Page 21 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Plan first, then act, that was his mantra.
He had time, he knew. None of the few people still working in the office had paid him any attention when he had first entered from the lobby, and many of them had been wearing earbuds, listening to music while working. None of them would have heard the suppressed gunshot that had killed the man minutes earlier.
He strolled back into the meeting room, pulling out the paper he had carried with him for several years now, ever since the events that had changed his life. He unfolded it and laid it flat on the table between his hands. He had followed the map all the way from the US, where he had been the previous day, and through Hong Kong to the restaurant on Temple Street, where he had first seen the short red-haired woman. Then he had used the map, following the item to the building and the eighty-second floor. Then, as he was approaching the meeting room, the item on the map had vanished, as if it had disappeared, even though the redhead and the man obviously did have it. And the woman clearly had some magical artefact that allowed her to fly, but that wasn’t visible on the map either.
Owen muttered to himself in frustration, not understanding. Why was an item visible sometimes and then suddenly not?
He had to find the woman to retrieve what she had taken so he could work out what it did. And he wanted to know what she knew, what other secrets she could tell him. But the map wasn’t going to help him with that. He folded it up and slid it into his back pocket. He was about to leave when he spotted the phone lying on the table. The phone was locked but when he touched the screen it illuminated to reveal a photograph of a busy street.
“London,” he said.
He dropped the phone into his pocket and walked around the table, stepping over the body of the tall Chinese man without giving it a second glance. He checked his watch. It had been less than ten minutes since he’d entered the room. He strolled back through the darkened office, seeing the same few desks illuminated, the same busy workers squinting at their computer screens. He had guessed right: nobody had heard anything. Owen had an instinct for these things, a sense well honed over many years.
He thought again of the woman with the red hair. She had shown impressive fortitude when he’d shot and killed the man. She had managed her emotions and had remained cool and calm under pressure, responding about as well as it was possible to respond in those circumstances.
It was a shame that she would probably have to die now. But that was who he was: a killer.
***
Owen Maddox had been a killer for all of his adult life, ever since he had escaped a childhood of abuse and poverty by joining the Parachute Regiment of the British Army as a teenager. He had run from his father and the tiny house they had shared in Swansea to Darlington, where twenty-eight weeks of basic infantry training at Catterick had awaited him, a gateway to a life structured and directed in a manner he had never before experienced. Owen had excelled over those weeks of training. He had joined the army as an escape but had discovered a calling, revealing capabilities and skills that had marked him out from his fellow recruits. In the following years he had continued to excel as a paratrooper. He had applied successfully to join the Pathfinder Platoon, and the Pathfinders had turned him into a sniper. He had served several tours in hot and miserable countries, spending long hours alone in pits dug in the desert or in muddy fields, waiting for the single, fleeting opportunity to deal with what the military called a “strategic target.” On other occasions, days he had enjoyed more, he’d been required to provide sniper cover for infantry manoeuvres. On those assignments he’d been able to summarily execute people whenever he wanted, as long as he could find a reason to justify it. Nobody ever really asked too many questions after the fact—it was war, and death was expected.
Being a sniper had given Owen great pleasure, and he had always been at his happiest when he was by himself, quietly killing strangers. He had loved watching people through the rifle scope, picking victimssometimes randomly, and putting a bullet through their heads. The best moment had been that split second before he pulled the trigger, when the person could still live or die, and Owen had control over their fate. And then, an instant later, there would be blood and brain matter exploding out of the victim’s skull, splattering on a dusty stone wall, and the victim’s body would thump lifelessly to the dirt. Owen had always been amazed at how quickly his victims would drop, how immediately the strings of life were cut.
Owen had been successful and respected in the army, quietly contented and not looking for anything else. But then everything had changed, and the start of his second life had come just after his twenty-eighth birthday, during a deployment to Germany for NATO training. Owen’s platoon commander, a tall red-faced captain called Iain Browning, had called Owen into his office to tell him that he was going on three days leave to Serbia.
