The Great Game (3 page)

  God.

  Unfashionable, yes. Not a god of churches, not a god of burning bushes like in the old stories, or a science god like in the new books Verne and Wells and their ilk had been writing. A god he couldn't articulate, that demanded little, that offered only forgiveness. Something above. Perhaps it was less god than a reason for being. For Smith believed, despite all the evidence, that there had to be a reason.

  He went into the church. It had stopped raining when he left the pub, and the sun, catching him unawares, had come out. A momentary brightness filled the church garden, and a bird called out from the branches of a tree. The grass was wet with rain, and it was quiet. He stepped into the church and stood there, inhaling its dry air of ageing books and candles. Thinking of the fat man. Thinking of Alice.

 

He was chilled when he got home. His boots were covered in mud and his face was wet. He went inside and shut the door. The house was small but he had large windows in the continental style and so he didn't bother with the gaslight. You didn't get much sunlight in England but at least he caught the most of it. The last of last night's coal was glowing dimly in the fireplace, and he prodded it with the poker, half-heartedly, and left it to die.

  He sat in the armchair by the window. The room was full of books. What was it the fat man had liked to say? "Guns and swords will kill you, but nothing is more dangerous than a book."

  The fat man had been obsessed with the Bookman, that shadowy assassin who had plagued the empire for so long. But he was no longer around, had become inactive, possibly killed.

  
Possibly retired,
Smith thought. Those had been glorious days, in the service of the empire, going across the world, across continents and countries –
on Her Majesty's secret service
, they used to call it: deniable, disposable, and often dead.

  Shadow men and shadow women doing shadow work. But the Bookman had always stood out amongst them, the consummate professional, the shadow of shadows. Mycroft had told him, once, that he suspected the Bookman to be of the same mysterious origins as Les Lézards. Smith didn't care. To him it was the work that mattered, and he prided himself on doing his job well.

  Rows of books lined the room. They made it seem less austere, a warmer place. There were bookcases, a rug the colour of dried blood on the floor, an armchair with more holes in it than a compromised agent, a low table where he put his tea and his books to read and where the package from London now sat, waiting to be opened.

  He reached for it.

  It came in the same plain brown wrapping paper all the books arrived in and he tore it carefully, expecting to find Orphan's
Poems
, that slim, contraband collection of poetry, by an almost-unknown poet, that Smith had been trying to locate for some time. Instead, he discovered he was holding a worn copy of the Manual.

  For a moment he just stared at it. It was exactly as he remembered it: the plain blue covers, the stamp on the front that said, simply,
Top Secret – Destroy if Found
. The same smell, that was the very smell of the place, the very essence of the trade, for Smith: of boiled cabbage and industrial soap, the smell of long echoey corridors with no windows, of hushed voices and the hum of unseen machinery; the secret heart of an empire, that had been the fat man's domain.

  He opened it at random.

  
A gentleman never kills by stealth or surreptitiously.

  The words spoken, so long ago, at that training centre in Ham Common. The instructor turning to them, smiling. He was missing two fingers on his left hand, Smith remembered. Looking at them, evaluating their response.

  Saying, at last, "But we are not gentlemen."

  It was still there, in the book. The manual of their trade, written as a joke or as a warning, he never knew which, but always circulating, from hand to hand, passed along from operative to operative, never openly discussed.

  
This is what we do. This is what we are.

  And added, by hand, as an addendum:
To do our job, even we have to forget that we exist.

  He knew that handwriting. He turned the book over in his hands. Opened it again, on the title page, which said only, and that in small, black letters, Manual.

  The rest of the page, rather than being blank as he remembered, was inscribed by hand. It didn't take long to read it.

 

  
If that is so – if I am dead, and you receive this in the post – then we are not alone.

  
Trust no one.

  
Beware the B-men.

  
Trace back the links, follow the chain. Begin with Alice.

  
Be careful. They will be coming for you.

 

 

  Smith stared at the note. He closed the Manual softly, put it on the table beside him. Stared out at the wan sunlight. It came as no surprise to know the fat man had not trusted Fogg. Smith had warned, repeatedly, of his suspicion of the man; it had seemed beyond doubt to him that the man was a mole, an agent of the Bookman. But the fat man never did anything, preferring, perhaps, to keep Fogg close by, to watch him.

  
And now Fogg was acting head.

  Well, what was it to Smith? He was retired. The actions of the Bureau were no longer his concern. He was too old, too jaded to think the shadow world they all inhabited was the be-all and end-all of politics. They were engaged in a game – often deadly, often dreary, but a game – while the real decisions were made above their heads, by the people they spied on. There had been moles in the organisation before, just as the Bureau, in its turn, had agents working inside the agencies of both opponents and friendlies. He himself had turned several agents, in his day…

  It was a game, only now Alice and the fat man were both dead.

 
 

 
 
 

It was a soft sound, like leaves falling on the roof, only they weren't leaves at all. Smith opened his eyes and stared at the darkness. The sound came again, furtive, soft: the sound of rats sneaking, a vaguely disturbing sound that gnawed at the edges of consciousness.

  In the darkness of the room, he smiled.

  He'd sat up in his armchair through the afternoon, thinking. He'd first met Alice in Venice, in sixty-five it must have been. The year of the Zanzibar Incident, though he had not been involved in that particular affair.

  The Bureau had sent him to the Venetian Republic, the lizards negotiating a secret treaty with Daniele Fonseca, the republican leader, against the Hapsburgs. It was baby-sitting duty for Smith, watching the British envoy from the shadows as the treaty was negotiated. And it
was
Venice, in the spring, and he met her one night when Hapsburgian agents attacked his envoy and Smith, outnumbered, had scrambled to save the man.

