by Ian Hocking
She opened the wardrobe. There were eight identical FIB outfits along with outdoor gear, gym clothes, plastic-wrapped underwear, several racks of shoes, and bags. She selected a black, short-handled bag and closed the door. Then she took the suit from the bed and dressed. When she had finished, she considered herself a chic, professional Berliner. It felt like a disguise.
She found eye shadow in the bathroom cabinet, along with red nail polish. She looked at the polish and remembered her Russian nickname, the Angel of Death. She brushed her shoulder-length hair until it crackled with static.
She opened the curtains and the windows too. The gloom left with a bow. The black furniture turned grey. She decided to go out and buy food from the Turkish kiosk at the corner of Meininger and Gothaer.
On the threshold of the apartment, her phone rang.
‘Never mind settling in,’ said Beckmann. ‘The Proctor situation has escalated. You’re to fly to Edinburgh. Have you read the documents I provided? They’re in your apartment safe.’
She had a safe?
‘I’m… still settling in.’
‘Here.’
Like a blooming flower, the knowledge grew in her mind. She gasped and slumped against the doorframe. A distant voice said, ‘You have it now,’ then said no more.
Chapter Twelve
Saskia took a taxi to Schönefeld airport. She shopped for headache tablets. She also bought some tampons. Thanks to Beckmann, the date of her last period was a mystery.
The flight landed in London Gatwick at 10:40 A.M. Waiting for her connection in the lounge, she eavesdropped on a businessman listening to something called Hamlet on his media player. Her eyes narrowed in astonishment: there was a fundamental question in the play that found an answer on the echoless steppe of her memories. ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ When the businessman rose to leave, she gripped his hand and said, ‘Wait,’ but he frowned and backed away.
Who wrote that? she asked of his retreating back, forlorn in her seat. Can I meet him?
In Edinburgh Airport’s baggage reclaim, she passed an advertisement for something called Fiddler on the Roof. Each question reset the bearing of her path through an unknown culture:
What is a musical?
Who was Topol?
What is a Jew?
What was the holocaust?
She fled to a toilet and sat in a cubicle. Her open eyes saw newsreel footage. She felt like food was being forced into mouth faster than she could swallow. There were colourless bodies in drifts. Mounds of hair, shaved. Troves of treasure, surgically stolen. Ash. Almost a century buried and burned, those bodies, and yet their memory had been rekindled in repetition, by a fear of rot from the heart outwards.
Stop. I don’t want to know any more, she told the chip
She recalled her conversation with Klutikov. ‘You’re brand new. You’re not answerable for the crimes of your body any more than you can be responsible for the crimes of your parents. Understood?’
No, she thought, wiping her eye. Not understood..
~
A man wearing a grey suit waited beneath the sensor that opened the automatic doors of the arrivals area. He held a sign that read ‘Brand’. She shrugged. Close enough. Detective Inspector Philip Jago was in his mid-fifties. In Britain, she knew, police officers could serve a maximum of twenty-five years. He would be close to retirement. His cheeks were purpled with blood vessels. He escorted her to a car and they got in the back. It was an unmarked, manual Ford.
‘In your own time,’ he said to the driver. He spoke in a way that reminded Saskia of Bavarian German: watery sounds running together. ‘Your luggage has been sent on. You’re staying in Whitburn, as you requested. Any reason? The last sighting of Proctor was further south.’
She would not tell him that the decision to head toward the site of Proctor’s original bombing had come to her as inspiration from the sleeping brain of the woman whose body she had usurped.
‘Operational advantage,’ she said, thinking of Klutikov’s explanation.
Jago flicked some ash from the window and looked annoyed. She wondered what he thought of her and was surprised—given the British politeness that ran through her fading memory of Simon—to be told immediately.
‘Get this straight, Detective Brandt. When you’re on this island, you play nice. You don’t use your firearm unless I say so. You tell me everything you’re thinking, including hunches, and you’ll share your sources. We find Proctor and we deliver him to Special Branch, then we shake hands and say auf wiedersehen. Alles Klar?’
‘Alles Klar.’
They looked at one another.
‘I’m serious.’ His sigh was blue. ‘Last bloke from the FIB shot our suspect and fucked off to Paris. Are you an assassin too?’
Assassin. From the Arabic.
‘An eater of hashish. Or a person in the control of Hassan-i-Sabah.’ She licked her lips. ‘I need a cigarette.’
He seemed amused. ‘I won’t stop you.’
‘May I have one of yours?’
‘Of course.’
‘People seldom smoke these days,’ she said.
‘They do in the police.’
‘Why?’
‘New to the job?’
‘Yes.’
‘Light?’
‘Please.’
He took out a gold Zippo and struck the thumbwheel. Saskia looked at the flame as she leaned into it. She had seen that trick before her investiture in the FIB. Where? She grabbed Jago by the wrist and studied the flame. But soon the lighter was only familiar. Then, even the familiarity was gone.
Jago stared at her.
‘Brandt, you may be sex on a stick, but I’ve been unhappily married to my desk for twenty years and, between us, I only get it up when the Hibs put one in.’
