The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  M’s fist flexed, the pen indenting the skin above David’s carotid. “Consider the boy,” he said.

  René’s face shifted into something like disappointment. “I have,” he said. He drew the handgun from his hip holster and shot David through the chest.

  David’s hands pressed over the wound as he slid from M’s grasp onto the floor. He stared up at René, mouth wavering while his life poured out between his fingers.

  “Dex, please show our high rollers to their room.” René holstered his gun. “Bidding will begin in the morning,” he said again on his way out.

  50

  Making His Preparations

  Night.

  Evan crouched at the side of the bed in the surveillance camera’s blind spot, making his preparations. He folded the plastic trash-can liner over itself again and again, forming a one-inch band of polyethylene. This time it would have to fit perfectly beneath the shock collar, hidden from view. He slid it between the contact points of the inner rim and his skin, then used his fingertips to tuck it in. If the slightest edge peeked up into view, his chance would be blown.

  And he’d wind up crucified or skinned or razor-bladed to pieces.

  And Alison Siegler would be delivered to the man who had purchased her from Hector Contrell like a piece of exercise equipment.

  And the boy who’d called Evan would languish in his own private hell, trying the RoamZone again and again. And again and again getting no answer.

  Still crouching, Evan retrieved the piano wire from where he’d stashed it beneath the boot insole and crossed to the distressed leather chair that was bolted to the floor.

  He removed his socks and used them to wrap his hands, then slid the wire around one of the chair’s wooden legs. He coiled either end of the wire around his padded hands and started sawing.

  Even through the cotton, the wire bit into his palms, but he kept at it. After about five minutes, he’d made a few centimeters of progress. But it was enough to give him some leverage.

  Firming his grip around the wire, he jammed it deep into the tiny notch and yanked down. It took three tries but at last a wedge of wood chipped off the leg.

  He stopped to catch his breath and flex his aching hands. His feet were freezing, so he slid his socks back on.

  Then he picked up the wedge of wood. Eight inches long, two wide, a few centimeters thick.

  With some force he was able to break it in half over his knee.

  Now he had two pieces that fit snugly in his fists when he curled his fingers around them.

  Handles.

  He looped either end of the piano wire around a chunk of wood, twisting it tight, testing it and testing it again until there was no give.

  A garrote.

  He wrapped it up tightly, slid it into his sock, and pulled down the leg of his jeans to cover the bulge.

  Then he pulled the spare pair of high-top hiking boots into his lap, tugged free the laces, and fashioned them into a double-strand noose. This he stuffed in his front pocket on top of the RoamZone.

  He’d have one shot at this and one shot only. If a single thing went wrong, he’d spend his last agonizing minutes staring into the face of Charles Van Sciver. But for now there was nothing more he could do.

  He dressed for morning and lay back on the bed. He let go of the grueling events of the day, tuned out his fears for tomorrow. There was only the present moment, his body on the soft, soft mattress, the faint sigh of his breath. If this proved to be his last night, then he wanted to enjoy every second.

  This time when the gas came, he welcomed it.

  51

  A Shout into the Abyss

  For once it was nice not to pretend. Candy didn’t have to act like Ben Jaggers’s wife or his whore or his partner in photojournalism. It was all out in the open. They were two deadly trained operatives, here to reclaim a government asset. And to permanently decommission him.

  Unfortunately, she still had to share a room with Jaggers.

  In other circumstances it might’ve been romantic. Crackling fireplace, homey quilts thrown over matching queen beds, snowflakes clinging to the windows—it was like a friggin’ Viagra commercial.

  She let her dress fall around her stiletto boots and stepped clear of it. Bending over, she unzipped her boots and tugged them off. She put on a pair of silk pajamas, the fabric a salve against her throbbing back.

  Not surprisingly, Jaggers didn’t bother to turn around. He sat on the bed facing the sliding glass door. From behind he looked frail and weak. His shoulders seemed bird-thin, and there was a slight hunch to his spine. He was the unlikeliest Orphan she’d ever encountered.

  “What’s your story?” she said.

  He still did not turn around. “What story?”

