by Erik Carter
He glanced at his hand, resting on his lap. It was blue. The beer bottle it held was blue. His legs were blue. The light coming from the gap in the pod painted everything.
When his training ended in the snowy woods in Virginia, it had been another opportunity for him to fortify his new identity. Before that, when he’d seen his new face, he hadn’t felt entirely like a new man. Neither had he felt like a new person when he’d taken the new name and agreed to be an assassin. He’d thought that when training was over, then he’d be transformed.
But when Nakiri said it—lying in the snow, looking up at him with that combination of physical pain and mentor approval and maybe even a bit of pride—when she’d said Training complete, still the new identity hadn’t fully adhered to him.
He’d long ago concluded that his previous life ended when Burton killed him at the beach house, but since then he’d been in limbo. He’d consciously accepted his new name, his new identity—but somehow his subconscious hadn’t.
C.C. had taught him that to move beyond one’s troubles, one must stop thinking about oneself.
And that’s exactly what he needed to do, because his disorganized mind had drifted into selfishness when he had to focus on something extremely critical.
He had to figure out how the hell to find Burton. Failure would have consequences for the entire nation.
Silence took a diaphragmatic breath. Held it. Released.
Then a sip of beer.
Two calming techniques—one of C.C.’s, one of his own.
To figure out what to do about Burton, Silence would have to crawl into that thing in front of him, the alien-looking half-sphere he’d been staring at for several minutes. If the hype was true—and he sure hoped it was, given how much he’d paid for the thing—then a transcendental experience awaited him inside.
That’s why he’d gotten it. The ultimate way of calming the storm that was his brain. The nearest facility where he could have paid for an individual session was all the way in Atlanta, which is why he’d dropped half his startup funds on the thing.
Still, he didn’t know what to expect. He would finish the beer before he got in. One calming technique at a time.
As he straightened up in the chair, he felt the open, skeletal presence of the half-finished wall against his back—the brand-new studs, the rear side of the hallway-facing drywall, and the original structure above and below. The smell was a mixture of fresh sawdust and decades-old timber.
Another sip of beer. Almost gone. If his first couple of weeks with Mrs. Enfield were any indication, he wouldn’t be able to rely on alcohol much longer. She was going to hound him, which meant he was going to have to ditch this calming technique.
Not that he minded. In only a couple of weeks, booze had become a crutch. He thought of his father—drunk and crying, in an undershirt, curled in a recliner.
This was the last time Silence would rely on alcohol. He would kill the crutch.
He looked at the bottle.
In fact, he’d kill it right now.
The glass thunked against the hardwood floor as he put it down.
Another look at the pod. Its glowing blue mouth acknowledged him—whether it was a smile or a scowl, he couldn’t tell.
Let’s go.
He was supposed to do this naked. So he stripped.
He stuck his hand in the blue gap, and pulled open the lid. The ten inches of water before him was perfectly still.
The supplies he needed were on the little ledge at the front. First, he inserted the flanged silicone earplugs. Then he opened the jar of petroleum jelly and smeared it over the nicks on his knuckles and face. This kept the salt water from burning.
One more look at the unnaturally blue pool, then he got in.
The 93.5-degree water felt pleasant, but not out of the ordinary.
Until he reclined.
He lay back in the water and instantly bobbed. This made him grin like an idiot, despite how silly he felt, despite the seriousness of the situation he was in. Silence had never been a floater. It felt funny.
There was a moment of struggle to get his bearings and pull his big frame into an upright position. When he finally stabilized, he grabbed the lid and pulled it shut.
And he was sealed in.
All was blue. The arched ceiling created by the underside of the lid was surprisingly high.
Silence lay back in the water, and as soon as his ears submerged, there was, well, silence. The flanged design of the plugs had already cut down on almost all sound, but the combination of the plugs and the water made things unnaturally, unbelievably quiet.
