Blood Hunt

ONE

HE STOOD ON THE EDGE of the abyss, staring down.

Not afraid, not feeling anything very much except the burning in his lungs, the damp ache behind his legs. He knew staring was never a one-way thing. It was reciprocal. Okay, he thought, get your staring finished, get it over and done with now. The fall, he thought-it isn’t the fall that kills you, it’s the ground at the end of it. It’s gravity, the fatal pull of the planet. There was water at the bottom of the chasm, the tide rising, foam churning against the sheer sides. He could hear the water, but in what was left of the daylight he could barely see it.

He took a deep breath at last and drew back, stretching his spine. There was an hour left till dusk: not much time. They wouldn’t find him now. He’d had one piece of luck about seventy-five minutes ago, but reckoned he was allowed one lucky break per mission.

At least they were quiet now, his pursuers. They weren’t yelling ill-considered commands back and forth, their words carrying on the sweet, still air all the way to where he lay listening. And they’d split into two-man patrols: also well-learned. He wondered whose idea that had been. They would know by now that time was against them, know too that they were tired, cold, and hungry. They’d give up before he did.

That was the edge he had on them. Not a physical edge-some of them were younger, fitter, stronger than him-but a psychological one. The sharpest edge there was.

He looked up and listened, breathed in the wet bracken, the small dull buds, the charged air. There were thunderclouds in the distance, moving farther away. A torrent of rain had swept the land yet again. There was nothing worse for the spirits than a periodical drenching. Their spirits, not his. They weren’t within a mile of him. They weren’t anywhere close. None of them would be blooded today.

He checked himself. Overconfidence. It had to be avoided. The most dangerous part of a mission, any mission, was the last part-those final few hours, or minutes, or even seconds. Your brain starts winding down, your tired body doing the same. And you start to make mistakes. He shook his head roughly, feeling the pain across his shoulders. He was carrying seventy-five pounds, which would have been nothing five or ten years before-he’d carried double that in the Falklands; some Special Air Service missions in the Gulf War had carried even more-but now he’d been carrying the rucksack for thirty-six hours, and the pack was wet and heavy.

He set off again after checking his map, walking backwards through the mud, sometimes circling so he crossed over his own tracks. He took a pride in all this confusion-a confusion his pursuers probably wouldn’t even notice. They had, perhaps, turned back already. But this wasn’t about them at all. It was about him. He’d never doubted it for a moment.

He started to climb again, with his back to the ground, heels pushing into the soil, his rucksack transferred to his chest. Near the top of the ridge he paused, listened, and heard a sound he could identify all too easily: paper tearing, being crushed. The ball of silver foil bounced close to him and stopped. He could hear no footsteps, no advance, no retreat-and no conversation. A sentry, then; a lone lookout. Maybe part of an observation post, which would mean two men. They had, after all, split into two-man patrols. He heard a bar of chocolate being snapped in two. He became certain he was dealing with a stand-alone; the other man must be out on recce.

The close of daylight being so near, it was tempting to take a prisoner, a hostage. But he knew it was only tempting because he was tired. Overconfidence again. He was trying to evade the enemy, not engage it. But if feet shuffled towards the overhang, if toecaps sent crumpled earth showering down, if a pair of eyes wondered what was below… The gun was ready.

He hugged the soil and grass, feeling the damp soaking into his back. To take his mind off it, he did a little mental check, ensuring he was ready for anything.

He was.

A sigh from above, barely ten feet away. Then: “Sod this for a lark,” and the sound of feet shuffling away, a throat being cleared, phlegm hawked onto the ground. Minus points, he thought-traces left for any pursuer: a gob of spit, some silver foil. Plus speaking out loud. Very minus points.

One day, he thought, one day not so very long ago, I’d have crept up behind you and dug my knife into your throat. Not a slit-a throat was tougher than you thought; a slit often wouldn’t be enough-you went for maximum damage in minimum time, and above all you wanted to get the voice box. So you stuffed the point of the dagger into the throat and poked around with it.

Jesus.

He had that nightmare sometimes. Not so often these days. It worried him that he didn’t dream about Joan and Allan. He never dreamed about them at all, yet they were his whole life-they were his saving.

He was wondering where the other man was, the one the chocolate-eater had gone to find. Last thing he wanted was for the bastard to stumble on him lying here, exposed, with the rucksack on his chest getting in the way of his gun.

Go back down the slope, or head up over the rise? He gave it another minute, then wormed his way upwards, peering over the lip. Open countryside, a rounded dip to the land like a giant saucer; and a hundred yards away, stumbling along, the chocolate-eater. He recognized the young man, even from behind, even in this light and from this distance. He recognized his useful bulk, not too much of which was flab. A quick check of the map confirmed he was headed back to the enemy base. He wasn’t looking for anyone. He just wanted to be indoors with a mug of something hot and wet. He’d had enough.

A final look at the map, committing it to memory. Soon it would be too dark to read, and the use of a torch, even the thinnest pencil-lead beam, was dangerous. So dangerous it was verboten during most active missions except in the direst emergency. There’d be no dire emergency this time.

He tracked the chocolate-eater, keeping a steady distance. After a while a tall, thin man joined up with the chocolate-eater and they had a muted discussion, pointing their arms in various directions like windblown weather vanes. Together they set off for camp, unaware that they were being watched by the very man they were supposed to capture at any cost.

Eventually, the “camp” itself came into view: two olive-green Land Rovers with roofs that had once been white. There were three men already there, hovering around a steaming kettle on a Campingaz stove. They were shuffling their feet and checking their watches.

