Without warning

‘I’m a pessimist,’ said Caitlin as they crossed a road where the traffic lights seemed to have failed. ‘I think it’ll be totally fucking medieval. Pogroms, food riots, blood in the streets. Maybe that’s just me. Whatever. But, your friends, they’re not gonna miss much in the next little while.’

‘The living will envy the dead, you mean?’

‘That’s a bit too Metallica for me, but yeah, if you like. Economies are going to collapse all over the world. Not just slow down, or go a little wobbly. They will collapse like the Twin Towers into smoking fuckin’ rubble, and anyone standing around underneath is gonna get smashed flat. Modern society is too complex to survive a shock like this. A simpler world, yeah, no worries – people would grow food in their back gardens, cart water from the well, live harder and closer to the bone for a few years. But you got, what, fifteen million people in the greater metro area of Paris? How are they going to move around, how are they going to feed themselves and their families in two weeks when the stores are empty because there’s no more gas at the pumps?’

Monique tilted her head and gave Caitlin a quizzical look. ‘But why would…?’

‘Why will the gas run out? Think of where it comes from, Monique. Think about what’s going to happen there now that the evil global overlord is no longer around to oppress everyone into behaving themselves. Think about what’s going to happen to the evil world financial system now that the planet’s greatest debtor nation has winked out of existence and won’t be meeting its mortgage payments to anyone. Think about what happens when you take the lid off Pandora’s box and everything that we forgot about in history comes spilling out to bite you on the ass. Do you know how unusual it is in human history, for children to be able to grow up in a place like this?’ She waved her hands around to take in the city. ‘Never knowing the fear of someone riding over the horizon to steal their family’s crops and burn their hut to the ground, and all as a prelude to being snatched up as slaves for the rest of their miserable fucking lives – that’s normality, baby. That’s life as it has been lived by most human beings through most of our history. That’s what I’ve been fighting against my entire adult life, variations on that theme. That’s what America protected you from. And now she’s gone. And you are all alone in the world, Monique. Except for me.’

By now they had reached the edge of Montparnasse Cemetery, a vast pool of darkness in the city of light. Monique’s lip was pushed out, giving her the appearance of a petulant child. She obviously didn’t want to hear any more, but neither did she argue with Caitlin.

The assassin checked their position, relying on memory now rather than the GPS device. They were on the far side of the graveyard from the safe house. It was time to get to work.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘We’re going in here, and I’ll go ahead and check out the situation at the apartment. See if it’s been tumbled. If they’ve got my number they might be rolling up the whole network. Are you going to be okay if I can stash you somewhere for a few hours?’

Monique looked alarmed. ‘A few hours?’

‘It’s okay,’ Caitlin assured her. ‘I have a lay-up point near here, something I set up myself. You’ll be safe there, but alone. I need to look over the place, otherwise we could be walking into something like the hospital all over again. Will you be okay with that? Are you strong enough?’

Monique shivered as she contemplated the fields of the dead stretching away from them into the dark. ‘I will try,’ she promised.

‘Cool,’ said Caitlin, slapping her on the shoulder. ‘That’s all anyone can ever ask. Let’s go.’

* * * *

Two vans had mounted the kerb outside the apartment, a no-parking zone, and lights burned inside the third-floor flat. Four or five men moved about inside without any pretence at stealth, turning the place over. Three hundred yards away, stretched out on a cracked, weed-covered gravesite overhung by an ancient elm, Caitlin was able to observe them unmolested. She had no scope or binoculars, but that hardly mattered. Their very presence was enough to alert her.

The apartment was an Echelon safe harbour, a first sanctum known only to her and her controller, Wales Larrison. He should have been waiting for her there. Indeed, he may well have been. He could be tied to a chair somewhere inside right now, taking the first of many beatings that lay in his immediate future. Caitlin had no way of telling unless she was willing to stake out the scene for much longer than was prudent. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing as a new wave of dizziness and nausea rolled over her. She couldn’t leave Monique on her own at the lay-up point further back in the cemetery for too much longer, and she couldn’t interdict the search of the safe house in her current condition with no back-up, minimal equipment and no idea of what sort of opposing force she’d encounter.