by Claire North
Coyle lay still, breathing steadily, heartbeat level. I washed my face in the polished sink, left the key to the room again in the pot by the elevator and went out to find New York’s rush hour.
The Subway.
On the express you slide along the plastic seats with the deceleration of the train. The escalators clack irritatingly as you descend; the ticket barriers have a nasty bite as they open and close around you.
I rode the rush-hour train and, when the crowd was substantial enough, I
jumped
and jumped
and jumped again
moving without motion
leaving my body far behind.
Chapter 82
Coyle was awake when I returned to the hotel, watching the news.
The news was loud, opinionated and local. In the land of the free you are free to say whatever you want, regardless of whether you have anything to say.
I was the porter again, and as I shuffled in with a tray of fruit and croissants, I said, “I can’t stay in this boy long – how are you feeling?”
Coyle’s fingers unconsciously fumbled at the dressing over his shoulder. “Crap. But not too crap.”
“Feel like food?”
“I’ll give it a go.”
He gave it a go and asked for more.
I said, “I really need to let this body get on with its work.”
“I need to make a phone call.”
“Who to?”
“A friend.”
“What kind of friend?” His eyes slipped up sideways at me, a sharp stare. Back off. I pulled my flat cap off my head, scratched at the dark hair nestled beneath, a thin shower of dandruff from my fingertips. “OK. You trusted me, I guess I owe you that. But please don’t do anything reckless.”
“More reckless than stealing a porter’s body for an hour?”
“Like I said, sometimes people are grateful to find the hours have passed. I’ll go for a walk in someone discreet.”
I went for a walk in someone discreet.
A woman, whose thick grey hair and overhanging eyelids proclaimed her to be old, but whose skin beneath my shirt was soft and pink, and whose arms, as I flexed them inside my sleeves, were sturdy and ready to work.
I walked the tourist’s shuffle, for only tourists ever really walk in New York.
I walked to Washington Square and stood beneath the white arch raised by city forefathers who loathed imperialism but had a soft spot for its ego. In the grand central circle buskers competed with the pigeons and each other for the attention of passers-by. The last time I visited the square, I had turned the corner to find four hundred zombies, faces melting, skins grey, butcher’s knives impaled through their skulls and sticking out of their spines, chatting about the weather. One zombie, his throat a bloody mess of latex and food colouring, had fallen behind the crowd, and stood beneath an oak tree on his mobile phone asking, where now? Which left do I take?
Now the sky was grey and the grass crackled underfoot, and only the bravest had ventured out from the university buildings that framed the square. One or two, in defiance of the threatening sky, hunched over the chess tables that marked the end of the would-be “chess district” of the city, complete with venerable shops and men who knew the difference between a Vienna and a king’s gambit. One offered to play me for twenty-five dollars. I patted my pockets and was surprised to discover I had nearly three hundred stuffed into a soft leather wallet. I sat down to play – sure, why not?
I don’t know how good you are, said my opponent. I won’t gamble. It’s money for the game, that’s all.
That’s fine, I replied. I’m only here to pass the time.
He said his name was Simon, and he lived at the Salvation Army shelter.
“I used to be an interior designer,” he explained, tearing into my pieces like a lion with a lamb. “But the recession came, and now I do whatever jobs I can.”
Like chess?
“I make maybe eighty bucks a day on the boards. Less now it’s cold. Sometimes folk don’t pay up, and the police don’t do nothing about that, cos it’s gambling and technically illegal, but they don’t care so long as no drugs are being dealt under the table.”
“Is there nothing you can do?”
“Against them who won’t pay? Nah. Folk who think they’re good don’t always take well to losing.”
“What happens when you lose?”
“I pay; wouldn’t come back here if I didn’t.”
“How often do you lose?”
He sucked breath judiciously between his teeth, then let it out all at once, cheeks puffing. “Not so often that it ain’t worth the risk.”
I nodded and struggled to stay alive in the face of his attacks. He moved carefully, without raising his head from the board. The ends of the fingers on his left hand were lightly calloused; those on his right were not. His eyes were grey and heavy, his skin was deep coffee, his hair was turning white at the roots long before its time. I said, what’s it like at the Salvation Army shelter?
It’s a roof, he replied. They’re strict, but it’s a roof.
He beat me, but only just, and I shook his hand, felt the coldness in his fingertips, and though he was beautiful – so very beautiful – I had no desire to be him for even a day. I left fifty dollars on the table and went on my way.
I dropped my body where I had found it and went via
a woman with bum compressed achingly into her tight, bright skirt,
a policeman with the taste of nicotine gum in his mouth,
a courier with headphones turned up far too high beneath his helmet,
the cleaning woman who changed the sheets in every room, wedding ring too tight on her right hand
back to Coyle.
I knocked on the door of the room, called, “Service!”
To my surprise, Coyle answered, his face washed, his hair combed, some semblance of civility on his face. “Already?”
“Yes, already,” I replied, tucking my trolley of white towels against the wall and pushing past him into the room. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but this body is dying for a pee.”
