The Fine Art of Invisible Detection

by Robert Goddard

  Michaela remarked at some point on the obstinacy of hunger. She had lots of grim contingencies to fill her mind with, but that didn’t stop her stomach growling when long hours passed without food. Nick hadn’t noticed until she said it how hungry he was himself. It was a kind of comfort in its way. They were alive and well, able to experience physical cravings. For the time being, at least.

  Then, at last, something happened. They heard a vehicle pull up outside. A few minutes passed, then the roller door was raised. A black Transit van was parked in front of the shed. Night had fallen. The roof of the van was washed in a sickly amber light.

  Three men, all wearing black boiler-suits and balaclavas, entered the shed, closing the door behind them. One of them, who appeared to be limping, stayed back. The other two walked towards Nick and Michaela. One was carrying a couple of pizza boxes and two plastic buckets looped over his arm. The other was carrying a baseball bat, swinging it loosely in his hand.

  ‘Why are you holding us here?’ Nick called to them as they advanced. They ignored him.

  Pizza man stopped about six feet from the cages, lowered the buckets to the floor and stacked the boxes on top of them.

  ‘Stand back against the wall,’ said baseball bat man to Nick, speaking with a gruff cockney accent. Once Nick had retreated, he stepped up to the cage and unlocked the door.

  His friend moved forward and tossed one of the pizza boxes into the cage. It landed flat on the floor with a thump. Then he threw the bucket in after it and moved back.

  ‘Push the other bucket out,’ said baseball bat man. Nick obeyed, painfully aware of the bat being raised as a precaution while he did so.

  The door was closed and locked. Then they followed the same procedure with Michaela’s cage. ‘How long are you going to keep us here?’ she demanded. She got no answer.

  ‘The pizzas are cheese and tomato,’ said baseball bat man after they’d finished. ‘Thought we’d play safe in case you were vegetarians. Besides, they reckon shit stinks less if you don’t eat meat, so it’s win-win, ain’t it?’

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ said Michaela with sudden sharpness.

  ‘We’ll be paid for this, luv. That I can guarantee. However it turns out for you.’

  ‘Who are you working for?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Wouldn’t know. It’s all contract work. Know what I mean? Now, enjoy your supper. The lights are on a timer. They’ll go out in about an hour. So, tuck in. And remember to eat your crusts like good little children.’

  Wada had told Holgate she needed to sleep on the problem of what to do next. In truth, she didn’t expect a night’s sleep to make any difference. There was nothing she could do for Michaela Morrisette and Nick Miller. There wasn’t much she could do for herself. She’d become Nishizaki’s enemy and she knew what generally happened to them.

  She went for a restless early-evening walk and ate a solitary supper back at the hotel, then took a long, cool bath, which she’d sometimes found led to a restful night.

  It didn’t this time.

  *

  It was utterly dark in the shed once the lights had gone out, apart from one tiny red gleam high in a distant corner, which Nick did his best not to look at. The effect, as he lay sleeplessly on his mattress, was similar, he imagined, to being in a flotation tank. Reality beyond the black void he was suspended in became ever harder to grasp. He thought Michaela was probably asleep. He was fairly certain he could hear her breathing. He tried to persuade himself not to think about what might happen when the lights came back on and a second day of captivity began. He tried not to run over and over in his mind all the times in recent weeks when he could have stepped away from the mystery of his paternity and allowed his world to continue moving in the safe and orderly way it always had – until now. He tried hard. On both counts.

  It didn’t work.

  Wada lay awake deep into the night. Eventually, when she’d given up on the idea of sleep, oblivion finally came. And then, with seemingly no lapse of time, she was roused, with the morning already well advanced, by the ringing of the bedside telephone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Reception here, Miss Wada. There’s a man downstairs who’d like to speak to you.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Driscoll. He says you know him. Shall I put him on the line?’

  Driscoll. He was here. In Ely. He’d found her. How she couldn’t imagine. But if he could, what was to stop Nishizaki? ‘Put him on,’ she said numbly.

