Cory smiled. ‘¿Tiene un paraguas? Se lo pagare.’
The woman narrowed her eyes. Her features were almost oriental, and Cory wondered if she descended from the indigenous Guaraní, who had walked the pampas before the time of the conquistadores. She clacked through a beaded archway and returned with a cloth umbrella. It was tatty and decorated with dragons. ‘Umbrayla, Englishman.’
Cory did not haggle. He gave her a note and re-entered the rain before she could overcome her surprise and shout her thanks. This was not, he knew, good tradecraft. Here he was, bright as a beacon in the empty streets of Buenos Aires carrying a faux-Chinese parasol. Cory smiled at the memory of his mentor, Blake. How much he would have given to travel this Buenos Airean street in a 1947 downpour—in 1947 by God. This was a golden age for the States. Given time, it would bankrupt the Soviet Union and live out its last days as a patrician superpower.
By Cory’s time, the republic would be in pieces. He well remembered the public debates of his childhood. They had been led by old, white men behind lecterns stamped with the Seal of Georgia. The debates concerned the undoing of a centuries-old compact, made when the pressure to unite the states had been equal to that of continents colliding. By Cory’s teenage years, waters had fouled, cities starved, and blood was bad. Talk was suspended, then sense. A posse hanged Cory’s uncle and blinded his father. His mother was sodomised, so a friend told him. The transitional government moved his family to a camp on the Rio Grande run by charities from Europe and China, but the cholera was there too and Cory was back in Georgia before winter, lying about his age, saddling up for the militia. He became a sharpshooter and fought at Chicago.
Cory angled the umbrella to look for a street sign. This was it. On the opposite side of the plaza, high on a building, a red shirt hung in the rain. Lisandro had been correct. After twenty days without contact, there was a message waiting for him at the dead drop.
Five feral cats watched him through the gate of the Cementerio de la Recoleta. The rain had stopped. His umbrella was furled but his suit had not dried. He opened the gate and stepped over water-filled bowls that, on his last visit, had contained kitchen scraps. A tabby drove its forehead into his leg as he surveyed the cemetery. It was almost empty of visitors, occupied two city blocks and was grassless and consciously urban. It looked like a trap.
Minutes later, when he found the tiny mausoleum, he saw that there was a vermillion rose on its lintel. On his last visit, the rose had pointed east. Today it pointed west.
Never the twain shall meet, he thought, removing his hat.
He took the long key from around his neck, pushed it into the lock, twisted, and felt the resistance give. The door shuddered open. Inside, the mausoleum was sparsely appointed. The altar held a dry bouquet of wildflowers, a tallow candle, and a cross. Cory lifted the candle and took the note. He read it voraciously.
…beneath a Jacaranda tree…
…the whetstone…
There was a sound behind him, a swish of rat tail through a puddle, perhaps, but he feared that the discovery of the note had compromised his situational awareness. Someone was standing at the door. Cory struggled to sense the stranger’s electrical signature. It was a skill he had yet to master; the human-shaped ghost was fainter than an afterimage.
Cory reached inside his jacket and removed a cigarette lighter. In a flash of solvent, the note was nothing. He drew his cane from the folds of the umbrella, and, turning,
(Transform, he thought, clear in his intention.)
aimed the gun at the intruder.
‘Amigo, Señor Will-for!’ cried Lisandro.
Chapter Ten
Berlin
Jem woke fully clothed on Saskia’s bed. As the fog of sleep cleared and the events of the day before pulled into focus, she noticed Ego sitting in a patch of streetlight near the edge of the duvet. He blinked a slow greeting and looked towards the window.
‘What’s new, pussycat?’ she asked, following his gaze.
There was nothing to be seen through the window but the corner of an apartment block. She turned back. The cat was gone.
‘Ego?’ She shifted the duvet and checked the floor. ‘Where are you?’
But Ego was staying with a Turkish friend of Saskia on the other side of Berlin. Jem had overheard Saskia making the arrangements.
‘I’m hallucinating cats. Different.’
Jem checked her phone. Now, in the dark, she understood that its vibrating alert had woken her. She rubbed her eyes. The bright egg timer tumbled twice before a message appeared.
Wer sind Sie? Who are you? İsminiz ne? ¿Quiénes son usted?
She replied:
Funny one, Danny. How did you get my number?
She flopped back against the oversized German pillow, but a new text arrived before she closed her eyes.
I am not Danny. I am in your apartment.
Jem remained staring at the words until the display dimmed. She could admit that she was scared. No need for lies; not here. Be honest: she had slept fully dressed because there was something odd about Cory. In fact, hadn’t she come in here intending to give it an hour before leaving unnoticed? She must have fallen asleep.
What to do? Who was sending her messages?
She thumbed out a reply:
I called the police. Who are you?
She waited, drumming the back of the phone. She looked at the door. Was it locked? Yes. Her heart was sprinting.
You are in danger. Meet me at the door to the apartment. Cory is a killer. This is the last message I can send.
The screen faded. Its stamp-sized afterimage floated before her eyes as she glanced around the room, checking shadows.
Was someone really waiting for her downstairs? She imagined a man in the coats, studying the darkness of the upper hallway for a sign that she had emerged. With a suddenness that surprised her, Jem decided it was the policeman she had spotted outside Wolfgang’s apartment. What was the connection between Wolfgang and Cory? Why send her a text message? If the policeman had evidence that Cory was dangerous, why not arrest him?
Yet the message felt genuine. She eased herself from the bed, walked to the door and turned its key. The hallway was gloomy and quiet. She strained to hear something from downstairs, but there was no breath, shoe scuff, or creak. The door to the spare bedroom, through which Cory had retired, was still closed.
She stepped out and rolled each foot heel-to-toe. Her rucksack was near the telephone. The rucksack found her shoulder with a practised swing. Another glance at Cory’s door. At the top of the stairs, she checked for Cory once more, and, as an afterthought, swiped her knickers from the kung fu wooden man.
Midway down the landing, she strained to look at the entrance space. Its coats were bulky enough to conceal her caller, and the scattered shoes might obscure his feet, but she felt certain that she was alone in the flat with Cory.
She took careful seconds over the final steps and let her rucksack slip, easy doing it, to the floor. A riser creaked behind her. She looked up. Nobody there. Just cooling wood. She put her eye to the spy hole and checked the outside halclass="underline" empty.
She texted:
I’m here. Where are you?
Jem looked at the door and its array of locks. Her doubt rested on the warning about Cory. He had not convinced her that he was the father of Saskia, but, then, there was not a great deal to know about Saskia, as the woman herself had said on countless occasions over the past month.