Saskia Brandt: Deja Vu Part 9

'The continental FIB hereby requests your full cooperation in the capture of Professor David Proctor, Colonel.' Her face closed on his. She saw the blackheads and the bloodshot sleepiness of his eyes. She looked at his lips and tilted her head. 'I will give you five minutes. Call the person who pays you. Ask them to confirm my ident.i.ty with the Berlin section chief, Beckmann. Then return and, first of all, explain to me and my deputy your rationale for this...filibustering. Second, try to talk me out of arresting you for obstruction of a terrorist investigation.'

McWhirter frowned. His anger was imperfectly contained. Saskia imagined him as an actor who was dumbstruck by the improvisation of a fellow performer. He spun on his heel, crossed the foyer, and was gone.

Jago turned to her.

'Deputy now, is it?'

'Sorry.'

'Don't apologise. I've never been a sidekick. It'll be a new experience.'

'A sidekick?'

'You know, a sidekick. He asks the hero dumb questions so the audience knows what's going on.'

'Ah, I understand.' A memory a a precious jewel a glinted. 'That happens on Enterprise, the 60s TV show. You beam down with the captain. If you are wearing a red s.h.i.+rt you will be subject to a fatal special effect.'

'You'd better call me Scotty, then. He never gets killed.'

'Do you think my speech worked?'

Jago found his smile, then lost it. 'We'll get the gen, or a bullet in the head. Either way, it's progress.'

The rear lawn was pressed and smooth, sloped like a fairway, and tree islands put winter half-shadow across Saskia, Jago and McWhirter as they walked.

'What about the woman on the motorbike?' Saskia asked.

'She's aged between thirty-five and forty-five,' said McWhirter. 'We would have her in custody if it wasn't for the local police.'

To Saskia, Jago said, 'We like to be useful.'

At the peak of the garden, where one could look back across the shoulder of the hotel to the widening valley, a large, camouflaged tent flexed in the wind. A man in civilian clothing stood next to its porch. His hands rested on an a.s.sault rifle. He saluted McWhirter as the party entered. Inside, a dozen men and women were packing computer and office equipment into crates. Unlike the guard, they did not acknowledge the visitors.

'It's lucky you came today,' said McWhirter. 'We would have been gone by tomorrow.'

Saskia moved to the centre of the tent, where a huge shaft had been opened. Its mouth was large enough to admit a car. Four coloured ropes dangled into the hole from a pyramid scaffold.

'Is this the only way down?' she asked.

'I'm sure the detective inspector and I wouldn't feel any less of you if you satisfied yourself with the crime scene photos rather than a trip down there. Am I wrong, Jago?'

The DI peered into the hole. Then he looked at the rig. He seemed unimpressed. 'Saskia, you should think twice about this.'

She removed her coat, handed it to Jago, and shrugged off her suit jacket. Both men stared at her. 'I came to see the crime scene,' she said.

'There are airborne contaminants,' said McWhirter. 'I really -'

'You let Proctor down.' Saskia removed her earrings and put them in a trouser pocket.

'Listen to me, Kommissarin.' He moved close to her. 'I need this hole capped by seven.'

'Then we should proceed.'

McWhirter held her stare, then turned to open an equipment crate. 'Splendid. Why not? We'll call it "The Magical Mystery Tour" and invite coach parties.'

Jago draped Saskia's jacket solemnly across one arm. As she reached to remove her holster, he gripped her knuckles. She read his expression and nodded. The gun stayed.

'Take this,' McWhirter said. He tossed her a helmet. Inside was a tangled bundle. Saskia shook it out to reveal a harness. She was relieved to see that it looked familiar. Rappeling, then, counted among her implanted skills. Her hands began to manipulate its straps with expertise. She fed her legs through and ensured the double-sprocket mechanism was attached to the karabiner.

McWhirter watched her complete the checks. He stepped over the fluorescent cordon and attached his harness to a rope. 'Twenty metres. I'm on blue.' He tapped his helmet and the lamp awoke. Then he jumped into the blackness. The rope whistled through his decelerator.

