The Reluctant Assassin (12 page)

Albert Garrick had been apprenticed to the Great Lombardi for more than ten years, and in that time the little Italian became like a second father to the orphan boy. But young Albert never forgot his first father, who had killed for him, and it was years before the nightmares of those cholera days in the Old Nichol faded and he stopped worrying every time a patch of dry skin appeared on his elbow or his eyes seemed a little sunken.

Lombardi worked him hard but was not cruel and never once struck him unless he deserved it. They traveled the length and breadth of England, working the theaters, and once even took the Boulogne ferry for a summer season in Paris’s Théâtre Italien, where sections of Lombardi’s act were woven into a street scene for a Verdi opera. Lombardi wept at the final curtain every night and often told young Albert that he saw working with Verdi as the crowning achievement of his career.

“I have searched all my life for real magic,” he said some years later as he lay dying from tuberculosis in their digs in Newcastle upon Tyne. “And I found it in the music of Verdi. An Italian.
Dio lo benedica
.”

Lombardi died that night, forcing his apprentice to appear in his stead at the Journal. The night was not an unqualified success, but many of the doves survived, which encouraged young Albert to adopt the Lombardi name and to fulfill his master’s engagements.

Garrick inherited not only his master’s bookings but his assistant, too. Sabine was the most exotic and beautiful creature Albert had ever seen, and he’d been in love with her since that first day, when he had watched, slack jawed, as she emerged unscathed from Lombardi’s Egyptian saw-box.

THE GARDEN HOTEL, MONMOUTH STREET. LONDON. NOW

And now, in the Garden Hotel, Garrick felt an echo of the passion of his youth as he took his first proper look at Chevron Savano.

She looks like Sabine, thought Garrick, gazing down at the girl.

He cupped Chevie’s jaw in his hand, tilting it back.
It’s uncanny, the resemblance.

And another part of his brain told him, There’s a passing likeness, nothing more. Garrick was shaken, all the same. His resolution to pierce this maid’s heart had evaporated like morning mist.

What is happening to me?

Garrick bowed once more to Chevie. “Beg pardon, Miss Savano. I need a moment to gather my thoughts.”

Garrick ducked out of the bathroom and strode to the kitchenette, where there stood what looked like a squat refrigerator of the American style. Garrick pulled open the door and inside, instead of rows of chilled food and beverages, he saw Agent Waldo Gunn, sitting behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.

Garrick knew from Orange’s expertise that this fake fridge was a personal panic pod and was just as secure as the president’s bunker under the White House.

Waldo sat shivering behind the glass, as though he were seated in a real refrigerator. He punched numbers into his phone with shaking fingers.

“This pod is not in the system, is it, Waldo?” said Garrick. “You have been augmenting your security.”

Garrick slammed the door so hard the catch snapped, and the door swung open. The fact that Waldo had been able to secure himself made Garrick’s own escape more urgent. The FBI would be aware of his existence now and would soon be— what was the expression?—
hot on his trail.
This century was becoming a dangerous place. Time to go home.

No more dallying!
he told himself.
In there you go, mate. And kill her. She is puny and helpless. One slice across the windpipe will more than do the trick. The noise will be distasteful, but there it is—too late now to be letting your qualms get in the way.

Garrick froze in mid-pace.

My qualms? But I don’t have qualms.

And, in a bolt of self-awareness, it came to him.

These are Smart’s qualms. He was fond of this Savano girl, and this fondness bleeds across my neurons, reinforcing this false identification with Sabine. This young woman is no more a reincarnation of Sabine than she is of Her Majesty, Queen Vic. I shall kill her and be well rid of an adversary.

Garrick stocked up on weaponry from the FBI arsenal, including Duff’s switchblade, which he had casually knocked from the agent’s grasp.

How charming, thought Garrick. The standard of weaponry has really improved. Killing in this time will be so much easier.

This notion cheered him immensely and he reentered the bathroom, bolstered for his grisly work.

Inside the bathroom, Chevie had her foot hooked underneath the unconscious Agent Duff’s chin and was trying to haul him toward her when Garrick’s frame filled the doorway.

“Most enterprising, Agent. Perhaps he has a blade of some sort on his person? One never knows, eh?”

