by Hocking, Ian
“So any time from 1998 to 2013.”
“Give or take.”
Saskia grunted dismissively. “This is all hypothetical anyway. We are going to find your daughter and then I am going to leave.”
David said quietly, “Only to return for me.”
“That is correct.”
They arrived fifteen minutes later. The Valley of Fire lay in a rocky basin about six miles long and four miles wide. They drove into the valley from the east. For the first time, David felt uncertain about their interpretation of the clue. Where could a research centre hide in such a small, public area?
“Should we drive round to the visitor’s centre?” he asked.
Saskia pointed to a large map near the car park entrance. “I think we should examine the map first. Perhaps it will be marked.”
“Are you serious?”
Saskia pointed to her mouth. “Observe the slight muscular twitch. That indicates irony.”
David considered this. He extended his middle finger. “Can you guess what this indicates?”
David sighed. He was getting hotter and the display was becoming difficult to read in the direct sunlight. “Map computer, are there any places that are out-of-bounds?”
“Yes,” said the female voice.
Five seconds later, Saskia snapped, “Where?”
“There is a government meteorological station east of the White Domes. This area is prohibited.”
“What and where are the White Domes?” continued Saskia.
“Welcome to the Valley of Fire,” said the computer, “the oldest State Park in Nevada.” On the map, at the northernmost tip of the park, a red dot pulsed. As they watched, it became a piece of video footage that showed huge, sloping banks of sandstone stained with horizontal ribbons of purple, yellow and blue. “The White Domes area contains a breath-taking arena of coloured stones. The bands you see here were stained by powerful oxides, including iron and manganese –”
“Computer, we want to go there,” David said.
The computer stopped. It remained silent. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve. He had forgotten, in his dealings with Ego, how obtuse and frustrating computers could be. “Computer, can we go there?”
“Yes.”
“Computer, give me a map.”
“Please insert your card.”
David took Ego from his wallet and examined the edges of the display. Sure enough, there was a magnetic strip reader on the right-hand side. “Ego,” he said, “This is a magnetic strip transaction. Cash. Don’t give it any personal information.”
“Understood,” said Ego.
David swiped it through the slot and heard the answering bleep. He replaced Ego. The computer chimed, “Thank-you, Anonymous Contributor. Car park and camping fee gratefully accepted. The map has been transferred to your personal computer. Enjoy your stay.”
It was a seven-mile drive to the White Domes. The sun climbed higher but the air conditioning kept them cool. The sweat dried on his forehead. Saskia said nothing.
The laser shone on David’s window. A small camera, placed high on the outcrop of the Met Four weather station, collected the invisible reflection. The light was analysed over the next half-hour as the window vibrated in tune with their conversation. The computer converted the vibrations to sound and searched their utterances for key-words. It found none.
They did not see the dusty rooster-tail of a car as it approached from the south. It drove itself. Both of its occupants we quite still. One was reading.
There was only one security laser. It switched to the new arrival. There was nothing to analyse because the passengers said nothing.
Saskia and David saw the car. If the laser had been trained on them, it would have heard David say, “My God, that’s Jennifer. My daughter. Who is she with?” and Saskia’s reply, “That’s Detective Frank Stone. FIB. Based in Moscow. Or so I thought.”
Jennifer shuffled her papers and pushed them into her satchel. She turned to Frank and said, “Are you going to follow me inside?”
“I have to accompany you the entire way. That’s my brief, ma’am,” he said stiffly.
“Well, I hope you have clearance,” Jennifer replied doubtfully.
Frank unfolded his legs and pulled himself from the car. The roof almost reached the belt of his trench coat. Sweat ran from his fingertips but he would not remove the coat. “I have clearance from Hartfield himself. A renegade agent from the FIB is treated seriously.” He waved a blue ID badge. “Level one clearance.”
Jennifer had never seen a level-one clearance. Frank had the key to the city.
