by Henry Porter
22
Witless Familiarity
She spun round and saw Eyam standing twenty feet away. She stared at him, utterly perplexed as to what emotion she felt or what her reaction to him should be, and took in the gauntness of his cheeks, the sunken eyes – as well as their feverish intensity – and the long hair. The beard had gone.
‘Where did you spring from?’ she said evenly.
‘Sorry, did I make you start?’ He gave a sheepish smile.
‘No, I’m quite used to the living dead.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. He walked towards her and now she noticed that he carried a stick; that his clothes were hanging off him and that his grin revealed many more of his teeth than she remembered. But none of this formed itself in her mind as anything more than an impression of Eyam looking somewhat younger.
He reached her and held out his hands, dropping the stick in the process. It clattered on the concrete. He glanced down and when he looked up, still wearing a slightly unworldly grin, her hand caught him on his left cheek. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ she said in a murderous whisper. ‘I grieved for you, Eyam. I cried for you. I was mortified – ashamed and furious with myself for failing you. It was like Charlie dying, though worse, because I felt I’d abandoned you. How could you have done that to me, Eyam? I was your friend. How could you have been so heartless? How could you not tell me?’
His eyes registered her anger and maybe he nodded with understanding, though she didn’t care to notice it, nor for that matter did she consider the veins that bulged at his temple and in his neck. ‘I am sorry,’ he said at length. ‘I had no idea how this would go.’
‘Crap, you wanted me to believe you were dead. You used me, knowing that if I believed you everyone else would.’
‘Not true,’ he said, bending to get his walking stick and at the same time looking up into her eyes. ‘I left as many clues as I could think of to say I hadn’t died in the explosion, clues that only you would understand. I didn’t want to put you through the pain.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder and she shook it off. ‘Once this thing started it was very difficult to control.’
She gazed at him, aware only of the crashingly obvious thought that had been with her since she had first begun to suspect he was alive. ‘In all those years, despite everything – our differences, the bad timing and let’s face it, the competition between us – I rashly assumed that you loved me, as a friend or a sometime lover or . . . Christ knows what. I thought you loved me just a little, Eyam. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
He nodded, and she wondered if he could possibly understand. She shook her head and looked down, which is to say she looked into herself. Was relief part of her anger? Was some glimmer of love still there? Her eyes moved and searched his face. ‘The thing is, no one who loved another a person could treat them like this. That’s what I take away from your behaviour. You used me like any other fucking man. You exploited my love and loyalty for you. And do you know what the worst thing is? I let myself be exploited: for that I can’t forgive you.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘But honestly, Sis, I wanted to cause you no pain. There was no other—’
‘That time you phoned me,’ she cut in, ‘the Saturday after the explosion. Were you going to tell me then?’
He shook his head silently.
‘Even if you had spoken to me?’
‘No.’
‘But you said on the tape that you had agonised about coming to New York. Were you going to tell me, or not?’
‘I decided not. Certainly not on the phone.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you never know who’s listening, especially on a call from Colombia. I knew you would work it out, and you did.’ His eyes pleaded with her, but there was also something resilient and determined behind his expression.
‘Have you gone mad? How could you expect this to work?’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘They know – they know you’re not dead. Kilmartin phoned and told me a couple of hours ago.’
He took the news calmly but asked, ‘Were you using your own phone when you talked to him?’
‘No, mine’s switched off and I wouldn’t have taken the call on my phone. What do you think I am? Some kind of moron?’
‘They will have a trace on both by now.’
‘Kilmartin gave me a phone, OK? It’s clean. It’s got encryption. But that is hardly the point, is it? I mean, Hugh Russell was killed because of this bloody stupid game of yours. You used him and now he’s dead. I could have been shot in the car with him.’
‘I wonder if I could ask you to turn the second phone off. They’ll be monitoring all traffic from this area.’ He was looking into her eyes, trying to connect with her. ‘And I think we should continue this conversation elsewhere.’
‘Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t leave now.’
‘Because you have no alternative: whether you like it or not, you’re involved. And because I am doing the right thing.’ She hit him again, good and hard, and connected with the side of his head. But this time the anger flared in his eyes and he caught hold of her arm as it withdrew. ‘Will you stop that, Sis? You’ve made your point, OK?’
She was unrepentant. ‘You’re so damned manipulative. From the moment I showed my face at the inquest you knew I would be marked.’
‘Actually, I didn’t know you would come. How could I have predicted that you were going to give up your job in New York?’
‘But you knew I would come to the funeral.’
‘Not necessarily – we were on pretty bad terms. I emailed you several times and got no reply.’
She started shaking her head. ‘Oh, give me a break – you knew I’d come. Hugh Russell was looking for me on the day of the funeral. You left me a bundle of documents about the government’s activities. I mean, those were state secrets, Eyam. You must have realised they would stop at nothing to get them back.’
‘They’re not state secrets – they are the secrets of a corrupt cabal. There’s an important difference, Sis. Look, there’s a lot I want to tell you but I’d rather not do it standing out in the open. By the way, do you know if they think I’m in the country?’
