The Reluctant Assassin

by Eoin Colfer

  “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 m
elting 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.

  Garrick slapped his thigh. “Oh, Chevron, you are a tonic. The odds are stacked against you higher than the Tower of London and still you are full to the gills with pluck. I see now why Felix was fond of you.”

  Chevie snorted. “Felix? Fond of me? You’ve been misinformed.”

  “Felix and I were . . . close before he died,” said Garrick cryptically. “Felix was fond of you, even if he was not fully aware of it.”

  “So you knew, but he didn’t?”

  Garrick half hid a smug smile behind his hand. “In a way, yes.”

  The magician’s smile evaporated when the cab turned the corner onto Bedford Square and the house on Bayley Street came into view. The railings were crisscrossed with police tape, and two FBI agents in blue Windbreakers stood out front, flanked by Metropolitan police officers with machine guns slung across their chests. Obviously Waldo had redirected some of the FBI response team to Bedford Square and called in the locals to boot.

  “We should have walked,” said Chevie. “We might have gotten here quicker.”

  Garrick gnawed on a knuckle. “Quiet, girl. Do not force me to commit murder for the sake of a moment’s silence.”

  Garrick considered the heavily armed officers.

  Even an individual of my expertise could not be expected to take on the entire police force, he concluded, especially not ones with machine guns. Though according to Smart’s experiences, the bobbies are much hampered by their own constitution. Apparently they cannot even dump vagrants into the Thames anymore. But even so, they would have no qualms about cutting down an assassin attempting to gain access to the building.

  While Garrick was thinking, Riley stole a glance at Chevie. Her face was tight and her muscles coiled, though she tried to appear at ease; and it was clear to Riley that she intended to try her luck with Garrick in this confined space.

  She thinks I’m on his side, he thought. And I cannot let her know the truth without also alerting Garrick.

  Garrick had obviously noticed Chevie’s attitude, for he pointed a finger at the boy. “Riley, tell your new friend to rethink her strategy. If she takes aggressive action, I will gut her before the seat belt is off, and knife the cabbie for spite.”

  Luckily the cabbie was separated from them by a plastic screen and did not realize his life was a tool for barter.

  “Here we are, mate,” he called over his shoulder. “Bayley Street. You might spot a few celebs up around here. House on the corner went for forty million pounds last month. There’s no recession in this manor, I’ll tell you that.”

  Garrick rolled his eyes. “Apparently the verbosity of London cabbies is constant through the ages.” He knocked on the plastic. “I have a new destination for you, driver. Take us to the Wolseley. A friend told me about this café, and I feel it would be just the ticket for our ravenous group. Down Piccadilly, if you please, I do not wish to take the tourists’ route.”

  “No worries,” said the cabbie. “I know this city better than the wife knows the inside of my wallet. Strike me dead if I try to cheat you.”

  Garrick hid his face as they passed the armed police.

  “That is exactly what I shall do,” he said.

  By the time the cabbie drew in front of the Wolseley, the restaurant was open for early breakfast. Garrick selected a booth in the window and studied the menu with coos of delight that drew attention from other diners.

  “What say you, son? Kedgeree or kippers? Why not both, eh? It is a special occasion, after all.”

  Chevie sat by the window, hemmed in between the glass and the magician’s apprentice, hampered by the table.

  I need to make a move, she thought. Orange’s last instruction to me was to guard the Timekey. I will not botch another mission. I must get that key back. And I can’t rely on Riley to help me.

  All traces of Smart were gone now. The person sitting opposite her was a genuine magician from the past, and as if to prove it, he charmed the waitress, pulling a salt shaker from behind her ear and Felix Smart’s platinum MasterCard from behind his own.

  “I believe this is what passes for money these days,” he said, his accent like something from an old black-and-white Sherlock Holmes movie. “Make sure to add a ten percent gratuity for yourself, my dear, pretty as you are.”

  The girl was used to big tippers. “I think I’m pretty enough for twenty percent,” she said, not even bothering to smile.

  Garrick waved a magnanimous hand. “Why not take thirty?” he said. “We Smarts are a generous breed.”

