“It was Peter all along,” said Walker. “The treacherous little shit. He killed Katt, and Blue, and—”
“No,” said Honey. “That was me.”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.”
“No.” She forced the words out past the pain and the blood. She needed me to know the truth. “I killed Blue and Katt. Tried to kill Walker. Even sabotaged my own sub at the loch, so I wouldn’t be suspected. I thought . . . it was my duty. To win the prize at any cost.”
“Honey . . .” I said, but the hard knot in my stomach wouldn’t let me say anything more.
She smiled briefly, showing perfect teeth slick with blood. “Never fall in love with another agent, Eddie. You know it’s never going to end well.”
She died in my arms. I held her for a long time.
It all went bad so quickly.
CHAPTER NINE
The Spying Game
W
hy be an agent? All right, you get to play with all the best toys, you get to see the world (though rarely the better parts), and now and again you get a real chance to stand between humanity and the forces that threaten . . . You get to be a hero, or a villain, and sometimes both. But what does any of that buy you in the end? Except death and suffering and the loss of those you care for. What makes a man an agent? And what keeps him going, in the face of everything?
Why be an agent?
Walker and I stood together in a dirty backstreet, looking down at Honey Lake’s body. I’d like to say she looked peaceful and at rest, but she didn’t. She looked like a toy that had been played with too roughly, and then thrown aside. I’d seen a lot of people look like that in the years I’d spent playing the spying game. When all the fun and games, all the adventure and romance, adds up to nothing more than bright red blood on a white jumpsuit.
“She was a good agent,” said Walker.
“Yes,” I said.
“She wouldn’t want us to just stand around, waiting to get caught.”
“No.”
“My teleport bracelet is gone,” said Walker, looking at his bare wrist. “Yours too?”
“Yes,” I said. “Honey’s bracelet is gone as well.”
Walker sniffed loudly, shooting his impeccably white cuff forward to cover his wrist. “Peter must have taken them with him.”
“Only one way he could have done that,” I said, still looking down at Honey’s body. “Peter must have been working with his grandfather all along. The Independent Agent always intended for his nephew to win the game, to keep his precious secrets in the family. This whole contest was a setup to establish Peter King as the new Independent Agent. I should have known. It’s always about family. The rest of us were just here for show. Window dressing for Peter’s great triumph.”
“And we’re left stranded in Roswell,” said Walker. “With a dead body at our feet and the local law no doubt already on their way, tipped off by an anonymous source. How very awkward. Time to be going, I think.”
“We have to go to Place Gloria,” I said. “Alexander and Peter have to pay for this.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “They do. I’ve always been a great believer in an eye for an eye, and a death for a death. Comes of a traditional public school upbringing, no doubt. Unfortunately, getting to the Independent Agent’s private lair isn’t going to be easy. We can’t be sure Place Gloria is where or even when we think it is. Remember the flux fog? The exterior we saw may have no connection at all to the more than comfortable retreat we walked through.”
“You’re just talking to distract me,” I said. “I appreciate the thought, but don’t. What are we going to do about Honey?”
“Communications should be working again, now that the alien mound has been destroyed,” said Walker. “We’ll call her people and tell them what’s happened, and they’ll get the local people to do what’s necessary. The Company’s always been very good at cleaning up after itself.”
I looked at Walker, and to his credit he didn’t blink. “Just walk away and leave her?” I said. “Leave her lying here in the street, alone?”
Walker met my gaze unflinchingly. “You’ll pardon me if I’m not overly sympathetic, Eddie. She did try to kill me back in Tunguska. And she did murder poor little Katt and your friend the Blue Fairy.”
“I know,” I said. “She was an agent.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “And that’s why she’d understand. In the field, you do what you have to do. She wouldn’t have hesitated to walk away from you and leave your body to be taken care of by the Droods.”
“Is this why we became agents?” I said, and was surprised by the bitterness in my voice. “To play games, to chase after secrets that are rarely worth all the blood spilled on their behalf . . . To end up stabbed in the back, just when you thought you’d won, bleeding out in some nameless backstreet . . . With most people never even knowing who you were, or what you did, or why it mattered?”
