Silver

by Steven Savile

  The set-up had appealed to Lethe's sense of the theatrical. The whole idea of a retina scan seemed far too Blade Runner for Frost, and the recessed steel doors like something out of the Death Star, but right now he couldn't argue with the genius of any of it. If the lad wanted to recreate his own movie sets, so be it. The one unarguable fact was that no one was leaving Nonesuch without the right eyes.

  Lockdown established, Frost had a binary decision to make: down to Lethe or back to the old man. He had only seen one bike and one set of tracks, meaning one intruder. The fact that he had heard voices in the old man's room decided it.

  He slipped out of the room.

  He had been in there less than thirty seconds. The hand on the grandfather clock hadn't moved.

  The main door out to the grounds was blocked by a thick metal plate. It had sliced through Max. The cut hadn't been clean. If it was the difference between his murderer escaping or not, he knew Max would forgive him.

  Frost heard the voices, louder now. The old man and a woman. The old man was begging. Frost didn't hesitate.

  He ran toward the old man's study.

  "What the hell was that?" the woman barked at him. The echo of the steel sheets slamming into place reverberated through the floor.

  Sir Charles smiled. Frost had arrived. There was a chance he might make it out of this alive, but if not, at least he had the consolation of knowing that his killer was not about to disappear into the night. It all depended upon the woman and whether her pity outweighed her killer instinct. It wasn't exactly a sure thing, but he was playing the only hand he had--the helpless old cripple card. With any luck she'd underestimate him, or his blathering would buy Frost enough time to find them. "The Bat Cave," the old man said.

  He had wriggled the chair around so far he couldn't see her face in the mirror anymore. The benefit of that was that she couldn't see his, either. The old man twisted hard on the wheel with his left hand, wedged his foot beneath the edge of the bed and pulled down on the other wheel with his right, deliberately unbalancing the chair. He leaned forward and fell, sprawling across the rug. The chair came down on top of him.

  He clawed his way out from under the chair, emerging on the window side of the bed. His walking stick was tantalizingly out of reach.

  "You really are something," the woman said, dragging the chair out of the way. "It's a pity I have to kill you."

  "It's a pity I have to die," Sir Charles said. He dragged himself another six inches across the floor, toward the stick leaning against the wall. He willed her to keep on underestimating him. He twisted to look up at her, then deliberately, slowly, let his gaze drift back longingly toward his walking stick, knowing she would follow it, and knowing she wouldn't think for a minute what a devious old fool he was. The walking stick was more than just an old man's affectation, and he wasn't about to beat her over the head with a stick of wood. It was a sword cane. One twist of the elaborately carved handle and the brass coupling would break. There was an eighteen-inch blade secreted inside the wooden shaft. If he could get to it, and get her close enough, there was a chance. A slim one, but that was infinitely preferable to none.

  He dragged himself to within touching distance of the stick.

  "Well, no, there's no pity in it at all, is there?" she said, coming around the side of the bed to stand over him. "This feels like killing my own grandfather," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't enjoy that, either."

  The old man was on his stomach, one leg twisted uncomfortably because it was still trapped beneath the bed frame, the other up by his side. He looked like a chalk outline waiting to be drawn around. The sword cane was six inches from his fingers. So close yet so far away. Everything around him developed a sense of hyper-reality. He saw the threads of the rug and smd the rubber that had worn itself into them with all of those back-and-forths in the wheelchair. Even the grain in the wooden bed frame seemed so much starker, like seeing the truth of a treasure map for the first time.

  He heard the study door burst open, but didn't waste time trying to turn. He knew it was Frost. He used that fraction of a second to push himself the last six inches to the sword cane. He reached out, barely grazing it with his fingers, then stretched, finding another inch in his reach. His hand closed around the thin wooden shaft. He pulled the sword cane to his chest and broke the shaft. It took less than a second, an entire second where he expected to hear the silenced gunshot and be swallowed by the nothing of death.

