An Innocent Man

by Mark Z. Kammell

that’s what you’re going to do; as it happened, Jared would have been much better off with an ultra-modern apartment somewhere in the centre of town, four thousand square feet of luxury and an infinity pool – at least he would have enjoyed his final few weeks on Earth. As it was, he spent them in high rise squalor only to gain maybe a few extra days and the dubious pleasure of skydiving thirty-two floors with only his jacket as a parachute. Beryl and Carl did, in fairness, give him the opportunity to call Ella just before, which I think was quite big of them. Jared declined, I expect on the basis of not wanting his wife and kids’ final memory of him to be of a blubbering mess with brown trousers, rather than the overwhelmingly mixed, yet somewhat more positive picture that they had of him.

  An interesting question, nonetheless, that troubled me more than the rest of the sorry, if somewhat predictable, saga, trying to picture myself and what I would do. I would like to think of myself standing with dignity on that tiny balcony, holding the phone to my ear as I tell Sylvia in a calm, pensive voice that I love her and would always love her (always in this case being the next thirty seconds of freefall), then handing the phone back to Beryl and stepping out into the warm air, rather than suffer the indignity of being thrown. The narrative in my head falls down somewhat when I think that, in reality, Sylvia would probably glance at her screen, see my name flash up and reject my call, crushing my final few seconds of rational thought in this world into a black hole of negativity. Still, I could hardly blame that on Beryl, or indeed Carl, who, contrary to appearances, were not a couple, just good friends with a strong business relationship and a shared love of adventure and violence. The rumour I heard was that Beryl defected to join some other outfit, although I don’t think it was government sponsored, not like ours; and that proved to be right, although she would have been better off staying there really, wouldn’t she. Between X and Jared and maybe even you, you got rid of pretty much everyone, except for the management. Except for me! Ha! Despite everything, I would have loved to see X’s face when he actually found out. I wonder what Jared would have thought. I can just imagine his face, thinking about that time he had me at his place. Just us, not wives, not kids. Just so he could show me how big his dick was. Well, I tell you what, Jared, if you can hear me now, if it’s not stuffed down your throat along with your balls, you should have spent less time measuring its size and more time doing your fucking job. Don’t you agree? Although, I have to admit, karma is a funny thing, isn’t it? If I hadn’t taken the VDE and hadn’t followed Mark, I wouldn’t have seen what I saw. And then of course, I wouldn’t have done what I did. And we wouldn’t be here now, would we.

  But I did steal the suit, and when I thought it was safe I slipped into it and tried it out. I promised myself that I wouldn’t use it, except for when absolutely necessary, as there was no point in taking risks. I then quickly realised that there had been utterly no point in taking it if I wasn’t going to use it, so I scratched my first thought straight away, but I definitely promised myself that I wouldn’t take any stupid risks. Security at our department had been understandably tightened and there was a new guy in charge there. New woman, in fact. Jared had been replaced by Sally Evans, and first impressions, I have to say, were positive. She had none of his arrogance and his cult of Jared narcissism, she didn’t drive to work in a Ferrari, she didn’t have a dick bigger than Big Ben, or if she did she kept it well hidden. She was personable, matter of fact, knowledgeable and altogether scary. The first thing she did was dismantle Jared’s super-kit and replace it with a much simpler set up, one that included cameras, facial recognition and laser beams. Her testing regime was extraordinarily thorough, intense – and successful. No sudden deaths, no broken bones, not even any torn ligaments or lost fingers, just a classic demonstration of the effectiveness of the security measures. She also recruited her own team – she needed to, there was hardly anyone left – a mixture of computer geeks and old fashioned A team tough guys, that wandered through the offices and made you thankful they were on your side (except, in my case, of course, they weren’t, not strictly speaking). We did get the show back on the road, of course. We had to beg our lords and masters – the government, clearly, and ultimately the British taxpayer – for a few extra billion in funding – but we firmly set our sights on building a new device, developing and industrialising it, time suddenly being of the essence as we were convinced that the Russians, Chinese or Americans were now in the race and God knows what would happen if they all suddenly turned up with invisible armies (and invisible diplomats as well, in the Americans’ case). X knew that he would be the first against the wall, shot by his own government for creating such a mess; he could hardly take it out on Jared, could he, anymore, and X knew that he had been incredibly lucky to survive the first cock up, and he only did because so far there hadn’t been any consequences.