“Seems quiet,” he said. He scanned the car park and his eyes fell upon something. He was an eagle on the verge of prey or a hare transfixed. Jennifer could not decide which. Frank needed more sleep. He had flown the Atlantic through the night to reach her. “Jennifer, get back in the car.”
“What?” she said.
“Get back in the car. It’s her.”
“Who?”
“Saskia Brandt.”
Jennifer found it difficult to balance. So Frank’s story was true. The renegade agent wanted to contact her. She had asked on her balcony this morning and she wanted to ask again: for what reason? He would not say.
His hand fell to his hip and she realised why he had been reluctant to remove the trench coat. There was a shape under the cloth.
“I’ll get back in the car,” she said. She turned on her heel and climbed back inside. She stole a glance at Met Four. Would their cameras be trained on the car park? Definitely. But no there were no human eyes behind those cameras. They were computer controlled; a computer would not be sensitive to the precipitation of violence. It could only respond to overtly suspicious behaviour. Jennifer crossed her fingers and sank behind the driver’s wheel. It had never been useful before.
Frank looked back at her. He saw that she was in the car and nodded. He pushed a palm towards her. Stay there. The palm fell back to his hip, to the shape.
Jennifer made a plan. If something happened to Frank, she would run from the car. Perhaps she would make the steps of Met Four. She didn’t know what Brandt wanted from her, but Frank had warned her of the danger. Everything that he had said had come true. Yes, she would run from the car. Her running would alert the computer, which would alert guards, who would come to her rescue.
Through the arch of the steering wheel she saw Frank begin to move. He walked slowly, his trench coat flapping. He flexed life into his gun hand. Someone emerged from another car. He stopped. Nothing moved but the tail of his coat.
The sun was high. He looked like a gunslinger. Jennifer made a mental note. When he returned, she would kiss him.
Frank stood with his legs apart. He could see that Saskia was alone. Her hair was constantly redrawn by the wind. He looked at her waist and, at that moment, her jacket blew open. She had no gun. Next he checked the car. There was a sun reflection on the windscreen, so he blinked twice. His contact lenses rotated. Their polarizing filter changed and the windscreen became transparent. He looked again and again, zooming as necessary. The car was empty.
In German, he said, “You are arrested by Detective Frank Stone of the Federal Office of Investigation, Russian section, badge number 012-919-001, on the internal charge of desertion. This charge will be pursued under the EU constitution. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be recorded at the discretion of your arresting officer and reproduced in a court of law as evidence against you. This data is the property of the FIB.”
Saskia did nothing. Hair blew across her face and she made no move to wipe it away. Frank flexed his calf muscles nervously. He visualised reaching for his gun and pulling the trigger. He imagined crouching, rolling, coming up with the gun. He imagined a dozen scenarios.
Frank took another step forward. “Saskia? Did you hear me?”
The wind gusted again. Saskia’s hair flew behind her. She said, “You lied to me, didn’t you?”
�
�What?”
“In Brussels. You didn’t follow me because you wanted to help. You were under orders. The orders were to give me misinformation about my past. To stop me searching. The newspaper story about the Angel of Death was a complete lie. Putting it in Russian stopped me from reading the details.”
Frank smiled. He had charmed Saskia before. He would do it again. “Saskia, I have to take to you back. Are you alone?”
“Just me.”
“Where’s your gun?”
Frank continued to speak in German. It was unlikely that an American security computer would speak the language. He did not need a jurisdiction problem; partly on general principle, but also because he had not been briefed on the background to Saskia’s presence. That would give her the advantage in manipulating the situation if security officers began to ask questions.
“Gun’s in the car. Shall I get it?”
Frank held his smile, but, inwardly, he was disappointed. They were amateurs, of course. All of Jobanique’s agents. Previously murderers, but what qualifications did that give them? Enough to track down one of their own kind. The intelligence of a bloodhound. Not enough to avoid simple mistakes. For that, you needed experience.
