The Miranda Contract Read Online Free PDF Page B

the window he realized just how far his strategy had spread from one hemisphere to the next, from one generation to the next. Losing five years had made everything that much clearer. The pattern was becoming unmistakable. And it gave him some pleasure.
    Even at the end of his life he could see the potential of the world, the possibility of his legacy.
    “Contact has been made?” he asked without turning back to the room. His breath frosted on the glass.
    The boy behind him was slouching on a sofa, boots crossed at his ankles. It irritated Galkin but the boy was worth overlooking a few insolent indiscretions. Sohail had been with him for nearly ten years, raised on the fringe of Melbourne with a purpose in mind, a part to play. As Halo, the boy had been one of Galkin’s Small Gods, bringers of chaos, the generation of broken hope. The memories brought a faint smile to his face, creased as it was.
    “Danny met his mum this afternoon,” Halo said, flipping through a magazine. “Had a chat over some chicken.”
    “How is he?” Galkin asked softly, the breath clouding the glass again.
    Halo dropped the magazine and shrugged. The mirror reflection of the boy played with Galkin’s mind and for a second he thought he caught glimpses of his own son and then his grandson. The movement was so natural, so unguarded. Galkin turned around.
    It was not Halo’s style to be so casual.
    “You play with me, Sohail? You withhold from me? From me?”
    Halo straightened up quickly, stood up and clasped his hands behind his back, at attention like the little soldier he was. Galkin held his stare for a few more seconds, the temptation to reprimand further, tantalizingly close, prickling his skin, ready to strike.
    “Dan’s fine, he’s good.”
    Behind Galkin, the skies darkened. Halo noticed: it was clear in his eyes.
    “He knows you’re back in town,” Halo continued. “Theresa told him you were back, looking for him. She did what she was told.”
    Galkin nodded once. The ploy to send the mother was a risk, but to announce his own return in person, to just appear before the boy, was unthinkable. The mother’s fractured state of mind, her cocktail of guilt and remorse and anger had its purpose. She had always been easily manipulated, although not altogether trustworthy. It was a gamble, of course, but a necessary one in the fine act of setting up his grandson for the next move. Perhaps, the final move.
    “You worry me some of these times, Sohail,” Galkin said. “We will not fail.”
    Halo relaxed slightly, hands shifting from his back to the pockets of his jacket. Galkin could sense it in the subtle shift of adrenalin, the softening of the edges. He blinked and saw the boy as a collection of electrical impulses, connected, heightened and then receding. The fine network was right there in front of him, so precious and so vulnerable.
    Just a prick here or a scramble there. Such little alterations and the boy could be a twitching mess on the floor. Maimed, broken, dead: it was all possible.
    “Danya…” he sighed, dismissing Halo with his hand. The storm spread across the city, turning the late afternoon into night. Up and down the street, and even across the city, lights were flickering on, fighting back the darkness. But Galkin knew that sometimes the darkness just had to come out. There could be no stopping what needed to happen; the pain would be fleeting in the grand scheme of things, the transformation worth every tear, every bruise on his grandson’s body.
    He ran his fingers across the glass, tracing the line of his own face. Danya was seventeen now, almost a man, but cut off from his father and grandfather. Aimless, wandering. Galkin frowned at himself, taking the wordless blame for his son’s failure, his unearned hubris. The signs were there early, in childhood; the irrational responses, the urgency, the desperation to be seen and heard and, worse, the need to be listened to. No child demanded more from its