Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“Welcome to my home, both of you. Well, have you nothing to say to the legendary Independent Agent at the moment of his greatest triumph? I’ve been running rings around people like you for the best part of a century, but you have to admit, this is one of my best! Oh, come on; surely you guessed before now? Surely two agents of such vaunted skill and experience had just the merest suspicion at some point that I wasn’t who I appeared to be; that it was in fact me?”

“You’ve been masquerading as your own grandson,” I said, feeling numb and stupid. “It was you all along, Alexander.”

“Of course, of course!” he said cheerfully. “It was my game, my rules, and you never stood a chance.”

“Was there ever a real grandson?” said Walker. “A real Peter King?”

“Oh, yes,” the Independent Agent said easily. “Pitiful little fellow. No use to anyone, not even himself. No drive, no ambition, and not a single achievement of worth to his name. A dreary little man in a dreary little job. Industrial espionage; is there anything lower for such as us? I didn’t really kill him, not as such. Just relieved him of a life he wasn’t using anyway. I took his life energy and used it to make myself young again. Gave myself a few nips and tucks here and there and a new face. It’s not difficult, if you know what you’re doing. An expensive process, certainly, but worth every penny. As a great man once said, What good is wealth, if you don’t have your health? I feel so young ! So alive ! I feel . . . like myself again!”

He swung one leg elegantly over the other and smiled condescendingly. I could feel my hands knotting into fists at my sides. I wanted to haul him down off his stupid throne and beat him to death with my bare hands. But I didn’t. I made myself wait. He had more to say, more secrets to spill, and I needed to hear them.

“You didn’t really think the legendary Independent Agent would give up his role and his secrets just because he was getting old, did you?” said Alexander through Peter King’s face. I decided to think of him as Alexander. It made it easier to hate him. “The world needs me, needs the Independent Agent, needs my knowledge and experience and skills now more than ever. Too many damned amateurs running around out there, screwing things up for everyone. When you’ve got a real problem, you need a professional. Someone who knows what he’s doing.

“And don’t get me started on the state of the official organisations! Bloody accountants have taken over, more concerned with balancing their budgets than actually achieving anything. And as for the Droods . . . I am lost for words, Eddie. You never should have meddled. All right, your family were corrupt; so what? They got the job done, didn’t they? Did you know I offered to help you out during the Hungry Gods War, and some damned fool turned me down?” He leaned forward on his throne to glare at me. “Did you really think I’d give it all up and go quietly into the long night? Just lie down and die, because I got old? I didn’t spend my whole life saving the world and putting it to rights just to grow old and feeble and die! People like me aren’t supposed to die! The world needs me! I still have important things to do! Dying is for small people, for the little people who don’t matter!”

“You’re shouting, Alex,” said Walker.

“Ah. Yes. Sorry about that,” said the young Independent Agent, sitting back on his wooden throne. “This new body is packed full of hormones. I’m still getting used to it.”

“The game never was what we thought it was,” I said. “You set the contest up specifically so you could be in it and win it. So you could beat us all, in front of the whole world. You needed to prove to yourself, and everyone else, that you were still the best. By taking on the greatest agents the world had to offer and beating them all.”

“Oh, please; you were hardly the best,” said Alexander. “You were just the five best up-and-comers. The ones most likely to be my competition as I started life again. The ones most likely to get in my way as I built my new career as Peter King. I brought you into this game to show everyone I could beat you, yes; but mostly so I could kill you all off before you became a nuisance.”

“Excuse me,” said Walker. “But . . . why me? I’m hardly an up-and-comer. I’m barely an agent. Why not choose the current champion of the Nightside, John Taylor?”

“You . . . were my one indulgence,” said Alexander, beaming down on Walker. “I wanted someone who could put up a good fight. Someone worth beating. And I wanted someone there who knew the old me, to see if they could identify me inside this new identity. And you didn’t! I fooled you completely!”

“All that young blood is going to your head,” said Walker.

“I know,” said Alexander. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“If all you wanted was to become young again,” I said slowly, “there are any number of ways you could have become a young Alexander King. Not very nice ways, most of them, but that wouldn’t have stopped you. The Independent Agent, rejuvenated! Such things have been known to happen in our field. Rarely, and usually frowned upon, but not unknown. However, you didn’t do that. You couldn’t afford to do that. You’ve made too many enemies down the years, Alexander. Really powerful, really nasty enemies. You couldn’t kill all of them and put them on display. No, they’re out there, sensing weakness in your old age: jackals and vultures circling the dying lion.

“The only way you could hope to shake them off was by spreading rumours of your impending death, and then reappearing as your own grandson. Winning the game you set up would establish Peter King as a major player in his own right, and then you’d use the secrets gained from the contest as currency to get you back in the great game. You would become the new Independent Agent, with none of your old enemies any the wiser.”

“But why this desperate need for new secrets?” said Walker. “Why play the game at all? Unless . . .”

“Exactly,” said Alexander. “Knew you’d get there, in the end. There is no great hoard of hidden secrets. Hasn’t been for some time. There was once, along with whole vaults full of objects of power and forbidden weapons and the like. But I sold them all off, down the years, to fund my wonderfully extravagant lifestyle. One at a time and very discreetly, of course, but they all went. Sometimes I even sold things back to the very people I’d taken them from in the first place! Through a whole series of trusted intermediaries, of course; I couldn’t risk any rumours getting out. Oh, I get almost giddy, thinking of how clever I’ve been . . . The last few items went in payment for my new youthfulness. Can’t say I miss them. They were the past, and I must concentrate only on the future now.

“As befits a young man, with his whole life ahead of him.

“I shall be the new sensation of the age and astonish everyone! After I’ve blown up Place Gloria to establish Alexander’s death. And yours too, naturally. A pity to have to blow up the old place; it’s been good to me . . . But the world must believe the Independent Agent is dead, if the new one is to rise from his ashes. And you have to die so you can’t tell anyone what you know. Nothing personal; just business.”

“Wrong,” I said. “This is personal.”

“You don’t really think it’s going to be that easy, do you?” said Walker.

“Oh, yes . . . I think so,” said Alexander. “If you hadn’t found your way here so quickly, I was planning to lay out a trail of bread crumbs. I needed you to come find me on your own, without calling in reinforcements. How did you find me so quickly . . . ? No. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t got where I am today by worrying over unimportant details. You’re here, as I meant you to be. You know, you’re very easy to manipulate, Eddie. I just knew killing Honey right in front of you would make you so angry you’d come charging after me without bothering to bring in any more of your annoying family.”