The hall was heavy with antiseptic and lemon odours, though they did nothing to cover over the reek of ammonia.
Through the low bustle of bodies and the symphony of human noises – coughs and shuffles whispers and the crinkles of newspapers being folded and magazine pages being turned - two sounds dominated. Discordant and sharp, loosed at irregular intervals, piercing electric klaxons and beeps cut through the air, but they were offset by the even clicks of Twilight's pocket watch. Even tucked into his pocket, the weight firm against his breast, it was audible.
In a Spy's arsenal, the greatest weapon, honed and polished through attentive care and study, was preparation. Whenever Twilight entered a room, he had already taken stock of points of egress, identified makeshift weapons, and noted the nooks and blind spots where an ambush might await. That was true whether he was a father, stopping off at common bakery or supermarket on the way home from work to pick up Anya's peanuts or the latest snack advertised during a commercial break in Bondman, or he was strutting through a posh dinning hall while in disguise as a bus boy or dilettante, trailing a target.
Plans and alternatives piled atop one another moment by moment when he was on mission.
Every contingency had to be plotted out with immaculate precision like the clockwork gears of a fine time piece. Each piece fit just so. All that would be required was a pivot and stutter-step onto another pathway that he'd laid out.
Everything in harmony. Everything working together to keep the melodious tick and tac of the cathedral hands of his pocket watch, the monogrammed initial on the inside of its hunter case now covered over by a small photograph of his mock-wife, Yor, precise and clean and clear.
Gold had long since warmed in the heat of his still-sweating palm. How long had he been looking? The back of his hand rested against the starched and rough fabric of his slacks.
Self-soothing by rocking in place, Anya sat on his knee, shuffling backwards so that her back was to his chest. Warmth built up between them.
In the photo, Yor was wearing that one low-hanging sweater that exposed her shoulders and collarbone. The angle of the lights they had set up to take the photograph cast shadows into the divots next to her shoulder. A formal man such as the psychiatrist, Loid Folger, might have been expected to carry an image of his prim wife in a dress, the photograph staged to conjure a formal air, but human beings were complex, conflicted things, tearing themselves apart by the seams. Research suggested that incongruity between external reserve and the more intimate and homey feeling evoked by the photograph would, in fact, cement his cover if he was to 'show off' his wife.
Everything was a balancing act, a tightrope walk like the performances at the circus that Anya had clapped and cheered over, even as she cawed something about her Momma being even cooler than the garish entertainers cartwheeling about the ring, chucking knives at moving bulls-eyes or leaping through flaming hoops. Sweating and babbling, clearly with embarrassment, Yor had patted the little girl on the head and wondered where she got that active imagination. So very silly.
Odd how children took pride in their parents.
And the reverse.
Was that codependency of a sort?
A broad clock, its glass face hazy with dust, had been placed on the far wall, and the sound of it had Loid - not Twilight because he was merely feigning frustration as befit the role – clenched his hand into a fist around the timepiece, as if trying to block out the sound.
Their clock was running slow.
And the clack of its seconds hand, audible over the din to his keen ears, was just a half second off-set from his pocket watch.
He could have blocked it out using his well-honed mental disciplines, enough to sustain him through the worst tortures an enemy nation could hope to inflict on a man such as him, but hearing the discordant echo grated.
Method acting was the best kind.
He had to look angry.
That was good cover.
Having clambered up onto his lap so that his arm could fold around her stomach, Anya whimpered, almost as she had on that first day when he'd seen her, standing alone in the dingy orphanage that stank of mold and unwashed bodies, excluded by the other children because she was ... odd. In her nativity, she had trusted him enough to clamber up onto his chest and fall asleep clutching his shirt.
People could become broken by being ostracized, passed over and returned time and again by foster and adoptive parents who had license to be picky when there were just so many orphans to choose from.
There was always another model if things didn't work out.
He put away his watch.
