Solomon's Keepers

by J. H. Kavanagh

  Matzov patches into the conference. Hasty, bundled, just maintaining cool. He looks as though he’s in a cubicle and his head looks oversized. An overhead light finds a sweat-streaked scalp under the slicked hair.

  ‘I am merely a shareholder – this is ridiculous – I am playing a lead role in the democratic process of this country – which this intrusion is disrupting…You’re making a mistake, a big mistake.’

  He can sense the police know what the stakes are and are grimly determined to follow through. They wish they weren’t here, that he wasn’t there, but they have no choice. He changes tack. ‘I shall meet the Prime Minister tonight – probably one of the last official courtesies he will perform will be to contact you, Deputy Commissioner, to confirm you are going to be fired before midnight and I’m going to watch it happen before I go on to the party tonight…’

  The police bustle, white-faced and fixed-eyed. Nobody wants to make eye contact. Several people are obviously brittle, the seniors snappy with their juniors…there’s a palpable atmosphere of fear in the room. Eva knows they believe they will have to let him go. The Deputy Commissioner speaks.

  ‘That chopper is off limits, breaching air traffic regulations and I want it ordered to land immediately where we can detain the pilot. Get him on the radio.’

  ‘Pilot, this is The Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. You are not authorised to make this flight and you are violating flight regulations. I am authorised to take defensive action against you and I will not hesitate to do so if you fail to obey my order – I am ordering you to land immediately – you will return east and land at London Estuary Airport, adjacent to the emergency beacon.’

  Eva catches a whisper as someone leans in to the DC. ‘Sir, be advised – this conversation will be intercepted by the news helicopters and may be broadcast. It is also being simulcast live to KomViva subscribers…’

  ‘What? Are they getting all this? Everything that pilot is doing and feeling?’

  ‘Indeed, Sir. We have to keep confidentiality in mind.’

  ‘Shit!’

  Below you the marchers are gathering along Victoria embankment on their way to turn around Whitehall and away to Victoria.

  You push the stick and sweep north over St James’s Park and along Birdcage Walk, a loop at the Palace gardens. What will they do? And then back, straight down the Mall and up to Charing Cross

  Solomon spooling…Zena is sending: five minutes of spray.

  You turn and bank, press the side button on the cyclic between your knees and a sudden yellow cloud billows beneath and flickers in the light. It ribbons out behinds as you strafe Whitehall and turn above Downing Street.

  You pause at Horse Guards, hover and turn to watch the black-painted buildings sinking amongst the yellow.

  There are people running everywhere, hands clutched to faces, shouts and screams.

  You see two mounted policemen struggling to control their horses as they buck and cower sideways.

  You engage for the final run; back over Downing Street, watching the scurrying figures below, and two police helicopters now close tracking too.

  The radio goes again – ‘I am ordering you to land immediately – you will return east and land at London Estuary Airport…’ now you’re down Whitehall, over the cenotaph and the crowd running amongst traffic in Parliament Square. The down draft is whipping the yellow candy floss cloud into tatters, now obscuring and then suddenly revealing the masses who can’t escape as they scramble beneath.

  Rooftop height and the jet spray is losing power, gouts of dye flopping to the ground amidst the mist. You can see the yellow-marked people – clothes, faces, placards streaked and blotched.

  Eva watches. Why is there no response from the pilot? Is it really Rees? She can see Matzov’s face come on the videoconference screen again, mobile to his ear, talking animatedly.

  Dooley is angry. ‘Mr Matzov, you speak to him. Let’s hear you give a clear command to your goddam pilot – put that chopper down now – on the goddam riverbank if need be – do it now!’

  Matzov leans in. His face is grimly resolute. A study in concentration.

  ‘Very well, I’ll be with you in one moment. I am issuing some instructions to my staff.’

  There’s a pause. Matzov is listening to his mobile. Everyone can hear as he barks into it.

  ‘Have you done so? Ajax. Have you issued it? Yes, I know. Now!’

  Eva can’t hear the reply but it brings evident satisfaction to Matzov’s big face.

  ‘Good – then we are done here.’ He turns into the videoconference cameras a changed man, a broad smile on his face. ‘And now, I am issuing a clear command to the pilot of the helicopter; return to London Estuary Airport and land immediately as instructed. I order you to follow the instructions given by the authorities here…and those of your support team. I am sure you understand. Comply at once.’

  Eva looks from Matzov to the police video and the Network One News coverage. The chopper is centre screen, hovering now. The spray has streaked its belly with yellow. A cloud of vapour trails it, dissipating in the downdraft. Now it is turning, it looks erratic, out of control. Then it goes out of sight behind the Palace of Westminster.

  Ajax: A command you know – not a command, a feeling you have always known – from deep within – not a voice, a knowing, an appointment, and with it a final recognition; the time has come.

  No point now in finishing the scat, nothing to save for the finale, for spraying the palace itself, so you hit the switch and pull back into a banked climb up over the towers, a last sputter of spray drifting downwind and dropping like rain into the slick of yellow on the Thames.

