he became numb to most emotions.
Other images raced through his mind: the day he received his képi blanc, placed it on his head, and was officially a legionnaire; earning his wings and being deployed to the Second REP; the mental and physical agony he’d felt as he underwent selection for the GCP; being given instructions by a DGSE officer and two days later placing a bomb underneath a car in Tripoli; and calling his sister from a pay phone in Marseille on the day his tour with the Legion had come to an end and her saying that she’d been wrong to tell him to run away after he killed his mother’s murderers.
Years later, he’d found out that Alistair and Patrick had covered up what he’d done.
He briefly took his eyes off the door to check the time. Nearly midnight. Outside, London was almost silent.
He remembered his four years at university and the sensation that the GCP legionnaire and DGSE hit man was gradually being turned back into someone more decent, more human. He saw himself, in his final year of studies, walking through the university’s Darwin College, clutching politics and philosophy books, and remembered the euphoric moment of feeling truly normal again.
It was the greatest feeling, and it lasted twenty-three minutes.
Up to the moment he was walking through Cambridge’s shopping district, saw a man try to grab a young woman’s handbag, watched the woman resist, saw a knife, and heard the victim yelp as she fell to the ground clutching her blood-covered tummy. He’d dropped his books, chased the man, grabbed him, and slammed him into a wall with sufficient force to not only make him unconscious but also fracture his skull.
At the moment the man’s head caved in, the euphoria had vanished.
Now, as he sat waiting for a killer to enter his home, he doubted it would ever return.
No other memories came to him. He tried to think about the operation, about what could possibly be happening, but he couldn’t concentrate. Time dragged.
Two A.M. He couldn’t hear anything now. No passing cars, nothing.
Three A.M. His body craved sleep, but he kept staring at the door, knowing that it would be in the early hours that the man would most likely come for him.
Four A.M. He heard a scream, flinched, grabbed the hilt of his knife, then released it as he realized the cry had come from an urban fox.
Five A.M. His back and shoulder muscles throbbed from lack of activity.
Six A.M. A door opened somewhere in the building, followed by rapid footsteps. Then the downstairs front door opened and closed. Will knew that it was one of his neighbors going to work—David, a recently divorced mortician who usually left at this hour and always did so in a manner that suggested he was late. Three weeks ago the chubby man, who had taken to rolling his own cigarettes and cooking his way through a famous French chef’s book, had met Will in the lobby, introduced himself, and given Will his business card “in case of need.”
Six forty. Another door opening and closing. A woman in heels. That would be Phoebe, a thirty-something art dealer who loved champagne, middleweight boxing matches, and Chinese food, and who rarely went to work without a hangover. She’d met Will in the rather embarrassing circumstances of kneeling by the letter slot in his front door one evening and screaming in a drunken voice, “I know you’re in there, you bastard! You can’t fuck me and leave me!” It was only when Will had opened the door that Phoebe had realized that Will wasn’t the previous occupant, a cad called Jim who’d sold Will the apartment in a hurry.
Six fifty. Retired major Dickie Mountjoy, former Coldstream Guards officer and now retiree, was leaving his home at exactly the same time as he did each morning. Dressed in a suit and moleskin overcoat, and always carrying an immaculately rolled umbrella regardless of conditions, he would be taking a ten-minute walk to his local newsagents, which opened at seven A.M. , would
Other images raced through his mind: the day he received his képi blanc, placed it on his head, and was officially a legionnaire; earning his wings and being deployed to the Second REP; the mental and physical agony he’d felt as he underwent selection for the GCP; being given instructions by a DGSE officer and two days later placing a bomb underneath a car in Tripoli; and calling his sister from a pay phone in Marseille on the day his tour with the Legion had come to an end and her saying that she’d been wrong to tell him to run away after he killed his mother’s murderers.
Years later, he’d found out that Alistair and Patrick had covered up what he’d done.
He briefly took his eyes off the door to check the time. Nearly midnight. Outside, London was almost silent.
He remembered his four years at university and the sensation that the GCP legionnaire and DGSE hit man was gradually being turned back into someone more decent, more human. He saw himself, in his final year of studies, walking through the university’s Darwin College, clutching politics and philosophy books, and remembered the euphoric moment of feeling truly normal again.
It was the greatest feeling, and it lasted twenty-three minutes.
Up to the moment he was walking through Cambridge’s shopping district, saw a man try to grab a young woman’s handbag, watched the woman resist, saw a knife, and heard the victim yelp as she fell to the ground clutching her blood-covered tummy. He’d dropped his books, chased the man, grabbed him, and slammed him into a wall with sufficient force to not only make him unconscious but also fracture his skull.
At the moment the man’s head caved in, the euphoria had vanished.
Now, as he sat waiting for a killer to enter his home, he doubted it would ever return.
No other memories came to him. He tried to think about the operation, about what could possibly be happening, but he couldn’t concentrate. Time dragged.
Two A.M. He couldn’t hear anything now. No passing cars, nothing.
Three A.M. His body craved sleep, but he kept staring at the door, knowing that it would be in the early hours that the man would most likely come for him.
Four A.M. He heard a scream, flinched, grabbed the hilt of his knife, then released it as he realized the cry had come from an urban fox.
Five A.M. His back and shoulder muscles throbbed from lack of activity.
Six A.M. A door opened somewhere in the building, followed by rapid footsteps. Then the downstairs front door opened and closed. Will knew that it was one of his neighbors going to work—David, a recently divorced mortician who usually left at this hour and always did so in a manner that suggested he was late. Three weeks ago the chubby man, who had taken to rolling his own cigarettes and cooking his way through a famous French chef’s book, had met Will in the lobby, introduced himself, and given Will his business card “in case of need.”
Six forty. Another door opening and closing. A woman in heels. That would be Phoebe, a thirty-something art dealer who loved champagne, middleweight boxing matches, and Chinese food, and who rarely went to work without a hangover. She’d met Will in the rather embarrassing circumstances of kneeling by the letter slot in his front door one evening and screaming in a drunken voice, “I know you’re in there, you bastard! You can’t fuck me and leave me!” It was only when Will had opened the door that Phoebe had realized that Will wasn’t the previous occupant, a cad called Jim who’d sold Will the apartment in a hurry.
Six fifty. Retired major Dickie Mountjoy, former Coldstream Guards officer and now retiree, was leaving his home at exactly the same time as he did each morning. Dressed in a suit and moleskin overcoat, and always carrying an immaculately rolled umbrella regardless of conditions, he would be taking a ten-minute walk to his local newsagents, which opened at seven A.M. , would
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