The Traveler fr-1

by John Twelve Hawks

  “Don’t you work in some kind of office?”

  “I’m an industrial designer. I work with a team developing product containers for different companies. Last week I created a new perfume bottle.”

  “Sounds challenging. I’m sure you’re very successful. And what about the rest of your world? Any boyfriends I should know about?”

  “No.”

  “There was that barrister-what’s his name?” Thorn knew, of course. But he pretended to search through his memory. “Connor Ramsey. Wealthy. Good-looking. Well-connected family. And then he left you for that other woman. Apparently, he’d been seeing her the whole time he was with you.”

  Maya felt like Thorn had just slapped her. She should have guessed that he would use his London contacts to get information. He always seemed to know everything.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “Don’t waste your time worrying about Ramsey. Some mercs working for Mother Blessing blew up his car a few months ago. Now he believes that terrorists are after him. He’s hired bodyguards. Lives in fear. And that’s good. Isn’t it? Mr. Ramsey needed to be punished for deceiving my little girl.”

  Thorn spun the wheelchair around and smiled at her. Maya knew that she should act outraged, but she couldn’t. She thought about Connor embracing her on the pier in Brighton, then Connor sitting in a restaurant three weeks later announcing that she wasn’t suitable for marriage. Maya had read about the car explosion in the papers, but hadn’t connected her father to the attack.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “But I did.” Thorn moved back to the coffee table.

  “Blowing up a car doesn’t change anything. I’m still not going to America.”

  “Who mentioned America? We’re just having a conversation.”

  Her Harlequin training told her that she should go on the attack. Like Thorn, she had prepared for the meeting. “Tell me something, Father. Just one fact. Do you love me?”

  “You’re my daughter, Maya.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Since your mother died, you’re the only precious thing in my life.”

  “All right. Let’s accept that statement for the moment.” She leaned forward in the chair. “The Tabula and the Harlequins used to be fairly equal adversaries, but the Vast Machine changed the balance of power. As far as I know, there are no more Travelers and only a few Harlequins.”

  “The Tabula can use face scanners, electronic surveillance, cooperation from government officials, and-”

  “I don’t want a reason. We’re not talking about that. Just facts and conclusions. In Pakistan you were injured and two people were killed. I always liked Libra. He used to take me to the theater when he visited London. And Willow was a strong, graceful woman.”

  “Both fighters accepted the risk,” Thorn said. “They both had a Proud Death.”

  “Yes, they’re dead. Set up and destroyed for nothing. And now you want me to die the same way.”

  Thorn gripped the arms of the wheelchair and, for a moment, she thought he was going to force himself to stand up, an act of pure will. “Something extraordinary has happened,” he said. “For the first time, we have a spy on the other side. Linden is in contact with him.”

  “It’s just another trap.”

  “Perhaps. But all the information we’ve received has been accurate. A few weeks ago, we learned about two possible Travelers in the United States. They’re brothers. I protected their father, Matthew Corrigan, many years ago. Before he went underground, I gave him a talisman.”

  “Do the Tabula know about these brothers?”

  “Yes. They’re watching them twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Why don’t the Tabula just kill them? That’s what they usually do.”

  “All I know is that the Corrigans are in danger and we have to help them as soon as possible. Shepherd comes from a Harlequin family. His grandfather saved hundreds of lives. But an unborn Traveler wouldn’t trust him. Shepherd isn’t very organized or intelligent. He’s a-”

  “A fool.”

  “Exactly. You could handle everything, Maya. All you have to do is find the Corrigans and take them to a safe place.”

  “Maybe they’re just ordinary citizens.”

  “We don’t know that until we question them. You’re right about one thing, there aren’t any more Travelers. This might be our last chance.”

  “You don’t need me. Just hire some mercs.”

  “The Tabula have more money and power. Mercenaries always betray us.”

  “Then do it yourself.”

  “I’m crippled, Maya. Stuck here, in this apartment, in this wheelchair. You’re the only one who can lead.”

