The Death of Achilles

ONE

In the year of his fortieth birthday, Achimas Welde began wondering whether it was time for him to retire.

No, he had not become blase about his work — it still gave him the same satisfaction as ever and set his impassive heart beating slightly faster. Nor had he lost his touch — on the contrary, he was now at the very peak of his maturity and prowess.

The reason lay elsewhere — there was no longer any point to his work.

In itself, the process of killing had never given Achimas any pleasure, apart from those very rare occasions when personal scores were involved.

The situation with the killings was simple. Achimas existed alone in the universe, surrounded on all sides by the most varied forms of alien life — plants, animals, and people. This life was in constant motion: It came into existence, changed, and was broken off. It was interesting to observe its metamorphoses, and even more interesting to influence this process through his own actions. But trample down life in one sector of the universe, and it changed the overall picture very little — life filled in the breach that had been formed with quite wonderful tenacity. Sometimes life seemed to Achimas like a tangled, overgrown lawn through which he was trimming the line of his fate. Precision and careful deliberation were required in order not to leave any blades of grass sticking up in the wrong place, while not touching any more blades than were necessary in order to maintain the smoothness and evenness of the line. Glancing back at the path he had traveled, what Achimas saw was not trimmed grass, but the ideal trajectory of his own movement.

Until now there had been two stimuli for his work: finding solutions and earning money.

However, Achimas no longer found the first of these as fascinating as he once had — for him there remained few truly difficult problems that were genuinely interesting to solve.

The second stimulus had also begun to make less and less sense.

A numbered account in a Zurich bank contained very nearly seven million Swiss francs. A safe in Barings bank in London held securities and gold ingots worth seventy-five thousand pounds sterling.

How much money did a man need, if he didn’t collect works of art or diamonds, if he wasn’t building a financial empire or consumed by political ambition?

Achimas’s outlays had stabilized: two or three hundred thousand francs a year went on ordinary expenses and the upkeep of his villa cost another hundred thousand. The price of the villa had been paid in full the year before last, all two and half million francs of it. It was expensive, of course, but a man who was almost forty had to have a house of his own. A man of a certain psychological constitution might not require a family, but he had to have a house.

Achimas was satisfied with his residence, a house that suited the character of its owner perfectly. The small villa of white marble stood on the very edge of a narrow outcrop of rock overlooking Lake Geneva. On one side there was free, open space, and on the other cypress trees. Beyond the cypress trees there was a high stone wall, and beyond that a sheer descent into a valley.

Achimas could sit for hours on his veranda overhanging the smooth surface of the water, looking at the lake and the distant mountains. The lake and the mountains were also forms of life, but without the constant agitation intrinsic to fauna and flora. It was hard to affect this form of life in any way; Achimas had no control over it and therefore it commanded his respect.

In the garden, among the cypresses, stood a secluded retreat, a white house with small round towers at its corners, in which the Circassian woman Leila lived. Achimas had brought her here from Constantinople the previous autumn. He had long ago abandoned the Parisian agencies and the monthly rotation of professional women — the moment had arrived when they no longer seemed so very different to Achimas. He had developed his own taste.

This taste required that a woman should possess a beauty and natural grace that were not cloying and not be too talkative. She should be passionate without being forward, not too inquisitive, and, above all, she should possess a female instinct that made her unerringly sensitive to a man’s mood and desires.

Leila was almost ideal. She could spend the whole day from morning till evening combing her long black hair, singing, and playing herself at backgammon. She was never sulky, never demanded attention. In addition to her native tongue she knew only Turkish and Chechen, which meant that Achimas was the only one who could talk to her and she communicated with the servants by means of gestures. If he wanted to be entertained, she knew numerous amusing stories from the life of Constantinople — Leila had formerly lived in the harem of the grand vizier.

Recently Achimas had accepted work only rarely, two or three times a year: either for very big money or for some special reward. For instance, in March he had received a secret commission from the Italian government to seek out and eliminate the anarchist Gino Zappa, known as the Jackal, who was planning to kill King Umberto. The terrorist was regarded as extremely dangerous and quite impossible to catch.

In itself the job had proved to be rather simple (the Jackal had been traced by Achimas’s assistants, and he had only needed to take a trip to Lugano and press the trigger once), but the fee he had been promised was quite outstanding. First, Achimas received an Italian diplomatic passport in the name of the Cavaliere Welde, and second, he was granted the option of buying the island of Santa Croce in the Tyrrhenian Sea. If Achimas should decide to exercise this option and buy the small scrap of land, in addition to the title of the Count of Santa Croce he would also be granted the right of extraterritoriality, which was particularly attractive. He could be his own sovereign, his own police, his own court? Hmm.

Out of curiosity Achimas took the trip to inspect the island and was captivated. There was nothing remarkable about it — it was nothing but rocks, a couple of olive groves, and a bay. It was possible to walk around the entire shoreline of the island in an hour. For the last four hundred years no one had lived here and the only visitors had been occasional fishermen seeking to replenish their supplies of fresh water.

The title of count held little attraction for Achimas, although in traveling around Europe a fine-sounding title could sometimes have its uses. But an island of his own?

There he could be alone with the sea and the sky. There he could create his own world, belonging to nobody but him. It was tempting.

To withdraw into peaceful retirement. To spend his time sailing and hunting mountain goats, to feel time stand still and fuse with eternity.

No more adventures; he was not a boy anymore.

Perhaps he could even start a family?

But the idea of a family was not really serious — it was more of a mental exercise. Achimas knew he would never have a family. He was afraid that once deprived of his solitude, he would begin to fear death. As other people feared it.

As he was he had no fear of death at all. It was the foundation underpinning the sturdy edifice that went by the name of Achimas Welde. If a pistol should happen to misfire, or a victim prove too cunning and lucky, then Achimas would die. That was all there was to it. It simply meant that nothing would exist any longer. One of the ancient philosophers — he thought it was Epicurus — had said all there was to say on that score: While I exist, death does not exist, and when it comes, I shall not exist.

Achimas Welde had lived long enough and seen enough of the world. One thing he had never known was love, but that was because of his profession. Attachment made you weak and love made you completely defenseless. As he was, Achimas was invulnerable. What leverage is there against a man who fears nothing and holds nothing and nobody dear?

But an island of his own — that was worth thinking about.

There was only one difficulty with the idea — finance. The redemption of his option would cost a lot of money; it would consume all of his funds in the banks in Zurich and London. How would he pay for the equipping and appointment of his count’s fiefdom? He could sell his villa, but that would probably not be enough. Somewhat more substantial capital would be required.

Perhaps he should simply put these idle fantasies out of his head?

And yet an island was more than your own cliff, and the sea was more than a lake. How was it possible to rest content with a little if you were offered more?

These were the reflections with which Achimas was occupied when he received a visit from a man in a mask.