The Sons of Scarlatti

by John McNally

  Finn wondered if his interest was just natural or whether he was trying to force a connection back to his parents, both of whom had been scientists (he’d lost his father, Ethan, in a laboratory accident just after he was born, his mother more recently to cancer). Either way it felt right. And when Al asked him what he’d like to do on his ‘week off’ from Grandma, Finn immediately knew he wanted to add to the collection.

  “Great idea. How about the blind insects of the Pyrenees?” said Al. “Freakish, eyeless Ungeheuer found in the deepest mountain caverns, evolved over twenty million years of total darkness!”

  “The Pyrenees?”

  “It’s a mountain range between France and Spain.”

  “I know where it is, but Grandma…”

  “Never tell Grandma anything; it only worries her and then you can’t shut her up.”

  Before Finn knew it, the trip was on.

  “Let’s hit the road,” said Al, reappearing from the back of the garage with two fishing rods and a jar of old tobacco pipes. “We’ve got to get to the ferry by three.”

  Finn snapped his fingers and Yo-yo sprang into the tiny back of the Mangusta, delighted because everything delighted Yo-yo. Bathtime. Being locked outside in the rain. Being shouted at. And right now – being taken to certain incarceration in kennels.

  En route, Al called the secretary at Finn’s school, Mrs Jennings, claiming, with a completely straight face, to be consultant dermatologist “Dr Xaphod Schmitten, that’s X-A-P-H—”, and that he was rushing Infinity Drake to his private clinic because of “an acute case of seborrhoeic dermatitis”.

  “It is absolutely vital to initiate wire-brushing.” If everything went well, the boy would be discharged in a week, Al continued, though he might be totally bald, and if so what was the school policy on “the wearing of a headscarf and/or wig for medical reasons”? The secretary, alarmed, put him on hold to consult a higher authority, then came back on the line to ask if she could just take his name again. “Of course,” said Al, “Herr Doktor Xaphod Schmitten, that’s X-A-P—” and then pretended to be cut off by poor reception.

  “That ought to do it.”

  He screeched to a halt in front of the kennels.

  “Ditch the mutt. Go.”

  Finn took a deep breath. “Come on, Yo-yo.”

  The dog sprang out of the back seat and followed Finn up to the kennels, excited by the other doggy noises and smells. Once shut inside his cage though, Yo-yo sat on his haunches and howled.

  Mum had got him for Finn as soon as she realised she was ill. It was obvious therapy, but it had worked.

  Finn touched his chest. Scratched the stone. Although he couldn’t get his head round the concept of his mum’s ‘soul’, he’d long ago decided that if there was such a thing then it lived in the stone that hung from a leather tie around his neck. It looked dull and ordinary, but in fact it was a rock called spharelite that his mum had always worn. When you scratched it – with your fingernail, with anything – it would literally glow. Triboluminescence it was called, but not even science could tell you quite how it worked, or why. Which was in part why Finn loved it. It was mysterious and it was scientific and it had been his mum’s and it had a great name. If he ever had children, one of them was going to be called Spharelite Triboluminescence.

  Finn reached in and gave Yo-yo’s neck one last rub.

  Yo-yo thought the cruel ‘lock-up-your-dog’ game was over and rolled on his back, offering his tummy to be tickled.

  What an idiot.

  It was at times like this that Finn remembered his mum’s third and final Big Rule, delivered in her last days alive when she hadn’t seemed like she was dying at all and had showered him with affection and practical instruction.

  “If you’re ever in doubt, work out what feels right in your heart of hearts then, whatever happens… just keep going.”

  Al watched, appalled, as a minute later Finn marched out of the kennels – followed by Yo-yo.

  “What…?”

  Yap!

  Finn got in the front, Yo-yo hopped in the back.

  “Mum…” Finn started to say – and Al knew what was coming: “Mum wouldn’t just leave him like this.”