Saskia looked at Jago. Her thumbs itched. 'You want to come too, Scotty?'

'No thanks. A friend of mine was paralysed using one of those decelerators. Anyway,' he said, hefting her coat and jacket, 'I'm being useful.'

'Right.' Saskia clipped her harness to the rope. She chose the red one, unhinged the decelerator and fitted the line around the two sprockets. She closed it firmly and checked, with a tug, that the rope was gripped. There was a disc attached to the sprocket axle. She pulled it out and turned the dial to twenty metres. Then she snapped it back, checked it was locked, and jumped.

The blackness opened like a mouth. She heard Jago say, 'A friend of mine was paralysed by one of those,' but he was no longer there. It was a memory. She blinked in the rus.h.i.+ng, dry air. She was falling too fast. She would hit the ground (spin, measure, snip) fast enough to break into pieces, fragments of a looking gla.s.s.

She saw a circle of light. She began to (spin) slow. The decelerator squealed and the harness bit into her pelvis. Her weight returned with a thump and her head whipped forward. Gasping, her eyes opened on smoke and dust. She could (measure) see her shoes dangling centimetres from the ground. She pinched the decelerator. It sprang open and the rope was (snip) released.

She landed on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. A pat confirmed that her gun was still in its holster. She resettled her gla.s.ses and tensed as McWhirter stepped towards her. She felt the heat of his face and his spit-smelling breath.

'Your helmet light has three levels of brightness. Just tap. Understood?'

Though her gla.s.ses had zero-light processors, she did not want McWhirter to know. She tapped the helmet three times. The beam became intense and localised. She had landed in the remains of a corridor. It was a long, grey s.p.a.ce choked with debris. She could see furniture, computer equipment, filing cabinets and paper. The air tickled her throat.

'What happened down here?' she asked.

'A fire. Don't be surprised if we suffocate.'

'Was this damage caused yesterday?'

'Most of it by the first bomb, twenty years ago.'

'And you say Proctor was responsible for both?'

'The origin of the explosion was inside the locked workroom of Proctor's laboratory. It should have destroyed the equipment in Proctor's lab, and only that.'

'But it didn't.'

'No. It started a fire, which soon spread. Ceilings collapsed. Eight people were killed. Proctor was evasive during his initial interrogation and evasive again to the inquiry. In their report, the investigators noted their suspicions, but there wasn't enough evidence. He slipped through the net.'

'Until now,' said Saskia, probing. 'When he slipped through the net again.'

McWhirter turned his light in her direction. 'Be careful where you step, Detective. I don't want to lose anyone else.'

He stepped through a rough gap that had once held a door. Puddles splashed as she followed. Inside the room, their torch-beams were thickened by the dust. A huge gla.s.s tank loomed. Its broken edges winked.

'What was in there?'

'A whole world. A world in a fish tank.'

'I do not understand.'

'Of course you don't.' He gestured to the right. 'Proctor's old office. That was where the 2003 bomb went off.'

Saskia removed her gla.s.ses and polished them on the hem of her blouse. As she rubbed, she felt his stare, and the revolver was close in her thoughts until the gla.s.ses were replaced and McWhirter turned away. She looked slowly over the scene to capture it. Later review of the video would reveal the shadowed corners. She stepped forward and something crunched underfoot. She glanced down and saw the eye of a flattened rat. She moved back and b.u.mped into an overturned chair. Her heart seemed to grow large and hot in her chest.

McWhirter's light blinded her again. 'You know, we have a saying in Britain: "The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime." s.h.i.+moda's body was in that room along with the bomb. He still is. Pieces of him, anyway.'

'"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all".'

'Sorry?'

'Another British saying. Do you feel guilty, Colonel, that this happened on your watch?'

'Should I?'

'It happened twice.'

'Detective, few people finish the games they start with me.'

Saskia touched rat with the tip of her shoe. She remembered crying in the back of a taxi after the break up with Simon, the boyfriend who never was. The burn: a question mark. Question: What power did McWhirter have over the Angel of Death, the serial killer whose bottled geni could erupt from her brain in an instant?

