The Best Thing You Can Steal

by Simon R. Green

  Annie couldn’t bring herself to look at me. I took hold of her chin and made her look.

  ‘I knew it was you,’ I said. ‘I’ve always known. Any number of people couldn’t wait to tell me – friends and enemies. It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t now. I would have done the same thing.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Annie. She pulled her chin out of my grasp but made herself meet my gaze. ‘This is why I stayed away. Because I couldn’t face you after what I did.’

  ‘I forgave you long ago,’ I said.

  ‘But I never forgave myself.’

  ‘Then let me do it for you.’

  ‘This is all very sweet,’ said Hammer in a long-suffering sort of way. ‘But I really don’t care. You came here to steal from me, and no one gets away with that. So, Thief, let’s make a start by relieving you of all your precious toys. That seems only fair. You can begin by handing over that special pen of yours. I saw you using it on the television. I haven’t quite figured out what it is or what it does, but I have people who can do that for me. All that matters is that it’s intriguing and I want it. So bring it to me, right now.’

  Several guards covered me with their guns as I moved forward. I produced the ballpoint pen from inside my jacket pocket, slowly and carefully, so as not to upset the guards. When I finally came face to face with Hammer, he stuck out a hand for the pen – and I hit the button. Time crashed to a halt, just long enough for me to make one small change. And then I started Time up again. No one noticed anything had happened, because for them nothing had. I kept my gaze down and my shoulders slumped, as though I had no more tricks left in me. Hammer snatched the pen out of my hand, and I tensed, but fortunately he had enough sense not to mess with something he didn’t properly understand. He slipped the pen carelessly into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Your other toys can wait,’ he said. ‘I probably have better versions in my collection anyway. You can go back to the others now.’

  I backed away, never taking my eyes off him, and Hammer never took his eyes off me. Once I was back with my crew, Hammer smiled happily.

  ‘Right! This was all your idea, so you get to die first.’ He turned to the nearest guard. ‘Shoot him.’

  The guard aimed his gun at me.

  ‘No!’ said Annie.

  The guard opened fire, and Johnny Wilde was suddenly standing right in front of me. The bullets hit Johnny so hard they slammed him off his feet and back into my arms. He cried out once, more in surprise than anything else, and we crashed to the floor together. Annie knelt down beside us. My throat was so tight I couldn’t say anything. The whole front of Johnny’s tweed suit was soaked in blood. He managed a smile for me.

  ‘I finally worked out what’s real,’ he said. ‘The people you care for. Hello. I must be going.’

  He stopped breathing. And for the first time, he looked very small and very ordinary.

  The Damned was already wrapped in his armour and charging the guards. They all opened fire at once, and every single cursed bullet hit the Damned squarely, but they didn’t even slow him down.

  Annie and I clung tightly together and kept our heads down. The Ghost stood tall, entirely unmoved as stray bullets passed right through his immaterial form to shatter precious items behind him. His gaze never once left Hammer.

  Lex raged among the guards, tearing them limb from limb with awful strength. Terrible tearing sounds were drowned out by horrid screams, as the guards bled and died, but Lex never said a word. His anger was too great for that. He struck them down and threw them aside, until, just a few moments later, Hammer was the only one still standing. All the guards were dead, what was left of them lying scattered in bloody pieces across the floor. Hammer stood there trembling, spattered in his guards’ blood, and the Damned turned his back on him. He put aside his armour and came back to kneel beside Johnny’s body. He reached out a steady hand and gently closed Johnny’s staring eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, my friend. I doubt we’ll ever meet again, because if anyone deserves not to end up where I’m going, it’s you.’

  He took his time getting to his feet again. Annie and I helped each other up, and while we were preoccupied doing that, Hammer went to leave, only to find the Ghost was already standing before the open door, blocking the way. Hammer sneered and went to walk through him, only to stop dead when the Ghost planted a very solid hand on his chest. Hammer fell back, startled.

  ‘Do you remember ordering my death?’ said the Ghost.

  Hammer quickly regained his composure. ‘Oh, yes … You’re the forger. It was a very good Turin Shroud, I’ll give you that. It fooled me and a lot of my experts. But you can’t con all of the people all of the time.’ He chuckled briefly. ‘I did get a bit annoyed with you, didn’t I?’

  ‘You had me killed in such a horrific way I still can’t bear to remember it,’ said the Ghost.

  Hammer shrugged. ‘You earned it. And I needed to send a message.’

  The Ghost stared at him for a long moment, and Hammer stirred uncomfortably.

  ‘You’re looking very well, for a ghost,’ he said finally.

