Solomon's Keepers

by J. H. Kavanagh

  He holds out some cigarettes, a new packet with one row organ-piped for an easy grab.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Matter of time… Joey boy… matter of time’

  There’s a piercing shriek from down the corridor and a stream of abuse in Spanish. You hear agonised syllables and the grunts of a body writhing under restraint. A chorus of whoops and baying imitations goes up all around and a renewed banging, metal on metal, drowns everything else.

  Charlie’s expecting you to react and you close your eyes and stay still. The Escalon brings you his breathing in orchestral detail.

  ‘We need to talk about the girls, Charlie,’ you say slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The girls: Melody, Susha…Kim. How old would they have been now? Melody would have been, what, sixteen now? Nearly grown up. Getting too old.’

  You haven’t opened your eyes more than a slit but you can see that Charlie has sat up sharply, feel his eyes on you. ‘Susha would be more like thirteen, and poor little Kim, what, ten?’

  ‘Who the fuck are you? What are you here for? You’re up against a lot more shit in here than you know.’ The springs on his bed give and you take a peek to see him sitting forward. He thinks about standing but isn’t sure about that much commitment to a confrontation.

  ‘Charlie, I’m not here to fuck around. In a moment, as soon as those guards are back in front of the TV and these morons have settled down, I’m going to give you something to think about. You remember how to do that? I’ll need you to pay attention, okay?

  He reacts more quickly than you would have credited. You hear the first hot fricative of abuse and then the weight of his body leaning over your knees and his hands at your throat. In a reflex, your hands steeple sharply between his wrists and you give him both heels in the guts, bracing your neck and shoulders against the wall. He reels back and folds where his bed frame catches the back of his knees. You’re up quickly enough to stop him rebounding and palm his head hard against the wall. When you step back he remains sitting, breathless and limp, on the bed.

  ‘Cunt,’ he mumbles.

  ‘We’re taking you out Charlie. Taking you to see the people you’ve been avoiding. That can be in one piece or as many as you like. Get out of order again and I’ll break something.’

  Charlie glowers at you in silence, then laughs.

  You laugh too. What do they read to come out with this stuff?

  ‘Sorry, man, I’m losing it. I need another mo to get into this tough guy crap. Can we take a break?’

  A voice bellows ‘take five’ and Rees sits down on the bed. ‘Maybe I’ll have one of those fags after all.’ Charlie holds them out.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to stay long in this place for real,’ he says. ‘Did he really do all that stuff, Wanstead, Hackney, those little twins, like they say?’

  Myron appears briefly at the door of the cell. ‘When you two are ready. Think we can do one more and then go for live? It’s way too hot to hang around in here. And let’s kill these lights, it’s still way too bright in here, we just want to make out Charlie’s outline. The voice sounded great. Accent is just right.’

  Sixteen

  Eva calls the Network One press office and asks for someone on the KomViva team. She tells them she wants to meet the man in KomViva. You and a million others, they say. Everyone wants to meet him. Everyone wants to know who he is. Thanks for your interest but KomViva will only accept a very limited number of people for personal encounters and those are chosen at random from applicants via the Premium Subscriber request line. Are you a premium subscriber? Can we offer you a special…?

  Eva’s patience is not her strong point. Listen to me. I don’t want to find out who he is. I already know who he is. I said I want to meet him. I want to see him. I need to speak to him and he will want to speak to me. It is an urgent family matter. Do you understand me?

  If you’d like to leave your name and contact details I can try for you but I can’t promise anything.

  She gives her name as Eva and her mobile number. Of course nothing will happen. She waits a couple of hours. She doesn’t know who to talk to. She doesn’t want to discuss it with her friends. She wonders if she is being foolish. She can’t understand why he’d would be doing what he’s doing. She can’t imagine the circumstances that explain it. Something makes her cautious. It’s hard enough to believe he’s still active and simply being covered by military secrecy; she doesn’t believe that. It is another thing to believe his identity must now be a secret even from the military. That’s getting weird. She wonders what she has stirred up now but she doesn’t stop. She can’t stop. What can it matter if she goes high enough? If she speaks directly to people who already know? What if she speaks to Matzov? Eva reasons that there can be no risk in telling someone who must already know everything. Or can there? It doesn’t cross her mind to consider her own safety.

  She searches on the web for an office for Matzov but after half an hour of looking has nothing. The best she can get is a senior VP in corporate Communications who crops up on various press releases. There’s a New York telephone number. When she calls she speaks to a secretary. Can you convey an urgent piece of information that needs to get into Mr Matzov’s hands immediately? The voice on the other end sounds hesitant. She can take a message for the press office. If you would give me your name and number and the nature of your information I will try to get someone to reach you back. In the meantime she would refer to the corporate website for general communications. She has no access to Mr. Matzov personally. She can’t say where his office is for sure.

