And sometimes it was better to let them all think you were a goner.
For a while, at least.
‘Heard that one myself,’ he said to Jessica. ‘But now I’m back.’
‘My boy is dead,’ she quavered, barely audible. ‘Why would you show your face around here? Why can’t you leave me alone? You failed. You said you’d bring him back and now he’s—’ her words dissolved into a spasm of tears. She buried her head in her arms, shoulders quaking.
‘Where’s Mike?’ Ben said softly.
She slowly raised her head, pointed a trembling finger towards the French windows and the sweep of lawn beyond. ‘Hiding down there in his office,’ she sniffed bitterly. ‘He can’t even be near me now. Says he can’t handle it. Says he’s leaving me. My whole world …gone . . .’
Ben touched her arm as he walked past her. There was nothing more to say, not yet. He swung open the French windows and walked down the garden.
Mike was at his desk in Drew Hunter’s old summerhouse studio, wearing a tweed jacket and getting ready to leave. All the desk drawers were open and empty, and he was busily packing the last of his papers into his briefcase when the door crashed in. Gaping up in speechless alarm, he was half out of his chair by the time Ben grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head twice, three times, against the desk.
‘Going somewhere, Mike?’ Ben rasped in his ear, then hurled him backwards into his chair so hard that it fell over backwards, spilling him to the floor. Mike could have done very little to fight back, even if he’d been conscious at that point.
Ben walked calmly around the desk. He closed the briefcase and tucked it under his arm. Then he seized a fistful of Mike’s jacket collar and dragged him out of the summerhouse; dragged him all the way up the garden and along the pebbled path around the front of the house to the car. He didn’t give a damn if Jessica saw him from the window. Didn’t give a damn if she called the cops.
The car engine was running, and the boot lid and driver’s door were open. Ben hauled Mike upright and bundled him into the boot. Slammed the lid. Walked around to the driver’s door, threw the briefcase inside the car and then got in and took off in a spray of gravel.
19
MIKE’S EYELIDS PEEPED open slowly at first, then snapped wide in panic as he realised he couldn’t move. ‘Where am I?’ he yelled, straining against the bonds that held him to the chair and twisting his head wildly this way and that in the murky shadows. His glasses were badly twisted and cracked, and he couldn’t see properly. Just a little light filtered through the drawn curtains. There was a smell of damp and mouldy carpet. He tried rocking the chair, but it was stuck fast to the floor.
Ben was lounging in another chair a few feet away, where he’d been patiently waiting for the man to wake up. ‘Welcome back,’ he said.
‘Where am I?’ Mike repeated shrilly.
‘Somewhere nobody can hear you calling for help,’ Ben said. He swung open the caravan door with his foot. ‘See?’ he said, motioning out at the empty field. ‘Drew picked the spot pretty well, I’d say. So go ahead and make all the noise you want. It won’t help you.’
Mike’s eyes bulged. ‘What the hell do you want with me?’ he raged. ‘Are you mad?’
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know,’ Ben said. ‘Very dangerous for you, Mike, if you don’t co-operate.’
‘Fuck you! You’ll get nothing out of me!’
Ben sighed, standing up. ‘Thought you might say that. That’s why I brought some truth serum with me.’ He walked across to the far side of the static caravan, picked up a plastic five-litre fuel can and walked back towards Mike’s chair. Taking his time, he unscrewed the top of the can, then set it on the floor and slid it under the chair with a nudge of his boot. The tang of petrol rose sharply upwards as liquid sloshed out of the can’s open nozzle.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Mike sputtered, coughing in the petrol fumes.
Ben drew his own chair closer to the draught of fresh air from the doorway. ‘Peaceful here, isn’t it?’ he said, taking out his Gauloises and Zippo. ‘Nippy sea breeze, though. They say it might warm up quite a bit later. Smoke?’ He flicked open the lighter and tutted. ‘This damn thing’s run empty on me again. Looks like I’m down to matches.’
‘No,’ Mike said, turning white. ‘Please.’