  As soon as the blade was clear of the sheath he lunged upward with it. He didn't have the reach, but after years in the chair what he did have was incredible upper body strength. He thrust with all of his might, feeling it hit bone and scrape off it as it sank deeper into her side. He twisted savagely, opening her up. She screamed. The sound was cut brutally short. Her body twitched on the end of the blade, then stopped moving completely. For a long second she stood, held up only by the sword in her side and the strength of the old man's arm.

  He heard a single shot but didn't feel anything.

  A fountain of blood sprayed across his face and more poured down the blade and down his arm. Then gravity caught up with her corpse and pulled the woman down the length of the sword. He couldn't hold her dead weight. She carried on falling, landing awkwardly across his body and pinning him to the rug. He struggled, but he couldn't shift her.

  He heard the floorboard creek beneath cautious footsteps.

  A moment later the old man saw Frost looking down over her shoulder.

  "You took your sweet time," he said. "Is Maxwell . . . ?"

  Frost didn't say anything. Instead he hauled the dead assassin off the old man and dumped her on his bed. He pulled the sword from her side and dumped it on the bed beside her, then he peeled off her balaclava and grunted. It was a grunt of recognition. Next he righted the old man's chair and helped him up into it. All of this was done in silence.

  The old man sat there soaked in his erstwhile killer's blood.

  He looked at her lying there on the bed. There was no way anyone could confusher death for sleep. She really was beautiful, or had been. He wondered what could have turned her into a gun for hire, but then realized the stupidity of that kind of thinking. It was like wondering what turned Frost into the man he was, a life of conflict in Derry and Belfast or the fields of blood in Kosovo, or something else entirely, something coded on a genetic level.

  "Lethe?" Sir Charles said, finally.

  "As far as I can tell, she came alone, met Max at the door, then came looking for you. If Jude's got any common sense, he turned the basement into a panic room and is sitting down there waiting for the cavalry." He didn't voice the alternative--that Lethe had tried to be the cavalry himself and was lying somewhere inside the big old house with a bullet in his head. The second alternative explained why the phone rang off the hook when he called, the first didn't.

  The old man wheeled his chair toward the doorway, then stopped, looking back toward the bed. "I will need fresh sheets," and in that horrible second where reality comes rushing in, he realized that without Maxwell no one was going to be changing his bed linen and that his world had just become a little smaller without his companion in it. He shook his head, clearing it. "All right, first things first," he said, all business. "What are we going to do with her?"

  "I suggest we find a big mailing pouch and send her right back where she came from," Frost said.

  "Appealing as that notion is, I was thinking something a little less problematic. One option would be burying her in the grounds. I doubt very much anyone save Devere knows she is here, and he's hardly likely to draw attention to his role in this. So given the circumstances, it shouldn't be too difficult to make like we never saw her. Another alternative is the incinerator."

  "That works as well," Frost said, "but I'd still rather post her."

  "I am sure you would, sealed with a kiss, no doubt."

  "A line of C4 and a short fuse seems more fitting," Frost said. "Okay, better get this over with. Let's go
find Lethe."

  As it was, they didn't need to go far. Jude Lethe stood beside half of the butler's corpse looking down at it. He heard them approach and looked up. "The cameras," he said, as though that explained everything. It did in a way. The old man took it to mean he had seen the assassin shoot Maxwell on one of his many screens down there in the basement and he'd locked down the nerve center of Nonesuch. No second thoughts, no heroice'd followed the protocols to the letter, even if it meant leaving the old man in harm's reach. Sir Charles nodded.

  He looked down at his friend.

  "Mister Lethe, would you be so kind as to reset the shield doors. Frost, Maxwell was one of ours. I would count it a personal favor if you would take care of things."

  Frost nodded. He seemed about to say something. It was rare that Ronan Frost didn't simply speak his mind.

  "What is it?" the old man asked.

