The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  “I’m on my way to Geneva.”

  “That means you haven’t found a way to stop him.”

  “I need you there with me.”

  “Why?”

  “We need your mind.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Plan A is to identify and neutralise the delivery system.”

  “And plan B?”

  “That I can’t tell you.”

  “A personal intervention?” Wolski asked.

  “You’ve got to know me too well,” Thornhill said.

  Wolski began to pace the room. “I have pondered much on ultimate judgement while I’ve been here. Eventually, evil men must answer to God. In the meantime our task is to prevent them from spreading their plague. I have helped you with that. As to your personal matter, that I will leave to the Almighty.”

  “I need your answer. Will you come to Geneva?”

  “I’ve already come too far. At first I was propelled by guilt and I believed I could achieve absolution by action. But it hasn’t worked, my guilt is no less.”

  “How could you be absolved? You were complicit in creating this plague and it’s your responsibility to help put the genie back in the bottle.”

  “You know that’s impossible,” Wolski said, avoiding eye contact. “You can’t un-invent something like that. And my meagre store of self-delusion is now exhausted.”

  Thornhill realised that he could not win the moral argument and decided that anger was his last chance. “I had hoped not to have to tell you this in these circumstances.”

  Wolski looked up at him expectantly. “Tell me what?”

  “It’s Jakob, he’s dead.”

  “How?” Wolski hid his head in his hands.

  “They thought he had information. They used a hot iron.”

  Wolski’s hands slowly slid down to reveal an ashen face. “When do we leave?” he said in a whisper.

  “Now,” Thornhill said.

  Chapter 28 - Upper East Side, Manhattan

  Fifty-five blocks to go; nearly three miles. Like a man buried by an earthquake, Murphy had slowly clawed his way back to a consciousness of the world outside his head. He knew he had to keep walking. Block by block his limbs were slowly becoming more controllable. Now his stride appeared no more remarkable than that of a survivor of an over-indulgent office party. Instinctively he realised that there was protection in an appearance of mild drunkenness. People gave him a wide berth. Yet even in the newly fashionable culture of zero tolerance, he was unlikely to attract the attention of the police. But such moments of clarity were brief. Ideas, names, fears, memories ricocheted around his head like broken crockery in a washing machine. Grimly he held onto the reality that Hunter College was now only fifty-one blocks away. How far was that at twenty blocks to the mile? His mind was incapable of making the calculation. He took refuge on a bench in the small, well-tended garden of a tall, dusty church. His strange appearance and the occasional incoherent phrase fortified his private madness against intrusion by others. A pattern seemed to be emerging. One part of his mind was struggling to gain control over the other. He felt like a disinterested spectator at a riotous wrestling match; his was the only silent voice among a shouting crowd.

  “Hold on, hold on…” He sat motionless, blank eyes locked onto the passing sidewalk traffic.

  “You okay, mister?” The kindly voice belonged to an elderly woman in a long red coat. She was clutching tall brown grocery bags. She took a packet from one of them and nervously approached.

  “I’m just the audience,” Murphy explained.

  The woman took a cautious step forward and tossed the package onto the bench alongside him. Murphy made a convulsive grab at it. The sudden move frightened the woman and she quickly stepped back into the stream of pedestrians. The street scene turned Murphy’s tangled mind to long-forgotten youthful explorations of the city. He heard his voice quietly singing.

  “Sadly I wander through scenes of my childhood… Hallelujah… Hindenburg… Fire and fishing line…”

  He opened the package – a pastrami sandwich. He held it at eye level – an object of awe. After an eternity that lasted no longer than a minute, he very slowly sank his teeth into it. The experience was psychedelic. The scent of the rye bread, the keen edge of the mustard and the texture of the meat crashed into his consciousness. How long it took to eat the sandwich – five minutes, half an hour – he had no way of knowing. How long had it been since he last ate? His memory refused to reply, but the renewed encounter with nourishment was energising, helping him climb through another layer of mental rubble. ‘Onward Christian soldiers … onward … uptown-wards.’

  He got to his feet and found a distantly remembered steadiness to his stride. ‘Marching as to war… We shall overcome…’ Thirty blocks to go. ‘This was their finest hour…’ Just a mile and a half. With every block he passed, the images in his mental hall of mirrors were less distorted and he started to gain a grip on coherence. The Four Leafed Shamrock stood two blocks from Hunter College; he faintly remembered Tad mentioning it as a student hangout. By now Murphy’s head was clearer than it had been for what seemed like a decade. He sat on a fire hydrant and waited in the warm draft that drifted up from a subway grate.

  He spotted Tad at the edge of a rowdy crowd of friends.

  “Hey, kid.” His voice seemed not to penetrate their self-absorption. “Over here, kid.”

  The unexpected familiarity of the voice began to register. Tad’s head turned; he stepped away from the group and began to cross the road.

  “Dad?”

  “Hi, Son. Tell them I’m a panhandler with a hard luck story.”

  “Dad, what are you doing here? You look terrible.”

  “Not half as bad as I feel. I need your help, kid. Get rid of those guys and meet me at the Campus Subway Station.”

