The Book of Levi

by Clark, Mark

  His eyes widened with imagination. He rubbed his pointed chin and he thought of Elizabeth Dawson.

  *

  Elizabeth was alone in her penthouse staring mindlessly out over the harbour. Her desk was full of untouched paper work. A vacant smile swept suddenly across her pretty face. She was so much looking forward to seeing Sebastian again.

  Chapter 10

  The moon was just beyond full, waning and rising behind Leslie’s laboratory. It was a rarity to see the heavens these past few months but there she was, nonetheless, the faithful old moon, doggedly on patrol as she had been for billions of years, keeping her grim vigil around the Earth, silent and alone.

  In spite of this romantic vision, Leslie cursed her for shedding too much light upon him as he and Johannes quietly made their way behind the building and entered through a back entrance that Leslie had discovered by chance some time ago. He figured that the guards would be out the front unaware of his back door. And he was right.

  Once inside, he and Johannes crept unhindered down the hallway and into the radio room. Leslie made Johannes sit in the corner while he looked around.

  He checked the clock upon the wall. It was almost eleven. He scoured the room to see what he could find but there was nothing of any significance. He scribbled down the precise co-ordinates that guided his satellite dish. He looked at the clock again and he wished the minutes away. He hoped against all hope that Elizabeth and Sebastian didn’t frequent the radio room every night at this time to speak with other cities. He needed at least one solid hour of radio contact with the outside world to try to convince someone that democracy was in trouble in Corporate City. What these distant governments could do to help, he had no idea, but he must try. If nothing else he must let them know. He must alert them to the quiet but ominous insurrection that he was certain was being perpetrated by Sebastian Levi from within the top levels of power in Corporate City.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ Johannes whispered. He looked around nervously. ‘You could have done all this by yourself.’

  ‘True,’ replied Leslie, turning on the radio, ‘but I want you to be a witness and if it comes to a fight, I expect you to back me up.’

  ‘A fight?’ Johannes echoed.

  ‘Yes, a fight,’ Leslie iterated. He turned and looked at Johannes, large and looming in the corner. ‘Or are you just all talk?’

  This suggestion appeared to make Johannes angry. He sat straighter in his seat. ‘I can fight. Never you mind,’ he growled.

  ‘Good,’ replied Leslie, turning back to the radio set. ‘Okay. We’ll be on line in just a few minutes.’

  He rummaged in a draw where he himself had kept his notes and found a writing pad that he didn’t recognise. Nor did he recognise the hand in which it was written, but his guess soon turned to certainty when he read the transcripts written within. These were Levi’s notes. The transcripts of multiple conversations with a plethora of world cities all attested to it. The presidents and prime ministers referred to him as Consul Levi or simply as Sebastian. But who had written them? There were no recording devices to be found in the room. Levi must have recorded them on a portable device and transcribed them after each call. ‘Very meticulous,’ thought Leslie, ‘and methodical’. There were tens of conversations: some with London; others to Teheran; to P’YongYang; to Beijing; to Rangoon. The list went on. The book was thick and full of notes. It must have taken Sebastian Levi all of his time to keep such copious, copperplate records.

  Leslie flicked through the transcripts. It appeared that Levi had given the foreign representatives the idea that he had been democratically elected and that he spoke for the administration of Corporate City. Most of the transcripts were pages long but one page had scrawled across it: The Western Hemisphere can go to hell! It was as if a madman had suddenly acquired the book, graffitied it, and then returned it to its original owner who had resumed his earlier, cordial tone without missing a beat.

  Leslie was about to read the last entry, when he heard a faint sound become audible in the distance. He listened with his hand trembling above the pages of the book, straining to discern what the noise was. He had never heard a sound exactly like it before. But it was growing louder.

  He placed the book back into the drawer and turned to Johannes who was standing now, alarmed at the increasing ruckus. Leslie raised his hand to his mouth and his index finger up to his lips, concentrating with all his might upon the rising din and combing through his mind to match it with anything he had ever heard before. He couldn’t. Whatever it was, it was now very close. Leslie hurried into an adjacent room, stood by the window and pulled back the curtain just sufficiently to see the street outside.

  A tremendous and noisy machine was landing there. It was like a giant mosquito, hovering metres above the road. Blades whirred above it with a smaller blade whizzing around at right angels on the tail. It was a ramshackle sort of affair. Its metal wasn’t painted and it looked like a prototype, but it was efficient enough. It reached the street and a large, armed guard dashed towards it. He opened the door and out jumped Sebastian Levi, resplendent in suit and tie and following him was Elizabeth Dawson, pretty as a picture in her winter jacket. The cacophony of the machine was slowly abating as Sebastian and Elizabeth made their way towards the building.

  ‘Shit!’ exclaimed Leslie.

  ‘What?’ asked Johannes in a gust of fear. He was only a metre away from Leslie but had chosen not to look out of the window for himself.

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Levi,’ Leslie replied curtly as he raced past Johannes.

  ‘Who?’

  Leslie switched off the radio set then checked the general area to ensure that he had left no traces of his presence. ‘Come.’ He waved Johannes into a large walk-in wardrobe that adjoined the radio room.

