The usual faces were making themselves known. I bumped into one of the scene’s main fixers: the infamous Middleman. Tall and elegant, wearing a bright green kaftan and smoking a slim black cigarillo in a long ivory holder. Handsome enough, in a ravaged-by-time sort of way, with flat black hair and more than a hint of mascara. His fingernails had been painted jet green. He was accompanied by two Thai teenagers in bright red leathers who might have been brother and sister or something even closer. The Middleman knew me as Shaman Bond and as Eddie Drood, but he didn’t know they were the same person. I know a lot of people like that. It would probably complicate things, if I were a complicated person.
“Shaman!” said the Middleman, gesturing lazily with one long, languid hand. “How nice! On the prowl for Madam Opportunity, are we? The creditors pressing close again? How very tiresome for you.”
“You know how it is,” I said. “It’s an expensive world, for those of us who just want a little fun out of life.”
“Oh, I know, I know, dear boy. I swear the money just evaporates out of my pockets when I’m not looking.”
“Particularly when you gamble as much as you do,” I said. “And so badly.”
The Middleman glared at his Thai boy. “Have you been telling tales out of school again, Maurice? I shall have to be very strict with you later. You know you like that . . .”
We chatted a while, but when he didn’t so much as raise an elegantly painted eyebrow when I mentioned the Tower of London, I made my excuses and moved on. The next familiar face made a point of bumping into me. Leo Morn might be good company but he’s always on the prowl and on the scrounge. I swear he came out of the womb trying to cadge a cigarette off the midwife. Leo is tall, slight, long-haired, pale, and interesting, and he looks like he ought to be starring in a particularly gloomy Tim Burton film. Dressed all in black, he looked so frail you half expected one good breeze would carry him away. But, as with so many of the people I know, appearances can be deceptive. Leo Morn has hidden strengths and a heart of solid granite.
He was looking for tracking work.
“Still playing bass with that punk folk band?” I said, and he grinned wolfishly.
“Of course! Got some really good gigs lined up.”
“Are you still having to change the name of the band regularly, so clubs will hire you twice?” I said innocently.
He scowled. “We are ahead of our time! We’re currently called Angel’s Son; got a sweet gig at Moles, in Bath, end of the month. Drop in, if you’re in the area. Catch us while you can. I doubt we’ll be there long . . .”
“No offence, Leo,” I said, “but on the whole I think I’d rather stick skewers in my ears.”
“For someone who didn’t want to give offence, I’d have to say you came pretty damned close there,” said Leo.
I wished him luck and he stalked off. People got out of his way; they could smell the wolf on him.
Next up was Harry Fabulous: handsome, charming, deeply fashionable, and all of it as fake as his constant smile. Harry showed no interest at all in the stalls, moving instead from one potential customer to another like a shark in good fishing waters. Harry would steal the shirt off your back but do it so charmingly you’d end up apologising to him that it wasn’t of better quality. Harry Fabulous: con man, thief, grifter, and your go-to man for absolutely everything that was bad for you.
“Shaman! Dear fellow!” said Harry, showing me all his teeth in his most professional smile. “Good to see you out and about again. Haven’t seen you since . . . ah, well, not in public, eh? What have you been up to?”
“You’d never believe me,” I said solemnly. “How about yourself, Harry? How’s business?”
“Oh, busy, as always.” His smile faltered for a moment, his eyes briefly far away. “Had a bit of bad business with an angel in the Nightside, and now I find it necessary to do good works for the sake of my soul . . . You know how it is. Could I interest you in something just a bit special, for an entirely reasonable price? I can get my hands on some very tasty smoked black centipede meat, or some full-strength Hyde, or even some prime Martian red weed: a very cool smoke . . . No? How about some Yeti’s Tears? Kirlian boost? Deep Speed, from the House of Blue Lights?”
“Think I’ll pass,” I said firmly.
“Then I must be off,” he said briskly. “You know how it is, old boy. Things to see, people to do . . . I think I spot a tourist over there, just begging to be relieved of everything he owns.”
