Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  “Slow down,” I said.

  He glared at me. His fingers clawed the air. But then the anger seemed to die in him. His body slumped, his arms hung uselessly. He half turned, glancing over at my double. “It was one of you. Or both of you. I don’t know which.”

  “I want some coffee,” I said, and began to walk away, but Shailer hurried after me. His voice was cracked.

  “He’s gone, Chris. Assur. One minute he was there—­it’s in the records—­one minute he was there, and then the next—­we don’t know. There was no breach in the fields, nothing.”

  He looked at me, helplessly.

  “What happened, Chris? Can they do this? Can they?”

  I walked gingerly back towards the Beach House. There were several unexpected cars there in the parking lot. ­People were milling, aimlessly—­Registry employees, visitors, and worshippers, all mixed together.

  Someone ran past me. It was the kind of scene that I’d imagine at a shipwreck, or a plane crash; ­people stunned or on the edge of panic, unable to assimilate the sudden, catastrophic changes in their lives.

  I stopped the first person I knew, a woman who did temp work for us, but she seemed to take a moment to recognize me, or to understand what I was asking her. Then she said, “He’s gone,” and held her hands up, as if he’d somehow slipped between her fingers.

  At noon, I got a text.

  It just said, I expected this.

  I wrote back, What?

  He wrote, U want to see me now don’t u?

  And it struck me that perhaps I did.

  Chapter 61

  The Hospital

  I flew to England.

  The flight was slow as ever and the movie was a pile of crap and I couldn’t drink the coffee or the booze because they made the jet lag worse. So I took a Xanax Angel had been keeping for some special day and presently it slowed me down enough to sleep. When I woke up it was morning in Heathrow. I walked what seemed like miles through Immigration and then caught the tube to town, a journey which may well have taken two or three eternities, at the end of which a taxi driver filled me in on all the ills of current governmental policy. My flat, when I got to it at last, was close and stale-­smelling, and I was shocked to find so many dirty clothes left in the hamper, and books lying around that I’d half read before I went away and then forgotten all about. I threw a month-­old newspaper into recycling and, this counting as my “tidying up,” I made two phone calls: one to the nearest Indian take-­away, which, thankfully, delivers, and one to Seddon.

  “I still don’t understand this . . . disappearance,” he complained. “Or quite what your old adversary is doing with Shailer? Are you sure about all this? Really?”

  So I ran it through again, which was about as tedious as doing push-­ups, and pretty much as hard.

  “I don’t know what he did,” I said.

  “But Chris, Chris, dear friend. You told me you were there . . .”

  “I was in some sort of . . . vision. Hallucination. I don’t know what was going on.”

  “Are you quite sure?” he asked me.

  “No, I’m not.”

  I heard him click his tongue and sigh, mulling this over. Then he said, “I did make those arrangements for you, by the way. The ones you mentioned on the phone. We could have sent a local man, though, just as easily. I’m going to have to justify your plane fare, you know. They’re getting quite . . . pernickety these days.”

  It was a bad night. But then, I’d known it would be.

  Next day I caught a train. Shailer’s voice kept going round my head, Shailer’s “explanation,” as he called it. Like telling me would somehow make it all OK—­a quick confession, and then straight on with the show.

  Like hell.

  “We set up an identity for him. He has a passport and an I.D. card. He has a Social Security number. Did you know that we can do that, Chris? That’s how big we are. That’s how much we’re needed.”

  His tone was still all nervous bombast, even with his schemes in rags around him.

  “He was—­I will admit, he was invaluable. It was extraordinary. I was the first to interview him. He was—­you’ve talked to him, Chris. The ideas he has, his way of looking at the world, it’s just so different, so—­so inspirational . . . You could remake the whole planet based on what he says. Imagine it, a new age, modern, totally modern, but powered by gods, by deities . . . but . . . he terrifies me, Chris. There are moments . . . his whole face seems to close up, he’s not human, Chris, and he—­”

  Shailer’s discomfiture would have been pleasing any other time. Right then, I was a bit too keyed up to enjoy it.

