JAKE RETURNED TO THE hotel suite first. Leaving most of the lights off, he went over and stood by the window. The rain had turned to mist and everything was soft and hazy out in the night.
“Maybe I’ve been at this business too long,” he told himself. He felt tired and he had the suspicion he’d feel the same way come morning.
In the alcove the vidphone buzzed.
Jake crossed over to answer. “Yeah?”
“Hello, dear.” Beth appeared on the screen, smiling.
“You called at a good time,” he told her. “I was just about to start brooding.”
“What I have to tell you, Jake, may not cheer you up,” she said. “Perhaps you already know, but since it’s being kept off the news media, perhaps you don’t. I thought I’d better call you.”
“What’s wrong? Is your father—”
“No, it’s Bennett Sands,” she told him. “I just found out from Agent Griggs. Sands has disappeared from the prison near Barsetshire. They discovered he was gone roughly three hours ago.”
“Damn,” said Jake quietly. “How’d he escape?”
She shook her head. “No one is certain. Obviously, though, the electronic surveillance system in his room in the hospital wing had to be fooled somehow. When they made their last in-person check on Sands, he simply wasn’t there. Nor anywhere else in the place.”
Jake said, “That’s why he was shipped over to England.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Somebody in England has a use for Sands. And enough influence to get him transferred from NorCal,” Jake said. “Plus enough connections to get him quietly sprung from a maxsec setup.”
“I’m trying to find out more details,” Beth said. “But ... I don’t know, Jake. I keep feeling that my father knew that this was going to happen.”
“Maybe he did, Beth. And I’m damn near certain Kate was expecting the escape, too.”
Smiling a bit sadly, Beth said, “We don’t seem to be having much luck with our relatives lately.”
“Sands’ daughter has dropped out of sight, too,” Jake told her. “You know that Dan’s had a sort of crush on her for a long time. I’m worried he’ll go hunting for her and get himself tangled up with Sands and the people who sprung him.”
“Dan’s inherited your smartness. He won’t do anything dumb,” she assured him. “By the way, on an entirely different topic—I miss you.”
“I have similar feelings about you.”
“Any idea how soon you’ll be home?”
“Not yet, and after we finish up here in Paris I want to go over to England to see Dan.”
“And Kate?”
“Not Kate, no.” They watched each other for a moment on the vidphone.
“Well, when you get to London, I have a couple of people you might want to look up. In case you happen to need assistance in certain areas,” Beth said. “There’s Marj Lofton, an old friend of mine. She used to be a very successful Associate Professor of Robotics at SoCal Tech. Three years ago, though, Marj decided she wanted to help people more directly and she went home to England to get involved in social work. She knows a lot about London lowlife.”
“Yeah, I may need her.”
“And my other friend, Denis Gilford, is now a reporter for The London FaxTimes. He always has access to all sorts of information nobody is supposed to have.”
“Another one of your former suitors?”
“Denis is a friend, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’ll add him to my list of things to see in London.” He smiled.
“I think you’ll enjoy him. Well, I have to go now. Remember, I love you, Jake.”
Jake said, “And I love you.”
The screen went blank.
He was alive again.
Sitting there, breathing in and out regularly, none of the other passengers paying him any mind.
Just a sad-looking young man, far as they could tell, bundled up in a large black overcoat with a knit cap pulled down low on his head. Sitting there, breathing in and out regularly. Nobody, not one of the damn idiots sharing this car in the London Underground Tubetrain, was aware of who he was.
He was death.
Not for them, not tonight anyway. But you never could tell. Maybe some night, maybe one of them would have to die.
He never knew. He’d simply be alive again, breathing in and out regularly, and a name would be given to him. Tonight was an easy one, without a lot of travel involved.
Tonight he just had to kill someone close to home.
Not that he minded traveling. Not that he liked traveling either. The part he didn’t much care for, although he hadn’t complained yet, was memorizing all the details about the person he had to kill.
That meant studying, which was too much like school. After all, he’d been out of college for ... Well, he didn’t have a complete memory about that. It had been a while ago anyway.
The voxbox in the ceiling of the car announced, “Coming into Paddington Station.”
The young man waited until a few other passengers had gotten up to move toward the doors. Then he stood.
The underground train silently halted, the doors silently drifted open.
As he went out the door onto the platform, the right-hand pocket of his black overcoat banged against the frame and produced a metallic crack. But nobody noticed.
The young man walked toward an exit, not hurrying, breathing in and out regularly. The weapons detector in the gate didn’t make a sound as he passed through. It was a simple-minded mechanism, incapable of getting around the antidetection gadget he carried in his pocket along with his stungun and his lazgun.
He got on a motoramp and let it carry him up to the street. He made his way over to Level One of Praed Street, not bothered by the thick, chill fog that choked the late night thoroughfare.
Thoroughfare. That was a nice word. It showed that he had a large and useful vocabulary. He sometimes, however, wished that his memory matched his vocabulary.
On his left the words tourist pub floated, glowing a prickly red, in the fog. The young man continued on until he reached Level One of the Edgware Road. He halted for a moment, listening, glancing casually around him.
Nobody was following him, no one was paying him undue attention. It was safe to go ahead with tonight’s killing.
Nodding, he climbed the ramp to Level 2 of Edgware. He patted the other pocket of his overcoat. It contained, neatly folded, the note he had to leave on the corpse after he cut it into four.