  The waitress pulled a pen from the belt of her apron and took Garrick’s order. The magician selected three kinds of eggs: poached, fried, and scrambled. Kedgeree and kippers. Toast, muffins, and American pancakes with syrup. Sausages, bacon, and potato cakes. Oatmeal and granola. Orange juice, grapefruit juice, and a large pot of coffee. Riley opted for hot chocolate and a full English breakfast, while Chevie asked for a glass of water.

  Obviously murder gives a person an appetite, she thought.

  “Not hungry, Agent?” Garrick asked her.

  Chevie smiled tightly. “I’m feeling a bit off. Must be all the corpses.”

  Garrick winked at Riley. “You grow accustomed to that. Look at my partner here, an apprentice no more. He’ll be tucking into his bacon like the hangman’s waiting for him in the square.”

  “Yeah,” said Chevie. “Maybe he is. That’s what happens when you kill everyone you meet.”

  “I haven’t killed you yet, Miss Savano. Perhaps after breakfast, eh?”

  Riley was silent throughout this exchange. He wished only to sleep and perhaps dream of a beach and the red-haired boy.

  Beware the undertow—it’ll have yer legs out from under you.

  Had the boy really said that, or was his mind inventing a past for himself? Riley shook his head to dislodge the familiar fog that settled over his brain when he was in Garrick’s company. He generally let his mind float away, but today was different. Chevie’s life was at stake as well as his own.

  The last thing Riley wanted was a fry-up, but his body was hungry and, as Garrick always said, Eat up, boy. Your next meal will probably be your last.

  “You should eat, Chevie.”

  Garrick’s hand darted across the table and clipped Riley’s ear. “Chevie? Who are you now, son? The Prince of Wales? Ladies will be referred to by their titles. This is Agent Savano or miss to you.”

  Chevie was unimpressed. “Wow, manners. Cool. I had thought you were a murdering psycho, but now you’ve won me over.”

  Garrick sighed, weary now of the girl’s comments. “This constant melodrama is so wearing. Isn’t there anything I can do to persuade you to be civil, at least while we are at table?”

  Psychology 101: get the subject to talk about himself. Any information learned might come in useful later, if there was a later.

  “You could tell me what you are, exactly.”

  Garrick seriously considered this. It would be nice to share the details of his
transformation; but then again, too much knowledge was too much power, so perhaps he would sketch in broad strokes. “I know that Felix went over the basics with you. Wormholes through time, and so forth. When Felix and I traveled the time tunnel together, we merged. I am still in control, but Felix is definitely a part of me.”

  “You killed him?”

  “I killed most of him. And it was self-defense: he did detonate a bomb.”

  “So you can do stuff with what’s left of Felix? Tricks?”

  “Ah, yes, of course. A trick. Ladies love the magic tricks. Think of a card.”

  Chevie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “No, seriously now, mademoiselle. Picture a card. Visualize it, as you Americans are fond of saying.”

  Chevie couldn’t help it. The Queen of Hearts popped into her mind. It had been her father’s favorite bar on the Pacific Coast Highway.

  Garrick clicked his fingers. “I have it. You were picturing the Ace of Spades. The card that signifies imminent and painful death.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” argued Chevie.

  Garrick twirled his butter knife. “You are now,” he said.

  It was an exchange straight out of a penny dreadful, Garrick knew; but he had grown up on stage and had melodrama in his blood.

  The food arrived, and Garrick tucked in with obvious delight, laughing as he ate, plucking morsels from several different plates—he ate sausages dipped in syrup and potato cakes smothered in hot chocolate. He was like a child at a party.

  “There is no dirt, not a speck of grit,” he declared. “The odors are uniformly pleasant, and what is supposed to be hot is hot.”

  Chevie watched the magician closely, mentally going over every detail of his face and mannerisms in order to commit it all to memory.

  Middle-aged. Maybe early forties, hard to tell. Pale complexion. Teeth seem a little long. Yellowed. Dark eyes. Blue, maybe, deep-set, with a bulbous brow. Black hair starting to gray. Long and straight. Slim build, but wiry. Nothing obviously threatening about him. This guy would never get the part of a Victorian villain in a movie about himself.