“Show-off,” Helen says.
Just then the cabin lights flicker twice. The signal. Mary Alice steps forward and opens the aft door. Vance has flown southwest out of Nice, parallel with the coast, edging slightly inland before banking hard left to aim the aircraft due south. They are past the bulk of the mountains, flying just over the national park of the Plaine des Maures. It is flatter than the craggy uplands to the east, but it is far from level. According to the topographical surveys they received in their briefings, it is rugged, scrubby, and dotted with parasol pines and dangerous outcroppings. Now it unrolls beneath the belly of the plane, a long, unrelieved patch of black. Far to the west, a narrow line of violet marks the death of the day, and the first stars are winking to life just above the horizon.
Natalie snaps her goggles into place, saluting as she drops away into the night.
Mary Alice goes next, flinging herself away from the bottom step like a swimmer setting off for the deep end. Helen is graceful, tipping backwards with a final wave at Billie.
Billie stands on the threshold of the plane, taking a slow, deep breath. The air smells of salt from the Gulf of St.-Tropez and the sharp tang of fuel, and she is grinning as she throws herself into the blackness.
She counts as she floats. Thirty seconds until the chute can be deployed, and it is the most peaceful thirty seconds of her life. She is conscious of counting off the numbers, fingers touching the ring on the rip cord, waiting, half wondering if she should just let it go. From that altitude, there wouldn’t be much left of her when she hits the ground and she wouldn’t feel or see it coming. Nothing but that beautiful, empty blackness beckoning like the end of time.
Thirty. Her fingers pull hard and instantly she is yanked as the chute fills, stalling her free fall. She dangles, legs loose as a marionette’s as she drops to the plain. To her left, she can see three tiny lights glimmering as Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie drift to the ground. She lands harder than expected, the impact forcing the air out of her lungs.
She makes herself go limp, rolling to her side as she has been trained. She comes to a hard stop against the base of a parasol pine and the impact wakes a bird that shrieks once or twice before leaving with an angry flap of wings. Billie sees the beacons of the others, winking like fireflies in an uneven line across the plain. She lifts her face to watch two more fireflies drift from the dark bulk of the aircraft. It is flying low, silhouetted against the clouds like a set piece as it heads towards the Mediterranean. The fuel has been precisely calculated to run out somewhere between the Balearics and Sardinia in the darkness before midnight, leaving nothing but a few bits of broken fuselage and a slick of chemicals on the surface of the water. Billie remembers reading it is ten thousand feet to the bottom of the sea, where the bones of ships and sailors have lain for thousands of years. A few more won’t matter.
Billie feels something brush her leg—a tortoise? A rat? She pushes herself to her feet and scouts the others, their positions indicated by the large safety beacons they have activated. She activates her own, nearly blinded by the brilliant white light. She shields her eyes as she hears the helicopter approach, lowering itself to pluck her from the rocky plain. She is the fourth to get picked up, shivering with the aftereffects of adrenaline. She trips as she clambers aboard, landing flat on her belly and wishing she had made a more elegant entrance when she sees their mentor and the head of Project Sphinx, Constance Halliday—code name Shepherdess—sitting in a jump seat. Halliday is every day of seventy years old and dressed in a flight suit, a white silk scarf wrapped neatly around her throat to guard against a chill. A walking stick is braced against her leg.
Helen is already buckled in, unzipping her suit to check on the dog, who is barking furiously but apparently unharmed by his adventure. Nat fusses over him while Mary Alice sits back, eyes closed as if in prayer. The men will be collected by a second, smaller chopper, and they will all gather for a post-mission debriefing at an undisclosed location outside of Paris. They will have to go over every minute of the mission in painstaking detail, outlining their mistakes and scrutinizing every decision for how to improve. But for now, they are safe. The first mission is finished with no casualties beyond Nat’s cracked rib and the blood still caked in Mary Alice’s hair.
Without a word, Halliday gestures and Billie unstraps the case, passing it over with the hand still attached, the blood drained away, leaving it pale and limp, like a glove full of vanilla pudding. Halliday ignores the hand. She produces a tool and opens the case, extracting a file. For the next few minutes, she skims the material inside, allowing herself one very small smile as she finishes.
“Good work, Miss Webster,” she says in her clipped accent.
Billie gives her a nod and, without warning, rolls over onto all fours to vomit.
It is the greatest day of her life.
So far.
CHAPTER TWO
Trouble has smelled like a lot of things in my life. A job gone wrong. A one-way street I never should have turned down. A man in faded Levi’s with a smile that broke my heart half a dozen times and loved it back together again. On the Amphitrite, it smelled like gardenias and money. The boat was a beauty, the latest luxury offering from a company that specialized in mini-liners—fifty staterooms including a pair of owners’ suites and a crew member for each of us. The brochures described everything as custom-made or handcrafted or artisanal. They had sent each of us a packet half as thick as a vintage phone book, stuffed with glossy photographs and maps and a welcome letter from the captain on embossed letterhead heavier than a wedding invitation. Everything from the menus for the three on-board restaurants (“featuring the freshest locally sourced seafood and organic, sustainably grown fruits”) to the excursion brochures (“glide above the reefs in your own mini-submersible”) had been chosen to make us feel welcome and pampered. Tucked into the packet was a personalized letter written in turquoise ink, the i’s dotted with tiny starfish.
Dear Mary Alice, Helen, Natalie, and Billie,
It is my pleasure to welcome you aboard the Amphitrite! We understand this is a special occasion for the four of you. Happy retirement! Forty years at the same job is a tremendous accomplishment, and we are so happy you are celebrating this event with us. As you turn the page to the new chapter of your lives, please let us know if there is anything we can do to enhance your cruising experience!
Cordially,
Heather Fanning
Executive Guest Services Coordinator
#retirement #luxurycruises #amphitrite
I shook my head. Forty years on one of the most elite assassin squads on earth and it finished like this, with a free cruise and a bouncy letter from a girl who signed her letters with hashtags.
If you expect me to tell you the name of the organization I work for, stop reading right now. It’s a secret—so secret, in fact, that those of us who work there never use the official title. We always refer to it as “the Museum” and we use museum nomenclature to make it a little less obvious to anybody listening in that our job is to eliminate people who need killing.