“You can’t work in the shadows and still expect applause,” said Walker. “The right people will know, and sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.”
“Anything for the family,” I said. “Anything for England. For humanity. But for us? What about us, Walker?”
“Duty and responsibility are their own rewards,” said Walker. “Old-fashioned, I know, but some things don’t change. The things that matter. We do it because it has to be done. We do it because if we don’t, who will? Who else could we trust to do it right?”
“She shouldn’t have died here,” I said. “Not like this.”
“It’s always somewhere like this,” said Walker. “That’s the job. Did you . . . love her, Eddie?”
“No,” I said. “But she was . . . special. If things had been different . . .”
“If,” said Walker. “Always the harshest word.”
“Why did you become an agent, Walker? I had no choice; I was born into the family business. So was Honey, I suppose. But why you?”
“For the sheer damned glamour of it all,” said Walker.
I couldn’t manage a smile for him just yet, but I nodded to show I appreciated the effort. I turned my back on Honey and walked away. Walker strode calmly along beside me, flourishing his furled umbrella like an officer’s stick. Say what you like about Walker, and many people have; the man has style. We left the back lot and the empty street behind us and went back into the town of Roswell to walk among sane things again.
“We can’t let Peter take the prize,” I said. “Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after what he did. He’s not worthy.”
“I’ll see him damned to Hell first,” Walker agreed cheerfully. “And his bloody grandfather too. Peter must have been the one following us earlier. I said it had to be a professional . . . He probably changed the settings on his teleport bracelet while he was still in the Sundered Lands, leaving ahead of us so he could arrive here separately.” Walker frowned. “Surely he couldn’t have known about the alien threat in advance . . . No . . . No; must have come as a very nasty surprise to find he was trapped here with the rest of us. That’s why he stayed well back until it was all over, before making his move.”
I nodded. I didn’t really care. It was just details.
Walker found a public phone and told the CIA about Honey. I contacted my family through my torc. That wouldn’t have been possible with the old torc, supplied by the corrupt Heart, but Ethel’s upgrade to strange matter had gifted us with many new options, some of which we were still getting used to. The Drood communications officer was all over me the moment he recognised my voice.
“Where the hell have you been, Edwin? We haven’t been able to reach you for days! You know you’re supposed to report in regularly.”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“But where have you been? It was like you’d dropped off the whole planet! We’ve had the whole family searching for some sign of you. Even Ethel couldn’t locate you, and she sees in five dimensions!”
“Good for her,” I said. “Now shut the hell up and patch me through to the War Room. I want to speak to the Matriarch. The whole game’s gone to hell, and the Independent Agent has screwed us all.”
“I’m here, Edwin.” The Matriarch’s cool and utterly professional voice sounded as though she was standing right next to me. “Where are you? What’s been happening?”
“The game was fixed from the start,” I said, doing my best to sound equally calm and collected. Even after everything that had passed between us, I still didn’t want to let myself down in front of her. “Alexander King never intended to let any of us get our grubby little hands on his treasure trove of secrets. So I’m going to be a very bad loser and take them anyway. I need to know where his secret lair really is, Grandmother. Tell me.”
“If anyone in this family had even a strong suspicion where to get our hands on the Independent Agent, we’d have kicked in his door and shut him down long ago,” the Matriarch said calmly. “We don’t like competition, we don’t like people who change sides according to which way the wind is blowing, and we’ve never approved of his methods. We would also very much like to get back all the records, trophies, and forbidden weapons he’s stolen and cheated us out of down the years. Alexander King is no friend of this family and never has been. I’m sorry, Edwin. His present location is a complete mystery to us. The space-time coordinates he provided for your transport to Place Gloria were a strictly one-time-only thing. I did send three field agents after you, just on the off chance, but they ended up materialising halfway up an Alp with not even a climber’s hut anywhere in sight. Callan in particular was very upset about that.”
“You know Alexander,” I said. “You were close to him once.”
“I was younger then, and much more impressionable.” The Matriarch’s voice didn’t change a bit. “And even back then, I would never have let my feelings get in the way of a mission. The family comes first, Edwin. You know that.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know that.”