  Parrs Hospital lies in a residential district, south of London. The grounds are 90 percent car park, 10 percent flower border, and the structure itself designed by a small child with a heap of building blocks. I checked in at reception and was halfway through a cup of coffee when a nurse appeared and offered me an escort to the ward.

  “He was abused. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know details.”

  “They’re not fun. Be warned.”

  The nurse, Mark, a short, stocky man with a beard, picked a pale blue ring-­binder from the desk behind him, flicking through the first few pages.

  “He’s given us permission to talk to you about his case. Just as a preliminary. Can’t let you see the notes, but I can tell you what’s in them.” He shrugged. “That’s how it works. Patient confidentiality. Very big on that, these days, we are.”

  “OK.”

  “You were—­what? His colleague? You found him, didn’t you? He was very difficult the first few weeks. There’s a list of assaults here.” He turned the pages. “Some on staff, most on other patients. He was in seclusion . . . seven times. That’s a lot. After that, the meds kicked in, calmed him down. He was moved up here, where, touch wood, he’s been as good as gold, so far.”

  “You sound doubtful.”

  “Professional cynicism, let’s call it. Perils of the job. Still—­your bloke’s got no real history. Could be a one-­off. It does happen.”

  “Self-­harm,” I said.

  “We’ve had a little bit of that, yeah.”

  “I knew him a long time ago. His arms—­” I traced my fingertips over my own arm. “Elaborate, some of them. Almost tribal.”

  “I wouldn’t think too much about the look of it. Mostly, it’s about relieving tension.” He leaned back; he seemed so bored I half expected him to yawn. “There’s a real, physiological kick in it. If you’re that way inclined . . .”

  I said, “Suppose . . . just suppose you could up the ante on that, somehow?”

  He shrugged. “Main goal for us is that they do it safely. You can’t stop them. Experience is, if you try, they’ll do it secretly. It may even get worse. So we treat it very matter-­of-­fact, get them to clean it up and so forth. I will say one thing, though. I’ve seen a lot in this job, and I’ve never known somebody go from self-­harm to harming others. Not unless they were stark staring bonkers to begin with, which your man here isn’t. What’s the point of it? What’s he trying to achieve?”

  I thought of Dayling’s words: You look down at your life, and it’s like every moment, going on forever. Infinite.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “That’s anybody’s guess.”

  Chapter 62

  A Splinter of Divinity

  A nurse was busy in the dining room, folding clothes and stacking them in piles on a tabletop. There was a smell of disinfectant. A radio high on a shelf played pop music at barely audible volume, and three rather disheveled-­looking men were sitting at a table under it, playing cards. They looked up with idle curiosity as we went by.

  Mark said, “I’ll organize some coffee, OK?”

  Dayling was in the Family Room, as it was called; there were some worn-­looking armchairs and
a low wooden coffee table. It took a moment, not so much for me to recognize him, as to accept the way he now looked. He’d gained weight. He wore sweat pants and a T-­shirt that did not look clean. His beard had grown. He struggled to get up when I walked in, pushing on the chair-­arms with his hands.

  “Chris—­Chris.”

  He had always been so neat in his appearance, so careful with his dress and grooming. I stared now at this big, round face, trying to reconcile his bloated features with the man I’d once known.

  After a time, I remembered to smile.

  “So good of you to come.” He took my hand, pumping it like an enthusiastic bank manager. He glanced around himself. “My humble abode. Room’s down—­ah. That way.” He gestured with his free hand. “How’s it going? How’s the firm? How’s—­oh, Chicago, isn’t it? How’s that? How—­what do they say there—­how’s it hanging?” He chuckled to himself. “How’s it,” he said, “hanging, eh, Chris?”

  I said, “Let’s sit.”

  “And how,” he asked me, “how is the god Assur?”