  "I saw the screens in the control room," he licked his lips. "Konstantin, Orla. They're ours too. And has Noah checked in? This is a mess." The understatement of the year.

  "There's nothing to be done," the old man said. It sounded harsh in his own ears even as he said it. Frost didn't so much as flinch. He accepted the judgment like the professional soldier he was.

  "I'm not finished looking," Lethe said. "I found someone in the crowd who was filming the Pope's blessing on his cell phone. The angle's right, with a bit of luck he caught everything on film. The only problem is I've got no idea who he is and have only actually seen the back of his head."

  "That's a bit of a problem," Frost said, but the possibility that someone had caught the truth of the assassination on their cell phone seemed to energize him. "But it's not insurmountable. Koblenz is a small enough city. Get the plod to go door to door with a photograph of the back of the guy's head. You know the deal: Is this you? Is this you? Is this you? It has to be someone."

  There was nothing to say that that particular someone even came from Koblenz, but it was a straw worth clutching at. He could see that in Frost's face. No man left behind.

  "The police won't go door to door. They took thousands of statements at the scene. If he had seen anything, the BKA will already know, and most likely, if they know he was filming, they will have confiscated his cell phone as potential evidence."

  "They might not have looked at the film yet," Frost said.

  "Or they might have seen it and deleted it already," Sir Charles said. He knew all too well how some of these profile investigations went. They had evidence, witnesses, and a prime suspect that the British Government would already have disowned. A Russian defector with paramilitary experience? They couldn't have asked for a better assassin. They wouldn't be looking for the knife in the hands of the supposedly most loyal guardsmen in the world. It didn't sit with their investigative mindset, and why would it? They all saw Konstantin do it. Or at least thought they did.

  "It's worth a try. It has to be," Frost pushed. "What about the guardsmen themselves?" He looked at Lethe. "Any of them see what happened?"

  "If they did, I'd expect another corpse to turn up any minute now, wouldn't you?" Lethe asked.

  Frost nodded. "But will another dead body be enough to barter Koni's freedom?" Frost and the old man locked gazes. Sir Charles was the first to look away. "I want to go out there," Frost said. "I'm no use sitting on my hands here. Hell, if it comes right down to it, Noah and I can go in there and bust him out of that damned German prison cell. It'd only need the two of us to bring him home. Then the three of us can go get Orla."

  He made it sound so simple.

  It wasn't.

  It was a geopolitical minefield.

  The suits at Vauxhall Cross might deny Konstantin, but that didn't mean the Germans would necessarily believe their denials. It came down to whether they believed he was British or Russian, which side he was currently working for and which government they wanted to hang out to dry. Deals could be made, perhaps. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that the public needed to see someone suffer.

  "That won't be necessary," Sir Charles told him. "You take care of Maxwell, I will make the call. If there is anything that can be done, it will be done. But I am making no promises. Understood?"

  "This is becoming rather a bad habit, Charles," Control's reedy voice said over the telephone. "I don't suppose I need to remind you about the hour, or point out that civilized people are abed?"

  "I'm not going to apologize," the old man said. "You know what is happening. Those are my people out there."

  "And that's a damned shame, but there's nothing I can do about it. And even if there was, these midnight calls are hardly endearing, old boy."

  "How long have we worked together?"

  "Longer, I am sure, than either of us would like to admit."

  "And how many times have I asked you for help, Quentin?"

  "Oh, is that the card your playing? The 'I've been a good and faithful servant all these years and you owe me'? I thought better of you."

  "You're the second person to say that to me tonight. The first one is dead. Regrettably, she killed Maxwell."

  "Are you telling me Nonesuch was breeched?"

  "That's exactly what I am telling you."

  "Have you been compromised, Charles? Tell me the truth. There's nothing to be gained by protecting your pride." Quentin Carruther's tone shifted, his affected tones suddenly more urgent, all hint of playfulness stripped from his words.

