by Matthew Dunn
“That would be splendid. But first . . .” The senior MI6 officer held out his hand. The files were returned to him and he placed them back in his case.
Mason said to his employees, “Go back to your weekend. I needed you here in case we had to get a plan B in place tonight.”
When Tanner and Bäcklund were out of the room, the admiral added, “I’m prepared not to set in place a plan B.”
Patrick and Alistair were mightily relieved. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. In five minutes, if presented with new data, I may make a different decision.”
“After he met you, Cochrane liked you,” said Alistair.
The comment took Mason by surprise.
“He called me after your face-to-face in this room.”
Mason said nothing.
“I can count the number of people who Cochrane likes on one hand. Most of them are dead.”
“I suspect your number is too low.”
“It is. Cochrane’s at a point in his life where he feels brave enough to trust certain people. Friendship has come from that huge leap of faith, most notably from the three neighbors who share his London apartment building with him. Cochrane wants me to think he’s his old self—untrusting of everyone, being that way because of who he is and what he does. I can see through it. He respects you and likes you. It was necessary to show you the Task Force S files, but they aren’t the whole story. His telephone call to me after being in this room is.”
Mason felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “Can he succeed, Alistair?”
Alistair put his overcoat on and grabbed his case. “He can fail.” He pointed at the window. “Just like everyone else out there.”
THIRTY-FOUR
I’d spent a day and most of the evening moving from one place in London to another, mostly whiling away my time in cafés and restaurants while trying to ascertain if the two men who attacked me in the cemetery were once again on my tail. Anti-surveillance is something I excel at; countless times it’s saved my life. But even for someone with my training and experience, it’s never an exact science, particularly in big cities where there are too many variables.
However, by the end of the day, I was sure I wasn’t being followed by my assailants. That thought was merely a temporary reprieve, because there was a bigger question that weighed heavily on me—how did the men get on my tail in the first place? One option was that they knew where I lived and followed me from my home to Highgate. If that was the case, they’d either had to have been watching my home for weeks, maybe months, waiting for me to show up—and I thought that was logistically unlikely—or someone had told them I was going to be at that location at a specific day and time. And yet I’d told no one about my intended movements. This left one uncomfortable probability: my alias passport and credit card were blown, details of which had been supplied to the blond man and the sniper, both of whom had the resources and capabilities to track me via their usage. Only intelligence officers, specialist cops, and customs officials have such capabilities. Were the men who tried to kill me such professionals? Or were they being fed the tracking data from corrupt members of those professions? Either way, if I was right, every time I used my documentation in any part of the world, I might as well be calling them and telling them my exact location.
I had no other ID I could use, but calling people was one thing I had control over. My cell in the name of Richard Oaks was switched off, its battery removed so that the device couldn’t be remotely attacked and used as a microphone receiver. No doubt Patrick and Mason were fretting because they hadn’t heard from me. That was tough on them but necessary for me. I had no idea who I could trust.
I finished my fifth black coffee of the day, walked fast out of the café, and hailed a cab. I had to get out of Britain and examine Gray Site. But the moment I bought an air ticket for Beirut, my pursuers would know I was en route to that location.
Standing outside room 32 in D.C.’s Savoy Suites Hotel, Rob Tanner checked his watch and waited for the minute hand to tell him that it was precisely 6 P.M. He knocked five times on the door, counted three seconds, knocked twice again, counted two seconds, and gave one last knock. The door opened. Tanner’s contact was standing in the entrance. The middle-aged man was wearing suit pants, a shirt, and a tie. He ushered Tanner into the room, closing the door behind him and fixing its security bolt in place.
The room looked similar to the other hotel rooms Tanner had visited during the last few days—small, clean, neither flashy nor tawdry. Its occupant always chose rooms like this because they suited his cover as a traveling salesman who only needed a place to sleep and wash before departing for work. The hotels’ other occupants were like him. They kept themselves to themselves and were usually too dog-tired to care about other guests.
Tanner grabbed a bottle of beer from the minibar and sat in a chair. His contact sat opposite him, only empty floor space between them.
“What do you have?” the man asked.
Tanner took a glug of the beer straight from the bottle. “Things have moved up to a whole new level.”
“I’m all ears.”
Tanner tapped a finger against the bottle. “I was made to sign a document that says I’ll be poleaxed if I speak to someone like you.”
“Good thing people like me and you don’t care about that.”
Tanner ran his hand through his designer haircut. “How much longer do I have to keep doing this?”
“As long as it takes. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Anyway, I reckon Mason’s days in the Pentagon are numbered. I’ll move you onto new things sooner than you think. What have you got?”
Tanner told him about the meeting in Mason’s office earlier today—Alistair’s files, Task Force S, Cochrane’s background, and the task force personnel. “I don’t know whether Alistair persuaded Mason that Cochrane’s silence shouldn’t change anything. Mason told Bäcklund and me to leave his office so he could speak privately with Patrick and Alistair.”
“Your hunch?”
“Is that Alistair and Patrick convinced Mason to keep the faith with the good Samaritan.”