  He dropped back in his chair, snuffling and wriggling like a bull in a wallow. A young man arrived with two plastic cups full of coffee and a plastic plate with Rich Tea biscuits arranged in a circle. As he left he nodded to me, pointing to the door to let me know that he’d be outside.

  Dayling snatched a ­couple of the biscuits, cradling one while he chewed the other. He used his right hand only, the left one stuffed between his hip and the chair arm, as if for warmth.

  “Hungry all the time,” he said at last. “It’s the meds.” He looked up quickly. “Never take meds, Chris. That’s my advice.”

  “They’re treating you all right, though?”

  “Can’t complain, can’t complain.” His tone grew pompous. “But I can. Course I bloody can. Place is underfunded. Look at it. Not seen a lick of paint in bloody years, I’d say. And it’s all, get up, get out of bed, do this, do that, time for lunch, time for meds. Pills, pills, pills. Staff are nice though. Most of ’em.” He swiveled his head around, as if easing a stiff neck. “Good of you to come, Chris. Good of you to come. They took my phone away, you know. Not that you answered it, you fucking cunt.”

  I couldn’t tell if he were kidding me or genuinely angry. I said, “You were sending me some pretty weird messages, Andrew.”

  “Weird. Ha. I like that. Weird.”

  “You know what I’m here for. But I’d like you to tell me all of it. What happened in Paris. And Baghdad, as well. Do you want to do that?”

  “They ask me here, too. All the time.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “Oh, bullshit, mostly. That’s what they want. That’s what they understand. They’re not like you and me, Chris. They’re not smart. They’re not . . . experienced.”

  “Nice, though, you said.”

  “Nice enough. Hm. Thick as pig shit, you want the truth. ”

  I took a biscuit. “The Colonel. The Russians. East Europeans. Whatever they are. Let’s start with them.”

  He grunted.

  I said, “You were going to sell them the flask.”

  “Oh, simpler than that. I vetoed your escort, Chris. I suppose it would have all come out eventually, but it looked like a smart move at the time. Left you just enough to keep you safe, if you were lucky. I really didn’t wish you any harm. They should have just walked in, taken it away from you. Like that.”

  I considered this. “It could have worked,” I said. “But for a few things.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. First thing—­well. They were idiots. Not their boss, but the rest of ’em. Kids, you know? Second—­I think I told you this—­I put off the retrieval. If I’d have done it when we got there, we’d have had it waiting for them. But the third thing—­third thing was your bloke Carl. He’s good. I mean, he’s really good.”

  “And you, Chris. Don’t forget your own part. Ever resourceful, ever valiant—­”

  “Cut it.”

  “I do apologize.”

  “So, what next? They made you a new offer? Get the flask to Paris? That it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And then . . . ?”

  “This little scrote turns up, no money, told me that he’d have to take the flask and get it verified, then they’d get the cash to me. Ha. I told him, don’t make me laugh.” He frowned, shook his head. “No. It wasn’t like that. I’m forgetting. I was meant to go with him. That’s it. I don’t remember . . .”

  “How much was it, then? The cash?”

  “A lot, Chris. An awful lot. More,” he said, “than you’ll see in a lifetime.” He nodded, as if the prospect were still open to him. “I’d have been set up, Chris. Set up for life. No more working shitty jobs. No more being told, go here, go there. No more—­no more other ­people. I’d have been in charge, Chris. For the first time in my fucking life, I’d have had control. I’ve never had that. Never.”

  “Control. Is that why you used to—­?”

  I mimed slicing my arm.

  “Oh, forget that,” he said. “That’s all nonsense. It makes you think you’re doing something. It’s not real.”

  “The kid in your hotel room, then. What you did to him. Was that real?”

  He sat there, and I could see the way the extra weight had stretched him; the bulge of his thighs, the swell of his belly, the face I had once known, almost buried in the soft new tissue, the gray-­streaked hair.

  “Do you remember that, Andrew?”

  Still nothing.

  “Why did you do it?”

  He looked up, as if to speak, then changed his mind, looked down again.

  I said, “No reason? Or you’re just not telling me? I know it wasn’t aimless.”

