The sheets were hanging off Geist’s back. Next to him, the blonde who had introduced herself as Ellie was still asleep, her arms contorted around her head like a halo. He got out of bed, cricked his neck one way, then the other, and went into the bathroom. The shower ran hot, then cold, forcing him to carefully dip himself into the stream of water a bit at a time to avoid scalding or freezing himself. He wiped the mirror with the back of his hand, shaved with the razor he had bought at the airport, and practiced his smile.
When he unlocked the door and returned to the bedroom Ellie was awake, picking her clothes off the floor. She half-turned and smiled at him.
“You woke me up,” she said.
“You can use the shower if you want to. It doesn’t hold temperature well but it’s water. There’s some soap in there too. Came with the room. Use as much as you want.”
“You’re so generous,” she quipped, smirking. Taking her clothes, she went into the bathroom and locked the door.

Geist said goodbye to her at the door of the room.
“Is this one of those ones where I tell you to look me up if you’re in town?” she said. Geist could only shrug.
“Up to you,” he said.
Ellie shook his hand and kissed him on the cheek. “It was good, but not that good. See ya round.”
Geist could only laugh.

The message came through the laptop with a bright sound like a bell: /IT’SREADY/. The plans. Geist never went through official channels for anything unless he had to, and this was no different. Luckily for him, he knew a guy in the records office. He slid the laptop into his bag, slipped his sunglasses onto his face, and left the hotel into the dullest weather he had ever seen in his life when it wasn’t actually raining. It was as if the sky had turned to asphalt. He folded up the sunglasses and stuffed them into his pocket, feeling naked without them.
Geist was not a city native, nor was he especially comfortable in the universal crowd that London seemed to operate on, even on a day like this. He knew where he was meeting his contact, and he had memorised the route that morning after getting rid of Ellie (who was a bit too chipper for his liking, and he was slightly glad to see the back of). What he wasn’t prepared for was Central London foot traffic. Even though he was walking in a straight line he felt as if he was getting turned around.
The meeting place was one of the dozens of little green spaces that dotted the city, in the shadow of a war memorial. On the other side of the river the London Eye turned slowly, and Geist tried to remember if it was true or not that it never stopped moving. He nodded to Keiran as he approached the monument. He was looking at his phone anxiously.
“Brought it?” he said. Keiran nodded and put his phone away. “Waiting for a message?”
“Delivery receipt. If they leave it on the step again I’m gonna kick off.”

They went to an open-air cafe to make the exchange, looking substantially less shifty than a couple of men just handing things to each other apropos of nothing.
Keiran swore. “They’ve gone and left it on the bloody step!” he said. “Be seeing you.” Then he got up and ran, leaving the bag with the building plans in behind. Was it all a ruse to excuse him for leaving the bag behind? Geist couldn’t say. But it had worked pretty well as one.
“He’s left his bag,” said a helpful student-looking guy. He was wearing a tie, so probably Econ or Racism Studies or something like that.
“I can see that,” said Geist, mock-irritably, and snatched up the bag. Now he was out of here as well, being sure to spill the tie-boy’s coffee into his lap with a hasty apology. Never trust a man who wears a tie when he doesn’t have to, he said to himself. He had read that somewhere. Couldn’t remember where.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and whistled. The paved-over sky was beginning to clear, bright rays of lighter grey shining through the clouds. It wasn’t blue, but it was a start. He found himself beginning to cheer up. He had a stop on the way back to the hotel, then he’d plan his route through the building tonight and be out of town in two days flat for another airport. He’d listen to one of his old favourites on the big surround speakers that they definitely weren’t mastered for, and turn off his computer if not for good at least for a year. Maybe get back into composing. Yeah.
“Excuse me, mate,” said a man in a police uniform, who Geist quickly surmised was a policeman. “This your bag?” He indicated the bag that Keiran had left in the cafe. Geist stopped, turning to explain himself as quickly and non-incriminatingly as possible.
“It’s my friend’s, he left it-” Geist was cut off by the policeman and another officer, a woman whose face was obscured by the high collar of her coat, grabbing his arms.
“Got him,” she said in clipped tones, tilting her head towards a radio receiver on her shoulder. “Bringing him in now.” Geist looked at the man, furrowing his brow.
“There a problem, mate?” said the cop.
“Do I know you?” said Geist. Then it clicked. The features were different, just different enough to be lacking say, a layer of stage prosthetics, but the structure was all there. This cop and Friend were one and the same. “Goddammit!” he exclaimed. “I’m smarter than this!”
“Don’t think so, mate. Come with us to the car and we’ll get this all sorted out.”
Geist broke his arm free from Friend and tugged the policewoman’s collar down.
“Sorry,” Ellie said, “but if it makes you feel better the hotel business was my idea.”
Geist cursed. “He really spared no expense, huh? How much he pay you to get beat up by me?” he asked, jabbing a finger into Friend’s chest. “You ready for round two?”
“I don’t think so,” said Friend. “You wanna take a swing at a copper, I’ll call firearms on you.” He gestured to the radio receiver nestled on his shoulder.
“That’s not a real radio,” Geist said.
“Wanna bet?” said Friend, waggling his eyebrows playfully. Geist hated that so much. It’s one thing to be a hired thug, it’s another thing to be a smug hired thug. Hired smug. He took a swing at Friend, who folded like a grandmother in Vegas and hit the floor without passing through the intervening space. Ellie hit him with her club and sent him staggering, but he turned the fall into forwards momentum and lost himself in the crowd easily.
That was embarrassing. He looked at his watch. He could still make his second appointment. He was all turned around though. He ducked into an alley and noted the name of the street he had been walking up. He was close! Good. He shrugged his bag off his shoulders and opened it up. There were the knuckles – not brass, because there was no way that would get through airport security. He slid his fingers through the translucent rings of the knuckle duster and felt a lot more secure.
Something was illuminated in there as well. Something red. He picked it out of the crevasse that the zip ran through with his thumb and held it in the palm of his hand like a small, fragile animal.
“She bugged me,” he said to nobody, more impressed than angry. He dropped the little LED to the floor and crushed it under his heel. Try it now, he thought. He wouldn’t fall for Hardin’s tricks again.

In Geist’s backpack there was a pocket that was lined with a special material. Someone he knew had called it Refrax, but that sounded like a sort of medication you don’t like people to know you’re on so he tried to avoid referring to it. It was sort of silvery, soft to the touch, and completely invisible to all kinds of scanning. Into this pocket he slipped a small handgun, the plasticy modern kind he didn’t like.
“What about something for longer range? Hunting, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, you’re going hunting?” said the reptilian looking guy he was buying off.
The rifle was stripped-down, tactical. Black, obviously. Just looking at it felt like observing an act of violence.

Every eye felt as if it was on him as he walked back into the hotel. He had bought a couple of extra clothes to wear over the next couple of days, and the bags, he hoped, were acting as camouflage to the sports bag that held the tools of his lethal pursuits.
Now came time to pore over the plans, to familiarise himself with the weapons in every detail before they were used and then discarded in the river. Before he did that, though, he needed to move to a new room. As long as Hardin knew he was here he was in danger.

He was in the process of packing up when there was a knock at the door. He withdrew his pistol, long-snouted silencer screwed on the end of the barrel, and aimed it at the door. Slowly, he went to the peephole.
“He killed John,” sobbed the woman. “He killed him.”
It was Ellie.