Sunfail (33 page)

“And all of this? Everything you’ve been doing?”

“To ensure that we can continue to protect people who need protecting.”

“Is that your sales pitch?”

The old man’s smile flickered for just a moment, betraying a chink in the armor, a glimpse at the man behind the mask of civility. “I am simply asking you to consider the bigger picture. Prejudice, as I am sure you can appreciate, is a killer.”

“I’m just not sure I’m buying this, Mr. . . . I’m sorry, I’m not very good at names. Until yesterday I thought he,” Jake nodded out toward the deck, “was called Harry. Turns out I was wrong.”

“Alom. Gabriel Alom.”

“Mr. Alom. It all sounds a bit too good to be true. Self-serving.”

“Let’s not forget that you asked for this parlay, Mr. Carter. You have come here, into my home, carrying secrets I already know, and want to trade them for your life? But I don’t see how that benefits me. If you want a secret kept, the best thing you can do is not share it. Once two people know, a secret it is impossible to keep unless one of them is dead.”

“I’ll be honest, that’s what I expect. I came here thinking that maybe I’d get one shot, cut your throat or crush your skull, and then your goons would take me out. I came in here prepared to die. I’ve made my peace with it.”

“How very noble of you. You truly are a warrior. What if I told you it doesn’t have to end that way? That there’s an alternative.”

“I’d say I don’t believe you,” Jake replied. “We’re both men of the world, let’s keep the bullshit out of this.”

The old man leaned forward and put something on the table between them. A gold pin.

“I can always use a good man like you, Mr. Carter. Especially considering the losses we have encountered recently.”

“You’re asking me to join you? What, just pick up where Sophie left off?”

“I’m presenting it as an alternative.”

“You want me to kill for you?”

“Crude, Mr. Carter. I want you to consider how you have wasted your life since leaving the service of our country, and to consider taking it up again. We have enemies, people who don’t want us to see our plans through to fruition. There are always predators and prey, Mr. Carter. And every predator is prey for some other apex hunter.”

“And who preys on you? Or are you the apex predator?” Jake asked, unable to help himself.

“You can answer this yourself. Did you simply stumble upon the brownstone, or were you dispatched? And don’t bother lying to me, I know Sophie reached out to them. She told them who you were and how she hoped to use you to strike at the heart of our operations here in New York. She used you. They all did.”

“But you won’t? Is that it?”

“Oh, no. I’ll use you too. I won’t lie to you, though—that’s the difference.”

“But who are they?”

“Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the NSA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence, any of them, all of them. We frighten them because we are the one thing that can deny them control as we march toward a brave new world. We are free men. We have money. Money grants power in this day and age, but more than that, it buys influence. We shape the politics of the world. We can make things happen one way or another.”

“So why all this now?”

“Control costs money, Mr. Carter. That is just the way the world works. If you want to make a difference you need to have money. Lots of it. It doesn’t matter whether it is New York, Paris, London, New Delhi, or Tokyo—it still costs money. If you are poor, you are a drain on society, you weaken the world rather than add to it.”

“Okay. So you’re not some end-of-the-world cult? This is all about money and politics?”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Right. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and never the twain shall meet? And the deal is, I take this,” he looked down at the pin, “you let me live, but I become an enemy of the United States government. I say no, you kill me. Am I missing something?”

“I won’t kill you.”

“Semantics,” Jake said. “I’ll be just as dead whether it’s you who pulls the trigger or Harry.”

“Then use your head, take my offer. Think of the good you can do. You say you are patriotic. Serve your country again, Mr. Carter. She needs a few good men now more than ever.”

Jake stared at the tiny gold pin on the table between them, such a small, insignificant thing, and yet carrying so much weight. Picking it up would mean taking on the burden Sophie had carried, but it would also keep Finn and Ryan alive. Was that the kind of devil’s debt he was prepared to take on?

He took the memory stick out of his pocket and set it down on the table. “This is everything we took. But like you said, the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. Take it in exchange for their lives. This is just between us. It ends here.”

“Does that mean you are saying no?”

“No.”

THE BEGINNING

“SO THAT’S IT, THEN?” Finn asked, not quite accepting that they’d just given up. “We’re good? No one’s going to be waiting for me in the office one day to make me disappear?”

They were having lunch at a little café near Columbia. She’d had a morning class but was free until two. He was tired but didn’t have anywhere to be now that he’d handed in his notice with the MTA. He had a new paymaster.