“No, I think I’ll get it,” he said.
He walked over to the passenger side and pushed Saskia away with the back of his hand. He made sure it brushed the top of her breasts. She scowled.
The wind was becoming stronger. He squinted against the spray, held the car door open and leaned inside. Information reached him in waves. First, he remembered that Saskia had emerged from the passenger-side of the car. That unsettled him. If she was on her own, why would she sit in the passenger seat? Second, there was no gun. The two realisations combined, fought, and he froze. He began to imagine scenarios.
He began to back out.
A hard, cold cylinder jammed between his buttocks. He gasped – a backwards-scream – and stood, but Frank Stone was a tall man in a small car. There was a sound not unlike a car door being slammed. Then he slid forward onto his belly, unconscious.
Saskia paused. She wondered if Frank was faking. He had believed her too readily. She had lured him into the car and waited for David to creep around from the boot, where he had been crounching with her gun. As she had guessed, David had not tried to play to the hero. He had passed the gun to her. She had jabbed the gun in Stone’s back. Somehow she had aimed too low and pushed too hard. He had knocked his head and collapsed.
“OK,” David prompted.
She blinked. She did not understand.
He managed to indicate Stone with his left eyebrow. His face contorted. Met Four was behind him. It was behind them both. Frank was obscured and Saskia herself obscured the gun. That gave them time. What did David mean? Then he whispered, “Inside.”
Quickly, they pushed Frank’s legs into the car. Now he lay across the driver and passenger seats. His gun was still in his hand. Saskia reached over and squeezed the top of the weapon. She shook it and the magazine slipped out. She put it her jacket pocket. Then she grabbed his shoulder to lift his torso and felt underneath with her hand. She snaked into the lapel pocket and found the security pass.
Frank was dribbling. She knew that he would have executed her. Her instinct was clear on that. With that realisation came another. She needed to understand Jobanique’s motivations. That was her thread from the labyrinth.
Why had Frank Stone been improperly briefed? He should have expected to find two people, not one. Frank had acted as though he had been given only Jennifer’s name. If Jobanique had wanted to recapture Proctor, why would he limit Frank’s effectiveness? Frank was eminently capable of retrieving Proctor.
He was more capable than Saskia. Why had Jobanique abandoned Proctor?
Saskia pulled at her lip. No, that wasn’t the right question. There was nothing to suggest that Jobanique had given up on Proctor. He had tried to remove Saskia from the scene.
She turned and looked at Met Four. The wind howled. Sand rushed around her.
Jobanique had changed his mind. His enigmatic, closed mind. If he did not want Proctor to be captured, that meant he wanted Proctor to reach his destination. His daughter. What did she have to do with this?
That was the real question.
Jennifer raised her head very slightly. The agent was approaching. A man accompanied her but it wasn’t Frank. He had been knocked out and now they were coming to get her. She considered telling the car computer to get her out of there, but the computer would take several seconds to do it. By then, they would have reached her.
Her fingers trembled. She felt for the door handle and gripped it hard. She would make a run for Met Four.
No, she thought. Lock the doors first, then just drive away.
She touched a button on the dashboard. The doors locked. She touched another and the engine sprang into life. She looked up. Brandt and her companion were closer.
She said, “Computer –” but she did not finish her sentence. She could not look away from Brandt’s companion. He bore an astounding resemblance to her father.
The man caught her stare and smiled.
Jennifer’s mind cartwheeled away.
A summer’s day in Oxford. They were walking down Broadstreet, close to Balliol College. The sky was blue. It was August; most of the students had gone. She was six or seven years old. They had been walking down Broadstreet, just the two of them, students gone, and Jennifer had announced to her father, “Daddy, did you know that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body?”
