Nailbiters Page 7

  The place where this target is located is like a fortress. It would take an expert in security and special operations to infiltrate its defences, and even then a successful strike could not be guaranteed – plus a highly trained operative would almost certainly be lost. No, it is much better this way. Much more convenient. Much easier…for them. As for what it is doing to him, well that doesn’t really enter into the equation.

  Last, but not least, there’s a scrap of material pinned to the back of the file. This was very difficult to acquire, cut from one of the target’s old uniforms. G786’s fingers hover over the square of khaki, but then they withdraw – as if almost touching a flame. Not yet, not yet…

  They allow G786 a further ten minutes or so to look through the reports again. He doesn’t really read them, just shuffles through for the sake of appearances. It is expected of him, so he obliges. He has no choice.

  ‘So… When you’re ready…’ prompts the stocky man.

  Ready? He is never ready.

  G786 nods, and thin ginger walks over to the window to close the blinds. The slats slice into the bright morning sunlight for a moment, striping the grey walls white and yellow momentarily. Then all the brightness goes away.

  Tall ginger finally takes his seat again as G786 passes his hands over the papers, his fingers now seeking out the scrap of material at the back. He closes his eyes…and allows the sensations to develop; stops fighting what is supposed to come so ‘naturally’. It always starts off with a tunnel, a rolling spiral of colours: of reds, golds, blues, greens, twisting round and around. He accesses this without any problems at all, letting the conduit take him away, lead him in the direction his mind needs to travel. At certain points there are crossroads and intersections, but he instinctively knows which ones to avoid and which to take. The feel of the cloth acts like scent to a hunting dog, linking him to his target, allowing him to cut across great distances in the blink of an eye.

  The arrival is always slightly more disorienting. It’s instantaneous and he’s thrown back into the world without warning. Or at least a piece of him is. He sees the base now, the one from the photograph. He slips past alarms and guards without being seen, because there isn’t really that much of him to be seen, and he carries on following his senses. He begins to rub the fabric between thumb and forefinger now, centring in on the man from the photograph. Passing through walls, through locked doors, without a second thought.

  Then here he is. In a room not much bigger than his office. G786 recognises the target immediately; he is sat talking to another man in a language G786 doesn’t understand. It doesn’t matter really what they are saying. All that matters is that a sighting has been confirmed. G786 knows what has to come next, even though he dreads it. In his present form it is simplicity itself to enter the target’s body. The method has been left entirely up to him, it can be slow and painful – such as an internal bleed – or fast and merciful, like the popping of a brain cell here or there. But whichever course of action is taken, one thing is for certain: he must exit the body before it is over or risk being trapped inside forever.

  It must be done, though. No matter how much he wavers, G786 knows this. He wants to get it over with as quickly as possible and so goes for the swifter option. G786 ingratiates himself into the target’s head… yet still he hesitates before doing the deed. Even after all this time, there’s a part of him that… He mentally shrugs this off. No room for a conscience, for emotions – he continues with the operation. A tweak here, a tweak there. Then he gets out.

  The other man in the room is quite surprised by what happens next. His superior suddenly clutches his forehead, eyes clicking backwards in their sockets, and falls out of his chair onto the floor. There is an effort made to save him, naturally, and physicians are even called in to help. But none of it will do any good. G786 hangs around just long enough to make sure his mission has been completed successfully, as if there was ever any doubt, and then departs – searches out the tunnel once more for the return journey.

  Back in the office his eyes snap open. ‘It’s done,’ he tells them.

  That day he is assigned two more cases, with long breaks between each one, before being allowed to clock out. The first is a senior politician who has risen in the ranks far too quickly and is becoming far too idealistic for their liking; the second is an intelligence operative who has defected to the other side – whatever the other side is supposed to be these days.

  Now it is time to leave.

  G786 walks to his maroon car in the lot and climbs inside. He pulls out into traffic on the main road, then begins the half-hour drive to the place he calls home, although the significance of the word has long since shrivelled away into nothing. Once, long ago, it had actually meant something. But that was before he had been forced into the programme, ironically by their threats to tear his home life apart. Before his talents had been detected by a routine screening, and before they had enhanced his basic abilities with a daily cocktail of drugs. At first it had been just spying missions, the usual stuff for national security; finding out plans and schemes before they could be used. Locating ‘enemy’ safe houses and monitoring the movement of certain key individuals. It hadn’t been hard work, in fact he’d almost found himself enjoying it. Not many people could do what he did and at least he was putting it to use, for the good of his country. He was also being compensated adequately for his trouble. Looked after.

  But then they started to talk about pushing him further. To see what else he was capable of. To train him in other methods and techniques – the kind that weren’t so palatable or easy to excuse. To send him on jobs that took a little piece of him away every time he returned, that left him feeling cold and numb afterwards: a shadow of a man.

  His car journey mirrors the ones he has taken invisibly that day, except instead of a tunnel there is a road – still, the junctions and turn-offs are the same. One of these brings him to his house, a pretty white abode with net curtains in the windows and hanging baskets over the front door. G786 opens the garage door with the remote control on his key ring, and parks the car inside. He can get to the house proper through a side-door, which opens out into the kitchen.

