by Andy Maslen
Letting herself in with a giggle as she fumbled the key into the lock, Britta turned and shushed Gabriel theatrically.
“Quiet! I do have downstairs neighbours, you know.”
Inside, the flat was decorated in high Scandinavian style. The walls were all white, the floors were sanded oak boards, the pictures on the wall were abstracts: blocks of sand, cream and saffron punctuated with slashes of blood-red and buttercup-yellow.
He held her lightly by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She stepped into his embrace and tilted her face slightly to meet his lips with her own. They stood like this for a minute or two, hardly daring to move, reacquainting themselves. Gabriel tasted wine on her and breathed in her perfume: a light floral smell that reminded him of tropical beaches.
In her bedroom, they undressed and then faced each other before sinking onto her bed entwined in each other’s arms. They fell into an easy rhythm, Gabriel above Britta, looking down into those wide blue eyes. She reared up as she came, clenching her hands round his arms. Gabriel reached his own climax moments later, moving urgently inside her as she moaned softly into his ear.
Gabriel woke in the night and checked the digital clock at the side of the bed. It was 3.00 a.m. Of course it was. Had he ever woken up with fear ricocheting around in his stomach like a pinball at any other time? He rolled away from Britta, onto his back, and folded his arms behind his head. Outside he could hear traffic on the A4, clattering taxis, and a few lorries moving up through the gears after being stopped at the lights. No planes yet; they wouldn’t start their nose-to-tail procession towards Heathrow for another hour or so. Britta stirred beside him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, in a sleep-muffled voice.
“Nothing. Just thinking about what I have to do next.”
She propped herself up on her left elbow and looked at him. Moonlight glinted on her eyes through a gap in the curtains.
“I wish I was coming with you. Maybe they’d let me. My masters at MI5, I mean. Especially if Don asked them for me specially.”
“I do too, but this is strictly off-the-books stuff. You know how Don works.”
“Well, I don’t, as a matter of fact. Just he’s some kind of super-spook with people like you running around with better toys than the rest of us.”
“It’ll be fine. Go to sleep.”
“Only if you do, too.”
“Deal.”
Gabriel held his arm out for her to slip inside. Pressed against him along the whole length of her body, Britta placed her palm flat over his heart.
“Stay safe, Gabriel Wolfe,” she whispered.
Gabriel left her later that morning with a promise to call her once the mission was over. He headed for the tube and was sitting in a half-empty carriage heading into London at 11.30.
31
Wealth Doesn’t Bring You Happiness
SUSANNAH’S PARTING GIFT TO GABRIEL had been a small-but-useful piece of intelligence. The Children of Heaven had some sort of recruiting centre just behind Sloane Square, at the top of the King’s Road. “In Chelsea, ironically,” she’d said as she told him. “They wander about offering tickets to a talk or a presentation or some fucking nonsense. Just stand around looking lost, and they’ll find you.”
He emerged from the exit to the tube station at just after midday. He stood with his back to the wall of the station and took in the crowd, trying to split it down into manageable categories. The bustling pedestrians began to slow down in his mind as he let his gaze roam over them, separating out the different tribes. Office workers, dressed more funkily than the ones he’d seen in the City of London’s financial district, in sharp-tailored outfits of teal, tobacco brown, and sky blue. Tourists ambling along the pavements, eyes upturned, selfie-sticks held aloft like divining rods, searching out the perfect shot. The odd wino pushing a wire trolley laden with bulging, wind-tattered plastic bags still displaying upmarket supermarket logos. And everywhere, the carefree, elegantly dressed offspring of the capital’s rich.
For his infiltration, Gabriel had decided simply to backtrack a couple of years and clothe himself in his advertising agency persona. A former soldier who’d served his country and then become disillusioned with the place and the job he’d come back to. A confident salesman who’d suddenly become sick of the shallow lies he was peddling. Don had suggested keeping his identity standard, since there was no way of telling what sort of background checks the cult would run on him. All his work for The Department was so far off the books that invisible ink would have looked like permanent marker in comparison.
The day was warm. Gabriel paused in his stroll through Sloane Square, turned his face towards the sun and let its warmth caress his cheeks. Standing around with your eyes closed and pointed heavenwards in central London is an activity that might charitably be described as unusual. And less charitably as, “acting like a bloody fool,” which was how a middle-aged man wearing a regimental blazer, rose-pink twill trousers and a bristling grey moustache referred to Gabriel after bumping into him while texting. Having extricated himself from the retired colonel’s personal space and made his apologies, Gabriel wandered on, attempting to cultivate an air of dissatisfaction with life in general. He pulled his brows together and turned his mouth down and sighed theatrically every ten steps or so.
He had just entered the King’s Road proper when a young couple approached him. They were both in their early twenties, dressed all in white and extraordinarily good-looking. Like models, was Gabriel’s first thought. They both had short hair; hers was a rich coppery colour cut into a fringe, his sandy and combed neatly into a side parting.
“Are you OK?” the young man asked. “From your little tangle back there, I mean?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Of course. It was nothing. I was just daydreaming. Should have been looking where I was going, I suppose.” He sighed again and tried for a sad expression, corners of the mouth pulled down, eyebrows pulled together. It seemed to do the trick.