He knew this land fairly well by now, and decided to get closer. It would mean a hike of a couple of miles, around to the other side of the encampment where the ground cover was thicker. He set off, crouching low, crawling on his belly when necessary. Another two-man patrol was coming home, and passed within a hundred yards of him. He made himself part of the scenery. They weren’t really concentrating anymore-they were too close to home, not expecting anything. The most dangerous time.

At one point he heard a cry of “Come out, come out!” followed by laughter. The laughter had an embarrassed edge to it. They’d be even more embarrassed if he walked into their camp, his gun trained on them.

He was where he wanted to be now, separated by the vehicles from the campfire and the men. They hadn’t set guards; they hadn’t done anything. Overconfidence. He lay his rucksack on the ground and started to crawl in towards their position. He knew his target. He was going to crawl right under one of the Land Rovers and point his gun up at them as they drank their tea. Then he was going to say hello.

“Hello.”

The voice behind him, over him. A woman’s voice, sounding amused, as well she might. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at her, at the gun she was carrying. In her free hand, she held his rucksack. She was tutting now, shaking her head.

“Traces,” she said. She meant the rucksack. He’d made no attempt to hide it. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was a man’s chronometer with a time-lapse function.

“Thirty-six hours and three minutes,” she said. “You almost didn’t make it.”

They were close enough to the Land Rovers for her voice to carry. The men in their camouflage uniforms came around to the back of the vehicles to see what was happening. He stood up and looked towards them, finding the chocolate-eater.

“Traces,” he said, tossing the ball of silver paper. It landed in the young man’s tin mug and floated in his tea.

They couldn’t head back until everyone had returned to camp. Eventually, the last few stragglers came limping home. One of them, the car dealer, had twisted his ankle and was being supported by his two friends, one of whom-a school PE instructor-had badly blistered feet, the result of wearing the wrong kind of socks with nearly new boots.

“I think I’ve caught pneumonia,” the man with the blisters said. He looked at the man they’d all been trying to catch for the past day and a half. Ten of them against one of him, within an area of six square miles outside which he was not allowed to operate. He was removing his belt-kit, always the last thing he shed. It comprised his survival kit, knife, compass, first-aid kit, water bottle, and chocolate bars. The PE instructor hobbled over and touched his arm, then his chest.

“How come you’re not soaked like the rest of us?” He sounded aggrieved. “There’s not a bit of shelter out there, hardly a bloody tree. You been cheating, Reeve?”

Gordon Reeve stared at the man. “I never need to cheat, Mr. Matthews.” He looked at the other men. “Anyone know how I kept my clothes dry?” Nobody spoke up. “Try some lateral thinking. How can you keep your clothes dry if you’ve nothing to cover them with?” They still didn’t answer. Reeve looked towards his wife. “Tell them, Joan.”

She had placed his rucksack against a Land Rover and was using it as a seat. She smiled towards Reeve. “You take them off,” she said.

Reeve nodded at the men. “You take them off and you stash them in your pack. You let the rain do its stuff, and when it stops you get dry again and you put your nice dry clothes back on. You’ve been cold and wet and miserable for a while, but you’re dry afterwards. One final lesson learned, gentlemen.” He took a mug from the ground and poured a brew into it. “And by the way, you were crap out there. You were absolute crap.”

They drove back to the house for debriefing. The Reeves had turned the stables into an annex that included a shower room with a dozen spray nozzles; a changing room with metal lockers, so each man could store his civvy clothes and all the other paraphernalia of the life they were leaving behind for seventy-two hours; a well-equipped gym; and a small conference room.

The conference room was where Reeve did most of the initial teaching. Not the physical stuff-that was done in the gym, or outside in the courtyard and surrounding countryside-but the other lessons, the show-and-tell. There was a monitor and a video machine; a slide projector; various blackboards, wall maps, and diagrammatic charts; a big oval table and a dozen or so functional chairs. There were no ashtrays; no smoking was allowed indoors. Smoking, as Reeve reminded each new intake, is bad for your health. He wasn’t talking about lung cancer; he was talking about traces.

After showering, the men dressed in their civvies and headed for the conference room. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table, but none of them would sniff a drop until the debriefing-and then there’d be just the single glass apiece, as most of them were driving home after dinner. Joan Reeve was in the kitchen, making sure the oven had done its work. Allan would have laid the table, then made a tactical retreat to his room to play another computer game.

When they were all seated, Gordon Reeve stood up and went to the blackboard. He wrote the letter P seven times with lime-green chalk. “The seven P‘s, gentlemen. Not the seven dwarves, not the Magnificent Seven, and not the seven moons of Jupiter. I couldn’t name the seven dwarves, I couldn’t name the Magnificent Seven, and sure as shit sticks to your arse I couldn’t name the seven moons of Jupiter. But I can tell you the seven P’s. Can you tell me?”

They shifted in their seats and offered up a few words. When they got a word right, Reeve chalked it on the board.

“Piss,” he said, writing it down. “Planning… Poor… Proper…” He saw they were struggling, so he turned away from the board. “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance. I could add an eighth P today: Procedure. You were a shambles out there. A barefoot Cub Scout blind from birth could have avoided you these past thirty-six hours. An elephant looking for the graveyard could have avoided you. The British Ladies’ fucking Equestrian Team and their horses could have given you a run for your money. So now it’s time to evaluate exactly what went so bloody disastrously wrong.”

They exchanged sad glances; his captives. It was going to be a long time till dinner.

After dinner and good-byes, after seeing them all off in their cars, waving them back to their real lives, Reeve went upstairs to try to convince Allan that it was bedtime.

