“A fantastic blend of action and deeper questions about what it means to be human.”
     —The Washington Post

“Like Philip K Dick’s best novels, [Spark] is insidious and troubling, its most profound points made with disarming casualness.”
     —The Guardian (London)

“Darkly futuristic . . . with a protagonist unlike any other.”
     —Austin Chronicle
 
“An adrenaline-charged thriller—endlessly inventive—that winds through a landscape of cutting-edge technology with great assurance and skill.”
     —Lincoln Child, New York Times bestselling author of *The Third Gate

“Twelve Hawks, like a character in his story, is untethered by technology and unreachable by the tentacles of the Vast Machine. He is a free spirit, a lone voice of reason in a data-fogged world.”
     —San Francisco Chronicle

• “Spark is a marvel. An utterly gripping, unbelievably imaginative tale with all the heart, drive, and humanity that its hero, Jacob Underwood, a contract assassin, lacks. . . . At once a heart pounding thriller, a bitter indictment of our growing surveillance state, and a life affirming story of the indomitability of the human heart.”
       —Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author of *Rules of Deception
• “Breathless action. . . . Twelve Hawks sets up the battles in Spark as more than simple combat. His appeal lies in his pairing of one system of belief against another and letting them duke it out.”
  *     —The New York Times

• “From start to finish Spark ***defies expectation, joining a ‘dead’ man’s cold regard with suspense at fever pitch.”
       —Locus
   
  “As good as the Fourth Realm books were, this one may be even more appealing: less fantastic, more grounded in a contemporary real world, with a narrator who is deeply scarred and endlessly fascinating.” —Booklist* (starred review)

  Autorentext

  John Twelve Hawks is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Traveler, The Dark River, and The Golden City.

  www.johntwelvehawks.com

  Klappentext

  After a catastrophic motorcycle accident, Jacob Underwood woke up believing he was already dead. This unusual condition has a name-Cotard's syndrome-and a surprising benefit: Feeling dead makes Jacob frighteningly good at his job. A contract employee of the multinational corporation DBG, he can now carry out his assignments with ruthless precision, untroubled by guilt, fear, dishonor or any moral conflict-the perfect skills for a hired assassin. When a bright young DBG associate vanishes without a trace, likely taking vast sums of money and valuable company information with her, Jacob will pursue her into a labyrinthine network of dark dealings which extend around the globe, and far beyond his understanding.

  In Spark, master storyteller John Twelve Hawks spins a riveting tale and delves into what it means to be human inside the modern surveillance state.

  Leseprobe
  1

  Forget faith and uncertainty, rebellion and slavery. Forget beauty in all its forms. Forget ugliness, too.

  Forget A Mighty Fortress Is Our God and the Kaddish. Forget an army of notes marching across a sheet of paper that are transformed into the Goldberg Variations. Forget the Taj Mahal at sunrise and the Grand Canyon at sunset, Shakespeares sonnets, War and Peace, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Forget the dabs of bright blue paint that became the eyes of Vincent van Gogh.

  Forget the fingertip sensation of fur, velvet, a cashmere shawl, and a smooth green chip of beach glass. Forget the moist texture of raw meat and dry brittleness of dead leaves crushed in the hand.

  Forget the taste of honey-soaked baklava. Ripe mango. Roasted garlic. Pickled herring. Licorice. Chocolate. Strawberry ice.

  And smellsforget them as well. Crushed lilacs and the harsh scent of hot tar. A babys neck. Moist earth. Fresh-baked scones.

  Forget the dead children from the Day of Rage and the speeches and sermons and memorial parks with names carved in stone. Forget every lesson from a teacher, every joke from a joker; every judgment from a judge.

  Forget what your parents told you. Forget what you were taught as a child and what you learned on your own.

  Forget what you think is right. And wrong.

  Do all this and you might become me: a Spark contained within a Shell that stood in a doorway on Sixty-Second Street in Brooklyn while a Russian businessman named Peter Stetsko attempted to park his car.

  It was November in New York Citydamp and cold. Death was present in the street, but there was nothing dramatic or sinister about my appearance. That night, I was neatly dressed in gray slacks and a V-neck sweater. In the outside pocket of my black raincoat, I carried a Brazilian-made semiautomatic pistol with skateboard tape attached to the grip. My Freedom ID card was concealed within a specially designed sleeve that made it impossible for the EYE system to detect my location.

  A delivery van passed through the intersection, its tires hissing on the wet asphalt. I slipped on a phone headset and Laura whispered into my ear.

  Ten-Thirty-Three on Flatbush Avenue and Farragut Road. One unit responding.

  Any police activity in Bensonhurst?

  Checking... It felt as if Laura was a real woman looking up a message board or gazing out a window, but she was only a Shadow. Somewhere in the Internet, one computer was talking to another, checking the data on a Web site that provided live-time reports of New York City police and fire department activity.

  Nothing, Mr. Underwood.

  My target had rented a two-bedroom house that reminded me of something a child would build with plastic blocks. It had a low brick wall in front that guarded a patch of concrete, painted grass green. There were red aluminum awnings over the two front windows and the front door.

  Since my Transformation, I am capable of a limited range of emotional responses: curiosity, boredom, and disgust. I had been curious if Stetsko could squeeze his Mercedes-Benz between a blue delivery van and a mud-splattered Toyota. Now I was bored with his cautious maneuvering and ready to complete my assignment.

  A young woman wearing a sequined green nightclub dress was sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. Because she was a witness, she would also have to be neutralized. I would start with a head shot for Stetsko through the side window, circle the car and deal with this secondary target, then circle the car again for confirmation shots. The sequence wasnt difficult, but it would make more noise.

  Any police activity, Laura?

  Nothing.

  A minute passed.

  Nothing.

  When Stetsko pulled out again for another try, the woman got out of the car. Like a photon of light, her green dress shimmered down the sidewalk, passed through the squeaky gate, and disappeared into the house. At that moment, my job became simple, direct, and clear.

  The Mercedes moved six inches back toward the curb and then stopped. Stetskos head swung back and forth like a man watching a tennis match. He pulled the steering wheel hard to the right and the car made a squeaking noise.

  Sixty-Second Street was dark and no one was on the sidewalk, but that didnt make me feel lonely or frightened. The rotting smell from a Dumpster appeared as a brownish-green color in my mind, but it didnt generate an emotional reaction. X = X. The world has no meaning aside from what is.

  Across the street, Stetsko finally …