“I agree.” The man smiled with a look of sarcasm. “Three honorable men agreeing to do the gentlemanly thing.” His expression turned serious. “I’ll pass this on. Keep doing what you’re doing. No suspicions?”
Tanner swallowed the rest of the beer. “No. I’m a pain in the ass. It distracts Mason and Bäcklund from the truth.”
“Excellent.”
Monsieur de Guise cleared away the dinner plates, washed the pots and pans he’d earlier used to cook tonight’s dinner of partridge in a red wine jus, and brought Safa a mug of hot chocolate. The Palestinian boy was still sitting at the dinner table. Part of his mind had clarity, yet the rest was befuddled. His guardian had spoken to him near continuously throughout their meal. His words gave Safa certainty but also a sense of dislocation from who he once was.
De Guise entered his study and returned a few moments later holding a few items. “And now we must indulge in some fun, must we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your medicine first, though.”
Safa looked at the medical kit with trepidation. “When will I be better? Soon, I hope.”
De Guise injected him three times. “The human body is a miracle. It can survive most things. But you, my poor Safa, have a body that had been pushed too far. When I first met you, I knew it could no longer cope. As all bodies do at that stage, it was eating itself.” De Guise removed the tourniquet from the boy’s biceps. “I intervened and reversed that process. Every night, you are administered proteins, vitamins, and blockers that trick some of your neurons into believing your body is strong again and needs a fully functioning nervous system. It is a temporary trick, but we hope that by the time your neurons realize they’ve been duped, your body will be genuinely stronger, at which point your neurons will be your friends
again.” De Guise omitted to tell Safa that his needles also contained barbiturates, opiates, and lysergic acid diethylamide, which—combined with de Guise’s words—produced a perception of inevitable vulnerability and desperate desire for one last chance at retribution before one’s body and mind drifted away forever. He smiled. “Doctors think of themselves as gods.”
He applied Band-Aids to Safa’s arm, which the boy rubbed. “That can only work if gods are doctors.”
“An apt observation.” De Guise had a twinkle in his eye. “Gods also kill. Doctors do not.”
Safa shook his head. “They do when all is lost.”
De Guise had hoped Safa would say something like this. “Tell me when such situations present themselves.”
Safa took a swig of his drink. It was piping hot, but the pain from the liquid’s heat seemed to belong to someone else. The flavor was sweet and syrupy to his taste buds, yet acrid to his mind. It seemed an indulgent drink. One for pigs.
“They extinguish the lives of the irreparable, the suffering who’ve no hope.”
“Your French vocabulary is improving.”
“I’ve you to thank for that, sir.”
“But your manners remain poor. You still wear your shoes in our home.”
Safa was embarrassed. “I forgot to take them off, sir.”
“But you won’t tomorrow. Let us switch to English and see how we get on.” De Guise smoothed his hands over a rectangular piece of cardboard. “We shall create people.” He drew the silhouettes of six men, handed Safa a pair of nail scissors, and said, “Cut out the shapes.”
Safa frowned, not understanding.
De Guise used his fingers to mimic a cutting action. “Do it carefully.”
The Palestinian boy set to work. Within ten minutes, he’d cut out the shapes.
His guardian lit a candle inside a lantern and discarded the shapes. The rectangular card with the empty shapes of people was what he needed. He wrapped it around the glass cover of the lantern and fixed it in place with tape. After extinguishing all other candles in the room, so that the lantern was the sole source of light, he switched back to French and said, “Sit on the floor, in the center of the room.”
When Safa had done so, the professor joined him and squatted by his side. He held the lantern at arm’s length above his head and used both hands to slowly spin it around. The lamp’s light cast the images of men onto the dining room walls. They were moving, yet seemed to be watching Safa. “Now we return to English. Pretend you are in the United States and wish to buy a train ticket to Washington, D.C. I am the ticket agent. In English, what would you say to me?”
Safa stared at the images on the wall, entranced, not sure what he thought about them. “Please, sir, I don’t speak or understand much English, but I would like to buy a train ticket to Washington, D.C. Can you help?”
“Perfect.” De Guise rotated the lantern a fraction faster. “You move amid crowds of pedestrians. How do you deport yourself?”
“Deport?”
“The way you move, the angle of your head, even your expression. Essentially, how do you wish people to see you?”
“I wish not to be noticed.”
“And how do you achieve that?”
“I make myself small; I don’t look at people.”
“Most people would think the same, but that is not how to be invisible. To disappear in a crowd, one must be normal. Engage in brief eye contact, then break it; hold your head up as if you are taking in the sights; move with purpose, sometimes fast, other times at ambling pace; unashamedly, be a dumb tourist who doesn’t care whether anyone’s looking at him or not. That way, you’ll disappear.”
Safa grinned, though he felt tingles across his face and his skin felt stretched. It was an uncomfortable feeling. “Dumb tourist.”
De Guise moved the lantern fast enough to make the human shapes become a slight blur. “You are in the center of a large crowd. No one notices you. No one cares about you. They are your enemies. More than that, they are enemies of everything you’ve ever held dear.”