“The Pathfinder Platoon has a history of supplying good soldiers to other branches of the government,” Browning had told him.
Owen had noted the use of the word “government” instead of “army.”
“There can be a different sort of career for soldiers with the right set of skills and qualities, after they leave the platoon,” Browning had said, shuffling papers on his desk as if trying to avoid Owen’s gaze. “If they want it. A better future than most get.” Browning had been one of those soldiers who had come from wealth. The sort of man who played at being a solider as a stepping stone to some corporate position or a life as a politician. The sort of man who had been given things easily that Owen would always have to fight for.
“An opportunity has arisen,” Browning had continued. “The government needs a job carried out in another part of Europe. A job that requires very specific skills. You have been identified as a soldier with the right sort of skills. Primarily you’re a bloody good sniper. But you are also smart, resourceful, and you don’t scare easily.”
Owen had nodded, accepting the compliments, even if he felt privately that Browning was in no place to compliment him on any of these qualities. Owen doubted the captain had ever killed a man in his life; incontrast, Owen, by that point, had killed twelve people officially, and another six unofficially.
“Dress in civvies,” Browning had instructed. “Take a change of clothes in a bag and get a taxi to the airport. There is a flight going to Belgrade that you are booked on. When you get there you’ll be met at the airport and given further instructions. When the job is done, you’ll be given a ticket for a return flight. Nobody else in the platoon knows anything about this and it will stay that way. Do you understand?”
Owen had confirmed that he had understood.
“This is a sensitive operation,” Browning had said, belabouring a point that didn’t need to be belaboured. “Do you understand what I mean?”
That same evening, in the lobby of a run-down hotel in the centre of Belgrade, Owen had met a Scotsman called Waverly Weir who had said he was from the government. Weir was skinny and balding, dark hair retreating from a large forehead. His eyes were sunken, his gaze restless and constantly moving like he was always on the lookout for threats, and he met Owen with a cigarette hanging between his lips. Owen hated the smell of cigarette smoke—it reminded him of his father and the beatings he had received, and Owen personally thought such an addiction was a weakness—but he had shown nothing on his face, not even when Weir offered him a tobacco-stained hand. Owen had shaken the hand without comment. Weir had given Owen a hotel room key, a duffle bag that had contained an FR F2, a French military sniper rifle—an old one, but well maintained and perfectly functional—and a set of detailed instructions, interrupted by occasional puffs on his cigarette.
“Do you understand, son?” Weir had asked when he was done.
“Yes, sir,” Owen had answered.
Weir had nodded, eyes narrowed at Owen in a way that said,Well, we’ll see about that.Then he had departed.
Owen had spent three days in a room in the run-down hotel in Belgrade, sitting at a window, eating room service and pissing and shitting in a bucket so as to avoid leaving his post, waiting for a meeting to take place in a more expensive hotel across the street. When that meeting hadhappened, Owen had shot and killed two of the people in the room, using Weir’s French sniper rifle. And then he had left, leaving behind the weapon, the duffle bag, and the room key just as he had been instructed. He had taken a taxi back to the airport, where Weir had found him in the departure hall.
“You did well, son,” Weir had said, eyes flicking about as he sat down. He crossed one leg over the other and started tapping his foot with a rolled-up newspaper. “You passed.”
“Passed what?” Owen had asked.
“Passed the test,” Weir had answered, staring at Owen intently. “You’ll be working for us now.”
Owen had flown back to Germany to return to his usual duties, but within a fortnight he had been transferred to Military Intelligence in London, and the second phase of his life had begun. He had been set up in a small flat in the Docklands and four or five times a year Weir would visit him with a job that needed doing. Owen had never asked why someone needed to be killed; he had never cared. He had liked the travel, the work, and the comfortable apartment they provided him, so different from the tiny council house he had grown up in.
