Die Twice (7 page)

“Jaime?” I said, stepping out of the shadows.

The four guys snapped around simultaneously to face me, but none of them spoke.

“It is you, right?” I said, cutting into the distance between us. “Where have you been, all these years? We missed you.”

The main guy lowered his arm.

“Who the hell’s Jaime?” he said.

“She is,” I said. “Jaime Sommers. The Bionic Woman.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“I mean, she must be bionic, right? Otherwise, why would it take all four of you to chase her around this yard?”

I was close enough by now to see a vein throbbing above his left temple. He glared at me, his mouth dropped open, but he didn’t manage any words.

“Seriously, I’m interested,” I said. “How many of you does it take to persuade one girl to walk through a doorway?”

The guy nearest me slipped his right hand into the back pocket of his jeans.

“But don’t let me interrupt,” I said. “Go ahead. Do what you need to do.”

He pulled something out, concealing it behind his leg and shifting his weight onto his front foot.

“Looked like you were going to hit her just now, when I arrived,” I said to the main guy. “So go on. Take your shot.”

He didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for?” I said. “Twenty dollars says you can’t take her down with one slap.”

The next guy in line broke ranks and moved to block my path.

“No?” I said. “OK. So here’s another idea. Why not try it with me?”

All four were facing me now, their backs to the woman. She started moving smoothly away, reversing, never taking her eyes off them for a second.

“What’s the problem?” I said. “There are four of you. And only one of—”

Without breaking stride I drove the heel of my right hand into the jaw of the guy who’d ended up in front of me. The impact knocked him off his feet, leaving him sprawling on the exact spot where the woman had been standing a moment earlier. His limbs followed a second behind his body, slapping limply onto the ground as I drew
my forearm back and smashed my elbow into the side of the next guy’s head. He went down too, pivoting sharply around so that his face was the first part of him to crack against the cobblestones. A wooden-handled switchblade slipped from his fingers. I kicked it away and brought my fist across the opposite way, my first two knuckles connecting with either side of the third guy’s nose. I felt his bone and cartilage crack, and saw that blood was already spurting from his face as his legs buckled under him and he flopped down onto his back.

I checked the kitchen door. There was no activity. I looked for the woman. She was safe, ten feet away, backing up against the wall. I watched as she disappeared from sight. Then I scanned the surrounding buildings. Confirmed there were no other windows overlooking us. No security cameras. In fact, no one watching us at all. It was just like Fothergill had said. As far as anyone could tell, I didn’t exist.

“Did I say, four of you against me?” I said to the remaining guy. “Sorry about that. I should have said, one. For another few seconds, anyway.”

The lesson I’d learned from that football ground exercise was still valid. I hadn’t forgotten about it. And I still didn’t choose to get involved with civilians.

But sometimes, it seemed, they chose to get involved with me.

Theoretically, the classroom elements of our training should have been the most popular. There was no danger of freezing to death. No maladjusted members of the Parachute Regiment lying in wait, itching to kick great big chunks out of us. No heavy equipment to carry. It didn’t rain, indoors. You always had food to eat and a bed to sleep in. But even so, given a choice, we’d always have voted for the practical courses. We loved to be out of barracks, even if it was just for an afternoon. For a change of scene. A breath of fresh air. A new challenge.

Even if the task we ended up with was rarely what we’d been told to expect.

whatever kind of exercise we were sent on, though, the routine was always the same. We were briefed. Given our stores. Deployed. Retrieved. And debriefed. At the beginning, we were always given everything we were likely to need. The process seemed like the model of effciency. But as we continued, I noticed that the odd essential item was missing from our kit. The first time, it was an ax.
The next, a paper clip. Then a length of chain. And because the activities were new to us, we didn’t know what we’d need until we actually got started. There was no way to anticipate or take relevant spares, just in case. The shortages started to occur more and more frequently. Some people started to complain. Eventually, we were being sent out with little more than the clothes we were wearing. Only by then, those of us who were left had woken up to the underlying point.

Success doesn’t depend on what you’re given by others.

It’s about what you can find for yourself.

