Without Warning (33 page)

“Bilal, it is not easy …”

Caitlin’s head felt as though it were wrapped in heavy blankets. Exhaustion and illness weighed her down, pressing her back into sleep, but a small part of her, an echo of her waking consciousness, forced her up out of troubled sleep. The dream came apart like mist before a hard wind. Her head reeled with dizziness, but she was immediately aware that the horrendous
pain and nausea had gone. Not just eased, but gone, at least for the moment. She became aware of everything. Her position, jackknifed on the short, uncomfortable couch. The threadbare blanket with which Monique had covered her. The smell of the meal she had cooked the previous evening and the rank stench of her having thrown it up. The predawn darkness, tinted just the faintest orange by the glow of a far-off blaze. The ticking of a windup clock. Footsteps padding about in the apartment above her. And Monique’s voice, talking to someone. Just her voice and occasional blank spots in the rhythm of a muttered conversation.

She was on the phone.

A jolt ran though Caitlin’s body, propelling her up off the couch and across the room. The sudden change left her balance reeling, and she barked her shin painfully on a table leg, cursing but hurrying on. A phone call!

“Mother of Christ,” she hissed.

She heard Monique’s voice falter, just before the beep of a terminated cellphone call reached her.

“What the fuck are you doing? I said no calls! Who was that, Monique? Who was it?”

Caitlin found her in the kitchen, pressed into a corner, looking scared.

“I am sorry. I’m so sorry, it’s just I was frightened.”

The room was dark, the only light the residual glow of the tiny screen on a new Nokia. It painted her features a garish yellow, before winking out and leaving them in darkness.

“Another fucking phone! Did you call your boyfriend, Monique?”

Caitlin’s voice was flat and hard, a sheet of stamped iron slamming down between them.

“Did you call Bilal?”

Her reply was an almost inaudible squeak.

“I’m sorry, Caitlin. I had to talk to him. I had …”

“Jesus Christ, Monique. How many times did I tell you, no calls to anyone. Let alone your boyfriend the terrorist.”

“He is
not
a terrorist…”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did he pinky-promise you that? Cross his heart and hope to die? Well then, I guess that’s all right. I’ll just go back to bed.”

Caitlin spun on her heels and stalked away, heading for the bathroom, where she tugged on the string to power up the one exposed bulb, before bending down to rip back a sheet of moldy linoleum, exposing the wooden boards beneath. She reached one finger through a knothole, gave a tug, and the board came away. Another pull removed the piece of wood beside it. A thick, buff-colored folder came out first. She sensed Monique coming up behind
her but said nothing, busying herself with emptying the small arsenal she had stashed away beneath the floor.

No conversation passed between them. The only sound was Caitlin’s breathing and the metallic rattle of weaponry and ammunition coming up out of the hiding place. She could feel Monique wanting to say something; the air was almost alive with the tension growing between them. Caitlin didn’t trust herself to respond rationally, however, so she decided to short-circuit any confrontation.

“There’s a sports bag in the bedroom, would you please get it for me?” she asked, in as reasonable a tone as she could manage.

“Okay,” replied Monique in a small, frightened voice.

She returned a few moments later with an old Adidas bag, empty save for a few shopping items from their last trip out. Batteries, a flashlight. Some energy bars. Caitlin began stuffing the guns and ammo into the bag.

“I am sorry, Caitlin … it’s just… I was …”

“Forget it,” she snapped. “It’s my fault. I should have checked. I should have taken the phone off you. You were always going to call someone. I should be apologizing. I’ve lost my edge. This fucking tumor or whatever. The Disappearance. It’s fucked me up, and we are going to get killed because of it. Not because you made a mistake. That’s just… you. You’re not trained. You have no experience. You don’t think things through the way you need to now.”

She finished topping off the bag with the three passports and a stack of currency. After a pause she tossed the greenbacks. They were just deadweight now. The euros, about fifteen grand’s worth, still had some residual value. Probably about half the purchasing power they’d had a week back. Caitlin hurried though to the small living area.

“I’m outta here. You can stay or come with me. If you stay, there’s a good chance men will be here with guns very soon.”

