My first kill was a kid about the same age as me. He had wrapped a garroting wire around my throat and almost snapped my neck. I stabbed him in the stomach, and then when he let go I turned and stabbed him three more times in the chest. His intention had been to steal my water skin and blanket. I didn't have any food, or water for that matter, but neither did he. I had been lucky to come by both the water skin and the blanket. I had wandered the "desert" for weeks before I finally found civilization other than my own. I found a dead man, dead probably for weeks, took his belongings, which consisted of said water skin and blanket, and in addition a stained but useable tunic and a crude stonework knife of dubious usefulness.
But, it was useful enough to kill my attacker. At the time, I barely considered what I had done. I wasn't hungry enough at that time to eat him, so I left him and moved on in search of food, water, and better land. At the time, I hadn't even been afraid. Surprised, yes. Aware of mortal danger, yes. Afraid, no. I had not hesitated to kill, even if it was in self-defense. Stabbing him multiple times ensured his quick death. If I hadn't he would have died a longer, and intensely painful death. But that did not occur to me, not even afterwards. At the time, I simply struck back when struck, and struck hard enough that my attacker would not attack me again. I felt no regret, and I didn't give the boy another thought until years and years later.
When I did, and when I do, I wish with every fiber of my being that I could change what happened. I've come up with all sorts of scenarios; I give him the water skin, I find him before he finds me, I pay attention to the noises around me and disarm him. I've invented hour-long conversations with the boy, although we never exchanged words, and even if we had I'm not sure we would have spoken the same language. Most of the time I forgive myself. I was young and inexperienced in a hostile environment. Sometimes, although rarely, I find I am at peace with this action of mine. If ever he and I meet in an afterlife, I can look him in the eye, figuratively anyway.
But I will never forget how casually I took my first human life.
I'm fighting off sleep now. I got maybe… fifteen minutes' worth on the train? I can pull this off for another day maybe, but then my work is going to start to suffer. Best to try to fit a two or four hour session in somewhere.
Upstate New York. Somewhere in this parking lot I've got a car parked. Maybe I should just take a cab. But best not to involve more people than necessary. I'm not sure when my tails are going to emerge. It should be down to three now. From the Watcher communiqué it sounds like they've finally established that they're supposed to leave me alone. I glance at my PDA again. No new information, but I should give it time. Time isn't really expendable at the moment, but I don't think there's anything I can do about it. Imposing myself on the situation will only draw attention to me and what I'm doing and will probably not get any faster results.
I find the car, "convince" the lock to open, then take longer finding the keys under the seat then if I'd just hotwired it. Cursing all the delays, I start up the car and blast the air conditioner to keep awake. I don't really need it, but it's helpful. I try to keep my thoughts on the information I received earlier, but thoughts are stubborn things with lives of their own (I'm quite convinced), and before long they're dwelling on Pao. Why did she go to the Watchers? Was it to keep an eye on me? They don't keep records on me, or if they do they're in big trouble. Was it to watch the others, so if one of them finally got me, she'd know about it? Was she abusing her position? She had recently, but the circumstances were pretty extenuating. Was she turning on them now, or working under someone else's orders, or just covering for someone, or for me? What's all this Canada nonsense? Misdirection? Misinformation? Does she have an accomplice, or a boss there? She's awfully independent… if she's working with someone it's likely she's being coerced or is doing the coercing. If she had left on any flights to China I'd know about it by now. Unless we missed one of her pseudonyms. Always a possibility.
I consider the possibility of convincing someone to do the satellite analysis for me. It would save me a considerable amount of time, but I'm the one with the surefire intuition. I wish I had picked up her trail sooner; it would have saved a lot of hassle and worry. A sudden thought hits me with the force of a jackhammer. Ben! He used to take business trips up to Canada all the time! Not strictly in the Ontario area, but he'd been enough times to feel comfortable there. Although he lives in Nevada now.
I whip out my cell phone and dial a South African contact.
"Toby! Toby, quick, I need a secure line." I shouldn't be doing this. My cell is protected as best as it can be, but it's still a glorified transmitter, and there's no way to be sure who's listening.
"Are you on a mobile?"
"Yes! Please, as secure as you can make it, and now."
He makes a disapproving noise. "You know I can't guarantee anything."
"Yeah, yeah. What part of now didn't you understand?"
He snorts, unperturbed by my irritation, which is why I work with him. "At the click."
I wait, trying to concentrate on the noise on the cell phone and not in the car. Finally I hear the click of a transferred call.
