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to an eye screw twisted into the stock. With some minor adjustments, I could conceal the weapon beneath a navy blue waterproof smock with a fake corporate logo sewn onto the breast. While I was examining my silhouette in the bedroom mirror, the Sentinel camera photographed Mallory’s mistress arriving for her weekend visit. In the past, the bodyguard had always driven her back to the train station on Sunday afternoon.
    It was time to start the plan. I took the tube to South London and rented a white delivery van for the weekend. It was raining as I crossed back over the river. Yellow headlights came toward me like blurry eyes. Cold drops of water exploded on the windshield and trickled down the glass. When I got back to my apartment I sat on the one chair in the middle of the living room with the sawed-off shotgun on my lap.
    I was safe. No one was touching me. But then my Spark began to vibrate rapidly and visions appeared that I could not control. I saw Micky Sicky grab Joey and throw him against a wall. Then he began kicking the dog with his heavy black boots. Smiling. Laughing.
    I do not believe in justice and fairness and decency. These words have no form or shape for me. There is more reality in things: a rusty nail on the sidewalk or a smooth brown pebble pulled from a stream. But thoughts about Mrs. Driscoll, Joey, and Micky Sicky were a
distraction
that would prevent me from completing my assignment. I needed to do something that would push those thoughts out of my mind.
    Around ten o’clock in the evening, I wrapped the sawed-off shotgun in a throw rug and placed it on the floor of the van. Great Britain had an EYE monitoring system like the United States’, but it was called ARGUS. Although my phone wasn’t connected to my identity, it could still be tracked by scanners. I turned it off as I drove the van north to Stoke Newington.
    I cruised up and down the streets looking for Micky Sicky, but only a few people were out. After an unsuccessful search I parked the car near a hospital and played a computer game on my phone. Then I returned to Watkins Street and found my target leaning against a parked car.
    I stopped the van, rolled down the window, and spoke with an American accent. “Good evening. Maybe you can help me. I just arrived in London this afternoon.”
    “What’s the problem, bruv? You lost?”
    “I work for somebody in the music business and he needs some drugs to get through the night. A girl at a party told me to come to this street.”
    Micky Sicky grinned. Bad teeth. “What’s your man’s name, bruv? He famous? Can I meet ’im?”
    “That depends on what you can supply.”
    “Got everything. Top gear. Whatever you need.”
    “Can we get off the street? Being out here like this makes me nervous.”
    “Go down to the corner, turn left, then right, and park.”
    I had not planned what was going to happen. At that moment, I felt like a line in a cathode tube, jabbing at the boundaries of the screen with sharp movements and sudden bursts of energy. Followinghis directions, I turned into a dirt alleyway behind some fenced-in vegetable gardens. Light came from a few windows and a security light attached to a tool shed.
    I got out of the van but left the door open. The shotgun was on the driver’s seat, the stock poking a few inches out of the rolled-up throw rug.
    “Hey …”
    Micky appeared at the end of the alleyway and began walking toward the van. Picking up the throw rug, I cradled it in my arms as if it was a wounded dog and approached him slowly.
    As the target drew closer my right hand thrust itself into the center of the rug, grabbed the stock of the shotgun, and let its concealment fall away.
    My legs took two quick steps and then—
    My finger squeezed the trigger and then—
    The shotgun fired and buckshot cut through the air.
    When I was in the clinic, Dr. Noland told me about a logical problem created by a Greek philosopher named Zeno that suggested that the buckshot would