Allan was eleven and “bookish”-except that in his case the adjective referred to computers, computer games, and videos. Reeve didn’t mind in the least that his son wasn’t the outdoor type. Friends thought maybe Reeve would have preferred a musclebound son who was good at football or rugby. Friends were wrong. Allan was a lovely-looking kid, too, with a strawberry-cream complexion and peach fuzz on his cheeks. He had short fair hair which curled at the nape of his neck, and deep blue eyes. He looked like his mother; everybody said so.

He was in bed, apparently asleep, when Reeve opened the door. The room was still warm from computer-use. Reeve went over and touched the top of the monitor-it was hot. He lifted the plastic cover off the hard drive and found it was still switched on. Smiling, Reeve nudged the mouse and the screen came to life. A game screen was held on pause.

He walked over to the bed, crunching magazines and comics underfoot. The boy didn’t move when Reeve sat down on the bed. His breathing sounded deep and regular; too deep, too regular.

Reeve stood up again. “Okay, partner, but no more games, right?”

He’d opened the door before Allan sat bolt upright, grinning.

Reeve smiled back at him from the doorway. “Get some sleep… or else.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“How are you getting on with that game?”

“I’ll beat it, just you wait. Uncle James always sends me games that’re too hard.”

Uncle James was Reeve’s brother, a journalist. He was working out in the States, and had sent Allan a couple of computer games as a very belated birthday-and-Christmas-combined present. That was typical of James; kids always forgave him his forgetfulness because he made it up to them once a year or so.

“Well, maybe I can help you with it.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Allan said determinedly. “There’s one screen I can’t get past, but after that it’ll be okay.”

Reeve nodded. “What about homework, is it done?”

“Done. Mum checked it this afternoon.”

“And do you still hate Billy?”

Allan wrinkled his face. “I loathe Billy.”

Reeve nodded again. “So who’s your best friend now?”

Allan shrugged.

“Go to sleep now,” his father said, closing the door. He waited in the hall, listening for the crackle of footsteps on paper as Allan left the bed and headed for the computer. But he didn’t hear anything. He stayed a little longer, staring along the passageway. He could hear Joan downstairs, watching television. The dishwasher was busy in the kitchen. This is home, he thought. This is my place. This is where I’m happy. But part of him was still crouching in the rain while a patrol passed nearby…

Downstairs, he made a couple of mugs of instant coffee and headed for the living room. This had been a farmhouse once, just a couple of rooms and an attic reached by a ladder. Reeve imagined that in the winters the farmer brought his animals into the house, keeping them warm and using them as central heating. The place had been uninhabited for eight years when they bought it. Joan had seen potential in the house-and Reeve had seen potential in the seclusion. They were close enough to civilization, but they were on their own.

It had taken time to settle on this location. The Scottish Borders would have provided better communications; clients driving up from London could have done the trip in half a day. But Reeve had finally opted for South Uist. He’d been here on holiday once as a child and had never really forgotten it. When he persuaded Joan to come with him to see it again he pretended it was just a holiday, but really he’d been sizing up the place. There were a few villages nearby; but for the most part there was nothing at all. Reeve liked that. He liked the wilderness and the hills. He liked the isolation.

Most of his clients came from England, and didn’t mind the travel. For them, it was part of the overall experience. They were a mixed lot: hikers looking for something more; gung-ho apocalyptic types, shaping up for the final showdown; trainee bodyguards; all-purpose masochists. Reeve provided intensive training that was partly field craft, partly survivalist. His aim, he told them at the outset, was to get them to use their instincts as well as any skills they might learn along the way. He was teaching them to survive, whether it be in the office or on a wind-chilled mountaintop. He was teaching them to survive.

The final test was the pursuit. It was never a no-win situation for the weekend soldiers. If they planned, prepared, and worked together, they could find him easily within the time allotted. If they read their maps, found themselves a leader, split into pairs, and covered the ground systematically, there was no way he could elude them. The area wasn’t that big, and boasted few enough hiding places. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t find him, just so long as they learned their lesson, learned that they might have found him if only they’d gone about it the right way.

The chocolate-eater was going to be somebody’s bodyguard someday. He probably thought being a bodyguard was all about being big and holding a clean driving license; a sort of chauffeur with clout. He had a lot to learn. Reeve had met a few heavyweight bodyguards, international types, political types. Some of them had been in Special Forces at the same time as him. Chocolate-chops had a long way to go.

He never told clients he’d been in the SAS. He told them he was ex-infantry, and mentioned a few of his campaigns: Northern Ireland, the Falklands… He never went into detail, though he was often pressed. As he said, none of that was important; it was the past. It was just stories-stories he never told.

The living room was warm. Joan was curled up on the sofa, tending to the immediate needs of Bakunin the cat while they both watched TV. She smiled as she took the mug from him. Bakunin gave him a dirty look for daring to interrupt the stroking session. Reeve made a tactical withdrawal and sank into his favorite chair. He looked around the room. Joan had decorated it, doing her usual thorough job. This is what home is all about, he thought. This is fine.

“You slipped up today,” she said, her eyes still on the TV.

“Thanks for making me look good.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know that was my job.”

Did she want an argument? He didn’t need one. He concentrated on the coffee.

“Did you get all their checks?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“They’re in the drawer.”

“In the cashbox?”

“In the drawer,” he repeated. He couldn’t taste the coffee.

“You gave them their receipts?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t say anything after that, and neither did he, but she’d managed to get beneath his skin again. She could do it so easily. He’d been trained for most things, but not for this. Joan would have made a great interrogator.

This is home, he thought.

Then the phone rang.

