It came. Zadokite Port divulged that Jaime’s Progress consisted of two information items. In his statuesque seclusion the Czar pursued a complex path of commands which took him down long highways, across sealed borders, through impenetrable fences, to the other side of guarded doors. He’d been in this place before – the hushed archives of a US Army medical centre. Click, click, click and Carson’s file popped open. The beauty of it. Were it not for the screen preventing contact, the Czar would have grabbed and hugged that file. So what was new? Huh, huh, two weeks ago Carson was still listed as psychologically fragile. Good. And last week, yes indeed, he was still taking strong medication. Okay, that made sense too. What else? What? Suddenly declared fit for discharge? Left three days ago?
Creepers, Heywood thought, is the son-of-a-gun on his way back?
Perturbed by item one, he frowned and activated item two.
It was quicker to get at, taking less than a second. A newspaper article appeared on the screen, a reproduction of page 8 of The South California Spiritualists’ Chronicle. There was a headline with a bolded intro. Heywood gasped.
New Spokesbeing for Pan-Credoism.
The latest arrival at the Rice Valley Pan-Credo
Monastery, located in the shadows of the Big Maria Mountains, is Carson Pryce.
“Jumping Jesus!” Heywood muttered. “Pan-Credoism? What in God’s great universe is that?” It had the ring of some kind of crustacean getting cooked in a pot. And why had Carson arrived at a monastery? What had those army shrinks done to him? Pumped him full of mood ointments extracted from God knows what kind of weird plant? Still, the image of Carson spending his future wearing a robe made of animal hair piqued Heywood and he scrolled farther.
Pan-credoism, which signifies the esoteric state of experiencing positive belief, has been proclaimed by its adherents to be at the zenith of the theogenetic scale. Its direct evolutionary precedents are pantheism and theopantism, but of course it goes far beyond both. Pan-credoism’s capacity for spiritual inclusiveness is greater than any other system of belief which has been, or can be conceived.
Whoa, thought Heywood, change a word or two and you’ve got Claire Desmarais babbling on about the UN and the evolution of nation states. What in blazes would Carson be doing with a crowd like that? And he was their new spokesbeing to boot. Had the US Army medical establishment done more than fill him to the eyeballs with funny drugs? Had they done a brain transplant too? Poor man. Well, what kind of prattling would Carson be doing in the interview?
Q: You’ve just come out of an army medical centre. Can you share your background?
A: I am a scarred survivor of dreadful conflict. I have hurt people. The days left to me in this life are too few for full repentance.
Right on, thought Heywood. I have hurt people. Carson’s own words, and who would dispute them? The Czar continued scrolling, scanning the interview, mostly theoretical stuff about why men bear arms and go to war. With some nice flourishes Carson pointed at the stupidity of doing that just to please God, as happened to be the case most of the time. It sounded nice, Heywood admitted, even if it lacked fresh insight.
The interview took a new direction, focussing on transformative experience. Carson was describing how he’d come to see the light. Heywood’s jaw went slack.
Wisdom surrounded me, but I did not recognise it until I was ravished by a plague. It drove me to seek deeper understanding and, plague driven, I fell into wisdom’s redeeming arms. My initials are CP. I now know that stood for Corporeal Pestilence. The day came when IH broke through. Inner Harmony. Henceforth the spirit of IH will be guiding me.
He read it again. Was he reading right? IH?
The Czar raced through the remainder of the interview. Mostly it was about plans Carson had for communicating with the world once he was formally named monastery spokesbeing. Messages to the world would come out in spurts between the long periods of silence so essential to purge the mind. Once the mind had completely emptied, when there was no memory of the past and no anticipation of the future, only then could it finally accept The One Belief which, Carson was claiming, consisted of all known, and unknown, sub-beliefs.
The One Belief? the Czar thought sceptically. I’ve got that already: my one belief is that I’m a carrier of genes, a biochemical condition which gets messy, is temporary, but sometimes full of fun. All this pancredo stuff sure is unreal.
Unreal? Or too unreal? He scrolled through the interview again. It somehow didn’t sound like Carson. It sounded more like something Carson would deploy. Think of the alternative existence he created for Rachel. But there was that reference to IH. If you looked at the article with trenchant realism, there were really only two pieces that had some credibility: one was Carson wanting to spend the remainder of his days repenting, and the second was the reference to him, to IH as a guiding light and source of wisdom. Heywood thought a moment. Put repentance and a humble recognition of authority together. What do they add up to? A heartfelt apology?
Heywood’s mind raced. Was Carson apologising? Were there some flecks of humanity in him? Had he merely had difficulty over the years to bring that out? Could it be that Carson had lived in inner turmoil, there being a basic goodness in him, though suppressed, and that his agony over that was always growing? Was it possible that he, Czar of Service Operations, source of wisdom, hadn’t seen what he ought to have?
A further insight jumped in his head. The process by which Carson’s message had appeared on his device – it had to have come through Jaime. Carson couldn’t have usurped Zadokite Port. It was too sophisticated. So Jaime must have cooperated. Once released from hospital, he must have found out she was in California. He’d have gone there to seek her help. After all, there had been those signs that she had a feeling for him. That was it! Jaime had advised him to apologise. Because she was smart. Smart, though a bit skittish. And Carson? Carson was deep, just a bit squirrely. So they were opposites. Which attract. Could it be? Somewhere in California? Carson and Jaime?
The Czar, with the tiny communications tool in his hand, thrust an arm skyward. And then, in the Service foyer, where ambassadors were crisscrossing and old salts and new fry were hurrying off to urgent meetings, under the flags of all the members of the United Nations, and overcome with love for people and technology both, there Heywood set his flesh in motion. Round and round he went, dancing out a momentum-gathering pirouette.
Praise for The Berlin Assignment
Also by Adrian de Hoog
“Characters are skilfully drawn and the story unfolds… with a climax as unexpected as it is satisfying. The tale is rich in gossip and loaded with scandalous traps. All in all, an auspicious debut.”
– Don Graves, The Hamilton Spectator
“…easily the most gripping novel I’ve read this year.”
– Jean Graham, Bookcase
“This well-crafted spy thriller combines an exciting, well evoked time–Berlin just after the destruction of the wall–with some engaging characters.”
– Joan Sullivan, The Telegram
Borderless Deceit Page 41
