The days passed in a blur. New York was such an amazing city with its soaring architecture, the noise and the traffic, the shop windows filled with treasures, the steam rising out of the streets… I wish I could say I enjoyed my time there. But all I could think about was the job, the moment of truth that was getting closer and closer. I continued to make preparations. I examined the house in West 85th Street. I saw where the children went to school. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found the room where the private function would take place, checking out all the entrances and exits. I bought a silicone cloth and some degreaser, stripped the gun down and made sure it was in perfect working order. I meditated, using methods I had learned on Malagosto, keeping my stress levels down.
Friday evening was warm and dry, just as the weather office had predicted. I was standing outside the office on Fifth Avenue when Kathryn Davis left and I saw her hail a cab. That didn’t surprise me. It was six forty-five and her destination was thirty blocks away. I hailed a second cab and followed. It took us twenty minutes to weave our way through the traffic, and when we arrived there were crowds of smartly dressed people making their way in through the front entrance of the museum. Somehow we had managed to overtake the taxi carrying Kathryn Davis and it took me a few anxious moments to find her again. She had just met a woman she knew and the two of them were kissing in the manner of two professionals rather than close friends, not actually touching each other.
As I stood watching, the two of them went in together. I very much hoped that the women would not leave together too. It had always been my assumption that Kathryn Davis would walk home alone. What if her friend offered to accompany her? What if there was a whole group of them? I could see now that I had made a mistake leaving the killing until my last evening in New York. I had to be on a plane at eleven o’clock the following morning. If anything went wrong tonight, there could be no backup. I wouldn’t get a second chance.
It was too late to worry about that now. There was a long plaza in front of the museum with an ornamental pool and three sets of steps running up to the main door. I found a place in the shadows and waited there while more taxis and limousines arrived and the guests went in. I could hear piano music playing inside.
Nobody saw me. I was wearing a dark coat, which I had bought in a thrift shop and which was one size too large for me. I had chosen it for the pockets, which were big enough to conceal both the gun and my hand which was curved around it. It was an easy draw – I had already checked. I would get rid of the coat at the same time as the gun. I was very calm. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I had played out the scene in my mind. I didn’t let it trouble me.
At nine-thirty, the guests began to leave. She was one of the first of them, talking to the same woman she had met when she had arrived. It seemed that they were going to set off together. Did it really matter, the death of two women instead of one? I was about to embark on a life where dozens, maybe hundreds of men and women would die because of me. There would always be innocent bystanders. There would be policemen – and policewomen – who might try to stop me. I could almost hear Oliver d’Arc talking to me.
The moment you start worrying about them, the moment you question what you are doing – goodbye, Yassen! You’re dead!
I put my hand in my pocket and found the gun. One woman. Two women. It made no difference at all.
In fact, Kathryn Davis walked off on her own. She said something to 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.