Part 10 A Sinister Business #3
‘This is why I created Modern Alchemical Solutions. To bring customers with interesting problems to me. Governments who want people quietly killed in prison cells. Businesses who want rivals hobbled. Wives who want cheating husbands humiliated. Like I said, I am the inverse of you: you try to prevent what I try to achieve. Which, I suppose, is why we are talking now. Tell me, do you love this girlfriend of yours, Agent Mills?’
I hesitated. ‘I, well—’
‘See, you are susceptible to psychological manipulation. You sold yourself short with that autism spectrum nonsense. I know that you can love and that means you can lose.’
Damn.
He was good.
‘Tell me, Dr Speedman—Samuel, if I may—straight up, first instinct, do you love Agent Audrey Mills?’
‘Yes, I do.’
And it was the truth.
A cold snort came over the line.
‘You see, I do not love. Nor am I loved. Love is not only a delusion, it is a weakness. Me, I am neither good nor bad. I do not have some sad childhood history of abuse or trauma motivating me. I do not need money—I have enough—and I do not need vali-dation. I have no manifesto or philosophy to impose on others.’
‘Just a need to overcome your boredom?’ I said.
‘Precisely. You know, Vasha is about the same size as Agent Mills. It wouldn’t be impossible to transform her into Agent Mills. Addressing the differences in skin pigmentation would be an issue but not insurmountable. Ms Mills has such interesting freckling. Hmmm.’
So, Vasha—who I’d read about in the plaintext—was indeed a female accomplice of this guy.
But what the hell did he mean when he said ‘transform her’ into Audrey?
And when he spoke of Audrey’s skin, his voice took on a strange tone, like the sort of detachment a hobbyist might display.
I didn’t like where this was going.
‘If you come after Audrey, I’ll come after you,’ I said.
‘See, Samuel, there it is. That is precisely why love is a weakness. Tell me, do you ever wonder if, perhaps, Agent Mills does not love you as much as you love her?’
Every day, I thought.
He was getting under my skin now.
‘Do you have a name?’ I said, trying to switch to another subject.
‘Attempting to change the topic? Good idea. I would, too, the way this conversation is going. I did have a name once. But I’ve been so many other people over the years—walked in their bodies, lived in their homes, cut their spouses’ throats—that I almost can’t remember my original name.
I have gradually removed my original identity from all records and databases, from all existence; so much so that I have literally become an unperson from George Orwell’s 1984. Why don’t you call me that: Unperson.’
His words reverberated in my mind:
He’d walked in people’s bodies, lived in their homes.
I once again recalled the Russians’ name for this man.
Perevertyshe.
One who walks around in another’s skin.
‘Are you American?’ I said.
‘I am now.’
A curious answer.
‘You came to America at some point?’
‘With skills that America didn’t want. No, that’s not right: I arrived with skills that Americans use differently.
Cheiloplasty. Free flaps. Autografting. Americans do these things for their vanity.
I performed them in different circumstances.
Tell me, Samuel, have you ever been conscripted to serve in an army?
Ever seen a person whose face has been blown half off by a landmine? ’
An even more curious answer.
Maybe I was getting under his skin.
He’d come to America from a country with compulsory military service: conscription. That explained his aptitude with weapons and drones. The other terms he used, however, sounded medical.
‘Okay, then—’ I said, warming up.
‘No, Samuel, it’s time for you to listen.
You have entered my world now. And only those whom I allow to stay get to remain alive in it.
The events of December 21 were meant to be over.
I am asking you politely but firmly to cease your investigations.
If you continue with them, we will meet. In person. And it will not go well.’
Click.
Dial tone.
I stared at the old phone as I placed it back in its cradle.
I was shaking a little.
It was 1:05 a.m., and buzzed as I was from that unique conversation, I was now officially exhausted.
(I actually felt safe inside 60 Hudson Street, with its many security guards and multiple checkpoints. It was about as safe as I could get right now.)
I desperately needed to sleep, but I wanted to check one more thing before I did.
I Googled cheiloplasty, free flaps and autografting.
When the results appeared on my phone’s screen, I blinked.
All three were terms used in the field of plastic surgery.
Cheiloplasty: surgical procedures involving the lips, especially cleft lip defects.
Free flaps: a kind of surgery where a chunk of tissue—including the blood vessels—is transferred from one part of the body to another and the blood vessels are reconnected.
Autografting: when bone is taken from another site on a patient’s body for use in facial surgery.
This man from Modern Alchemical Solutions—the Unperson—was a doctor of some kind, one proficient in plastic or reconstructive surgery, which, if he and his criminal colleagues were in the habit of impersonating people, was a very helpful skill to have.
Uneasy and unsettled, I lay down on the cot and, after a short time, fell asleep.