Cry Darkness

by Hilary Bonner

  Cecil placed a large chunk of pud in his mouth and after chewing for a few seconds looked up at Jones in some surprise.

  ‘Delicious,’ he murmured. ‘Every bit as good as my club’s.’

  ‘You were saying, Jimmy,’ Jones prompted impatiently.

  ‘Ah yes. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re a scientist. You believe the brain is a kind of computer, don’t you? A biological computer.’

  ‘Well, up to a point.’

  ‘All right. Up to a point. Well, up to a point, then, imagine any kind of universal method of controlling that biological computer. Global consciousness could be the next great weapon. It leaves nuclear power standing—’

  ‘Connie has always said that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cecil continued. ‘But did it occur to either you or her that the governments of the world were also thinking that way?’

  ‘Not on the scale you are suggesting,’ said Jones. ‘RECAP’s problem was always that people with power were sceptical of its work. It’s a quantum leap to think in terms of governments actually accepting, fearing even, the power of consciousness.’

  ‘Well, they are. When RECAP was on its own, tucked away in an obscure corner of Princeton, it’s probably true that nobody on the outside gave it much thought. Certainly there was no anxiety about it, nor about the handful of similar institutions scattered around the place. The Global Consciousness Project changed all that. When the RECAP Random Event Generator began to spawn many more of the things, and when, more revolutionary still, they linked them together, via the internet, that was different. Governmental departments across the globe have monitored this project – you must know that, what cloistered academic world do you live in, Sandy? – and have been left in no doubt that something monumental was being illustrated by these REG experiments. It’s not just America that has been keeping a close watch on the GCP for decades. In the simplest of terms it’s mind over matter, isn’t it, Sandy? And the results are fact. Only the questions “how” and “why” have remained unanswered. The possibility that Professor Ruders may have finally answered those two questions is of immense international concern.

  ‘So, you can be assured that whatever course of action has been taken so far regarding the Ruders Theory was’ – Cecil broke off and cleared his throat loudly – ‘was not taken by the American government alone.’

  Jones took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  ‘It really is even bigger than I’d thought,’ she muttered.

  ‘Probably. And you should know that I am only telling you any of this, Sandy, because you have confided in me that you have in your possession a copy of Paul Ruders’ theory. You do realize the enormous responsibility of that, and the position that puts you in, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I think I do, yes. I’m well aware that it puts me in further danger, or it would if it came to the attention of the wrong people, anyway. And I therefore certainly realize the risk I have taken in confiding in you today.’

  ‘A calculated risk, I hope. But you really ought to think very carefully about what you should do next, my dear. If we come to fully understand the nature of consciousness, to utilize it in the ways that I have described, then governments worldwide will fall. The established order of things will be destroyed. Life as we know it will be changed beyond recognition. There would be no doubt about that …’

  ‘Yes, well, that might not be such a bad thing.’

  ‘If you’ll forgive me, those are the words of an idealistic child, Sandy. Whatever might happen eventually, you would in the short term almost certainly be talking about anarchy. Are you an anarchist, as well as an idealist?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No. Of course not. You suddenly have immense and probably rather unenviable power in your hands, Sandy. The power of whether or not to change the world irrevocably.’

  Cecil poured some more claret into Jones’s glass.

  ‘Personally I prefer the devil I know. Which is why I do the job that I do …’

  ‘And what job is that exactly?’ Jones heard himself ask, albeit with little hope of a proper reply.

  ‘Oh, this and that, you know,’ murmured her companion, suddenly returning his entire attention to the remains of his steak and kidney pudding.

  ‘I am slightly disturbed by the extent to which you may be personally involved, Jimmy.’

  ‘Really, my dear? You surprise me.’

  Cecil helped himself to a second helping of mashed potato. He obviously did not intend to elucidate any further.

  Jones put down her knife and fork, picked up her glass of claret and emptied it in one swallow. She was aware of Jimmy Cecil wincing. No doubt the claret was special. Jones hadn’t noticed. She had other things on his mind.

  ‘In spite of that, or maybe because of that, I am going to confide in you further,’ Jones continued. ‘There is something else. Something our government, America and all the other governments apparently so preoccupied with the power of human consciousness should probably know. And, as I was well aware from the moment you called to invite me to lunch, Jimmy, I have little doubt that you are the man to pass on the message.’

  Jimmy Cecil speared a particularly succulent looking piece of kidney on his fork and paused with it still a few inches from his mouth.

  ‘I’m all ears, old girl,’ he said.

  It was almost a couple of hours later before Cecil set off to walk back over Waterloo Bridge to his South Bank base. He hoped the fresh air would help him think.

  His American visitor was waiting in his office, as he had expected. He had met Marmaduke Johnson the Second several times before, of course, and trans-Atlantic telephone calls between the two men were not unusual. Indeed, they had become rather frequent over the last few days. Johnson was, after all, the nearest thing there was, for Jimmy Cecil, to an opposite number across the pond. Nonetheless Johnson almost always had the same effect on the Englishman. There was something about Marmaduke Johnson that made the muscles at the back of Jimmy Cecil’s neck lock solid, and sent an alert signal to every nerve end in his body.