  Eva asks again for the woman’s name and repeats back as though writing it down: Melche Rosario Sanchez. OK Melche, it is now three-fifteen PM in the UK, which is where I’m calling from. When this gets to Reuben I promise you he is going to want an explanation for every second it has taken to reach him. Okay? Here’s what you need to tell him. You getting this down? You tell him that the identity of the man in KomViva is now known, yes? It is not secret any more. Tell him he can be sure of this. Tell him the name starts with the letter R – that’s R as in Rescue. You tell him that this information is about to go public. It will be posted on the internet in full detail. He is not going to want that to happen. But it is not too late to stop that happening. It is possible to do something about that if I hear something from him in the next eight hours. You got that? By eleven-fifteen tonight UK time – that’s six-fifteen New York time. Here’s the number, okay? She gives her mobile number. Repeat it back to me. Now tell me exactly what you’re going to do with that information and I want the name of the person you’re going to give it to.

  Eva takes a deep breath. It seems overdue. Who is she kidding? She smiles at the Reuben bit. Come on, if she knew him she’d know how to get to him. She’ll think she’s just another nut. If she wrote it down at all it’s probably already in the bin. The website post had been an impromptu idea but suddenly seems a possible next step. Has she any photos that would be identifiable against the KomViva experience?

  She pours another glass. She should be calling home now but she can’t take her mind off the call she’s had and the one she wants.

  Seventeen

  John Shaw wakes from fitful sleep as his plane rushes east to meet the dawn. From this height, the world is appreciable in its curving volume beneath him and its surface, where the shallow itch of human activity takes place, is paradoxically more detailed for being distant. Far below, innumerable tiny fields form a complex tattoo; the boundaries that must be hedges and ditches are lividly etched. The last time he had woken it was over the gunmetal of the Baltic. Now the landscape is greening and he senses the start of a descent. This must be Germany or Poland already. For a moment he lets memories of fairytales carry him away before more immediate recollections overrule and bring the details of the Solomon files back into his mind. He has read and reread the files twenty times in the previous few days. He has become an expert in the language of digital transmission, of br
ain signals, access codes and downloads. He has studied the names and the histories of each person admitted to the programme. He has watched them progress through the reports written by their trainers, their medical notes and a sheaf of psychological assessments. There are patterns he recognises which parallel his own background: the intensity of the training, the competition, the relentless aspiration that creates the elite. He wonders if he might have accepted the opportunity had technology offered the route to advancement in his own field. One day it will. He’d used Modafinil on more than one occasion to keep going. What was to say he wouldn’t take a bigger challenge and a bigger risk? He was just glad he didn’t have the choice to make. Only days ago such a development would have seemed remote, suddenly it seems uncomfortably close.

  Kieskut Szczymany is a village which owes its continued existence in modern times to an airfield that has serviced foreign powers, first the Luftwaffe and now the Americans. The one grand house, perhaps once the feudal manor, with its formal grounds, rambling outbuildings and appetite for servants is now faded. There seems no modern need for the cluster of old buildings that forms the centre of the village and no major road and no railway leads away through the vast plain to the East or divides the forest that creeps to within a mile or two to the west and runs up the slopes of the mountains beyond. The strip itself stands apart in what clearly was once a larger airfield. A long runway of fresh tarmac and two shorter crosswind runways of older concrete look from the air like a huge brooch or symbolic cross dropped from the air. The greater part of the old field is scrubby and overgrown but at one end of the main runway where it meets the edge of the grand estate there is a geometric pattern of modern buildings with bright white walls, dark flat roofs and a tall wire perimeter fence. The airplane banks steeply over this as it turns to lose height. Suddenly the complex seems much larger. Amongst the buildings there are patterns of carefully tended lawns and clean young trees. The sun picks out chrome and glass of new cars parked in spines on a fresh black forecourt. The inoculation of dollars. The plane takes one more long pass down the strip and a final turn to approach.

  The Lear taxis and stops. The pilot has been here before and points across to the new buildings, but a young man has come out to greet them and busies himself at the bottom of the steps.

  They walk together across the strip. The young man is in military fatigues but has a casual air. He introduces himself as Chen, smiles and asks about the trip in poor English.

  Klimt, the formal head of the base is on a retirement posting. He’s a big Ranger Major and superior to Shaw. He hasn’t had any practice in hosting visitors for a while. But he’s got the coffee pot ready on the big table in his corner office where Chen delivers Shaw. They sit at one end and Shaw takes in the golf posters and a bent nine iron in a frame on the wall and then looks out at the airfield and the sun climbing above the distant tree line. The whole point of being out here is not to be noticed and visitors from outside the immediate chain of command are by definition trouble. Shaw talks golf for a while to ease in. Klimt says there’s a nine hole course around the field perimeter, some young trees and even water introduced in his time. They keep going into October but November onwards it’s changeable and too cold, even for a guy from Cleveland, Ohio. Then they shoot the woods instead.

  ‘You’ll know this is a dual purpose installation’ Klimt says early on. ‘I’m a logistics man. Storage, forward supply and transportation. We handle about eighteen flights a day on a routine basis and act as a secure transit point. We handle all transportation, maintenance operations and personnel for the scientific facility also. Scientific and military staff are all on secondment and we bring in everything they need. We have local staff for maintenance but pretty much everything and everybody here is flown in. My job is to keep it all running. So, whatever you need, you come to me.’

