“I have nothing to tell you.”
“Should I mention that I know Sylvie Leblanc, your niece?” I say, commanding his attention. “I also know that you worked at the Hartfield Institute towards the end of the last century and were involved in a Special Operation called KW—”
“Are youinsane? Keep your voice down,” urges Leblanc, clearly panicked now and scanning the area behind me once again. “You have no idea who may be listening. How did you learn about Knight’s Watch? From my niece?”
“Please,” I say, and pull back my sleeve to show him the tattoo. “I need to know who I am.”
Leblanc’s eyes bob from my wrist to my face, his brain working wildly. When he sways slightly, I wonder if he is about to pass out, but instead of moving backwards, he grabs my wrist, bends forward, and looks closer.
“Get in here,” he says, wrenching the door open wide. “Hurry.”
The interior of the cottage is the antithesis of the exterior. Lit by a single table lamp near the door, the hall corridor is lined on both sides with untidy piles of documents and books in grey bindings—precariously balanced and restricting access. They follow the steep rise of the threadbare stair carpet like paper battlements. Musky odours of pipe tobacco hang in the air, the white paintwork nicotine-stained and patchy. I follow Leblanc down a narrow corridor towards the back of the house and am directed into a darkened room, the large window covered by a blackout blind. A doorway leads off into a small kitchen with sunlight—for some reason the only room with uncovered windows. In addition to wall-to-wall bookcases in the main room, an oversized digital television screen is mounted on the wall. Leblanc instructs me to sit in a chair at the table, which is strewn with papers around an ashtray piled with cigarette ends.
“You should not have come here. They have many ways to watch us.”
I am not sure if his agitation is paranoia or common sense. I would have known if I were being spied upon by someone other than him on my way down the drive. But then again, drones are not easy to pick out these days.
“How are you alive?” I notice he has stopped pacing and is now staring at me. “They said you’d been killed on assignment.”
“Who said I’d been killed?”
“The operations commanders. The year before the project was shut down. Two Knights were killed during missions, they told us, Five and Seven. More of their subterfuge, I suppose. Covering their tracks. Five—you—were killed on a covert operation in Libya with a senior intelligence agent. A super yacht anchored off the coast of Tripoli, owned by a known sex trafficker of young boys and an illicit arms trader. A gas tank exploded onboard. Nobody survived, according to reports. Divers from the Special Boat Service managed to recover identifiable parts of the trafficker and the agent who accompanied you, but your remains and those of many of the passengers and crew were never found. How did you escape?”
I miss his question for a moment as my mind replays the violent vision I had when I spotted a luxury yacht off the coast while visiting San Vincenzo with Lorenzo. How did I survive? I see no reason to withhold details of my retrograde amnesia and about having recollections of very few events before the train crash.
“That makes sense. You would have been on your way back to Hartfield. Knights were programmed to return directly to base after completing a mission or, in the rare event of a mishap, to return to base. As ironic as it may sound, that train crash you were in saved your life.”
I assume he means I was gifted with a life in the real world rather than one lived in an institution.
“You said another of us went missing.”
“Knight Seven. Not missing. A sniper got lucky in Afghanistan. I examined the repatriated corpse.”
“What happened to the others?”
“Others?”
“The other Knights. If I was Five and the other was Seven, there must have been more. And weren’t there also Pawns?”
Leblanc, who has been standing all this time, drops down into a seat.
“Retired,” he says, barely a whisper.
“What does that mean?”
“Killed off. By the time any of us knew what was happening, it was too late. Orders came from and were carried out by a hardcore military contingent. But the answer to your question is that many were executed. The neophyte Pawns would have been easy to deal with without much of a fight. Appalling. The Knights, not so much, having been groomed into elite fighting machines. Regular soldiers might eventually have eliminated them with sheer numbers, but the cost would have been too high. Instead, the commanders did the worst thing imaginable.”
“Which was?”
“They locked them into the underground gymnasium and pitted the last six against each other. Ordered one to destroy the other. At the end, one child was left—unconscious and barely hanging onto life—for me to euthanise.”
“You murdered the last of the Knights.”
“Not the last it would seem. And yes, I was instructed to do so.”
I say nothing but consider the magnitude of what he has just told me. Perhaps his world of paranoia is justified.
“Do not judge me, Five. Do you have any idea of the pain you caused? How many lives you took and innocents you murdered carrying out orders? Besides, I said I was instructed. I did not say I went through with those instructions.”