  “Why you little…”

  It was an emotionally loaded, totally absurd unwritten rule between them that, if either Finn or Al invoked his mother, the other had to obey. The rule was stone crazy and wide open to abuse (“My sister would’ve loved you to make me another cup of tea…” “My mother would have loved FIFA 14 on PSP…”), but it was not one Finn ever felt he could revoke. It needed Al to be the grown-up and break the spell, to put an end to the madness, but that just wasn’t Al.

  So, six minutes later, they found themselves outside the church.

  Christabel Coles, vicar of the Church of St James and St John in the village of Langmere, Bucks, had been fond of Finn ever since – in the middle of his mother’s funeral, aged eleven – he held up his hand to bring the service to a halt and demanded to know exactly what a ‘soul’ was and if it did exist then exactly where was his mother right now? Christabel had paused, then said, “Good question,” and sat down in her vestments, ignoring the packed congregation, to discuss it with him. It had been interesting, illuminating and inconclusive, though it had helped both of them to get through the day and they’d become great friends and indulged in many such conversations since, often in the company of this… blessed dog, which Christabel didn’t have the heart to tell Finn she found among the most trying of all God’s creatures.

  Finn argued that he could no more leave Yo-yo locked in kennels “than you could lead rich men through the eye of a camel or whatever it is. Y’know, Christabel? Will you look after him? I’ll come to church next week, honest…”

  She caved in. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Brilliant! Wet food in the morning, dry at night, and just give him a blanket to lie on. Oh and walk him when you can, but it’s just as easy to let him wander.”

  “And don’t kill it,” added Al.

  “But I will have to tell your grandmother about this!”

  “Don’t worry, Al will do that. He’s in enough trouble as it is.”

  She watched Finn jump back in beside his unreasonably handsome uncle and gave a little sigh.

  Al put his foot down and the Mangusta razzed off, Yo-yo chasing them halfway down the lane.

  Trust yourself.

  Be yourself.

  Just keep going.

  It wasn’t much of a legacy, but it was all he had.

  “Can we go on holiday now?” asked Finn.

  “We can go on holiday now,” replied Al.

  The sun was shining and they were roaring through the English countryside in an Italian sports car, headed for the continent on a school day in possession of various bits of scientific equipment, a tent, two fishing rods, half a tube of Pringles and not a care in the world.

  Could things be more perfect…?

  * * *

  The beast whipped at the flank of the sow badger again and again and again.

  It was an attack so frenzied, venom leaked from the beast’s abdomen, spattering the animal’s hide.

  The effects of the cold store and anaesthesia had left it sluggish most of the morning, but the moment it had locked its barbed extendable jaw into the badger flesh, rich blood overwhelmed the beast’s senses and only one thing flashed through its crazed nervous system –

  Kill kill kill kill kill kill…

  Three Tyros1 watched.

  Two stood well back in Kevlar bodysuits. Fully masked.

  The eldest, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, stood close by in just a hoody and jeans.

  It was he who had positioned the badger, crippled but alive, on the north side of the wood. A farm animal would have served just as well, but in the remote chance a walker happened across the body, a dead cow might have given cause for concern and a phone call to a farmer, whereas a dead wild animal was just… nature.

  He�
�d held the beast as it woke. He had touched it: him it would taste, but not attack.

  He had released it carefully, directly on to the badger’s side. Now he watched as it drank its fill.

  After eight minutes, the beast unhooked its jaws. The sow badger was unconscious. In a few minutes she would be dead.

  The beast, fat and drowsy with blood, felt an instinctive urge as its abdomen strained and cells divided and extended in a race to become full, viable eggs.

  The Tyros withdrew, as planned, and split up without a word.

  Nothing remained of the release operation but an electronic eye concealed in a nearby tree.

  THREE

  “Help-me-Mrs-Murphy – come to my aid!

  You’re gonna flip the pin on my love-grenade!

  I-mean boom I-mean bust I-mean whom I-mean us!”