Chevie glared at the assassin belligerently. “You killed them all, didn’t you? Smart, the hazmat team, those officers outside?”

Garrick twirled the blade. “Not all,” he said, nodding pointedly at Duff. “Not yet.”

Chevie withdrew her foot, hoping that Duff at least would be spared. “Riley was right about you.”

“Oh?” said Garrick, prepared to listen to this before silencing this girl forever. “And what did my wayward assistant say?”

“He said that we could never stop you. That you would cross heaven and hell to find him.”

Garrick tousled Riley’s hair, and the boy forced himself not to jerk his head away from the touch.

“Time and space, to be precise,” said Garrick. “And I picked up a few valuable tidbits on my travels.” As he was saying this, Garrick knelt and placed the tip of the switchblade over Duff’s chest. “But one lesson I learned long before this particular jaunt was not to leave any witnesses. Not unless I want to swing for the kindness.”

“Let me do it, master,” blurted Riley. “To make it up to you for all the blundering and trouble I’ve put you to.”

Garrick was touched, but wary. “You would make your bones? Now?”

“Your way is the only way,” said Riley. “I see that now. The time has come for me to embrace my destiny. To back the winning horse.”

Garrick tapped his own chin with the blade, then leaned forward to slice Riley’s cuffs.

“I have no patience for tomfoolery or hesitations, Riley. Strike quickly and earn yourself a footnote in my good books. Otherwise I will be treating you as a hostile.”

Riley took the offered blade. “I am grateful for the chance, master. You can count on me.”

Chevie could only hope that Riley was making a play; otherwise, if he actually intended to do whatever it took to keep himself alive, that might include killing her and Duff both. In any case, she had to appear outraged.

“Don’t do it, kid,” she warned. “You kill a Fed, and there will be nowhere to hide.”

Garrick smiled slyly. “Oh, but there is a place, isn’t there, Agent? Or perhaps a
time
?”

Riley held the blade in his fist and then moved so fast that even Garrick’s eyebrows lifted. He twirled the knife a full revolution and then slid it cleanly between Duff’s third and fourth ribs, directly above the heart. A poppy-shaped bloodstain blossomed at the spot and quickly soaked the material of the agent’s crisp shirt.

“There,” said Riley, his voice quavering slightly. “It is done. And no big deal either. Shall I send the other one off also? Unto dust, as you always say, master.”

“Murderer!” cried Chevie, aiming a kick at Riley, which Garrick deflected with the heel of one hand.

“All credit to you, boy. That was a clean puncture. In like a hot poker through snow.”

“The girl, master?”

“No,” said Garrick, taking back the switchblade. “Though every strike binds you to me with blood, I must do this one myself.”

Garrick grasped Chevie’s chin with his fingers. They felt like steel pincers along her jawline. He ratcheted her head backward, carefully removed the Timekey from her neck, and laid the blade along her windpipe.

Chevie flinched as her life flashed before her eyes, just as the movies had told her it would.

She saw her teacher’s face, kind and worried, as she rescued her student from the clutches of a briar patch on the Topanga Canyon trail. She saw her father’s motorbike accelerate around a bend on the Pacific Coast Highway, and she knew now he would never return, that his fuel tank would explode as he passed through Venice Beach. She saw her friend Nikki riding a big wave on Cross Creek beach, her hands reaching toward the sky as though she could grab onto a cloud.

The images faded, and Chevie discovered to her surprise that she was still alive. Garrick crouched over her, spine curved, a grimace dragging at the corners of his mouth. A man at war with his demons.

You must prevail, Albert Garrick
, he thought.
Your mind is your own.

Chevie was afraid to breathe. The tiniest movement would press her tender throat against the razor-sharp blade.

Do it
, Garrick told himself.
Make the cut. Unto dust.

Riley tried to take advantage of Garrick’s hesitation. “Master, leave the lass be. It’s me you’re after. Leave her, and let’s away.”

Garrick rounded on the boy, pointing the switchblade at his eye. “You are plum correct there, my lad. I have come for you, and you proved yourself worthy. Now make yourself useful and check the gentlemen beyond for heartbeats.”

Riley hesitated at the door. “We are not clear of this yet, master. Perhaps a hostage would be useful?”