And off he went, sliding so smoothly through the crowd he hardly made a ripple, a smile on his lips and honest larceny in his heart.
Standing alone, apparently lost in thought in the middle of his own personal and very private space, was the Notional Man. Everyone was giving him plenty of room, because no one in their right mind wanted to get too close to him. He might notice them. The Notional Man was a human being reduced (or perhaps evolved) to its most abstract form. You see him most clearly out of the corner of your eye, but even then more as an impression than any definite shape. I don’t know what he uses for a body these days, but it sure as hell isn’t flesh anymore. He’s a projection, an idea of a man . . . immortal, invulnerable, and capable of thinking around corners you didn’t even know were there. Some say he lost a bet, with God or the Devil, and some say he did it to himself and now can’t undo it. Either way, the Notional Man comes and goes as he pleases, and no one knows how or why. A tragedy or a triumph, and quite possibly both. The only thing that everyone can agree on is that he’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know, so we’re all very polite to him.
I’d never seen him in the Hiring Hall before.
He turned his abstract head in my direction, and I felt the impact of his gaze. He knew who I really was. He knew everything he wanted to know. He didn’t walk towards me; he was just suddenly there, right in front of me. I did my best not to jump or flinch away. Up close, he was even more disturbing. It hurt my eyes to look at him directly; everything about him was wrong. Like a circle with straight lines, or a room with too many angles. He had height and breadth and depth and other things too. I could feel myself shaking.
His voice exploded inside my head, and I cried out. He was sound and colours and deafening images. The Notional Man had moved beyond speech into something that might have been the other side of telepathy. All I could tell was that he was looking for something or someone, but he couldn’t make me understand what. Blood spurted from my nostrils and welled up from under my eyelids. And then, just like that, he was back where he had been before, and the only person inside my head was me.
A passing Man in Black offered me a paper tissue, and I nodded gratefully, mopping at the blood on my cheeks and pressing the tissue against my throbbing nose.
All in all, a fairly typical encounter with the Notional Man. The Droods have received several requests to terminate his existence with more than usual extreme prejudice on the grounds that he’s just too damned worrying, and we’re seriously considering it, if only for the challenge. The trouble with the Notional Man is that he’s pure and potent, as much a concept as anything else, and totally beyond any human capacity to understand or manipulate. And who wants a god you can’t understand or appease and who doesn’t give a damn whether you worship him or not?
I checked the paper tissue. There was no blood on it. Neither, when I checked, was there any blood on my cheeks, around my eyes, or drying inside my nostrils. Typical.
I strolled on through the crowd. Exchanged words, shook hands, kissed cheeks. I like being Shaman Bond. All right, he’s not really real, as such, but I feel so much more comfortable being him than I do being Eddie Drood. Shaman can be strong or silly, wise or foolish, just as he chooses, and it doesn’t matter a damn whether he screws up. He doesn’t have the fate of humanity resting on his shoulders.
He has friends. A Drood only has family and enemies.
Shaman Bond is more than just the mask I hide behind in public. He’s the man I might have been, if my life had been my own.
The CIA had their own stall, as always, and very big and bright and colourful it looked, complete with flat-screen images, all the latest gadgets and gizmos, an American flag standing tall and proud, and a real eagle squatting on a perch, glaring suspiciously at passersby. The CIA would recruit anyone who showed an interest and did a thriving trade in souvenirs and memorabilia, and there was never any shortage of cash in hand for information and gossip . . . but really they were just there to establish their presence. To remind us they were always watching. I recognised another familiar face behind the table and wandered over.
Nickie Carter is old-school CIA, fourth or maybe even fifth generation in the spy game. A pleasant-looking brunette in her early twenties, Nickie wore a smart powder blue business suit and a professional smile and looked more like the successful product of some famous business school. She also knew fifty-seven ways to kill you with a single finger and some quite disgusting things she could do with her mouth. We once spent a lost weekend in Helsinki together, on the trail of someone who turned out not to exist, as such. The job’s like that, sometimes.