  ‘O-hayo gozaimasu, Wada-san,’ came the smooth, by now familiar, voice. ‘Shall I come up? Or will you come down?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘WHY DON’T WE walk round to the cathedral green and talk there?’ Driscoll suggested as he greeted Wada at the foot of the hotel stairs with a smile. He was wearing a light suit, pale shirt and no tie. He looked businesslike but relaxed.

  ‘Maybe I would prefer to talk here,’ said Wada defensively.

  ‘This isn’t a trap,’ he responded in an undertone. ‘I’ve come alone. And we need to talk, you and I. Somewhere where we can’t be overheard. The cathedral isn’t far.’

  Wada couldn’t be sure what kind of risk she might be taking by going with him. But alternatives weren’t thick on the ground. He’d found her. So hiding was no longer an option. ‘Very well,’ she murmured.

  ‘Why did you come to Ely?’ he asked as they walked out of the hotel.

  ‘I needed to leave Cambridge urgently. There was an opportunity to come here. I took it. I did not think anyone would look for me in Ely.’

  ‘Anyone probably won’t. But you used your credit card when you booked into the Lamb, which was careless. We lifted the particulars from your phone. Lucky for you it’s in our hands rather than Nishizaki’s.’

  ‘What is it that you want to talk to me about, Driscoll-san?’

  ‘The past, the present … and the near future.’

  ‘My future? Or yours?’

  ‘Both, Wada. They’re inextricably linked now, I’m afraid. For better … or worse.’

  They sat on the same bench Wada had sat on for a while the previous day. The morning was bright but cool, the air clear, their words distinct.

  Driscoll squinted up at the central tower of the cathedral. ‘Ah,’ he purred, ‘the Lantern of the Fens. I used to come up here on the train from Cambridge when I was a student. Just to be somewhere that wasn’t … part of the university world.’

  ‘Is that the past you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘No. We don’t need to go back quite that far. Our raid on Nancekuke, in June of seventy-seven. That’s where it begins. You know all about it from Marty, I imagine. I can’t believe you spent two days immured with him at Stórí-Asgarbær without hearing the whole story. He never could move on from that night. The night Alison died.’

  ‘How did she die? He did not reveal what you told him about that.’

  Driscoll sighed. ‘There were more guards than we anticipated. I think they were expecting us. Maybe Noy had let something slip. He could be loose-lipped when he was drunk. And he was often drunk. We didn’t know him well enough to trust him. And yet we did trust him. I suppose Alison and I were so eager to believe him we never stopped to consider whether we were wise to. But then wisdom and youth don’t generally go together, do they?’

  ‘Did you shoot one of the guards?’

  ‘Not exactly. They were lying in wait for us in the underground corridor leading to the bunker where the condenser containing the Super Sarin was supposedly stored. There was a struggle when they tried to arrest us. I didn’t actually realize the guard who was manhandling me was armed until his gun went off. In the mayhem after he was wounded, Alison and I tried to escape. But we were cornered and the only way out, according to the directions Noy had given us, was down a drainage chute that connected with a sea cave beneath the base. The tide was in, so the cave was flooded. We had to swim out. But something went wrong. When I reached the mouth of the cave, I realized Aliso
n wasn’t with me. I went back, but I couldn’t find her. There was quite a long stretch where the water was up to the roof of the cave and it was so dark it would have been easy to swim into a flooded side-cave by mistake and drown before you’d found your way out. I think that’s what must have happened to her. I’ve always regretted giving up looking for her that night, though I’m not sure I could have done much more without drowning along with her. That wasn’t what I was thinking at the time, though. I was thinking about self-preservation. That’s the truth of it. And the shame I felt on account of that was one of the reasons I ran away. Not just from Nancekuke, but from my life to that point. Plus the fear of being charged with attempted murder of a guard and sent to prison, of course.’

  ‘So you became Peter Evans?’