  On the hob is a boiling pan, steam rising in spirals to touch the ceiling. His wife is cooking spaghetti again, as always on a Monday. He hears singing – sweet singing that should touch his heart – coming from the hallway, and suddenly she is at the kitchen door. Even dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt, she looks so beautiful. Her long, dark hair cascading onto her shoulders like a waterfall. She blinks with those wide eyes and tries to smile. It is not the smile of yesteryear, the smile that first attracted him to her, that he fell in love with so long ago. This is a smile worn away by heartache and pain.

  ‘Hello, Simon.’ That’s G786’s real name. It feels as alien to him now as the house he’s in, the woman standing in front of him. She walks across to the hob, turns it down a fraction, then continues across to him.

  ‘Hello, Amy,’ he says eventually. Even her name is pretty, but you’d hardly think so the way it comes out of his mouth. She rises to kiss him on that mouth now, applying pressure but receiving none in return. He doesn’t even put his arms around her, doesn’t hold her the way he used to.

  She pulls away and returns to the cooker. ‘Dinner won’t be much longer. Why don’t you sit down?’

  G786 takes a seat at the kitchen table and listens as Amy makes small talk about her day, about the friends she’s seen and the things she’s done. None of it really interests him. Then, as she’s serving up dinner, Amy asks him how his own day has been – after all this time she still thinks he works for a finance company. He mumbles the usual ‘Fine,’ but doesn’t go into any details. And while they eat she keeps looking at him, trying to find an answer, find some clues. She used to be able to tell what he was thinking by just gazing at him, looking into his eyes; now she sees only a miniature reflection looking back. As usual, she wonders why he has gradually grown so distant, h
ow the man she married could have become the person sitting there now. Had it been something she’d done? Had he gone off her? The fact that she couldn’t bear him a child? Or maybe his love had just dwindled away, eroded over time.

  That evening they watch the television; he has no preference. Doesn’t laugh at the sitcoms anymore, doesn’t cheer at the football or get passionate about the news reports. He just lets it all wash over him, and they sit there together on the couch like strangers, Amy trying to snuggle up to him and getting nowhere. It’s the same in bed. They undress, climb inside. She makes the first move, hoping against hope, but he presents his cold back to her. Why doesn’t he care anymore? she wonders. If only he’d care. If only he’d…love her. Instead he sleeps, a mechanical action – a robot recharging. Amy herself lies awake for hours, worrying about what has happened to her marriage, and what might happen in the future.

  One thing is for sure, they cannot carry on like this forever.

  * * *

  In fact they only have to carry on like this for another two weeks.

  G786 reports to the office on a Thursday morning this time. He is assigned one mission – the assassination of a scientist about to uncover a secret that might mean the end of civilisation as we know it…being as it’s such a civilised world to begin with – before the alarms go off.

  There are only two observers in his office today for a change, a puffy-faced man with triangular shoulders and a slender woman with long, blonde hair, and they both rush out into the corridor. G786 follows, but more slowly. They all believe there has been some sort of attack on the building; that some intelligence somewhere has discovered its true nature and detonated a bomb. As it turns out the wailing throb of the siren is simply an ordinary fire alarm. A soon-to-be very ex-employee has thrown a cigarette into a wastepaper bin in one of the downstairs offices without checking whether it was properly out. The offices are meant to be a non-smoking environment anyway, so this was his first mistake. The cigarette set fire to the rubbish inside, which in turn set fire to a desk beside it and the carpet on which it rests.

  After the local smoke alarm went off, somebody smashed the glass on a larger one on the wall and it is this that’s causing the panic. The sprinklers come on eventually. The standard procedure in any emergency is to get out and ask questions later, so this is what occurs. G786 and his supervisors do not risk the lifts. Instead they join a group of other workers making their way down the stairs. None of G786’s fellow numbers are panicking as such – only their observers.

  They make it outside safely and stand around in the car park, unsure of what to do next. It takes twenty minutes for the cause of the accident to be discovered and dealt with by internal security. There is no way the proper authorities can be alerted: who knows what they might see inside? The culprit is identified not long afterwards and detained, but the powers that be decide that all other staff might as well take the rest of the day off and return in the morning fresh. This will give security time to make doubly sure the building is safe and fit for the ‘workers’.

  This is how G786 comes to be driving home at such an early hour on a Thursday afternoon. He takes the same route as always, and makes very good time because there isn’t much traffic. He uses the remote and parks his car in the garage, then enters his house through the kitchen door again. The kitchen is empty this time. He walks through into the hall and then checks the living room. Amy is not there. G786 doesn’t call out; he simply goes upstairs to use the toilet. While he’s up there he checks to see if his wife is around. She isn’t in either of the bedrooms or the study. He uses the toilet and flushes.