The waterline fell at his chest, around his neck, halfway up his head. He bobbed, gently tapping the sides as he drifted around. He’d been told that bobbing would quickly subside when he stopped moving.
The black speakers were a few inches behind his head. Even though it could be used in a sensory deprivation manner, the pod also had options that involved the senses. The speakers could be used to play gentle music, and the light could be left on.
He reached to the buttons on the wall to his right, pressed the center, and the blue light vanished.
And it was dark. Really, really dark. Pure black.
He held perfectly still, but pushing the button had created more movement in the water, and his naked body bobbed again and touched the walls—when he’d brush one side, he’d drift to the other side, then the back, then the top.
Which frustrated him. How was he supposed to have this transcendental, sensory-free experience if his sides kept brushing the walls? The dealer had told him that Silence’s height—six-foot-three—was at the high end of the comfort scale for a standard pod. He’d gotten the XL model. Did he need the XXL? Was there an XXL?
Soon, though, the bobbing subsided, just gentle undulations. He wondered what caused these. His heartbeat, maybe. Or the movement of the Earth. Or the small, unavoidable motions he didn’t know he was making.
He blinked.
Which made him realize he’d lost track of whether his eyes were open. It was that dark. And relaxing.
Still, it wasn’t working.
Where was the transcendental experience?
Ugh. He wanted to climb out. This was silly. Ridiculous. And also dangerous, given the seriousness of the situation, which sent a flood of panic over him.
C.C. would tell him to relax, to breathe, to give it a chance to work.
He took a deep breath. Diaphragmatic.
That’s what he was supposed to do, anyway, to get this thing to work—in the pod, one is supposed to focus on one’s breathing and stop thinking.
He couldn’t stop thinking. It wasn’t in his nature, and his entire purpose of doing this float was to think his way through his problem.
Burton.
There was something to all of this that Silence was missing. But what? 8 p.m. tonight. That was the time Glover had given, the time that Burton was to meet with an unknown connection, someone with incredible power. A meeting that had devastating ramifications.
But why?
Why were they meeting?
His eyes opened. They’d been closed, and he didn’t realize it. He didn’t see the ceiling above him, but he knew it was there.
He wasn’t in a sensory-free environment. He was in a damn plastic bubble in one of his bedrooms, the one with a half-finished wall.
He was in a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bubble.
This was silly.
Valuable time was ticking away.
This wasn’t working.
Dammit!
No transcendental experience. No hallucinations. No out-of-body clarity to help him reach his conclusion.
Nothing.
What would C.C. think?
He blinked.
C.C.
He saw her.
Smiling. Looking up from a book. On one of the sofas in the library. Her spot. Shapely legs crossed in front of her. Her favorite blanket—a gray-and-blue quilt—tucked under her arm.
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She fell from the sofa.
Onto the hardwood floor.
And rolled twice. Stopped. Her face was gone. Blood and tissue. The area where her mouth should be opened up. And the monster version of C.C. screamed.
Jake screamed too.
Jake, not Silence.
He ran toward her, his feet thudding on the floor, never gaining, treading in place as she grew farther and farther away. Smaller. Disappearing down a wooden tunnel that stretched farther and farther before him. She was a red blur. Then a dot on the horizon. Gone.
He reached, couldn’t grab her.
Silence’s eyes opened.
He gasped.
His legs twitched, which brought movement back to the water, making him bob again. His left shoulder gently brushed the wall.
This thing actually works.
But he needed to refocus, to come back to the assignment. He was Silence, not Jake. And he had to stop Burton. Not just for revenge, not just for C.C.
Massive ramifications. Countless lives at risk.
Focus.
Burton. Focus on Burton
Where had he left off?
Before he could answer himself, his eyes were closed again, and he slipped into another memory. His last moments in Virginia. After all his hard work—Training complete.
He was back in that dreary little room as he received the details of his first assignment, just before he returned to Florida and killed Clayton Glover.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The room was filthy.