Ring. Please be there, Ben, I plead with my head. But some time in listening to the static, I know he's not there. Ring. Well, I don't know, it's just instinct, but like I said, my instincts are better than most people's logic. Actually, that's not saying much. Fine, my instincts are better than most logic. Period. Ring. But I'm not going to hang up until I have confirmation.
"Hello?" A tired, female voice answers.
Ben's wife. She sounds older than I remembered. Probably because she is older than I remembered, but I'm supposed to be concentrating on her. "Mrs. Baucum?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour." I glance at the clock. It's only about eleven p.m. Well, it's late for retired people. "I'm calling for Mr. Baucum. Is he available?"
"No he isn't, can I take a message?" Oh fuck fuck fuck.
"I'm afraid I need to contact him as soon as possible. Could you tell me when he'll be available?"
"No, but I can have him return your call if you leave a number." Smart girl. I smile appreciatively. Her voice belies her anxiety, but only to the trained ear. She's covering for Ben. He should have given her some better instruction on voice stressors.
I give her a number that will eventually get the caller in touch with me. "Ask for Officer Annersen. Can you tell me where he is, Mrs. Baucum? This is very important."
She hesitates. Bad move. "What is this regarding?"
"I'm working on a case involving Mr. Baucum's former boss. I wouldn't ask if it weren't important." I take a minute to make sure I'm phrasing things right. When impersonating a police officer, it's best to do a good job.
Again she hesitates. This time it's alright, though; she could be digesting the implications of that. "He's out of town at the moment, perhaps you should speak with him when he returns." My stomach twists uncomfortably around that hoagie.
I let only the disappointment resonate in my voice, and then only a mild amount. "Thank you, Mrs. Baucum, I hope I'll speak to him soon."
As soon as I hang up, I give Bern a call. I guess Pao really is headed for Canada.
I sat on a cold rock, glaring gloomily into the creek. My thighs were still hurting and my back was beginning to itch. Good, I thought bitterly, it'll get infected and then all that work will be ruined. That turned out to be too much to hope for.
Hitthu came walking down by the creek, fixing me with that horrible understanding gaze of hers.
"You're overreacting, you know," she said, sitting down next to me.
I wasn't in the mood for companionship. "Easy for you to say. Just go away, I don't want to talk to you. Or at all. Just go."
Instead she leaned back and looked up at the sky. "The clouds. They go by so fast."
Her point was far from lost on me. "Memories are mountains, not clouds. No matter how far away you get, they're still there, and still just as big." I threw her a look with as much bile as I could muster.
She just laughed at me. "All of us have been shamed at one time or another. People forget. It won't be forever, your patriarch is getting old."
I glared at her, truly angry with her now. "Your shame had no such dire consequences, did it?"
She looked startled. "Are you forgetting-"
"Don't be a fool. You know I don't forget," I interrupted. I looked away, trying to hide the full extent of my anger and shame. "This is forever. You would do well to stop being my friend. You'll only get trouble for it, and I won't be able to help anymore, or return the favor."
Part of me really wanted her to insist that she would never abandon me. But the rest of me knew that if she did, our friendship would come at a very high price. An ongoing one. Even if a power shift was brought in on a new wind, my status would be unlikely to change. This was one case where I knew if I kicked the world I'd break my foot. And worse, so would Hitthu. We just weren't that good of friends.
She stood up and looked down on me, her gaze evaluative. I refused to meet her eyes; instead I stared pointedly at the creek. Finally she spoke.
"But mountains are clouds, too." She walked away, and stayed away.
I run up the stairs of this boring suburban house I plan to call home for a day, maybe two. I'm anxious to get inside so I can make more calls without being concerned about the insecurity of cell phones. I've been in this house once before, but I don't have the key. Undeterred, I pick the lock as discretely as I can and make my way inside, trying to remember the furniture layout and where I'll find the phone. I hurry to the phone, set up the computer, and as soon as I'm sure the line is as secure as I can make it, I start making phone calls again.
More information arrives on my PDA, but it's about Sonny's street criminals and is pretty predictable. I'm a bit surprised this took so long, but then I suppose Sonny doesn't keep as good of records as, say, the Watchers. Nevertheless, I make a mental note that this information might be faulty, and to check on the investigators ASAP. Then it's back to the rounds as I mobilize people to locate Ben.