Digging into his pocket, stuffed with a few scraps of paper, he withdrew a small pent-packet of shelled peanuts. Cracking the seal with a single hand, the other stroking Anya's hair, was effortless for a man who could disarm a tripwire explosive with his toes.
"Are you hungry?" Dinner had been abandoned only half prepared. Anya really should be coaxed to eat something.
The girl didn't even shake her head, merely hugging his hand to her belly more tightly.
Twilight despised the reality that, no matter how well-plotted out, plans always gave way.
Only by thinking on his feet could he have survived this long in so elegant and deadly a game. Adaptability, much as he loathed alterations to a meticulous plan plotted out down to the last, was just as vital.
You could never anticipate everything.
"Is momma going to die?" Anya's head tilted backwards to the point that the crown of her scalp butted against his pectorals, looking up at him.
"No," he said, no knowing whether he was lying on being honest, caught between plans that couldn't coalesce. A spy – a man – never relied on others. It was odious. People couldn't be accounted for. "Of course not. She's going to be perfectly fine."
That was the wrong thing to say as her face twisted up in righteous anger, offset by the dribble of snot that leaked out of her nose.
"You're a liar Papa." The upside-down folds of Anya's lips were as alien as the tone of near genuine loathing, even as her little hands dug into the flesh of his forearms underneath the rolled-up cuffs of his dress shirt. "Why do you always lie?"
A little fist pounded into the back of his hand.
The lie named Loid Folger scraped trimmed fingernails across his brow as he felt acid in his throat, a directionless energy like an adrenaline rush setting his blood pounding, yet she seemed mollified before he even formed the answer, throat cracking with a little hiccupped sob.
"Because I'm ..." What was he? What could he be? His palms sweated even as he tried to mop the film away from his brow. "Scared."
Perhaps honest was what he could be.
The little orphan blinked up at him, her eyes misting and her head cocked to the side, before she turned in place to cling to his chest. Feeble arms clutched at him and somehow, in the weakness of that grip, caused him to flinch while he hugged her back.
"... I'm scared too, Papa."
The mission. That was what was important at this juncture, he knew, even as he stroked soothing patterns over her upper back. The girl. The woman. Means to an end. A loss of one, or both, merely meant that he would have to shift tracks. Find a new plan.
It was only...
Exhausted and pacified by the motion of his hand, the girl shivered, a whole-body twitch, a hypnic jerk sending her bucking in his arms.
Failure.
Though he knew no words to children's songs before Anya, he had researched the matter so that, if asked, he could lie convincingly about the girl's favourite bedtime stories and the lullabies he'd used while rocking her to sleep when she was a baby. He'd had nothing stored away for use – no mother's voice that calmed him, or firm intonations that laid the foundations and scaffolding for his life, as a father read from the scriptures or a storybook.
Any recollection of his own infancy were washed away with time, everything as blasted out as the rubble-strewn cityscape that a sooty blond boy had stumbled through while weeping, unheeded, so many years earlier.
That memory was so sharp that it had cut out everything else before it, and sculpted everything that came after.
There would be no recovering from this. Plans would unravel. No contingency existed that could account for this.
Pain burst in his jaw, suddenly a sharp ache because he'd been clenching and grinding, giving away too much. Involuntary muscle twitches had has hand tightening around Anya's stomach, but there was no indication that the increased pressure was disturbing her.
With his training, it would have been effortless to disguise himself as a doctor or orderly. Even with his preexisting and firmly established forged identity as a psychiatrist, he probably could have secured the admissions file without too many questions being asked. That would have left Anya alone in the waiting room for anywhere between five minutes and a full half hour, depending on unanticipated impediments, and any action on his part increased the risk of his exposure.
Imagine! The famed international spy, Twilight, who had circumvented thermonuclear war and flushed out terrorist cells, being caught in a ridiculous attempt to rifle through a local hospital's office!
Those were the logical reasons that he couldn't check.
He couldn't see.
So, with Anya clinging to his chest, he waited for Yor's doctor.
It couldn't be long now.