by Nikki Owen
‘Erm, hello? Maria?’ Someone clears their throat. My hand hovers in the air, touching my friend’s, not wanting the moment to pass.
‘Maria?’
I reluctantly drop my hand and turn and this time speak. ‘Balthus.’ I peer at him, inspecting his face and torso. ‘You look a lot older.’
‘And hello to you, too.’ He smiles a wide smile with eye creases and I count an extra wrinkle on each side. It looks like Balthus, but now there are deeper blue circles under his eyes, and on his head a dark slick of oiled hair sits speckled now with growing grey sides, his skin as brown as an almond. His once taut, wide frame seems smaller now somehow, shrunken, but still large, and yet somehow he seems weaker, more fragile.
‘These past few months have been hard, haven’t they?’ he says, the smile still affixed to his features.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘I miss Harry.’
‘I miss him, too,’ I find myself saying, wanting to say more, needing to, but not knowing how. The dusty courtyard breezes between us and a strange lump forms in my throat.
Balthus coughs then inhales. ‘So, were you followed?’
Chris steps forward. ‘Yes.’
Balthus’s eyes go wide and he throws open his arms and laughs. ‘Chris!’
Chris smiles and, stepping forward, greets Balthus with wide, open arms. The two men hug, slapping each other’s backs, and I watch, curious at the exchange.
‘I’m so glad you’re okay,’ Balthus says, pulling back. ‘You got a nice tan there.’
‘Ha, yeah. More than you, grandad.’
‘Hey! Who are you calling grandad?’ Balthus says, lightly punching Chris in the stomach, to which Chris actually appears to laugh. ‘I’ve tanned pretty good thanks.’
I watch the exchange, not fully understanding it. Are they fighting? ‘Are you angry with each other?’
Chris swivels round. ‘What?’
I turn to Patricia for some reassurance then realise she does not know Chris, so I try to be social and do what I have seen others do and introduce him to her.
‘Patricia, this is Chris. He is a hacker and has been convicted for such crimes. The USA government wanted to extradite him. He has a goofy smile, he likes Taylor Swift and he says what a lot.’
There. I step back, satisfied I have contributed to regular social conversation.
Chris stares at me and then shakes his head, bends forward and holds out a hand to Patricia. ‘Hi. I’m Chris.’
She takes his hand, shakes it. ‘Hiya. Patricia.’
I watch them—I should try to mirror their actions. So, I step forward towards Chris, hold out my hand and, taking hold of his, shake it. ‘Hi.’
He smiles. ‘Um, hi.’ He nods his head. ‘You … you do know we know each other already, right?’
I keep shaking. ‘Of course.’
‘Right.’
Patricia leans in. ‘Er, Doc, you can stop shaking his hand now.’
‘Oh.’ I drop it and step back.
Balthus moves towards us. ‘Thanks for helping us out, Chris. Maria, what happened when you were followed? Was it the Project or MI5?’
I inform him of everything that has happened to Chris and me since his villa in the village, and Balthus’s eyes go wide.
‘We’d best get inside then and out of sight in that case. The Abbot is an old family friend. He’s agreed to let us stay here.’ Balthus searches behind him. ‘Ah, there he is.’
A figure looms into view ahead by the gaping mouth of the monastery, body cloaked in a thick dark fabric that flaps in the wind, as, on the ground beneath, a dust storm snaps at our feet.
‘Do you think this is a good idea, staying here?’ Chris says, frowning at the apparition ahead.
I look to him. ‘Throughout history, the monastery has been regarded as a sanctuary for dissidents and political refugees—which is probably why Balthus has chosen it for us to hide in—and during the dictatorship of Franco, when many people hid in the abbey, over twenty monks were executed.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, come on then,’ Balthus urges. ‘We can’t be seen out here.’
We start to move but then Chris stops. ‘Oh, wait.’ He points to the stolen car. ‘The keys,’ he says to me, ‘are they in the ignition?’
‘Yes.’