I still can't believe I hadn't thought of him sooner. He's a target as much as Pao, although she did kind of stick a bull's eye around her neck by joining the Watchers. Stupid girl. But if I can find Ben, Pao won't be far behind. Except she is traveling on foot, or was. I wonder if I should be concerned that looking for them will put them in greater danger of being found by someone else first. Well, it shouldn't stop me from looking for them, but it's imperative I proceed with caution. Maybe I should be doing the Ben inquiries myself and leaving Pao to delegation. She did do the incredibly stupid when she murdered those two saps.
I put the phone down for a minute and sigh. Sleep deprivation dulls my instincts. I should know better. Alright, time to trust my instincts. Keep looking for Ben and Pao like I have been. Maybe get some help with the satellite photos. Pin a tail on Ben's wife to keep her safe. Okay, phone time again.
Another three hours and what do I get, another night older and deeper in fret. I stretch, check my PDA again, worry briefly that I haven't gotten any more information packets, then let myself crash on the couch. Two hours sleep, like I promised myself.
My mother was a beautiful woman. She was tall, like me. Well, tall for our people. She had a natural presence, a natural confidence. If she'd been taller, she would have been the envy of every ballerina everywhere. She danced like dancing was living. She loved it. She inspired me to love it. Even when I was a better dancer than she was, she was more beautiful to watch. Or at least I thought so.
We would dance around the fire on festival nights. Some of the other women would usually join us, and always the slaves. Some of the men made what we passed off as music. Those were the best times of my life. We would be well fed for once, and practically drunk off the feeling of a full belly. They were celebrations of life, and we sure tried to suck the marrow out of it. Usually the dancing dissolved into sex, but my mom and I would dance for so long that there was usually no one for us to partner with. We'd finally just lay down on the ground and look up at the stars and fall asleep to dream that we were still dancing.
Later, when I was made a slave of my own people, I was required to dance, and to have sex with any man around the fire who felt like grabbing me. Most of the time it wasn't so bad. It wasn't meant to degrade me, or anything like that; it was just a life and fertility ritual. It was simply compulsory for me. The men I had sex with generally didn't feel any need to dominate or humiliate me. A few did. When that happened, I would imagine I was still dancing around the fire, and that my mom was with me. I always imagined her with me when I danced. She made me keep loving it, even when those men should have made me stop.
When I fell in love, memories of those encounters should have generated some less than healthy thoughts about sex, but they didn't. I could give myself completely to him, and not just physically. The loss of the one person in my childhood that loved me unconditionally should have made me hesitate before falling so hard for someone, but it didn't. My mother taught me to love life, and love dancing, and no pain, no trauma could take away that joy.
Or so I thought.
Finally. The rest of the Watcher report and the CIA information had come while I was asleep. I pick up my PDA and quickly read through the files.
The Watcher, Pao Yng, had been assigned to someone named Le Pai. In China. How she had ended up taking the trip stateside was a mystery to them; she had stopped sending in her reports a month ago, although nothing in her reports to date had indicated Le Pai had been aware of her spying, nor that anything else was amiss. Le Pai was still in China, with a new Watcher assigned to him. She had reappeared suddenly in Louisville. A Watcher had tailed his assignment to a warehouse (I roll my eyes at the stereotype) where some sort of meeting or trade was taking place. A weapons smuggler was present. The tone of the Watchers' discussions about the smuggler indicated that they thought he was more or less a petty criminal.
I know differently. I don't recognize his pseudonym, but I recognize the description and the MO alright. He's a big time arms dealer for certain terrorist organizations, and a few governments to boot. He was meeting with this Watcher's assignment, and two of his new lackeys were there, although it doesn't really seem clear why. The Watcher wasn't near enough to hear the conversation, and didn't really seem to know what business the two had together. They had barely gotten introductions out of the way when a woman I recognize immediately barged in. Anyway, she attacked the arms dealer, and his two lackeys scatter, thinking the dealer's dead. It didn't take them too long to realize the dealer's not her target; it was rather the person they met. Being the curious fools they were, they hid and watched. To make a long story short, she killed their contact and confronts the Watcher. The man panicked and tried to leave, but luckily it didn't cost him his life. She bullied him and then left him cowering on the warehouse floor. The poor man was supposed to approach the two lackeys, but between mastering his own fear and confusion and getting the arms dealer an ambulance they slipped through the cracks.
The Watchers weren't too concerned; they tried to pick the two up. Unfortunately, the two were so spooked that they had headed for New York. Instead, they found Pao sniffing around. It took them so long to figure out who she was and that she wasn't actually supposed to be there that she gave them the slip.
