For a minute the angel didn’t answer, but when he did, it confirmed everything I had tried so hard not to believe:
‘One day.’
There was this horrible, helpless dry sob, which I suppose must have come from me for the angel had spoken without any emotion whatsoever.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said desperately, taking a step back, trying to find some relief from the immense heat. ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’
‘Too late.’
Too late… yes… it was too late, wasn’t it?… I might have started off gentle, but there must have been something wrong with me even then. Few men had it in them to kill again and again and again as I had done…
I couldn’t breathe any more. The flames were roaring now — pounding in my head, blistering my skin, stinging my eyes. I tried to look at Michael, but he blurred in the wavering heat haze. I staggered, clutched at the door handle, tried to get out… but the heat took the air right out of my burning lungs so that I sank to the floor, blinking sweat out of my eyes and choking on the smoke. And then — at last… at long, long last — my eyes rolled back in my head and I fell into this silent, cool, beautiful darkness.
I opened my eyes some time later, staring at the bathroom tiles, listening to the steady drip, drip from the leaky tap, wishing I could get my amnesia back. At last, I dragged myself upright, turned around and saw Michael standing in the doorway, watching me. There was a bright aura about him but he no longer dripped with flames. He was clearer, more sharply defined than I had ever seen him before. He had bright blue eyes, glossy blond hair, and was wearing plain, simply cut white clothes. Although physically he looked like a man, he still seemed incredibly bright… illuminated — as if he was close to something so blinding that it lit him up as well.
‘Can you see me now?’ he asked in a deep and resonant voice, looking straight at me.
‘Of… of course I can see you,’ I stammered.
‘We’re in need of your services,’ Michael said. He looked anything but happy about it.
‘Why didn’t you come to me sooner?’ I asked, and then flinched at the anger that flashed across the angel’s face.
‘Your ignorance and lack of desire for the truth distanced you from us, and placed you closer to demons. That’s why you were such pathetically easy prey for Mephistopheles and why you couldn’t see us. Do you remember the Ninth Circle now?’
I nodded. Oh, yes, I remembered it. I remembered it clearly. At some point, all assassins became too old and were required to retire. Or they cracked up and had to be quietly dealt with. When I told my handler that I had started seeing angels and devils, he decided that the work was getting to me; that I was one of the few who could not compartmentalise as we’d been trained to do, not dwelling on the crimes we’d committed. So he put me down for the Ninth Circle. It was an experimental programme designed to protect state secrets and help ex-assassins rehabilitate themselves back into civilian life. The process had not yet been fine-tuned enough to allow the removal of certain memories while leaving others intact. So the assassin’s entire memory had to be repressed by blanking out everything, right down to early childhood. I have no idea why the programme was called the Ninth Circle. I’m sure there never was any kind of theological connection but, back then, the name seemed utterly profound and significant to me — like a warning from God that I must find some way of circumventing the effects of the procedure.
Careful preparation was made beforehand — with the willing co-operation of the assassin. They were given a new home, a new identity — false records were made up and stored in the bank. I even remembered copying out the letter to my non-existent aunt as my handler dictated it to me, and the hours and hours I had spent signing my new name so that the false signature might become automatic.
After the procedure, a blow was carefully applied to the head, causing a nasty looking bruise and some bleeding but hardly enough to cause any permanent damage — we’d all taken much worse during the course of our careers. The assassin was then left in their new home amid a set-up that would lead them to believe that an accident had caused them to lose their memory. I had had my doubts about the programme, sceptical that any man would be content to simply accept such a strange scenario.
But it worked. It really did. I had been sure that it wouldn’t work on me, however. That, even with my memories temporarily gone, I would realise something was not right; and that I wouldn’t rest until I’d found the answers. But it did work. And it would have continued to work, had it not been for the failsafe I had installed — there was that to my credit, at least. It was just that I had so badly wanted to believe that all I saw was true and that there were no hidden horrors. The scientists at the Agency believed it was a subconscious thing. That, on some level, the brain prevented assassins from delving too deeply into the set-up and instead urged them to accept the superficial ‘truth’ that they themselves had helped create.
And as an extra precaution, there was always the money. The cash was always left in the assassin’s home as an added incentive not to go to the police. Human greed never failed. They didn’t want the money to be taken from them. This was also why I had so much cash in my bank account, for assassins were handsomely paid — as if anything could pay the price for what we do.
The memories were repressed, not deleted, and could be recalled again with the careful application of timely prompts. I thought back to the clues I had sent myself. They had had to be cryptic. A sudden revelation would have recalled my memories only for a moment before being rejected by my subconscious and then becoming even more deeply buried within my mind. Hence the ambiguous clues… to instil uneasiness, to instil suspicion, but to postpone the final revelation until some time had passed. The photos alone would have been sufficient for that. There had never been any need for the quotes, but I did it because I wanted to feel fear. It was a curiosity thing. I had never felt fear before and I wanted to know what it was like. I couldn’t have known that my plan would work so spectacularly. Fear of losing friends… fear of losing a normal life… And fear when I had read the accusatory notes written in Latin and entrusted to Toby
… Fear that I might have committed wicked, terrible sins, of which I had no memory. Now I knew what that emotion felt like at last. It was only fitting, for I had been the instrument of fear for so many, even though I tried to make it as quick and painless as I could.
I always took pains to make sure my victims were unsuspecting, but
… sometimes, it couldn’t be helped… they knew. Not for very long, of course. But for moments, they knew what was about to happen to them. You cannot avoid fear completely — you cannot always kill people without scaring them first. I detested strangulation and avoided it, even though many of my colleagues favoured it because of the lack of blood. But what about fear? What about the agonising fear a person has to go through first? It is too slow, too drawn out. That is why I like weapons, for they are quick. They’re merciful like I am.
Sex was an effective weapon and I’d used it before, in varying degrees, depending on the circumstances. It was useful for building up trust, and so on. But we were forbidden to have sex with a victim just before a kill because, of course, that would leave biological evidence that could connect us to them. I no longer had emotions by then, but lust is hardly an emotion, is it? Lust is nothing more than a base animal instinct, like hunger. It was only ever a job to me, and I never went further than I had to. That would have been wrong.
The Neville Chamberlain’s Weeping Willow reference on the back of Anna Sovanak’s photo makes sense to me now, for I had felt very strongly about appeasement. I’d felt that standing by and doing nothing while crimes were being committed was just as bad as committing the crime yourself. It was all to do with self-loathing — I had allowed myself to be pushed into becoming an assassin when I should have resisted it. I’d regarded the Weeping Willow memorial as belonging to Chamberlain and Churchill and Roosevelt just as much as it belonged to Hitler. I had been as much to blame for Anna’s death as the person who gave the order. I remembered writing out the sentence on the back of the photo with a malicious smile on my lips, delighted at the prospect of frightening my future self.
And the photo of Mephistopheles… We had never been friends, in spite of his lie. He had been no more than an acquaintance of whom I was suspicious. He had claimed to be from a rival agency. He had tried to tell me that I had nothing to be ashamed of because my job was a necessary evil that must be performed by someone. He had spoken to me of moral ambiguity. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. I had a role to play, that was all. I had been working on a case in Paris when he came to my hotel room to see me. He spoke of another kind of career, serving under a different boss. But he was vague about the nature of the work I would be expected to do, speaking only of my ‘special talents’ and their need for someone like me. I had turned him down, of course. The higher salary he offered was of no interest to me; I couldn’t spend the money I earned as it was. I had purposefully