  For a few seconds she actually wanted to draw the sword and charge into battle, and then she remembered the fight in the London Underground station. A father should protect his daughter. Instead, Thorn had destroyed her childhood.

  She stood up and walked to the door. “I’m going back to London.”

  “Don’t you remember what I taught you? Verdammt durch das Fleisch. Gerettet durch das Blut…”

  Damned by the flesh. Saved by the blood. Maya had heard the Harlequin phrase-and hated it-since she was a little girl.

  “Tell your slogans to your new Russian friend. They don’t work with me.”

  “If there are no more Travelers, then the Tabula have finally conquered history. In one or two generations, the Fourth Realm will become a cold, sterile place where everyone is watched and controlled.”

  “It’s that way already.”

  “This is our obligation, Maya. It’s who we are.” Thorn’s voice was full of pain and regret. “I’ve often wished for a different life, wished that I was born ignorant and blind. But I could never turn away and deny the past, deny all those Harlequins who sacrificed themselves for such an important cause.”

  “You gave me weapons and taught me how to kill. Now you’re sending me out to be destroyed.”

  Thorn looked small and frail in the wheelchair. His voice was a harsh whisper. “I would die for you.”

  “But I’m not dying for a cause that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Maya reached for Thorn’s shoulder. It was a farewell gesture, a chance to connect with him one last time-but his angry expression made her pull her hand away.

  “Goodbye, Father.” She turned to the door and opened the latch. “I have one small chance to be happy. I can’t let you take it away from me.”

  2

  Nathan Boone sat in a second-floor room of the warehouse across the street from the lingerie shop. Peering through a nightscope, he watched Maya leave Thorn’s building and head down the sidewalk. Boone had already photographed Thorn’s daughter arriving at the airport terminal, but he enjoyed seeing her again. So much of his work these days involved staring at a computer monitor, checking phone calls and credit card bills, reading medical reports and police bulletins from a dozen different countries. To see an actual Harlequin helped him reconnect with the reality of what he was doing. The enemy still existed-at least a few of them did-and it was his responsibility to eliminate them.

  Two years ago, after the shoot-out in Pakistan, he found Maya living in London. Her public behavior indicated that she had rejected the violence of the Harlequins and had decided to have a normal life. The Brethren had considered executing Maya, but Boone sent them a lengthy e-mail recommending against it. He knew that she might lead him to Thorn, Linden, or Mother Blessing. All three Harlequins were still dangerous. They needed to be tracked down and destroyed.

  Maya would have noticed anyone following her around London, so Boone sent a squad of technicians to her apartment and had them insert tracer beads in every piece of her luggage. After she obtained a job and started to live a public life, the Brethren’s computers constantly monitored her phone calls, e-mails, and credit card transactions. The first alert came after Maya sent an e-mail to her supervisor asking for time off to visit “a sick relative.” When she
purchased a Friday plane ticket to Prague, Boone decided that the city was a logical place for Thorn to hide. He had three days to fly to Europe and come up with a plan.

  That morning one of Boone’s employees had read the note left in Maya’s hotel room by the young Russian who worked for Thorn. Now Boone knew the location of Thorn’s apartment, and it would be just a matter of minutes until he would be face-to-face with the Harlequin.

  Boone heard Loutka’s voice come from his radio headset. “Now what?” Loutka asked. “Do we follow her?”

  “That’s Halver’s job. He can handle it. Thorn is the primary target. We’ll deal with Maya later tonight.”

  Loutka and the three technicians sat in the back of a delivery van parked near the corner. Loutka was a Czech police lieutenant and was supposed to handle the local authorities. The technicians were there to do their special jobs and go home.

  With Loutka’s help, Boone had also hired two professional killers in Prague. The mercenaries sat on the floor behind him, waiting for orders. The Magyar was a big man who couldn’t speak English. His Serb friend, an ex-soldier, knew four languages and seemed intelligent, but Boone didn’t trust him. He was the kind of person who might run away if there was resistance.

