Skull had driven most of the day in the car he’d rented outside Jersey City. Now he lay on the bed of a roadside hotel off I-95, a book on the Black Plague held open before him.
The world calls the Eden virus a plague, Skull thought. This was a plague. It killed one quarter the population of medieval Europe.
Loud music from the hotel bar downstairs kept distracting Skull from his reading. He couldn’t decide if it was annoying or appealing. He decided a drink might help him sleep. Climbing out of bed, he put his boots back on and walked downstairs.
He found a table in the corner and ordered a beer when the waitress came. The place seemed crowded with a mixture of locals and guests. Loud music thumped from an overtaxed jukebox. A few people danced in a cleared space nearby. Skull sipped his drink and felt the booming and the ambience of humanity wash over him.
A loner by nature, yet he felt alone at times and craved the presence of people. Not direct interaction. Not conversation. Just the perverse anonymity of the crowd, combined with the unlikely possibility of seeing something interesting.
At his heart, a sniper was the ultimate observer. Something pleasant fizzed in the back of his brain when he was able to watch others undetected, some voyeuristic impulse.
But the illusion of distance soon dissolved. Women began to look at him appraisingly. Men sized him up. The waitress tried to engage him in conversation, asking his story. Any one of them might be a Security Service informant.
This was a mistake. I can’t afford mistakes.
Skull left and went back to his room.
Hopefully, I’ll be forgotten.
He thought he could sleep now. The combination of beer and the contentment of briefly communing with humanity left him feeling heavy and spent. He decided to check his messages one more time and saw one from Shawna Nightingale.
It would have been so easy to ignore it or wait until the morning to answer, but knew he should have contacted her earlier and felt a twinge of quilt. Opening the email, he saw she wanted him to call her on an untraceable video line.
She answered on the second ring, even though it had to be early morning in Africa.
“How you doing?” he asked her.
“As well as can be expected,” she answered and Skull thought it looked like she’d been crying.
“Sorry I didn’t contact you earlier. I believe Larry is alive. Whoever took him wants to use him, or get information out of him.”
“He won’t talk.” Shawna said.
“Everyone talks eventually.” Or dies, he didn’t say out loud.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I believe so.”
“Where?”
Skull said nothing.
She took a deep breath that contained several hitches, as if fighting off sobs. “Dammit, Cassandra was right.”
“Cassandra? You talked to her?”
“Yes. You weren’t getting back to me, and…”
She seemed about to reveal a secret. Irrationally, he placed his hand on the grip of his pistol, as if expecting enemies to burst in the door. It made him feel better. “Go ahead.”
“Cassandra didn’t want to let you know she was involved. Now she won’t tell me anything and I’m so scared I’ll never see Larry again.”
“Involved how?”
“I’m not sure, but the request for Larry to go do this came through her, so she must know more than she’s letting on.”
Skull stared a moment at her image on the screen, knowing the camera was showing his own face. “I should have expected that. At least it’s Cassandra and not…” Not Spooky, he said to himself.
“Please, bring him back, Alan,” she said, close to tears.
“I’ll do everything I can. This isn’t your fault. But…don’t get your hopes up. You need to prepare for the worst.”
She nodded smiling. “I will. Thank you.”
“Bye, Shawna,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He sat without moving for nearly five minutes. He thought about composing a nasty message to Cassandra, but in reality, he understood her role. She tried to do the best she could, to gain the optimal outcome possible. She gave instructions with the force of orders, not so different from a military officer. She played the spy game as well as anyone.
He couldn’t fault her.
Besides, he…liked her. If there was ever to be anything between them, he couldn’t hammer her too hard. Like the scorpion on the duck’s back, she was what she was. He wouldn’t change her.
Skull was what he was, too, and she wouldn’t change him. He doubted anyone ever would.
Turning off the lights, he lay on his bed and closed his eyes, listening to the muffled sounds of people from downstairs, feeling more alone than ever.
Wrapping himself in the armor of solitude, he prepared his mind for his coming task.