TWO

THE CO-WORLD CHEMICALS BUILDING was situated on the corner of B Street and Fifth Avenue in downtown San Diego. That put it about sixteen miles north of the Mexican border, which was a lot closer than Alfred Dulwater liked. The place was practically a foreign country as far as he was concerned. He knew, too, that the city’s Gaslamp Quarter started only a couple of blocks south of the CWC building, and though the city had cleaned the place up and now advertised it to tourists as “historic,” it was still as full of panhandlers and bums as it was overpriced restaurants and knickknack shops.

Dulwater came from Denver. As a kid, he’d taken a map of the USA and drawn two diagonals through it, one from Seattle to Miami, the other from Boston to San Diego. In so doing, he’d managed to prove to himself that Denver, Colorado, was just about at the heart of the blessed United States. Okay, Topeka had actually been nearest the cross-sights, but Denver was close, too.

He didn’t live in Denver these days, though. The private investigation company he worked for-indeed, was the newest junior partner in-operated out of Washington, DC. The image a lot of people had of PIs was the usual fictional one: grubby men chain-smoking on motel stakeouts. But Alfred Dulwater’s firm, Alliance Investigative, wasn’t like that. Even its name made it sound more like an insurance company than some two-bit outfit. Alliance was big and prosperous and worked for only select clients, most of them big corporations like Co-World Chemicals. Dulwater didn’t mind at all working for CWC, even on something which seemed so trivial, but he did mind that Kosigin kept bringing him to San Diego. Usually, a report would be delivered by trusted messenger service. It was very unusual for a client to demand that a junior partner deliver the report personally; in the present case it was not just one report, but several, requiring several trips to Southern California-crazy economics, since the subject was living and working locally. It meant Dulwater had to fly out here, rendezvous with his team of investigators, read through their report, and then carry the same to San Diego, like he was a damned postman.

Still, Kosigin was paying. As old man Allerdyce at Alliance said, “He who pays is king.” At least for a day.

Mr. Allerdyce was taking a close interest in this investigation. It seemed Kosigin had approached him personally and asked him to take on the case. This was a simple surveillance, with background biography and clippings. They were to look for the usual-dirt buried beneath the fingernails of the subject’s past-but were also to report on his workday activities.

Which, really, as Dulwater had suggested to Mr. Allerdyce, was a bit beneath them; they were corporate investigators. But Allerdyce had sat behind his huge oak desk and pouted thoughtfully, then waved his fingers in the air, dismissing the complaint. And now he wanted regular reports from Dulwater, too. Dulwater wasn’t stupid; he knew that if he kept in with the old man, did a good job, and kept quiet, then there might be advancement. And he lived for advancement.

No Mexicans seemed to work in the CWC building. Even the doorman, the security guard who checked Dulwater’s identity, and the cleaner polishing the brass rails on the wall between the four elevators were all male, all white. Dulwater liked that. That had class. And the air-conditioning pleased him, too. San Diego was warm-to-hot; it was like that all year, except when it got real hot. But there were sea breezes, you had to admit that. It wasn’t a baking or steamy heat. It would’ve been quite pleasant if Dulwater hadn’t been trussed into a blue woollen three-piece with a tie constricting his neck. Damned suit and shirt used to fit-but then he’d added some weight recently, since the injury to his knee stopped his weekly squash torture.

There was a gym in the CWC building. It was one floor below the lobby, and one floor up from parking. Dulwater had never been that far down, but he’d been right to the top, and he was going there again. The security guard came with him to the elevator and turned his key in the lock, pressing the button for the fourteenth floor. You couldn’t simply press the button, you needed the key as well, like in some of the hotels Dulwater had stayed in, the ones with penthouse and executive levels. The doors closed, and he tried to stop seeming nervous. Kosigin wasn’t the biggest fish within the multinational; he was maybe number five or six in the States, which made him seven or eight in the world. But he was young and arrogant with it, and Dulwater didn’t like his attitude. In another life, he’d have punched him out and then given him a sharp-toed kick in the lumbar region for good measure.

But this was business, and Kosigin was king for the duration of the meeting. The doors opened, bringing Dulwater out onto the thick, silent carpeting of the fourteenth floor. There was a reception area, with only three doors leading off. Each door led to an office, and each office covered several hundred square feet, so that they didn’t feel like offices at all; they felt more like temples. The secretary, who was actually known as a “personal assistant,” smiled at him.

“Good morning, Mr. Dulwater.” She still pronounced it dull-water, even though on his first visit he’d corrected it to doo-latter. In truth, the family back in Denver said dull-water, too, but Alfred didn’t like the sound of that, just as he’d hated all the jibes and nicknames at school and college. When he left for Washington, he’d decided to reject dull-water and become doo-latter. He liked doo-latter. It sounded like it had class.

“Mr. Kosigin will be about five minutes. If you’d like to wait inside…”

Dulwater nodded and approached the door to Kosigin’s office, which the secretary unlocked with a button beneath the lip of her desk. Then he walked in.

That was another thing. He’d looked at Kosigin’s name and thought koss-eegin, like the Soviet guy in the fifties-or was it sixties? But the name was pronounced kossigin, rattled off in a single breath, all the letters short and hard. There was a hardness to Kosigin’s office which matched both his name and personality. Even the works of art looked harsh and brutal: the paintings were full of squared-off objects, geometric shapes in dull colors; the sculptures looked like either disfigured people or things that had gotten too close to a heat source. And even the view, which should have been fantastic, was somehow harder, crueler than it merited. You couldn’t quite see the waterfront-there were other, taller buildings in the way. He thought he could see the shiny Marriott through a gap in the downtown buildings, but the way it reflected light it could have been anything.