Ben replaced the lighter in his pocket and came out with a matchbox. He struck one and flicked it into Mike’s lap, where it fizzled out in a tiny puff of smoke. ‘Whoops. Sorry.’
‘No! Oh, Jesus! Don’t do that!’
Ben paused, about to strike another match. ‘You’re right, Mike,’ he said, putting the cigarettes away. ‘These things’ll kill you.’
‘What do you want?’ Mike asked, panting hard.
‘Just a few simple answers,’ Ben said. ‘You tell me who you really are, who you work for and where they’ve taken Carl, and you stand a chance of seeing tomorrow. If not …and by the way, there are three more open cans of fuel under the caravan, right below where I nailed your chair to the floor. You’re in the hot seat, Mike. How about we start with your real name and go from there?’
‘Simonsen. Dr Mark Simonsen.’
‘Nice to meet you, Dr Simonsen. You won’t mind if I go on calling you Mike, though, will you? So tell me, Mike. You’re not really a “development consultant” for an optics firm. What are you?’
Mike’s head hung down to his chest. ‘I’m a clinical psychologist,’ he admitted.
‘And not just any old one, either, not with a fancy PhD and such an important job to do. They must have been queuing up to move in with a nice-looking woman like Jessica Hunter, get paid to sleep in her bed every night with nothing else to do except send reports back about her son’s, shall we say, unusual abilities? Where were you about to sneak off to, now that the job was finished? Your next assignment?’
After a long pause, Mike gave a reluctant nod. ‘Germany first. Then onto North Carolina.’
‘Quite the globetrotter, aren’t you, Mike? I’m sure your accent would go down well over there in the States, with whatever divorcée or single mother whose life you were planning on worming your way into. Does she have a psychic kid too?’
Mike sighed heavily. ‘So you know everything.’
‘No, but I soon will. Who’s paying you?’
‘Linden Global. They’re …they’re a provider of technology solutions.’
‘When I hear vague euphemisms like that, I get stressed out,’ Ben said. ‘When I get stressed out, I get this overwhelming urge to light a cigarette.’
‘All right, all right,’ Mike said. ‘They’re a private military contractor, okay? One of the biggest. Urban population control technologies. Surveillance and counter-surveillance. Defence systems. They’re into everything. Recruit from all sectors. Ex-military, intelligence, science. I …I’m just a low level operative. I barely know anything that goes on—’
‘Then I’m wasting my time talking to you, correct?’ Ben said, taking out the matches again.
‘Remote viewing,’ Mike spat out in a hurry. ‘ESP. The Indigo Project. That’s what it’s all about, okay? Please don’t burn me. I can tell you everything.’
‘Then you’d better get on with it. Starting with this remote viewing.’
‘It was researchers at the Stanford Research Institute who came up with the term decades ago,’ Mike explained, nervously eyeing the box of matches in Ben’s hand. ‘Basically, it’s the practice of seeking impressions about an unseen or distant target using extra-sensory perception. When the Americans launched their Stargate Project in the seventies, the goal was to determine the potential military or domestic application of psychic phenomena. They funded a series of rigorously controlled trials at a think tank called The Science Applications International Corporation.’
‘Go on,’ Ben said.
‘The results were classified at the top level, because they were so incredible that even the project leaders could hardly believe them. The first successful remote v
iewer who came out of the program was Joseph McMoneagle, codenamed Psychic 001, who went on to work for thirteen years with the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in California. During his time with Stargate, he provided intelligence data that no regular spy could have fed back. Months before a top-secret new Soviet submarine was even completed, he predicted accurate launch data and in-depth design details that were so revolutionary at the time that nobody but a handful of Russian engineers could have guessed at them. All his predictions turned out to be correct, down to the last detail. Later, when a US army general was kidnapped by the Red Brigade, he was able to pinpoint the exact location where they were holding him captive.’
