her friend, then turned and left. Just as I had expected, she went round
the side of the museum and into Central Park. I followed.
Almost at once we were on our own, cut off from the traffic on Fifth
Avenue, the other guests searching for their cars and taxis. The way
ahead was clear. Light was spilling out from a huge conservatory at the
back of the museum, throwing dark green shadows between the shrubs
and trees. We crossed a smaller road – this one closed to traffic – that
ran through the park.
Over to the left, a stone obelisk rose up in a
clearing. It was called Cleopatra’s Needle. I had stood in front of it that
afternoon. A couple of joggers ran past,
two young men in tracksuits,
their Nike trainers hitting the track in unison. I turned away, making
sure they didn’t see my face. The moon had come out, pale and listless.
It didn’t add much light to the scene. It was more like a distant witness.
Kathryn Davis had taken one of the paths that circled the softball fields
with a large pond on her left. She knew exactly where she was going, as
if she had done this walk often. I was about ten paces behind her, slowly
catching up, trying to pretend that I had nothing to do with her. We
were already halfway across. I was beginning to hear the traffic noise on
the other side. And then, quite suddenly, she turned round and looked at
me. I would not say that she was scared but she was aggressive. She was
using her body
language to assert herself, to tell me that she wasn’t
afraid of me. There was an electric lamp nearby and it reflected in her
glasses.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you following me?”
The two of us were quite alone. The joggers had gone. There were no
other walkers anywhere near. What she had done was really quite
stupid. If she had become aware of me, which she clearly had, she would
have done better to increase her pace, to reach the safety of the streets.
Instead, she had signed her death warrant. I could shoot her here and
now. We were less than ten paces apart.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
I was trying to take out the gun. But I couldn’t. It was just like when I
had played Russian roulette with Vladimir Sharkovsky. My hand
wouldn’t obey me. I felt sick. I had planned
everything so carefully,
every last detail. In the last four days, I had done nothing else. But all
the time, I had ignored my own feelings and it was only now, here, that
I realized the truth. I was not, after all, a killer. This woman was about
the same age as my own mother. She had two children of her own. If I
shot her down, simply for money, what sort of monster would that make
me?
If you don’t kill her, Scorpia will kill you
, a voice whispered in my ear.
Let them
, I replied.
It would be better to be dead than to become what they
want
.
“Who are you?” Kathryn Davis asked.
“I’m no one,” I said. I took my hands out of my coat pockets, showing
that they were empty. “I was just walking.”
She relaxed a little. “Well, maybe you should keep your distance.”
“Sure. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Yeah – OK.”
She stood there, watching me, waiting for me to go. I quickly walked
past her, then turned off in another direction.
I didn’t look back. Inside, I felt glad. That was the simple truth. I was
happy that she was still alive. I was aware of a sense of huge relief, as if
I had just fought a battle with myself and won. I saw now that from the
moment I had climbed into the helicopter with Rykov – or Mr Grant – I
had been sinking into some sort of mental quicksand. Mrs Rothman in
Venice. Sefton Nye, Hatsumi Saburo and Oliver d’Arc on Malagosto …
they had all been drawing me into it. They were like a disease. And I
had come so close to being infected. I had been about to kill somebody!
If Kathryn Davis had not turned and spoken to me, I might well have
done what I had been told. I might have committed murder.
The sound of the gunshot was not loud but it was close and my first
thought was that I had been targeted. But even as I dropped to one knee,
drawing out the Smith & Wesson, I knew that the direction was wrong,
that the bullet had not come close. At that moment I was helpless. I had
lost my focus, the vital self-knowledge – who I am, where I am, what is
around me – that Saburo had drummed into me a hundred times.
Anyone could have picked me off.
Kathryn Davis was dead. I saw it at once.
She had been shot in the
back of the head and lay on a circle of dark grass, her arms and legs
stretched out in the shape of a star. There was someone walking towards
her, wearing a coat and black gloves, a gun in his hand. I recognized the
neat beard, the unworried eyes. It was Marcus, the man who had met me
at the hotel.
He checked the body, nodded to himself. Then he saw me. He had his
gun. I had mine. But I saw instantly that there was no question of our
firing at each other. He looked at me almost sadly.
“Make sure you’re on that plane tomorrow,” he said.
I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain what had happened, how I
felt, but he had already turned his back on me and was walking away
into the shadows. In the distance I heard the wail of a police siren. It
might have nothing to do with what had happened here. Even if
someone
had heard the shot, they wouldn’t know where it had come
from. But it still warned me that it was time to go.
I walked out of the park and all the way to the Hudson River with the
darkened mass of New Jersey in front of me. I took out the gun and
weighed
it in my hand, feeling nothing but loathing … for it and for
myself. At the same time, I was aware of the first stirrings of fear. I
would pay for this.
I threw the gun into the river. Then I went back to the hotel.
The following day, I left for Venice.