‘When what?’
‘When my beloved Hibernian Football Club scores what we term a “goal”, my dear,’ he said, affecting a pompous tone. He switched back to his native register: ‘So turn it off, eh?’
She let go of his hand. ‘I didn’t mean to -’
‘Here’s my ID, hen. Next time, ask for it. Any numpty can hold up a sign in an airport.’
‘Sorry.’
Softening, he said, ‘You’re alright. Here, take a look.’ He showed her his warrant card. She took it, nodded, and allowed him to inspect her FIB badge. He held it at arm’s length and squinted. ‘Ex tabula rasa?’
‘Just so.’ Saskia thought of the emptiness inside her. She was no police officer. Beckmann had employed her for her gut instinct. ‘DI Jago, I would please like to go to the West Lothian Centre.’
‘Where?’ The annoyance returned to his face. ‘The community centre?’
‘No. The scene of the terrorist activity.’
‘You mean the Park Hotel. Waste of time.’
‘Why?’
‘Our contact there has government connections and doesn’t have to cooperate. The situation is covered by the Official Secrets Act.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Once you’ve signed a secrecy contract, they can stop you talking about certain things. The act means that we can’t know everything about the murder.’
‘That makes it rather difficult to investigate, DI Jago.’
‘Yes, Detective Brandt, it does.’
‘Kommissarin.’
‘Our job, Kommissarin, is to find him, not investigate anything. My Super and a sheriff looked at the evidence. They’re satisfied he’s guilty and have authorised all reasonable force in grabbing him. We should start at the shed where he landed.’
‘No,’ she said, surprised at the ease with which her certainty came. This was the voice of her instinct, homed in that blood-infused organ behind her eyes, the brain that was not hers.
‘No?’
‘DI Jago, please. Trust me. This is my job.’
‘We’re going to be thick as thieves, I can
tell.’ He tapped the driver. ‘Park Hotel. Just out of Whitburn, on the way to Harthill.’
~
A low sun hung in reflections, across stonework, on the patina of snow that had fallen during the night. She stepped from the car. Her eyes narrowed in the sudden cold. She could hear water running nearby. The battlements of trees loomed and she was held, albeit briefly, by the urge to run into that woodland and just be, where it was silent and safe. She turned to the hotel. Its wings flanked the gravelled car park. At the centre, Saskia noticed a fountain set with a stone Prometheus, frozen as he passed the gift of fire to man.
‘Brandt?’ prompted Jago.
Prometheus, who had been chained to a rock by Zeus for his treachery. Prometheus, who had suffered a hawk eat his liver. The liver that grew back; the hawk that returned.
The chains…
‘Revenge should have no bounds.’
Hamlet echoed across her mind again.
The Zippo lighter. The gesture.
The hawk that returned.
Why did these thoughts feel significant? Were these the weeping wounds of her brain, silent in the dark of her skull?
Not now. This is a different chase. Whom do you hunt? Proctor or Brandt?
The hawk that returned.
She remembered her dream of her first night as Brandt. The Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she measures a length. Atropos, she cuts it.
Spin, measure, snip.
Saskia took a clamshell case from her handbag. Inside was a pair of glasses. She put them on. She knew—though she could remember no training—that the glasses would capture video of everything she saw. The statue was a key, and she wanted an impression of its shape.
‘Brandt, are you OK?’
‘Yes. The wind is turning, I feel.’
‘Northerly. It’ll be a cold night. Come on.’
Chapter Thirteen
That morning
David awoke in a field. He was wrapped in his parachute. His uncovered face had deadened to a mask. His hands were tense balls of bone and sinew. In the left was Jennifer’s crayon drawing. His back ached and he needed to urinate. He wriggled from the parachute.
Ahead, a dark shape in the dawn, was a wooden shed.
His fingers moved only at explicit, clumsy command. Finally, he opened the overalls’ zip. Piss steamed gloriously onto the colourless grass.
Cold. Core temperature too low.
This had implications, he knew. He had to get warm. And eat. Something like a hot soup. He remembered a favourite from his youth, when he had hillwalked with his wife, Helen. Oxtail soup from a Thermos. Oxtail at the pinnacle; pushing back the cold as it went down, stratum by stratum.
He looked at the shed.
It was wooden, four metres by six, painted white. On top was a solar panel. The door was padlocked but the key had not been removed from its base. He detached the padlock, held it as a weapon, and went inside.
‘Hello?’
An old-style fluorescent tube lit. There was a tool-laden workbench. To his right was a partition of old sacking. David approached the bench and saw a stack of folded, silver material. He took it. A space blanket.
‘Things are…’
A vacuum flask fell from the blanket and he caught it. He unscrewed the lid. With a twist of steam came the memory of peaks climbed and cold defeated: Oxtail soup, his favourite.
‘…getting weird.’
~
‘Hello.’
David looked down.
There was a tablet computer on the workbench. As he tipped soup into the lid, an impressionistic sketch of a woman’s face appeared on the screen. The soup hurt going down.