At the restaurant, I started with the mussels. Then I had steak, cooked extra rare, with mustard butter. Both were sublime. Simple. Elegant. And perfectly executed. The only slight off-note came when I was waiting for my espresso. Two police officers arrived. They appeared from the kitchen and started wandering around between the tables, asking questions about an alleged disturbance in the vicinity, earlier in the evening.

They came to me first.

I had nothing for them.

The streets were still swarming with people when I left the restaurant, just before six thirty. There were office workers, leaving the city. Drinkers and theatergoers, pushing their way back in. Shoppers, rushing for their final few purchases. A repair crew, trying to pump the water out of a leak in some foundations they were digging next to the river. But none of that caused me a problem. I had no need to hurry anywhere. There was no sign of the guys from the courtyard. Or the woman. And still no word from Fothergill.

A courier arrived at the hotel twenty-five minutes after I got to
my room. She brought two packages for me, secured with official consulate seals. I asked her to wait while I opened them. And the first one, I gave straight back. It contained photographs, courtesy of the INS. Portraits of travelers. Everyone who’d arrived in Illinois from overseas in the last week. Followed by the records from all the surrounding states. The stack was five inches thick. And even without the note confirming that there were no matches for the dead men’s fingerprints, I knew it wouldn’t tell me anything. It was pointless having sent it. A typical example of a desk guy trying to give the impression of productivity. One of the skills you had to master, to be a success on Fothergill’s adopted side of the fence?

The second envelope wasn’t much more useful. It was from the police lab. There was an initial analysis of the men’s clothes. A breakdown of their last meals. Details of their physical condition, before they were shot. And a sketchy inventory of McIntyre’s apartment, where they’d died. Every aspect came up blank. There was nothing to tell me where the dead guys had come from. What they’d been doing. Or where McIntyre was likely to be, now. None of which was a surprise. It was par for the course at this stage of a job. There was little to do besides settling down and waiting for more information. I was used to it. And at least I was in a hotel. I had a bed. A bathroom. A TV. And room service.

I guess my feelings about the quality of the intelligence he’d gathered didn’t reach Fothergill until the morning because I didn’t hear from him until past eight o’clock, when I was still contemplating the need to leave the comfort of my duvet. And even then, he only sent me a text message.

qqo?

Questions, queries, or observations? That was standard protocol following a remote briefing, and no more than I was expecting.

natt
, I sent back. Nothing at this time.

I knew what his reply would be without looking at the phone.

hypafo
.

The inevitable,
Hold your position—await further orders
.

In other words, sit and wait. The bane of service life. There was no telling how long the machine would take to churn out something useful, so I decided to get started with some breakfast. I ordered room service. A full English, with extra coffee. It was a good choice. I followed it up with a shave and a shower. And then crossed to the window to sketch out my own plans for the day.

The sky was a radiant, unbroken blue. It reminded me of deep, clear water. I thought about strolling over to the lake. Maybe carrying on along the shore for a while. Seeing how the city looked, floating above the waves. But I wouldn’t be able to go far. I needed to stay in touch in case we got a lead on McIntyre. Somewhere closer at hand would be better. Somewhere central. Something unique to Chicago, since I wasn’t planning on being here long. I moved to the window on the other side of the room, and straight away my eyes settled on a pair of massive antennas that rose above the surrounding buildings like white devil horns. They were on the roof of the Sears Tower. Or whatever it was called now. The tallest building in the world for more than twenty years. Still the tallest in America. And now, there it was, calling to me.

I pulled the tourist information folder out of the desk drawer and checked the address. Read up on the building’s history. Glanced at extracts from its original blueprints. Skimmed through photographs of it being built. Studied a table of key facts. Looked for details of its observation deck. And found a leaflet tucked inside the back cover saying it was closed. The whole floor was out of commission. It had been shut down for some kind of emergency repair work, reading between the lines. So people were expected to settle for an alternative vantage point they were offering, on a lower floor.

Or find somewhere else to go.