  “I wrote that. I was in a band. Do you ‘dig’ that? No. Because you lack the life experience to appreciate the majesty of—”

  “Do you see that helicopter?” interrupted Finn, looking back out of the window of the Mangusta.

  “That what?”

  Al believed in the to and fro of vigorous debate on long journeys and, as such, he and Finn had spent much of the morning arguing about wind turbines, football, whether Concorde could be revived and adapted to fly into space, whether snow was better than powered flight and, if the Nazis had taken over, which of Grandma’s friends would have turned collaborator.

  They were just starting on Al’s assertion that “rock music is wasted on kids” when Finn first noticed the chopper.

  He craned his neck to get a good look back up the road. Al tried to locate it in his mirrors.

  The route was winding and the tree cover heavy, as they were on the edge of the New Forest, but unmistakably, less than a couple of hundred metres behind and above them, a helicopter was swinging back and forth, following the line of the road, getting lower and lower as it went.

  “It’s getting really low,” said Finn. “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “I hope it’s not your truant officer…” said Al, letting the joke trail off as he became more concerned.

  The chopper was approaching fast now, almost skimming the tops of the trees. A couple of cars behind them had both slowed and pulled over.

  Al carried on – the chopper didn’t have police markings after all – but as they came over a ridge into more open country it closed in, violently large and loud, bringing itself right up alongside the Mangusta.

  “What are they doing?” said Al.

  Then a voice echoed out of a loudhailer on the chopper’s belly.

  “DR ALLENBY, PULL OVER.”

  “They know you?” squealed Finn, impressed.

  Al slowed to a halt. The chopper went to land in the road ahead.

  “What is this? What’s going on?” said Finn.

  Al paused for a moment. “I’m not sure, but at the very least it’s bad manners.”

  He suddenly put his foot down. The car shot off. Then Al threw it into a screeching handbrake turn which spun them back the way they came. The V8 engine roared and Finn felt himself pushed back into the leather seat as the acceleration bit – there was no doubt about it, these cars were built to thrill.

  “Why aren’t we stopping?” Finn shouted.

  “Might be agents of a foreign state… Might be an old girlfriend trying to kill me… But don’t worry, we can lose them in the woods up here.”

  Was he joking? He must be joking. Then Finn noticed that Al’s knuckles were white where he gripped the wheel. Finn hunkered down lower in his seat, heart hammering with excitement.

  “Drive fast, Al.”

  “Check.”

  They were closing on the woods, but the chopper was almost upon them.

  Again came the voice from the chopper’s loudhailer: “PULL OVER, DR ALLENBY, BY ORDER OF COMMANDER KING.”

  Al cursed, slammed on the brakes and spun the Mangusta back to a halt at the side of the road, just short of the trees. The chopper descended gently on to the grass beside them.

  Finn was transfixed. “Al…?” he started to ask, but his uncle, too furious to speak, just folded his arms and waited.

  Further down the road two police 4 × 4s were approaching. Two men in Security Service suits leapt out of the chopper and made their way over as the engine powered down.

  “Sir, you’ve got to come with—”

  “Do thank the Commander,” Al interrupted, “but tell him we’re on holiday, tell him we’re ‘en route’, and he’ll have to get in touch next week, and tell him he doesn’t need to bother with all this either. I’m on email, Facebook or even the telephone. Oh, and don’t forget to tell him he’ll have to come crawling to me on his hands and knees while you’re at it…”

  “Sir, I have been instructed to inform you the matter pertains to Project Boldklub.”

  Project Boldklub? Finn laughed. What a bizarre name. “Who’s that? Some Viking?” He looked at Al.

  Al’s face was suddenly still and serious.

  * * *

  DAY ONE 12:38 (BST). Siberia, Russia

  The Arctic fox confused it with a lemming at first, but the scent soon became richer and sweeter.

  The temperature was 2°C. Summer. Bog and meltwater pools characterised the surface at this time of year, the illusion of thaw. As the fox drew in towards the scent, the salt and sweet notes increased, grew irresistible, sending his nervous system wild.

