“Is that all about me?”
He ignored me. Instead of opening my file, he leaned forward and gazed at me with his unblinking eyes.
“How do you rate the Chuzzlewit case?”
I found myself staring at his scar. It ran from his forehead down to his chin and had all the size and subtlety of a shipbuilder’s weld. It pulled his lip up, but apart from that his face was pleasant enough; without the scar he might have been handsome. I was being unsubtle. He instinctively brought up a hand to cover it.
“Finest Cossack,” he murmured, making light of it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s hard not to gawp.”
He paused for a moment.
“I work for SpecOps-5,” he announced slowly, showing me a shiny badge.
“SO-5?” I gasped, failing to hide the surprise in my voice. “What do you lot do?”
“That’s restricted, Miss Next. I showed you the badge so you could talk to me without worrying about security clearances. I can okay that with Boswell if you’d prefer?—”
My heart was beating faster. Interviews with SpecOps operatives farther up the ladder sometimes led to transfers—
“So, Miss Next, what do you think about Chuzzlewit?”
“You want my opinion or the official version?”
“Your opinion. Official versions I get from Boswell.”
“I think it’s too early to tell. If ransom is the motive then we can assume the manuscript is still in one piece. If it’s stolen to sell or barter we can also consider it in one piece. If terrorism is the game then we might have to be worried. In scenarios one and three the Litera Tecs have sod all to do with it. SO-9 get involved and we’re kind of out of the picture.”
The man looked at me intently and nodded his head.
“You don’t like it here, do you?”
“I’ve had enough, put it that way,” I responded, slightly less guardedly than I should. “Who are you, anyway?”
The man laughed.
“Sorry. Very bad manners; I didn’t mean all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The name’s Tamworth, head field operative at SO-5. Actually,” he added, “that doesn’t mean so much. At present there are just me and two others.”
I shook his outstretched hand.
“Three people in a SpecOps division?” I asked curiously. “Isn’t that kind of mean?”
“I lost some guys yesterday.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that’s not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don’t like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don’t. But I understand.”
I nodded. I understood too.
“Why are you talking to me?” I asked almost casually. “I’m SO-27; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keeps telling me, my talents lie either in front of a Litera Tec desk or a kitchen stove.”
Tamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.
“I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don’t really have a good word for ‘No,’ they just fob. It’s what they’re best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.”
“If you’re SO-5 he doesn’t have much choice, does he?”
Tamworth laughed.
“That’s true. But you do. I’d never recruit anyone who didn’t want to join me.”
I looked at him. He meant it.
“Is this a transfer?”
“No,” replied Tamworth, “it isn’t. I just need you because you have information that is of use to us. You’ll be an observer; nothing more. Once you understand what we’re up against you’ll be very glad to be just that.”
“So when this is over I just get thrown back here?”
He paused and looked at me for a moment, trying to give the best assurance that he could without lying. I liked him for it.
“I make no guarantees, Miss Next, but anyone who has been on an SO-5 assignment can be pretty confident that they won’t be SO-27 forever.”
“What is it you want me to do?”
Tamworth pulled a form from his case and pushed it across the table to me. It was a standard security clearance and, once signed, gave SpecOps the right to almost everything I possessed and a lot more besides if I so much as breathed a word to someone with a lesser clearance. I signed it dutifully and handed it back. In exchange he gave me a shiny SO-5 badge with my name already in place. Tamworth knew me better than I thought. This done, he lowered his voice and began:
“SO-5 is basically a Search & Containment facility. We are posted with a man to track until found and contained, then we get another. SO-4 is pretty much the same; they are just after a different thing. Person. You know. Anyway, I was down at Gad’s Hill this morning, Thursday—can I call you Thursday?—and I had a good look at the crime scene at first hand. Whoever took the manuscript of Chuzzlewit left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.”
“Not a lot to go on, was there?”
“On the contrary. It was just the break I’ve been waiting for.”
“Did you share this with Boswell?” I asked.
“Of course not. We’re not interested in the manuscript; we’re interested in the man who stole it.”
“And who’s that?”
“I can’t tell you his name but I can write it.”
He took out a felt tip and wrote “Acheron Hades” on a notepad and held it up for me to read.
“Look familiar?”
“Very familiar. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard about him.”
“I know. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in ’68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.”
“Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?”
“He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.”
