Episode 218 · The First Sunday

On his first Sunday with the agency, Soles was given a bed, a locker and a sheet explaining which of them could be searched.

The answer was both. He read the sheet twice, then put it in the locker.

The room held two beds against opposite walls, but only his had been made. Through the window he could see the service yard, a low training building and the back of the office where the man in gray had left him after the station. A fence separated the yard from the road.

He left Maxim’s bag and his own phone on the bed by the window, then went downstairs with the agency handset.

A woman at the office desk gave him a temporary pass. She asked how much he could lift before asking his name.

— What am I moving? he asked.

— We haven’t decided yet.

— Then I couldn’t say.

She wrote Assessment pending. beside the question.

She wrote something beside the number on his pass and directed him through the yard to the training building. He would be met there. The file from the train went with him; the photograph showed a low brick pumping station beside a drainage channel.

Three men stood outside the building. One had a narrow black case open on a bench and was checking the knives laid inside it. Another watched Soles cross the yard.

— This is him?

The third man came away from the wall. He was broad across the shoulders, with a heavy jaw and a small scar at the corner of his mouth. He looked at Soles’s coat, then the file.

— You lost?

— I was told to come here.

— Upstairs. Equipment room. Take that case.

He pointed to a metal box beneath the bench.

Soles tried one handle. The box tilted toward his knee, too wide for him to carry safely up the narrow stairs alone.

— Somebody can take the other end, he said.

One of the men laughed. The broad man’s expression changed very slightly.

— Bull, a voice called from inside. He’s with me.

A woman in a plain training jacket stood at the foot of the stairs. Bull kept looking at Soles for another moment, then put his boot against the box and pushed it under the bench.

— Leave it. You’ll slow us down.

The woman held out her hand for Soles’s file.

— You have your own group, Bull. Leave the arrivals to me.

— He needs to know where he stands.

— Last week somebody needed his jaw set. Go and explain that one to the office.

Bull kept the file a moment longer before putting it into her hand. His friends had gone quiet. He waited until she turned away to brush past Soles, making him give up half the doorway.

He picked up the file instead and opened it. The photograph slid out. Soles caught it before it reached the wet paving.

— Pump house, Bull said. They found you something with a faucet.

Soles straightened. The woman’s eyes moved between them. She waited until he had the photograph back in the file before leading him inside.

The room on the ground floor had mats, a wooden bench and an open patch of concrete marked by a painted square. She closed the door to the yard.

— Put your things there. Show me how you stand when something comes at you.

He set the file on the bench and turned.

When she advanced without warning, his left hand rose, but his right foot crossed behind his left. For a moment he waited for strength to make the mistake unimportant.

Her palm met his chest and he sat down hard on the mat.

— Again, she said.

He got up and made himself put his feet where Tesa had wanted them.

The woman stopped before touching him this time.

— Better. Do you know why?

He did. Saying it took longer than doing it had.

They worked until his shirt was damp. She watched how he turned, where his hands went and which movements carried him beyond his balance. When he moved well once and badly the next time, she made him repeat both.

Then she gave him a padded knife. He reached for her wrist as she advanced and took the soft point beneath his ribs.

— Your hands don’t get there before your feet, she said.

He had another try. This time he stepped clear, only to lose his guard when she struck with her empty hand.

By the end, he wanted the chair more than another attempt. She sat opposite him and laid out the coming weeks: conditioning in the mornings, then practice here, with empty hands or training weapons. He would learn to take a fall, keep his feet and stop a movement before it carried him somewhere he could not defend.

— And the running?

— That comes before breakfast.

— I’ve found breakfast useful before running.

— Bring it back if you need it.

He almost smiled. His breathing had made a much stronger argument for the schedule than he could make against it.

Tesa had given him the beginnings of balance and a guard. Here he would have to keep them while another person changed the question.

Phenom brought the readiness to finish a movement through the person in front of him. The woman kept making him stop before there was anyone to finish. His legs tired sooner than the readiness did.

Outside the window, Bull walked past with two other cleaners. He saw Soles sitting on the bench and patted the air downward, smiling.

Soles stood up before the woman told him to.

— Rest means rest, she said.

He sat back down.

Before noon he went upstairs for a clean shirt and put his own phone in his coat. A driver took him to the pumping station and stayed at the road. His task was reconnaissance: look, establish an approach and report what help he needed.

The channel ran behind the building. Inside, a locked grille separated the pump floor from a lower service room. The light below it moved against the concrete. He could hear water striking something hollow.

He stayed at the entrance and drew the route on the back of the photograph: door, grille, stairs beyond it. Then he went outside to ask for the key.

The agency phone rang while he was speaking to the driver. A voice asked whether he could complete the work alone.

He looked at the sketch. He had not yet seen what lay at the foot of the stairs.

— I need the grille opened first.

The voice asked him to wait. He waited beside the car, watching the locked grille while the sweat cooled against his back.

His own phone vibrated in his coat.

Maxim. Soles watched the name while the agency voice returned in his other ear, asking for the number on the grille.

He went back to the doorway to read it out. By then, Maxim’s call had ended.

He would call back from the room. That was what he told himself as he put the phone away.