The shapes were moving so fast now that Safa’s vision was blurred, his mind was confused, and his stomach was nauseous.
“What must you do to correct their imperfections?” His guardian switched back to French. “Their imperfections, Safa: What must be done about them?”
The Palestinian boy started sweating. “Please, stop!”
“Only you can make this stop.”
“You hold the lantern.”
“I do.”
“Please stop turning it. Please.”
“Turning it? Safa, it is motionless.” De Guise twisted it faster. “It is interesting that you think the shapes are moving.”
“Moving too fast!”
“Ah, I see what is happening. Your mind is projecting meaning onto the characters on the wall. It thinks they’re moving. It is telling you that their speed means they can never be stopped and held to account.”
“I want them to stop!”
“Then you must find a means to do so and use something to make that happen; use something that is quicker than the fastest human being.”
A sharp pain stabbed behind Safa’s eyes, yet he couldn’t stop looking at the images. “My enemies?”
“Yes, and they wish to cause you further pain. They don’t care about anything beyond mocking your weakness. If only they knew the truth. Because you are not weak, are you?”
“Don’t want to be.” Safa’s face was screwed up, his skin now saturated with sweat.
“Perhaps you carry something that could make this end? Something fast?”
Safa nodded. “Yes.”
“Something that will give meaning to everything?”
“My meaning.”
“Your meaning, indeed.” De Guise moved the lantern as quick as his nimble fingers could maneuver the object. He knew his charge would be in a lot of pain now, his mind disoriented yet trying to grapple onto some semblance of meaning, his body craving sleep and an end to this. “The lantern, Safa. It must stop. Has to stop. Only you can make it stop. Punish. Tell it why. Finalize all matters.”
Safa sat as if frozen.
“Safa!” The professor’s tone was commanding. “Only you can make it stop. It must be you. I am not your parents, but I speak with their blessing and on their behalf. Your mind and body must be strong. I have a responsibility to ensure that. Make the bad things stop!”
No longer able to bear any of this, Safa leapt to his feet, grabbed the lantern, and smashed it on the floor. “You . . . murderers!” He repeatedly stamped on the broken glass. Speaking to the lantern, he shouted, “You did nothing while you watched the crazy men kill everyone. You are fat! You only love your power. No more. No more!”
Monsieur de Guise withdrew a vinyl record and placed it on the turntable. He sat in one of his leather living room armchairs, next to a fire in the fireplace, and sipped his calvados. Safa was sleeping in his bed, exhausted from shock, confusion, and drugs that were fighting each other in his brain and were trying to take his cognitive process in conflicting directions. The professor had ensured that his charge was warm and was sleeping in a position that minimized the chances of him swallowing his tongue.
The music on the record player was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead, a symphonic poem that depicts Charon, the ferryman of Hades, rowing on the River Styx. De Guise closed his eyes and imagined that he was the boatman, taking young Safa to the land of the dead, the boy nervous yet beguiled by the wonder of their adventure. The man who called himself Thales jettisoned the image because it was one that belonged to romance and had no place in a calculating mind whose bedrock was the Enlightenment and reason.
But sometimes the professor couldn’t resist gently testing his devotion to precision and logic; he did so to tease his mind. Occasionally the test would see his stoic thought process crumple in favor of more emotive imagery, much in the way that a highly intelligent man or woman can go wobbly at the knees at the
sight of a beautiful person.
He told himself this was why he liked magic. It was his secret piece of art. A thing of beauty that was unenlightened and unabashedly ethereal. The truth was different. Like everything else about de Guise, his magic was precise trickery. It was science.
His cell phone rang. He accepted the call from Colonel Rowe but didn’t speak; instead, he closed his eyes again and imagined Safa dipping his hand in the Styx, watching the black water drip off his fingers, thinking the fluid calmed the tremors in his limbs and heart.
“Sir. He got away. It appears your Israeli wishes to hurt but not extinguish. He confused my line of sight.”
De Guise let Rachmaninoff’s orchestral notes wash over him. “He is not my Israeli. And I employ you because your sight has thus far always been true. Where is the Englishman?”
“Gone. Heading to an airport, I suspect. I know where he lives, but he probably won’t go there to collect his things.”
“Of course. I want you to go to an airport right now.”
“Sir, I don’t know which airport the Englishman—”
“Of course you don’t. Thirty minutes ago I received a telephone call from someone in my trust who was able to deliver far better and more instructive words than it appears you are capable of today.” De Guise spoke for a further five minutes. “You’ve noted down the details I’ve just given you?”
“I have.”
“Memorize and burn them.”
“They may give the Englishman even greater purpose.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe they will make him impotent with grief. Either way, his judgment will be clouded with emotion. Whether your action stops him in his tracks or puts fire in his heart, his mind will no longer be clear. The Holy Land will remain a mystery to him. That is all that matters.” De Guise opened his eyes and watched the flames lick the wood, like serpents caressing the kindling before consuming it. “Get on the next available flight.”
