He dialled the number.
‘Yes?’ the voice answered.
‘Reporting.’
‘Clearance?’
‘Spettro.’
‘Classification?’
‘T- 1.’
‘Voice check.’
‘Jack be nimble, Jack be—’
‘ID number?’
‘730-037-370.’
‘Cleared for routing. Contact?’
‘Quill.’
‘Routing.’
He was on hold for only a few seconds when the cultured voice answered.
‘Quill.’
‘Falmouth.’
‘Is your phone clean?’
‘Yes, it’s a pay phone.’
‘Excellent. Glad you got back to me. I have something for you. It’s a bit dirty, but the price is good.’
‘Yes?’
‘A consultant has been lifted by the Rafsaludi from Sunset Oil in Caracas. They want two million by day after tomorrow. The subject is Avery Lavander. We want to bring him in whole.’
‘Have you a play in mind?’
‘Yes. A variation on the Algerian switch.’
‘That would require a preliminary face-to-face confrontation.’
‘We’ve had a bit of a break in that respect. The plant manager has arranged a meeting between the Rafsaludi and a company rep tomorrow at two. They’re being quite audacious about this, but they’re also a bit stupid. It gives us plenty of time to get in there and set up.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Are you familiar with the play?’
‘Yes. It requires a team.’
‘Affirmative. But only two men. L understand you prefer to operate solo, but you happen to be.
Quill’s voice seemed to fade away. Falmouth was already considering his options. It would be the worst kind of tactic to turn down a red urgent assignment at this point. But a chill coursed through his body into his stomach. He felt as if he had swallowed an ice cube. The timing could not be worse. And a team play into the bargain. He had made his reputation as a solo. Working alone was something e had learned a long time ago
On the outskirts of Newtonabbey, six or seven miles northeast of Belfast, the grim rowhouses seem to stretch for miles. as if reflected in mirrors. They crowd the cobblestone streets, these dismal clones, caked a monochrome gray by decades of industrial dust that has long since disguised whatever colours the houses once were. One of Tony Falmouth’s earliest memories was that his house and all the houses in this drab infinity seemed constantly to be peeling. The grit-caked paint hung in flakes from window sills and porch railings and door frames, like dead skin peeling from a burned body. In his youthful nightmares, the rains would come and the flakes became soggy and the houses began to melt and son the gutters of the claustrophobic streets were flooded with a thick gray mass of putty, and Tony ran along the sidewalk trying to find his own house in that molten river of gray slime. Then he woke up.
13y the time he was ten, Tony Falmouth had already begun to deal with his identity crisis. He had his Uncle Jerry to thank for that. Uncle Jerry was another persistent memory from his youth, although a much more pleasant one. Uncle Jerry, the wiry, hard-talking little Cheshire Cat of a man, always smiling, always humming some nondescript tune; a man so ugly he was beautiful, with a large warty nose and hands so big he could conceal a pint in his fist.
Jerry Devlin, his mother’s brother, listened to his dreams and his fears and talked to him. Nobody else did. His father, Emmett, crushed under the weight of family and job and assigned by fate to the worst kind of drab anonymity, had very little to say to anyone. Every night he sat with his pint or two of ale, staring out the window, down through the endless parade of slums, to a place where he cu1d just barely see the ocean between the houses. One night, when Tony was nine, his father got up from the chair and followed his gaze out the door, down the cobblestone street, and off into the fog and never came home.
The crisis precipitated by the desertion of Emmett Falmouth was resolved by Uncle Jerry and Uncle Martin. Tony was very bright, so it was decided he would stay in school and Jerry and Marty would keep food on the table and make the rent and keep an eye on the kid.
But there was always the weight. He had watched it bend his father until he looked like a hunchback. And now he watched the weight bow his mother, watched the wrinkles spread across her face like ripples on water, watched the colour fade from her hair and the life fade from her eyes until one morning she could no longer get out of bed. It took her a month, lying there choking on her own phlegm, to die.
