The hawk that returned.
‘Revenge should have no bounds.’
There was a long moment of awkwardness, to which only Hartfield seemed indifferent. Saskia’s gun arm began to ache and she let it fall to her side. As she did so, Hartfield looked at his watch. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you feel, Saskia?’
‘Feel what?’
‘A sense of your own power. Of your efficacy. Of your human will. I remember that feeling from memories I have of the person I was, many years ago. I will fight for it.’
‘No,’ said Jennifer. ‘Remember the watch. I sent it backwards in time but there never the question of a paradox. I had to wait two hours and send it. No effect without a cause, remember?’
Hartfield shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, Jennifer. And David and Saskia—you’re wrong too. I have with me the specifications of the correct nano-treatment. I have studied the operation of the time machine. I will return to the year 1999 and correct Orza’s mistakes. I will be cured and my future will change. The world of 2023 can go to hell.’
The lights went out.
Saskia saw an afterimage of the room flick left and right as she scanned the darkness. Something brushed her elbow.
‘Jennifer, David: did either of you touch me?’
‘No.’
Saskia fired over her shoulder, turning as she did. In the muzzle flash, she saw the black arch of the doorway and, almost out of sight, Hartfield’s heel as he escaped into the corridor.
‘He’s gone,’ Saskia shouted above her deadened ears. ‘What did he do to the lights?’
‘Can’t see any emergency diodes,’ said David. ‘He must have disabled the backup too.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Ego. ‘I have detected a transmission from another Ego-class personal computer.’
‘Whose?’ asked David. ‘Hartfield’s?’
‘The transmission comprised two coded radio bursts. The first instructed the central computer to deactivate both the primary and emergency lighting throughout the centre.’
‘And the second?’
‘The second instructed the chip in Saskia’s brain to deactivate, effective immediately.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘Saskia,’ said David. ‘We’ll think of something. Hold on.’
She slid down the frame of the door and stretched her legs as though she could brace herself against the coming loss, the tide of nothingness. Would it feel like a stroke, or falling asleep? She felt no shift in her mind, but when David next spoke, his words were unintelligible. Her English was gone. The implanted skills were fading.
She put the gun to her temple.
I will not become the Angel of Death.
‘Do you know the true purpose of Russian Roulette? It is the power of the question: Is there a bullet or is there not?’
The six-shooter held six rounds, less one fired by Hartfield. She had fired two more. There were three bullets left. But before she could squeeze the trigger, David gripped the barrel. They fought for control. David pushed the gun towards the floor and it glanced across his thigh, spinning the barrel. Saskia thumbed a nerve below his ear. He cried and fell back.
She put the gun against her head and pulled the trigger.
Snick.
The chamber was empty.
She pulled the trigger again.
Snick.
She had hit the second empty chamber.
She squeezed again.
Snick.
The third empty chamber. Anger expanded inside her.
For the last time, she pulled the trigger.
The spring creaked. The hammer yawned and the ratchet revolved. Spin. The chamber turned. Measure. At the same time, David’s hands closed on her shoulders and she heard his meaningless words, felt his breath on her face. The world slowed. David’s voice deepened and Saskia imagined the gap between the hammer and the round. In that gap, which might have been a thousand miles across, a flame sprang up, guttered, and died.
A nightmare poured from that darkness: She was in a coffin. She wanted to scream but her dead mouth would not move. Her chest itched from the coroner’s incision. She smelled formaldehyde, corrupt meat and wood. Smoke, too. With that, she felt a draught through the dark curtain that separated the present from the past. The light from another world found her, even as she lay inside her box, and she remembered everything.
The nightmare inside the nightmare.
Everything was revenge.
Snip.
Chapter Thirty-One
Cologne: Three Weeks Earlier
The tusk-like arches of the main railway station emerged on her left. Opposite was a department store. She stepped between them a wounded figure. Her eyes, hidden under sunglasses, fixed on the sign for Oppenheim Street. She found a bench. It was late summer and the sun was low.
Ute removed a camera from her shoulder bag and retied her long hair into a neat ponytail. She pretended to photograph the passers-by, but she was taking pictures of an office block. Its ground floor housed a perfumery. Above that, the windows were soaped. Ute moved away. She found an alley that led around the back of the building. More photographs. There was a fire escape. Beyond was Father Rhine, steady as the sea.
She returned to the main street. On the same bench, she ate ice cream by twilight.
She paused on the way home to buy a padlock and a tube of superglue. The shop assistant asked her out for dinner, his gaze flickering upward to her green eyes. She stared at him until he apologised. She hurried from the shop and vomited into a drain.
The day grew old. She avoided eyes and hugged herself against the chill air while others relaxed in cafés and commented on Germany’s Indian summer. Ute heard them and seethed. It was not summer; it was autumn. If not that, then winter.
She was a student. She was writing a thesis on the use of traditional myths in Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Six nights ago, she had returned to the Kabana Klub. Her friend, Brigitte, had accompanied her, and together they had scanned the crowd. They had not found him. Brigitte had said, ‘Why would he come back? He might expect it.’
‘He would not.’
‘What are you going to do if you see him?’
‘First, I need to see him.’
Brigitte had accompanied her the next night too, and the one after that. Then she had stopped. Ute did not blame her. The music was too loud for conversation and, as Brigitte persisted with her questions, Ute persisted with her silence.
On the third night, alone, Ute saw him: a short, moustached man. He stood in the same corner wearing the same clothes. He chatted to two women just as he had chatted to her. He lit their cigarettes with a Zippo lighter whose flame he conjured with a dash across his thigh. But her fate and theirs took different paths; they smiled indulgently at his broken German and walked away, giggling. Ute watched them leave. She wondered whether she should confront the man. She decided not to.
He left two hours later, on foot. He walked for almost a kilometre. He meandered and doubled back on himself. Ute matched him. She had lived in the city her whole life and he had not. She stopped on corners and into shadows. She reversed her coat. There were few places for him to lose her.
They took the underground at Ottoplatz and emerged at Reichenspergerplatz. They came to the office block. This must be the place. She found a phone booth and dialled Holtz’s office at the police station. There was no answer.