  “There’s a little piece of him. Still in here. A little splinter of a god.” He thumped his chest.

  “Tell me about Paris. About what happened in your room.”

  “I was there, yes. I remember it. I can see it. Someone with a knife. Yes.”

  “You planned it. You took the knife. You must have got the packing tape from somewhere, too. You planned it out.”

  “They tell me that. They keep saying to me, someone planned it. Someone did. So perhaps it was me after all.”

  He affected a snarl, made sudden stabbing motions with his arm. Then he sighed, and settled back.

  “I couldn’t sell it. That’s the trouble. Once I’d got it in my hands—­the god—­I couldn’t part with it. This isn’t like the others, Chris. This is special. This is . . . I can’t say. I can’t describe it. So,” he said, “I asked it what to do. And it told me.”

  “It spoke?”

  “You’ve asked me that. What do you want me to say? All right: it put the knowledge in my head. How’s that? Better? It was a moment of my life—­so clear. I knew exactly what to do, and what I wanted. I knew that you were onto me. You, the Russians. I’d got minutes. The god gave me the knowledge how to do it.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And. He likes pain, Chris. Or—­he likes emotion. Other kinds, as well, but pain . . . pain’s simple, don’t you think? Pain makes you feel.”

  “I suppose.”

  “When I was young, I knew that pain could stop things. Stop thoughts. Stop feelings. It was like a wall, they’d just run up against it and then—­gone. And for a little while after, I’d be . . . peaceful. Calm. It’s a sacrifice we make, Chris. And the gods like sacrifice. It’s food and drink to them . . .”

  “You didn’t want the money anymore?”

  “The money . . . it wasn’t anything like this.”

  “Something money can’t buy.”

  “Oh yes. Raising me up above the world. I told you—­I tried—­but you can’t understand unless you’ve felt it, unless you know . . . I rose up, and everything was s
o serene and wonderful . . . and I dropped back. I dropped back thirty, forty minutes earlier.” He nodded, solemnly, a preacher in the pulpit. “That’s what he does, Chris. Time is nothing to him, nothing special. Just another compass point. That’s all.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Sometimes. Not . . . always.”

  “When I saw you in the church, you were looking at something. Kind of above the flask. What was that, Andrew? What did it look like?”

  He said nothing.

  I said, “What does the god look like?”

  He moved his right hand, spread his fingers. “Like—­like the universe.” He made a fist. “He’s a predator. He’s every predator.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “Sometimes a lion, or a scorpion. Or, or . . . right back through evolution.” He frowned, as if to squeeze the words out of his head. “He’s a worm stretching from life’s beginning to its end. Every second is a part of him.”

  “Go on.”

  “He eats the years of our lives. He eats them up and shits them out. He eats the minutes and the days. He feels our lives inside him, and he grinds them into shit. You know what that feels like, don’t you? Everyone knows that.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Andrew.”

  “Everyone knows that!”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “But I can show you, Chris. I can. He left —­” a look of wonder, suddenly, transforming him, remaking him “—­a little piece in me. A little, tiny spark.”

  “You know that things went wrong, don’t you?”

  He nodded, still with that near-­beatific rapture on his face.

  “How do you know that, Andrew?”

  He smiled. “I know.”

  “We had him. We had him contained. On show to the public.” I debated how much more to tell him, how much he already knew. “We haven’t got him anymore. And I was wondering . . . if you were looking . . . I was wondering where you’d look.”

  “I’d look . . .” Then he grinned. “In here.” He tapped his chest. “And here.” He pointed to mine. Then he said, “I’d look where the wires don’t run. I’d look . . . where they can’t drain him. Can’t keep him prisoner. You know, Chris? It’s awful being locked up. Can’t you get me out of here? This place’ll drive me mad. There’s a woman here just wails and wails, half the day and half the night. We’ve got a killer, murdered his girlfriend. I can’t trust these ­people, Chris. They’re dangerous. They’re crazy. At least I never killed anyone.”