True to his investigator’s skills, Dulwater didn’t spend much time on the view but walked over to Kosigin’s desk, just to see what was there. The answer as usual was disappointingly little. It was an ornate antique desk, maybe French, with bowed legs that looked like they’d snap if you put any weight on them. It was quite long but narrow, and didn’t seem to square with Kosigin’s chosen chair, a workaday swivel model with red covers and black plastic armrests. Dulwater got the feeling Kosigin did his real work elsewhere. On the desk’s surface were a blotter pad, a tray of pens and stuff, and a small Anglepoise. It could’ve been a student’s desk; it could have been anybody’s desk.

He took stock of the rest of the room. There was a lot of bare parquet floor between himself and the living area. This comprised a sofa and two chairs, all done in black crushed leather; a large and well-stocked liquor cabinet, with empty decanter and crystal glasses on top; and a couple of TV sets, one of which seemed to be switched on permanently. It was showing C-Span with the sound on mute.

Some of the wall space was taken up with tall freestanding wooden cabinets, locked, and never opened in Dulwater’s presence. He didn’t know if they were empty or full, if they contained files or Kosigin’s shoe collection. Hell, maybe they were secret doors to other offices. It didn’t much matter. What mattered was that Kosigin was keeping him waiting. He put his briefcase-rigid, mat-black, almost impossible to open without both keys, official Alliance issue-on the low table next to the working TV and sat himself down on the sofa. There was no remote for the TV that he could see, but he found the control panel on the front of the set, eased its cover aside, and changed channels. There was a Rolling Stones tribute on MTV, so he left it at that and sat back to watch, not bothering with the sound.

He wondered again about the surveillance. Surely a corporation like CWC, one of the globe’s chemical giants, could and would afford its own security operatives. Why hadn’t Kosigin handed the pissant job to them? And why was old man Allerdyce taking such a close interest? It wasn’t as though he was afraid Dulwater would screw up; he’d assured him of that. Why then? What was it about this guy James Reeve, this asshole Anglo with the boring personal habits and the peripatetic job? That wasn’t Dulwater’s concern, just like Mr. Allerdyce had said. What was his phrase? “We are the means, not the end.” It sounded great when he said it, but what the fuck did it mean?

He walked over to one of the windows and looked directly down onto the street below. One block south was an orange-and- green trolley-bus on its tourist route, one of the old city trolleys almost colliding with it. He hoped the tourists would have more sense than to get off in Gaslamp.

“Mr. Dulwater.”

He hadn’t even heard the door opening, but when he turned, Kosigin was already halfway to his desk. He wasn’t looking at Dulwater, though; he was looking over towards the TV and the briefcase. The briefcase wasn’t supposed to leave Dulwater’s hands. It made going to the john an interesting outing, but those were the explicit instructions. Dulwater went over to retrieve the case. By the time he got back to the desk, Kosigin had unlocked a drawer and brought out a remote. He pointed it towards the distant TV and flipped back to its original channel. Dulwater almost apologized, but didn’t. Apologies made you weak. Besides, what had he done wrong?

He sat down opposite Kosigin and watched the man put the remote back in the drawer and relock it with a key he tucked into his vest pocket. For a few seconds, all he had was a view of the top of Kosigin’s head, with its thick salt-and-pepper hair, curling and luxuriant. Maybe he had it dyed like that to look older. When he looked up, Kosigin almost seemed like a teenager, with bright healthy cheeks and sparkling eyes with no wrinkles or creases. His burgundy silk tie shimmered with life. Then he slipped on his metal-rimmed glasses and changed again. He didn’t need to harden his face; the glasses did that for him. And the voice-the voice was pure authority.

“Now then, Mr. Dulwater.”

Which was Dulwater’s cue to unlock the briefcase. He took one key from his jacket pocket and slipped off his left shoe to retrieve the second key from where he had taped it to the heel of his sock. The case was fireproof, bombproof, and tamperproof; if anyone attempted to open it without both keys, a small incendiary wiped out the contents. Dulwater opened the case with ease, Kosigin avoiding eye contact as he waited for the investigator to place the file on his desk. The first time they’d met, Dulwater had held out the file and Kosigin had sat like a dummy until Dulwater realized what was wanted of him: Kosigin didn’t want any contact with the investigator, not so much as linkage by a document folder. So now Dulwater placed the file on the desk, and when he’d taken his hand away, Kosigin slid the file a bit closer and opened it, leafing through the sheets of paper.

It was a thick report this time: further background, biographies of friends, colleagues, family. It had taken hundreds of man-hours to compile, including use of investigators overseas. It was utterly thorough.

“Thank you, Mr. Dulwater.”

And that was it-no small talk, no drink, no eye contact, even. Alfred Dulwater was dismissed.

After the investigator had gone, Kosigin took the file over to one of the leather chairs and made himself comfortable. He glanced up at the TV whenever he turned to a new sheet, but otherwise had eyes only for the report. He didn’t like Dulwater-the man was oversized and slow-witted-but he had to concede that Allerdyce ran an impressive operation.

He reread the report, taking his time. He didn’t want to make the wrong decision, after all, not when it might be such a serious decision. James Reeve the journalist was no longer just a thorn in CWC’s side, and the man would not take a warning. Money had been attempted; threats had been attempted; physical threats, too. But the journalist was either very stupid or simply overconfident.

Kosigin read for a third time the updated biography. Several things caught his eye: a failed marriage which ended in acrimony and legal debts; a drinking problem; flirtation with narcotics-some speed and coke, plus grass, but then nearly everyone in California did grass-several unsuccessful relationships since the marital breakup. No children. And now a story that was go-ing nowhere-a state of affairs which might just break Reeve. There was one brother, but no one of importance. And no powerful friends, no real allies.

He buzzed Alexis and asked her to bring him coffee, decaffeinated with one percent milk. Then he took out his leather-bound address book and made a telephone call to Los Angeles.