  G786 knows that Amy sometimes goes out in the day. He doesn’t know where, because he doesn’t really listen when she tells him things. To a friend’s house probably or shopping…he doesn’t care. Or at least he shouldn’t. Except it’s strange to return home and not find her here. Every day since they’ve been married she’s been there to greet him when he walks through that kitchen door. Back when they’d first started living together, he used to sweep her up in his arms and kiss every available inch of her face. Why is he thinking about that now? He doesn’t usually. He shouldn’t. Could it be that…that he misses her being here? That emotions he thought he’d suppressed, that he thought had been driven out of him by months and months of doing what he now does, were actually still there? And had been all along…?

  He shakes his head. You can’t afford to think, to feel. To care. Not when you end people’s lives for a living. Not when you are a number rather than a name. A tool rather than a man.

  A weapon.

  On his way back to the stairs he finds himself pausing outside the bedroom they share. He enters this again. What, is he tired? Does he need to lie down? No. G786 walks around the bed, as if he’s never seen it before. It is a bed they sleep in together, inches apart and yet it might as well be miles. The miles he travels to take out a—

  On the bedside table, on Amy’s side: a photograph he hasn’t looked at in a long time; he’s tried not to. Their wedding day. G786 and Amy smiling, laughing, as the crowd throws confetti on them. He knows that he was there that day, but it seems like another man’s memory. Actually it is another man’s memory, isn’t it: Simon’s. G786 goes over to the picture, touches the frame with his fingers, touches the glass. Hopes that just as he can travel distances, he might somehow also be able to travel through time. Back to that day, to experience it all over again, just to remember what it felt like to—

  Why? Why bother? What is the point? What would it achieve? It certainly wouldn’t alter his reality.

  But it is too late. He needs to see Amy now, if only for his own sake. She’ll be back soon, he tells himself. Then he can see her all he wants. That’s not the same, though; she’ll be here with him. It was never the same when she was here. G786 just needs to look upon her face without her knowing. It is a bizarre thing to admit, but true. He can’t explain it, either, nor why he is now going to the window to close the curtains, going over to the wardrobe to get something out…a piece of her clothing, a dress, a skirt, a blouse…a jumper. One of her favourite fluffy jumpers. She wears this all the time when the cold weather bites. G786 grabs hold of it and sits back down on the bed.

  He concentrates, rubbing the material between his thumb and fingers. G786 closes his eyes and enters the rainbow tunnel, the bright multi-coloured conduit. He zips up ‘roads’, turns off ‘junctions’; but doesn’t have to go that far this time. His wife is not in another country or on the other side of the world. She is in the next town. He arrives outside a building, tall and brown; doesn’t really recognise the place but knows she is inside. He senses her. It’s strange, but G786 thinks little of this. He just enters via the nearest wall, passing through bricks and mortar like a ghost. And enters a wide open space with a counter on one side and a set of stairs on the other.

  Ignoring the rest of it, he travels up these stairs without ever having to touch one of them. He flies, up through level after level, up and down corridor after corridor. Until at last he comes to a door. It’s one of many, but it’s the only one he sees. There is a number on the outside, very much like the one on his office door at work – except this one says 505. This time it’s a room rather than a person’s number.

  G786 passes through it.

  Once inside, he sees his wife. But wishes to God – if there is a God – that he couldn’t. She is in a room, in a bed. And she is not alone. A man, G786 doesn’t recognise him, is on top of her. The sheets that cover the bottom half of his body are rising with him. Slowly, gently, tenderly. Amy’s hands are clutching his back, stroking the skin, digging her nails in as he speeds up. Now he is kissing her as he works, his lips brushing neck, and cheeks. Amy’s head flops to one side and G786 can see her face.

  What’s the matter? You wanted to see her face, didn’t you? Only not like this… Not like this…

  Amy is in the throes of ecstasy, and G786 feels almost sick. A whirlwind of buried emotions are churning up ins
ide him. Where before there was nothing – or almost nothing – he now feels love, jealously, anger, betrayal, hatred, and above all envy. Yes, envy. He, G786…Simon, wants to be in that bed with Amy, as he once was, as he could have been all those many, many nights when he’d turned her away, ignored her, forced her to seek comfort in the arms of another. Forced her to find someone whom she could love and who would love her; who’d give her what Simon could not. Warmth, humanity even.

  It is too much for him to bear. No sooner has he thought about it than he is there: inside the body of this stranger screwing his wife. Simon can feel the beating of the man’s heart, faster and faster. How easy it would be to just squeeze that muscle until it burst. But he isn’t going to do that. He has other things in mind.

  Amy looks up at the slick, rugged face above her. She’s never felt so alive in her life – well, not since she and Simon used to… But suddenly something is wrong with the picture. Will – for that is the name of the man she finally gave herself to after months of resisting – is grimacing. Not because he is about to finish, but because of something else. His sweet, handsome face is swelling up. Forehead bloating, eyes bulging. And now his body is following suit. Shoulders inflating and skin stretching taut.

  He rolls away and gets up off the bed. She watches as he staggers about there, clutching his head, his chest, his whole torso in fact; not knowing where to put his hands first, or what help they could possibly be when they got there. A trickle of blood is running from the corner of his mouth, then another down his nose. He begins to convulse, crying out in agony as spasms plague his now unrecognisable body.