The guidebook gave plenty of alternatives. It showed pictures of animals in the zoo. Paintings, at the Art Institute. Models of ancient Mexican cities in the Field Museum. Various exhibitions about planes. Trains. Cars. Ships. Body parts. And a submarine. A German U-boat. A genuine World War II relic. It had been captured off the coast of Africa, brought back to the States—complete with its pair of fully functional Enigma machines—then transported to Chicago in the fifties. Recently moved underground, into a reproduction concrete wolf-pen. Still loaded with torpedoes. And the sort of icon that no one from any navy would willingly ignore.

My coat was on and I was halfway down the corridor when I started to wonder about what kind of state the sub would be in. It was more than sixty years old. It had stood outside in the rain for maybe forty years. That would have called for some degree of restoration. Even German steel would be unable to weather that kind of neglect, unscathed. Plus, it must have been adapted somewhat to allow museum visitors to wander safely around inside. And with all those feet passing through, it would need regular cleaning. Which means its original character would have been changed. The marks and scratches and pieces of everyday detritus left behind by the original crew—dozens of guys crammed into the tiny space for weeks on end, like sweaty sardines—would have gone. They’d have been painted over. Swept aside. Or rusted away and replaced with fiberglass.

I was disappointed. I considered just staying in my room. But then thoughts of the U-Boat triggered off another realization. I’d also been disappointed with the Chicago police report that Fothergill had sent me. In particular, the file on McIntyre’s apartment. It had been little more than a list of contents. There’d been no serious attempt to interpret or analyze. And now it hit me why not. Mcintyre wasn’t the kind of individual they were used to dealing with. He wasn’t an ordinary criminal. They weren’t on the same
wavelength as him. In the same way as you’d need to be in the navy to fully appreciate the submarine, you’d need to be in the same line of work as McIntyre to look at where he’d been hiding and see any sort of significance. And the only other person around here in that line of work was me.

So I did still leave the hotel. But I changed my destination.

I told the guy at the front desk I needed a cab to O’Hare, but once we were under way I told the driver we had a new heading. Lincoln Park Zoo. I’d seen a sign for it yesterday when I was zigzagging around the city behind Rollins, so I knew it was in the right general area. The guy took it well at first. He was happy as long as I let him talk. But he was less impressed when I pulled him up short on Clark, just shy of Fullerton. I got out of the taxi, turned the corner and walked past the building McIntyre had been using, staying on the opposite side of the street. There were cars parked on both sides. I checked carefully, but none of them were occupied. I suppose the city’s budget didn’t run to stakeouts in the way ours did. Either that, or they were less thorough. But either way, I didn’t risk approaching the place from the front. I followed round to Geneva Terrace and made my way back down the alley at the rear. Only this time I didn’t have to worry about gates or fences. I guess the police had taken care of those, when they responded to the “shots fired” call yesterday. There were splintered remains lying around everywhere, so I just picked my way through the debris and walked up to the side door.

Three lengths of police crime-scene tape were hanging from the frame, flapping limply in the breeze. They’d been cut. Not with a knife, though. At least, not a sharp one. From the ragged edges I’d say more likely with the edge of a key. I peered through the dusty glass, and right away I saw someone. Some legs, anyway. They were on the far side of the inner door. Lying down. Nothing was visible above the knee. The rest of the body was hidden by the internal
wall. It must have been stretched out, toward the abandoned laundry room. All I could see was the lower half of a pair of stained, ripped jeans and two shabby shoes. One was brown. One was black. It wasn’t a promising outfit. And not a place you’d usually choose to sleep, either.

The door opened as soon as I applied the slightest pressure. The lock had been broken. Forced, from the outside. The same had happened to the inner door. I eased that one open more carefully and squeezed through the gap, keeping well clear of the body. Or actually, bodies. A second one was sprawled out farther down the corridor, out of sight of the entrance. Both were male. I’d guess the first was in his thirties. The other was maybe twenty years older. The state they were in made it hard to be sure. Their clothes were ruined and filthy and torn. Their skin was blotchy and riddled with scabs. Their hair was unwashed, uncut, and plastered to their scalps. They were unshaven. And definitely unwashed.