The case also had a fake lining with a pocket, attached with Velcro to the inside of the lid. He peeled it back and put his money, letters and the fake passport into the waterproof pocket. Hatcher replaced the phony lining and dropped several file folders in the pocket, then closed the case and spun the dials on the five-digit combination lock.
Broken down into its three parts and secreted in the attache case, the Aug defied any detection device. Assembled, it was one of the most lethal and versatile weapons in existence, a killing machine without recoil or noise. The loudest sound the gun made was the trigger clicking. It was accurate to 450 yards. It was the only weapon Hatcher carried. The ammunition was available anywhere in the world, no problem.
He went back in the bedroom, swiftly packed the Gurkha bag, zipped it up and took it back to the living room. Then he returned to the bedroom.
Ginia was still sleeping. He stared down at her.
The past was tapping his shoulder. What the Chinese called the
What ghosts were waiting back there to wring his soul?
Hatcher had thought Hong Kong and Bangkok were history. Upriver and the lair of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti.
The White Palm Gang and the Chiu Chaos. Tollie Fong, Sam-Sam Sam and White Powder Mama. Fat Lady Lau’s,
Cohen.
Bangkok.
And Daphne.
Names he had tried to forget and couldn’t.
He had tried to put them away, but they were all his yesterdays, the sum of his life.
Sloan had returned like the devil crawling up out of Hades, extending a long, bony finger to him, beckoning him back to the dark places that even 126 did not talk about, places seeded with hatred and death.
Going back really didn’t have much to do with Sloan, or with the names he’d dredged up — Buffalo Bill or Murph
Cody. It was time to go back, time to close out some unfinished chapters in his life. Time to pay the fiddler.
He sat down on the bed and began to rub Ginia’s back. She stirred and rolled over on her stomach. He got some moisturizer and began to massage her. For a moment the thought occurred to him that he was going to miss her, and the thought annoyed him because missing was like remembering. Hatcher had never missed anyone before in his life. It didn’t fit the pattern. It could be distracting, and that could be dangerous, screw up the old clicks, pull you out of the shadows into sunlight, where he knew he didn’t belong.
‘Attachments can be fatal,’ Sloan had said once. ‘They put your mind in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Funny how often 126 and Sloan disagreed. What was it old 126 used to say? A man who has forgotten how to cry is dead inside.
He dismissed the thought, kneading his fingers into her shoulders and then up to her neck, moving along her arms to her finger-tips and stretching each one, massaging it with cream, then back to her sides and down to her hips. She groaned very faintly and spread her legs slightly. He put one leg between hers, pulled her down against it and, leaning forward into her, started to massage her neck again.
‘Hurry home,’ she whispered.
CIRILLO
Hatcher waited near the marina parking lot, listening to the night birds courting one another in the darkness, their melodies echoing across the broad, flat marsh. It was past midnight and the causeway leading to the mainland was almost deserted. Five miles away on the other side of the marsh, the lights of Brunswick twinkled like fireflies. He had one more task to finish before he left on his journey. He had said his good-bye to Ginia and now he waited in the dark, the briefcase sitting beside his leg.
A pair of headlights appeared far down the causeway and gradually grew larger as a car approached the docks. It turned off the narrow two-lane blacktop that connected the island with the rest of the world. The tan-and-brown police car, its tires crunching on the oyster-shell drive, stopped beside Hatcher. The door swung open.
Hatcher peered in at the beefy police officer in the brown uniform, a gold lieutenant’s bar twinkling on the open collar of his starched shirt. Jim Cirillo was a muscular man, deeply tanned, his black hair salted gray by time and sun. Powerful hands rested casually on top of the steering wheel.
‘You lookin’ to get busted for loitering?’ his deep voice drawled.
‘Yeah,’ Hatcher answered with a grin. He got in beside the cop. Cirillo dropped the stick into drive and wheeled out of the lot, turning back across the drawbridge and onto the island. Tall oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from their limbs like gray icicles arched the narrow roads. This was Cirillo’s time. He was a night person who preferred to sleep and fish in the daytime. They drove in silence for a few minutes.
‘Sloan found me,’ Hatcher finally croaked.
‘So? You don’t owe him,’ Cirillo answered with a shrug.
‘That’s right,’ Hatcher answered.
‘If anything, he owes you.’