'Are you trying to scare me, Colonel?'

'I'm making you aware of the facts.'

'Facts I have. What I need is the feel. Where is the interface with the computer?'

'See for yourself.'

He pointed towards a doorway in the far wall. She moved towards it. The plaintive cries of the rats became louder. The room was small. There was a power here: it was a room in a room in a room, buried deep in the earth. Saskia was struck by the thought that, after she and McWhirter completed their tour, and this place was capped, its silence would return and its power would grow again.

McWhirter breathed in her ear. 'It has an unpleasant feel, don't you agree?'

She turned to him. 'It is certainly dusty.'

'Got what you wanted?'

'Please?'

'You wanted to get into Proctor's head. Are you close enough? You can almost smell him, can't you? Smells like...an incinerator. A crematorium, even.'

'I would like to leave now.'

'It has atmosphere, doesn't it? My little Magical Mystery Tour.'

'I would like to leave.' Her voice was firmer. Her hand rested on her gun. 'Now.'

He laughed. 'I'm only pulling your leg. Come on.'

They retraced their steps. When they reached the corridor, McWhirter was quick to attach his rope. He connected the decelerator and climbed upwards in a caterpillar-like motion, alternately grasping the rope his hands and feet. 'Are you coming?'

'Directly. I want to check to something first.'

'Well, don't stay too long. I heard some noises just now.'

'What kind of noises?'

'Just noises.'

And he was gone. His breath echoed down the shaft and sounded close, but Saskia was alone. She touched the edge of her gla.s.ses and a Heads Up Display appeared, overlaying the dark scene with objecting-parsing halos, and a menu. A cross-hair was locked to her eye movements. She blinked at the cartoonish graphic of a filing cabinet and a preview of her recently recorded footage expanded.

What? she thought. What am I looking for?

Myself?

No. Concentrate.

She cued through the footage until she found the moment she had descended into the research centre. Fast forward some seconds. The dark corners were bright. No objects had thermal properties that the gla.s.ses identified as statistically warmer or cooler than the ambient. She stopped on the image of the corridor wall. Her breath stopped too. Her astonished eyes saccaded to the magnifier icon, blinked, and the image rushed out.

It showed the corridor a this corridor, right now a in almost perfect brilliance. There was the wreckage, the charcoaled furniture and loose paper. But on the wall immediately to the left of the doorway, someone had written a message.

The words blazed white on the grey surface. She lowered her gla.s.ses and looked sternly at the wall. Nothing. She raised the gla.s.ses. The graffiti re-appeared. She swallowed. The writer had used a paint that was reflective in the infra-red portion of the spectrum.

The message read: Das Kribbeln in meinen Fingerspitzen la.s.st mich ahnen, es scheint ein Ungluck sich anzubahnen.

The gla.s.ses were produced in America and their default language was English. Uncommanded, a subt.i.tle ran across the base of her vision.

The p.r.i.c.king in my fingertips lets me say that bad luck is on the way.

Her heart tapped at her ribs. The gla.s.ses skipped through a Euclidean deep-structure a.n.a.lysis of the sentence and returned a quote that was its nearest neighbour in a multi-dimensional semantic s.p.a.ce: By the p.r.i.c.king of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Shakespeare, thought Saskia. Macbeth. The play began with three witches, each an a.n.a.logue of a Fate: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she measures a length. Atropos, she cuts it.

Spin, measure, snip.

Surely the message had been written by Proctor. He must have known, somehow, that she was tracking him and had, somehow again, happened upon a fragment of her past life a a memory that she could not yet fully recall. Plus, he knew she was German.

There was one last element to the graffiti: an arrow that pointed to a slab of masonry. Behind it, she discovered a fist-sized rock and, beneath that, a sealed plastic folder. Inside was a white envelope. It was impossible to tell how long the folder had lain there, waiting.

'Are you alright, hen?' called Jago. 'Sit tight. I'm coming down.'