He smiles. ‘Then we have just borrowed it and now—’ he runs over to the vehicle and, in the dust on the bonnet, writes something with his index finger ‘—we are returning it as politely as we can.’
I cock my head to the left and look as Chris stands back and walks over to us from the car. There on the bonnet in its sandstone vehicle dust is one word: Thanks.
Chris rejoins the group, delivers me an eye-creased smile and I find myself smiling back. Balthus, then checking we are all set, tells us to follow him forward. As I walk, securing my rucksack to my shoulder, I glance to Chris then to the ground ahead and notice that the circles of sand that before swirled in the breeze have now fallen still and all that moves where the wind once was is one lone cicada crawling in the dust as, above us, the clouds finally burst and the rain begins to fall.
Chapter 21
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
Ramon has my journal in his lap and while he holds it, the timer by my side ticks. I am nervous. I don’t know how long it is until the next drug dose and even though I try to gain some control and trace the time that passes, it is hard because the air is thick and dark and my mind is distracted not only by all that is in this room, but by my journal and the fact that someone else is reading it.
‘You have some days missing,’ Ramon says, looking up from the page.
I do not reply. For me, it is too hard. Ramon is my brother but there is an alarm in my head that is telling me that to speak to him too much is dangerous, and yet that voice—I do not understand it. Days, the recording of their events, are missing from my journal because I was taken by the Project and given Versed when they were done, but if Ramon is being coerced by them, how can it be safe to talk to him?
‘Papa loved the fact that you taught yourself the piano,’ he says suddenly. He must be reading my notes written when I was thirteen, fourteen and those few years beyond when I played piano to hide from my feelings, from the confusion of death and life and growing up amid a world that made no sense.
‘How did you do that?’ Ramon says now. ‘You just played the piano and you didn’t even have lessons. I used to sneak in and listen to you when you didn’t know I was there because you didn’t like people to watch you. My friends used to laugh about you, call you weird. I hit one of them—did you know that?’
I shake my head, eyes down. Tick, tick, tick goes the timer.
‘He called you weird, so I punched him there—’ he points to his left cheek ‘—right on the bone …’
Ramon now says something else but I am distracted. The piano, the thought of it sparks something in me, sparks a recent memory and I try to place it, but the rope on my wrists digs into my skin and the timer rings loud in my head colliding, the two of them, to blast any focus I can gain far away.
‘He loved you, Papa did,’ Ramon continues. ‘He loved the way you knew all the composers’ names, all the details of their life. I did too—I still do. Who’s that composer you liked the most?’ He shakes his head then clicks his fingers. I flinch at the sharp sound. ‘Erik Satie—that’s it.’
I lift my head as a thought springs up. Erik Satie. Erik Satie … I say the composer’s name in my head as, somewhere in my memory, in my short-term recollection, something begins to shift, to move in iceberg fashion from hidden moorings to float into view as, slowly, I begin to remember.
Erik Satie. The composer whose classical talent I admire. The composer whose musical piece, Gymnopédie No 1, Dr Andersson played in her office when I was in Goldmouth prison in London during my murder conviction.
Ramon sighs. ‘I play his pieces sometimes now, did you know that? Did you know I play piano now, too?’
But I barely hear him, because shards of images are beginning to come back to me as, bit by bit, the cloak slips down from my memory block and, for the first time since I awoke in this room, I remember an element of the events that led to here, to now.
I remember Dr Andersson being at my villa.
I remember killing her. I remember Chris, recall going to Chris’s house and reciting his name, just like I recited the name, as I did when I was young, of Erik Satie. I remember being followed by a black van. I remember Balthus on my cell, remember his smile and his laughter when he saw me at the abbey, and, most of all, I remember seeing Patricia by his side, happy and safe, my hands clapping in the evening sun.
‘M, are you okay?’
I jump at Ramon’s voice and look at myself. My nails are digging into the wood on the chair, scratching into the groove of it as my brain registers the emotions of happiness and sadness and fear all at the same time.
