Simon Green - For Heaven's Eyes Only

“I thought you ran the gun shop in the Nightside,” said Molly.

“Oh, I’m there, too, my dear,” said Usher, a small grey man with a small grey voice. The man behind the Gun Shops of Usher, the greatest supplier of murder and mayhem to the world, was a reputable man in a regulation suit, with a broad, square face, a professional smile and a cold, passionless stare from behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like what he was: a businessman interested only in business. “I’m there, and I’m here; I’m everywhere there’s a gun shop, Miss Molly. Because there’s always someone who needs a gun.”

“You run them all simultaneously?” I said. “What are you, an avatar of slaughter?”

“Nothing so grand, Mr. Bond,” said Usher. “I’m . . . necessary.”

I looked over the weapons spread out on the table before me. Guns: special, individual, significant guns from throughout history and legend. The Walther PPK that Hitler used to shoot Eva Braun before he turned it on himself. Billy the Kid’s old nickel pistol. The first rifle used to kill an American Indian, and the first rifle sold to an American Indian. Half a dozen guns that had turned on their famous author owners, each one neatly labelled and autographed by the writer. And a rifle from a book depository. Magic bullets extra.

“I see you carry a Colt repeater, Mr. Drood,” said Usher. “Your uncle does very good work.”

“Don’t use that name again,” I said coldly. “I’m here incognito. You blow my cover in front of this crowd and I will blow you away.”

“Of course, Mr. Bond. Your secret is safe with me. You’d be surprised how many secrets I keep.”

Molly and I moved on to the next stall. I wasn’t sure putting a bullet through Mr. Usher’s head would actually kill him, but the formalities have to be observed. Molly gave me a sideways look.

“You don’t like guns, do you? Sort of strange, that, in a secret agent.”

“I can use a gun if I have to,” I said. “But I’m an agent, not an assassin. I kill only when I have to, and I try really hard to take no pleasure or satisfaction from it. Walk too far down that path and you end up in groups like Dusk’s. Because that’s where you belong.”

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people?” suggested Molly.

“People with guns kill people,” I said. “Guns make it easy for people to kill people. It should never be easy to take someone’s life.”

“Pacifist!” sneered a passerby.

“Hardly,” I said, but he was already gone.

At the next booth, a scientist in the traditional white coat was demonstrating description theory with a blackboard and a piece of chalk, to an only mildly interested crowd. He didn’t seem to have anything to sell, but he was so earnest and determined that people were willing to listen. They watched, frowning, as he stalked back and forth before his blackboard; like so many dogs being shown a card trick, they could sense something clever was happening, but couldn’t follow it.

Basically, the scientist explained, description theory says that if you can describe something exactly, using mathematics, then the maths is the object, and vice versa. So if you change the maths, you change the object. His theory had many applications when it comes to weapons: Description theory bombs, where the maths can persuade a city it isn’t there anymore. Or even transportation, where the maths can persuade the universe that people are where the maths says they are.

By this time, the scientist had the crowd hanging on his every word, and he scurried back and forth before the blackboard, adding a symbol here and taking away one there as he carefully rewrote his maths, getting closer and closer to his objective. He finally added one last symbol with a flourish, and the blackboard disappeared. The crowd gave him a massive round of applause.

“No! No!” yelled the scientist, throwing his chalk on the ground and stamping on it. “That isn’t what’s supposed to happen!”

Molly and I moved on and left him to it. I don’t like to see a grown man cry.

Not too far away, another scientist was trying to persuade a sceptical crowd of the value of quantum uncertainty devices. Only every time he adjusted the controls on the device in front of him, he changed into somebody else. The scientist became another man, who became a woman, who became something tall and blue, before disappearing completely. Leaving only a disembodied voice saying, “Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there? Oh, bloody hell, not again . . .”

There were a great many other interesting things to be seen. A bottle of cheap djinn, a rifle that could shoot round corners and a pack of crazy ghosts who’d been conditioned to work as attack dogs. These last were a miserable-looking bunch, held in place by shimmering chains of reinforced ectoplasm. Their faces were blank and their eyes were empty, and their semitransparent bodies drifted in and out of one another as they stirred restlessly in the limited space of their tent. Their handler was an Armani-suited Sicilian with an easy, charming manner and a chilling ruthlessness in his sales pitch.

“Imagine, my friends,” he said. “The enemy you have whom no one can reach . . . is now reachable. Ghosts can go anywhere: through walls, through barbed wire, through all kinds of security systems, walking in straight lines straight to their targets. They do whatever you tell them to do, with no back talk. They have no identities left; I’ve beaten that nonsense out of them. They’re spiritual attack dogs now, suitable for defence or offence. Ectoplasmic collars and chains can be provided at little extra cost.”

“Have you no respect for the dead?” said someone in the crowd. “What if they were members of your family?”

“They are my family,” said the Sicilian. “Why should they rest while they can still make money for the family?”

“What if one of them should happen to wake up?” said Molly, almost lazily. “What if they should happen to remember who they are and what you’ve done to them?”

The Sicilian grinned his easy, supercilious grin. “Not going to happen, pretty lady. You want a big brute, perhaps, just for yourself? They can be trained to do almost anything. . . .”

“When people can be as appalling as this,” said Molly, “is it any wonder I prefer animals, on the whole?”

The Sicilian stopped smiling. He tugged on the chain of one of the ghosts, and it surged forward to crouch beside him. The Sicilian pointed at Molly and muttered something under his breath. The ghost suddenly snapped into focus. Its face was sharp and distinct, the eyes full of a mad rage. It snarled, and its mouth had vicious teeth. It raised a hand, and the fingers ended in claws. It looked entirely solid and substantial. The Sicilian slipped loose the chain, but before the ghost could move forward Molly fixed it with her gaze, holding its eyes with hers. For a moment neither of them moved, and then all the rage went out of the ghost’s face, and it cringed back to hide behind the Sicilian, whimpering. The Sicilian cuffed it round the head and glared at Molly.

“Hey! You break it, you pay for it!”

Molly ignored him, looking thoughtfully at the pack of ghosts. They moved restlessly back and forth, frowning under her gaze. Molly looked back at the Sicilian.

“What if they should all wake up and remember what you’ve done to them . . . ?”

She snapped her fingers once, and then turned unhurriedly away. The Sicilian screamed horribly as the pack swarmed over him, but he didn’t scream for long. I gave the crowd a warning look, in case anyone felt like getting involved, but they all had urgent business elsewhere. I caught up with Molly and walked along beside her.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” I said after a while.