The GoldenCity

Do it, she told herself. You can’t hesitate. Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath, and then dashed forward. As she approached the edge, she stopped suddenly. Her left foot kicked a white pebble into the gap; it bounced off the walls and disappeared into the shadows below.

“Coward,” she whispered as she backed away from the edge. “You are a coward.” Feeling small and weak and twelve-years-old, she gazed out at the seabirds riding the air currents up to the heavens.

When she took a few steps back to level ground, she saw a black shape come over the ridge. It was Sister Maura, red-cheeked and breathing hard. The wind grabbed at her veil and the sleeves of her dress.

“Alice!” the nun shouted. “I’m not pleased with you. Not pleased at all. You didn’t finish diagramming your sentences and Sister Ruth said you didn’t peel the carrots. Back to the hut. No dawdling. You know the rule-no play until work is done.”

Alice took a few more steps back and concentrated on a patch of red lichen on the other side of the gap. There must have been something in the way she held her body that told Sister Maura what was going to happen.

“Stop!” the nun screamed. “You’ll kill yourself! You’ll-”

But the rest of the words were absorbed by the wind as the Warrior Princess ran toward the edge.

And jumped.

3

Hollis Wilson carried his new weapon in a guitar case stuffed with wadded-up newspaper. A few weeks ago, he had asked Winston Abosa to supply him with a bolt-action rifle capable of hitting a target at least a hundred yards away. Winston owned a drum shop in Camden Market and he used his contacts there to purchase a stolen Lee-Enfield with a hunting scope. The original Lee-Enfield rifle was used in World War I; this Mark 4-T version had been developed in World War II for snipers. After Hollis had fired the rifle, he planned to leave it on the rooftop and walk away.

London police officers usually noticed Hollis when he strolled down the sidewalk or sat in an underground train. Even when he wore a business suit and necktie, there was something in the way he carried himself that seemed a bit too confident-almost defiant. The guitar case was the perfect camouflage. When Hollis encountered a police officer near the entrance of the Camden Town tube station, the young woman glanced at him for only a second and then turned away. He was a musician-that’s all-a black man in a shabby overcoat who was going to play on a street corner.

The rifle shifted inside the case as he passed through the turnstile. For Hollis, the London underground always felt less intense than the New York City subway. The cars were smaller, almost cozy, and the train made a soft whooshing sound when it entered the station.

Hollis took the Northern Line to Embankment and then switched over to the Circle Line. He got off at Blackfriars Station and walked briskly up New Bridge Street, away from the river. It was about eight o’clock in the evening; most of the suburban commuters had already left their jobs and hurried home to the warm light of their televisions. As usual, the drones were still working-sweeping the street, painting women’s toenails, delivering take-out food. Their faces showed hunger and exhaustion, a grinding desire to lie down and sleep. A billboard hanging on the side of a building showed a young blonde woman looking ecstatic as she spooned a new kind of custard out of a carton. Happy Today? asked the billboard, and Hollis smiled to himself. Not happy, he thought. But I might get some satisfaction.

***

During the last few months, his life had been transformed. He had left New York, traveled to West Ireland and buried Vicki Fraser on Skellig Columba. A week after that, he was in Berlin, scooping up Mother Blessing and carrying her out of the Tabula’s underground computer center as alarm bells rang and smoke flowed up the stairwells. Before the police arrived, he had just enough to time to walk two blocks and hide the body of the dead Harlequin behind a trash dumpster. Then he stripped off his blood-stained jacket and went to find the car they had left near the dance hall on Auguststrasse.

It took him several hours to get back to the body and dump it into the trunk of the Mercedes Benz. The Berlin police had blocked off the area around the computer center and he saw the flashing lights of fire engines and ambulances. Eventually, a reporter would show up and receive the official story: MADMAN KILLS SIX-POLICE SEARCH FOR VENGEFUL EMPLOYEE.