  ‘How ya doing, Jimbo,’ said Johnson, by way of greeting, at the same time grasping Cecil’s right hand in a hearty handshake.

  Cecil forced a smile of welcome, which he feared was rather more of a grimace.

  The tall American was wearing an unnecessarily loud checked suit, Jimmy Cecil thought. But it fitted in well with his good-old-boy personae, or at least the personae he chose to present to the world.

  ‘I’m doing fine, Duke,’ responded Cecil, feeling the usual tweak of embarrassment he always felt when addressing the American by the abbreviation he had more or less been ordered to use from the beginning.

  Johnson had coat-hanger shoulders, a paunch, no hair, and very white teeth which seemed both too big and too numerous for his mouth. His eyes were small, set rather too far apart for comfort, and were not entirely synchronized. Instead each appeared to be looking in a marginally different direction. And as he came closer, Cecil was reminded again of how difficult it was to focus on both Duke Johnson’s eyes at once.

  ‘So what tidings do you bring from the great doctor?’

  Johnson’s accent was so Deep South it was almost comic book. Jimmy Cecil had always suspected that it could not possibly be genuine. The apparently obligatory black cheroot dangled precariously from the American’s lips. A puff of foul-smelling smoke hit Cecil straight in the face. He recoiled. But he knew better than to even attempt to remind Marmaduke Johnson of his building’s no smoking rule.

  One of Johnson’s disconcertingly pale blue eyes was staring intently at Cecil through the unsavoury grey cloud he had created. The other appeared to be studying the closed door of the Englishman’s private bathroom.

  Jimmy Cecil lowered himself stiffly onto the chair at his desk and turned slightly away from the American, so that he did not have to deal with the distraction of attempting eye contact.

  ‘I think we may need to put a fairly substantial damage li
mitation operation into effect, Duke old boy,’ he said.

  The aircraft had flown across the Atlantic from New York and was about to touch down in South Africa, at Johannesburg. A passenger wearing khaki fatigues with a strongly military flavour and spanking new, almost orange, Timberland boots peered through the window. The cloud was low, and he could see very little. He wondered anxiously what might await him below.

  Mikey MacEntee was no longer the Man in Black, as Jones had dubbed him at Princeton police station. That phase had ended. The dark suit, white shirt, and black tie had been consigned to the back of his wardrobe. Only the shades remained in place. Mikey had been told that he was going undercover in Africa. He had therefore done his best to dress in what he considered to be an appropriate manner. As he always did in his perennially futile efforts to fit in. The wide-brimmed bush hat, which he held on his lap, completed his new outfit. This was his Out of Africa look. Or so he thought.

  One or two other passengers on the flight glanced at him curiously. Mikey didn’t notice.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to be asked to do once he arrived in Johannesburg, but he knew that his country was involved in all kinds of undercover activity throughout Africa. Much of it connected with international terrorism. And he realized this new job must be important. He had been told he should travel immediately.

  Mikey had been taken by surprise. The FBI ran around fifty attaché offices at US embassies and consulates throughout the world, and FBI operatives were not infrequently dispatched overseas to investigate almost anything that might adversely concern America, but he had never expected to be chosen for such an assignment. The overseas appointments were coveted among agents. To be dispatched on a mission abroad such as this surely indicated that he had finally been accepted as a front-line Fed. And Mikey wasn’t used to being accepted by anyone, which is why he always worked so hard at trying to be so.

  He had been mightily relieved by the way Mr Johnson had reacted after he’d got shot by that lady cop. Mr Johnson had arranged everything. The damage to Mikey’s leg had turned out to be not nearly as bad as he’d feared – the bullet had narrowly missed his thigh bone causing only a nasty flesh wound – and Mr Johnson had arranged for medical treatment straight away, just as Mikey had hoped.

  Mikey had expected to be in deep trouble after his part in an operation which had gone so pear-shaped. But Mr Johnson had appeared to be really quite sympathetic.

  Mikey had been eating a Chinese – garlic prawns, mixed vegetables with garlic, and fried noodles with garlic – while watching a television news report of Sandy Jones’s revelations, when he’d received the call despatching him to Africa.

  He’d always boasted within the Bureau about his access to information concerning RECAP, and grossly exaggerated his closeness to the project. It had been purely by chance, really, that he’d found out about the Ruders Theory of Consciousness. He’d put a bug on his brother’s phone some months previously, a new device he’d acquired online, more to check it out than anything else. Mikey had never been able to resist experimenting with surveillance gadgets. It was a habit.

  But then he’d overheard a conversation between Ed and Professor Ruders which had clearly indicated the existence of an effective theory of consciousness. Mikey had not been greatly excited by this himself, after all he believed that more or less everything about RECAP was nonsense. However he knew how interested his superiors were in the project, even though that had always rather surprised him, and saw an opportunity to increase his standing at the Bureau. So he reported back at once, which led his Agent in Charge to put him in touch with Mr Johnson.

  Mikey still didn’t know exactly who or what Mr Johnson was, but he knew the man was mighty powerful, that was for sure. And from the moment he’d become aware of the plan to blow up the RECAP lab, Mikey had deeply regretted his rashness, his compulsion to show off and play the big shot. Secretly, because he didn’t dare let Mr Johnson know, he had been horrified by such a drastic and murderous turn of events. Particularly as his brother was involved. He’d never expected anything like it.