She knows me only as Shaman Bond. Which is just as well, or she’d probably feel obliged to try to kill me.
Nickie smiled sweetly at me. “Shaman, honey; looking good! Sorry about that enforced rendition attempt last year; some damned fool higher up the food chain got it into his head that you were a player in the Manifest Destiny group. I tried to tell them, but no one ever listens to a mere field agent anymore. It’s all computers these days, all trends and predictions. Damn bean counters . . .” She looked at me thoughtfully. “How did you manage to avoid us, Shaman?”
“Nice to see you again, Nickie,” I said solemnly. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
Nickie smiled fondly at the elderly gentleman sitting beside her, staring off into the distance. “Of course. This is a colleague of mine, Shaman. May I present to you one of the living legends of the CIA, Stephen Victor, on his farewell tour of Europe.”
I knew the name. A definite major player back in the seventies, with a quite extraordinary way with the ladies. A one-man honey trap, by all accounts; women from all sides of the Cold War couldn’t wait to jump in bed with him and tell him every secret they knew. He couldn’t be that far into his sixties, but he looked twenty years older. He had a great noble head, just a bit gaunt, with a mane of silver gray hair, but though his mouth was firm enough, his eyes were vague and faraway. He had that slightly rumpled look of a man who’d been dressed by someone else. He smiled easily in my direction when Nickie cued him with my name, and he shook my hand with a firm, manly grip, but there was no one home behind his eyes. Just a shell of the man he’d once been, trotted out for public consumption. He let go of my hand and went back to staring at nothing again.
“He’s here to visit some old haunts, meet a few old friends and enemies,” said Nickie. “In the hope he can squeeze some last few secrets out before he’s retired. Poor old thing. Can’t even put him out to stud. Don’t worry, Shaman. We can say what we like. He’s deaf as a post.”
“I suppose it comes to all of us, in the end,” I said.
“Not if I can help it,” Nickie said firmly. “The moment I start forgetting how many beans make four, I firmly intend to take up bungee jumping over live volcanoes; go out with a little style, while I’m still me. Look at the state of him . . . doesn’t know whether it’s Tuesday or Belgium. I’m his nurse as much as his bodyguard. The last time he was in London, our ambassador introduced him to the Queen. And he propositioned her.”
“Really?” I said. “What did Her Majesty say?”
“No one knows,” Nickie said darkly. “But Prince Philip had a hell of a lot to say afterwards . . .”
I grinned, excused myself, and wandered off again. Stephen Victor, the great seducer of his generation, reduced to a bag of bones in a crumpled suit. Was that all I had to look forward to? Was that my future, if I lived that long? A relic of the past, all my triumphs and achievements faded into some vague respectful legend . . . Just another prematurely aged agent, lost in memories of the past? No. The odds were I’d die young and die bloody, like most field agents.
I looked thoughtfully around me. The CIA wasn’t the only foreign intelligence agency showing its flag in the Hiring Hall today. All the major countries and powers were represented, with agents buying and selling information and influence and probably discussing a little discreet murder and sabotage on the side. Unusual to see so many out at once . . . not that anyone would say anything. The Hiring Hall doesn’t care who or what you were, as long as you pay the rent on your stall on time.
On the whole, the big boys don’t bother much with Shaman Bond. He’s too small-time to interest them. Occasionally someone will decide they want to know what he knows and turn the dogs loose on me . . . but somehow Shaman always seems to know about these things in advance and sidesteps their traps and blandishments with equal ease. Sometimes the big boys like to order him about, just to remind everyone who’s in charge, and I usually go along. It’s amazing what you can learn just by keeping your eyes and ears open. When you’re nothing but small-fry, hired help, the important people will often speak quite openly in front of you, as though you’re not even there.
I spent the best part of two hours cruising through the Hiring Hall and walking up and down in it, talking with everyone and politely avoiding murmured offers of employment in secret jobs and dubious schemes . . . and at the end of it all I was no wiser. It wasn’t as though I had much to go on; all the family precogs had was a threat to the Tower of London and a general sense of danger and urgency. I’ve always felt that most precogs would benefit greatly from a good slap around the head.
