Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“How do you stand it?” I said. “Working in a moral cesspit like this?”

“It’s my job,” said Walker. “And I’m very good at it. Now, time we were going.”

His hands worked expertly on the pocket watch, and the darkness within leapt up and out, forming a great dark blanket above us. It slammed down like a flyswatter, and I didn’t even have time to react before suddenly we were somewhere else.

The interior of Place Gloria looked just as I remembered it. Tacky, gaudily coloured reminders from the decade that taste disowned. I looked quickly about me while Walker put his pocket watch away, but everything was still and silent. I knew this room; it was where we’d all stood together at the start of the game, when we’d still thought we had a fair chance of winning. I caught Walker considering me thoughtfully and made myself unclench my fists.

“I don’t think we should just go charging through the rooms at random,” murmured Walker, “in the hope of just running into Alexander and Peter . . . There are bound to be protections, alarms; probably even booby traps for the unwary and those in a hurry.”

“Searching this place thoroughly could take forever,” I said. “I’ve a better idea. Make a lot of noise and make them come to us.”

I drew my Colt Repeater, the gun that doesn’t need to be aimed and never runs out of ammunition, and I fired it again and again, calmly and coldly destroying everything of value in the room. Anything that looked important, or expensive, or hard to replace. Ancient china blew apart, glasses and mirrors shattered, and the room was full of vengeful thunder. Photos of Alexander’s old cases and triumphs jumped off the walls, precious memories destroyed in moments. The photos showed him posing with the great and the good, the famous and the infamous. Smiling faces, blown away. I shot holes in objects of historical significance and artistic merit, and I didn’t give a damn. I destroyed antique furnishings and modern furniture and stamped the pieces under my feet as I raged around the room. The continual roar of the gun in the confined space was almost unbearable.

Some things had their own protections. An oversized clock whose hands swept steadily backwards faded away before my bullets could reach it. An ancient black runesword mounted on the wall began to sing menacingly in no human language. My bullets couldn’t touch it, so I moved on. And a huge stone hand in an impenetrable glass case gave me the finger. I didn’t care. There were still many good things left to destroy.

It did occur to me that I was probably destroying or at least vandalising important relics of spy history, but none of that mattered. Not with Honey’s blood still drying on my clothes, from where I’d held her close as she died. Not with the Blue Fairy’s death message still fresh in my mind. And not while Alexander and Peter still lived.

I finally ran out of things to shoot and slowly lowered the Colt Repeater. It felt heavy in my hand. The echoes from the continuous gunfire died away, and Walker removed his hands from his ears. The room was destroyed, bits and pieces everywhere, but no one came to investigate.

“Odd,” said Walker, entirely unmoved by the destruction all around him. “No alarms? No bells or sirens or those annoying flashing lights that always give me a headache? And no attempt to protect most of the items? Try this in the Collector’s warehouse, and the security robots would be picking up bits of you for weeks afterward. I think we have to assume that Alexander and Peter know we’re here and have no intention of exposing themselves to danger . . . Which is understandable. If I was out here after me, I wouldn’t show myself either. You know, this could be a trap.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Don’t care was made to care,” said an angry, familiar voice.

I looked around sharply, and there they were, the three of them, standing in a tense threatening row on the other side of the room. Coffin Jobe, the Dancing Fool, and Strange Chloe. My three fellow conspirators from the raid on the Tower of London. It all seemed so long ago now . . . a different world. But here they were now, and they were clearly not on my side. Coffin Jobe, the necroleptic, who died and came back to life so frequently he saw the world so much more clearly than the rest of us. The Dancing Fool, who created his own martial art based on Scottish sword dancing, and won every fight because he knew what you were going to do even before you did. Déjà fu. And Strange Chloe, the Goth’s Goth, with her black and white markings tattooed on her face, who could make anything in the world disappear if she just hated it enough. And she had a lot of hate in her.

Friends of a kind. Colleagues, certainly. All of them with good cause to want me dead. Life’s like that, sometimes.

“Guys,” I said. “This really isn’t a good time. Could we do this some other time?”

“What’s the matter, Eddie?” said the Dancing Fool. His voice was harsh, vicious. “Forgotten all about us, had you? The three friends you betrayed and left helpless for the authorities in the Tower of London? The colleagues you stabbed in the back and then left to rot? If Alexander King hadn’t stepped in to rescue us, we’d still be behind bars!”

“Alexander?” I said. “Damn, how long has he been watching me . . . ?”

“Get over yourself, Shaman!” said Strange Chloe. “This isn’t about you! It’s about us!”

“Only Shaman isn’t your real name, is it?” said the Dancing Fool. “Not even close.”

“Drood,” said Coffin Jobe in his gray, deathly voice. “Bad enough that you betrayed us, Shaman . . . But you’re a Drood too?”

“You have to admit,” said Walker, “this is an excellent defence stratagem. Making you fight your way through your own colleagues to get to him. Alexander King made his legend by always being one step ahead of everyone else . . . It’s almost an honour to see such talent at work.”

None of us were listening to him.

“I saved your lives!” I said to all three of them. “Big Aus was planning to kill all of us once he’d got his hands on what he was really after. You didn’t seriously buy into that nonsense about the ravens, did you? He was after the Crown Jewels!”

“Yeah, right,” said Strange Chloe. “And my arse plays the banjo. You’d say anything to save your own skin, wouldn’t you?”

“I thought you were my friend, Shaman,” said Coffin Jobe. “And now you’re a Drood?”

“How could you turn out to be one of them ?” said Strange Chloe. “The professional killjoys, the bullies and spoilsports, dedicated to taking all the fun out of life! You pretended to be one of us when you were really one of them . . . Well, here’s where you get yours, Drood .”

“Alexander brought us here so we could take our revenge on you,” said the Dancing Fool. “He knew you’d try to smash in here to steal the prize you couldn’t win honestly. Typical Drood. And we all jumped at the chance for a little justified payback!”

“You don’t know what’s going on here,” I said as steadily and calmly as I could. “He’s using you, just like Big Aus. You’re only here as another way to hurt me, by making me fight my way through my friends to get to him.”

“This isn’t about you!” Strange Chloe shouted, all but stamping her foot. “Not everything is about you just because you’re a bloody Drood!”

“This is,” I said, and something in my voice stopped her. I looked at the three of them and felt more tired than anything. “Do you really think you can stop me?” I said. “I’m a Drood, with a Drood’s armour and a Drood’s training. You know what that means.”

The three of them looked at each other, uneasy for the first time. They knew what a Drood can do.