A kitchenette on the lefthand side revealed its previous identity as a break room—battered cabinetry with drooping doors; a teetering refrigerator, whose doors dangled as much as those of the cabinets; a cobweb-coated stainless-steel sink.
Silence was alone, at the long table in the center of the room. He’d found one of the cleanest chairs, but he’d still had to wipe away dust and chunks of ceiling tile.
The decayed quasi-neighborhood was visible through the grimy window. A man prodded a shopping cart along the far sidewalk, the only sign of life. The sky was a lighter gray than it had been, and a bright spot at its peak showed the sun’s location. The temperature had risen a couple degrees in recent days.
A late model Cadillac sat near the sidewalk that led to the building, the subdued sunlight glistening off its immaculate black shine. The windows were tinted pitch-black. Vapor puffed from its exhaust tips.
Falcon burst through the door in the back of the room, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He came to an abrupt stop, scowled, and gave the small room a visual sweep.
“She’s late. Dammit, Nakiri.” He groaned, and his shoulders dropped an inch. “She’s one of my problem children. You seem pretty bullheaded yourself. You gonna give me troubles too?”
Probably, Silence thought.
But he said nothing. He wasn’t gonna lie, but more importantly, he didn’t want to speak. Overall, his throat was improving, but it had good days and bad days. Today was a bad day.
Falcon strolled around the table, his shoes crunching the rotten linoleum. He stopped for a moment to look through the window at the urban wasteland, then flopped his briefcase on the table, pulled out the chair across from Silence, and wiped it clear of debris.
Silence glanced at Falcon’s suit—dark blue, pinstriped. There was no way that perfunctory chair-cleaning was going to keep the dust off that expensive wool.
Falcon saw something in his expression and gave his customary grin, the corner of his mouth lifting both his mustache and the unlit cigarette.
“I know what you’re thinking: why the hell do the Watchers keep such a shithole place? As you could see from the medical facility below ground, we’re not short on funds. But we have to keep up appearances if we’re going to remain hidden in plain sight.” He pointed to the window, the rough neighborhood beyond. “It’s not always glamorous.”
He pointed to the cigarette.
“You mind?”
Silence shook his head, but he minded. Smoke bothered him.
Falcon reached into his pocket and took out a cheap gas station lighter. A couple flicks, and the end of the cigarette glowed orange. He smiled with genuine contentment as he inhaled.
Suddenly switching gears, he pivoted forward, clicked open his briefcase, and retrieved a holstered pistol. He shoved it across the table in Silence’s direction.
Silence stopped it with a palm, popped the gun from its holster, examined.
“Your new buddy,” Laswell said and took a drag from his Marlboro. “Beretta 92FS, 9 mm, standard Asset sidearm. Fifteen and one with the standard mag; up to thirty-two and one with high-capacity. Open-slide. Short-recoil. And, naturally, threaded for a suppressor.”
Silence was already more than familiar with the popular weapon. Like Cobb’s Glock 19 that Silence carried during his killing spree, this was a weapon trusted around the world by police and military forces. If he hadn’t already learned all about the weapon during his police training, Nakiri had relentlessly pounded the information into his brain in recent weeks.
It was matte black, ideal for the work he’d be doing. The weight of it was pleasing. So was the shape of it, the feel.
He put it back in the holster.
Falcon blew smoke from the corner of his mouth and checked his watch.
“Dammit, where is she?” He took another drag. Sighed. “You made it through training. Do you feel ready?”
Before Silence could reply, the door behind him flew open, and there was the tap of heels rapidly crossing the ruined floor. Nakiri came to the table, threw down the peacoat she’d had hooked in her arm, then tore off her oversized sunglasses, revealing a shiner on her left eye. Purple and yellow and glistening. She pointed at it as she stepped within a couple feet of Falcon.
“Oh, yes, he’s ready.”