I mentioned the Tower of London to all the better-connected rogues and scumbags in the Hiring Hall, but all I got in return was vague words and vaguer promises to let me know if they heard anything. Something was in the air, some big job; but no one knew anything for sure. No one had a name or a even a direction to point in.
I had been hinting, as broadly as possible, that I was in the market for a bit of action, no risk too great . . . I’d even let it be known I was quite definitely up for a bash at any symbols of authority; but while there was no shortage of offers, none of them sounded right. I owe some people, I would say. People not known for their patience or understanding. And familiar faces would nod and smile, and say they quite understood, and suggest all kind of interesting opportunities (some of which I made a mental note to deal with later), but none of them what I was there for.
Until finally it was all dropped in my lap through an anonymous tip. Now, it’s not easy to be anonymous around a Drood; we can See right through most glamours and disguises, and we’re almost impossible to sneak up on. Nevertheless, this quiet voice whispered in my ear, soft as a dove’s fart: If you’re interested in the Tower of London job, you need to speak to Big Oz. Over there, by the Universal Exports stall.
“Who is this?” I said quietly, careful not to look around. “Why are you telling me this?”
A breath of laughter warm on my ear. Perhaps because even the most unrepentant villain can, much to his own surprise, turn out to be a patriot.
I waited, but there was nothing more. I looked around, but there was only the crowd, shoving and jostling and shouting each other down, doing business. I considered the situation. Big Oz? Really? If the Emerald City was mounting an operation in London, I should have been informed. Unless it was in one of those damned memos I hadn’t got around to yet . . .
But no; it turned out the man I’d been pointed at was Big Aus, a fanatical republican Australian. I introduced myself, and he crushed my hand in a big meaty fist. He was a large man, broad in the shoulder and wide in the belly, wearing a suit that looked like he’d ordered it from a photograph. He had a broad cheerful face, with sharp piercing eyes and a ready smile. He knew my name and reputation and said he was very pleased to see me.
“Call me Big Aus,” he said. “Every
one does. And you are a sight for sore eyes, Shaman. I’m a man short for a really sweet scheme, and you fit the part perfectly. Dame Luck must be smiling on me today. You want in? You’re in!”
“Hold it,” I said quickly. “It’s nice to be wanted, Big Aus, but I’m not agreeing to be a part of anything until I know just what it is I’m getting into. And what the money’s like.”
“Of course! Of course! Wouldn’t want a fella who was willing to just dive in blind! We can’t talk here. You come along with me to this nice little watering hole I know around the corner. The rest of the gang’s already there, just waiting for me to fill the last gap with the right man. You’ll love them; they’re all real characters, just like you. Come with me, Shaman, and I will tell you how we’re going to make ourselves really bloody wealthy and stick it to the whole bloody British monarchy. We are going to pull off the crime of the century and help make God’s own country of Australia the republic she was always meant to be!”
Big Aus took me firmly by the arm and escorted me to a tacky little theme eatery just a few streets away from the Hiring Hall, an almost unbearably twee faux-Irish chain called the L’il Leprechaun. I knew of the chain but had never thought I’d actually be required to eat in one. The L’il Leprechauns have about as much in common with real Irish cuisine and culture as a plastic shamrock, and even less dignity. If the real Little People ever find out what’s being perpetrated in their name, they’ll declare a fatwa on the whole damned chain.
The eatery was decked out in loud primary colours, the tables were shaped like great flattened-off mushrooms, and there were pots of gold in which to stub out your herbal cigarettes. Cartoon leprechauns gambolled cheerfully across the walls and ceiling and even peeped playfully out from behind the big stand-up menus. Most of the food, and even some of the drinks, came in shades of green. I made a mental note to steer well clear of the beef burgers. A sulky waitress done up as a Bunny Colleen, complete with sprayed-on freckles, tottered over on high heels and led Big Aus and me to a table at the back, where three other people were already sitting.
The Spy Who Haunted Me sh-3 Page 2