Garrick seized upon this notion. It gave him a legitimate reason for not harming the girl.

“Perhaps a hostage would be of use. But I fear this one will rebel when an opportunity presents itself.”

“I will vouch for her,” said Riley.

“Do you understand what you are saying?” asked Garrick. “You are offering yourself to pay for her crimes? Her punishment will be yours? And you yourself are teetering on the edge of the abyss after your escape attempt, even with that kill. I will brook not one more scrap of insubordination.”

“I understand, master. Perhaps she can help us.”

Garrick closed one eye and the other glittered. “Us, is it? There’s an
us
now?”

Riley waited for his master’s response with held breath. He knew that Garrick would not hesitate to kill Chevie simply to make his argument clear, but something held him back.

I was right. Garrick has changed, Riley observed. His posture, the meat on his bones. Even his tone seems different.

“Very well,” said Garrick, after a tantalizing silence. “We take the girl. But if she does betray me . . . you
both
pay the price.”

Riley sighed, relieved that Chevie would live, even though she would probably kill him given the chance.

Garrick gazed down at her. “You are as transparent as a window at Fortnum and Mason’s to me, girl. You are thinking at this instant that so long as you are alive, then there is a chance of escape.”

Garrick bent low over Chevie, tracing her eyebrow with the tip of his blade. “Abandon all hope,” he whispered. “For hope has abandoned ye.”

Chevie believed him, and so did the boy.

Garrick was positively ebullient to have Riley back. He had an audience again, swelled to twice its size.

“Numbers in the stalls are up by a hundred percent,” he commented to Riley as they rode in the black cab toward Bedford Square. “It must be a good show.”

Chevie and Riley sat opposite him on the fold-down seats. Chevie was traumatized from stepping over the half dozen federal corpses in the safe suite.

Duff was a jerk, thought Chevie. But he was a human jerk. Chevie had never seen so much death and was more shaken than she had imagined she would be in a combat situation. Her only consolation had been the sight of Waldo Gunn safe inside his panic pod.

At least Waldo knows I am not a murderer.

But this scrap of comfort did little to dispel the shock that crushed her spirit.

Riley, on the other hand, had lived his life in Victorian London, where murder was rare but life was cheap. Many poor children died at birth; if they did survive that first day, the odds were that cholera, smallpox, scarlet fever, or whooping cough would do them in before their fifth birthday. Riley had seen the grim reaper’s handiwork more times than he could count.

Life and death are two ends of the same ride
, Garrick had once told him.
Nothing to celebrate or mourn.

And so Riley told himself to stay sharp, or he and Miss Savano could be coming to the end of their own rides.

Someday I may mourn all the souls Albert Garrick has done in, he thought. But not this day. This day is for fighting.

It was the early hours of the morning, and the streets were alive with die-hard revelers and city workers, winding along Tottenham Court Road under the eyes of coppers who walked the beat in pairs. Motorized street sweepers scoured the road with their bristled brushes, throwing up wakes of muddied water; and in the shop windows, employees of a dozen electronics stores switched on a thousand television and computer screens.

“Pleasantly warm,” noted Garrick, tapping the knife in his breast pocket, so that Chevie would not forget that it was there or what it could do. “What is the season?”

“Summer,” said Chevie sullenly.

Garrick sighed, and his face seemed to slide like melting butter until the features were his own again.

The face of an accountant, thought Chevie. Or a geography teacher. Not a merciless assassin.

Garrick punched Riley’s shoulder playfully. “Ah . . . summer in London, without the stench of decay in our nostrils, and the two of us finally brothers in enterprise. Could there be anything finer? Almost a pity we have to go home, eh, boy?”

“Why
do
you want to go back?” asked Chevie.

Garrick tugged at the Timekey around his neck. “In spite of my new abilities, this world is new to me. I am at a disadvantage here, and a fugitive to boot. When I return to my own time, London town will be my oyster. Can you imagine what I could achieve with my understanding of the future? In the field of armaments alone, I could change the world.”

“A psychopath who wants to take over the planet. How original.”

Riley drew a sharp breath, anticipating swift punishment for such an impudent comment, but to his surprise Garrick almost seemed to be enjoying the exchange.