“It wasn’t your fault,” the young woman said touching him lightly on the arm and giving him a quick sympathetic smile. “Everyone’s in such a hurry these days. Nobody has time for anyone else any more, do they?”
And here you are, to show me the way.
“You’re right. I sometimes feel like, you know, what’s the point? I mean, is this all there is?” he swung his arm round in a vague half-circle, taking in the department store on the corner and the expensive designer shops to each side.
“We know how you feel,” the young man said, adding a pat on the shoulder to the subtle grooming process. “I’m Zack. This is Sophie. Listen, have you got anywhere you need to be right now?”
“Huh! That’s the point, isn’t it? No job, no prospect of getting one. So, in answer to your question, no, I’m as free as a bird.”
“Cool. I mean, not about the job, that’s terrible. But it’s cool that you have some free time. Listen, we’ve got a really great place to hang out, grab a free coffee if you like, or a water. And we’ve got a really inspirational talk starting in twenty minutes. It’s all about finding meaning in our lives. Maybe you’d like to come along? Sophie can take you, if you like.”
Sophie smiled at Gabriel. “Of course! You can tell me about yourself. Shall we?”
“Why not?” Gabriel said, “It’s not like I have anything else to do, is it?”
“Lush!” she said, slipping her arm through his. “Come on then. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Gabriel.”
“Oh wow, that is so awesome. Like the archangel.”
The building she led him to, a couple of streets back from Sloane Square, was a four-storey Georgian house, painted white, with gold-tipped black iron railings along the front. Etched onto a thick, translucent sheet of blue-green glass above the door were the words,
ARE YOU CONNECTED?
Gabriel pointed. “What does that mean?”
“Like, an electrical circuit, you know? Connected. To yourself. To other peo
ple. To the Universe. To a higher power.”
“Oh. OK. Cool.”
“I know, right?” she said, her eyes flashing wide and her smile even wider. “It’s like, there’s this big spiritual battery and you need to be connected to it and then you can share the power with others.”
So who’s sharing their power with you, Sophie? That’s what I need to find out.
To each side of the front door stood an olive tree, pruned into a loose ball on its gnarled trunk and planted in a galvanised iron cube at least a yard on each side.
“They symbolise ancient wisdom because they can live to be a thousand years old. They’re mentioned a lot in ancient texts, too,” Sophie said, with a disarming smile that exposed perfect white teeth. “Come on, let’s get a coffee and something to eat. I’m famished!”
Inside, the character of the house changed completely. An extremely clever architect had remodelled the interior, giving it the feel of a modern university campus or marketing agency. Everywhere he looked, Gabriel saw pale wooden tables, moulded plastic chairs in shades ranging from a dazzling peacock blue through burnt orange to a mint green, and beanbags. Lots of bean bags. There were plenty of tablets and slim silver laptops plugged in to floor-mounted power outlets, some being used, many waiting to be tapped into life. The floor was sanded and polished floorboards, scattered with rugs and mats in more bright, rainbow hues and abstract geometric patterns. If he was looking for signs of God, he was disappointed. It felt more like some communal creative living space for artists or graphic designers, or maybe app designers. Although the uniformly attractive men and women thronging the massive space shared very little with that tribe beyond their youth.
If it was a cult, its public relations people had succeeded brilliantly in disguising the fact. The white clothes were odd, but they reinforced the impression of health and well-being that seemed to emanate from the inhabitants’ pores.
“Come on, Gabriel. What do you fancy? Latte? Cappuccino? Fruit juice? It’s over there.”
Sophie pointed to the far side of the room where a counter beneath one of the abstract paintings groaned with bowls of fresh fruit, bagels, pastries, jugs of fruit juice, bottles of mineral water, and a couple of pop-in-a-pod coffee machines.
“A latte would be good. And I might have one of the Danish pastries. I haven’t eaten for a while.”
“Oh, poor you!” Sophie said, pouting and putting her head on one side. “You have to eat.”
They stood together at the counter, making drinks and picking a couple of pastries each. Then Sophie led him to a spare table. He took a sip of the coffee. It was good, and he hadn’t been lying about not eating for a while; he’d skipped breakfast, not wanting to risk throwing up in Don’s office. While Gabriel munched the pastries, which were also delicious, made with fresh raspberries and thick, creamy confectioner’s custard, Sophie talked non-stop. Not a word about religion, or God. Just about how she and her ‘mates’ wanted to make a difference in the world, to be ‘connected’.
Then, “Oh, look,” she said, pointing at a huge railway station clock bolted to the opposite wall. “The talk’s almost starting. Come on, let’s go in and get a good seat.”
She stood up and brushed a few buttery flakes of pastry from her thighs. Then she held out her hand. Taking it in his own, Gabriel stood. Once again, she led him through the tables. He noticed that couples all around were standing and making their way in the same direction as he and Sophie were, towards a door at the back of the room.
The door led directly into a darkened room that looked as though it would hold about fifty people. It reminded Gabriel of one of the smaller screens in his local cinema. The seats were similar, too—high-backed and comfortably upholstered. The first couple of rows were already filled, so Sophie ushered him towards two adjacent seats on the next row back.