  ‘How is it that you’re able to see me?’

  ‘I took a potion,’ said Hammer. ‘So I could enjoy all the ghosts in my collection.’

  Lex and Annie and I came forward to confront Hammer. He drew himself up and faced us defiantly.

  ‘You can’t kill me,’ Hammer said flatly. ‘The first thing I looked for on the television was my own future. I’m still very much alive, years from now.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘That was one of the first things my predecessor looked for when he was setting up this heist.’

  ‘You never told us that,’ said Annie.

  ‘Now you know why I was so insistent we could only hurt Hammer, not kill him,’ I said.

  ‘You see?’ Hammer said triumphantly. ‘There’s nothing you can do to me.’

  The Ghost advanced on Hammer, and he backed away.

  ‘Don’t you feel any guilt?’ said the Ghost. ‘For all the people you hurt and the lives you ruined?’

  ‘What do people matter?’ said Hammer. ‘Compared with all the precious things in the world? There’s never any shortage of people.’

  ‘Our short lives are all that matter,’ said the Ghost. ‘Because we’re a long time dead.’

  I closed in on Hammer from his blind side, thrust my hand into his jacket pocket and took back my pen. Hammer fumed but had enough sense not to say anything. I put the pen away, while Hammer did his best to stare us all down.

  ‘More of my guards are on their way. And I have all kinds of personal protection. There’s no way you can win!’

  ‘I’m sure I can find one if I try hard enough,’ said Lex. ‘Why should you live when my good friend is dead?’

  ‘You can’t kill him, Lex,’ I said quickly.

  Lex looked at me angrily. ‘Why do you keep saying that? Johnny was one of us!’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘He gave up his life for me.’

  ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill this piece of garbage,’ said Lex. ‘The world will smell better once he’s gone.’

  ‘You chose to be an agent of the Good,’ I said.

  ‘Only to piss off Hell. Anyway, killing a monster like him would be a good thing.’

  ‘But what would Johnny want you to do?’ I said.

  Lex scowled. ‘Something annoying, probably. But he never was vindictive. He always was a better man than me.’ He turned his scowl on Hammer. ‘I’ll make you a deal. Give me the immortality drug and I won’t kill you.’

  The hope that had flared in Hammer’s face at the mention of a deal disappeared again.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ he said. ‘There was only the one dose, and I drank it before Judi could get her hands on it.’

  ‘Then what use are you?’ said Lex.

  Hammer took in the look on the Damned’s face and had to turn his head away.

  ‘Hold off, Lex,’ I said. ‘I have a use fo
r him.’

  ‘Convince me,’ said Lex, his cold gaze fixed on Hammer.

  ‘You don’t understand what’s going on here,’ I said. ‘No one does, except me.’ I smiled at Hammer. ‘This was never your plan, for all your foresight; it was mine. I knew you’d use the television to look ahead in Time, to check for people coming to steal from you. Because that’s what I would do. So I gave the matter some thought. How could I get in here, and do what I needed to do, if you knew we were coming? But then I had the idea to make the Wild Card a part of my crew. I knew his unique nature would confuse things wonderfully.’

  ‘And by bringing him here, you got him killed,’ said Hammer.

  ‘No,’ said Lex. ‘That’s down to you.’

  I turned to the Ghost. ‘I promised you an end to your ghostly existence. How would you like a chance at a second life?’

  ‘You think there’s something here that could do that?’ said the Ghost. ‘I looked really hard and I couldn’t see anything.’

  ‘That’s because I’d already picked it up,’ I said. ‘Remember the bone ring I told you about, fashioned from one of the possessed Gadarene swine? The one that allows you to possess someone else’s body?’

  The Ghost was already shaking his head. ‘I told you. I won’t drive someone else out, just so I can take their body for myself. I won’t do that.’

  ‘Not even Fredric Hammer?’ I said.

  The Ghost turned slowly to look at Hammer.

  ‘Sable’s journal said the possessing ring was here,’ I said. ‘I slipped it into my pocket earlier, when no one was looking. And when Hammer demanded I hand over my pen, that allowed me to get close enough to quietly slip the ring on to his finger.’

  Hammer looked down at his hand and made a shocked sound. He tried to pull the ring off, but it wouldn’t budge.

  I nodded to the Ghost. ‘Take Hammer’s body. Take his whole life – for your revenge.’

  ‘Love to,’ said the Ghost.

  He walked forward and disappeared inside Hammer. The man cried out once, and then his voice cut off abruptly. His eyes were suddenly kind, and when he smiled, there was none of Hammer’s malice in it. He took a deep breath and stretched slowly, like a cat, savouring it.