  It was cold in the room and Boone was wearing an all-weather parka and a knit cap. His military haircut and steel eyeglasses made him look disciplined and fit, like a chemical engineer who ran marathons on the weekend.

  “Let’s go,” Loutka said.

  “No.”

  “Maya is walking back to her hotel. I don’t think that Thorn will get any more visitors tonight.”

  “You don’t understand these people. I do. They deliberately do things that are unpredictable. Thorn may decide to leave the house. Maya may decide to return. Let’s give it five minutes and see what happens.”

  Boone lowered the nightscope and continued to watch the street. For the last six years he had worked for the Brethren, a small group of men from different countries united by a particular vision of the future. The Brethren-who were called “the Tabula” by their enemies-were committed to the destruction of both the Harlequins and the Travelers.

  Boone was a liaison between the Brethren and their mercenaries. He found it easy to deal with people like the Serb and Lieutenant Loutka. A mercenary always wanted money or some kind of favor. First you negotiated a price, then you decided if you were going to pay it.

  Although Boone received a generous salary from the Brethren, he never felt that he was a mercenary. Two years ago, he was allowed to read a collection of books called The Knowledge that gave him a larger vision of the Brethren’s goals and philosophy. The Knowledge showed Boone that he was part of a historical battle against the forces of disorder. The Brethren and their allies were on the verge of establishing a perfectly controlled society, but this new system would not survive if Travelers were allowed to leave the system, then return to challenge the accepted view. Peace and prosperity were possible only if people stopped asking new questions and accepted the available answers.

  The Travelers brought chaos into the world, but Boone didn’t hate them. A Traveler was born with the power to cross over; there was nothing they could do about their strange inheritance. The Harlequins were different. Although there were Harlequin families, each man or woman made a choice to protect the Travelers. Their deliberate randomness contradicted the rules that governed Boone’s life.

  A few years earlier, Boone had traveled to Hong Kong to kill a Harlequin named Crow. Searching the man’s body, he found the usual weapons and false passports along with an electronic device called a random number generator. The RNG was a miniature computer that produced a mathematically random number whenever you pushed the button. Sometimes Harlequins used RNGs to make decisions. An odd number might mean yes, an even number no. Push a button and the RNG would tell you which door to enter.

  Boone remembered sitting in a hotel room and studying the device. How could a person live this way? As far as he was concerned, anyone who used random numbers to guide his life should be hunted down and exterminated. Order and discipline were the values that kept Western civilization from falling apart. You only had to look at the edges of the society to see what would happen if people allowed their life decisions to be determined by random choices.

  Two minutes had gone by. He pressed a button on his watch and the device flashed his pulse rate and then his body temperature. This was a stressful situation, and it pleased Boone to see that his pulse rate was only six points higher than average. He knew his pulse rate at rest and during exercise as well as his body fat percentage, cholesterol number, and daily calorie consumption.

  A match snapped and a few seconds later he smelled tobacco smoke. Turning around, he saw that the Serb was puffing on a cigarette.

  “Put that out.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like to breathe toxic air.”

  The Serb grinned. “You’re not breathing anything, my friend. It’s my cigarette.”

  Boone stood up and moved away from the window. His face was impassive as he evaluated the opposition. Was this man dangerous? Did he need to be intimidated for the success of the operation? How quickly could he respond?

  Boone slid his right hand into one of the upper side pockets of his parka, felt the taped razor, and held it tightly between his thumb and index finger. “Put the cigarette out immediately.”

  “When I’m finished.”

  Boone swung downward and chopped off the tip of the cigarette. Before the Serb could react, Boone grabbed the mercenary’s collar and held the edge of the razor a quarter inch away from the man’s right eye.

  “If I slashed your eyes open, my face would be the last thing you would ever see. You’d think about me for the rest of your life, Josef. The image would be burned in your brain.”