  “How did you get here? Become an Orphan?”

  “That information is classified. You know this.”

  “No shit. But it’s me and you in a snowed-in chalet in the middle of Godknowswhereistan, and we can’t fuck because you’re lacking the requisite hardware. So I figure a little conversation might help us while away the hours.”

  At last he turned, but only enough to give her his profile. That drippy nose, the runny chin. He was a sight. “If you continue to break protocol,” he said, “I’ll report you to Orphan Y.”

  “Van Sciver,” she said, “has bigger concerns.”

  Now Jaggers faced her fully. Sitting on the mattress, he drew his knees to his chest. He looked scrawny, an embryonic vulture. And yet those eyes held his power. Flat and hard like river-smoothed stones, the eyes of a shark gliding effortlessly through the depths in search of prey. Those eyes told the truth, and the truth was that there was no story, no background to make sense of, because men like Ben Jaggers didn’t make sense. They just were.

  “As do we,” he said. “We can’t underestimate this man René. He’s impressive.”

  “You admire him.”

  “I admire what he did in that ballroom, how he took the winning cards right out of our hands. It was an intel failure on our part. We should have known what the man values and does not value.”

  “Maybe,” Candy said, “he valued it all. He just valued some things over others.”

  She studied his face, but it was like studying a dinner plate. She thought of him in that alley behind the old Crimean cannery, how when the girl had approached, he’d managed to shape his features into something human, into something requiring neighborly aid. We could use a hand with the trunk. I think it got warped in the crash. Candy pictured the girl’s one-shouldered shrug. Jaggers’s clawlike hand slapped over her mouth, the slim silver pen jabbing at her neck. The wet thrashing against the closed trunk. She’d been beautiful, that girl, and it was a sin to destroy something beautiful.

  It struck Candy now that Jaggers had killed her not because it was prudent as he’d claimed but because he resented her beauty. He envied it. And he admired René not for the chess move of killing his young friend but for the ruthlessness of the act. To destroy something you cannot be is to embrace your darkest heart, to yield to an ungodly desire. It is to be hijacked by what you aren’t rather than nourished by what you are.

  Because what you are is nothing.

  Van Sciver’s mantra played in her head: It is what it is, and that’s all that it is. She heard it differently this time, not as a hard-boiled directive but as a shout into the abyss. Maybe ultimately that’s all they were, her and M and Y, untethered souls, parentless and brotherless, stripped of their humanity, forever echoing in the chasm.

  What had she seen in Orphan X’s eyes when she’d revealed her mutilated back? Remorse? Whatever it was, it was not what she’d expected. She’d devoted every waking minute to tracking him down, hellbent on staring him in the face. Whatever she’d been hoping for, it certainly hadn’t been the glimmer of empathy she’d spied in his eyes. She hated him all the more for it. Didn’t she?

  Or had she seen in X a reflection of what she herself had felt since her flesh had been defaced?
The weakness of human emotion.

  Orphan M had said something.

  Candy blinked. “What?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I said it’s time to make contact.”

  Clearing her throat, she went into the bathroom, where she removed a contact-lens case from her toiletries bag. Leaning close to the mirror, she fingertipped a lens onto her right eyeball.

  The contact was a spherical curve of liquid crystal cells that projected high-def images. Invisible to all but the user, the lens created a virtual display several feet from the face.

  She fluttered her fingers, the metallic press-on nails catching the dim light. The radio-frequency identification-tagged fingernails allowed her to type in the air without a keyboard.

  Before hooding Candy and Jaggers and loading them in the private jet, René’s men had searched their luggage compulsively for any communication devices. They had no way of knowing that Candy had been wearing her phone.

  She let her gaze loosen to focus on the floating display. It always took some time for the double-blind comms connection to initiate.

  The cursor blinked red, red, then finally turned green.

  Van Sciver’s text scrolled before her face: HAVE YOU SECURED THE ASSET?

  She lifted her fingers like a pianist and typed a reply text in thin air: POWER PLAY FAILED. WILL WIN HIM @ AUCTION TOMORROW.

