Chapter 5
Five
Mark
Once I reach my car, I make a call with the burner I picked up once I got to the country.
Afterward, the phone gets knocked back to factory settings and dropped in an electronics recycling box in Exeter, where I also leave the rented car and walk to a station to board a train bound for London.
I have a stocking hat pulled over my head and the collar of a battered secondhand coat turned up, and there’s a pebble in my right shoe to hobble my usual lengthy stride.
It’s not a perfect disguise—nothing is in a place as surveilled as England—but it’s enough to make someone work to find me when they comb through the CCTV footage. That’s as much as I need at the moment.
The London clockmaker has a shop behind a shit-splattered sidewalk in Croydon, and she’s expecting me when I walk in. Clockmakers aren’t a chatty bunch, so I’m not surprised when she wordlessly disappears into the back before I can even reach the counter.
I poke around the cases of watches and tabletop timepieces, watch the clocks on the wall tick in perfect concord. Behind the desk, a neat row of clocks shows the times across the globe.
The shop is cluttered but sparkling, unlike the battered storefront outside, and when the clockmaker emerges from the back, I get a glimpse of a well-ordered room with stacks of notepads, a shelf of atlases, and a fax machine made of yellowing plastic.
The clockmaker hands me a piece of paper. The clockmaker in Singapore is fond of coordinates, but here in London, things are a little quainter, and I just get a name. Place Seffarine .
I look up at the clockmaker. Her expression tells me that she knows exactly what I’m about to ask and that I’d better not. But Fez ? I might as well search for a needle in a haystack in the dark. With gloves on.
I glance up at the clocks on the wall and mentally triangulate how long this little detour might take and then decide it doesn’t matter. It might be yet another dead end, one more wasted trip, but I’ll regret it if I don’t try to find this man.
“They said he was a priest,” the clockmaker says unexpectedly, dipping her head toward the paper in my hand.
Even though we’re alone in the shop, I’m a little surprised.
Getting anything approaching context or detail or explanation from a clockmaker is almost unheard of.
An SIS relic from the Cold War, the clockmakers operate on an older set of rules, the chief rule being that the less everyone knows, the better.
A rule that’s kept the clockmaking operation ticking through the decades, as counterterrorism overtook all other concerns, as private actors slowly started filtering into the business of intelligence and covert action.
The clockmakers will work with almost anyone for the right price—provided Vauxhall Cross doesn’t consider them a threat—but there’s a difference between the SIS titrating out tidbits of information and them handing over everything they know about a subject.
“He was,” I say and fold the paper into a crisp square. “He worked in the archives of the Vatican.”
Professional interest flickers in the clockmaker’s eyes. I know she’s imagining what she could do with only a day in those archives, the secrets she could find to write on little pieces of paper for ridiculous sums.
“He’s been hopping cities every few months,” she says. “He knows how to hide, and now he’s in Fez. In the medina.”
In other words, he’s in one of the easiest places to hide in the world.
She seems to come to some kind of decision. “You should know that someone else was asking after him. Three days ago.”
Fuck.
“Who were they?” I ask, knowing she won’t answer, and she doesn’t. Clockmakers don’t stay in business by revealing the identities of their customers.
“Best of luck,” she says, and then she disappears into the back.
Fez is hectic but picturesque as I navigate the medina—an eight-hundred-acre warren of souks, mosques, and dead-end lanes.
The streets are packed with stalls, vendors, and pack mules; fountains gurgle from hidden corners and unseen courtyards; cats dart everywhere.
When I hear the din of hammers against copper, I slow my gait and stroll into Place Seffarine, one hand in the pocket of my tan suit.
I become the picture of a tourist at leisure.
I stop at the shops and chat with the coppersmiths in British-accented French, and I gradually piece together a sense of the square.
Most of the nearby buildings are low, two or three stories at most, with shuttered windows and cafés wedged onto rooftops.
There’s a madrasa on one side, with the occasional clump of students entering or leaving via the horseshoe arch, and vendors have spread out their wares on the steps rising up to the far end of the square, calling out to locals and tourists alike.