  ‘Yes. After swimming ashore, I left Marty out for the count on Porthtowan beach and walked through the night to Newquay. I caught a train there and dodged the ticket inspectors all the way to London. I could have got off at Exeter. When I stayed on, the die was cast. In London, I took a job serving behind a bar and set about turning myself into Peter Evans. It was a lot easier to pull off than it would be today, of course, with so much of ourselves on the Web. One asset I had was my fluency in Japanese, though. That’s how, later that summer, I found myself working as Shitaro Masafumi’s translator. Which meant I came to know all about his and Nishizaki’s sokaiya dealings back in Japan. Masafumi was under a lot of pressure, desperately trying to shore up his finances and failing at every turn. He drank a lot and often passed out, leaving incriminating paperwork lying around for anyone who understood Japanese to read.’

  ‘Meaning you?’ Why Driscoll was being so frank with her Wada still had no idea, but she didn’t want to say anything to hold him back.

  ‘Correct. I never imagined the effect learning Japanese would have on my life. It led me to Masafumi. And Masafumi led me to Nishizaki. I told you in Reykjavík I didn’t know whether Masafumi killed himself or was murdered. Technically, that’s true. But I have little doubt Nishizaki “arranged” his suicide. He was in London at the time. And Masafumi clearly lived in fear of him.’

  ‘Yet this was the man you went into business with.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Nishizaki and I ended up in something of a stand-off. I had evidence of his involvement in Masafumi’s sokaiya dealings from the documents I’d helped myself to while Masafumi was in one of his drunken stupors. He had evidence I was actually Peter Ellery, wanted by the MoD police in connection with the shooting of a guard at Nancekuke. It was a nasty surprise when I discovered he’d been checking up on me and had managed to join up the dots that connected me to my previous identity. He was concerned I might know too much about his part in Masafumi’s activities. And he was right to be concerned. As for how our stand-off was resolved, well, according to him, we had the basis for a good working relationship. I’d demonstrated my suitability to become his assistant as he took Masafumi’s work forward in a more professional manner. He was willing to supply me with a new identity that would bear more scrutiny than the Peter Evans persona. I could make a whole new life for myself – and become a wealthy man – by returning with him to Japan and throwing myself into helping him make a lot of money. And then a lot more after that.’

  ‘And that is what you did.’

  ‘Yes. For the next forty years I was his right-hand man. Not exactly his partner, because that implies equality, which isn’t a principle Nishizaki believes in. But closer to him than anyone. He allowed me to start my own subsidiary, Quartizon, but only because I persuaded him it would be useful to have a channel for certain specialized operations that couldn’t be officially tracked back to him.’

  ‘You knew about all the murders that Nishizaki commissioned to dispose of people who stood in his way? And you knew all the details of his arrangements with Aum Shinrikyo?’

  ‘I’m not about to insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise, Wada. I’m a living testament to what a man is prepared to overlook in order to live well. But Nishizaki has never trusted me. You must understand that. He has controlled and rewarded me. He retrieved the incriminating documents I had. But he retained the evidence that could prove I was Peter Ellery, wanted man, should he ever need to do so. We’ve grown old together. But old age is a problem in our line of work. Retirement is a delicate concept when so much is at stake. I asked myself, a few years ago, how it was likely to end between us. And I realized Nishizaki would be asking himself the same question. He’s nothing if not ruthless. His success has been built on utter single-mindedness. There’s no room for sentiment or loyalty in his world view. There was only one solution he was likely to arrive at to our shared old age problem: I wasn’t going to retire. I was going to be retired. As in terminated, at a time of his choosing. It was a sobering moment when the certainty of that conclusion was borne in on me, and it was the moment I began planning a way to avoid that fate. I began planning, if you like, to get my solution in first.’

  ‘And your plan involved … Emergence?’

  ‘My plan was Emergence. But let’s leave the details of that to one side for the moment. All would have gone smoothly, I believe, but for Marty’s ill-judged communication with Mimori Takenaga, prompted, of course, by Caro’s decision to tell him what she knew before she died. Once Nishizaki realized people were digging into the related questions of Masafumi’s death and my buried identity, he became concerned that our many dealings over many years could unravel, including the extremely lucrative Emergence project. In the course of trying to neutralize the threat he perceived to his position, he had your employer killed and sent Ohara – the Irishman, as I dubbed him – to establish how much Marty knew. In the process, he discovered something about me that I’d hoped to keep from him at all costs, because I was well aware it would give him a hold over me just when I needed the greatest possible freedom of movement. He discovered I had a son.’