  "The situation was contained, this time."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I killed the intruder myself, Quentin. Her blood is still all over my clothes, and her corpse is in my bed. I couldn't be much surer."

  "Well that's something, at least."

  "I want him out of there, Quentin," the old man said, shifting the subject back to Konstantin Khavin.

  "There's nothing I can do, Charles. I don't run you boys anymore, not that I ever did, really. You've had far too long a leash for too long a time. This is the new world order, my friend, and there's a new sheriff in town. Talk to him, talk to the Chief. If anyone can pull diplomatic strings it's him. My hands are decidedly stringless. But don't hold your breath. Your boy knew the risks when he signed up. Her Majesty is hardly about to claim responsibility for the papal assassin, now is she?"

  "He didn't do it and you know full well that he didn't."

  "Neither here nor there, though, is it? The camera never lies. If he was innocent, the picture proving it would have been all over the tabloids by now. As it is they're calling for his head as though he were John the Baptist."

  "I want him out of there, Quentin."

  "And I want Pretty Boy Floyd to come massage my aching feet. I suspect both of us are going to be disappointed, don't you?"

  "Someone in the crowd filmed it," the old man said, trying a different tack.

  "I am sure they did, but again, it doesn't help us. Your boy wasn't supposed to be there. He was operating without German consent. He assaulted the Israeli ambassador's men in Berlin. There is photographic evidence of him breaking and entering into a dead man's apartment, and enough to suggest he might be linked to the whole sorry affair. They want him, old boy, and there is sweet Fanny Anne that I can say or do that will change their minds. He was careless. He got caught."

  "So you're saying he should have let the Pope die?"

  "I don't know whether you noticed, but His Holiness died. So yes, as far as Her Majesty is concerned, Khavin's involvement in this debacle is nothing short of embarrassing. She could come out publicly and say, 'Yes, we sent an agent to try to protect the Holy Father, but that agent failed.' It doesn't look good for a monarch to admit fallibility. Then there are the questions of why we didn't turn everything over to the German authorities the moment he suspected something was going to happen on their soil. Things are fractious enough even sixty years on. To say that there is still bad blood between our countries is something of an understatement.

  "We can't make him disappear; that will just make the Germans look foolish. We
can't trade him one for one because it's been years since we've held a German citizen as a gheight=f Her Majesty's Displeasure. We can't bully them into giving him back; how would that make us look? Give us back the man who just killed the Pope! Can you imagine? Just be grateful they don't have the death penalty anymore. They'd have him hanging from a gibbet in the same town square, ironic given one of the purposes of the blessing, if you think about it." Control had the decency not to chuckle at his own joke. "No one is going to come out of this very well, Charles. Now it is all about damage limitation. The eyes of the world are on Koblenz. Give them Khavin. They have it all on film, they get to look good, a fast efficient clean up, justice served and everyone is happy. That's the long and the short of it."

  "Not everyone," the old man said. "You don't want me to turn this into a war, Quentin. He's my boy. I lost one of mine today, and I refuse to lose another."

  "Is that a threat, Charles?"

  "You know it is, old boy," the old man said. "I suggest you make the call and don't try and fob me off with deniability. You've got a duty to Konstantin."

  "I suppose you want me to mount an invasion? We could take Tel Aviv while we are at it, bring your girl home, a two-for-one special. Don't be so naive, Charles. Khavin is nothing more than an unfortunate incident. He doesn't even register as collateral damage. You need to understand, if you continue to push this, we'll cut you off. It's as simple as that. Ogmios will cease to be useful. You'll be closed down."

  The old man breathed into the phone, letting his silence speak for him.

  "In case the nuance was lost on you, that was a threat, dear boy," Quentin Carruthers said.

  "Or I could just send Frost around to your house tonight. It's always tragic when an old man dies, but there's something natural about dying in your sleep, don't you think?"

  "And to think I used to call you my friend."