  She chewed her lip, waited nervously.

  I’M UNWILLING TO TAKE THAT RISK.

  OK. She took a deep breath, studied the bathroom walls. WHERE AM I? DID U BACKTRACE SATPHONE CALL?

  REMOTE LOCATION IN MAINE.

  Maine didn’t make sense given their travel time. To throw off their estimates, René’s men must have flown them back and forth in the jet before loading them into the helicopters.

  She waited, watched the blinking green cursor.

  After a moment another text appeared: WE GOT THROUGH THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC CIPHERS ON HIS SATPHONE, BUT WE ONLY HAD TWO SATELLITES VISIBLE FOR THE GPS TRILATERATION. WE’RE MAKING TIMING CORRECTIONS NOW, ZEROING IN ON PRECISE COORDINATES.

  R U GOING 2 SEND A DRONE?

  GETS TRICKY OVER U.S. SOIL.

  She typed, WE LIVE 4 TRICKY.

  I’M TAKING NO CHANCES, Van Sciver texted.

  WHICH MEANS?

  BOOTS ON THE GROUND.

  She pursed her lips. A physical raid backed by numbers? Van Sciver didn’t operate this way. Ever. It would take a different level of coordination, logistics, mission planning. Which meant time.

  CAN U GET HERE BY MORNING? she typed.

  IF NOT, he texted, YOU’D DAMN WELL BETTER STALL THE AUCTION.

  COPY THAT.

  THERE IS NO VERSION IN WHICH ORPHAN X EXITS THAT BUILDING UNTIL I ARRIVE. UNDERSTOOD?

  She took a breath. UNDERSTOOD.

  The cursor went from green to red. She lowered her hands. The display vanished, leaving her looking at her own reflection in the mirror.

  Her conscience, long buried and atrophied from lack of use, rolled over from its sleep. She kicked it in the face and put it back down. It had no business being awake for what she was about to do.

  52

  Some Kind of Advantage

  Despite the drugs Evan was awake and alert with the first light of dawn. He lay on his back. Waiting. He sensed the planks compressing in the hall before he heard them creak. Dex could put some serious weight down on a floor.

  The dead bolts clanked open, one after another, and the hinges gave a soft complaint as the mahogany door swung inward. Evan rolled over, feigning sleep, his eyelids cracked enough to register Dex’s massive shape entering the room.

  His cinder-block fist raised the transmitter to aim at Evan, and Evan reacted appropriately, jolting awake, shuddering on the sheets, clawing at his shock collar. It was, he thought, a convincing performance.

  He’d had plenty of practice.

  Dex led him into the hall where Xalbador waited, less-lethal shotgun in hand.

  Not a word was exchanged as Evan headed to the stairs and wound his way down.

  Dead man walking.

  When they reached the ground floor, Evan caught a whiff of espresso in the air, the distant murmur of chatter. The library was empty, but a few early risers had gathered in the sunroom—the guests being catered to, pampered like Sotheby’s VIPs at a pre-auction reception. The Great White Sark held forth by the banquette, swapping war stories with the others. The Widow Lakshminarayanan sipped tea in a corner, sitting ramrod straight. Conversation ceased as Evan passed by, all those sets of eyes lifting to trace his path across the doorway.

  Candy McClure and Orphan M were conspicuously absent. Even if Van Sciver chose to deploy Orphans in pairs these days, they were built to operate alone. Old habits were hard to break. It was tough to imagine them chewing biscotti with war criminals and drug lords.

  Evan kept on. He sensed Xalbador’s shotgun trained at the space between his shoulder blades. Dex kept several paces ahead of him, walking sideways to hold him in view, the pistol dwarfed by his hand. Their three-man procession was coming up on the ballroom now. Evan felt his skin tingle as it did before a mission kicked off. Not fear, no, nor even the stress of anticipation, but an overwhelming sense of his own aliveness. He hated to admit how much he loved this, especially given the horrors he would face if he failed.