‘Take it easy, M.’
I think I nod at him, at my brother—I am unsure—but what I do know is that my mind is beginning to wake up. I have recalled some events, which means if I have remembered those, I may remember more, and what can trigger it is … I look up. It is my journal, it is the pages of my mind that sit now in my brother’s lap which can awaken the events and facts hidden deep in my brain, locked away through the drug in my arm, events and facts that I need to know to help me get out of here. To help us both get out of here.
‘Can you read more?’ I say now.
‘Really?’ Ramon smiles. ‘Of course!’ He flicks the page. ‘See, I told you it would help.’
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to keep my mind alight. ‘It is helping.’
He begins to read aloud and I listen and I focus and as he speaks the words I wrote more than a decade ago, I will my mind to start recalling every single thing it ever can.
Monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, nr. Barcelona.
25 hours and 13 minutes to confinement
I am sitting by a long wooden table in a room that glows orange. We are in the bowels of the monastery. The walls are sand in colour and the air is chilled with a scent of incense, and when I look at the lamps on the wall, I count eight on the left and ten on the right. Inside each bulb is a flicker and even though it is not a flame, it resembles one and I cannot help but watch it, the movement and flow combined with the soft light hypnotising me into a semi-tranced state. I yawn. It has been a long time since I last slept and when I roll my shoulders, they feel tight and solid and ready to drop.
Chris works on a laptop in the corner of the room where he sits on a chair made of wood and red leather, and near him resides Balthus who is sipping water and watching Chris. Patricia is to my right, her hands in star shapes on the table so that each time I glance around, I catch sight of them, catch sight of her presence, and given the new room and space and scent of incense to process, it makes me feel calmer. We have told her now, Patricia, everything that has happened up until this point—the villa, what I found on the SIM card, the flashbacks I had, all of it. Chris, too, listened to the information and the entire time he did so, he looked at me and I felt a heat rise to my cheeks which spread to my feet and stomach.
The Abbot enters now and sets down water and wine at the table, and behind him a monk in brown hessian cloth carries a metal tray of bread and grapes. We eat and, for a while, no one speaks. Exhaustion appears to have taken over and as I lift my hands, I feel weary, aches and pains shooting through me, my brain firing, recording every murmur and bite and grind of the teeth made in the room, and each time the incense smell reaches my nose, my brain threatens to tip into overload mode.
Patricia leans in and moves her hand on the table towards mine. ‘Doc, are you okay? You look pale.’
I spread my fingers towards hers and let them touch. The sensation sends tingles up my arm, rippling towards my shoulders and chest. I take a bite of bread and breathe a little easier.
‘So,’ she says, ‘you’re really going to try and find this Project facility you had the flashback about?’
‘Yes.’ I sip some wine, but not too much. Alcohol scrambles my ability to focus.
‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’
‘Yes. They had a dossier on you all. They want to find you all. It has to end.’
She inhales. ‘And this other file, the one from your flashback you recall from when you were at the Project—the woman in that said it had details on it that could damage the Project, but you don’t know which facility it was at?’
‘That is correct.’
She chews her lip. ‘So, the SIM card Dr Andersson had didn’t have anything on it to find this place?’
‘It had a grid reference for Switzerland.’
‘The one in Geneva—could that be where the facility is, do you think?’
I watch Chris tapping on the computer and talking to Balthus. ‘Perhaps. We need to verify.’
‘Doc, I’m not going to lie—if you go to the facility, if you try and find this file this woman from your flashback mentioned, you won’t be safe.’
I pick up my water glass. ‘I have never been safe. I was not even safe in prison.’
‘Okay. True.’ She pauses. ‘So, it’s a case of finding the file, finding out who else is involved, is that right?’
‘Balthus says there could be others.’
She nods. ‘The other subject numbers.’
‘Yes. The Project will not stop. MI5 will not stop. They will not stop going after me and you and Mama and Ramon.’