Falcon turned to Silence and grinned. “I’m glad you’re learning to do what’s necessary. True indiscrimination.”
Nakiri went to the other end of the table. She wore jeans and a long-sleeve, V-neck top. After the now customary cleaning of the seat, she flopped down into the chair. Dust ballooned up, twinkling in the sunlight coming in through the window.
She looked across the table at Silence with a slightly softened version of her standard severity. He’d passed a test, and now he was a contemporary of hers, but she still needed him to know he was a piece of shit.
Falcon looked back-and-forth between them, that little grin of his disappearing. Silence had noticed how this attitude of Falcon’s could quickly shift into professionalism. Whoever this guy was in the real world, he’d made a clear delineation between civility and playfulness, no matter how goofy the guy could appear.
“Burton had Clayton Glover finish off every last piece of the Farone family,” Falcon said. He paused to look at Silence, his expression changing again, this time to something like hesitance, almost pity. “Including Joseph Farone. I know the old man took a shining to you. Sorry to have to report this, Suppressor.”
Silence nodded.
A twinge in Silence’s gut, another taste of loss in a period of time when he’d lost so much. But it was slight. And it disappeared as quickly as it had materialized.
He remembered what Burton had told him in the hallway of the Farone mansion, the night he murdered C.C. Burton said two things were going to happen, the second of which would occur down the line and be a chance for him to reconnect with his “Daddy.”
Burton had followed through. He’d reconnected with Daddy. Murdered him.
After everything Silence had gone through recently, after all Burton had taken from him, he was surprisingly blank. He wondered if it would always be like this, if he’d been permanently numbed.
Falcon watched him, eyes squinting slightly as though processing a thought before he said it. “You’ve been trained. You’ve healed. Now it’s time for your assignment. As badly as you want to get your revenge on Burton, you know he’s involved in some bigger shit as well. And you need to
know more about him.”
Nakiri leaned in Silence’s direction and almost put her forearms on the dusty table before thinking better of it. She crossed them over her chest instead.
“That’s right. You don’t think I hung on that piece of shit’s arm for months and didn’t get any intel, did you, dummy? Burton wanted us all to think he’d been an orphan from unknown parents, handpicked and groomed by Joey ‘the Jaguar’ Farone. Most of that’s true. All except the parenting part.
“His biological father was Jacques Sollier, an international terrorist, active in the mid ’60s through the ’70s. No one knows whether he was French, French-Canadian, French-Algerian—the guy was a ghost. Bombings in Poland. Assassinations in East Germany and the Balkans. A real opportunist: no-affiliation, highest-bidder-gets-the-job sort of stuff. Moved around Europe with near impunity.” A piece of ceiling tile dropped to her lap. She scowled and brushed it away. “Sollier’s specialty was utilizing shipping ports—transporting weapons and explosives and hostages and himself. Evidently he died doing what he loved—they found him with a few holes in his chest behind a utility shed at the Freeport of Riga. Neither the Latvians nor Interpol ever found who did it. My guess is they didn’t try too hard.”
Falcon squashed out his cigarette on the sole of his brogues and flicked the butt into the pile of broken cinderblocks in the corner.
“Sollier fathered a child on one of his trips to the States,” he said. “Abandoned the kid and the mother, one Carolyn Burton. Momma got herself murdered a few years later. Kid goes into foster care. And you know the rest.
“Now … let’s talk about the present. Nakiri blew her cover with Burton.” He pointed toward her, and though he didn’t look at her, she still averted her eyes. “So we’ve been monitoring him from a distance while we pieced you back together. The guy’s a pro. He’s meticulous about privacy, security. All we’ve been able to glean is a numerical code: CG247.
“But his lieutenant is a whole lot sloppier. Clayton Glover might be moving up in the world, but he’s still a scumbag. Every other Friday, like clockwork, he goes out to a crappy part of Pensacola, where a suited man ‘escorts’ a lady to his Lexus.”