  His vision sharpened until he could make out the knuckle grooves on Dex’s trigger finger. He sensed the cadence of Xalbador’s footsteps, the vibrations through the marble floor. Reading the rhythm of the men’s movements, he predicted and gauged and prepared.

  The makeshift garrote stuffed in his sock pressed coolly into his flesh.

  They turned the corner, their boots tapping the hardwood. The rows of empty chairs were set out neatly, as if in anticipation of a wedding service. The Lexan vault waited. They crossed the freshly polished spot on the floor where David had bled out.

  Ten more steps.

  Evan used the chirp of Xalbador’s boots against the floor to measure the man’s distance behind him. He slipped a hand into his pocket, digging for his bootlaces, curling his fingers around one side of the improvised noose.

  Six more steps.

  His muscles tensed. His cells sang. It would come down to instinct, timing, and luck.

  Four.

  The high-set windows threw Xalbador’s shadow forward next to Evan. He flicked his eyes over, reading the dark outline, noting the shotgun’s position. Letting his right hand dangle, he gripped his jeans at the thigh and gave a little tug, the pant leg riding up a few inches, putting the garrote within reach.

  Dex cast a last glance back at Evan before pivoting, his hand starting to rise to the sensor panel beneath the big steel handle of the Lexan door.

  Two steps.

  One.

  The fine hairs on Dex’s arm glistened in the morning light. His big hand spread, that tattooed grimace growing even broader, the blood-dripping canines coming clear. Everything moved in slow motion, as if Evan were again living inside that single drop from René’s syringe.

  Dex’s giant palm touched the panel.

  The inset screen flared to life, reading the road map of veins beneath the skin.

  MATCH.

  The lugs released.

  The foot-thick door swung open. Three inches. Six. A foot. Dex’s hand was still raised, the flared fingers starting to retract.

  Evan yanked the bootlace noose from his pocket. He stepped not for Dex but past him, lunging for the widening gap in the door. As he skimmed by Dex’s shoulder, he lassoed the still-raised hand. Xalbador shouted, the shotgun aimed, but Evan had already put Dex between himself and the barrel.

  Dex wheeled, disoriented by the fact that Evan was fleeing into the Lexan room instead of away from it. Dex was spinning in one direction, Evan in the other. With his free hand, Evan grabbed for the .45.

  And missed.

  For an instant he tumbled toward the Lexan vault, his left hand gripping the end of the bootlaces, his right flailing.
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  Then the slack came out of the laces.

  The noose cinched around Dex’s wrist. His arm snapped straight. Evan held on with everything he had.

  His momentum carried him past the razor-sharp edge of the doorway, across the threshold, into the vault. He seized the inside door handle and slammed the bulky door shut as hard as he could.

  It hammered Dex above the junction of his wrist, nearly cleaving the arm in two.

  Dex’s mouth stretched wide, his lips wavering. It was really strange to see a man scream and not make a sound.

  Evan put all his weight against the handle, pinning Dex’s arm. He’d released the noose, but the knot held, the laces embedded in the flesh at the base of Dex’s hand a few inches below the massive wound.

  Holding the blood in the veins.

  Now he just had to remove the hand.

  Keeping his grip on the door handle, Evan ripped the garrote free of his sock. Dex reared back, the weighty door swinging open, then smashing shut again on the hatchet wound of the wrist. His mouth spread in another silent roar, but by then Evan had already looped the piano wire around the arm, sinking it into the deepening gash above the wrist.

  Gripping the roughly hewn wooden handles, Evan twisted the garrote. Ligaments snapped. The bones of the wrist started to separate from the base of the ulna and radius. It was grisly, hard-going work.

  Evan sensed a blur of movement overhead, found himself looking up into the barrel of the .45. He jerked his face to the side as Dex pulled the trigger, the percussion so loud that for a moment Evan thought the round had in fact penetrated his head.

  But he heard it ping behind him—and then again and again, ricocheting endlessly around the small box. It seemed only a matter of time before the bullet would find him.

  Evan was dangling from the garrote’s handles, wrenching with all his might, yanking Dex against the door to hold it shut. Dex shoved himself back, trying to widen the gap and position himself for another shot.