The whole story I had more or less pieced together already, but it does give me a few more points to investigate in the Watcher archives. The CIA information is much more detailed and engrossing. Their reason for following me, as I guessed, is simply that I work for them and am on leave. Technically I don't work for them, although they like to think I do. Basically I work with them because they are one of the better-prepared organizations, and if I lead them to a potential problem or threat they're usually pretty efficient at dealing with it. However, they do have their limitations, and their own allies that I don't approve of. As is probably obvious, they aren't the only organization I work with. The problem is none of these organizations, CIA included, trust each other to any useful extent whatsoever. The CIA isn't really aware that I have these other affiliations, but they suspect them. As well they might. In any event, I may be an ally, but I'm not a trusted employee, and they apparently feel the need to keep tabs on me. Which, in turn, is why I obsess over security. It's not so much that I don't want them listening in on my conversations as I don't like the leaks in their system.
Luckily, I can exploit the leaks as well as anyone else can, and can find out just how much they know about my activities. They have a pretty detailed account of my activities, including my accessing satellite photos. They even have a few sound clips of me threatening that Watcher, Roman. What they don't have speaks volumes. They don't have any of my cell phone calls, except the one I made to Jerome before visiting Roman. They know I got on a train but not where I got off. Not yet anyway. They don't know what I learned from the barman, or if I learned anything at all, and they don't know what the hell I'm doing. They attempted to gain access to my PDA and failed. They're in the process of getting access to more of my cell phone calls, but the only luck they might have is with my call to Ben's wife. I hope they don't get that one, but it's possible. They managed to get onto the NYU computer I used, but too late, they got no useful information. Same with the library computer.
One thing I am particularly relieved about is that they seem to consider the possibility that I'm spying on them in turn as likely. If they didn't, I would suspect that they knew I was spying and were feeding me information, and it would also indicate my sources were in danger. I don't have time for damage control so I hope it won't be necessary.
I continue reading the CIA file. More on Jerome Vaughn than I would have thought necessary. I suppose they're looking for leverage, or maybe they just want to see if he's more careless than I am. Ah, well, let them. He shouldn't need the heads up and he shouldn't be in any danger if he keeps his mouth shut. There's also a bit about my other tags. Not much in the way of personal information, but no doubt they'll get around to that. Anyway, it seems the Watcher tail was the most obvious and nearly exposed the CIA tail several times, although I'm pretty sure that was accidental. It seems I was right; the Watchers had been getting mixed signals as to whether they should stick to me or abort. I don't know how extensive the CIA's knowledge of the Watchers is, but after this encounter it can only have been improved. The two Watchers were only careful that I didn't hear their discussions.
The spooks also managed to connect the dots; they guessed I was visiting that bar because of the murders, but as usual with them two and two make five and the assumption was made that I'm involved with the arms dealer. This seems to have been questioned when their tags overheard some of the Watchers' discussions, but when they found out a Watcher was somehow involved in the head arms dealer's injury in Louisville (an incident they still don't have a good account of), they decided that clinched it. So now my dealings with said arms dealer and his organization(s) are being researched. I'm sure they'll find something of interest; the dealer had a lot of clients, and I have my finger on a lot of pulses.
There are still some gaps in my intel, but nothing too worrying. I'm still waiting for my Bern information, but I don't expect that for hours. Time for satellite analysis. I sigh. I get the downloads started, then try to think of who I should recruit to help me with this. My first choice is an astronomer I discovered via SETI, but I'm going to have enough trouble waking anybody on the East Coast up. I suppose there's that MIT grad student… but last I checked he was a late night kind of guy. That data analyst expert, Harchet. He shouldn't be on sabbatical yet; he's usually in his office early. I find a good photo of Pao and email it to him, along with her height and weight, then give him a call.
"Hey Harchet, I just emailed you."
"Yeah, I noticed. Who is this?"
"Our newest target. Catskills region, starting from New York City sixteen days ago. Northward trending. Flag the photos if you find anything."
He sighs. "Am I on my own?"
"No, I'm working it, too."
This surprises him. "I thought you only delegated tall orders."
I grin. "I'm usually too busy with the impossible ones to help with the tall ones."
"Nothing impossible to keep you occupied?"
I snort. "This is impossible. Come on, might as well dig in. Happy hunting."
So the hunt is on, in New York and Georgia. Hopefully our quarry is still in range.