GODSFALL

GODSFALL's Return

The name of the man in the SUV was General Aldric Hume, and he was supposed to be dead.

He had been supposed dead for seven years. That was how long it had been since his name turned up on a casualty list from an operation that had officially never taken place in a country that officially had no civil conflict. Ethan had attended the memorial. He had stood at the back, as funerals for the relevantly dead were always conducted, in a church nobody who had actually known Hume would have chosen, and he had watched the performance of grief from a suitable distance and left when it was over. He had taken the news the way he took most such news: a permanent subtraction from the short list of people he trusted, a list that had never been long and that kept getting shorter.

Hume was not dead. He was sixty-one and looked every year of it, weathered in the particular way of men who had spent decades in places that required constant adaptation. His eyes were exactly as Ethan remembered. That specific pale grey. Ethan had long associated pale grey eyes with intelligence, which was irrational, but the association had calcified years ago and showed no signs of shifting.

He had something that belonged to Ethan. He had said so, plainly, when he opened the car door. So Ethan had gotten in.

Now they were stationary in the basement level of a parking structure on the east side of the financial district, engine running for heat. Iris stood outside the passenger window looking at nothing in particular with the posture of someone looking at everything.

"You've been watching me," Ethan said. Not an accusation. An orientation.

"Occasionally. When it seemed necessary." Hume looked at him with the directness of a man who had concluded long ago that apologies were a poor use of whatever time remaining. "Nothing continuous. Nothing hostile."

"How long have you been alive?"

"Since I was born."

"Hume."

"Seven years. Roughly." He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. "The official death was arranged by the people I was working for at the time. I let it happen because I needed to disappear from their records. I've been on my own since."

"Under whose authority?"

"My own." He said it plainly, without defensiveness, the way one states a fact made in peace a long time ago. "I know how that sounds. There's a document that explains most of it. But first." He withdrew a small sealed envelope from his pocket, the kind used for formal correspondence. It had a wax seal. Ethan looked at the seal and something cold ran from the back of his neck down his spine.

The House Crown device. Old version. Pre-reform. Thirty years old, at least.

"Where did you get that," Ethan said. His voice came out very flat.

"Your mother gave it to me." Hume held it out. "Before she died. She said: if something happens to me, take this to my son when he's old enough to understand what it means." He set the envelope on the seat between them. "I've been waiting until I was certain."

Ethan did not reach for it immediately. He looked at it.

"You knew her," he said.

"I was her handler. Six years." Hume looked at him. "I know what happened to her. I know who arranged it and why. It's in the document." He paused. "And it connects directly to Marcus Vane and the organisation he serves."

Ethan picked up the envelope. Didn't open it. He turned it over, felt the weight of it. Very light, for something that had apparently been waiting nineteen years.

"I'll need to verify your identity independently," he said.

"I'd expect nothing less." Hume nodded toward the window. "Tell your strategist I'll submit to whatever protocol she needs. I understand the necessity."

Ethan looked at Iris through the glass. She hadn't moved. He knew she had heard everything.

"One more thing," Hume said.

"Yes."

"The safe house on Crestfield Avenue. The one you used early on." Hume held his gaze. "Someone is there. They arrived before sunrise in a vehicle registered to a private security firm with no verifiable client list. In my experience that means the actual client list is the kind that prefers not to be verified." He paused. "They weren't sent by anyone I know. Which means they were sent by someone neither of us has identified yet."

"That's a long list."

"Narrower than you'd think. Very few people know that address."

Ethan put the envelope in his breast pocket and pushed the door open.

"I'll be in touch," he said.

He stepped out into the cold of the parking structure. Iris was beside him before he'd taken three steps.

"He's who he says he is," she said quietly, as they walked. "Biometrics match. Background consistent. The stress patterns in his voice suggest he believes what he's telling you."

"As he understands it."

"Everyone's working from a version." She glanced sideways at him. "The safe house?"

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"Now."