The Nowhere Man

51 A Shout into the Abyss

For once it was nice not to pretend. Candy didn’t have to act like Ben Jaggers’s wife or his whore or his partner in photojournalism. It was all out in the open. They were two deadly trained operatives, here to reclaim a government asset. And to permanently decommission him.

Unfortunately, she still had to share a room with Jaggers.

In other circumstances it might’ve been romantic. Crackling fireplace, homey quilts thrown over matching queen beds, snowflakes clinging to the windows — it was like a friggin’ Viagra commercial.

She let her dress fall around her stiletto boots and stepped clear of it. Bending over, she unzipped her boots and tugged them off. She put on a pair of silk pajamas, the fabric a salve against her throbbing back.

Not surprisingly, Jaggers didn’t bother to turn around. He sat on the bed facing the sliding glass door. From behind he looked frail and weak. His shoulders seemed bird-thin, and there was a slight hunch to his spine. He was the unlikeliest Orphan she’d ever encountered.

“What’s your story?” she said.

He still did not turn around. “What story?”

“How did you get here? Become an Orphan?”

“That information is classified. You know this.”

“No shit. But it’s me and you in a snowed-in chalet in the middle of Godknowswhereistan, and we can’t fuck because you’re lacking the requisite hardware. So I figure a little conversation might help us while away the hours.”

At last he turned, but only enough to give her his profile. That drippy nose, the runny chin. He was a sight. “If you continue to break protocol,” he said, “I’ll report you to Orphan Y.”

“Van Sciver,” she said, “has bigger concerns.”

Now Jaggers faced her fully. Sitting on the mattress, he drew his knees to his chest. He looked scrawny, an embryonic vulture. And yet those eyes held his power. Flat and hard like river-smoothed stones, the eyes of a shark gliding effortlessly through the depths in search of prey. Those eyes told the truth, and the truth was that there was no story, no background to make sense of, because men like Ben Jaggers didn’t make sense. They just were.

“As do we,” he said. “We can’t underestimate this man René. He’s impressive.”

“You admire him.”

“I admire what he did in that ballroom, how he took the winning cards right out of our hands. It was an intel failure on our part. We should have known what the man values and does not value.”

“Maybe,” Candy said, “he valued it all. He just valued some things over others.”

She studied his face, but it was like studying a dinner plate. She thought of him in that alley behind the old Crimean cannery, how when the girl had approached, he’d managed to shape his features into something human, into something requiring neighborly aid. We could use a hand with the trunk. I think it got warped in the crash. Candy pictured the girl’s one-shouldered shrug. Jaggers’s clawlike hand slapped over her mouth, the slim silver pen jabbing at her neck. The wet thrashing against the closed trunk. She’d been beautiful, that girl, and it was a sin to destroy something beautiful.

It struck Candy now that Jaggers had killed her not because it was prudent as he’d claimed but because he resented her beauty. He envied it. And he admired René not for the chess move of killing his young friend but for the ruthlessness of the act. To destroy something you cannot be is to embrace your darkest heart, to yield to an ungodly desire. It is to be hijacked by what you aren’t rather than nourished by what you are.

Because what you are is nothing.

Van Sciver’s mantra played in her head: It is what it is, and that’s all that it is. She heard it differently this time, not as a hard-boiled directive but as a shout into the abyss. Maybe ultimately that’s all they were, her and M and Y, untethered souls, parentless and brotherless, stripped of their humanity, forever echoing in the chasm.

What had she seen in Orphan X’s eyes when she’d revealed her mutilated back? Remorse? Whatever it was, it was not what she’d expected. She’d devoted every waking minute to tracking him down, hellbent on staring him in the face. Whatever she’d been hoping for, it certainly hadn’t been the glimmer of empathy she’d spied in his eyes. She hated him all the more for it. Didn’t she?

Or had she seen in X a reflection of what she herself had felt since her flesh had been defaced? The weakness of human emotion.

Orphan M had said something.

Candy blinked. “What?”

He glanced at his watch. “I said it’s time to make contact.”

Clearing her throat, she went into the bathroom, where she removed a contact-lens case from her toiletries bag. Leaning close to the mirror, she fingertipped a lens onto her right eyeball.

The contact was a spherical curve of liquid crystal cells that projected high-def images. Invisible to all but the user, the lens created a virtual display several feet from the face.

She fluttered her fingers, the metallic press-on nails catching the dim light. The radio-frequency identification-tagged fingernails allowed her to type in the air without a keyboard.

Before hooding Candy and Jaggers and loading them in the private jet, René’s men had searched their luggage compulsively for any communication devices. They had no way of knowing that Candy had been wearing her phone.

She let her gaze loosen to focus on the floating display. It always took some time for the double-blind comms connection to initiate.

The cursor blinked red, red, then finally turned green.

Van Sciver’s text scrolled before her face: HAVE YOU SECURED THE ASSET?

She lifted her fingers like a pianist and typed a reply text in thin air: POWER PLAY FAILED. WILL WIN HIM @ AUCTION TOMORROW.

She chewed her lip, waited nervously.

I’M UNWILLING TO TAKE THAT RISK.

OK. She took a deep breath, studied the bathroom walls. WHERE AM I? DID U BACKTRACE SATPHONE CALL?

REMOTE LOCATION IN MAINE.

Maine didn’t make sense given their travel time. To throw off their estimates, René’s men must have flown them back and forth in the jet before loading them into the helicopters.

She waited, watched the blinking green cursor.

After a moment another text appeared: WE GOT THROUGH THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC CIPHERS ON HIS SATPHONE, BUT WE ONLY HAD TWO SATELLITES VISIBLE FOR THE GPS TRILATERATION. WE’RE MAKING TIMING CORRECTIONS NOW, ZEROING IN ON PRECISE COORDINATES.

R U GOING 2 SEND A DRONE?

GETS TRICKY OVER U.S. SOIL.

She typed, WE LIVE 4 TRICKY.

I’M TAKING NO CHANCES, Van Sciver texted.

WHICH MEANS?

BOOTS ON THE GROUND.

She pursed her lips. A physical raid backed by numbers? Van Sciver didn’t operate this way. Ever. It would take a different level of coordination, logistics, mission planning. Which meant time.

CAN U GET HERE BY MORNING? she typed.

IF NOT, he texted, YOU’D DAMN WELL BETTER STALL THE AUCTION.

COPY THAT.

THERE IS NO VERSION IN WHICH ORPHAN X EXITS THAT BUILDING UNTIL I ARRIVE. UNDERSTOOD?

She took a breath. UNDERSTOOD.

The cursor went from green to red. She lowered her hands. The display vanished, leaving her looking at her own reflection in the mirror.

Her conscience, long buried and atrophied from lack of use, rolled over from its sleep. She kicked it in the face and put it back down. It had no business being awake for what she was about to do.