“It’s me,” he said into the receiver. “How soon can you get down here?”

THREE

JAMES REEVE WOKE UP THAT MORNING feeling the usual apprehension.

He’d really tied one on the previous night, but there was nothing so unusual in that. In the course of his life he’d been kicked out of more bars than he cared to remember. His motel room looked unfamiliar to him, until he caught sight of the large suitcase-his suitcase-its contents spewing out onto the olive-green carpet. Yes, that looked familiar all right. He’d seen that suitcase look the same way all over the USA, Europe, and the Far East. The case had probably done more traveling than most of the world’s population.

It took him a couple of minutes to reach the bathroom, what with getting dizzy and having to sit on the end of the bed for a moment, screwing shut his eyes against the headache and the white flashes. It was the kind of thing Vietnam vets should get: huge phosphor explosions across the glaze of his eyeballs.

“I’m not cut out for drinking,” he told himself, reaching for the first cigarette, knowing it was a mistake even as he did so, even as he placed it between his lips, even as he lit it and inhaled.

He almost had to pick himself up off the floor after that. God, it hurt, and it tasted foul. But it was necessity. Sheer addiction, like with the drink. Some men were built for alcohol; they had large frames which soaked up the juice, and brains which rejected all thought of a hangover. On the other hand, he was lean and lanky-and by Christ he got hangovers. He guessed by now his liver must be about the size of a sheep’s head. It was a wonder it hadn’t pushed all his other organs aside, knocked them out of the game. He loved drinking but hated getting drunk. But of course by the time he was getting drunk, the defenses were all down, so he kept on drinking. It was a problem. It surely was a problem.

So why did he drink?

“I drink therefore I am,” he reasoned, rising once more from the bed. He smiled through the pain. Maybe his brother would have appreciated the philosophy. Or maybe it was the wrong kind of philosophy. He’d never been able to figure Gordon out, not for a minute. He suspected-no, hell, he knew-Gordon had been in the SAS or one of those other quasisecret branches of armed service. He knew it just as surely as he knew the bathroom was only another three hundred yards away. Maybe if I crawl, he thought, maybe everything would be easier if I resorted to all fours, returning to nature, communing with my fellow beasts. Hell, this is California, the idea might catch on. Every other idea in the world had. You could get Tai Chi with your chili or send your kids to Satanist preschool. Every loony in the world seemed to have landed here with their One Idea, some life-changing thing that might take off. You’d always find at least one sucker, one easy-to-dupe disciple.

I’m a journalist, he thought. I’m a persuader. I could have half of Beverly Hills crawling on all fours and talking to the dogs and cats in no time. What I can’t do, right now, is find my way to the bathroom.

He was sweating when he finally crawled up to the toilet, the sweat cooling his back and brow as he threw up in the bowl. He hauled himself up and sat, resting his head against the cold porcelain sink. He was beginning to feel better, his heart rate slowing, even starting to consider the day ahead, his agenda, things that must be done. Like phone Eddie. Then he’d try to talk to that pharmacist again. But first he had to phone Eddie.

He pulled himself up to standing and stared into the mirror. Most of the glass was covered with dried toothpaste. A woman he’d had back here a few nights before had left a message for him. She’d been gone by the time he got up. He’d stumbled through to the bathroom and leaned against the sink, rubbing his head against the cool mirror. When he’d finally looked up, he saw he’d smeared away whatever the message had been and had red and white stripes of toothpaste clogged in his hair.

When he went back into the bedroom, he saw he’d plugged the laptop in some time the previous night, which showed forethought; the batteries would be charged up by now. He couldn’t live without his laptop. Just as some people had cats, and held them in their laps and stroked them, he had his computer. It was like therapy; when he picked it up and started to work the keys, he felt his worries evaporate. It felt stupid when he said it to people, but it made him feel immortal; he was writing, and that writing would one day be published, and once something was published it became immortal. People would store it, hoard it, keep it for reference, read it, devour it, cross-reference it, transfer it to other media like microfiche or CD-ROM. His laptop was a hangover cure, a panacea. Maybe that was the reason he wasn’t afraid of Co-World Chemicals. Maybe.

He sat on the bedroom floor and went through his recent notes. The thing was shaping up-at least, he hoped it was. There was a lot of speculation in there, stuff that needed, as any editor would tell him, meat on its bones. And by meat they’d mean validation. He needed to get people to talk on the record. Hell, even off the record would do for the moment. He could still let an editor have a listen to off-the-record remarks. Then maybe that editor would have a check made out to him so he could bolster his flagging finances.

The catch was, he was in hock to Giles Gulliver in London, and the bugger was refusing to front him any more cash until he’d seen a story he could run with. Catch-22. He needed more money if he was going to be able to give Giles that story. So now he was looking for a spin-off, something he could sell elsewhere. Jesus, he’d already pitched at a couple of travel editors, pieces about San Diego, the border, Tijuana, La Jolla. He ’d do the zoo or Sea World if they wanted it! But they didn’t want anything from him. They knew his reputation. Knew several of his reputations. They knew he was bad with deadlines, and didn’t write nice little travel articles to be read over the Sunday cornflakes and coffee. That wasn’t journalism anyway-it was filler, an excuse for a cramming of ads, and he’d told three travel editors exactly that. Also that they could go bugger themselves.

