John was silent for a while, wondering how best to phrase his question. In the event, Mee beat him to it.
“Yes, I’m going to tell her about Seb,” she said. “Just in simple terms, at first. It’s not as if anyone really understood him, anyway. Understands him.”
John nodded at Mee’s change of tense.
“He’ll be back, Mee.”
“Yes, I know. I know it, John. I just don’t know when. And once that first year had passed, when he had missed seeing his daughter born—,” she stopped talking and attacked a frying pan with a scouring pad using more vigor than was strictly necessary. John lifted it gently out of her hands when she showed no sign of stopping.
“He loves you. He’ll love Joni. And he’ll be back.”
Just before she fell asleep that night, Joni thought about her father, the Fairy King. He had given her some of her magic. She smiled. She knew he would come back for her.
4
Rome
The covert photographs showed a married couple drinking cocktails on a hotel balcony. They seemed happy enough. Not young, not old. No children yet. Both successful in their chosen careers. Successful in their marriage, too. Neither had taken lovers. Adam’s employers would be pleased by that last detail. Not because of any moral stance. Abandoned lovers sometimes asked questions, and—in Adam’s line of work—the fewer questions, the better.
Adam had lived with a girl for a few months, once. It hadn’t ended well. Not for her, leastways. He struggled to remember how it had felt, having someone to come home to. Someone waiting when you opened the door. Someone who wanted to know how you were feeling. Someone who cared enough to be there, even in the bad times. Then he remembered: he’d hated it. Even her corpse had annoyed him.
Spreading the photographs out on the hotel room desk, Adam took a small roller out of his backpack, removing the protective cover. As he rolled it briskly and firmly across all four images the top layer of the photographs disintegrated into tiny shreds of paper. When he had finished, a rough, pockmarked surface remained, leaving no recognizable trace of its original subject. He collected the particles into a pile, tapping the roller to release any stray pieces, then swept them into his cupped hand and flushed them down the toilet.
He’d invented the roller device himself, using a lint remover as a prototype, then having a more robust model tooled - each piece at separate shops. The roller’s blades tore the outermost layer of a sheet of paper or photograph away, producing a tiny pile of dust to dispose of. It also—Adam had discovered—made a surprisingly effective instrument of torture.
It was typical of his approach to his work: a low-tech, elegant solution to a problem.
Adam ripped up the unrecognizable photographs and put them in his suit pocket. He sat down and checked his reflection, angling the desk lamp onto his face to make sure every detail was right. His skin tone was olive today, the wig black and neatly trimmed. The stubble shading his face was another product of his inventive mind. Adam’s entire body was hairless, so he drew upon his expertise with makeup to match his skin tone to the local Italian businessmen he had observed in the nearby cafes and bars. The fake stubble was actually the real thing, collected from barbers’ garbage bags and applied to his makeup before it dried. His eyes, behind lightweight designer glasses, were rendered dark brown by contact lenses.
He closed his makeup bag and replaced it in the backpack, pushing it right to the bottom, so that he could quickly reach the weapons tucked into pouches nearer the top. The backpack was black and anonymous-looking. He replaced it every few weeks, or after every job, whichever came sooner. It was part of his routine. Adam had spent years perfecting the art of being unseen, unremarkable, unnoticed.
Before leaving the hotel room, he threw a couple of towels onto the bathroom floor. He squeezed a little toothpaste onto his finger, smearing it across the side of the sink. He messed up the sheets on the bed. He opened the minibar, tipped a few tiny bottles of vodka into a glass, swirled the contents briefly, then poured it down the toilet. He carefully placed the glass on its side on the table, next to a copy of yesterday’s Figaro.
Pausing at the door, he looked at the room dispassionately. Untidy enough. Overly tidy rooms stood out as much as trashed rooms to hotel cleaners. Adam didn’t want to stand out.
