Silence on the phone, silence in the van.
“Thought as much.”
In the town of Cavaliere (LIVE THE PAST–tourist office open 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Monday–Thursday excluding siesta) a map pinned up by the beige-bricked church pointed to a small clinic, a door like any other tucked into a street of tight apartments whose only claim to fame was a tiny plastic sign stuck by the bell asking any would-be visitors to kindly refrain from smoking on the stairs.
I parked squarely in the middle of the street, left the engine running and crawled over the seat into the back. Coyle was still awake, still breathing, his eyes red and his fingers curled into claws. “Hanging on in there?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“I wasn’t really asking. Remember that it wasn’t me who shot you. Remember that your own people ordered you dead.”
“Why?”
“Why remember, or why did they give the order?”
“Both.”
“I think you can guess,” I replied, shifting my weight forward, hands folded comfortably between my knees. “Leaving aside the fact that you’ve been compromised by the entity known as Kepler, you’re just a bit of a pain. You’re obsessed with Galileo; you failed in your mission, and now you’ve read files that you probably shouldn’t have. I imagine, despite my excellent advice, that you asked some questions. Questions like ‘Why did Josephine have to die?’ or ‘Has Galileo ever been to Frankfurt?’ or ‘When you say vaccination programme, what precisely are your parameters?’ or… whatever. Am I wrong?”
He didn’t answer, and I was not wrong.
“As for why your friends decided to kill you–that’s easier still. An order was given. A telephone rang or an email was sent, and whoever spoke knew the code words and had power and authority, and an order was given. And of course you have protocols, fail-safes against just this sort of situation, but then again a fail-safe is only as good as the person who created it. And who’s to say who really gives the orders now?”
“You think… it’s in Aquarius?”
“Yes.”
“At the top?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It’s had time.”
“Why?” Trying to fight more than pain now, trying to swallow more than morphine could numb. “Why?”
“Because you’re useful. Because if I wanted to study ghosts–really study them–if I wanted to learn what makes us tick, I’d probably create an organisation like Aquarius too. Keep your enemies close, as the old words say.”
He didn’t answer, couldn’t meet my eyes. His breathing was fast, struggling, skin shining with sweat.
“You’re losing blood.”
No answer.
“I can help you, but you’ll need to do something for me.”
“Do what?”
“I need you to tie me to the passenger seat and point a gun at me.” His mouth widened first in question, then wider in comprehension. “You still want to kill me?”
Without hesitation, his mouth twisting in a smile that wasn’t a smile: “Yes.”
“You think it’s a good idea?”
“Yes.”
“You want to live?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer to that one. I nodded at nothing in particular, held out my bare cold hands for his attention. He didn’t move, one hand still cradling the bloody mess of his arm, head turned to one side. “Galileo ordered you dead,” I murmured, “and Aquarius did it. Now I’m about as excited by this as you are, but unless you want to bleed out right here, right now, this is what it’s going to have to be.”
He levered himself up on one elbow. “Cable ties,” he said, and “Give me your gun.”
I hesitated.
Gave him my gun.
His finger tapped against the trigger, light as a conductor testing his baton, feeling the weight of it, considering his options. He sighted down it, then let it drop to his side. I strapped my hands to the hook that hung above the passenger’s seat, tightening the cable ties with my teeth until they bit deep, and then a little bit more, for spite. The height of the van was awkward–I could neither stand straight nor sit down, but balanced, knees bent, arms raised, suspended like an old coat.
“OK,” I said as Coyle watched me from the floor. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
He crawled on to his knees, cradling the gun to his chest. Made it on to one foot, and for a moment I thought he’d fall, but then the other foot came in and with a half-step, half-stagger, he came towards me, eyes locked on mine.
A moment.
Just a moment, and I didn’t know.
A mistake, perhaps?
His finger tap-tap-tapped against the trigger of the gun.
Too little time to plan, too little time to come up with anything better.
A mistake ever to let this man live?
Perhaps.
Perhaps this will be a very short learning curve.
Then he reached down and picked something black and grubby from the floor. A balaclava, long since discarded. A twist at the end of his lips that might have been a smile, he staggered towards me, waved it before my face, a command in gesture, not words. Open wide.
I licked my lips. “You in much pain, Nathan Coyle?” I asked.
“Find out,” he replied. I tried not to gag as he pushed the damp black fabric into my mouth. It tickled the back of my throat, made me want to vomit. I swallowed and tasted wool, mud, cigarette smoke. Tap-tap went Coyle’s trigger finger against the gun. The barrel brushed against my chest as he inspected his handiwork.
A moment.
He thought about it as the blood seeped through the whiteness of the bandage, dried brown on his fingers, around his throat.
He looked at me, and I looked at him.
His hand shook as he reached out for me, hovered an inch away from my hands, the whole arm rocking with more than just cold. I don’t know if he intended the movement, or if the weight of his own fingertips became too much to bear. Skin brushed my skin,
and I jumped, giddy with the relief of it, and as the bleary-eyed would-be killer flopped against the ties that bound him to the roof of the van, I staggered back, clutching my arm, the pain now not so much a universal shrieking as a specific throbbing, the hot fire of it pulsing in time to the rhythm of my heart. I gasped, swayed against the side of the van, felt thin blood bubble through my skull, blinked tears from my eyes. My captive flopped against his bonds, then kicked out, tried to stagger upright and flopped again, shouting unheard words through the balaclava in his mouth. I waggled the gun at him and hissed, “Try me.”
He fell silent, grew still.
I smiled my giddiest smile and slid, one shaking foot at a time, out of the van.
The night nurse took a long time to answer the door.
When she did, she saw first my face, grey and smeared with blood, and her features opened in shock and sympathy. Then she saw the bandages around my shoulder and chest, and I think understood what it was, what it might be, but by then I’d caught her by the index finger and,
as Coyle fell, I grabbed him round the middle and held him up. “OK,” I whispered in my new, gentler voice. “You’re OK.”
I eased him down on to the steps, and as his eyes regained their focus he looked up into mine. “Kepler?”
“I’m going to get you blood,” I replied. “And painkillers. What’s your type?”
“You’re really doing this?”
“Blood type. Now would be a good time to declare allergies too.”
“A positive. I’m A positive.”
“OK. Stay there. If your friend in the truck starts shouting, shoot him.”
“Kepler?” he called as I skipped back up the stairs, light-limbed in my nurse’s shoes. “He is my friend, you know that?”