  Eva loses sight of the News picture as the team throngs around the big television. The radio operators have abandoned the headsets, now lying on the table.

  ‘What’s happened, what’s happened?’

  Commissioner – ‘Can we get a close up?’

  ‘Coming on three.’

  Eva looks from the television to the videoconference screen. There is Matzov. He has a mobile to his ear again. He looks composed, concentrating. She realises that he looks, not surprised or fearful but…in control. He looks expectant.

  ‘Look at him! She pulls Shaw round to look. Look at him – he knows something we don’t!’

  Someone says the spray is going again – ‘Look – above the palace.’

  There’s the red chopper, spiralling up above a plume of yellow spray – like a mad cockerel or a deflating balloon rioting into the sky.

  A distant voice speaks for them all. ‘Christ, he’s losing it!’

  A disembodied voice crackles in the earphones of the headsets on the table. Eva knows it’s Rees even before she picks up a set and pulls the phones over her ears. For the first time in so long she hears his voice.

  ‘Hope you enjoyed the ride. Last stop coming up.’

  She tears off the cans, pulls at Shaw.

  ‘Listen,’ she screams. ‘He’s on the radio!’

  And then his voice is streaming through a speaker.

  ‘Seems we’re all friends at last, huh? All the big players together. And game over.’

  To Eva, it’s a different Rees. The life has drained away from his voice. He speaks slowly, as though with great effort.

  ‘I guess it’s been a screw up right from the start. Sorry guys, my fault.’

  Now he’s mumbling and incoherent, speaking to himself, ‘…fucking losers…look at this shit – all those little people, look at them, So dumb it’s almost funny.’

  ‘He’s over the city, Sir – heading out the way he came – we’ve alerted the tower and they’re standing by.’

  ‘You know, I ought to just drop this chopper here and take out a few of these greedy, self-serving bastards while I’m at it – two fuck ups for the price of one. But let’s make a proper job of it, shall we? One last thing not to fuck up. One last little thing – is that too much? Are we all still on? All my little hookie fans, you getting this?
I should have been there for you, Brett, should have done something, sack of shit, sitting there and letting let you drown. Ah, the great illusion that any of it matters a damn, that any of it is anything but hopeless…feeling like shit for another day, another fucking year?’

  Eva and Shaw look at one another. The team is bewildered. The News pictures have the chopper in view – high now above the city and flying erratically. The escort has backed off to a distance and the red chopper is a dot at the end of a skein of thin yellow mist.

  Dooley is bellowing: ‘What’s going on there? What’s that boy talking about? Where’s he headed?’

  Eva points again at Matzov. She steps forward, no longer trying to stay out of sight and oblivious to Shaw’s attempt to restrain her. She presses the button to speak.

  ‘Mr. Matzov, this is Eva Aguilar – I’m the one you tried to have silenced, remember? I know, and now we all know, exactly who your KomViva pilot is – and I say you know where he came from and what is going on here.’

  Matzov doesn’t look fazed. ‘Young lady, you are mistaken, overwrought, and gentlemen, you have a botched security operation coming apart. What on earth are you doing introducing this person into a meeting of this nature? You should be restoring order on the streets and not wasting all this effort and diverting me to dwell on a…misdemeanour that, with your continued harassment and intervention, risks becoming something a lot worse. Now, all we need is to get that pilot landed safely so we can all get on with the important matters that face this country and on which the electorate will be voting tomorrow. Let’s get a sense of priority here.’

  Eva is tugging at Shaw. Something isn’t right and she knows it. ‘He can’t mean that. If Rees lands and your team pick him up… He doesn’t want that. There must be…’

  Dooley cuts her off. ‘Let me speak to him.’

  ‘Confidentiality, Sir…’

  ‘Put him on.’

  Familiar voice in the cans.

  Pilot, I think you know who I am. And you therefore know I have your identity too. I need you to come in now. I have no leeway for fooling around. You will be well treated. I know you have been through a lot. You may believe this situation has been forced upon you, I don’t know but I need you to make the landing requested immediately. I repeat you are to return and land immediately.’

  It seems to Eva that Matzov is looking straight at her. His eyes are livid and his big frame hunched as though to spring right out of the television monitor.

  Dooley has had enough: ‘Will someone switch that bastard off? We have to keep that boy in sight – have we got people ready for him landing? I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Did it make any sense?

  It’s Shaw that says no.

  Dooley – ‘Get me on the radio again – shit! ‘If you can hear me Rees, this is General Dooley. I have a horrible feeling we let you down…but you were once a soldier and I think you still are…and can be again. You’re done fooling around now…and for that matter so are we. You must come in now. Do you read me?’

  Eva has Shaw by the shoulder and starts to shake him. ‘That’s not the real Rees – something else is going on here.’