The chambermaid was young, her features regular and her blouse slightly too small. She smiled as she moved her trolley to one side to let Adam past. He was about to walk on when a slight stiffening of her posture reminded him of his role. He slowed after passing her and turned back, whistling softly. She looked over her shoulder and caught him admiring her ass. She made a disapproving noise to mask her obvious pleasure and Adam shrugged, mock-apologetically, giving her a little smile as his gaze moved up to her face, down a little to her breasts, then back up to her face again. She decided to return the smile, but he was already walking away toward the elevators. Reassured that the young man in room 1104 was a healthy, good-looking, arrogant pig after all, the chambermaid returned to her duties.
He found them in the second café he tried. With only two more days of their vacation remaining, they had become predictable in their habits, taking lunch at pavement cafes within walking distance of the hotel, to which they would return for sex and sleep before setting out once more in the early evening.
They were sharing a dessert - gelato, four scoops of amaretto ice-cream in the long glass accessible only after disposing of the whipped cream and flaked almonds on top. They fed one another with long-handled spoons and laughed at each other’s jokes. Adam supposed they were happy. Happiness was a fairly easy trick to pull, so long as you were prepared to ignore the facts.
They ordered cappuccino. They almost could have passed for Italians, with their designer clothes and manicures, but no Italian would be caught dead ordering a cappuccino after 11am. Adam detected a tiny sneer in the smile of the waiter as he placed the cups on their table. Adam ordered a second espresso and paid the check, strolling over to the fountain in the middle of the square.
Sitting on a bench that gave him a good view of the cafe, he pulled out a cellphone and started to talk into it, his tone low and urgent. The phone was a brick - he’d carefully taken a soldering iron to the SIM card and fused it to the surrounding circuitry. It was a simple precaution. He supposed he could carry a phone with no SIM at all, but if it was ever mislaid, stolen, or—worse, still—if he ever ended up in custody, it would draw attention. This way, it looked like a malfunction had recently occurred. And the phone served its purpose very well. Adam had discovered that those few people who managed to overcome the unease they felt around him enough to approach him, were quickly put off by the serious expression he adopted while jabbering nonsense into a silver rectangle.
When the couple finally left the café, he followed at first, then, as they approached the hotel, walked briskly ahead of them and pushed the button for the elevator. Adam’s timing was perfect. As the doors slid open and he stepped inside, he heard them pick up their pace slightly. As the doors slid back into place, he prevented them closing fully by sticking his foot in the rapidly decreasing gap. The couple thanked him. They were both smiling, flushed, anticipating getting back to their room. Oblivious to Adam, whose talent for invisibility was hardly necessary when each only had eyes for the other.
The man went to push the button for floor nine, but stopped when he saw Adam had already done it. The woman’s face was flushed, her eyes shining. The man had placed his body between Adam and his wife - not out of any defensive instinct, but because he wanted to hide the fact that he was touching her through her skirt. Adam was relieved when the elevator doors opened and they spilled out, the amorous couple stifling their giggles. The sexual urge was very powerful, but it clouded judgement. Adam had mastered it through years of mental and physical training. He was able to feel sexual desire, even take pleasure in it if the circumstances were correctly arranged, but he could summon or dismiss the urge at will.
Adam p
ulled the envelope out of his jacket pocket and placed his other hand on the gun in his right-hand pants pocket. The gun had a long silencer screwed to the barrel. The first thing Adam did when he bought a suit was to slit away the right hand pants pocket. A simple holster on his thigh kept the weapon easily accessible.
No one else was in the corridor, which made the process a little simpler. As the man opened his hotel door and watched his wife go in, Adam called after him, jogging slightly and waving the hand-written envelope. The envelope had never failed. Adam had experimented with waving a wallet, a phone, money, a book - anything to get the attention of the target for a moment. The envelope worked best because the target had to take a look at the name on the front before he knew if he were the intended recipient. And, in this day of email and instant messages, who could resist the allure of a crisp, white envelope?
