(I love it, Janus replied. I love it I love it I love it!)
“I knew Kuanyin,” I answered, taking my words slowly, familiar sounds on an unfamiliar tongue. “She was kind.”
“The only kindness I saw Kuanyin perform was in the manner in which he died. I want you to understand this. I want you to understand what we are. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Then be merciful to yourself, if no one else. Where is Coyle?”
I licked my lips. “One question…”
“Where is Coyle?”
“Just one, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, and when this is done you can find a nice body with a terminal disease, and I’ll go.”
He waited, broken flesh and breathing silence.
I closed my eyes, trying to shape the words. “I’ve been thinking about Frankfurt. Your organisation was running a trial, a vaccination programme–vaccinating against me, my kind. Four researchers were killed, and you blamed Josephine–blamed me. I studied Josephine’s life. She was no killer, but when I became Alice, I had a look on her computer, and there it was. CCTV footage from Frankfurt, the night of Müller’s death, and Josephine smiled at the camera. She smiled and it wasn’t her, we both know it. Not Josephine, not my Josephine. I made her a deal and she had no idea what I was, she didn’t know what it meant to be worn. But your CCTV footage predates the time when I met her, so if she had been worn, she cannot have been aware of it. Grabbed in the night perhaps by the man she’d slept with. A few hours vanish, a few minutes. She closes her eyes in a stranger’s hotel room, and when she blinks, she is there still, though her hands feel cleaner than they were, and two maybe three hours have passed her by. Is that the time, she asks, and a stranger says, yes, yes it is, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? And she walks away, not knowing that in the bathroom by the door the tap is still washing away someone else’s blood, scrubbed from her fingertips.”
Eugene ran a finger along a line of scarring across his belly–habit, fascinated by his own flesh, eyes focused on nothing, body moving on automatic. “You haven’t asked a question yet.”
“I want you to understand it, before I ask. You told Coyle that Josephine killed those people under my orders but that it was her choice. You blamed me for another’s crimes without evidence. You sent Coyle–a man with a history–to kill me, and through all of this I think about Galileo. Where Galileo fits into all of this. Because Josephine killed no one. I studied her life, it wasn’t her. But a few hours here, a few hours there, perhaps–just perhaps–her body killed someone. And the manner in which it was done is all Galileo. Every step of the way. So, either you’re a fool, giving orders that do not conform to your stated intentions, or you’re nothing more than a pawn. My question, therefore, is this: have you been losing time?”
Silence.
He paces.
He turns.
He stops.
He paces again.
Is he considering the question or simply his answer?
He paces again.
Stops.
Says, “No.”
That is all.
“All right then,” I replied. “You’re just another foot soldier.”
His eyes flickered up to mine, then away again. “Where is Coyle?”
Fingers running over scars.
“Rathaus Steglitz,” I said.
“An address.”
I gave him one.
Chapter 50
Waiting in a prison.
Boring, waiting for the excitement to begin.
I remember:
(Do you like what you see?)
(I love it! Love it love it love it!)
Kuanyin.
I remember her as decent, if aloof.
I remember her as a her, beautiful in a Congolese woman, her hair pinned back, the scar marks just visible on her wrists from where the blades had slashed, as she proclaimed, “She said she would try again.”
And what did you do?
“Why, I took her away from there.”
And what will you do when she wakes? Kuanyin, goddess of mercy, what will you do when the woman you are wearing opens her eyes and the grief that you walked away from is still fresh in her heart?
“I will open her eyes in a safe place, with no knives nearby,” she replied. “She chooses death because it seems simpler than life. I will make that decision hard.”
I heard Kuanyin speak, and I was impressed.
“Do you like what you see?”
“You’re very beautiful,” I replied. “Very kind.”
Only later did it occur to me that I never asked when she intended to give the body back.
And then, as far from the austere coldness of Kuanyin, there was Janus, who stood in front of a mirror in an apartment in Brooklyn and said, “I love it!”
It was 1974, and though the Cold War raged and Nixon still clung on by his ragged fingernails, there was a sense in the air that these were the times that would change all times.
Her brief had been nothing remarkable. Her ambitions bordered on the banal–a house, a family, a life to call her own. A clean body with no past, no baggage. I just needed to get her started.
I had found the skin at freshers’ week.
“I love it! Love it love it love it!”
Michael Peter Morgan, twenty-three years old, about to start an economics doctorate. His first degree was from Harvard, his parents, both dead, had left him a sizeable inheritance. An awkward youth with almost impossibly black hair, thick eyebrows and shoulders that curved forward before the gaze of other men, at first I had dismissed him as a candidate. However, look again and somewhere beneath the hooded eyes and clenched fists, a handsome man was struggling to break free.
The second Janus slipped into his body like a hot dressing gown after a cold shower, my suspicions were confirmed. His shoulders rolled back, his head rose, his knees unlocked, and as Janus stripped before the mirror, he, who was an instant before a she, puffed his chest out and exclaimed, “Wow, do I go to the gym?”
“You did tae kwon do at Harvard.”
“Oh I can see!” he shrilled, turning his naked body this way and that. He raised his arms and squeezed the muscles tight, squeaking with satisfaction. “How long do I take to grow a beard? Do you think I need a beard?”
“Morgan shaves every three or four days, not very well.”
“I think I’d suit grizzled. Adds masculinity. How much do I have in the bank?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“And what do I do?”
“You’re about to begin a doctorate.”
“So I’m qualified?”
“Highly.”
“Is my doctorate in something exciting?”
“No,” I admitted. “I suspect… for these purposes, no.”
“It’s fine, I can do without the doctorate. Now–I can’t quite see–my arse, would you call it tight?”
I considered his arse.
“It seems very nice.”
He slapped it with a loud crack of palm on buttock, feeling around the flesh on his bum, his thighs, his belly. “Jesus,” he said. “Tae kwon do is the shit, isn’t it?”
“You haven’t practised for a while. I thought you would be pleased by how well you retain the benefits.”
“Hell yes! Though I always find it’s easier to stay at a level when I’m a guy.” His gaze, wandering round Morgan’s room, settled on the wardrobe. Throwing the doors wide, Janus’ face dropped. “So yeah,” he grunted. “Shopping trip tomorrow.”
I tried not to drum my fingers on my knees. “Do you think you’re going to take it?”
An overdramatic sucking in of air followed this enquiry, before Janus’ face split into a delighted grin. “Just one question–do you think I can get away with wearing yellow?”