  Johannes followed. They closed the swinging, wooden doors to separate themselves from the main room. Together they stood behind the doors, silently jockeying for best advantage of the view through the wooden slats carved into them.

  It wasn’t long before they saw Sebastian approach the radio set. They were looking at his back. He switched on the set. Immediately it came to life. Sebastian paused for a moment, perhaps surprised at the speed with which it had warmed up. He seemed to dismiss the thought, however, and turned to address Elizabeth who was now directly behind him.

  ‘Sit,’ he ordered and she did, in the seat just occupied by Johannes.

  ‘Sit?’ muttered Leslie, amazed at the rudeness of the order and at Elizabeth’s readiness to obey it.

  Sebastian sat beside the desk, pulled out his transcript book, pulled a pen from his top pocket and opened the book to the next available blank page.

  Leslie looked on in wonder as Sebastian Levi began a long conference conversation with P’YongYang, Kabul and Teheran. Leslie couldn’t understand what the conversations were about because Levi was somehow able to speak in their native tongues. He appeared to be selling something to each government, because every so often he would mention a price and he repeatedly used the term ‘units’. But what most impressed Leslie, as he watched the magnificently confident Levi, all swarthy and dark-eyed in his dark suit and tie, was the efficiency with which he not only presided over the conversation, but the ease with which he also simultaneously wrote out the entire transcript of all parties as the conversation occurred. Page after page he wrote, presumably in the same copperplate hand, whilst quoting technical details to convince whoever he was speaking to that he could achieve whatever it was he had obviously claimed in previous conversations: not only that, but since none of the voices on the other end of the satellite link were speaking in English, Levi must be translating his notes into English in real time and at the same time running the conference. It was startling – and enormously worrying.

  After twenty minutes or so, through which Elizabeth had not moved a muscle or contributed one word, Levi terminated the conference and replaced the book into the
desk drawer. Elizabeth sat, motionless, to one side. She reminded Leslie of an obedient, well-trained dog.

  But as Sebastian stood and stretched his back Johannes made a small movement that resulted in a barely audible noise. Levi heard it.

  ‘What was that?’ he whispered. Cautiously, he moved towards the slatted swinging doors. Then with a massive thrust, he opened them. He turned on the light. Nothing. He took one step into the wardrobe and crinkled up his nose. ‘It stinks in here,’ he said. ‘Smells like rat shit.’ He turned from the doors and towards Elizabeth. ‘Come,’ he ordered and she followed him from the room.

  In the deep recess of the wardrobe Leslie sat with his hand clasped lightly over Johannes’ mouth. He removed it. ‘You do stink,’ he commented.

  Leslie listened as the strange machine started up on the road outside. And he continued to listen as its whelping, yawning whistle disappeared into the background night.

  He re-entered the radio room and stared down at the drawer for a while. Should he take the book? He wasn’t sure. If he took it Levi would know it was probably him. He couldn’t risk it. He must return at some other time to read it fully, but he couldn’t resist taking one quick look at the English translation of the conversation he had just heard.

  He turned to the last entry and his eyes were immediately drawn to one isolated section of numbers. It read: Teheran – 20; P’YongYang – 20; Kabul – 10.

  The top of the column, under which these numbers were listed, was headed: ‘I.Q. Transference Units’.

  The manufacturing company was clearly listed further up the same page: Hill Enterprises.

  *

  ‘So why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Steady on.’

  ‘I will not steady on. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Leslie was furious with Damien. Johannes listened on with interest.

  ‘Because I don’t want to die. Okay? Is that a good enough reason for you?’ Damien was walking around his apartment like a caged lion.

  ‘You could have told me. I thought you were my friend. How long have you been working for him?’

  Damien stopped walking and stood face to face with Leslie. ‘A couple of weeks.’

  ‘What?’ Leslie squealed. ‘What about our project? Or have you shelved that?’

  ‘No, but mate, this is a royal bloody edict. I can’t refuse. They’ve got me making those transference units twenty four hours a day.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Leslie blurted, more out of exasperation than anger.

  Damien caught him by the elbow. ‘Listen, I’ve been trying to tell you – things are getting very dangerous around here.’

  ‘And what about that thing . . . that helicopter thing? I suppose you made that for that evil bastard from his precious blueprints too, did you?’

  ‘Les,’ Damien said quietly, but emphatically, ‘I didn’t build the damn thing. He did. He welded it together in one of my factories. He built the engine up from nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Leslie blinked. He thought back to the radio room. ‘He built it?’

  Damien nodded. ‘In a couple of days. From the ground up.’

  Leslie moved towards the scraper window. He looked out over the city lights. He imagined the rich in the scrapers and the poor on the streets. He imagined a better world where there was less inequality. He sifted through his mind and tried to find such a place in history. He found none. In his mind he listened to the Marxist chant of the big red bearded man, who was no doubt watching him right at this moment as he stared out of the window. And he shook his head with sorrow at the realisation that Mao’s idea of continuous revolution could never be a possibility in a part of the universe where humans had individual stomachs and minds and where those who rule grow very keen, very quickly, on maintaining the status quo. And he thought about Sebastian Levi – what had Damien quipped? - the Rasputin in the queen’s ear, was it? And he realised what he had suspected for some time – that Sebastian Levi, librarian, had risen above his station and in a blaze of opportunity, that he, Leslie, idiot consul and inventor, had largely and unwittingly provided, had fed his mind upon the honey dew of others and was about to bring about a social change Karl Marx could only have dreamed of, but for all the wrong reasons and ultimately, with all the wrong results.