Which left him running out of money fast, and reduced to cheap motels where they cleaned the rooms once a week and skimped on the towels. He had to work faster. Either that or take CWC’s money, use it to placate Giles, and buy a holiday with whatever was left. Everyone would be happier that way. Maybe even he’d be happier. But it didn’t work like that. There was a story out there, and if he didn’t get it, it would nag him for months, years even. Like the time he had to give up on the Faslane story. He’d been working for a London paper then, and the proprietor had told the editor to rein him in. He’d fumed, then resigned, then decided he didn’t want to resign-so they fired him. He’d gone back to the story, working freelance, but couldn’t get any further with it, and no one wanted to publish what he had except Private Eye, who’d given it half a page at the back of the mag.

God bless the Fourth Estate!

He had another cigarette, then pulled the phone off the bedside cabinet.

Once, he would have been living in a Hyatt or Holiday Inn, maybe even a Marriott. But times had changed, and James Reeve with them. He was meaner now; meaner in both senses. He left smaller tips (when he tipped at all: that guy in Reservoir Dogs had a point), and he was less pleasant. Poor people can’t afford to be pleasant; they’re too busy barely getting by.

Eddie’s phone kept ringing and ringing, and Reeve let it ring until it was answered.

“What? What?”

“Good morning, sir,” Reeve said sweetly, smoke pouring down his nose, “this is your requested alarm call.”

There were groans and hacking coughs at the other end of the line. It was good to feel you weren’t alone in your afflictions.

“You scumbag, you loathsome string of shit, you complete and utter douchehead.”

“What is this?” said Reeve. “Dial-a-Foulmouth?”

Eddie Cantona wheezed, trying to speak and laugh and light a cigarette all at the same time. “So what’s our schedule?” he finally said.

“Just get over here and pick me up. I’ll think of something.”

“Thirty minutes, okay?”

“Make it half an hour.” James Reeve hung up the phone. He liked Eddie, liked him a lot. They’d met in a bar in the Gaslamp Quarter. The bar had a western theme and sold ribs and steaks. You ate at a long, hewn wooden bench, or at hewn wooden tables, and at the bar they served the tap beer in Mason jars. It was an affectation, yes, and it meant you didn’t get a lot of beer for your money-but it was good beer, almost good enough and dark enough to be English.

Reeve had come into the dark, cool bar after a hot, unprofitable walk in the sunshine; and he’d drunk too many beers too quickly. And he’d got talking to the man on the stool beside him, who introduced himself as Eddie Cantona. Reeve started off by saying there was a football player called Cantona, then had to explain that he meant soccer, and that the player himself was French.

“It’s a Spanish name,” Eddie persisted. And it was, too, the way he said it, turning the middle syllable into toe and dragging the whole name out-whereas in England the commentators would try to abbreviate it to two syllables at most.

The conversation could only improve from there, and it did, especially when Eddie announced that he was “between appointments” and owned a car. Reeve had been spending a fortune on cabs and other modes of transport. Here was a driver looking for short-term employment. And a big man at that-someone who just might double as bodyguard should the need arise. By that point, Reeve had figured on the need arising.

Since then he’d been offered money to quit the story. And when he’d turned the offer down, there had been a silent beating in a back alley. They’d caught him while Eddie was off somewhere. They hadn’t said a word, which was the clearest message they could have given.

And still James Reeve wanted the story. He wanted it more than ever.

They drove out to La Jolla first to visit the retired pharmacist unannounced.

It was a white-painted clapboard house (Eddie pronounced the word “clabbard”), a bungalow with not much land around it. It had a green picket fence, which was being freshly redecorated by a whistling workman in overalls. His van was parked with two wheels on the curb, its back doors open to show a range of paint cans, ladders, and brushes. He smiled and said, “Good morning to you” as James Reeve pushed open the stubborn gate. There were bells hanging from the latch, and they chimed as he closed it behind him.

He’d been here before, and the old man hadn’t answered any of his questions. But persistence was a journalist’s main line of attack. He rang the doorbell and took one pace back onto the path. The street wasn’t close to La Jolla ’s seafront, but he guessed the houses would still be worth at least a hundred and fifty thou apiece. It was that kind of town. Eddie’d told him that Raymond Chandler used to live in La Jolla. To James’s eye, there didn’t seem much worth writing about in La Jolla.

He stepped up to the door again, tried the bell, then squatted to peer through the mail slot. But there was no mail slot. Instead, Dr. Killin had one of those mailboxes on a post near the gate, with a red flag beside it for when there was mail. The flag was down. James went to the only window fronting the bungalow and looked in at a comfortable living room, lots of old photographs on the walls, a three-seat sofa with floral covers taking up way too much room. He remembered Dr. Killin from their first, only, and very brief meeting. Killin had reminded him physically of Giles Gulliver, a knotted strength beneath an apparently frail exterior. He had a shiny domed bald head, the skull out of proportion to the frame supporting it, and thick-lensed glasses behind which the eyes were magnified, the eyelashes thick and curling.

The old fart wasn’t home.

He walked back down the path and wrestled with the gate again. The painter stopped whistling and smiled up at him from his half-kneeling position.

“Ain’t in,” he informed James Reeve, like this was news.

“You might have said before I went three rounds with that damned gate.”

The painter chuckled, wiping his green fingers on a rag. “Might’ve,” he agreed.

“Do you know where he is?”

The man shook his head, then scratched his ear. “I was told something about a vacation. But how do you take a vacation when you live in paradise?” And he laughed, turning back to his task.

James Reeve took a step towards him. “When did he leave?”

“That I don’t know, sir.”

“Any idea when he’ll be back?”

The painter shrugged.

The journalist cursed under his breath and leaned over the fence to open the mailbox, looking for something, anything.

“Shouldn’t do that,” the painter said.

“I know,” said Reeve, “tampering with the U.S. Mail.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. But see, you got green paint on your shirt.”

And so he had.