“We’re good,” Jake replied, running the back of the spoon over the latte’s foamed milk. It was hard to believe it had only been a week. It already seemed like a long nightmare ago, but in those seven days so much had happened to undo the worst of it: the city had regained power, the grid coming back online after a couple of days. According to reports circulating in the mainstream media, the poles had stabilized; scientists were on the TV all the time talking about magnetic fields and shielding the earth from solar radiation. Suddenly everyone was an expert. There were still shooting stars, but people had stopped thinking they were meteors coming to wipe out humanity because the sun had failed. The blackouts were becoming fewer and farther between as things settled down. Now they were down to the weather, not the sunfail phenomenon.

Most noticeably, the birds had begun to fly again, returning to their usual migratory patterns, and the dogs weren’t running wild through the streets—proof if any were needed that the animal kingdom had adapted to the change. Dogland was a thing of the past. Manhattan was back to being Manhattan.

“Any news from the dive?”

“Actually, yeah . . . I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Always a dangerous thing.”

“Indeed.” She grinned at him. “I really hate the snow and I’m due a break. Fancy a trip to Cuba? I hear the diving’s really good this time of year.”

Jake smiled. “I’ve got a confession to make.” She hadn’t questioned him about the gold pin on his collar. He’d told her it was a souvenir. A reminder. He hadn’t told her it was the price of her safety.

“Uh-hunh?”

“You might need to teach me how to swim.”

She smiled too, the tension visibly leaving her body. “I can do that.”

New York’s key infrastructure seemed to be functioning normally—power, transportation, communication, finance, security; there were no obvious signs of interference. All indicators seemed to suggest life around Jake was returning to normal.

Of course, that was
around
him. His life would never be normal again as long as he wore that pin on his collar. He knew they were watching him even if he couldn’t see them. That was what they did. Lurked. Clung to the shadows. Alom might claim it was all noble, but monsters never thought they were evil. And he had absolutely no doubt that Gabriel Alom was a monster.

Jake had made a deal with the devil. If he was lucky, he’d live long enough to regret it. But that was a problem for tomorrow. Right now, Finn was safe. That was his win. That was all he’d wanted when he set foot on that yacht, to keep her safe, to keep Ryan safe. He was a simple man.

A week, two, a month, just them, even if she was working, would give them a chance.

They hadn’t slept together yet. He liked that word:
yet.
It was only a matter of time. He wanted to get it right. To get to know her properly. He wanted to be her friend first.

Or that was what he told himself. He didn’t want to think about the fact that in saving her life he’d essentially traded his own.

“Harry’s handed his notice in,” Finn told him. “He’s got an offer out in France.”

Paris
, Jake thought, knowing Harry had stepped up to fill Sophie’s shoes, making the opening here in New York for Jake. Or should he call himself Bahlam, the Jaguar God who, so Alom told him, protected people and communities?

Yesterday he’d seen Sophie’s face in a newspaper. The report explained how she had been murdered in a café in London, and how she was believed to have been behind the bombing of the stock exchange. They didn’t know the truth, and they weren’t interested in it, because the people paying to put the news out there were the same people who wanted to keep it hidden.

That was just the way the new world worked. He understood that now better than anyone. Sometimes in this life you had to become the thing you hated in order to protect the thing you loved. But this didn’t mean you had to like it.

Jake didn’t know how he was going to do it, but when he’d said “No” to Alom, he’d meant it. Two people couldn’t keep a secret. He
was
going to bring Alom down. And all the others. He was smart enough to know the only way he was going to do that was from the inside. So if he needed to pretend to be their man, he’d pretend. He’d smile and grit his teeth and all the while remember Sophie and her promise that she wasn’t who he thought she was. Was that how she’d started? Trying to make the world right? She’d known exactly who he was when she’d dragged him into this. He was a man who couldn’t walk away. Not now. Not ever.

Jake took a sip of his latte, and reached out for Finn’s hand.

She was the bridge between past and future. He was going to need her. With Finn at his side, he felt like he could take on the world.

The End

Do you want to know what Bahlam, the Jaguar God's first job is with The Hidden? Email us at [email protected] with the subject heading BAHLAM and we'll send you a bonus Jake Carter short story by Steven Savile.

STEVEN SAVILE,
a multiple finalist for the British Fantasy Award, has written for
Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Stargate, Warhammer, Sláine, Fireborn, Pathfinder,
and other popular game and comic series. He wrote the story for the international best-selling computer game
Battlefield 3,
which sold over five million copies in its week of release, and served as head writer for the popular online children’s game
Spineworld.

E-BOOK EXTRAS

An excerpt from
H.N.I.C
by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson with Steven Savile

Also Available from Infamous Books and Akashic Books

Please enjoy this excerpt from
H.N.I.C.
by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson with Steven Savile

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