‘I’ve no idea: Kilmartin didn’t say, but they used a drone to follow me to the valley, so I guess they hope I will lead them to you.’
‘Maybe. Look, I really must leave here.’
‘How did you fake the film?’ she said quickly.
‘With a lot of trouble: did you look at it closely?’
‘Why would I, for Christ’s sake? I took it at face value until I saw the book and then I started to think about what you were really saying in that poem on the back of the order of service. But the film fooled me, which is what it was meant to do.’
‘It’s just there were one or two messages hidden in it for you which you might have found amusing but I won’t bore you with that now.’ He looked at her. ‘Right, Sis, it’s time to go. Are you coming, or not?’
‘As you point out, there’s not much else I can do.’
She followed him to the back of the sheds where a two-seater quad bike was parked at the head of a wooded track. She wanted to ask why he moved with such difficulty, but he cut her off. ‘How’s the Dove?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful place?’
‘Which part is wonderful? The isolation and proximity to a murder scene, or the quaint little building with more mikes than a recording studio? To tell you the truth, I didn’t see its charm.’
He smiled to himself, climbed onto the bike and wedged his stick between his leg and the machine. She did likewise with hers and gripped the handles either side of her, but when they shot off up the track she had to move her hands to his shoulders, and it was then that she grasped how painfully thin Eyam was. They travelled for about thirty minutes, shooting along Forestry Commission pathways and never once having to resort to a public road or stop to open a gate. The noise of the engine made talk impossible so she sat on the back looking up at the country
side and conceded that one of the greatest minds of her generation was also good on a quad bike.
They reached a bluff of rock where there were trees growing out of the faults and crevices in the strata. Beneath it was a wooded dip in the landscape and from the rock face projected a flat, grassy shelf. Eyam stopped, then turned the bike down a narrow pathway and slowly tacked into the dip, at which point Kate saw that the shelf was a roof supported by walls made from stone hewed from the bedrock. A large cattle shelter had been elaborated to make a cabin with a bay for the bike and a wood store. He told her to get off, then reversed the bike under the shelter and stopped the engine. She walked a few paces and looked about. ‘What is this? Robin Hood’s lair?’ She turned. Eyam was leaning against a post, looking drained. ‘What’s the matter with you? You look as though you’re on drugs.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said brightly. ‘Just a bad night, that’s all.’
‘I’m not surprised if you’re sleeping out here.’
‘Lunch?’
‘Lunch! I’m meeting Kilmartin at six o’clock. Forget lunch. I want an explanation. I want to know what this is about. How long have you been here?’
‘A few days: it’s fine when you get used to it, but the Dove has a better view.’
Despite her protests he went inside and returned carrying a loaded tray, which he placed on a bench that ran alongside the cabin.
‘Come, sit and we can talk,’ he said. ‘I even have wine.’
‘I’m getting a really bad feeling about this. It’s like you’ve become insane. For God’s sake, tell me what this is about.’
He uncorked the bottle and handed her a tumbler of red wine. ‘OK, so this is about a system, an incredibly powerful monitoring system, which was introduced secretly and which continues to extend its control of society through every official computer, every database and every surveillance system. Some call it SPINDRIFT – a nickname given it by Christopher Holmes, my predecessor at the Joint Intelligence Committee. By the way, I am certain that Holmes’ death was no accident, that he was murdered with his wife, and that will become clear when my evidence is published. It is also known as DEEP TRUTH, which originally described the product of the system – the official knowledge of each one of us.’
She took a mouthful of wine and looked away to avoid the annoying intensity of Eyam’s expression.
‘DEEP TRUTH, if we are to call it that, is the evolution of another system called ASCAMS, which stands for Automatic Selection Correlation And Monitoring System.’
‘Russell mentioned it,’ she said.
‘Yes, he must have read the dossier. He told me wouldn’t but . . . Anyway, ASCAMS was introduced back in 2009 to watch terrorist suspects in the build-up to the Olympics. Instead of the Intelligence Services picking targets, the system trawled all relevant transactions and behaviour and made deductions about their intentions. For example, it correlated all those who bought a ticket to Pakistan, or any Arab State, who made telephone calls to particular numbers or certain purchases on the web, or who were in the habit of travelling to certain places. It searched for certain profiles and patterns of behaviour.’
‘In other words, your basic data mining package,’ she said.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said, looking exasperated. ‘This thing monitors everyone! Everyone, Kate! And everything they do! It uses incredibly powerful software to sift the behaviour, not just of suspect individuals, but of the entire population.’ He looked away and inhaled deeply. ‘Soon after ASCAMS was introduced someone had the bright idea that it could be used to identify criminality. Then the Police National Extremism Tactical Coordinating Unit and the Forward Intelligence Teams deployed it to watch activist groups. And so the system gradually expanded – as these things do as a law of nature – to the point where it seemed sensible to monitor the entire population. But before that could happen DEEP TRUTH needed organisation, money and new software. That is where Eden White came in. His companies provided the upgrade for ASCAMS. Once they had everyone’s important data – this so-called deep truth – it was a relatively simple matter to add the software that made the connections and provided the evidence to different government agencies of wrongdoing, or suspected wrongdoing. For example, declared incomes are matched with expenditure on airlines, hotels and so forth and when there’s a disparity between the two the Revenue is informed. Then it went one step further to identify troublemakers, those that seemed disposed to anti-government beliefs, which of course these days is read as anti-state activity. The system even identifies people who merely appear to “harbour intentions” and nudges one or other government agency to take action.’