“He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.”
“Your information is good, Mr. Tamworth.”
Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.
“But the important thing is: You know what he looks like?”
“Of course,” I replied, “but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in ’82.”
“No; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn’t him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That’s why we can’t say his name. I call it Rule Number One.”
“His name? Why not?”
“Because he can hear his own name—even whispered—over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.”
“And why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit?”
Tamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked “Most Secret—SpecOps-5 clearance only.” The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.
“We don’t have a picture of him,” said Tamworth as I opened the file. “He doesn’t resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad’s Hill?”
“Yes?”
“They didn’t pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them durin
g the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?”
I nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron’s file. Tamworth continued:
“I’ve been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He’s cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.”
“Hartlepool in ’75?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Tamworth slowly. “You heard about it?”
I had. Most people had. Hades had been cornered in the basement of a multistory car park after a botched robbery. One of his associates lay dead in a bank nearby; Acheron had killed the wounded man to stop him talking. In the basement, he persuaded an officer into giving him his gun, killing six others as he walked out. The only officer who survived was the one whose gun he had used. That was Acheron’s idea of a joke. The officer in question never gave a satisfactory explanation as to why he had given up his firearm. He had taken early retirement and gassed himself in his car six years later after a short history of alcoholism and petty theft. He came to be known as the seventh victim.
“I interviewed the Hartlepool survivor before he took his own life,” Tamworth went on, “after I was instructed to find . . . him at any cost. My findings led us to formulate Rule Number Two: If you ever have the misfortune to face him in person, believe nothing that he says or does. He can lie in thought, deed, action and appearance. He has amazing persuasive powers over those of weak mind. Did I tell you that we have been authorized to use maximum force?”
“No, but I guessed.”
“SO-5 has a shoot-to-kill policy concerning our friend—”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a sec. You have the power to eliminate without trial?”
“Welcome to SpecOps-5, Thursday—what did you think containment meant?”
He laughed a laugh that was slightly disturbing.
“As the saying goes: If you want to get into SpecOps, act kinda weird. We don’t tend to pussyfoot around.”
“Is it legal?”
“Not in the least. It’s Blind Eye Grand Central below SpecOps-8. We have a saying: Below the eight, above the law. Ever hear it?”
“No.”
“You’ll hear it a lot. In any event we make it our Rule Number Three: Apprehension is of minimal importance. What gun do you carry?”
I told him and he scribbled a note.
“I’ll get some fluted expansion slugs for you.”
“There’ll be hell to pay if we get caught with those.”
“Self-defense only,” explained Tamworth quickly. “You won’t be dealing with this man; I just want you to ID him if he shows. But listen: If the shit hits the fan I don’t want any of my people left with bows and arrows against the lightning. And anything less than an expanding slug is about as much good as using wet cardboard as a flak jacket. We know almost nothing about him. No birth certificate, not even a reliable age or even who his parents were. He just appeared on the scene in ’54 as a petty criminal with a literary edge and has worked his way steadily upward to being number three on the planet’s most-wanted list.”
“Who’re number one and two?”
“I don’t know and I have been reliably informed that it’s far better not to know.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I’ll call you. Stay alert and keep your pager with you at all times. You’re on leave as of now from SO-27, so just enjoy the time off. I’ll be seeing you!”
He was gone in an instant, leaving me with the SO-5 badge and a thumping heart. Boswell returned, followed by a curious Paige. I showed them both the badge.
“Way to go!” said Paige, giving me a hug, but Boswell seemed less happy. After all, he did have his own department to think about.
“They can play very rough at SO-5, Next,” said Boswell in a fatherly tone. “I want you to go back to your desk and have a long calm think about this. Have a cup of coffee and a bun. No, have two buns. Don’t make any rash decisions, and just run through all the pros and cons of the argument. When you’ve done that I would be happy to adjudicate. Do you understand?”
I understood. In my hurry to leave the office I almost forgot the picture of Landen.
4.
Acheron Hades
. . . The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts—and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field—is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good—and we all know how rare that is . . .
ACHERON HADES
—Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit
TAMWORTH DIDN’T call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up-to-date with some reading, filing, mending the car and also—because of the new legislation—to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.
“Plock-plock,” said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.
“No wings?” asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick’s slightly odd shape.
