“Those shit-licking bastards,” she finished. “What if some of the work we did was part of this freelance bullshit? Someone could have been using us to carry out their dirty little side jobs like we were common hit men.”
It was all too easy to see how it might have been done—money changing hands, dossiers prepared. The board would be briefed on the prospective targets and the field agent assigned. Once it was passed down to us, we’d have no way of knowing if the job was clean or not. We put our faith in Provenance and the board to identify the appropriate targets. Every piece of information, every decision, every action, was a link in the chain we forged together. Any corruption in that chain was unthinkable.
“Not exactly what we signed up for,” Mary Alice said.
“I always told myself we were making the world better, safer,” Helen said finally.
“And we did,” I told her. I looked around at their devastated faces. “Look, I know it feels like a betrayal—”
“Feels?” Natalie’s voice rose.
“It is a betrayal,” I corrected. “But whatever we may have done, it was inadvertent. We believed in the organization. We trusted them. If we’ve made mistakes in who we took out, we can deal with that later. Right now the problem is the board. They’ve decided to make scapegoats of us to save whoever is behind all of this. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
We looked at each other, and we knew this decision was going to be bigger than the four of us.
We summoned Akiko and Minka and brought them up to speed. I ate a cinnamon bagel while Natalie pulled hers to pieces, making little bagel pellets with the insides and flicking them around the room.
“Could you not?” Mary Alice asked, shaking one out of her hair and flicking it back.
“I’m just fidgety,” Natalie said. “I don’t like being on this end of things.”
I looked around the table. “We’re going to be on this end of things forever unless we take control,” I said. “We’ve never been marks before, but we’ve also never had to decide on a target before. That’s always been decided for us. For better or worse, we’ve always been the instrument and not the musician. We don’t choose the tune. And you two,” I said, eyeing Minka and Akiko, “have no idea what it’s like to get your hands dirty.”
Minka gave me a cool look. “I maybe know better than you think.”
“Maybe you do, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is uncharted territory for all of us. We have two choices. One, we can walk away right now. We can get Minka to forge new papers for each of us. This is a big world and with the right documentation, we can disappear. We can start new lives and just let this one go.”
“And do what?” Natalie asked. “I’m broke. Thanks to the board, my pension blew up somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.”
“Mine too,” said Helen. “After the illness, Kenneth didn’t leave much.”
Mary Alice and Akiko didn’t speak, but the look they exchanged suggested they weren’t much better off.
“We could get jobs,” I pointed out.
“Doing what?” Natalie demanded. “We’ve spent forty years assassinating people, Billie. It’s all we know how to do, and you can’t exactly find clients for that on LinkedIn.”
“I think Craigslist would be a better place to find clients,” Helen put in.
I held up a hand. “I’m just saying, we can try to walk away.”
“Okay, and what would that be like?” Natalie asked. “We’d spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, wondering if we’ve been made, if today is finally the day when somebody gets to cash in a nice fat bonus check for bringing back our hides.”
“I don’t like it any better than you do,” I said. “If it were up to me, we’d already be working up a plan to take out the board and end this. But I don’t think this is something we should rush into. We can take a day to sleep on it—” I started.
“I’m in,” Mary Alice said firmly.
To my surprise, Akiko spoke up. “Me too.”
“Really?” Mary Alice asked, sounding hopeful. Akiko didn’t return her smile, but it was a start.
“Alright,” I said, tallying. “That’s Mary Alice and Akiko in.” I looked around. Minka nodded and Natalie grinned and sat up straight. “What’s the expression the kids use? ‘Hells yeah’? Well, hells yeah. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left and I’ll be damned if I spend them looking over my shoulder for whichever goon the board decides to send next. Besides, we’ve got a score to settle.”
I looked at Helen. She opened her mouth and closed it again, nodding. She might be less than what she had once been, but she was still worth a hell of a lot.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, holding it for a count of six. I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes. “Then it’s unanimous. The Board of Directors is going to die.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When we had finished our discussion, I went to my room to throw a few things in a bag. At some point we were going to have to leave New Orleans and I figured it was easier to pack when I had the chance. I was stuffing clothes into a small duffel when Helen slipped into my room, closing the door behind her.
“That’s a criminal way to treat silk,” she said, pulling a blouse out of the duffel. She laid it on the bed facedown, smoothing it neatly before making a couple of quick motions with her hands that created a small, tidy parcel.
“It looks like Barbie’s Glamour Parachute,” I told her.
She tucked it into the duffel. “It should come out fine, but if there are creases, just hang it in the bathroom when you shower. The wrinkles will drop right out.”
“Gee, if only that worked for my face,” I said, tossing a pair of jeans into the duffel on top of the blouse. I wadded up a T-shirt until I saw her expression. She put out her hand for the T-shirt and refolded it, smoothing the fabric slowly. “I’ve been thinking, Billie. About Minka. I don’t think she should come.”
“You didn’t like her on day one and you still haven’t warmed up to her,” I began.
“It isn’t that, Billie. You were right to trust her. She’s a remarkable girl. But she is a girl.”
“She’s the same age we were when we signed up for the Museum,” I said, snatching back the T-shirt and shoving it into the duffel.
“And my mother was having babies at twenty. What’s your point?” she said mildly. “Times change. She should have a chance to see the world. And not the way we did.”
I moved to pick up a stack of underwear, but she put out her hand to take mine. “Billie.” I stopped moving.
“She’s seen more of the world than you can possibly imagine,” I said.
“I know. We’ve had a few interesting chats,” she said, her hand still on top of mine. “I know where you found her and how you got her out of Ukraine. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” I said simply.
Helen smiled. “Contrary to what you think, I like her. Very much. And I don’t want to see her end up like us.”
“What are you saying, Helen? That we somehow missed out? That we wasted our lives and we’re nothing but washed-up cautionary tales?”
“No,” she replied. “But aren’t there things you wish you’d done differently? Things you wish you’d made time for? People you wish you hadn’t let go?”
I snatched my hand out from under hers. “Minka is part of the team and she’s coming to England. End of story.” I clamped my mouth shut before I said anything I’d regret—probably about her freezing up in Jackson Square and losing her nerve.
I started shoving the rest of my clothes into the duffel, cramming a pair of boots on top of a shirtwaist dress I didn’t even remember owning. Helen watched me for a minute, then got up.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said quietly as she shut the door behind her.
She hadn’t said his name, but I knew exactly who she was thinking of, and when I crawled into bed without undressing that night and waited for hours to crash into sleep, it was because I was thinking of him. Taverner.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NOVEMBER 1981