“Is that Japanese?” I said.
The guy didn’t speak, but his I saw his eyes narrow with surprise and the skin of his forehead wrinkle into narrow folds.
“The knife you’re holding,” I said. “It looks Japanese. That’s not good. I prefer Sheffield steel, myself. But then, I am a little biased.”
He didn’t respond.
“Have you ever used a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife?” I said. “I went to the factory, once. And saw how they make them.”
This time his eyes grew wider, but he still didn’t speak.
“You should try one,” I said. “They’re a lot better than kitchen utensils. Less likely to snag on someone’s rib. If you want a job done properly, you need the right tools. Remember that. Now. Take the mask off.”
He removed it gingerly with his left hand, and confirmed what I’d suspected from the moment I first heard him move. It was the guy I’d seen leaving the machine shop in the back of the Cadillac, nearly two and a half hours ago.
“Have you been in this business long?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“How’s it working out for you?” I said. “Are you enjoying it? Does it give you much job satisfaction?”
His eyes were starting to glaze over.
“No?” I said. “Can you tell me the money’s good, at least? ’Cause I’ve met your co-workers, and they’re nothing to write home about.”
By now he was looking thoroughly confused.
“Let’s try this, instead,” I said. “Do you know who I am?”
He shook his head.
“Well, we need to put that right,” I said. “My name’s David Trevellyan. I’m your victim. You’re supposed to be killing me, right here, in less than two hours.”
That took a moment to sink in. Then his whole body recoiled, pressing hard against the cubicle wall to get away from me.
“So, we can do one of two things,” I said. “Bring the schedule forward, and you can kill me now. Try to, that is. Or you can put the knife down, and we’ll think of another way to handle this.”
The knife hit the floor and for a moment it hummed like a tuning fork, but the expression on the guy’s face didn’t relax one bit.
“Good,” I said. “Now, there’s one more thing I need to find out.”
The guy capitulating like that gave me a tough choice to make. He was no use to me. He was clearly new to whatever business his employers were in, and if he didn’t even recognize my face or know my name, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance he’d be privy to McIntyre’s contact information. Obtaining that was my only valid objective, not furthering my case for the Nobel Peace Prize. Keeping him alive was a liability. I knew that. If we were part of a well-resourced, official operation, things might be different. You could maybe make a case for holding on to him. He was never going to be primary source material—that was immediately obvious—but some conscientious interrogator with time on his hands might have been able to dredge up some useful background information from somewhere inside him. But with circumstances as they were, however, the requirements of the mission were clear. It was my job to shut him down. Permanently. Except that I was reluctant to do that. He wasn’t like the guys at the machine shop or the Ritz-Carlton or the apartment. He was quivering. Up close, he didn’t seem much more than a kid. Not much of an adversary. More of a rabbit in the headlights. So I decided to delegate. To let him make the decision for me. And to do that I kept him at the limit of my peripheral vision, half turned away, and started to open the stall door.
“I have to just step outside for a moment,” I said. “You stay there. Don’t move.”
He moved. I was still midstep when I heard his coveralls start to rustle. I saw him sit up and lean forward. He was stretching. Going for the knife. He reached the handle. His intent was clear. He was still trying to pose a threat. So I changed direction and planted my left foot firmly on the flat side of the blade, pinning it to the floor and trapping his fingers. Then I drove the edge of my right foot into the bridge of his nose. His head snapped back and smashed into the hard tiles on the back wall. He started to slide. He was out cold. But he didn’t fall all the way, because I leaned in and caught him.
A couple of seconds later I did lay him down. Only by then, there was no chance of him regaining consciousness. Ever again.
TWELVE
I come from a very healthy family.
We live till ripe old ages, and hardly spend any time in bed, sick. In fact, during my whole childhood, I can only remember my mother taking to her bed on one occasion. It was just after we’d moved into our new house in London, and I guess looking back the stress of relocating from Birmingham had taken its toll. My father filled the void as well as he could, but after three days he sent an SOS to some obscure relatives in Ireland and headed back to the safety of his office.
Two old ladies answered his distress call, and they had an almost immediate effect. Within hours of them arriving, my mother was out of bed, cooking, washing up, and making sure the guests were comfortable. And within two days, she was in the hospital. The Irish ladies were well meaning, but hopeless. She felt she had no option but to look after them, even though it was supposed to be the other way around. And the effort required was simply too great.
I heard the grown-ups referring to the whole episode as the Curse of Good Intentions.
I didn’t really understand what that meant, at the time. But later in life, it became only too clear.
Sixty minutes is a long while to spend on your own in a women’s bathroom. Especially in one like the Commissariat’s, where there isn’t even a window to look out of. Instead, I sat on the counter between two basins and tried to make the time count for something. I wanted to put myself in McIntyre’s shoes. To picture what he might be doing or where he might be going, in case the afternoon’s meeting didn’t yield any new information. I’d infiltrated groups who were trying to buy arms—and secrets, and even people—but I’d never sold anything like that on my own initiative before. There were too many factors I had no experience of, and too many gaps in our intelligence. I guessed the main one was not knowing how big the consignment he’d stolen had actually been. If he’d sold all his stock already, maybe he’d just fade into the background until his wounds had healed. If not, greed might lead him to show his face one more time. These thoughts just kept chasing themselves around my head, never leading anywhere conclusive, so I still hadn’t made much progress when I saw that my watch was showing three forty-five. Only half an hour to the rendezvous. I decided it was time to take my seat in the bar.
Charades had never been my forte as a kid, but I did my best to mime “putting makeup on” to the girl in the DJ booth as I came out of the bathroom. I didn’t want to speak to her again, and that seemed like the best way to avoid it. I was in luck. She just smiled and turned back to her iPod, leaving me free to walk across to the table I’d used yesterday. I’d been there less than a minute when the barman arrived at my side. He was carrying a new bottle of Peroni, as well the empty one I’d been drinking earlier.
“You must have been sitting here quite a while,” he said, setting the bottles down together. “Assuming you don’t drink too fast.”
“I never left the table,” I said. “And I’m very responsible when it comes to alcohol.”
The guy who’d done all the talking and the girl who’d searched me arrived fifteen minutes late, just as they had done yesterday. They paused at the foot of the stairs, surveyed the room, then approached the table and sat down on either side of me without saying a word.