  ‘Quite an operation. And the scientific side?’

  ‘That’s a whole other ball game. My remit is to fly them in, feed them and give them power. That’s why we’re here. One, an airfield, two, hydro-electric power ten miles over there. The tall building you would have seen as you came in – over by the perimeter? That’s all generators in case we lose power. They use most of it. Cooling, heat, light – those guys use as much power as my home town on a Saturday night. And, Lieutenant Shaw, I have no idea what they need all those computers for. I leave that to Dr Brodzky.

  He looks around as he’s talking and they both hear the sound of footsteps outside.

  ‘Right on cue. Lieutenant Shaw, this is Dr Brodzky.’

  Shaw shakes the newcomer’s hand. It’s a big hand and a firm grasp. Brodzky returns his gaze, blue eyes searching and cautious. His blond hair has recently been arranged into a boy’s approximate parting. Klimt excuses himself and invites them to use his office. He leaves quickly. Brodzky seats himself in the vacated chair and puts his hands on the table top in the manner of someone expecting to rise to his feet.

  ‘So, do you want to talk or would you like me to show you around?’

  Shaw looks at his watch deliberately. ‘You know, that coffee’s still hot if you want some. I’d like to begin by explaining what I’m here for…’

  Brodzky watches him intently, impatiently. ‘I know what you’re here for. I read the meeting request. You are assisting the move process and require a briefing.’ He says it in a matter of fact tone, not bothering with too much conviction

  ‘I understand you’re a prime mover in the whole development of Solomon; the programme wouldn’t be where it is today without your work, and the work of your team.’ Brodzky is impassive; this isn’t even a question. Shaw keeps going:

  ‘Of course I had no idea that we were so advanced in this field. It must be frustrating sometimes to have to…’ He thinks the better of this. ‘What you’ve been able to achieve is remarkable.’

  Brodzky appears to warm up a little. He sits back and loses the hands in his pockets again. ‘This facility lets me get on without distractions. There are none here, as you can imagine. When I was at the university everyone wanted me to publish things, I had to teach classes, the press wanted to know everything. Now it’s simpler. They pay me to do what I am interested in and I get on without…with less intrusions.’ He gives a shrug. ‘Have you a medical or scientific training, Lieutenant?’

  ‘I’m afraid not; I’m a lawyer by training.’

  ‘Ah, a lawyer. I see. Well I’ll do my best to explain anything you need to know in layman’s terms. It is a complex area.’

  ‘I have read that your work before you were here goes back many years. You were the first to implant monkeys. You had been working on human subjects for – what? – two years before Solomon? I know that when our guys first came across your work they realised that…I think it was a shock to them how far you’d taken the ball. And to have them build this place from scratch out here is really impressive. This must rank as a first class facility in anyone’s terms, right?’

  Brodzky lets all this flow past him without comment. He seems to be gradually inhaling, expanding as this commentary progresses, as though storing every word for correction, embellishment or perhaps rebuttal later on.

  ‘You know, I’ve read the papers but nothing beats hearing it from the horse’s mouth. I’d appreciate hearing your perspective?’

  Brodzky considers for a moment. ‘Well, after a career that was mainly in neuro and micro-surgery I was specializing in research on various primate species, concentrating on the physical side of the interface and neuronal grafting problems. I had been a student of Hedren’s at Cambridge many years before and I had the opportunity to work with him in Warsaw. My parents are Polish as you probably know, even though I was brought up in England, so it was easy for me. I had only intended it to be a year or two but I stayed for five years there. The focus was less therapeutics than the, I suppose you would say, modelling and reconstruction of neural activity captured in situ. We were able to define a framework for connecting silicon resources and to practice the s
urgical techniques in a quite unhampered way. It is not an easy subject in which to make practical progress in squeamish times, and by that you can read peacetime. There were certain dispensations available there, as there are here for us now. And then I returned to work in the UK and some work with private concerns and military contracts and it was there I was approached to participate in setting up a laboratory. Some of my early work was well known in academic circles but much of the later work was obviously not. But there was a certain intuition that what I had been doing could take the programme a lot further quite quickly. Your military research, for example, was heavily into simulation but lacked the pragmatic experience, the surgical technique.’

  ‘Was it a tough decision to join this team, to come here?’

  ‘Not at all. The work fitted well. There was urgency and that urgency was matched by funds. It was important new work. This whole facility created from a field. Inside a year we had a world class team here. And of course the emphasis was on deployment. That’s not a word you hear much in research circles. I am able to divide my time between here and London – and now of course the United States. It has been successful, I think.’

  ‘And now with the move to the US, you’ll continue to play a role?’

  ‘Officially, we’ll handle some continuing subsidiary programmes such as the interfaces with the medical technology: Medipac Six and now Medipac Seven.

  ‘What about unofficially?’

  ‘I…do some special research work. There isn’t really anyone else who can peer review Chou’s work. And I continue to do physical interventions. I also review a lot of the programme work, it’s not supposed to be a lot of my time any more but…’

  ‘But it could be if you let it.’

  ‘I have other duties.’

  ‘So, what? You hand more over to the new US team?