Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“How did you do that?” he said to Walker, forcing the words out. “I’m fast. I can dodge bullets. And I always know what’s coming! How could you do that?”

“Because you never met anyone like me before,” Walker said calmly.

I moved over to join him, giving the crippled Dancing Fool plenty of room. “Was that really necessary, Walker?”

“I thought so, yes,” he said. “We don’t all have suits of armour to protect us.”

“Sorry, Nigel,” I said to the Dancing Fool.

“Shove it!” he said. Both his hands were slick with blood now, and his ruined leg trembled violently from shock and nerve damage. “I’ll get you for this. Get you both! I’ll never stop, never give up. You’ll spend what’s left of your lives looking back over your shoulder, waiting for me to be there. And I will! I’ll kill you both for this!”

“No, you won’t,” said Walker. And he put a bullet through the Dancing Fool’s other kneecap.

There was only the briefest of screams, and then the Dancing Fool passed out from pain and shock and horror. I looked at him, and then at Walker.

“It was a mercy, really,” said Walker, putting away his gun. “Revenge is such a waste of life. Besides, it’s never wise to leave an enemy in shape to come after you.”

“There is that,” I said. “At least they won’t call him the Dancing Fool anymore.”

We both looked around for Coffin Jobe. He was lying dead on the floor. I got Walker to help me pick him up and settle him in a chair, so at least he’d be comfortable when he came back to life again. I left Nigel where he was; I didn’t want to risk waking him.

“Well,” said Walker. “This was all very distracting, but it doesn’t get us any closer to Alexander and Peter. In fact, after this I think we have to assume that they’ve been observing us ever since we got here and are therefore probably heading for the nearest exit or locking themselves inside a reinforced secret bunker.”

“No,” I said. “They won’t leave. Not with so much unfinished business left between us. They know they haven’t won until they’ve beaten me. Beaten me fair and square, to keep my family from coming after them. Because the other side of Anything for the family is Anything for any member of the family. And the Kings’ best chance for winning is here on their home territory, where they have all the advantages.”

“Would you still be willing to make a deal?” said Walker. “Hands off, leave safely, in return for the Independent Agent’s secrets?”

“No,” I said. “But they’ll think they can persuade me to settle for that. Because that’s how they think.” I raised my voice. “I know you can hear me, Alexander! Talk to me! Tell me where you are so we can sort this out face-to-face. You know you want to.”

A vision of Alexander King sitting at his ease on his great wooden throne appeared on the air before us. He looked exactly as he had before: an aged rogue in flamboyant clothes. But his smile was cold and calculating now, and it added years to his shrunken face.

“Just walk straight ahead,” he said. “I’m waiting.”

The vision snapped off. I looked at Walker, and then leaned in close to murmur in his ear.

“Don’t stand on ceremony. If you get the chance, kill him.”

“Glad to,” murmured Walker.

We walked on through the Independent Agent’s monument to his own genius, through room after room full of trophies and mementos, the museum he’d made of his life. Endless photos from his extensive career, from all places and periods, showing Alexander King as a young man, growing steadily older . . . but not beyond a certain point. No photos of a more than middle-aged man, past his best, or of an old man limping into retirement. Just portraits of the legendary Independent Agent with famous faces from politics and religion, along with movie stars and celebrities, and even a few gods and monsters. (Though those last tended not to photograph well.) Alexander King really had got around in his day.

I paused before one photo, nicely framed, but just one more set among so many . . . A young and handsome Alexander stood with his arm around the waist of a very young Martha Drood. A simple snapshot of a warm moment in the Cold War. Martha, when she was just a field agent, like me. She wasn’t even as old as I was. She was beautiful, just like everyone said.

Another photograph showed a middle-aged but still stylish Alexander standing next to a young Walker dressed in what looked like his very first good suit. I looked at Walker, and he shrugged easily.

“When you have work that needs doing, you go to the best man for the job. And for many years, that man was Alexander King.”

“Have you noticed?” I said, indicating a whole wall of photos with one wave of my hand, “all these photos of the man himself and his world, and all the people he knew . . . but not one of his family. Not one of Alexander with his wife, whoever she was, or his daughter. Or Peter. What kind of a man has no family photos?”

“A man who lives for his work,” said Walker. “You don’t get to be the greatest agent of all time by allowing yourself to be . . . distracted.”

Soon after, we passed through a room full of evidence of Alexander King’s more ruthless side. Stuffed and mounted exhibits of men and women from his past. Enemies he’d overcome, and then kept as trophies. At first I thought they were waxworks, but up close I could see the treated skin and smell the preservatives. I tapped a fingertip against one eye, and it was glass. The exhibits were dressed in the very height of fashion from their times, from the 1920s onwards. Their faces were taut, emotionless, damned forever to stand around the room in casual poses, as though at some awful cocktail party that would never end.

A museum to murder.

“Old enemies,” said Walker, striding casually through the carefully posed figures and occasionally peering closely at certain faces. “And maybe just a few friends and allies who got above themselves. What better way to celebrate your victory, when you can’t tell the world . . . than to be able to walk among your defeated foes and gloat as you please? I wonder if he talks to them. Probably . . . Probably the only people he can talk to, these days . . .”

“Anyone here you recognise?” The place was creeping me out big-time, but I was damned if I’d show it in front of Walker.

“No one I know personally,” he said. “I’ve only ever operated on the fringes of the intelligence field. How about you?”

“Jesus!” I said suddenly, striding forward. “This one’s a Drood! He’s still wearing his torc!”

I reached out to take the torc, and Walker grabbed my arm at the last moment and pulled me back.

“No, Eddie. Really bad idea. Booby traps, remember?”

I stopped, breathing hard, and then nodded curtly to Walker to show him I was back in control again. He let go of my arm.

“Later,” I said. “I’ll see to this later.”

“Yes,” said Walker. “There will be time for many things, later.”

Finally, we ran out of rooms. I pushed open one last oversized door, and there before us was the room I’d seen in the background of Alexander’s floating vision. A bare room, with bare walls, nothing in it but a great wooden throne with its back turned to me. I stopped just inside the door and took a good look around, but there was no one else in the room. Walker mouthed the word Peter? at me, and I shrugged. We strode forward into the room, and the door closed slowly but firmly behind us. The throne began to turn spinning silently on some unseen mechanism, and there, sitting on the Independent Agent’s throne, was Peter King. He smiled easily at me and nodded to Walker.