Her father stopped short. Passers-by were forced to walk around them. He frowned in concentration, as though he was checking her question against a mental database of brain facts. Then, tentatively, he reached up and touched right side of his head. Suddenly, his left leg flailed into the air behind him, seemed to rise up past his shoulder, and finish in front. Jennifer clapped her hands and giggled. Her father, who was so tall, looked down. His expression was utterly serious. “Do you know – I think you’re right.” Then, he reached up with his left hand and prodded the other side of his head. His right leg swung around just as the left had done. This foot landed in front of the other. “Jennifer,” her father said, “you are right.” Jennifer began to laugh. Her father began to walk. One leg at a time, he goose-stepped down Broadstreet, crash crash crash, Jennifer running circles around him. She laughed so much it began to hurt. When she saw the expressions of those around her, she laughed even harder. They continued until her father began to giggle as well. Finally, he removed his fingers from his wavy black hair and took her hand. He said, “Jennifer, your father’s a fool,” and Jennifer had beamed.
She had wanted to say that she loved that about him, but couldn’t find the right words.
She unlocked the door.
Her father was standing outside. His face was older now, an impressionistic sketch of man who had goose-stepped down Broadstreet thirteen years before. He was trying not to laugh. Jennifer opened the door and stepped out into his arms. She could not cry. She wanted to hold this man but didn’t know what it would do to her. There was no feeling that his proximity – his physical presence – meant that everything was fine…but it meant that, perhaps, some day, it would be.
David clung to her. She squeezed the breath from his lungs. She had grown. She was as tall as him. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. Her ear brushed against the stubble on his cheek. Her hair blew across his face – he could smell her shampoo – and he realised, with some sadness, that his girl had become a woman.
The hair blew away and he opened his eyes. The Valley of Fire had gone.
It was the late 1970s. He was seven or eight years old. He lived with his mother and father on a farm in Kent. That autumn, he had wandered into his father’s garage. The garage was a place of power. It smelled of sawdust, black paint and oil. His father had looked up from his workbench and asked him what was wrong. Nothing was wrong, David stammered. He would like a rabbit. Thomas, his best fri
end, had one, and he wanted one too. His father set down his drill and reached for a cloth to wipe the oil from his hands. They were always oily. “What does your mother think?” he had asked. She said it was OK, David replied. He was looking at the floor.
That same week, David and his father bought the rabbit from a gruff farmer in the neighbouring village. They put it in a hutch and David promised to feed it every day and clean it out once a week. He named it Bugs Bunny. His father wrote Bugs’s name on the hutch with a gold pen. The autumn came and went. Near Christmas, David began to do well in school. He became absentminded. At the back of his mind he knew that he had not been taking care of Bugs as he should, but he knew that his father would. After all, Bugs lived in the garage, his father’s work place.
On Christmas morning, before he could open his presents, David’s father told him that they had to see something the in garage. David could not help but smile; he guessed it was a new bike like Thomas’s.
David knew something was wrong when he saw that the garage was the same as ever. There were no presents. He glanced, puzzled, at his father. Before he could ask a question, his father clipped him around the ear. He was a big man with hands like shovels. David fell onto his knees. He landed on the wooden planks of the car pit. The edges of his vision to sparkled.
“Look at Bugsy,” his father said quietly.
David climbed to his feet. He was too surprised to cry. He was too surprised to think very much at all…but he was sure that he did not want to look at Bugsy.
“Look at Bugsy,” his father said again.
David took a deep breath. It shuddered into his chest. It was awfully loud. He didn’t want to cry. He turned and looked at Bugsy.
Bugsy’s hutch was in shadow. He stepped forward and peered. Bugsy was in a corner and David began to cry. The wood shavings that made Bugsy’s bed had been pushed into one corner. They were bloody. There was blood on the meshed window, and blood too on the straw of his water-feeder. Bugsy himself was in the corner. He was stretched out. His grey-white hair had yellowed. He was lying on his side, lying on weeks of his own shit. David could see his ribs. His belly shuddered just as David’s did right then. Bugsy’s face was pinched. Red-coloured spit bridged the gap between his nose and his front paws.