Personal(113)

The panels scored 100 per cent.

Then came the moment of truth. They loaded up the .50-cal and laid it on the bench. Armour-piercing ammunition. For which seventy yards was more than unrealistically short. But I understood the point they were hoping to make.

The panels scored 100 per cent.

And at a hundred feet, and at fifty, and even at twenty-five. Although the scientists were open enough to point out that the visible pitting at the shorter ranges would require replacement of the panels after every such incident. Even the scientists were political enough to understand a candidate couldn’t show up behind gear already riddled with bullet holes from previous failed attempts. Like he had gotten out of Dodge just in time. Not good for the image. People might get a clue.

There was a lot of foreign money in the project, and a lot of valuable foreign lives depending on the outcome, so the test procedure was supervised every step of the way by representatives from all the interested parties. They checked the numbers, they asked the questions, they looked behind the curtain. They were all intelligence specialists, but scientifically literate. The old guard, with nothing better to do, all extremely experienced. The guys from Paris didn’t mind. It was like any other peer review. Just compressed in time. I swiped the screen and scrolled down, through the list of participants, just a little ways, to E, for Etats-Unis d’Amérique.

The United States of America.

The Pentagon had sent Tom O’Day.





FIFTY-FOUR


I LOOKED OVER the low wall at Joey’s house. The gates were still open and lights were still burning. But nothing else was happening. I gave the phone back to Bennett, and I said, ‘Why don’t you go take a short stroll?’

He said, ‘Why would I want to?’

‘I need to talk to Ms Nice alone.’

‘What are you going to say to her?’

‘Something inaudible, from where you’re going to be.’

He paused a beat, and then he got up and disappeared in the dark, there one minute, gone the next, like on the apartment balcony in Paris. Nice and I squatted side by side, with our backs against the wall.

I said, ‘This is the scene where I try to get rid of you.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘Not for the reasons you think. I could use your help a dozen different ways, and you’d be good at all of them. But this is between Kott and me. He wants me gone, therefore I want him gone. Not fair to involve other people, in a private quarrel. I’m going to tell Bennett the same thing.’

‘Bennett will stay away anyway. He has to. There are rules. But I’m free to do what I want.’

‘This is me and Kott. Which has rules too. It’s one on one.’

‘You’re just saying that.’

‘Because I mean it.’

‘I think you’re being kind.’

‘That’s an accusation I don’t hear often.’

She said, ‘Why did he take my pill?’

‘Take as in deprive, or take as in swallow?’

‘Swallow.’

‘I’m guessing he took all kinds of pills. A guy that big gets aches and pains. In his back, and his joints. So he already likes the opiates and the painkillers, and then he starts to dabble in the bad stuff passing through his hands. Pretty soon, he sees a pill, he takes it. Occupational hazard.’

‘I don’t want to take them any more. Did you see his mouth? He was disgusting.’

‘Right now you can’t take them any more. Even if you wanted to.’

‘Is that the reason? You think I’m going to freak out?’

‘Are you?’

‘Not from anxiety, anyway. I can’t even see anxiety in the rear-view mirror.’

‘We’ll be OK.’

‘We?’

‘You out here, me in there.’

‘I should help.’

‘This is me and Kott,’ I said again. ‘I’m not going to gang up on him. Wouldn’t feel right, afterwards.’

The gates were still open, but I didn’t want to go in the front. It was the obvious point of entry. It was the main place Kott would watch. Probably MI5 would come up with a number. Kott spent 61 per cent of his time watching the front. In second place would be the back yard. Third and fourth place would be the end walls. But which was third and which was fourth? I guessed third place went to the end facing the bowling club. That was where the action had been thus far. So I headed the other way, to the other end of the house, fourth place, away from the night-vision, creeping through the shadows, then climbing the fence. Which was not easy, but it was feasible, because the ironwork had sculpted features that acted like rungs on a ladder. I stepped down into a flowerbed. The side of the house was right there, across a narrow path. There were eight ground-floor windows. They would all have been drawn small by the kid with the crayon, but I could have gotten through any one of them standing up.