“Because of my call.”

“Because of your call. To
Bilal.”
Caitlin turned and looked at her for the first time that morning. “If you come, there’ll still be men with guns. At first it’ll be like at the hospital. Professionals, playing by the rules. Even if the rules have changed and I don’t know what the fuck they are anymore, there
will
be rules. But soon, very soon … no more rules. Just violence like you cannot imagine. You will have to change, Monique. You will have to grow up.”

“To be more like you?” Her tone was reproachful, almost sarcastic.

“To be like me. And Bilal.”

At that Monique rolled her eyes again, and Caitlin pushed past her, not wanting to be delayed by another tantrum. She retrieved a small backpack
from the bedroom and began cramming food into it. Trail food that she’d picked up from a camping store. Freeze-dried meals and energy bars and couple of British surplus MRE packages. It was getting lighter outside; the light of the fires beyond the edge of the old city were throwing less of a dramatic light on the low, scudding toxic clouds that hung over Paris.

That hang over everything,
she reminded herself.

“I am sorry …”

“Would you for Chrissakes stop saying that and pack. We have to get out of here,” Caitlin insisted. “Come on.”

She led Monique through to the bedroom and pointed at another small backpack.

“Pack clothes and food. More of the latter,” she ordered.

“Okay. Okay. But you are wrong about Bilal. I told him what you said …”

“A week ago that would have gotten you killed, but right now, slow packing is what’s threatening to end your life. Come on, move.”

Caitlin’s ears pricked up at the distant howl of a siren. Her heart jumped forward a beat but the sound tapered off. As Monique began to fill her pack with more supplies, Caitlin retrieved a pistol from the weapon bag. A Glock 19 for herself and a .38 revolver for Monique, if needed.

“So what did he say, exactly, your boyfriend, that is?”

Monique cinched shut the top flap, and flapped her arms theatrically. “He said you were crazy. He was very understanding. He thought the Disappearance had driven you mad. There have been many instances among the Americans in Germany. Suicides. Breakdowns and such.”

“So he’s in Germany? At Neukölln, perhaps?”

Monique froze, a suspicious glare fixed on her face.

Caitlin smiled.

“That’s right. I know where he lives. With his mom. Be cool. He is so off my to-do list now. Remember, I’m unemployed as of last week.”

The other woman eyed her doubtfully but finally swung the pack over her shoulder, ready to go. Caitlin rushed to put on a fresh pair of socks. She slipped into her old boots, donned the leather jacket she’d stolen from the hospital, and loaded up. She wouldn’t normally hit the streets loaded down with so much artillery, but any encounter they had with the cops was going to turn nasty anyway. She had no doubt both she and Monique were on watch lists with every agency of the state by now. The only question for her was whether the state would fall apart before it laid hands on them.

She checked her watch.

5:45 a.m.

Fifteen minutes until the curfew was over. Fifteen minutes they probably didn’t have.

At least the drizzle had stopped for now. She could see that the pavement and road were still slicked with acidic rain, but for now they could move about without the irritation of burning skin and stinging eyes. Caitlin checked the room for the last time, making sure they weren’t leaving some vital piece of gear behind in the rush. The GPS batteries were dead, but the satellite system itself, or at least the link to it, was increasingly patchy, so the unit stayed on the table where she’d dropped it. Between them they knew enough of the city to get away.

There was nothing to identify her. Unless the French security service had her DNA on file somewhere, and anyway, that sort of obsessiveness was no longer necessary. She’d already been blown. Echelon was gone. She was simply looking to save her own skin now, not to maintain operational security. It was liberating in a way. She could play a lot faster and looser because there were no rules. They might just make it.

If her illness didn’t finish her off first.

As soon as they hit the street both women were struck by the strength of the contamination still befouling the air. Caitlin had a flashback to her first time in India, when she’d stepped into a small curry house and had to step out again immediately, her eyes streaming and her throat burning from the dense mist of powdered chili dust she’d inhaled. This wasn’t quite that bad. It was at least bearable. But the deterioration in the atmosphere was still severe. At ground level the number of dead birds was spectacular. Perhaps the night had claimed more of them. They did not quite carpet the ground, but it was impossible to walk in a straight line for more than few meters without stepping on one.

