Balance—that word returned to him as he crossed the bridge again, trembling. Without balance, a life is no longer worth the effort.
He’d been doing his particular job for six—no, seven—years, floating unmoored from city to city, engaged by transatlantic phone calls from a man he hadn’t seen in two years. The phone itself was his master. Weeks sometimes passed without work, and in those periods he slept and drank heavily, but when he was on the job there was no way to stop the brutal forward movement. He had to suck down whatever stimulants would keep him in motion, because the job had never been about keeping Charles Alexander in good health. The job was only about the quiet, anonymous maintenance of the kindly named “sphere of influence,” Charles Alexander and others like him be damned.
Angela had said, “There is no other side anymore,” but there was. The other side was multifaceted: Russian mafias, Chinese industrialization, loose nukes, and even the vocal Muslims camped in Afghani stan who were trying to pry Washington’s fingers off the oil-soaked Middle East. As Grainger would put it, anyone who could not be embraced or absorbed by the empire was anathema and had to be dealt with, like barbarians at the gates. That was when Charles Alexander’s phone would ring.
He wondered how many bodies padded the murky floor of these canals, and the thought of joining them was, if nothing else, a comfort. It is because of death that death means nothing; it’s because of death that life means nothing.
Finish the job, he thought. Don’t go out in failure. And then …
No more planes and border guards and customs people; no more looking over your shoulder.
By five, it was decided. The prescient glow before dawn lit the sky, and he dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine. The jitters returned. He remembered his mother and her dreams of a utopia with only big voices. What would she think of him? He knew: She would want to beat him senseless. He’d spent his entire adult life working for the procurers and manufacturers of those insidious little voices.
When, at nine thirty, the George Michael fan unlocked the osteria again, Charles was surprised to find himself still breathing. He ordered two espressos and waited patiently by the window while the man cooked up a pancetta, egg, garlic, oil, and linguine mix for his dour, sickly customer. It was delicious, but halfway through his plate he stopped, peering out the window.
Three people were approaching the palazzo. The bodyguard he’d seen yesterday—Nikolai—and, close behind, a very pregnant woman with an older man. That older man was Frank Dawdle.
He dialed his cell phone.
“Yeah?” said Angela.
“He’s here.”
Charles pocketed the phone and laid down money. The bartender, serving an old couple, looked angry. “You don’t like the breakfast?”
“Leave it out,” Charles said. “I’ll finish it in a minute.”
By the time Angela arrived, her hair damp from an interrupted shower, the visitors had been inside the palazzo for twelve minutes. There were four tourists along the length of the street, and he hoped they would clear out soon. “You have a gun?” Charles asked as he took out his Walther.
Angela pulled back her jacket to show off a SIG Sauer in a shoulder holster.
“Keep it there. If someone has to get shot, I better do it. I can disappear; you can’t.”
“So you’re watching out for me.”
“Yeah, Angela. I am watching out for you.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re also afraid I won’t be able to shoot him.” Her gaze dropped to his trembling gun hand. “But I’m not sure you’ll even be able to shoot straight.”
He squeezed the Walther until the shaking lessened. “I’ll do fine. You get over there,” he said, pointing at a doorway just beyond, and opposite, the palazzo’s entrance. “He’ll be boxed in. He comes out, we make the arrest. Simple.”
“Simple,” she replied curtly, then walked to her assigned doorway as the tourists, thankfully, left the street.
Once she was out of sight, he reexamined his hand. She was right, of course. Angela Yates usually was. He couldn’t go on like this, and he wouldn’t. It was a miserable job; it was a miserable life.
The palazzo’s front door opened.
Bald Nikolai opened it, but remained inside, his tailored jacket arm holding the bloated wooden door so that the pregnant woman— who Charles could now see was very beautiful, her bright green eyes flashing across the square—could step over the threshold and onto the cobbles. Then came Dawdle, touching her elbow. He looked every one of his sixty-two years, and more.
The bodyguard closed the door behind them, and the woman turned to say something to Dawdle, but Dawdle didn’t answer. He was looking at Angela, who had emerged from her doorway and was running in his direction. “Frank!” she shouted.
Charles had missed his cue. He began running, too, the Walther in his hand.
A man’s voice shouted from the sky in easy English: “And her I love, you bastard!” Then a rising wail, like a steam-engine whistle, filled the air.
Unlike the other three people in the street, Charles didn’t look up. Distractions, he knew, are usually just that. He hurtled forward. The pregnant woman, eyes aloft, screamed and stepped back. Frank Dawdle was stuck to the ground. Angela’s flared jacket dropped as she halted and opened her mouth, but made no sound. Beside the pregnant woman, something pink hit the earth. It was 10:27 A.M.
He stumbled to a stop. Perhaps it was a bomb. But bombs weren’t pink, and they didn’t hit like that. They exploded or crashed into the ground with hard noises. This pink thing hit with a soft, wretched thump. That’s when he knew it was a body. On one side, spread among the splash of blood on the cobblestones, he saw a scatter of long hair—it was the pretty girl he’d spotted on the terrace last night.
He looked up, but the terrace was again empty. The pregnant woman screamed, tripped, and fell backward.
Frank Dawdle produced a pistol and shot wildly three times, the sound echoing off the stones, then turned and ran. Angela bolted after him, shouting, “Stop! Frank!”
Charles Alexander was trained to follow through with actions even when faced with the unpredictable, but what he saw—the falling girl, the shots, the fleeing man—each thing seemed only to confuse him more.
How did the pregnant woman fit into this?
His breathing was suddenly difficult, but he reached her. She kept screaming. Red face, eyes rolling. Her words were a garbled mess.
His chest really did feel strange, so he sat heavily on the ground beside her. That’s when he noticed all the blood. Not the girl’s—she was on the other side of the hysterical woman—but his own. He could see that now. It pumped a red blossom into his shirt.
How about that? He was exhausted. Red rivulets filled the spaces between the cobblestones. I’m dead. Off to the left, Angela ran after the dwindling form of Frank Dawdle.
Amid the indecipherable noises coming from the pregnant woman, he heard one clear phrase: “I’m in labor!”
He blinked at her, wanting to say, But I’m dying, I can’t help you. Then he read the desperation