been six years old; I’d had to comply with the training I received as I grew up. But then, somewhere along the way, I realised I did have a choice. It was mine and I had made it. I would never be able to have a normal life now. Any friendships I might have would be built on lies, because any normal person would shrink away from me in horror if they knew what I had done — even though none of it was my fault. The government told us these people were dangerous, potential terrorists, threats to the safety of Britain. I think most of my co-workers clung to those reassurances.
Anna Sovanak, for example — I was told during my briefing that she had been designing a new kind of biological weapon, and there was fear that this might find its way into the hands of certain religious extremists with whom Anna supposedly had sympathies. I don’t know if this was true, although I suppose if she really had been working on developing new weapons, then that might explain why the story of her discovered body had been quietly consigned to page six. Who’s to say whether there were genuine reasons for my victims’ deaths, or whether they were simply political murders? You can’t think like that when you have a job to do. And it really doesn’t matter to me, for I believe that all human life is sacred: that life, in any form, even the smallest, tiniest insect, is absolutely and inherently sacred. And I loathed myself for what I’d done. There could be no greater sin than taking a life. And I had done it again and again and again. But there had hardly seemed any point in quitting.
I killed my first person when I was six years old, although I did not mean to and no one paid me for that crime. It was at the orphanage; I remembered it now. The other children there had taken a dislike to me right from the beginning, for whatever arbitrarily childish reason. But there was one in particular who really hated me. Aaron Thomas. He was older, about nine, and would bully me whenever he got the chance — and the nuns who ran the orphanage never troubled to do anything much about it, for it was all character building, wasn’t it?
Then, one day, while playing, Aaron fell through a third-storey window and was left gripping the window ledge, screaming for help. I ran to assist him. I didn’t hesitate for a moment, didn’t even think about all those horrible things he had done to me. But as I ran towards the window, I tripped on a child’s toy left in the middle of the floor, stumbled, and instinctively tried to right myself by grabbing on to whatever I could. It was unfortunate that my hands landed on the drawn up window, my weight bringing the pane of glass down hard on Aaron’s fingers. The boy let go at once with a scream of pain and fell to his death. One of the nuns had come in to the room in time to see me ‘leaping’ for the window to pull it down onto my former tormenter’s fingers, causing him to fall three storeys to the stone courtyard below. And that was what the other children there saw too. The nuns believed that, after quietly taking the pain and humiliation of being bullied for so long, I had finally lost my mind and committed murder with a coldness shocking in a child.
I never told anyone that I had been trying to help the boy. I never cried. I never showed any remorse, although I too was appalled by what had happened. Why didn’t I speak out? How different would my life have been if only I had acted as a normal child and not convinced the secret service, with my cold stoniness, that I was an ideal candidate for their children’s training programme? Aaron Thomas — that childhood bully — had not only made me miserable as a child… he had ruined my whole life! I felt glad in that moment that he was dead! I hated him! I was glad I’d killed him; I was so glad! He was responsible for all of this! Look what he’d done to me! Look what he’d done! If he hadn’t bullied me so badly, the nuns wouldn’t have been so ready to see me deliberately murdering him. Instead, they would have seen the truth of what had happened. If Aaron had been a good-natured boy without an enemy in the world, then the nuns would have wanted to believe that I had been running to help him. So that’s what they would have seen.
I started off gentle, that’s the irony of it. I used to sneak round the girls’ empty dormitories during the day, catching spiders and putting them outside because I couldn’t stand to hear the girlish squeals and the accompanying slap, slap of slippers flattening any spider that was discovered there later.
‘Why don’t you like spiders anyway?’ I’d asked them. ‘What harm have they ever done you? What harm have they ever done anyone?’
