If her illness didn’t finish her off first.
As soon as they hit the street, both women were struck by the strength of the contamination still befouling the air. Caitlin had a flashback to her first time in India, when she’d stepped into a small curry house and had to step out again immediately, her eyes streaming and her throat burning from the dense mist of powdered chilli dust she’d inhaled. This wasn’t quite that bad. It was at least bearable. But the deterioration in the atmosphere was still severe. At ground level the number of dead birds was spectacular. Perhaps the night had claimed more of them. They didn’t quite carpet the ground, but it was impossible to walk in a straight line for more than a few metres without stepping on one.
‘Man,’ said Caitlin. ‘This sucks. We should have masks. Let’s get going. I want to find us a car with good filters.’
A week ago Monique would have protested and held them up. Now she nodded sombrely and hurried to keep up with her companion. Avoiding the birds, many of which still twitched and flapped feebly with the last sparks of life, slowed them down somewhat, and the noxious ether quickly burned their lungs and air passages. Caitlin had chosen an apartment in the 17th Arrondissement, north-west of the city centre, where the working-class tenements of Place de Clichy edged into the red-light district of Pigalle. There was still an abundance of smaller, cheaper rooms to be had in the area, one of the most densely populated in the capital. The brothels and strip clubs, the unlicensed bars and underground gaming halls all helped to create an outre environment where the police and other, more dangerous state actors were unwelcome.
‘Why are you doing this, Caitlin?’ Monique asked as they walked. ‘Why are you helping? Surely you could move more quickly on your own. You must still have friends left in the city, or on the continent? You could disappear.’
‘My friends have been disappeared already, Monique. My network’s been rolled up. Remember those guys at the first apartment I tried to take us to? They were turning it over. My controller should have been there, to get me out. Maybe he was and they grabbed him, maybe he wasn’t, but I haven’t been able to contact him or anyone. The numbers I had, the internet addresses – they’re all dead. And the net’s useless anyway. It’s falling apart. The people are gone, if they were back home, and missing, if they were here. But mostly they’re gone. And I have to assume that all of my contacts have been compromised. I’m on my own, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a cot case. An invalid.’
They stopped outside a patisserie. It should have been open by now but the shopfront remained closed and the blinds were shut.
‘I could sell you some line of bullshit, darlin’. That was a specialty of mine. You might not believe it, but I’m a bit of an empath. I have no trouble putting myself in somebody else’s shoes. Just before I kill them, or arrange to have someone else kill them.’
Monique blanched and moved on, picking her way through more dead birds. Caitlin stepped up beside her, scanning the streets ahead for a vehicle. In this part of town, however, few people drove, and cars were few and far between. The streets were narrow and there was no garaging available for them. Everyone took the Metro or walked.
Caitlin went on. ‘But there’s no point shitting you, is there? You know the deal already. What I am, what I was doing.’
‘Old,’ shrugged Monique.
‘Bottom line is, I need you. I’m fucked up with this… tumour. The effects come and go. I’m fine right now but I still feel like shit. And I can never tell when I’m gonna lose it – fall on my ass, pass out, who knows what? So I could give you a line about how I’m responsible for you, how I got you into this mess and how honour demands I get us both out. But fact is, I’m fucked and I need your help. I have nobody else in what’s left of the world.’
They came around a bend in the street and spied a minibus up ahead. A man was loading his family into it, with about a month’s worth of supplies by the look of all the boxes and bags of food he was manhandling into the cabin. Monique caught Caitlin scoping them out and was about to object but the assassin smiled crookedly.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not about to wax a bunch of kids and steal their ride. You have to have more faith in me. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but people like that – normal, decent folks – in the end they were my mission. Protecting them.’
Monique examined her with wry detachment, almost tripping on a dead pigeon from not watching her footing. ‘Not them so much, Caitlin,’ she replied. ‘They are French, and you are not. I know enough now about your world to understand what that means. You told me about Noisy-le-Sec, remember. And this Echelon is no secret. There have been books and news stories written, and a French government investigation. I read about it in Le Monde. Not so secret, no? It is a well-documented conspiracy of the English-speaking world.’
Caitlin smiled. ‘There are knowns and there are unknowns, Monique. But you’re right in one sense. Sometimes governments, agencies, whatever, they might set themselves against each other, but I’m talking about the wider picture. People like that…’ – she nodded ahead at the family now loading the last of their number into the bus – ‘people who want nothing more than to go about their own business, raising their kids, keeping them safe, giving them whatever chances they can to do better. The world they want to make is worth fighting for. They are worth defending.’
‘Against my boyfriend?’ asked Monique, giving full vent to her sarcasm.
Caitlin stopped and held her gaze. ‘Yes.’
‘Merde dors…’
They started moving again. Monique’s shoulders had hunched forward and she was holding her arms stiffly by her sides. Caitlin recognised it as one of her tells: she was furious again.
She sighed. ‘Bilal Hans Baumer,’ she said, and immediately caught Monique’s attention.
‘You know his full name?’ She looked both surprised and wary.
‘Of course I know his name, darlin’. He was my target.’ She dropped into her best Schwarzenegger. ‘I haaf extensiff files.’
The French girl didn’t get the reference. Caitlin pushed on regardless.
‘Bilal Hans Baumer. Born 5 May, 1974 in Hamburg, Germany. Parents, separated. A German auto mechanic, Hans Baumer, and Turkish mother, Fabia Shah. His father named him Wilhelm, but Hans was a drinker and abandoned the family after losing his job in 1978. His mother was a reformist Muslim. Her brother Abu came to act as a surrogate father for the boy after Hans took off. Abu had always called him Bilal instead of Wilhelm. The name stuck – don’t stop walking. Come on, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’
Monique had come to a halt just metres from the back of the minibus. The father, who’d been about to climb into the driver’s seat, caught her eye. He looked guilty, as though she had found him out doing something shameful. Monique favoured him with a shaky smile, and he nodded, taking in their backpacks and the appearance of flight that hung about them.