‘Are you Professor Proctor? If so, you’ll remember the code that needs to be written on the pink sheet.’
David poured himself another cup. He had burned his palate and was already tired of his rescuer. Tom Sawyer…
‘TS4415. Happy?’
‘Thank you. Immediately below this computer is a heated box containing clothes. Please do not touch any of the clothing in this storage shed.’
‘Why not?’
‘It does not belong to you.’
David bolted the last of the soup and let the space blanket fall. He opened the crate, took a warm T-shirt, pushed it into his face and sighed. He found hiking boots, thermal underwear, jeans, an over-shirt, gloves, a heavy-duty sports jacket, a scarf and a woollen hat.
‘At the end of this bench you will see a lock pick for your handcuffs.’
He took the gun-shaped device. It had a tapered end that formed different shapes when the trigger was pulled. He set about freeing the cuffs. A dozen clicks later, they released. He let them fall and swung his arms experimentally.
‘What’s the plan, computer?’
‘Beyond the partition you will find a motorbike.’
‘Oh.’ David’s excitement was undercut by the thought of his Matchless G80, a custom-restored beauty that had been in his garage when his house burned.
‘Watch this, please. The bike is an advanced model.’ The computer screen changed to show a cartoon motorbike. ‘It has a key ignition. The keys are in the bike. Turn the key to the second position and press the start button. The right-hand grip is the accelerator and its lever is the front brake. The left-hand lever is the back brake. Always use both brakes simultaneously.’
David began to dress. He was careful to transfer Jennifer’s drawing to his new clothes. ‘Go on.’
‘Remember, the left-hand lever is not the clutch. The bike has an automatic gear transmission. The on-board processor will select its own gears based on speed, predicted traction, orientation and so on. In the event this processor malfunctions, the bike will revert to a mechanical automatic transmission.’
David pulled on the gloves. ‘OK.’
‘Your left foot will rest naturally with the metal tab under the heel and another tab over the toes. The same for your right foot. If you move your feet like so…’ the stick figure on the computer screen squeezed its heels, ‘…then the engine will increase its power output by one quarter for five seconds.’
The stick figure raced away.
‘Got it.’
He parted the sack-cloth divider and whistled. The bike had a low profile and wide, spiked tyres. Hydraulic pistons connected the chassis to the steering column. The colour scheme was chrome silver. On the tank, in the precision flourish of an artist’s signature, was the word Moiré.
‘Professor Proctor,’ said the computer agent. Its voice was louder. ‘There are two, possibly three, motorbikes approaching from the south.’
Found.
David scooped the helmet from the seat and threw it on his head. He’d fasten the chin strap later. ‘OK, computer, I’m gone.’
‘Wait. Take the rucksack. It contains important travel documents.’
‘Right.’ He flung it across his shoulders.
‘One more thing.’
‘What?’
‘Please press the red switch on the computer. It is an explosive device with a ten-second delay.’
David pressed it and jumped on the bike. Outside, the other bikes had arrived. Their engine tones dropped. He could smell their exhausts. He turned the key, pressed the ignition switch and the bike awoke. He felt the suspension rise, then fall.
David was poised to walk the bike forward when a helmeted man entered the shed. To judge by his clothing, he was a farm hand. Their eyes met, David’s widened, and the laptop exploded. The sound was loud and concussive. Both were struck by the debris. The man retreated from the shed in a crouch, one arm across his face.
David lowered his head, gunned the engine, and went nowhere. He looked over his shoulder. The tyre was spinning itself into a blur. He came off the power and it bit into the concrete floor. The bike reared like a startled horse. As the front wheel dropped, he swung the nose and charged through the door, knocking it open.
He burst into the field.
If his old Matchless was a b
roadsword, the Moiré was a rapier. From the corner of his eye, he saw another bike flash by at a right angle. It was difficult to guess what the rider was doing because he couldn’t see behind him; the bike had no wing mirrors.
‘I could really do with a backwards-facing camera,’ he muttered.
There was a beep from the bike. David glanced down. The dashboard showed the view from a small camera mounted on the back of the bike. He counted three bikes, riding in an even, wide spread. They were gaining.
He turned downhill. The handling improved. He looked down, unsure of what had changed. The hydraulic rods that connected the chassis to the steering column were correcting his steering. He felt an odd mixture of relief and indignation. ‘Have it your way. But where am I going?’
There was a hedge approaching. It was impossible to judge its height, but it would certainly hurt at—he checked the speedometer—thirty-five miles per hour.
Another bleep and the bike showed him a contour map of the area. A red dot flashed in the centre, which David took to represent his position. A blue arrow trailed to the southwest. At the bottom of the map, a revolving logo read Easy Rider(TM) SatNav. The blue line pointed left so he pulled a wobbly left-hander and rode parallel with the hedge. The ground became muddier and he was forced to slow.
A biker slid into view on his right, between him and the hedge. The profile of this man’s machine was much higher than his own. His helmet was open-faced but he wore goggles and a blue bandana, highwayman-style. The man flapped his arm. Pull over.