  The clouds are drifting dark, the yellow has gone as you circle the slab-sided monuments of the city, a, cubist coral reef where bloated sharks swim in their own shit and munch on the small fry that commute and flit and hover in stupid shoals, button-eyed but blind to the con that surrounds them twenty-four seven. Lives without memory or purpose. Life as lunch. You fly above it but you too are worthless, a cipher, an entertainer of idiots. You are a harbinger of a fatuous future, a fucked up moron fit only for the dirty work and other people’s empty pleasures.

  You turn the chopper towards the East; the shoreline again, the greater blackness beyond. Let’s get finished.

  Roman slides his head out of the helmet. He is bewildered. He feels he’s approached something momentous – something his whole life has been leading up to – only to fail to recognise it and to have it suddenly whipped away. He wants to go back there. But the red light has gone out on the Nandie. The cable looks fine. No interfering mother. Nothing he’d done. The transmission has ended unaccountably. He feels dizzy, depressed, deprived…he feels he’s dying.

  Eva is remembering Brodzky. What had he said? Fragments come back. So recent and yet such a mad blur. A routine that only runs once…turns all those resources inward, all those patterns and choices go black. She steps forward – no one obstructs her now. She sits at the table and pulls the speaker to her.

  Where is this shit coming from? Memory gives an ironic flicker, a recollection of training, framing you for the missions: ‘You can do it. You can succeed. You are winners, selected for success and you only have to believe.’ And you’d repeat with them: ‘We have been chosen for our abilities. We are successful. We are infinitely capable. We know how to find all the resources we need within ourselves.’ You only needed to learn how to interrogate the Solomon. ‘We are the chosen, we are important, we are loved. All that we need will be provided’. Bullshit!

  The wind butts the cabin. Ahead you can see the thin line of light, Estuary City on the horizon flickering and dying.

  All your life you’ve been running. You couldn’t reach Brett, you weren’t strong enough, weren’t fast enough. All that running, all that work was just to bring you to this? Are all those hookies still attached to this? There is only one thing to do, one last experience to bring to them, one last act of education that you can perform.

  ‘Rees, can you hear me? Rees, this is Eva.’

  Wow! – Still a shock factor left in the cans. Her voice in your ears, that familiar timbre, its warm freight of music, syllables like carriages, memories disembarking in your mind; the smile, the smells, the press of her, the world she brings, the feeling of her…

  But now a rolling and tumbling off Solomon. On to the thoughts like a cat on a mouse that can suddenly run. It’s not what it seems. It’s not her – and what if it is? She’s lying. She wants to confuse you, to wreck your last chance to deliver. Bitch! She knows it’s the big one, the mission, the moment, and she wants to fuck it up. All over again. Another fuck up. Too little too late, too weak, too indecisive…But you’d need to have interest, excitement, desire – and something inside you has gone on strike. There isn’t enough meaning or worth or truth in the whole world to stop now. Layers of nothing. Leave it to the Sensomondo jerks and the next generation of idiots. It has all been a waste. It lacks integrity. You can feel yourself giving up on it – stick with the plan – better to die. The right thing. Didn’t need to think before and don’t now. Need to act. Don’t even need to land. Waste of time. You tilt the stick forward and take her down. The night sky comes suddenly alive as buffeting wind. The chopper lurches.

  ‘I don’t have much time now – just a few words – a few words in the middle of all this other noise. I hope you can hear me, Rees. I’m sitting here with all these computer screens going and televisions, telephones, and wires everywhere…and these people in uniform who I don’t know. And I’m wondering what has just happened and watching you out there. I don’t really know what to say…I thought you were dead. All that time. They told me you had been killed. And I believed them. But they were wrong, Rees and I found out the truth. You were alive. Can you hear me Rees?

  You know how you felt you’d let Brett down, how you could have saved him – well now I’m hoping I have a chance to save you and I won’t let you down.

  Brodzky told me about the chip. He said that they can turn it against you. That it’s making you turn against yourself, making you want to destroy yourself. Is that right, cariño? Is that what this is?’

  You turn aside and headbutt the doorframe – once, twice. You can feel the warmth of blood streaming down your forehead. You tell yourself this is a joke but you’re not laughing. There are tears in your eyes. There is no point. There is nothing but dying. There is nothing but the decline, the realisation and the ultimate death. The brave thing, the urgent thing, the
only thing is to bring that on. This brings it all together, makes it all worthwhile. Service. Only you can do it. The moment has come. There is no point; the whole of life is a continuous thread of futility. Let’s not dignify the thing with any more bullshit about where it might lead or at what point some fucking sense in it all emerges. There is only the choice of where to cut it.

  You’ve fucked it all up – you don’t know…how much – it could have been a wonder – the best the world could offer –something beautiful – a bridge…but it’s no good now – it’s too late ‘I’m fucked – get yourself another guy – one that’s got a whole brain of his own – one who hasn’t screwed around with his mind – one with some sense – a future – one who you can trust…’

  Of course. Good point, she’ll have been fucking someone else, right? Of course she will…What’s that?

  ‘You went away, remember? You left me. Then I thought you were dead. But now I’m trying to reach you again.’

  Well you’re crazy then – why have you come back? How does that make any sense? Stupid cow!