  And then he saw something he didn’t understand.

  A man.

  The man raised an arm. Fired. Then continued eating his hot dog.

  The impact propelled the fox into a gully. As blood seeped through his crystal-white fur, a last survival instinct kicked in, and he curled and clamped his mouth round the wound.

  A disc of congealed blood formed on the surface of the tundra. Insects and micro-organisms, adapted to the extreme environment, drew in to feed greedily upon it.

  Fourteen metres beneath, in a vast insulated bunker and in simulated tropical luxury, David Anthony Pytor Kaparis lay in his iron lung1 and waited.

  The lung breathed in. The lung breathed out.

  It encased him like a coffin, leaving only his head exposed, and that was all but enveloped by a cluster of automated mirrors and optical devices that allowed his gaze to roam free without troubling the muscles in his damaged neck. These mirrors and lenses swivelled and shifted constantly, bending and distorting reflections of his face so it appeared almost pixelated and an observer could never be sure where those eyes were going to pop up next. Eyes of black ice, sour and entombed.

  Above him a panoramic screen array carried multiple data, news and intelligence feeds. Optical tracking meant he could manipulate it all at a glance – trawl the web, analyse data, model an idea, visit any place on earth, even (if looks could kill…) order a drone strike.

  The meeting in the CFAC at Hook Hall had been relayed to him in real time through a concealed 816-micron digital video camera built into his agent’s spectacles. It was transmitting pictures first to a microprocessor sewn into the agent’s scalp via an induction loop, then via tiny data-burst relays between specially adapted low-energy light bulbs fitted throughout the Hook Hall complex, and thereafter via the Scimitar Intelcomms 8648 satellite to Siberia. Transmission lag to Kaparis – 0.44 seconds.

  It was an ingenious system.

  His serotonin levels should’ve been satisfactory. Instead Kaparis was intensely irritated. The pictures from the live feed kept jumping because the agent constantly flicked the spectacles up and down. Despite the eighteen months of effort and detailed planning that had gone into this most complicated operation, no one had thought to supply the correct ophthalmic prescription.

  Was simply doing your job really so difficult?

  Was it only him that cared about the details?

  What must it be like to be ordinary?

  “Heywood?” Kaparis said, summoning his butler in a cut-glass English accent.

&nbs
p; “Sir?”

  “Establish who supplied the incorrect lenses for the camera spectacles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then have their eyes pulled out. And salted.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Killing would be too much. It was important to keep a sense of proportion.

  Onscreen, a helicopter hove into view. The image flicked again, taunting his leniency.

  “And Heywood?”

  “Sir?”

  “Record the screams.”

  FOUR

  DAY ONE 12:51 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey

  Finn’s first view of Hook Hall was from above: a grand old country house with a formal garden, surrounded by a complex of ultra-modern buildings. Outside the largest of these buildings, as they came into land, Finn could see a clutch of officials and lab-coated scientists drawn towards the spot like ants to a dropped ice cream.

  Al took off his helmet as they touched down and indicated Finn should do the same.

  “We are still on holiday until I say so. OK?”

  “If you say so!” Finn yelled back, still numb with exhilaration from the short flight and having already decided to just go with the bewildering flow. He stepped off the aircraft after Al and stumbled self-consciously through the rotor wash, half deaf, towards the small welcoming committee.

  A shortish, fattish old man was first to greet them, overwhelmed apparently to be meeting –

  “Dr Allenby! An honour! Professor Channing. I reviewed your paper on anti-concentric-kinesthesis.”

  “Wonderful. This is Finn,” said Al.

  “Hi!” said Finn.

  “Is the resort this way?” Al asked.

  “Ah…?” said the Professor, confused.

  Huge road transporters packed with equipment were lined up outside the large building waiting to go through its hangar-sized doors.

  “What an unusual hotel. Is there room service?” said Al.