Had I thought it would work, I would have called the Club at once. I would have summoned up mercenaries, I would have taken up arms myself, and we would have administered the Forgetting to Vincent, right then and there. No question, no trial, no fruitless interrogation for his point of origin, which information, I felt sure, he would not easily give. He was a mnemonic, and if my experiences were anything to judge by, such action could only result in failure, and every chance we had of stopping Vincent could be lost for good.
Having found him, this was a time now to walk away.
He knew where to find me, if that was his inclination.
Three months.
Worse than any torture.
I went about my job, and this time I was scrupulous, I was rigorous, I played the part of a journalist to the full and took no action that could be even considered as remotely researching Vincent. Further, I stepped up other activities that might be considered symptomatic of a ouroboran only two lives on from a Forgetting. I attended churches of various denominations; made and then broke various appointments with counsellors, maintained firm isolation from my peers, and in every way, shape and form lived the life of Harry August, innocent kalachakra slogging through a confusing world. I even took private classes in Spanish, which language I spoke fluently, masking my easy progress by paying my downstairs neighbour’s child to do my homework, and that badly, and embarking on a brief and fairly enjoyable affair with my teacher, before guilt at her betrayal of a very absent Mexican boyfriend caused her to break off both relationship and lessons.
Whether I needed to have gone to the lengths I did to maintain this illusion, I do not know. If Vincent was investigating my present conditions closely, he hid it brilliantly. For certain he was investigating my past, looking no doubt for my point of origin. But my allies were in place, Charity and Akinleye, and every document left in the system proclaimed that I, Harry August, had come into the understanding of the British as an orphan abandoned in Leeds, and there remained until my adoption by a local couple by the name of Mr and Mrs August. I knew Vincent would investigate these facts and indeed find a Mr and Mrs August of Leeds who had adopted a boy of roughly suitable age, whose life I had always quietly marked as being a useful alibi for mine and who died in a car crash in 1938, in time for me to claim his paperwork as my own. His accidental death was, in many ways, a great fortune to me as, if it had not occurred, I may well have been forced to kill him in order to safely maintain my disguise.
Whatever the course of Vincent’s investigations into these carefully woven lies, he did not approach me for another three months, and I did not seek him out. Then, when he finally did reappear, he did so at two in the morning, on a land line to my apartment in Washington DC.
I answered, groggy and bewildered, which was precisely how he intended me to be.
“Mr August?”
His voice, instantly recognisable. Full wakefulness immediately; the blood raced so fast in my ears I wondered he couldn’t hear it as I pressed the phone against my body.
“Who is this?” I demanded, crawling across my bed for the light switch.
“It’s Simon Ransome,” he replied. “We met at Mrs Cynthia-Wright’s soirée?”
Was that what it had been? Perhaps. “Ransome… I’m sorry, I don’t quite—”
“Forgive me, you probably don’t recall. I’m an avid reader of your works…”
“Of course!” Was my jubilation at recognition a little too much, a little too forced? This was America, a land of big expressions, and the phone was not the medium for subtlety. “I’m sorry, Mr Ransome, of course I remember–it’s a touch early in the morning, is all…”
“Good God!” Was his regret a little too forced, a little too over the top? Perhaps, I mused, when this was done we could swap notes on the qualities of each other’s deceptions? I could think of no one whose opinion I would value more in this regard. “I’m so sorry. What time is it there?”
“Two in the morning.”
“Good God!” again, and really I was beginning to feel I should be taking points off Vincent’s otherwise flawless performance. I made a mental note to myself that empty banal sounds were far more apposite than grand exclamations of sentiment when it came to such matters. Then again, if his operating assumption was that I was a traumatised innocent stuck in my second life, perhaps he considered it only apt to treat me like an idiot? “Harry, I’m so sorry,” and again there it was, the slip of a familiar first name where no such terms should have yet existed. “I was going to invite you to join me for drinks next week, as I believe I’ll be in your neighbourhood. How thoughtless of me to forget the time! I’ll call back later–a thousand apologies!”
He hung up before I could begin to let him off the hook.
We met for drinks.