‘But the public assumes this sort of thing goes on, don’t they?’ she said. ‘I mean, this isn’t new.’
‘The British public hasn’t got the slightest idea how far DEEP TRUTH has penetrated each life or what power it gives the government. It has never been debated or discussed and the beauty for the government is that it is totally deniable. There’s no single computer, no facility or building where the operation takes place, and it doesn’t have a dedicated staff. DEEP TRUTH lives in the system – in the software of every computer belonging to government agencies. It infests government communications and suggests ways of updating itself, of pulling in more and more data and setting new tasks for itself. For instance, it taps into social neworking sites to make use of all the information people volunteer about themselves. It knows where they go, what they buy, their friends, their salaries, the performance of their children at school, when they stay in a hotel or visit a doctor – just about everything. And like all databases, it’s capable of the grossest errors, which are never rectified because no one knows why they have occurred in the first place. No one challenges the wisdom of these automatic decisions. It’s a monster because of its size, its reach and the determination of those who protect it, not because of any innate intelligence. Its power resides in its witless familiarity with the lives of every one of the sixty-five million people living in this country and its ability to make connections between different people and groups and to probe almost every aspect of the personal realm.’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘You must see that without anyone knowing this thing has altered society profoundly, Sis.’
‘Of course I see the threat, but I just wonder how you hope to outflank the government and the world’s most sophisticated surveillance system from a broken-down hovel in the back of beyond. You probably don’t even have electricity here.’
‘Actually, I do – it comes from the farm below.’
‘And they don’t mind?’
‘I own it.’
‘You can’t own a farm – you’re dead.’
‘A foreign company that I own controls the farm – a good investment with the price of food these days.’
‘How long have you spent setting all this up?’
‘Two and a half years.’
‘So you started before you went to that committee?’
‘Yes, before my second appearance in front of the ISC. I was on the inside, Kate. I know the nature of the beast. Temple, Eden White – I know how they think. I planned for a long time.’ He looked down. ‘I have pickle, bread, ham, tomatoes, olives. I’ve even got some cheese for you. It’s made on the farm – quite good, I believe.’ He leaned against the cabin and straightened his legs. Dappled sunlight warmed the wood of the window frames and bench, which made gentle creaking sounds.
‘You never told me the whole story because you wanted me to get hooked on the problem you set for me. You manipulated me, Eyam, and Darsh was part of it – all that talk about butterflies waking from the dead or flying up from the south.’
‘Butterflies?’ said Eyam, mystified.
‘Yes, the red admiral: look, I’m not going into it, OK? Darsh was talking in riddles because he wanted to know if I suspected you were alive.’
‘He was aware of my hopes; that I wanted to return – yes.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
He turned to her with a mild expression. ‘Look, you can sit here bitching, or we can talk.’
‘What happened to you, Eyam? You look like a derelict.’
‘I was coming to that. You see, Sis, I didn’t know whether I would be able to return to England. That’s the point.’
‘Because you might be arrested abroad?’
He shook his head patiently. ‘I didn’t know if I’d make it.’ She began to say something. ‘For God’s sake shut the hell up and listen, will you? I didn’t know if I’d make it because I have cancer – Hodgkin’s – cancer of the lymph system. I was diagnosed last year. Do you understand?’
Logic engaged before compassion. ‘Then why fake your death?’ she asked.
This really amused him. ‘You haven’t changed, that’s for sure.’
‘Look, you have cancer,’ she said, and with the words absorbed the reality. ‘I’m sorry – oh Christ, you know what I mean. Why fake your death if you thought you were going to die?’ She stopped and said quietly, ‘Are you going to die?’
‘Probably,’ he replied.
‘How long have you got?’
‘Who knows? I’ve been lucky. I found a new doctor and got a different course of chemo and things began to improve. But at the moment I’m not on drugs, as you put it.’
‘God, I’m sorry. I’m a heartless idiot.’
‘How were you to know?’
‘But I did,’ she said. ‘That’s what makes it worse. Hugh Russell hinted you had health problems and there was a finality about the tape. I knew something was wrong. You said as much.’
He sipped his wine and breathed deeply. ‘When I left in December I didn’t think I’d see England again. I was given a matter of weeks and I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend them in jail as a suspected paedophile. I hung on for my father. He helped me make the financial arrangements abroad, devising ways of keeping all the money in his estate hidden but accessible by me. I left immediately after his funeral.’