It had seemed incredibly arrogant to me for those stupid, twittering girls to find the mere existence of these creatures offensive. Unfortunately, Aaron overheard me talking to the girls one day, and thereafter took great delight in killing spiders in front of me whenever he could. I hated him for that. I understood the importance of being kind to animals… of being kind to insects.. of being kind to anything that was smaller than I was. I understood that all unnecessary deaths brought God pain. I didn’t wish suffering on anyone — not even on Aaron, who I hated. So I ran to help him when he was hanging from that window, and in doing so I condemned myself to a lifetime of violence and horror and bloodshed. I should have just stood back and done nothing — just watched him fall, for no one would have condemned me for that, even though it would have been just as blameworthy.
I could remember once, when I was little, wanting to grow up to be a fireman. It probably had something to do with the bright red fire engine toy I’d adored before Aaron took it from me… Assassin had certainly never been on my list…
What do you want to do when you grow up, Gabriel…?
Kill people…
But for the whole of my adult career, I was a merciful killer. Obsessively merciful. I went to great lengths to kill in the most painless way possible, and I would always pray for the victim’s soul afterwards. I discreetly attended their funeral every time, out of respect, and left flowers at the grave in acknowledgement of the life they’d led. I went to Anna’s funeral and watched her children — Max and Jessica, about whom I had heard so much — crying for their mother, and I wished that I could feel something for them… pity, sadness, shame… but there was nothing. It was as if my profession had burned out all emotions inside me so that I couldn’t feel anything at all. It was this kind of behaviour that led my co-workers to mockingly bestow the name of Gabriel on me. Angel of Mercy, they’d said. Angel of Death. The assassin who sat and prayed for his victims’ souls after coldly murdering them… Gabriel… what a logical choice…
But these people were marked for death anyway, and if they were not assigned to me then they would be assigned to some other assassin within the programme. If I left, the government would pick someone else to fill my place and, in that way, another man’s soul would be lost for ever. The way I saw it, I was doing the right thing by staying in the programme. There is logic in that, isn’t there?
But now the true horror of what I had been crashed through me dizzyingly, and pain twisted inside as I fully realised how terribly isolated I would always be from everyone around me, by the very nature of my past. I could never have friends or a family. My profession had lost me that right. I had seen parents, lovers, siblings, spouses and children weeping at the funerals of my victims. I could never have people in my life when I had spent so much of it taking loved ones away from their families. Besides, I didn’t know how to love people. Love was dangerous — it set you up for the worst kind of agony. I had seen it. So I was going to remain alone and I had always known that. Accepted it right from when I’d been six and the people at the orphanage had stared at me with unconcealed horror; loathed me for what I was… a killer… something you can’t take back…
But for the last four months, for the first time in my life, there had been hope that I might somehow manage to belong to other people. Because that’s what we all want, isn’t it? That’s what we are all constantly striving for. I know what love is now, because I love Casey — but I shouldn’t. Assassins can’t have loved ones — can’t have anyone at all — because you have to be able to kill anyone you might be assigned to. I’d learned that the hard way some years ago. How can you let yourself love someone when you know how easily they might be taken away from you? And now I’d found out that, not only were Nicky and Luke not real, but they never would be either.
To have all my illusions ripped away from me like that… I think I actually tasted madness for a second there. I am Wladyslaw Szpilman, hiding in my self-imposed attic, wishing, longing for human company but knowing that if anyone comes my way, I must distance myself from them, for their safety, for my safety, and for the sake of what is right. I’m so dirty now that anyone who gets too close to me will surely be tainted as well. I hurt people just by being near them. I couldn’t stop the images of all those people from going through my mind — laughing, happy, relaxed — as I had seen them all at some point or other before murdering them. Now they were all lying in graves because of me.
I staggered into the bathroom… threw up again and again until my vomit became tainted with blood, and it felt like I had torn something inside. When I at last got unsteadily to my feet and turned around, I could see him there behind my mirror. If anything, his image scared me even more now that I knew what he was. Michael’s face was turned towards me, though I could hardly make out his features for the light from his flames was so bright, blinding me, scorching my skin, suddenly choking the whole room with heat and smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
‘Am I… am I going to Hell?’ I asked, raising my voice above the noise of the spitting fire.