The man waited for Adam, who kept the envelope in motion so that the writing stayed blurred. When he reached the man, he handed it to him with a smile. The second the target’s eyes fell to the meaningless scrawl on the envelope, Adam shot him in the skull and pushed the body into the room, lowering the corpse silently to the floor and shoving the door closed with his foot. Stepping over the man, he took three quick steps into the room, which was laid out exactly the same as the one he’d booked for himself. As he walked, he looked to his right, where the mirror gave him a view into the space. The woman had hitched up her skirt and was bending over the bed, her silk panties stretched tightly over her buttocks. He placed a hand on her rear, and she sighed with desire. He shot her in the back of the head and she collapsed forwards without a sound.
Adam scanned the scene. Two kills, no witnesses, no complications. The gun he was using was not powerful, and the silencer slowed the progress of the bullet slightly. Those two factors, combined with the flat-tipped ammunition he used meant the bullet would enter the skull, but would not retain enough kinetic energy to punch out an exit wound on the far side of the brain. Also, the bullets expanded on impact, doing enough damage to ensure one shot was enough. Very efficient, very little mess.
Adam closed the door quietly behind him, hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on it. He took the stairs down to the lobby and ducked into the bathroom, heading straight for a stall. Once inside, he took a canvas bag from the backpack. Peeling off the suit, he balled it up and placed it at the bottom of the bag. He put on shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers and carefully removed the black wig. He pulled out a baseball cap which had strands of blonde hair glued into the front and back. Sunglasses completed the change. He put the backpack in the canvas bag and grabbed it, hoisting it over his shoulder.
No one looked twice as he exited the hotel and headed for the train station.
Twenty-nine kills. He doubted many in his profession could boast as many. Most were eventually terminated by their employers to prevent any trail leading back to them. Adam had been very careful to make sure he wouldn’t meet the same fate. Firstly, his work was impeccable. It would be a bad business decision to get rid of him. Secondly, no one had ever actually met him, either to give him instructions for the next job or to pay him for the last kill. Adam was very, very careful. But he knew his unblemished record of hits was finally becoming a liability. It was nearly time to retire and disappear.
Adam bought a ticket to Berlin and boarded the train to Milan. It was busier than he liked, but he’d learned to screen out the noise and smells of the cattle, and they—in their turn—seemed to instinctively know to keep their distance. They were so easy to fool, but when he had finished a job and was able to let the mask slip a little, Adam knew his presence made others uncomfortable. He was glad of it.
His training was progressing well. His physical strength and stamina were still growing, and his temperament was improving as he worked with the darkness at his core. With each job, he had become more level, calm, and weathered by experience. He knew he must not rush anything. What were a few years when you were going to make history? When he was ready, he would pay the Broker a visit. By that time, he would have the knowledge and the ability to make the kill that would change the world. The kill he had been born to make. The kill his father’s successor had messed up so comprehensively.
5
Innisfarne
The summer after she fell/didn’t fall from the tree, Joni got sick with glandular fever. At first, it was just a sore throat, which was initially treated with a little skepticism due to her fondness for the chocolate ice cream which seemed to provide the only relief.
After a week, her throat was obviously swollen, and she couldn’t get out of bed at all. Her arms and legs felt like they were being held down by invisible goblins and she couldn’t even lift her head off the pillow when Mum came to bring her some breakfast.
“Yoghurt?” said Joni, her voice a croak like crumpling paper.
“Yoghurt,” said Mee. “I’m not sure three meals consisting solely of ice-cream is providing you with a nutritionally balanced diet.”
“Ok,” said Joni, and closed her eyes.
“What do you mean, ‘ok’? No argument, just ‘ok’?” Mee leaned over her daughter and smoothed back a lick of dark black hair that had stuck to her forehead. Joni was sweating, and her forehead was hot. Too hot.
“Jones?” said Mee. There was no answer. She was asleep.
“Shit,” said Mee as she backed out of the door. “Shit and buggery.”
She leaned out of the door.
“Kate? Kate?” There was an answering shout from the kitchen downstairs. Mee walked to the top of the stairs and leaned out over the bannister.