“Man,” said Caitlin. “This sucks. We should have masks. Let’s get going. I want to find us a car with good filters.”

A week ago Monique would have protested and held them up. Now she nodded somberly and hurried to keep up with her companion. Avoiding the birds, many of which still twitched and flapped feebly with the last sparks of life, slowed them somewhat, and the noxious ether quickly burned their lungs and air passages. Caitlin had chosen an apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement, where the working-class tenements of Place de Clichy edged into the red-light district of Pigalle. There was still an abundance of smaller, cheaper rooms to be had in the area, one of the most densely populated
in the capital. The brothels and strip clubs, the unlicensed bars and underground gaming halls all helped create an outré environment where the police and other, more dangerous state actors were unwelcome.

“Why are you doing this, Caitlin? Why are you helping? Surely you could move more quickly on your own. You must still have friends left in the city. On the continent. You could disappear.”

“My friends have been disappeared already, Monique. My network’s been rolled up. Those guys at the first apartment I tried to take us to? They were turning it over. My controller should have been there, to get me out. Maybe he was and they grabbed him, maybe he wasn’t. But I haven’t been able to contact him or anyone. The numbers I had, the Internet addresses, they’re all dead. And the Net’s useless anyway. It’s falling apart. The people are gone, if they were back home. And missing, if they were here. But mostly they’re gone. And I have to assume all of my contacts have been compromised. I’m on my own, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a hospital case, an invalid.”

They stopped outside a patisserie. It should have been open by now but the shop front remained closed and the blinds were shut.

“I could sell you some line of bullshit, darlin’. That was a specialty of mine. You might not believe it, but I’m a bit of an empath. I have no trouble putting myself in somebody else’s shoes. Just before I kill them, or arrange to have someone else kill them.”

Monique blanched and moved on, picking her way through dead birds. Caitlin stepped up beside her, scanning the streets ahead for a vehicle. In this part of town, however, few people drove, and cars were few and far between. The streets were narrow, and there was no garaging available for cars. Everyone rode the Métro or walked. Caitlin went on.

“But there’s no point shitting you, is there? You know the deal already. What I am. What I was doing.”

“Oui.” Monique shrugged.

“Bottom line is, I need you. I’m fucked up with this … tumor, whatever. The effects come and go. I’m cool right now. But I still feel like shit, and I can never tell when I’m gonna lose it. Fall on my ass. Pass out. Who knows what? So I could give you a line about how I’m responsible for you, how I got you into this mess and honor demands that I get us both out. But the fact is, I’m fucked and I need your help. I have nobody else in what’s left of the world.”

They came around a bend in the street and spied a minibus, but a man was loading his family into it, with about a month’s worth of supplies by the look of all the boxes and bags of food he was manhandling into the cabin. Monique caught Caitlin scoping them out and was about to object but the assassin smiled crookedly.

“Don’t worry. I’m not about to wax a bunch of kids and steal their ride. You have to have more faith in me. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but people like that, normal, decent folks, in the end
they
were my mission. Protecting them.”

Monique examined her with wry detachment, almost tripping on a dead pigeon from not watching her footing.

“Not them so much, Caitlin. They are French. And you are not. I know enough now about your world to understand what that means. You told me about Noisy-le-Sec, remember. And this Echelon is no secret. There have been books and news stories written. And a French government investigation. I read about it in
Le Monde.
Not so secret, no? It is a well-documented conspiracy of the English-speaking world.”

Caitlin smiled.

“There are knowns, and there are unknowns, Monique. But you’re right in one sense. Sometimes governments, agencies, whatever, they might set themselves against each other, but I’m talking about the wider picture. People like that…” She nodded at the family now loading the last of their number into the bus. “People like that, who want nothing more than to go about their own business, raising their kids, keeping them safe, giving them whatever chances they can to do better … the world they want to make is worth fighting for. They are worth defending.”