“Are you all right, Edwin?” said the Matriarch. “You sound . . . tired. Do you require assistance?”
“No,” I said. “I need to do this myself.”
I shut down the contact before she could start asking me questions I had no intention of answering. I looked at Walker, who’d finished his phone call and was looking at me patiently.
“My family can’t help,” I said.
“I can,” said Walker.
“You know how to find the Independent Agent?” I said just a bit suspiciously.
“Not as such,” said Walker. “But I can get us there. It’s always been part of my job, to be able to go where I’m needed. Of course, this will mean travelling via the Nightside. And, Eddie, if I’m going to take you there, you’re going to have to promise me that you’ll behave. Droods are forbidden access to the Nightside for good reason. Do you give me your word you won’t start anything?”
“I’ll be good,” I said. “No matter what the provocation. I can do that, to get to Alexander and Peter. But how do we get to the Nightside from here?”
“I am about to reveal one of the great secrets of the Nightside,” said Walker. “And to a Drood, of all people. What is the world coming to? . . . Anyway, here it is.
Timeslips don’t just happen.
Well, actually, they do. Suddenly and violently and all over the place. Bloody things are always opening up, forming temporary gateways to the past, the future, and any number of alternate Earths. Apparently it’s the result of a major design flaw in the original creation of the Nightside . . . But you don’t really think the powers that be in the Nightside—the poor bastards who think they actually run the place—would let such a thing happen without trying to take advantage of the situation? No; they found a way to tap into the basic energies involved and made the energies work for them. The Authorities didn’t just gift me with my Voice, you know; they also gave me my very own Portable Timeslip so I could come and go as I please and be wherever I need to be, whenever I need to be there. And sometimes just a little before.”
He produced a large gold pocket watch on a reinforced gold chain from his waistcoat pocket. He hefted the watch thoughtfully, and then held it out for me to see. The watch cover had an engraving of the snake Oroborus, with its tail in its mouth, surrounding an hourglass. Walker flipped open the cover, and inside there was nothing but darkness. Like a bottomless hole, falling away forever. I pulled my head back with a snap to keep from being sucked in. Walker smiled faintly.
“If you look into the abyss long enough, the abyss looks back into you. And sometimes it knows your name. I’ve been told there is someone or something trapped at the bottom of the watch, powering the Portable Timeslip. I’ve never felt inclined to pursue the matter.”
“My family has something similar,” I said, for pride’s sake. “A portable door. We’ve been using them for years.”
“Makes you wonder who had the idea first, doesn’t it?” said Walker. “And who sold what to whom? Droods may be banned from the Nightside by long tradition, but the intelligence community has always had its connections on many unofficial levels. Your portable doors operate in space and local time; my Portable Timeslip is more ambitious. The Authorities, in their various incarnations, have spent centuries studying Timeslips and slowly learning how to influence and manipulate them. Not the Authorities personally, of course; they have people to do that kind of thing for them. But this little watch can take me anywhere I need to be, and once it’s been there it never forgets. Which means the exact coordinates of Alexander King’s lair are safely tucked away in the watch’s memory core.
“Unfortunately, it’s running very low on power. It has just enough metatemporal juice left to transport both of us to a prearranged setting in the Nightside, where I can get it recharged.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit the Nightside,” I said.
“You only say that because you’ve never seen it,” said Walker.
He turned the fob on the pocket watch back and forth like a combination lock, muttering under his breath as he did so. He made one final dramatic twist of the fob, and the darkness leapt up out of the watch to form itself into a door hanging on the air before us. A simple rectangle of impenetrable darkness, a patch of night sky with absolutely no stars that could lead anywhere. Walker gestured for me to walk through. Only a few days earlier I would have refused, knowing better than to turn my back on Walker . . . but I didn’t care anymore. I wanted justice and revenge, and if I had to make a deal with the Devil to get them, then so be it. I walked into the darkness and out the other side and found myself in the dingiest, sleaziest bar I’d ever seen. Walker appeared out of nowhere to stand beside me.