“Joni’s running a fever. Her throat is worse. Anyone on yesterday’s boat still carrying Manna?”
Although Innisfarne had no Thin Places where Users could absorb Manna, visitors to the community sometimes showed up with their reserves brimming, reluctant to let go of the safety net provided by its power.
Mee heard footsteps, then Kate’s face appeared below.
“You sure, Mee? It’s fine with me, but…”
“Well I’m not overjoyed about it, but she’s really sick.”
“Ok, Paula always shows up with a full tank. I’ll go find her.”
Mee took a wet flannel in to Joni and held it against her forehead. She was burning up. Mee frowned at the thought of letting Manna near her little girl, but what choice did she have? She knew her distrust of nanotechnology was based solely on the fact that it had led to her losing the only man she had ever loved. Sometimes it was convenient to forget he wouldn’t even be alive without it.
Seb had been gone more than a decade now. Mee had been eleven weeks pregnant with Joni when it had happened. He had saved the world, but lost himself. Over the course of a few short weeks, he had become distant, disconnected. She could still see the old Seb in him, but it was as if he was being pulled in a different direction by an irresistible force. He had told her that he didn’t have a single organic cell left in his body. He had allowed the alien nanotechnology, which had saved his life more than once, to replace his human cells completely. As a result, he had certainly averted the deaths of more than seven and a half billion of his fellow humans.
“If, that is, you think I can call myself human any more,” Seb had joked, feebly, in one of the rare moments when they were talking properly, just days before he had gone.
“You’re the most human man I’ve ever known, Sebby.” He hadn’t flinched when she called him Sebby. Not a good sign.
“I don’t know what I am, Mee,” he had said. “Maybe it will get clearer, but…” He had stopped talking, looking up at the stars.
Mee had looked at his profile in the moonlight. His ready smile was absent, his jokes, his spontaneity. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he had gone through, or how it must feel to begin to doubt your connection to your own species. She had stroked his face.
“Maybe you’re overthinking this,” she had said, choosing her words carefully. “Maybe you get to decide now. Choose who you want to be. What do y
ou want, Seb?”
The silence that followed had gone on far, far too long. Finally, he’d turned and looked at her, but it was as if he couldn’t see her at all.
“Mee?” he had said, not seeing her face half-illuminated by the fire they’d lit, not hearing the crackle of the flames, not feeling the soft breeze or the touch of her hand on his skin.
“Mum? Mum?”
Mee thought of how Seb had changed physically, during the fifteen days he had stood unmoving on the beach. The memory of pushing a hand right through his shoulder, as if his body had been semi-solid, still woke her up some nights.
“Mum? I don’t feel so good.”
With a start, Mee looked down at Joni, who was sweating. Her eyes were dark, her skin pale. For a second she looked like a very old woman rather than a ten-year-old tomboy.
“I’m sorry, honey, I know. Someone’s coming to help you.”
Mee held a cup up to Joni’s lips and winced at the obvious pain her daughter experienced when trying to swallow.
Paula bustled around Joni’s bedroom like an anxious tie-dyed nightmare, muttering about Feng Shui, reflexology, and crystals. When she started moving her hands around Joni’s body, trying to ‘sense her aura,’ Mee finally snapped.
“Look, Paula, do me a favor, would you?”
Paula stopped chanting. She had been trying to produce overtones with her voice, something she’d read about in a magazine. She felt sure her technique was showing improvement, but an unfortunate side-effect was the dribble of mucus sliding out of her right nostril. She wiped it on one purple sleeve.
“Yes?”
“Cut the mumbo-jumbo crap and help her. Or piss off out of it.”
Paula elected to respond to Mee’s rudeness and cynicism with a display of quiet, unruffled dignity. She shook her head sorrowfully while pursing her lips and raising her eyebrows, which was intended to register as a mixture of pity and selflessness. Unfortunately, it made her look like a bulldog that had just been given an unexpectedly large suppository, sideways.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 69
