Steven Savile - Silver

It was an uneventful flight, both on the ground and in the air. A lot could happen in nine days it seemed, including people forgetting a face, or half-recognizing it and not being sure where from, even when it was a face they had seen day after day on the news reels and in the press. He wasn’t a film star and he wasn’t a pro ball player. What that meant was when they looked at him a few people did a weird sort of double-take, then shook their heads as though dismissing him. They had recognized him on some subliminal level, just like any other famous person, but they had filed him as just that, a famous person. Logic told them he had to be one, and who was he to argue with logic?

The fact of the matter was that the BKA were hardly about to announce to the world that they’d lost him. Airports, train stations and bus terminals would be swarming with agents on the ground looking for him-but they weren’t looking for John Smith.

As it was, he landed in London refreshed from the flight and disembarked the plane. On the way along the metal passage back toward the gate, he asked one of the ground crew where the nearest pay phone was and made the call to Lethe.

“Welcome home, Koni,” Lethe said, even before the phone had started to ring in his ear. “We were worried about you.”

“Touching, I am sure. You have the address for me?”

“The old man told me to tell you he wants you here for a debriefing first thing.”

“Second thing. First thing I have a promise to keep.”

“Whatever you say, man, I’m just passing on the message. Second thing it is.”

“The address?”

“He’s in England. He entered the country the day after the assassination.”

“England isn’t small. Where in England?”

“I just want you to appreciate my brilliance for a moment, Koni. I found him for you, just like you asked. But think about it, if I say he’s in London, that means he’s one of seven and a half million people spread over thirty-two different boroughs. That’s a lot of people and a hell of a lot of streets. That’s your needle in a haystack right there.”

“Where is he?”

“Well, out of all those millions of buildings, I found the one he’s in. That’s how good I am at what I do, Koni. He has a place in the heart of London, Clippers Quay, off Taeping Street. You can take the DLR to Mudchute and walk from there in a couple of minutes. Most of the houses are built around the old Graving Dock. There are four apartments in the block. The penthouse is his. You can’t miss it.”

“A graving dock? Isn’t that appropriate,” Konstantin said.

“It doesn’t mean they used to bury people there, Koni,” Lethe said in his ear. The phone line started to beep, but he talked over them.

“Well it does now.”

Konstantin hung up and went to keep a promise.

He left the train and walked quickly down the stairs that ran between the up and down escalator. He was the only person left on the train by the time it reached the Isle of Dogs. This part of the city was called Little Manhattan because of the mini-skyscrapers that had been built all along the riverside development of Canary Wharf. The Devere Holdings building was in there amid all of the merchant banks and import/export offices. Mudchute rather matched its name. Despite its nearness to the skyscrapers, it was like something out of the ’50s and owed its curious name to the fact that when it was being built the country was suffering from football factories, and its hooligans were the fear of Europe; otherwise, it would have been called Millwall Park, after the football team.

He followed the road around. Twenty years ago this part of London would have been full of kids kicking tin cans and pretending to be Teddy Sheringham and Tony Cascarino. Tonight it was quiet.

There was more building going on on the other side of the tracks. The metal skeleton of the building was slowly being wrapped in bricks and mortar.

He didn’t have a weapon. No doubt he could have climbed over the wall and dropped down onto the building site and found a decent sized rock. Or maybe a piece of steel pipe or rebar, a chisel, hammer or other tool. He decided against it, not for any ethical reasons-he had no problem with stealing from a construction site. No, he wanted to do this with his bare hands. He didn’t want anything between him and Devere as he beat the life out of him.

Konstantin found the building. Lethe was right, he couldn’t miss it. It was one of those carbuncles on the face of the city Prince Charles had been railing about for years while no one paid the slightest bit of notice to his royal raving.

He had lost his bump key when the BKA took him into custody, so getting past the security was going to be a little more complicated. He stepped back, standing just out of the puddle of light from the streetlight, and looked up at the facade. There was a fairly substantial drainage system on the outside of the house, with pipes running all the way down from the roof. He’d never understood why the British put their water pipes on the outside of their houses, when the cold came they were always going to crack, maybe not for ten years, but eventually they would. Freeze, thaw, and all of that. Pipes on the outside was asking for problems. Good metal pipes properly set into the mortar were asking for an entirely different set of problems.

Konstantin picked a path up to the first balcony. It was a long affair that actually ran around half of the frontage, then turned right to catch some of the lowering evening sun. The second story balcony repeated the pattern. It was the same for each of the four stories. The water pipes threaded through the narrowest of places, where the balconies didn’t over lap. Once he got to the first one it would be relatively easy to climb to the next. Of course there was no guarantee that when he got there the balcony doors would be open-and if they weren’t, hell would freeze over before Devere stopped playing Little Pig and let him in.

He could always try the buzzer trick again, but there were only three buzzers and no lights in any of the lower apartments. He didn’t waste any more time. He shimmied up the drainpipe, scuffing his feet off the wall, and hooked his hand onto the first balcony so that he could pull himself up. Second to third was almost as easy. He stood on the balcony rail and reached up. The next level was six inches out of reach, so leaning out over the drop, he jumped.

Konstantin caught the concrete base of the balcony and hauled himself up as though he was doing chin-ups, then swung, hooking his leg up onto the balcony railing and climbed onto the third story balcony. He repeated the maneuver for the fourth story and stood there for a moment, looking in through the huge plate glass doors and dusting his hands off.

The television was on, casting shadow shapes across the contours of the lounge.

Miles Devere was slumped in a leather armchair. He had his eyes closed and rested in the posture of someone who’d slipped into sleep.

Konstantin wanted him awake for the fun.

He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite midnight. There were chairs on the balcony, good cushioned chairs with high backs. Konstantin settled down into one of them. He was going to do this the Russian way. That meant coming late, four o’clock, coming in fast and hard and scaring the living crap out of Devere before he made him beg and plead and offer to pay anything, to give up his fortune, anything, and everything. Konstantin wasn’t about to be bought. When Devere was through begging he would beat the man to death and leave him in his fancy skyscraper city apartment surrounded by all the fine things money could buy.

He had the patience of a saint when it came to keeping a promise.

He looked out over the river, watching the city at night. It was a curious beast. It never quietly slept. He couldn’t understand the appeal of it. It was dirty, smelly, over-crowded, just like any other city in the world. He scanned the rooftops from The Tower to St. Paul’s distinctive dome and over the rooftops to The London Eye and, almost on the edge of what could be seen, Big Ben. The night lights made it seem like a different place. Like a fairy tale city. They might soften the sharp edges of the architecture, but they couldn’t hide the fact that right now murder was the only tale of the city worth telling.