  ‘Nicholas Miller?’

  ‘Yes. He came across the information amongst the papers he stole from Marty’s flat. And later he forced Miranda to confirm it. Caro was pregnant by me when I ran away, though I didn’t know it at the time. If I had, I suppose I might have stayed and faced the music. Or maybe I wouldn’t. It’s hard to say. Anyway, it doesn’t much matter now.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘When I began planning Emergence. I’m sure Dr Morrisette has told you the basis of the Emergence operation. I needed expert assistance from people I could rely on to set it up. I turned to two friends from Exeter days – Miranda Cushing and Vinod Hardekar. I offered them rich rewards if they helped me. Miranda has expensive tastes and Vinod’s career hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. They both had good reasons to go in with me. I think they found it all rather exciting as well. Miranda pointed me in the direction of the right people to approach in several Middle Eastern oil states. She’d worked as a consultant for an international investment company that advised several of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in that part of the world. She did some of the initial sounding-out for me. Vinod’s role was to prepare a financial network of offshore entities to channel the proceeds from the auction of the land options through Quartizon and out of Nishizaki’s reach. It was Miranda who told me about Nick, passed off by Caro as Geoff Nolan’s son, but actually mine. An obvious vulnerability, but one I thought I could disregard. Unfortunately, Marty proved more assiduous in his search for me than I’d anticipated, until, in the end, I had to rescue him from pursuit by the Irishman and hide him in Iceland. And when I became aware that Nick was also on my trail I realized to my surprise that having a son wasn’t just the accidental outcome of a drunken tumble with Caro forty-two years ago … but an emotional connection I couldn’t deny, even to myself.’

  ‘You designed Emergence from the outset as a means of cheating Nishizaki?’

  ‘It’s how he’d probably see it. He’s received none of the profits and Vinod’s fixed things so he never will. But it goes beyond that.
The money is only half the story, the half that was to supply me with a well-heeled and invisible retirement far from Nishizaki’s clutches. The fraudulent element of Emergence is the crucial factor: the additional options Dr Morrisette has doubtless explained to you are essentially worthless. I always wanted her to expose the reality of the situation. It’s why I instructed Nanoq to give you the memory stick detailing the whole thing and send you to her. Once the buyers of those options – all of them rich, powerful, dangerous people – realize they’ve been taken for a ride, they’ll want more than their money back. They’ll want revenge. More specifically, they’ll want to show they can’t be conned with impunity. And they’ll blame Nishizaki for what’s happened to them. He can protest all he likes that I’m the one who’s done this to them, but they won’t believe him, because he is – and always has been – the man ultimately in charge: the face of the Nishizaki Corporation. They’ll never be convinced I would have dared to act against his wishes. They’ll never be persuaded he hasn’t tried to defraud them. And that can end only one way for him.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘It was him or me as I saw it. And I was determined it wasn’t going to be me. It’s not as if I was setting him up for a punishment he didn’t richly deserve. I’m sure you’ll agree with me about that, since your own husband was indirectly one of his victims.’

  ‘Has he discovered yet what you have planned for him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Ohara’s disappearance in Iceland while hunting for Marty was bound to alarm him. He sent Zayala to investigate. Zayala was considerably tech-savvier than Ohara. He demanded full access to the Emergence files. It was impossible to refuse him without openly challenging Nishizaki. I think Zayala smelt a rat and sent a worrying message back to his boss before he went the same way as Ohara. But it was too late to change the plan. We went ahead with the auction. The money changed hands. The fraud kicked in. And you tipped off Dr Morrisette. But Nishizaki was already on edge and he reacted to her complaints more quickly and more radically than I’d anticipated.’