Dismissing the offer of mineral spirits, in need of another kind of spirit altogether, he stomped back to the car where Eddie was waiting for him. He got into the passenger seat.

“I heard,” said Eddie.

“He’s been scared off,” Reeve declared. “I know he has.”

“You could leave a business card or something, ask him to get back to you.” Eddie started the engine.

“I did that last time. He didn’t get back to me. He never let me past the front door.”

“Well-old folks, they do get suspicious. Lot of muggings around.”

James Reeve turned as best he could in the seat, so he was facing Eddie Cantona. “Eddie, do I look like a mugger?”

Eddie smiled and shook his head, pressing the accelerator. “But then you don’t look like the Good Humor man either.”

The painter watched them go, waved even, though they’d already forgotten about him. Then, still grinning, he wiped his hands as he walked to his van. He reached into the passenger side and took out a cell phone, holding it to his face. He stopped smiling only when the connection was made.

“They were just here,” he said.

That afternoon, Eddie dropped his employer off downtown, on the corner of Eighth and E. James Reeve had some work to do at the public library. He sometimes typed his notes into the laptop there, too-it was better than his motel room, a hundred times better. Surrounded by busy people, people with projects and ideas, people with goals, he found his own work, his own goal, became more focused.

Plus, the library was only four blocks from Gaslamp, which meant he could get a beer afterwards. Eddie had a couple of things to do, but said he might be in their regular haunt by six. If he still hadn’t arrived by the time James felt like going home, the bar would call him a cab. It was an eight-dollar ride, including tip.

The story was slowing down, he decided. Here he was in San Diego, which should have been the heart of it, and he wasn’t getting anywhere. He had Preece and the pesticide research, but that was years back. He had a rape, also ancient history. He had stories from two retired investigators. He had Korngold… but Korngold was dead.

He had Agrippa and the bank accounts. Maybe if he went back to England, concentrated on that particular corner of the puzzle, talked to Josh Vincent again; the union man’s story was almost enough in itself. But he’d already pitched that at Giles Gulliver, who’d pooh-poohed it, saying the Guardian had run a similar story the year before. He’d checked, and the Guardian hadn’t been following the same tack at all-but there’d been no persuading Giles, the stubborn old bastard.

So there was little enough for him to add to his files. He had other names, and had tried telephone calls, but no one wanted to meet him, or even talk on the phone. This was a shame, as he’d had his little recorder beside him, the microphone attached to the telephone earpiece. All his recordings showed so far was evasiveness on a grand scale, which didn’t mean anything. Americans were wary of callers at the best of times. Blame all the cold-callers out there, interrupting lunch or dinner or a postprandial snooze to drum up money for everything from the Republican Party to Tupperware parties. He’d even had someone call him in his motel room, trying to sell him language courses. Language courses! Maybe they tried every room in every motel. Barrel-scraping was what it was.

Barrel-scraping.

He sighed, turned off the laptop, folded it away, and decided he could use a beer, Mason jar or no Mason jar. As he pushed through the library’s main door the heat hit him again. It was very pleasant; almost too pleasant. You could go crazy in a place like this, with only slight fluctuations in temperature all year. Almost no rain, and the streets clean, and everyone so polite to you; it could get to you.

He found himself in the dimly lit air-conditioned bar, sliding onto what had become his favorite stool. The barmaid was new and wore cutoff denims and a tight white T-shirt. Her hair was tied back with a red bandanna, another one loose around her throat. Her legs, arms, and face were tanned and smooth. You just didn’t get girls like that in England -not with that all-over even tan and that unsullied complexion-yet here they were thick on the ground. Then he looked in the long mirror behind the bar, seeing not only his own reflection, but those of his fellow drinkers. Who was he kidding? Imperfections were staring him in the face. Men-men in love with beer-pasty-faced and thick-paunched, with greasy thinning hair and little stamina. Here’s to the lot of us, he thought, draining his first jar.

The drinker on the stool next to him didn’t look in the mood for conversation, and the barmaid needed everything repeated twice, unable to comprehend his accent. “I haven’t got an accent,” he told her, then had to repeat that, too. So when Eddie hadn’t turned up by 6:30, he thought about calling him. After all, he was Eddie’s employer, and Eddie’s job was to ferry him around. But that wasn’t exactly fair, he decided, after a moment’s thought. He was paying Eddie peanuts, and the guy was with him most of the day as it was-though he got the feeling Eddie hung around so he could pick up some free drinks and maybe even a free dinner.

He decided he wasn’t hungry. He’d had enough. He just wanted to go back to his lousy motel and sleep for twelve or so hours. He asked if the barmaid could call him a cab, remembering to shorten the a in cab so she’d understand the word.

“Sure,” she said.

Then the silent drinker next to him decided it was time to bow out, too. He walked out of the bar without saying a word, though he did nod in James’s general direction, and he left a couple of dollars on the bar for the server, which was pretty generous. While she had her back to him, making the call, James slipped one of the dollars along to his own section of bar and left it there. Times were hard.

A minute later, the driver stuck his head into the bar.

“Mr. Reeve!” he called, then went back outside again. James Reeve slid off his stool and said so long to the assembly. He’d only had the four beers, and felt fine-maybe a little depressed as he picked up his laptop, but he’d been worse. He would do something with the story, something lasting, something immortal. He just needed a little more money and a lot more time. He couldn’t just let it go, not when it affected the whole damned planet.

There were a couple of panhandlers directly outside, but he brushed past them. They never really bothered him. They took one look at him-his height, his pallor-and decided there were better options. The driver was holding the rear door open for him. The cab was unmarked, that struck him as he got in. And something else struck him, just a little too late.

He hadn’t given the barmaid his name.

So how did the driver know it?