  ‘I’m alive again. I can feel again! I’m back.’

  I turned to Lex. ‘And that is why I couldn’t let you kill Hammer.’

  Lex shook his head slowly. ‘You couldn’t just tell me?’

  ‘Not until it was time. I couldn’t be sure who was listening.’

  ‘But if that’s the Ghost in Hammer’s body,’ said Lex, ‘where has Hammer’s spirit gone?’

  ‘Where he should have gone long ago,’ I said. ‘Where he deserves to be. I promised you revenge on Hammer, Lex. Have I delivered?’

  Lex looked at the Ghost, smiling his gentle smile with Hammer’s face.

  ‘It’ll do,’ said Lex.

  I smiled at Annie. ‘This heist was never just about burgling Hammer’s vault. It was about getting some personal justice for all of us. Happy now?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ said Annie.

  Lex nodded to the Ghost in Hammer. ‘Welcome back to the world. What will you do with your new life?’

  ‘Enjoy all the good times that Hammer cheated me out of,’ said the Ghost. ‘And then I think I’ll put his life to some real use. With all his money and resources, I can finally help the people I always wanted to.’

  ‘And the collection?’ said Annie.

  ‘I think I’ll sell it all off,’ the Ghost said cheerfully. ‘Or destroy it, if need be.’

  ‘Will Hammer’s people let you do that?’ said Lex.

  ‘I imagine they’re used to obeying his orders, whether they make sense or not,’ said the Ghost.

  ‘I got what I came here for,’ said Lex. ‘Hammer is dead. Shame about the immortality drug.’ He looked at me. ‘You lied to get me here. But I suppose I would have done the same thing in your position.’

  ‘Does that mean I’m forgiven?’ I said.

  ‘I’m still working on that,’ said Lex.

  Annie moved to stand between us. ‘To get to him, you’d have to go through me.’

  ‘Then I’d better forgive him,’ said Lex.

  And then we all looked round, startled, as Johnny Wilde leapt to his feet, laughing out loud in sheer exuberance. He checked the front of his suit, sticking his fingers in the bullet holes and grinning at the blood. He danced around the vault, jumping up and clicking his heels together, until he finally crashed to a halt before us, beaming happily.

  ‘I’m the Wild Card, remember? Too weird to live, too strange to die!’

  Lex laughed, catching us all by surprise, and pulled Johnny into a bear hug.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you!’

  ‘You see,’ said Johnny. ‘You can care about someone other than yourself.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and let me enjoy the moment, you annoying little weirdo.’

  I had to ask. ‘Johnny, when you got between me and that guard, did you know those bullets couldn’t kill you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Sort of. Maybe.’

  ‘Who would have thought it?’ said the Ghost. ‘Justice and good times for everyone. I never thought I’d live to see the day …’

  Annie looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You promised me I’d find something here to give me back control over my gift.’

  ‘You already have it,’ I said. ‘The problem was never with the gift, but with your lack of self-confidence. Haven’t you noticed how your control returned as we worked the heist?’

  Annie smiled and shook her head. ‘You always were that little bit sneakier than me.’

  ‘Hearing you say that makes all of this worthwhile,’ I said. ‘So, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Anywhere we want,’ said Annie.

  I took her in my arms, and we kissed the missing years away. After a while, the others started making impatient noises, and we broke apart.

  ‘Just like old times,’ I said to Annie.

  ‘Oh, I think we can do better than that,’ said Annie.

  ‘I set this up so we could make enough money to leave our old lives behind,’ I said. ‘We won’t get our millions from Judi Rifkin now, but we can still walk out of here with as many precious things as we can carry.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ said Annie.

  ‘And then we can live happily ever after – if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie. ‘I’d like that.’

  We all looked round as Lex picked up the massive freezer as though it weighed nothing.

  ‘You said we could take anything we could carry …’

  ‘Show off,’ said Johnny.

  FOURTEEN

  And Finally

  The Ghost as Hammer ordered his security people to let us go, and they did. He escorted us back out into the cavern, already full of plans for how best to use his new position to atone for past sins. He stood outside the museum and waved us goodbye as we made our way across the open cavern floor.

  Back in the Perfect Pizza Palace, Lex and Johnny dumped the freezer in a corner and dropped down at the nearest empty table. They ordered everything on the menu and launched into a spirited discussion on what they were going to do with their new lives, while everyone else tried hard to pretend that they weren’t eavesdropping. Annie and I left them to it.

  Outside, the car was gone, so we walked off into the night, hand in hand.

  Because the best thing you can steal … is a second chance to get things right.

 

 

 
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