  And I get it, God knows what would have happened to me if they had found out then it was me, so I knew I had to be careful, but then what red blooded male would be able to resist the urge to just put a few things to the test. And then of course there was the bizarre logic of the whole thing, which became very clear two bottles of wine. The government were determined to make X pay in the long term, that was clear to me, although I think he yet had to admit it to himself. Which meant, sans Jared, he would take it out on everyone else before meeting his maker, which very much meant me. For our loyalty to our country and our team only stretches as far as our own sense of safety, of course. That’s if they didn’t work out who stole it. If they did, well clearly that meant me as well. I was screwed either way, which rather put short term risk taking into perspective. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t do anything too untoward, but I did become acutely aware of the possibilities that this held. I should explain a couple of other things about the VDE. Firstly, we realised that its use in espionage would be severely limited if metal detectors were able to pick it up, and so we built into it the ability to go through these undetected. It’s quite easy, to be honest. And secondly, we also realised that there may be a need to procure and store goods, such as documents – imagine if a camera caught a top-secret document walking by itself through an office! We therefore built in a large pocket at the front, a little like a baby carrier. Of course, the VDE itself had built in cameras and all that jazz, but sometimes you need the real thing. In any case, useful as those may be on ultra-secret spying missions, my first impulse when this was in my possession was not to break into the Russian embassy, or to board a plane secretly, or to see what actually happens in a cabinet meeting, or to watch private people do private things, or all manner of other potential things that may have been more creative or more interesting.

  No, the first thing that I did was to walk into a technology store and walk out again with over £5000 worth of the latest in mobile communications, without paying for it, without being noticed and without setting off any alarms. Yes, my imagination ran no further than the ability to be a thief. I’m not proud of it, but there you have it, you can’t deny who you are. I used to think of myself as someone who was inventive, creative, even, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve found the need or desire to express myself has diminished, I’m quite satisfied with an awful lot of money, a luxury car and, until recently at least, the love of a good woman. Ah, yes, Sylvia. People used to laugh – Sylvain and Sylvia, why would you do that, don’t you know it would never work, but I of course wouldn’t listen so such banalities and we both ran headlong into it. I’m no poet, but when we had enough time to come up for breath, Sylvia used to say we are just two sparks of light in a dark sky, trying to break through. I never really understood what she meant, I always thought of myself as a fleck of grey. Sylvia, however, thought she saw something in me that was never really there, and she pursued it and pursued it until we were both exhausted, until we ran out of road – then she would look into my dull eyes and, although she didn’t say it, I could see the disappointment reflected back to me. Is that all there is, she wanted to say, I think, is that rea
lly all of you. I sometimes thought she would have even preferred me to be someone like Jared. Flamboyant, ostentatious, vain and presumptuous but at least there was something there behind the façade, some passion or desire, that could change and become something else. Behind my grey eyes there was just a dull void.

  I think I’ve changed, though, albeit only slightly, but the events of the last few weeks have forced me to realise that sometimes you need to take sides, and that there are things that it’s possible to believe in. For Sylvia, however, even if she were still with us, even if she were to have noticed, it would have just been a case of too little, too late. I do think she still loved me, actually maybe she still does, or at least she would if she was able and I knew where she was. A vain hope, I’m sure you agree, but there has been enough strangeness here to give me hope, wouldn’t you say? Even then, however, even if everything else wasn’t true, she would probably think I’m dead, lying in a ditch or in an