  Mikey was by then in so deep, however, that he could do nothing except continue to play the part he’d created for himself. But the intrigue concerning Connie Pike’s survival and the consequent second, and somewhat inept, attempt on her life, resulting in Marion being so grievously injured, had turned him into a complete nervous wreck.

  Even as he sat on that aircraft over Johannesburg, he was only just beginning to fully appreciate the scale of what he had so artlessly embroiled himself in. It hadn’t occurred to Mikey that anything concerning RECAP, that slightly off-the-wall fringe area of scientific research that Ed and his dotty friends had been rabbiting on to him about since his teenage days, could really be of national importance. Let alone of international importance.

  Mikey stretched his injured left leg. It ached constantly and still caused him to walk with a limp, but he realized he’d had a lucky escape from much worse. And he hoped that might be an omen.

  All in all, Mikey was glad to have been despatched out of the country, somewhere well away from the furore over the RECAP affair which seemed to have taken hold throughout the United States, and indeed most of the world. He hoped that South Africa might prove to be a backwater in that regard. But on the other hand he realized that this international commotion meant that, almost certainly, any danger his brother may have been in because of him no longer existed. And that was a great relief to Mikey MacEntee.

  Mikey didn’t realize that his superiors had sent him to South Africa simply because they now regarded him as something of an embarrassment. Why would he? After all, Mr Johnson had been almost kind to him.

  He just wished he knew what was in store for him there …

  At about the same time another aircraft was preparing to land in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Enforcer sat next to the Apprentice in business class. Just like Mikey, they’d been despatched out of New York to do a job, but they had yet to be informed exactly what the job would be.

  The Enforcer assumed that there was someone on the tropical island who needed watching and then, perhaps, dealing with, in the way that the Enforcer and his Apprentice specialized in. Someone who was a danger to America.

  The Enforcer had no time for anyone who might remotely be a danger to America, and he didn’t care at all if the occasional mistake meant that the innocent suffered.

  The Enforcer believed in the greater good. He believed in George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the Statue of Liberty, turkey at Thanksgiving, home-made apple pie, Coca Cola and footballs that weren’t round. And Donald Trump.

  He also believed in the Apprentice.

  They had not made a success of their last job. There could be little dispute about that. They had allowed Connie Pike to escape the Princeton explosion they had arranged, then failed in a second attempt to assassinate her, and instead maimed another woman. All the same, they remained indispensable, surely. Nobody else could, or would, do what they did. The Enforcer was confident of that. In any case, he and the Apprentice knew where far too many bodies were buried. It had been suggested to the Enforcer that, if they wished, they could stay a little while longer in Hawaii than might be strictly necessary. Indeed it had been indicated that it might be a good thing for the pair of them to be away from New York for a bit.

  The Enforcer didn’t mind that at all. He considered Hawaii to be the most pleasant of places. And neither could he imagine a better companion. He turned towards the younger man.

  Then he reached out, took the Apprentice’s right hand in his left and squeezed.

  The Apprentice blushed.

  PART SIX

  Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but, in the end, there it is.

  Winston Churchill

  TWENTY

  A few days later Sandy Jones flew back to America with Ed, who now knew everything she did. Not only everything about the Ruders Theory, but everything about her meeting wit
h Jimmy Cecil. She could think of no better confidante.

  Ed was going home. He needed to return to his teaching job.

  ‘Before it’s not there anymore,’ he told her.

  Jones was travelling with him partly, although she hadn’t quite admitted it to herself yet, because she simply wanted to delay their parting, and partly because she needed to see Connie. Marion Jessop’s condition had improved enough for her to be released from hospital, and Connie was caring for her at her Princeton home.

  Jones and Ed arrived in Princeton late in the afternoon on a blustery Autumn day. They took a taxi to Ed’s apartment first. There was a postcard lying on the doormat. From Mikey. It had a South African postmark, and bore a picture of an elephant.

  Ed was momentarily elated. He’d received no reply to a series of emails, and had continued to worry about his wayward brother.

  ‘What does he say?’ Jones asked.

  ‘“Over here on special assignment. Hope you’re well and everything sorted. See you soon. Ciao, Mikey”,’ Ed read. ‘Well that doesn’t tell us much, does it?’

  ‘It tells us he’s safe,’ Jones commented.

  ‘I don’t even know if he deserves to be safe. Not after what he did.’

  ‘We’re not really sure what he did do.’

  ‘I think we have a fair idea, Sandy.’

  ‘Maybe. But he would only have been a very small cog in the wheel.’

  ‘There’s not even any sort of an apology.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that would be an admission of guilt.’

  ‘Umm. I didn’t know Feds went abroad on assignments.’

  ‘Neither did I. But, hey, maybe your mad brother was only pretending to be a Fed. Maybe he’s really a spook.’

  Ed chuckled. Jones was becoming increasingly fond of him. But she didn’t dare admit just how fond. Not yet. And certainly not to him. In any case, she was on a mission.