Mike swallowed anxiously, then went on: ‘McMoneagle wasn’t the only remote viewer who showed extraordinary abilities. Another predicted the release of a hostage in the Middle East three weeks before the kidnappers let him go, with a description of the medical problem that had brought about his release. Yet another, Pat Price, made detailed sketches of Russian weapons manufacturing plants that conformed to US intelligence photographs he’d never been shown. Stargate was declassified in the 1990s to give the impression that nobody took the research seriously any more. The Americans claimed it was history, axed, discredited as never anything more than a joke. The truth is, that was just a disinformation exercise, to make it look as if they were cleaning house while in reality they had no such intention.
‘And it’s not just the Yanks,’ Mike continued. ‘Russia. China. The big players in Europe, as well as emerging powers like North Korea. They’re all at it. Now the floodgates are wide open for private corporations vying to secure billion-dollar contracts from any nation with deep enough pockets. The public has no idea this is happening. But it’s a serious part of classified military intelligence R&D programmes worldwide, and competition is intense. In the days of Stargate, an effective remote viewer could be expected to make contact with a target with about 65 percent reliability. Nowadays the expectations are far higher.’
‘What’s the Indigo Project?’ Ben demanded.
‘A secret initiative founded in 1999 by Linden Global, with the long-term aim of cornering the market in ESP research for defence and espionage,’ Mike replied nervously. ‘Its purpose is to locate and research children with extra-sensory potential, as studies have repeatedly shown a higher incidence of extraordinary psychic perception among the young. It often seems to fade with the onset of adulthood. A global network of scouts are employed to find these gifted children, by infiltrating schools, scouring local media reports and other sources, sometimes just from hearsay.’
Ben stared at him, appalled, as the pieces fell into place. The Spanish chess incident that had drawn public attention to Carl’s abilities; the newspaper clipping hidden in Mike’s briefcase. Everything Drew had said was true. Carl had been deliberately targeted by these people. ‘And that’s where you came in.’
Mike nodded miserably. ‘Where possible, field agents with psychology training are inserted to gain further evidence. There’s a 99-plus per cent elimination rate due to all the false claims and new-age bullshit that’s out there. Early assessments strongly indicated that Carl was one of the genuine ones.’
‘So what happens to the genuine ones?’ Ben said through gritted teeth.
‘The extent of the research needed isn’t possible within the home environment. The subjects are removed to a secure location with the necessary facilities.’
‘You mean kidnapped. What facilities?’
‘It’s a specialised laboratory unit in the Black Forest,’ Mike said. ‘Extremely secret, very well hidden in the mountains. Armed guards patrol twenty-four-seven.’
‘Germany. That’s where you said you were going next.’
‘I travel up to the lab from time to time,’ Mike admitted. ‘It’s part of my work.’
Ben glared at him. ‘To do what, help train your kidnap victims into little psychic spies for whichever government agency bids the highest?’
Mike shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s been tried, and it’s a waste of time. The subjects failed to perform under the duress of being separated from their families and placed in an unfamiliar environment. Coercion didn’t work, and the incentive of financial gain was meaningless to them. They were children. Simply too frightened and confused by what was happening to them, with fatal results for whatever ESP aptitude they might have shown under normal relaxed conditions. We had to come up with alternatives. It’s now essentially a neuroscience-based approach.’
Ben could feel the cold fury slowly spreading through him. Loose matches sprinkled the caravan floor as he crushed the box flat in his fist without even knowing it. ‘Neuroscience-based – what does that mean? That you pull their brains apart into pieces to see how they work? Is that the idea?’
‘No!’ Mike protested, blanching at the look on Ben’s face. ‘I mean, surgical procedures are strictly considered an extreme measure.’
‘An extreme measure. But not out of the question.’
‘Where at all possible, other analytic methods are used. CT scans, imaging techniques . . .’
‘Carl had better be alive,’ Ben warned. ‘Or you’re going to wish you never had been.’
‘Look, I’m fond of that boy. I mean it. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. You think I’d want him to suffer?’
‘What happened to the children who failed to perform under duress?’
Mike looked down at his chest and made no reply.