He was sitting on the end of the bed, legs swinging down to the floor, hands clasped, head bowed, when I returned.
“Did you have a good walk?” he asked.
“Sure. Saw some of the sights, took in a bit of atmosphere. Did you make your phone call?”
“Yes.”
“And? Should I be expecting armed vengeance to come crashing out of the cupboard any moment now?”
“No. I told you. I called a friend.”
“And who is this friend?”
“She’ll help us meet the sponsor.”
“And this sponsor will have answers for us? For you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
I shrugged. “Fine then. Who now?”
Chapter 83
Too long since I slept.
My bodies are rested, and I am not.
We sat in a diner off Lafayette and East Houston Street, and waited.
Coyle waited with coffee.
I waited in an Asian student with bright orange hair, who carried in her purple rucksack books on…
“The medicinal applications of chitin.”
“Really.” An empty sound as Coyle prodded his cup of coffee.
“Good God.” From the bottom of my bag I pulled out a small glass jar. Within it a creature as long as my index finger, fat as my thumb, rattled and bumped, its translucent wings flapping ineffectively against its prison walls. “No matter how old I get, I’m still always surprised by what I find in the bottom of my bag.”
“Do you know anything about the medicinal applications of chitin?” asked Coyle as I returned my belongings to the gloom of the rucksack.
“Frankly, no.”
“Then let’s hope no one asks you too many questions. Ma’am?”
The waitress smiled, and just about restrained herself from doing a little bob as she topped up his coffee
cup. “And for you, miss?”
“Do you do pancakes?”
“Sure we do!”
“With syrup?”
“Sweetie, all our pancakes come with syrup.”
“Whatever you’d recommend, please.”
“Sure thing!”
Coyle pressed his hands tighter against the coffee cup. “You’re not diabetic, I take it?”
“I can’t find any evidence that I am, and it feels like I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Do you eat constantly?”
“I eat when I’m hungry. It simply happens that sometimes I’m hungry several bodies in a row. And I will concede that knowing someone else will top up on salad and exercise when I’m done can induce a certain gluttony. You going to tell me anything about your friend?”
“She works for Aquarius.”
“You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
“I trust her.”
“That’s fine, but does she trust you? You and your bosses did part in a rather spectacular manner.”
“She trusts me. We spoke. She trusts me. We… have been close, sometimes.”
“Did you tell her about me?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to —”
“No,” fast. Then, “No. I want… this to be clean. Honest.” He thought about it a moment longer. “And if something does happen, if she has… If Aquarius do come, then I may… need you.” The words came out, slow and bitter. “What should I say your name is?”
“What? I suppose… Susie. Call me Susie.”
“OK then.”
The pancakes came, a great pile of them, bacon in between, syrup all over. I tucked in gleefully, running my finger round the edge of the plate to mop up the oozing sauce while Coyle tried not to look too sickened.
Then, as is always the way when meeting strangers, a woman who could have been anyone from anywhere sat down on the padded orange couch opposite us, and she wore long sleeves, long trousers, long gloves, a long silk scarf that was wound across her face and neck, long socks that vanished high up her trouser legs and probably tights underneath, and though it might have been a particularly in-depth sports section that weighed so heavily in the newspaper as she laid it down on the tabletop between us, it was more likely to be a .22 calibre revolver, loaded and ready to fire.
Coyle looked up into the thin strip of veil from which grey eyes stared, smiled and said, “Hi, Pam.”
One of her gloved hands rested beneath the paper, the other pressed against the table’s edge. Eyes flickered from Coyle to me, and back again. “Where did we meet?” she asked. Her accent was pure Manhattan, brisk and hard.
“Chicago, 2004,” he replied. “You were wearing a blue dress.”
“San Francisco, 2008. What did we eat on the night of the op?”
“Japanese. You had sushi, I had teriyaki, and in the morning you had the early flight and didn’t want to wake me to say goodbye.”
“Tell me what you said when I left.”
“I said your husband was a lucky man, and I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“And did you?” she asked, quick and sharp. “Did you tell a soul?”
“No, Pam. I didn’t tell anyone. I am me.”
For a moment her eyes lingered on his face, then slowly turned to me. “Who is this?”
“I’m Susie,” I said. “I’m a friend.”
“I don’t know you.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Pam,” blurted Coyle, “I don’t know what you’ve heard…”
“I heard that you were taken,” she retorted. “An operation went wrong. There’s an alert out on you. They say that you’ve been compromised by Janus.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I believe that you’re you. Don’t think that makes this easy. Phil —”
“I’m Nathan now.”
“OK, Nathan,” she went on in the same breath. “You’ve been compromised twice in as many weeks. There are orders.”
“And are you obeying them now? Are you going to do your job?”
“I… don’t know. I read the files you sent from Berlin.”
“Did you tell anyone?” he asked, eyes rising fast, and this was news to me too.
“No.”
“And?”
“And I can see different ways of looking at it.”
“Marigare shot me; he had orders to shoot me.”