  “Please,” the Serb mumbled. “Please, don’t…”

  Boone stepped back and returned the razor to his pocket. He glanced at the Magyar. The big man looked impressed.

  As he returned to the window, Lieutenant Loutka’s voice came out of his radio headset. “What’s going on? Why are we waiting?”

  “We’re not waiting anymore,” Boone said. “Tell Skip and Jamie it’s time for them to earn their salary.”

  Skip and Jamie Todd were two brothers from Chicago who specialized in electronic surveillance. They were both short and plump, and were wearing identical brown coveralls. As Boone watched through his nightscope, the two men pulled an aluminum ladder out of the van and carried it down the sidewalk to the lingerie shop. They looked like electricians who had been called in to fix a wiring problem.

  Skip snapped open the ladder and Jamie climbed up to the sign hanging over the window of the lingerie shop. A radio-controlled miniature camera had been placed on the edge of the sign earlier that day. It had taken a video of Maya when she stood on the sidewalk.

  Thorn had installed a surveillance camera inside the canopy that protected his front door. Jamie climbed the ladder a second time, removed the camera, and replaced it with a miniature DVD player. When the brothers were finished, they folded up their ladder and carried it back to the van. For three minutes of work, they had earned $10,000 and a free visit to a brothel on Korunni Street.

  “Get ready,” Boone told Lieutenant Loutka. “We’re coming down.”

  “What about Harkness?”

  “Tell him to stay in the van. We’ll bring him upstairs when it’s safe.”

  Boone slipped the nightscope into his pocket and motioned to the local hires. “It’s time to go.”

  The Serb spoke to the Magyar and the two men got to their feet.

  “Be careful when we enter the apartment,” Boone said. “Harlequins are very dangerous. If attacked, they respond immediately.”

  The Serb had regained some of his confidence. “Maybe they’re dangerous for you. But my friend and I can handle any problem.”

  “Harlequins aren’t normal. They spend their entire childhood learning
how to kill their enemies.”

  The three men went down into the street and met Loutka. The police lieutenant looked pale beneath the streetlight. “What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.

  “If you’re scared, you can stay in the van with Harkness, but you’re not going to get paid. Don’t worry. When I organize an operation, everything works.”

  Boone led the men across the street to Thorn’s door and drew his laser-guided automatic pistol. A radio control was in his left hand. He clicked the yellow button and the DVD started to play an image of Maya standing on the sidewalk half an hour earlier. Look left. Look right. Everyone was ready. He pushed the door buzzer and waited. Upstairs, the young Russian-it probably wouldn’t be Thorn-went over to a closed-circuit television monitor, glanced at the screen, and saw Maya. The lock clicked open. They were inside.

  The four men climbed upstairs. When they reached the first-floor landing, Loutka took out a voice recorder.

  “Voice print please,” said an electronic voice.

  Loutka switched on the recorder and played the audio captured earlier that day in the taxicab. “Open the bloody door,” Maya said. “Open the-”

  The electric door lock clicked and Boone was the first person inside. The tattooed Russian stood there holding a dish towel and looking very surprised. Boone raised the automatic and fired at close range. The 9-mm bullet hit the Russian’s chest like a giant fist and he was hurled backward.

  Trying to get a bonus for the next kill, the Magyar ran around the half wall that divided the room. Boone heard the big man scream. He ran forward, followed by Loutka and the Serb. They entered a kitchen area and saw that the Magyar was lying facedown on Thorn’s lap, his legs on the floor, his shoulders wedged between the arms of the wheelchair. Thorn was trying to push the body away and grab his sword.

  “Get his arms,” said Boone. “Come on! Do it!”

  The Serb and Loutka grabbed Thorn’s arms, controlling him. Blood spurted over the wheelchair. When Boone pulled the Magyar away he saw the handle of a throwing knife protruding from the base of the dead man’s throat. Thorn had killed him with the knife, but the Magyar had fallen forward and hit the chair.