  She had stepped out of the shadow, a young girl, glowing – so it seemed to him, then, romantic fool that he was – in the light of the moon. Her long white legs were bare and she wore a blue dress and a blue flower behind one ear. She smiled at him, flashing perfect white teeth, and killed the first of the would-be assassins with a knife throw that went deep into the man's chest, a flower of blood blooming on his shirt as he fell.

  Together, they eliminated the others, the envoy oblivious the whole while to the covert assassination attempt, then disposed of the bodies together, dragging them into one of the canals and setting them adrift, Alice's blue flower pinned to the leader's chest. It had been the most romantic night of Smith's life.

  Later, when the envoy was safely asleep in his bed, Smith and Alice shared a drink on the balcony of the small, dank hotel, and watched the moonlight play on the water of the canal…

  Now he listened for the smallest sounds, that soft patter on the roof, the drop of a body, then another. The fat man had warned him but somehow, Smith always knew the day would come, was always waiting for it, and now he was ready.

  He slid a knife from its scabbard, tied around his ankle. He had spent some of the afternoon, and a part of the evening, sharpening this knife, his favourite, and cleaning and oiling various other devices. Cleaning one's weapons was a comforting act, an ingrained habit that felt almost domestic. It made him think of Alice, who preferred guns to knives, and disliked poisons.

  The things the mind conjures… He'd often argued with her about it, to no avail.

  Smith disliked guns. They were loud, and showy, the weapon of bullies and show-offs. A gun had swagger behind it, but little thought. Smith preferred the intimacy of killing, the touch of flesh on flesh, the hissed intake of breath that was a mark's last. He liked neatness, in all things.

  Then everything happened very quickly and almost at once.

  The windows broke inwards – a loud explosive sound – shards of glass flying through the air, showering the floor and furniture.

  Something heavy slammed into the front door, and the back one, sending both crashing to the ground, as dark figures came streaming through, and Smith found himself grinning. A single candle had been left burning on the bedside table and now it died with a gust of cold wind, and the house was dark.

  Five pouring in from the front. Five more from the back. And there'd be others outside by now, forming a ring around the house. They wanted him badly. He was almost flattered. And they wanted him alive – which was an advantage.

  He killed the first one with a knife thrust, holding the body gently as it dropped down to the floor. Black-clad, armed – he took the man's gun out of its holster, admiring its lightness, and fired once, twice, three times and watched two of them fall, one rolling away. When they fired back, destroying the bedroom, he was no longer there.

  He worried about his library but there was nothing he could do. He came on two more of them there and killed the first one by breaking his neck, twisting it with a gentle nostalgia, then dropped the corpse to the floor, and the second one turned, and with the same motion Smith flipped the knife and sent it flying.

  He went to retrieve it, pulling it out of the man's chest. The man wasn't quite dead yet. His lips were moving. "
Zu sein
," the man said, the softest breath of air.
To be
. Smith strained to hear more but there was nothing left in the man, no words or air.

  Smith straightened. He couldn't take them all. He was against the wall when he heard a barked question – "
In der Bibliothek?"

  Two more bullets, a man dropped at the open door. Shouts behind now, no more pretence at secrecy or stealth. Smith said, "
Warten sie
!"

  
Wait.

  "Mr Smith."

  The voice came from beyond the door, a voice in shadows.

  "
Ja
."

  "You come with us, now, Mr Smith. No more play."

  The voice spoke good English, but accented. It was young, like the others. A fully trained extraction team, but too young, and they did things differently these days.

  "Don't shoot," Smith said.

  The voice chuckled. "You are late for an appointment," it said, "arranged a long time ago."

  Smith smiled. "Take them," he said, loudly.

  There was the sudden sound of gunfire outside.
Heavy
gunfire. Smith ran, jumped – dived out of the broken window. The whistle of something flying through the air, entering the room he had just vacated. He rolled and covered his head and there was a booming thunder and he felt fragments of wood and stone hit his back and his legs and the night became bright, momentarily.

  When it was over he raised his head, looked–

  The old lady from M.'s, the lace and china shop, was standing with her hair on edge, a manic grin spread across her face. She was holding the controls of a giant, mounted Gatling gun, a small steam engine belching beside it. "Take one for the Kaiser!" she screamed, and a torrent of bullets exploded out of the machine like angry bees, tracer bullets lighting up the night sky, as M. screamed soundlessly and fired, mowing the black-clothed attackers as though they were unruly grass.

  Spies, Smith thought, trying to make himself as small as possible. They'll take any excuse to let their hair down.

  The firing stopped and then someone was beside him, grabbing him. He turned and saw Verloc from the bookshop, grinning at him – the first time, perhaps, he had ever seen him look happy.

  "Come on!" Verloc said. He pulled Smith, who stood up and followed him. The two men ran across the cabbage patch, over what was left of the fence (which wasn't much) and into the field beyond.

  Smith could hear M. screaming again, then a second round of shooting. His poor house. No. 6 would never be the same again, after this. He should have taken care of this business on his own.

  Well, too late now.

  Turning, he saw Colonel Creighton, the baroness by his side, going through the garden and into the house, the colonel armed with a curved khukuri knife, the baroness, less ostentatiously, with a couple of small-calibre, elegant hand guns, one in each hand. He raised his head and saw, floating above the house, a long, graceful black shape: an airship.

  "Don't let it get away," Smith said. Beside him, Verloc grinned. "Shall we?" he said.