’ time. She’d spend too long admiring the tiles in the station forecourt, buy a ticket from the ticket-seller in the station kiosk, and even buy a coffee from the cafe. What more could she do to help?
Julian Worker Fiction Writing 