‘And so you have to end it.’
I break some bread in two. ‘Yes.’
She sits for a moment and sips some wine. She takes a napkin from the plate and, scrunching it up, wipes her face. ‘Doc, it’s important you know that—’ she glances to Chris and Balthus ‘—you’re not on your own now. We can help you with this, yeah?’
The lamps drift gentle brushstrokes of orange and yellow across the room, and I look now at Chris. He hasn’t stopped working on the laptop since we arrived and I don’t know what he is doing.
‘Do you like him, this Chris bloke?’
Patricia’s question takes me by surprise. ‘Why?’
She throws him a gaze. ‘He’s nice. Seems to be into you. Have you chatted to him?’
‘I have asked him some questions enquiring into his family and work particulars, yes. But he has been in prison a lot. I am unsure I can trust him.’
‘Doc, you’ve been in prison.’
Feeling anxious, I fiddle with my bread, begin ripping off tiny crumbs.
‘Look, Doc, I know this stuff is hard for you to process, but listen. You’ve got so much to offer. You’re smart, funny—’
‘That is what Chris said.’ I lay the crumbs in neat rows of ten. ‘He said I was funny.’
‘Well, he’s right!’ She lets out a long breath. ‘If you want something to happen with him, you know, if you like him and want a, well, a relationship with him, say—’
‘Sex.’
‘Okay, um, sure.’ She bows her head. ‘Sex,’ she whispers. ‘But that, may I point out, is just one small part of it, then you need to give him a little longer, you need to allow yourself more time for you to get to know him and for him to get to know you. Firing off a line of interview questions is not going to do it.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ I fiddle with the bread crumbs I have formed into a neat line as my head tries to make sense of what Patricia means. ‘Do you mean chit chat?’
‘Yeah. You know, things that will help you get to know each other.’
‘But I have already interviewed him.’
‘I know, but …’ She sighs. ‘You just, well, keep talking to each other.’
I look down. It is all very confusing, not to mention tiring. Then I get an idea. ‘Can I issue him a questionnaire and that would suffice?’
‘Um, no.’
‘Oh.’
I look over at Chris. He is whispering to Balthus now, his hair flopping into his eyes, and
yet he doesn’t move it out of the way, and I fight the urge to stride over and do it for him.
‘Maria,’ Balthus says, ‘can you come over here?’
‘Why?’
He shoots a glance to Chris. ‘We’ve … we’ve found something.’
Chapter 22
Monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, nr. Barcelona.
25 hours and 3 minutes to confinement
I scrape back the chair and walk over to the corner and as I do, my hand brushes into the neat lines of crumbs, scattering them randomly across the wood.
I reach Chris and when I stop, Patricia is right behind me. ‘What have you found?’
‘Well,’ Chris says, raking a hand through his hair, ‘you know you had me hack into that website with that SIM card and the eye came up, and the documents flashed across the screen?’
Balthus looks at me. ‘What documents?’
I tell him. He shakes his head. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘Well, I found a code,’ Chris says.
‘How?’
‘Okay, so, I took the SIM.’
‘When?’
‘From your rucksack as you were walking into the monastery.’
‘That is stealing.’
‘Well, no, borrowing—and to help you, see?’ He points to the screen. ‘Here.’
I look. A series of numbers and letters and black and white symbols stretch like tickertape across the screen. ‘How did you access this?’
‘I set up a rock-solid proxy, bypassed the firewall and released a hack programme I wrote in—’ he shoots a glance to Balthus then leans in to me ‘—in prison,’ he whispers, then raises his volume again. ‘The files I found have the same stuff on them as the ones we found back at my place—the 1973 Black September reference, your, what is it, subject number, the 375 thing? But see here?’ I squint. ‘There’s more detail right there. It’s that age click thing, it’s going down like before, counting down the time, but, well, does that mean anything to you?’
He points to the screen and I look to where his finger lies. There is a series of numbers and one special one hidden among it: 115.