  He turned back to face Damien and Johannes who had watched his rumination patiently from a distance. ‘We have to stop him,’ he said.

  There was a sudden noise in the corridor outside of the room. Damien and Leslie shared eye contact. Was this the police?

  Edgar burst through the door with tears streaming down his fine-featured face. He staggered towards Leslie, reached him, looked desperately into his eyes and uttered in broken gasps, ‘Dad’s dead.’ He buried his face into Leslie’s chest and sobbed like a young woman betrayed by her first lover.

  Leslie embraced him. He looked towards Damien and then towards Johannes. Both looked downward.

  For some time the apartment was wrenched with the sound of human sorrow. Grief, that greatest plague of man, permeated the room as the young man wailed for the loss of his father, the volume of his agony muffled by Leslie’s body.

  When at last the tears would flow no more, for even tears have a limit, he raised his eyes for comfort and looked up towards Leslie.

  ‘It was arsenic,’ said Leslie, in response to Edgar’s silent question. This renewed the young man’s tears.

  When, once again they subsided, Leslie sat him down. He sat beside him. ‘Your father was poisoned,’ said Leslie, quietly, ‘and we’re going to find out who was responsible. I promise you. Come on. I’ll take you back to my apartment.’

  ‘No you can’t,’ Edgar replied, suddenly free of grief and full of urgency.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’re everywhere.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘At your apartment – there are men everywhere. Police. Big, dumb police. I saw them taking things from your room.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ Leslie asked, the indignation growing within him.

  ‘Everything. Furniture. Everything,’ Edgar replied, grasping on to Leslie as if not to let him go there.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Johannes asked.

  Damien answered for Leslie. ‘It means, old chum, that the game is up. They’re on to you.’

  ‘Levi knew that we were there tonight,’ said Leslie. His eyes were quietly alive with realisation. Suddenly he stood. ‘Quickly. We must get away before we incriminate you, Damien, and you, Edgar.’

  Damien laughed and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I think it’s a bit late for that now, mate.’

  Johannes stepped forward. ‘What about my wife and child?’

  ‘They were taken away,’ replied Edgar, his eyes soft and sad like a puppy’s. ‘I don’t know where.’

  ‘They’re in danger,’ replied Leslie, looking towards Johannes with pent fury in his eyes. He thought - ‘What can I do?’ He moved instinctively once again towards the window and the space that this afforded his caged mind.

  ‘We go to the library,’ replied Johannes. ‘We go to the library, if that’s where he’s taken them. Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Leslie replied. ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Then we go to library and we save them.’

  ‘But how can we get in?’ asked Leslie, ‘The whole damn place is crawling with police. It has been all week. It’ll be covered in them now.’

  ‘We use a back door,’ Johannes replied.

  ‘And you know one?’ asked Leslie, off-hand, as if he knew the answer already.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ the large man replied, unexpectedly. ‘And I’m going there right now, with you bastards, or without you.’

  Chapter 11

  The electricity buzzed and crackled. Elizabeth’s eyes widened and lost some of their lustre. Above, in the console room, Sebastian watched a stream of numbers flow across his computer screen.

  ‘And how do you feel,
my dear,’ he asked her as she joined him beside the console.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied uncertainly. ‘Okay, I think.’

  ‘Excellent. Now it’s my turn. It’s all set up. All you have to do is push this button.’ He pointed to the console.

  Elizabeth stared at him vacantly. He laughed lightly and repeated, ‘This button, my dear.’

  This time she saw the button and nodded.

  ‘This is the big one,’ he explained. ‘I’m doubling my I.Q. to 1000.’

  He may as well have not spoken. Elizabeth looked back at him with bovine serenity.

  Sebastian entered the transference room and attached himself to the metal headpiece. He waved his hand. Elizabeth took the cue. She pushed the button.

  Below them, crawling through the old Tank Stream, were Leslie, Damien, Johannes and Edgar. Johannes was holding a torch and leading the way. ‘This was the city’s water supply about four hundred years ago,’ he explained. ‘About a hundred years ago, after the bombs, a group of people used to live down here.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Leslie, suddenly reefing some cobweb from the side of his mouth.

  ‘Because I’m a well-read man.’ He hesitated, ‘Also, I’ve hidden down here from the police a few times.’

  Ahead was a breach in the ancient stone. The four men crawled through it, until at last they found themselves ascending into a dark, disused corridor. They moved slowly in the darkness, guided only by the faint light of Johannes’ torch. Eventually, they reached a door. It was the door under which Weena had felt the first pangs of love for Rueben well over one hundred years before. Quietly they stepped into the lowest level of the library, surrounded by magazines stacked to a man’s height.

  Johannes turned off the torch. ‘Where to?’