It’s a noisy, busy place. A place where you can pass through without standing out.
I buy a few trinkets I don’t need and then find a spot in a café with a cup of black coffee and a discarded newspaper, which I pretend to read while I observe the square from above.
I haven’t forgotten that this is the worst part of intelligence work. Waiting and watching. Beating off boredom with a stick, keeping my thoughts from drifting to the endless unknowns.
Unknowns like whether my runaway priest will wait to leave his bolt-hole when the shadows stretch over the streets of the medina, or whether he’ll trust the bustle of the square and brazenly go about his business during the day.
Whether he’s changed physically since the last known photo of him was taken. Whether he’s alone.
Whether he’s dangerous.
The café is sheltered from the briskest of the December breezes, but I’m grateful for my jacket and the fresh coffee as morning rolls into afternoon.
An orange tabby hops into the chair next to me and cleans his paws.
I stroke his ears while I read and drink more coffee.
I think about cappuccinos and my bodyguard.
I think about espresso cups cradled in my wife’s slender, deadly hands.
I had a plan once, and it went like this: get revenge, and then probably die in the process. It was a thing of clarity and purpose, and for all its moving parts, the reason behind it was as present as a hatchet buried in my chest. They killed what I loved, so I would kill all of them.
But then came Isolde. Isolde who fainted after crawling to me because subspace hit her so hard; Isolde who used the honeysuckle knife I gave her to kill wicked priests.
Then came Tristan, who only wanted one thing while he was deployed, and that was a kiss. Who went to Ireland to get my bride for me because I asked, even though it lacerated his heart to do it.
And now I don’t even know what the hell to do with my plan. I was supposed to care about nothing , and now I care about two things, and it’s a little fucking irritating, if I’m honest.
There’s a flicker of movement from one of the doorways opening into the square, and it would be easy to ignore, to forget, except I see a hand come up, then down, then side to side. The sign of the cross.
Instantly alert, I watch as a white man wearing a zip-up and jeans—tourist clothes—drops his hand, steps into the square, and starts walking toward one of the narrow lanes leading out to the rest of the medina. Small drops gleam darkly in his wake—blood, dripping from the hem of his jeans.
I toss my newspaper on the table, wedge some dirhams under the coffee cup, and stride out of the café.
I nearly lose him as I shoulder my way down the lane he chose, but I catch sight of the dark green zip-up and curly brown hair as we walk past the university.
He’s found a baseball cap—or he had it already—and is pulling it over his head as he makes a sharp turn down an even busier lane.
Carpet stores and clothing stores have their doors flung open, and vendors have parked their wheeled carts between, selling everything from bottled water to dried scorpions.
I’m decently good at following people, if I’m allowed the self-praise, but my quarry seems to be just as good at evading a tail.
He turns often, he doesn’t shy away from crowds, and he uses the narrow lanes and congested corners to his advantage.
I’m staying on him, but only just , and that’s when he throws a glance over his shoulder.
Just the one, but it’s long enough to see me, which shouldn’t matter—the medina is full of tourists, and I’m able to play the role of feckless British tourist quite well—but it does matter.
And I have a beat after he bolts down the next lane he comes upon to appreciate that he must know who I am.
It doesn’t narrow down the list of people who’d like to run away from me, but it gives me an idea of what I’m in for.
I sigh and then take off after him, wishing that for once, things could be easy. Haven’t I earned that? Something easy? Jesus.
He’s fast, but so am I, and I gain on him as we tear past cafés and bazaars and piles of cats sleeping in the sun.
I’d rather not be running in a linen suit and leather shoes, but I’ve operated in tuxedos, in dress shoes—and once in a full Venetian carnival costume and volto mask—so this isn’t too bad, and despite the pinch in my feet and having to fumble for the leather gloves in my pocket to pull on as I run, I’ve almost caught up to him when he ducks down by a fountain, turns, and scoops up something from the ground to throw at me.