Ben stood up, fists clenched. ‘Answer me, Mike. What happened to them? They couldn’t be returned to their families, could they? Not after what they’d been through. Not in the state they were in. Did they just disappear?’
‘Look, that’s not my area,’ Mike blurted. ‘I’m just a field assessor.’
Ben stood over him, wanting to tear his head off. ‘How many other children like Carl are they holding now?’
Mike’s reply was almost a sob. ‘Carl makes seven.’
‘Boys and girls? How old?’
‘Both. Gender makes no difference. The youngest is Franck. He’s nearly eight. Satoko’s the eldest now, with Kristina g—’ Mike checked himself and shut his mouth.
‘You were about to say “gone”, weren’t you?’ Ben asked harshly. ‘What happened to Kristina?’
‘She …escaped. There was …an accident. She fell.’
‘Fell?’
‘Down a ravine. The mountains are full of them. They found the body at the bottom …but you have to believe me. I wasn’t responsible for what happened, I swear. I wasn’t even there.’
‘Oh, you’re not that involved,’ Ben said, his fists clenched in anger. ‘Then I suppose you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Paul Finley, either.’
‘He was asking too many questions,’ Mike jabbered. ‘By the time we realised he was following me and taking pictures of my meetings, he’d already identified one of my contacts from an old army connection. He was getting too close.’
‘So you had him killed. Just like your three goons for hire tried to do to me in Dover. Did they actually believe Drew Hunter had sent them, or is that just what they were told to say?’
‘We really didn’t want you to be hurt!’
‘No, you didn’t want to have to replace me,’ Ben said. ‘Not with your precious asset on the run, and the clock ticking. But you couldn’t let me get too close to Finley’s discoveries, either, could you? My purpose was just to recover your lost property, and you bastards were watching me the whole time to make sure I did my job. Dover. Monaco. Every step of the way. I know when I’m being followed. I wasn’t. How did you do it?’
‘You don’t even begin to understand what you’re dealing with here, do you?’ Mike yelled with a flash of defiance. ‘Linden Global is one of the biggest private defence corporations in Europe. Big enough to have their own satellite division. They see everything. And they’re watching us right now. They can pinpoint our location to within a metre.’
‘I
doubt that very much, Mike. Nobody knew I was coming back to Jersey. I’ve been presumed dead for three weeks, remember? Burned up in the fire. And you know what they say about presumption.’
‘I’ll be missed, don’t you see?’ Mike threatened. ‘I’m due to report to the lab. If I don’t turn up at the pick-up-point, the pilot will report back immediately and they’ll know something happened. It won’t be long before they figure it out. They’ll hunt you down. You’ll be a walking dead man.’
Ben smiled. ‘Then we’ll have to make sure you don’t miss that flight, won’t we?’
20
THE SMALL AIRFIELD was out in the countryside, twenty minutes from the ferry port of Saint-Malo. The corporate brains behind the Indigo Project were clearly hot on secrecy, as Ben could tell from the disused state of the rendezvous point. Buildings and hangars stood empty amid patches of yellowed and weed-strewn grass that waved in the breeze. There wasn’t a soul about to witness the mysterious comings and goings of Dr Mark Simonsen, a.k.a Mike Greerson, and that was exactly how his employers wanted things to be.
Mike peered closely at his watch. ‘Any time now,’ he muttered, and squinted myopically up at the sky, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. He walked a few steps from the car towards the airstrip. He was still moving stiffly from his undignified confinement in the boot during the ferry crossing from Jersey. ‘I hear it,’ he said, scanning the sky.
So could Ben. The distant buzz of an approaching plane, growing steadily louder. Moments later, he saw the incoming aircraft’s tiny white speck against the blue.
Ben grabbed Mike’s briefcase from the car. He’d already examined its contents on the ferry. There was no incriminating paperwork inside, only a set of disks containing information that he was certain would be inaccessible to him even if he’d had a computer. The case also contained a laminated ID pass card and a clip-on name badge, both with the company header “Drexler Optik GmbH”. In a zippered compartment was a spare pair of glasses, a comb and some pens.
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