Antonio saw her leave the cab and walk across busy Mannerheimintie Street to the imposing bulk of Stockmann’s department store. Antonio thought it was such a pity not to have a little more time to play with her but there was no time left; they had been quite certain about that; the female agent, they had said, had to be eliminated quickly to avoid complications.
His masters had become convinced in the past few days that Rita Macklin was not a journalist but one of the Opposition, a deep-cover member of R Section. It was the only satisfactory explanation for her second mission with the agent called November. Rather than abort the operation using November, the second agent called Macklin would have to be dealt with so no counter-operation would be mounted.
So they explained to him, and the explanation bored him. Antonio did not care for motives or details. He was a simple man who wanted a target and then wanted to be left alone to effect the operation the best way he could.
Rita Macklin strode with wide steps across the sidewalk.
Antonio was seventy-five feet behind her. He felt the edge of the knife along the skin of his right arm.
The knife was simple, working on a mechanical trigger pull fitted into his half-clenched right hand like a ring. It had been concealed as part of the brasswork on the briefcase he carried through the electronic security apparatus in Paris. He had fitted the knife to his arm in the lavatory on the plane and then sat next to Rita to play with her as a child plays with a doll.
Games were over. He would clench his fist and the knife would fall into his hand and lock at the wrist. It was an effective weapon. He had used it on the whore, Natali, when he was finished with her. Natali had pleaded at the end, which he had expected, and it pleased him to pretend to listen to her pleadings. She had kissed his naked feet. They were in the bathroom; Natali had kissed his body while she remained on her knees on the cold tile floor. When he had finished his amusement, he had said her name and she had looked up at him, holding him around his hips with her hands, tears in her eyes. He had sliced her open from throat to belly in one swift, shallow movement.
Antonio had a surgeon’s eye; he had once studied Gray’s Anatomy and reviewed the remains of corpses in the morgue at Reggio Calabria under the guise of being a medical student. He knew which parts of the body meant instant death and which parts meant slow death.
Natali had not felt pain but surprise. She had said, in English, “You promised me.” It had been absurd. He could have let her die slowly but she had pleased him and so he finished her then with a quick thrust into the heart. Her blood washed over him, over the floor. He had put her in the shower and let the water wash the blood from her and then he had wrapped her naked body in plastic and dumped it in the excavation lot behind the Presidentti Hotel.
Rita Macklin would die differently.
He pushed through the doors of the department store and started up the steps to the second floor. He would not cut her deeply. She would die in agonizing minutes, writhing on the floor in this department store, horrified people gathering at the sound of her screams, her intestines spilling from her, the screams finally drowning in blood coming from her mouth and nose. She had chosen this way to die because she had not spoken to him, because she had not seen that her fate was decided anyway and that it was as well to play the game Antonio wanted to play. The thought of her murder — of the act and of the agony that would follow — excited Antonio and his eyes grew wide as he continued his careful track up the steps.
The store was nearly empty. The cold sun and bitter wind were unrelenting in winter, though the ice on the shoreline was already broken and spring was very close.
He followed Rita Macklin from floor to floor.
Two salesclerks — girls in fancy blouses and plain skirts — stood speaking to each other near a display of Russian chess pieces in a far corner of the fourth floor. Rita Macklin turned from the escalator and looked around the nearly empty floor. She glanced for a moment at a display of traditional Lapp hunting knives. The handles were of bone and leather; the blades of the knives were carved with intricate patterns and with scenes of reindeer roundups. In another corner, Finnish glassware sparkled in the bright lights. Fifteen minutes until her meeting with Devereaux. She glanced around and saw Antonio at the stairs. He was smiling.
Her face went white. She stumbled back a moment and steadied her hand on the counter. She looked toward the two salesclerks but they had disappeared into a back room.
Antonio walked toward her without any wasted motion.
Rita made a sound that was half a cry and turned and grabbed an enormous Lapp knife from the display counter. She ran behind the display with the knife in her hand and around a second corner. The floors were shaped around the stairs like spokes in a wheel.
FINLAND WELCOMES YOU exulted a poster on a wall. She ducked into an aisle between racks of fur coats. She pushed to the end of the aisle and realized she had trapped herself at a dead end.
Antonio’s form darkened the entrance of the dead end.
“Miss Macklin,” he said.
Her nostrils were wide, her eyes were wide, her face was flushed with blood; her breathing was heavy, as though she were fighting or running. She held the knife in front of her, the handle against her belly.
“Absurd,” said Antonio and he clenched his fist and opened it. The knife fell with a rasp into the lock around his wrist. It was thin and pointed like a dagger or stiletto; the angles of the knife glistened in the light of the store.
“I’ll kill you,” Rita said. Antonio took a step toward her. She braced herself and smelled the fear of death; once she thought of Devereaux but the image of him was piled under with a thousand sudden images from a thousand days of her life, not passing in review but screaming in her mind for attention and then drowning in the tide of other memories. This is death, she thought, and she waited.
Antonio slashed once, a lazy cutting slash that tore neatly through her coat and grazed her hand with a bright red cut. She dropped the knife with a clatter on the tile floor. She pushed back but there was no place to go. A glass angel on a shelf above the furs fell to the floor and shattered on the tile. There was no other sound.
Rita felt no pain but saw the blood on her hand. Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Rita kicked out sharply with her shoe and caught his shin with the edge of her toe. Antonio winced for a moment and then his hand arced down and Rita, off balance, fell toward him and accidentally muffled the blow. The knife sliced into a fur on the rack and momentarily became entangled.
Rita stepped back again.
“When you are dying, you whore, you will scream and then the screaming will stop, not because you do not feel pain but because you will choke in your own blood,” Antonio said. She saw his eyes fill with pleasure.
She pulled against the rack and a bolt came loose and the furs suddenly were dumped on the aisle between them.
Antonio stepped back. They were six feet apart.