“He’s a Version 1.2,” I explained. “One of the first. They didn’t get the sequence complete until 1.7.”
“Must be pretty old.”
“Twelve years this October.”
“I had one of the early Thylacines,” said the official glumly. “A Version 2.1. When we decanted him he had no ears. Stone deaf. No warranty or anything. Bloody liberty, I call it. Do you read New Splicer?”
I had to admit that I didn’t.
“They sequenced a Steller’s sea cow last week. How do I even get one of those through the door?”
“Grease its sides?” I suggested. “And show it a plate of kelp?”
But the official wasn’t listening; he had turned his attention to the next dodo, a pinkish creature with a long neck. The owner caught my eye and smiled sheepishly.
“Redundant strands filled in with flamingo,” he explained. “I should have used dove.”
“Version 2.9?”
“2.9.1, actually. A bit of a hotchpotch but to us he’s simply Chester. We wouldn’t swap him for anything.”
The inspector had been studying Chester’s registration documents.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “2.9.1s come under the new Chimera category.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not enough dodo to be dodo. Room seven down the corridor. Follow the owner of the pukey, but be careful; I sent a quarkbeast down there this morning.”
I left Chester’s owner and the official arguing together and took Pickwick for a waddle in the park. I let him off the leash and he chased a few pigeons before fraternizing with some feral dodos who were cooling their feet in the pond. They splashed excitedly and made quiet plock plock noises to one another until it was time to go home.
Two days after that I had run out of ways to rearrange the furniture, so it was lucky that Tamworth called me. He told me he was on a stakeout and that I needed to join him. I hastily scribbled down the address and was in the East End in under forty minutes. The stakeout was in a shabby street of converted warehouses that had been due for demolition two decades before. I doused the lights and got out, hid anything of value and locked the car carefully. The battered Pontiac was old and grotty enough not to arouse suspicion in the grimy surroundings. I glanced around. The brickwork was crumbling and heavy smears of green algae streaked the walls where the down pipes had once been. The windows were cracked and dirty and the brick wall at ground
level was stained alternately with graffiti or the sooty blackness of a recent fire. A rusty fire escape zigzagged up the dark building and cast a staccato shadow on the potholed road and several burned-out cars. I made my way to a side door according to Tamworth’s instructions. Inside, large cracks had opened up in the walls and the damp and decay had mixed with the smell of Jeyes fluid and a curry shop on the ground floor. A neon light flashed on and off regularly, and I saw several women in tight skirts hovering in the dark doorways. The citizens who lived in the area were a curious mix; the lack of cheap housing in and around London attracted a cross section of people, from locals to down-and-outs to professionals. It wasn’t great from a law-and-order point of view, but it did allow SpecOps agents to move around without raising suspicion.
I reached the seventh floor, where a couple of young Henry Fielding fanatics were busy swapping bubble-gum cards.
“I’ll swap you one Sophia for an Amelia.”
“Piss off!” replied his friend indignantly. “If you want Sophia you’re going to have to give me an Allworthy plus a Tom Jones, as well as the Amelia!”
His friend, realizing the rarity of a Sophia, reluctantly agreed. The deal was done and they ran off downstairs to look for hubcaps. I compared a number with the address that Tamworth had given me and rapped on a door covered with peeling peach-colored paint. It was opened cautiously by a man somewhere in his eighties. He half-hid his face from me with a wrinkled hand, and I showed him my badge.
“You must be Next,” he said in a voice that was really quite sprightly for his age. I ignored the old joke and went in. Tamworth was peering through some binoculars at a room in the building opposite and waved a greeting without looking up. I looked at the old man again and smiled.
“Call me Thursday.”
He seemed gratified at this and shook my hand.
“The name’s Snood; you can call me Junior.”
“Snood?” I echoed. “Any relation to Filbert?”
The old man nodded.
“Filbert, ah yes!” he murmured. “A good lad and a fine son to his father!”
Filbert Snood was the only man who had even remotely interested me since I left Landen ten years ago. Snood had been in the ChronoGuard; he went away on assignment to Tewkesbury and never came back. I had a call from his commanding officer explaining that he had been unavoidably detained. I took that to mean another girl. It hurt at the time but I hadn’t been in love with Filbert. I was certain of that because I had been in love with Landen. When you’ve been there you know it, like seeing a Turner or going for a walk on the west coast of Ireland.