Amid the hubbub as people continued filing in to the room, Gabriel looked around. Half the people wore white; half were dressed in street clothes. All were more than averagely attractive, he judged, resisting the urge to denigrate his own looks in their company. He’d been told often enough that his intense, dark brown eyes, black hair, and scar on his right cheek were catnip to women, most recently by his friend Julia, back in Salisbury, when they’d been walking her dog together.
“Don’t be so bloody modest,” she’d told him. “If I wasn’t married, I’d give you one. And you know how high my standards are.”
When he returned his gaze to the front, he saw that the previously dark lectern was now illuminated by a single LED lamp on a bendy, black swan-neck fixture clamped to the side of the pale wooden platen. To its rear stood a tall, slim man in his mid-forties, dressed in white like Sophie and her fellow devotees. In his case, this meant tailored chinos and a loose, collarless shirt. His silver-grey hair was cropped short to his skull and he looked out at his audience with piercing, ice-blue eyes that glittered behind shallow, rimless glasses.
Robert Slater stood, perfectly still, observing his audience, smiling as a patient father might smile as he watched his children play together. Then he leaned forward and gripped the lectern with both hands. The murmur of subdued chatter died away in seconds. Once silence had fallen, Gabriel started to count. The man was using an old trick Gabriel had been taught at Sandhurst. The instructor called it “the headmaster’s pause”—that moment of suspense when you hold the audience in the palm of your hand and make them wait.
32
Let Go of Your Troubles
THE SMILING MAN BROKE THE silence. His voice was warm, and he spoke slowly and steadily, his voice rising and falling like a preacher’s.
“Violence. Greed. Consumerism. Crime. Family breakdown. Racism. Corruption. Does it ever seem to you that this world of ours, this beautiful world of ours, has something rotten at its core? Do you ever stop for a second and ask yourself, ‘Was I really put here just to take photographs of myself and put them on Facebook?’”
There was a titter at this, and a few people nodded.
“Well, my friends, let me give you a straight answer. No. You were not. You were not put here to yearn for empty material success. You were not put here to engage in mindless, transitory sexual relationships with strangers. You were not put here to squander your short, beautiful lives in pursuit of empty goals that bring not satisfaction, but more emptiness. Will the perfect phone bring you spiritual fulfilment? Will more likes or retweets bring you contentment? Will a promotion to a new job where you work even longer hours make you a better person? No. No. NO!”
He shouted this last word, and a few of the people in the front rows reared back at the sudden violence of his delivery. In his persona of world-weary fugitive from all that the smiling man was railing against, Gabriel felt he could nod along vigorously like the other outsiders sitting beside their white-garbed minders. Other than that, he simply saw a smooth, polished huckster who was part of a terrorist organisation and whom he would cheerfully strangle with his bare hands if they were in a place where the rule of law was more readily flouted. The smiling man, who wasn’t smiling any more, continued his speech, only now he stopped attacking his audience and began a subtle bonding process.
“It is not your fault. You did not ask for this world. You have the potential for purity of thought, word and deed. Of a spiritual life free from the curses of this sullied, commercialised world they have built around you. But beware. There are those who would sell you cures,” he made air quotes around this last word, “that are nothing but stickier strands of the same spider’s web of deceit. Believe me, my children, eating like a caveman, stealing grains from Bolivian peasants to sprinkle on your breakfast cereal, hanging crystals in your bedroom, twisting your body into knots, repeating nursery babble in your head—these will not bring succour. They are mere spiritual baubles, as fragile as those you hang on a Christmas tree, and capable only of delivering the same fleeting pleasure.”
As the sermon, or motivational speech, or whatever it was, continued, Gabriel noticed one o
r two people getting up and leaving. They stooped as they left, as dissatisfied theatregoers will if they find they cannot tolerate a moment more of the drama, anxious not to draw attention to themselves. The man did not acknowledge them. He spoke on, and Gabriel noticed that references to God had, finally, surfaced, like trout rising for flies on the surface of a chalk stream.
“Let me ask you a question. Do you believe in anything at all beyond what you can discern through your five senses? Beyond money, jobs, material goods, and worldly success? Let me see your hand if you have ever wondered about that.”
About half the visitors in the room put their hands up, a hesitant, bent-elbow gesture, no doubt encouraged by their minders, all of whose hands shot up like eager children in a classroom.
“That’s good. Now, I don’t know what you call that, that thing you believe in. Some call it mindfulness. Some call it Gaia. Some call it energy. Some call it bliss. Let me tell you what I call it. I call it connection. We are connected. We are connected to each other. We are connected to every other human being on this planet. We are connected to nature. And we are connected to God. Now,” he patted the air in front of him with both hands, “I’m not talking about some old bearded guy in a long, white robe flinging thunderbolts around,” there were more titters, “but about the fundamental, basic, connecting force of love in the Universe. Did you see the question above the door as you came into this house? Are you connected? We talk about connections here. Because we are all connected. But it has a truer, deeper meaning. We are connected to God.”
