Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

He squinted across the room at Ramsey and his vision cleared so that he saw the lieutenant standing over Foster now, lifting his gun to put a final bullet in him. Shannon could not bring his own weapon to bear fast enough. He could not stop Ramsey in time.

So he shouted out "Ramsey!" through the wind.

And he saw Ramsey, startled, spinning around, turning the gun quickly from Foster to point it straight at him.

When Ramsey heard the shout and turned and saw the blood-soaked figure bringing the gun to bear on him, he knew what was going to happen next, it seemed inevitable. All in a moment, he felt overwhelming desperation, rage, and terrible shame. A wild, silent cry of regret, a silent cry of yearning for his mother's comfort, tore from his guts and filled him. All in a moment, he saw: it was his doing, all his doing, and he was sorry for it.

Maybe that's why he hesitated just a fraction of a fraction of a second before he began to pull the trigger.

But it was too late by then. Shannon shot him.

It was a wild shot. The bullet hit only the fleshy edge of Ramsey's thigh. It didn't even knock the gun out of his hand. But the jolt and the searing pain made him stagger back a step and he tripped over Foster lying there and he staggered back another step and fell off the edge of the floor into nothingness and went down and down and down, screaming in helpless terror and sorrow for what felt like forever.

Shannon saw Ramsey fall back into the sky and vanish in a finger snap as by some terrible magic, and he understood that it was over. The weight of the gun and the pain overwhelmed him then. He collapsed onto the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood.

He closed his eyes. He felt himself sinking away into darkness-death or unconsciousness, he didn't know which. Either way, he was glad-glad and grateful for it. It was over. He had done everything he had to do.

He let himself go and was gone.

IT WAS STRANGE to be back in the white room. For the first day or two, he was in a painkiller fog, and it was very strange. He hung suspended in the fog as if in midair, and the fog drifted by him, sometimes black and sometimes gray and sometimes full of present shadows or past faces he remembered. He saw the white room through the breaks in the fog for shapeless moments at a time, and he wasn't sure whether it was really there or he was dreaming. And when he thought it was there, that he was back in the white room again, he wondered if the rest of it had been a dream-the ruined city and the wooden angel and Teresa-everything a dream while he had been here in the white room all along.

Slowly, day by day, the fog thinned. He wafted down from the air and intermittently felt the bed beneath him. The sound of a door opening or footsteps on the floor would alert him and he would fight against the weighted haze, trying to sit up and see more clearly. He caught glimpses of men with guns. Different men at different times. One would stand over him with his thumbs in his belt and look down at him with a deadpan face. Another would sit in a chair against the wall and page through a magazine. Yet another would just sit in the chair and stare. Lawmen of some sort, standing guard.

There were other men, too, sometimes-and sometimes women: doctors or nurses in scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks. They fussed at him and shifted him on the bed and stuck needles into him. Sometimes they gave him water through a straw and he drank gratefully. When they spoke to him, they spoke as if he were an infant or a dog-as if he couldn't really understand or answer them. When he did answer, they always seemed surprised and a little resentful. Then he would be gone again and when he woke up it was all so hard to remember.

One day, he opened his eyes, and there was Foster. Same old narrow, bald, seedy agent in yet another cheap suit. Shannon squinted through sleep and saw him fidgeting in a chair at his bedside. He was wearing a blue sling on his right arm and Shannon remembered that Ramsey had shot him.

Foster rubbed his neck with his good hand. He shifted his neck in his collar. He looked up at a woman working a machine by the bed.

"All right?" he said. "I need him clear."

If she answered, Shannon didn't hear her. He saw her walk away. With lazy nausea, he moved his head so he could look at Foster.

"Teresa," Shannon said. He had a feeling it was not the first time he had said it.

"Yeah, yeah, she's all right," said Foster. "I told you. They're fine, they're in the system. New city, new life. No one even knows they were involved. They'll be okay."

Shannon closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was a great relief to him. He shifted uncomfortably. He was beginning to become aware of a new, unwelcome clarity. The drugs were wearing off, the tendrils of painless fog losing their grip on him, falling away. He could feel cool reality drifting over his skin like air drifting over a rotting tooth. He understood for the first time-or for the first time he could remember anyway-that his body was broken and wrong and the drugs were keeping him from the full feeling of it. He opened his eyes.

"How bad?" he mumbled. "How bad am I?"

Foster gave a jerky shrug. "You got a beating, dog. Ribs broken. Nose, fingers. Lost your spleen. Muscles torn up all over. You'll live, though."

Shannon nodded.

"But we better talk fast," the agent went on. "I need you clear. I need you to understand what I tell you. But once the drugs wear off, you'll be a traveler in the unhappy lands, my friend. So let's get it over with, so we can put you back under."

Shannon managed another nod. "What…?"

"Focus, boy. You understanding me?"

"Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

"All right. Here it is. The situation out there in the world is currently pretty bleak, not to say dire, for both you and me. We're getting hit good and hard. The media have put their heart and soul into the Augie Lancaster dream of life, and the idea that he's the most corrupt, power-hungry organism in the galaxy isn't sitting well."

Shannon had to fight hard to understand this. His head was clearing, but as it cleared, he felt the pain closing on him like a fresh skin of knitted nerve endings, closing on him until it passed through, and he couldn't tell whether it was outside him or rising from within… It was distracting. "Yeah? Okay?"

"Well, you know how the media thing goes," said Foster. "The way they tell it, it's all our fault. It was an illegal operation, blah, blah, blah. We're just trying to bring down a great reformer and defend the status quo, doncha know. We're racists taking vengeance on Augie for exposing the white man's incompetence during the flood. Whatever. People will do and say just about anything to keep from admitting they're wrong. They're wrong about Augie, but they don't care. They'll die to keep from admitting it."

"Right, right, right," said Shannon. He was starting to breathe harder, to flinch with the spark and play of his pain. "So what's the point?"

"The point is: I'll probably be fired. Possibly I'll do some prison time. Which means you've got no friends anywhere."

"Well… I never knew you were my friend anyway, so no loss."

"It's a sad fact, dog, but I'm all you've got. Without me, they'll be in here trying to charge you with shit you never even heard of. You don't get yourself a good lawyer, you'll die in prison, maybe get the lethal I."

"Well…" Shannon took a sharp breath as the pain shot through him. It was a tough situation, but he couldn't think about it now. "It is what it is," he said.

"Yeah," said Foster. "It surely is." He stood up out of his chair and moved the chair in front of him and moved to stand behind it. He looked here and there around the room. "The way it's going to go is this. A lot of serious-looking men and women wearing expensive suits the taxpayers were forced to pay for at gunpoint are going to come through here in the next few days and weeks and ask you questions in stern, serious tones of voices the taxpayers were also forced to pay for. They will be full of shit, every single one of them, and they will be attempting to convict you of anything they can in the hopes they can support Augie Lancaster so that the media will make them look virtuous and they can continue to live off the ever-dwindling fat of the land. That is called your government, son, and when it is finished with you, it will put you in one of its prisons or kill you dead. Now you've been warned."