  “You look like you need help right now,” Tad said.

  “No, don’t raise any curiosity. I’ve got to keep on the move. An hour from now, okay? A hard luck story, just tell them that.”

  Tad reluctantly re-crossed the road. A train rattled beneath Murphy’s feet and threw up a cloud of metallic dust as he shambled off into the shadows.

  *

  “Where’s your roommate?” Murphy asked, sitting on the empty bed in Tad’s tiny student apartment.

  “In Ohio; his mother is seriously ill.”

  “Son, there are a lot of things to say and to do but it’s important to get them in the right order.”

  Tad seemed not to be listening. “Three years I’ve been here and this is the first time you’ve paid a visit.” Murphy nodded in acknowledgement. “Have you left home? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No, I’ve not left home, but I can’t go back, not yet.”

  “I won’t do anything to hurt Mom.”

  “Nor would I, Son, but sometimes knowledge is dangerous. That’s why this needs to remain between us. I just need a place to rest up ‘til morning.”

  “I don’t understand any of this.” Tad was scared.

  Murphy breathed deeply in an attempt to expel the weariness that seemed to be soaking into his bones. He tried to get up from the soft bed and could only make it by reaching out to the doorframe and pulling himself up.

  “I guess both of us never knew our fathers. Mine died doing what he loved.”

  Tad became alarmed. “Is that what you’re planning?”

  “What?”

  “Walking back into my life to tell me you’re dying?”

  “You’re only half right, kid. This is about living or dying, but I don’t know which.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then just listen. I said I wanted to get things in the right order.” It took a moment to find the words. When they came, they were very simple. “I love you,” Murphy said.

  Tad’s astonishment was total. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “You’ve never said that, never.”

  “Not in words, but in every
other way.”

  “Words matter.”

  “You remind me of your mother.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Murphy sank back onto the bed.

  “Are you sick?” Tad asked.

  “I have been; I’m mostly better now.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “With me? Nothing. It’s just my head.”

  Tad didn’t respond.

  Murphy tried to explain, but made things worse. “It’s okay, kid, I’m not crazy. They got inside my head, that’s all.”

  “Who?”

  “That I can’t tell you.”

  “You need to see a doctor.” Tad reached for the phone. “There’s a twenty-four-hour number; students have bad trips all the time.”

  “Bad trip? I guess I’ve been on a bad trip. But no doctor, no records. I just need a beer.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Then what do you have?”

  “Just herbal tea or water.”

  “Water,” Murphy said without hesitation.

  Tad filled a glass at the corner sink. “Is this about work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you on the run?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are sick, aren’t you?”

  Murphy took a key ring from his pocket. “Here’s what I need to get me better, kid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Murphy held up the keys one by one. “This is a key to the house. This one opens the cellar. And this opens the safe in the old coal store. Nobody looks for safes among dirt,” he added with a hint of self-congratulation.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s Wednesday, your mother will be out at her literature club, then she goes out with the girls, usually to that Greek restaurant on 7th Avenue.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because she won’t be back until around eleven thirty.”

  “What are you asking me to do?”

  “There are things I need. They’re all in the cellar. There are some fishing clothes in the locker at the bottom of the stairs and I need my golf clubs.”

  “Golf clubs!” Tad was incredulous.

  “Hear me out. Golf clubs; they’re in an old Slazenger bag beside the wine rack. I need my fishing gear from the shelf above the workbench. It should fit into the golf bag.”

  “Dad, this is crazy.”

  “I’m not going on vacation.” The heaviness of his tone silenced Tad’s opposition. “In the safe you’ll find all manner of things. I just need the zip-up wash bag and the Rox metal camera case. You can put the whole lot into the old leather suitcase in the corner cupboard.”

  Tad took the keys and moved to the door.

  “Don’t use a cab – drivers have memories. Take the subway.”

  *

  Less than an hour and a half later, Tad was back. Murphy was in a deep sleep, draped clumsily across the narrow bed. Tad shook him awake. He took a can of Miller from the pocket of his jacket.

  “Just the one; I didn’t have enough money for a six-pack.”

  Murphy was angry at his own thoughtlessness. “Thanks. Open the case.”

  Tad slid the catches back and Murphy took out the metal camera case. Turning his back to Tad, he opened it carefully. Inside was a hand grenade, an insane souvenir of an insane time in Beirut. He closed the case and zipped open the wash bag to reveal a passport, a driver’s licence, credit cards and ten thousand dollars in cash. He split the wad of notes and handed half of them to Tad.

  “I can’t take that.”

  “Yes you can, you might need it.”

  “No.”

  Murphy ignored the protest and slid the cash under the computer on the table beneath a grimy window. “Regard it as a consultancy fee.”

  “A what?”

  “I need you to do some work for me,” Murphy said.

  “What kind of work?

  “Do you have any matches?”

  “What for?”

  “Just get them.”

  Tad went into the kitchen and returned with a matchbox. “Just three left,” he said.

  “One should do it,” Murphy said. He opened the sunglasses case on his belt and removed the plastic sample he had taken from Helios. “They didn’t find it; they looked everywhere else, but they didn’t find it,” he said.

