Matthew Dunn - Spycatcher

He wondered if he should sleep. He decided that sleep was the very last thing he needed, given that he might be dead in seven hours’ time.

Will stood on a side street just off Broadway in Washington Heights, Manhattan, and decided that the small hotel before him looked perfect. There were backpackers, badly dressed tourists, and dubious-looking women attached to dubious-looking men constantly coming and going from the place. It looked cheap, and its occupants looked cheap. In Will’s experience, cheap hotels were anonymous and often the best places to go to disappear from unwanted intrusion or to conduct covert meetings. He stepped across the street and entered the building.

A man stood behind a small reception desk and looked bored as he fiddled with room keys and papers. He glanced up at Will and continued to look bored as Will asked for a room for one night and said that he would be paying with cash. The man took two hundred dollars from Will and asked him for ID. Will told him that he’d lost his ID but was willing to pay him an extra fifty dollars just to get the room. The man hesitated, took the additional money, and gave him a key. He told him that there might or might not be hot water in the room’s bathroom, and that the room’s door lock was sometimes a bit temperamental. He announced that Will was not allowed visitors in his room after 7:00 P.M. but that in truth nobody here would give a damn how many guests he had in his room during the night or when he had them.

Will took the key and walked up narrow creaking stairs to the hotel’s second floor, squeezing past a short-skirted woman with generously applied makeup as she tottered down the stairway in high heels. He reached the top of the stairs and saw that his room was immediately to his right. He fiddled with the door lock until he felt the bolt snap open and entered the room. It was larger than he expected and had a lounge area, which led to a double bed on the far side of the room. But it smelled musty, and aside from the bed it had only one armchair, a couple of lamps and side tables, a minifridge, and an old-looking TV. He looked out of the room’s window, saw the daylight of New York, and heard the city’s noise.

He pulled out his cell phone and typed a message, which he sent to Lana’s number, knowing that it would not be read by her but instead would be seen by Megiddo. He told the man where he could find Nicholas Cree. Will replaced the phone in the inner pocket of his suit jacket and rubbed his face.

He wondered if tonight a huge hole would be carved into the city of New York. Then he wondered if that would happen shortly after he was murdered in this hotel.

The day was darkening.

Lights were being switched on in the city, and its buildings sent shards of white light bouncing off their windows and into Will’s hotel room. Will kept his room lights switched off and went to look outside. He stood still and thought of everything that had happened to bring him to this place and everything that could still happen. He looked around the city, peering at the cracks between the buildings, and saw activity everywhere. He wondered if Lana was alive somewhere in the city. He wondered if instead her throat had been cut by Megiddo and her body had been dumped somewhere near Saranac Lake. He decided that he had to believe she was still alive, that Megiddo had to keep her alive, and that she would do everything she could to stay alive.

He heard laughing and shouting and arguing and swearing from other rooms and corridors in the shabby hotel. Doors opened and banged shut, and footsteps ran fast over wooden floorboards and stairs. He looked down at the street and saw a group of six men and women noisily exit the hotel. They seemed drunk, and Will imagined that they were going out to make themselves drunker. He was glad. Their departure meant the hotel was quiet for the moment.

He moved away from the window and wondered whether he should turn on one of the corner lamps. He decided to leave the room in darkness, save for what was visible from the lights that came from outside. He walked to the armchair and picked up his suit jacket.

Then he heard a creak on the stairway.

He put his jacket on and moved to one of the side tables. He picked up his cell phone, turned it off, and placed it within an inner jacket pocket.

The stairs creaked again.

He picked up his wad of cash and carefully secreted it within another pocket. He moved to his bed and looked at his Heckler amp; Koch MK23 and the three spare magazines that were laid in the center of the bed. He placed the magazines in his trouser pockets.

The stairs creaked again, and this time the noise was closer.

He looked at the gun and wondered if he would ever have a life without guns, and how it would feel to have such a life. He picked up the gun and checked its workings. He tested the weight of it in his hand. One day it might feel good to live a life without weapons. But not today.

The creaking on the stairs was now accompanied by audible, deliberate, and slow footfalls.

Will turned from his bed and looked at the room. Outside, it was now total night. Thin streaks of white city light slashed diagonally through the window and across his room and illuminated dust particles in the air. It reminded Will of the way Harry’s corridor had looked moments before Will had been shot in the head.

The footsteps were very close now. They clearly belonged to one person.

Will breathed in deeply and suddenly felt very calm. He felt as if everything outside this room was artificial; all that mattered was this room. He exhaled slowly, shut his eyes, and smiled. When he opened his eyes again, his smile was gone.

The footsteps stopped outside his door.

Will gripped his gun and raised it to eye level, pointing at the door. He waited, knowing that it was now 6:00 P.M., that now was the most important moment in his life, that it was the most important moment in many lives.

He held his gun steady and knew that directly outside his door was a deadly mastermind called Megiddo.

The doorknob groaned as it turned slowly.

Will stood very still five meters away from the entrance. He kept his gun held high, pointing at the door. Outside his room he heard traffic, voices on the streets, distant sirens, and the overall hum of a nighttime city that was alive and energetic. Inside his room everything was different. It was quiet, and the night and the light made everything either black or white.

Thin diagonal blades of white light traversed the unlit room through the window blinds, flickered, and seemed to be cutting the room into slices. Will looked through those blades and moved one foot forward so that he was poised to shoot. The knob groaned louder, and the door moved open an inch. Yellow light from the hotel corridor was framed by the partially opened door. An icy breeze that had clearly traveled up the stairway from the streets below entered the room. Despite his having spent weeks in freezing temperatures, the air seemed colder than anything he had felt before.

The white light flickered and moved to different parts of the room. Will remained motionless, carefully controlled his breathing, and waited.

A final gust of the dreadfully cold air hit him in the face as the door swung open wide, showing the silhouette of a man before slamming shut and sending the doorway into total darkness.

Will knew that the man was now in the room.

For the briefest of moments, the city became utterly silent, the outside world seeming to pause and hold its breath.

Will said calmly, “Show yourself.”

Nothing happened. The white lights darted around the room but kept away from the door.