Beneath the veil a flicker of her eyebrows. Surprise, perhaps disbelief. “Why?”
“We were bringing in a suspect, a possible ghost. Marigare decided the witness was compromised. We were supposed to…” he rolled the words slowly around his mouth, like the taste of aniseed that won’t wash away “… eliminate the threat. We took the body down to the river, and it said Galileo.”
“OK. Then?”
“Then Marigare shot me. ‘Just following orders’ and he shot me. In Berlin Kepler showed me the file and they lied to me, to us, Pam. They lied about what went down in Frankfurt, they lied about the hosts, they lied about Galileo, Kepler said —”
“Kepler lies.”
“You’ve seen the Galileo file too. Do you believe it? You’re the only one I trusted with it – what did you see?”
“You killed Marigare.” Her voice was high, cutting through words she didn’t want to hear.
“I… Yes. He shot me. He looked right at me and knew my name and shot me, Pam.”
Again her eyes flickered to me, quiet in my corner, then back to Coyle. “Say I believe you – how did you survive?”
The long breath Coyle exhaled was perhaps more expressive than any words. The gun beneath the newspaper turned my way. I wrapped my hands tight around my coffee mug. “Kepler,” I said. “You call me Kepler.”
An intake of breath. Her head rocked back, her arm jerked, the gun now turned firmly towards me, the muzzle sticking out a little from the newspaper. She didn’t speak, too many words at once for any to be spoken out loud, so Coyle spoke instead, low and urgent: “She… it’s no threat to us. It came here of its own accord.”
“If you know my name,” I added, “you’ll know that I have Aquarius’ computer records at my disposal, stolen from Berlin. I could have brought down Aquarius already, without ‘Phil’, without risking my neck. I’m here for Galileo – nothing more.”
“You’re working with this?” she hissed at Coyle.
“I would have died. She… it…” he spat the word, forcing the recollection of my being on to his lips “… it helped me survive. It hates Galileo and has done me no harm…”
“It tore Berlin to pieces.”
“It saved my life.”
“It’s worn you,” she hissed. “It’s violated you. Christ, do you even know what it’s done to you? Do you know what it’s made you do?”
“I haven’t —” I began, and she shrieked, shut up, shut up, loud enough for heads to turn, for Coyle to flinch, for her to shudder and force her voice down, her head down, a worm-like blue vein rising hot in the thin space between her eyes and her veil.
“Pam,” Coyle’s voice, soothing, “you disobeyed orders meeting me here. You read the Galileo file. I know you have. I know you understand. I know you know about… You understand what it is. What Galileo is. What he means to me. Now, perhaps you go through with your orders, perhaps you shoot me down, shoot this… girl in front of all these people. Or perhaps you have a team outside, ready to pick us up when we leave. I don’t know. But whatever you decide, believe this: Galileo is inside us. Aquarius ran a trial in Frankfurt and he took it, corrupted it, used it. I… killed a woman. No. That’s not even right. I murdered her. I murdered a woman on the steps of Taksim station because of Galileo’s lies. He’s been eating us up from the inside out, playing us. But… I did it. It was me. Kill me, don’t kill me, but whatever you decide, I need you to stop Galileo.”
She said nothing. Coyle reached out slowly across the table, rested his palm on top of her gloved hand and left it t
here. He left it there, and nothing changed, and she was crying without crying, refusing to let us see.
“Go,” she whispered.
“If you want us to —”
“Go! Get out, go!”
“The sponsor —”
“Just go!” she snarled, and Coyle jerked his hand away, nodded once and, without another word, climbed to his feet. I followed, gathering up my rucksack in my skinny arms and scampering after him as he strode to the door.
“Coyle…” I murmured, but he shook his head, so I closed my mouth, and followed, and said nothing at all.
Chapter 84
We moved hotel.
I had borrowed a few too many bodies from our present abode to feel safe.
Coyle watched the news.
I paced up and down, and when noon came and noon went, I said, “I’m late for class.”
“Then go to class,” he replied, eyes not moving from the TV screen.
“I don’t care about medical insects.”
“Then find something you care about, Kepler, and do that.”
I scowled and marched out of the hotel room, bag bouncing on my back.
I rode the Subway.
The insect in the jar in the bottom of my bag was growing feebler, rattling limply against the glass. I unscrewed the lid a little, let some air in, then did it up tight again. Laying the jar on the floor beside me, I reached out for the nearest passenger and, uncaring of who they were or how they seemed,
jumped.
I am beautiful, and I shop for beautiful things that will make me more so.
I am tourist, camera on my back, beige loafers on my feet, standing in the gallery of the Natural History Museum, staring up at the mighty monsters who died before me.
I am chubby businesswoman eating chocolate cake that she would probably shun and I adore.
I am schoolgirl, sitting with my legs folded beneath me in the library, reading of times gone by, tales told. And when my mother calls, I run to her side and hold her tight and she says, “Now then, what’s this? What’s the matter?” and she takes my head in her hands and presses her arms across my back and loves me, almost as much as I love her.