  “What is it?” Tad asked anxiously.

  “It’s best you don’t know.”

  Murphy went into the kitchen, struck a match and held it to the sample. There was a sudden burst of flame. He dropped the plastic into the sink and watched it burn.

  “I need you to do something else for me,” Murphy said.

  “What?” Tad asked cautiously.

  “On the computer; work I can’t do for myself.”

  “You want something from the Net?”

  “No, I need your brain, I need you to do some calculations.”

  Chapter 29 - Geneva, Switzerland

  In Switzerland, global conflict is good for business. A week before the Summit, every hotel room around the lake and within an hour’s drive of Geneva was booked solid. Satellite uplink time was sold out. Only broadcasters with heavyweight clout could get a transmitter truck into the grounds of the Palais de Nations and those without such a facility were hiring dispatch riders to ferry tapes to transmission points as far away as Zurich and Basel. Organisation for the event reached into every part of life. Overtime rates were negotiated with sewage workers. Hotel staff were recruited everywhere from Bulgaria to Portugal. All road works were cancelled to ease traffic flow. Extra capacity was added to the phone system. Yet the biggest change – the transformation of the city into an electronic fortress – was almost invisible. The security plan had the structure of a mediaeval castle, with concentric rings of defence radiating out from the event itself. Airports, stations and border crossings were monitored with Swiss efficiency. Cameras, linked to image recognition software, observed the streets day and night. The city was on its best behaviour. Civic pride demanded that Geneva must be seen as the polar opposite of New York. There must be no protests, no untidiness; everything had to work smoothly. Crime fell to near zero. Even when camera equipment was stolen from the rooms of a dozen or more photographers during a welcome reception in the media hotel, there was a wholesaler’s van on-site within the hour.

  While police meticulously recorded details, the victims were offered replacements. Canon, Nikon, Pentax; all were on offer against a signature on an agreement to pay when insurance claims were settled. As veterans of countless wars, frozen all-night vigils outside the boltholes of pop stars and threats of violence from their heavyweight minders, the photographers couldn’t believe their luck as they checked out their new gear.

  Commercial opportunism went hand in hand with civic thoroughness. The international set of nomadic crack addicts, and the few rough sleepers native to the city, were arrested and discreetly moved out of town, or across the border to France or Italy. A specially chartered 747 freighter carried ATMs imported by the larger hotels to keep transaction commissions in-house. Huge additional quantities of everything from pomegranate juice to contraceptives arrived by truck. At the airport, the cargo terminal was converted into an ultra-high-security area to house and service the twenty-two vehicles in the motorcade needed to deliver presidents and prime ministers to the event with appropriate pomp. Everything was ready for the biggest event in the city’s history.

  *

  It had been a mistake to expose Wolski to the endless succession of meetings with Swiss technical specialists. There were presentations on food and beverage security, air supply monitoring systems, explosives and chemical detectors, and skin wipes to reveal contact with threatening substances. The coverage of every point of entry into the concentric rings of defence seemed flawless. None of the visiting experts had anything worthwhile to add, but they were made to learn a catalogue of acronyms and
passwords so beloved of bureaucrats. Karl-Heinz Schneider was reluctantly coming to the end of his five minutes of fame.

  “Finally, code words for states of alert, to be known only by those with access to the physical presence of the delegates.”

  “How many people is that?” Thornhill asked.

  Schneider replied without reference to his notes. “Seven hundred and ninety-three.” He hesitated for a moment and continued. “The code words are all the names of Swiss mountains, so they will be easy to remember. Jungfrau – think of virgin snow – is normal state. Dom is a perceived danger in the general area. Some of you will know that the word also means cathedral, so think of the fragility of the human condition. Eiger is an immediate threat to the safety of the delegates. As some of you may also know, the Eiger has killed more climbers than Everest.”

  “Who said the Swiss don’t have a sense of humour?” Darcy muttered under his breath.

  The session ended exactly on time and there was almost half an hour in hand before the team meeting that Thornhill had called.

  “Let’s walk,” Thornhill said as he guided Wolski towards the tall doors opening onto the gardens that led down to the lake.

  Thornhill hoped that the catharsis of the damp ice-laden air at the margin of the water would somehow sharpen his mind and, more importantly, that of Wolski.

  Across the lake, the city skyline of modest spires and discreet financial hideaways floated on a bed of pearly mist.

  “If Michelangelo had been a banker, that is how he would have painted heaven,” Wolski said.

  “If you see a Swiss banker jump out of the window, follow him; there’s money to be made on the way down,” Thornhill replied. It was a mistake; the weak humour didn’t connect with the intensity of Wolski’s mood.

  “You’re thinking of Zurich. Things are different here.”

  “How so?”

  “Geneva has a strangely magnetic quality about it,” Wolski said.

  “Magnetic? I’ve always thought of it as a pallid version of Paris,” Thornhill said dismissively.

  “And there you have the strangeness of the attraction. Geneva has drawn to itself the most unlikely collection of opposing notions. Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, Byron – ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know’ – Frankenstein, the Red Cross, Carl Jung. So many competing theologies, and now we add to their number by seeking out our own special madness.”