My Name Is Nobody

by Matthew Richardson

  But still nothing. The file seemed to be just another false start, offering no promise of redemption. For a moment now, he wondered how it would all end, hearing the sound of boots and weapons, any last chance exhausted in a final, hopeless hunt for the truth.

  He was just about to shrug off such morbid premonitions, when a bark of noise snapped him back to full consciousness. He stopped, listening more closely. But there could be no mistake. The sound had been too loud to have come from anywhere else in the hotel.

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  57

  He didn’t move at first, trying to slow the tempo of his own breathing, suddenly conscious of the slightest creak of his feet. He looked towards the door, then turned to the window on his right. The curtains were threadbare, easily thin enough to spot the whirl of police sirens. Perhaps they had turned off the lights, decided on a stealth approach, knowing that the vaguest noise could send him heading for an escape route.

  He tried to recall the exact frequency of the first two knocks. They had been firm and reasonably close together, loud enough to snap someone awake but not the usual battering-ram of sound. He waited for another second, then heard the rap of a further three knocks. They were quieter this time, as if nervous about making too much noise and attracting attention. Vine felt a bead of sweat slide down the side of his face, heavy on his skin.

  He waited to see if he could catch the sound of footsteps retreating. But there was silence. Broken only moments later by another sound. A voice.

  ‘Solomon … it’s me.’

  He moved over to the door and reached for the handle, gently teasing it open. Rose cast a quick glance behind her, before making her way in. Vine closed the door, relief allowing him to breathe again.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he said, checking the door was properly locked.

  ‘I always remembered you telling me this was your back-up plan,’ she said. ‘Top room, top floor, Hugh Street.’

  ‘A major operational mistake.’

  ‘I’m not sure you were in fully operational mode at the time … I’m sorry. I checked my tail all the way here. I didn’t know who else to turn to.’

  He wondered how many times during the last few years he had imagined her saying something like that. Standing there, she looked more real than ever somehow, the glossy swish of hair tangled with rain, the curves of her face depressed by recent events. There was no distance between them now, the public face replaced by the private one.

  His mind had been so full of disappointment at the MIDAS file and the lack of connection to the Nobody mole that it took him a moment to think of Wilde’s hostage video. He dismissed all other concerns, hauling himself back to the present.

  ‘When did you see the video?’ he said. He walked over to the small plastic tray with a rickety hotel kettle on it at the end of the desk and began trying to find some mugs.

  She looked exhausted even at the task of remembering. ‘I was with Cecil,’ she said. ‘A final debrief on the Yousef surveillance.’

  Vine tried to staunch a pang of unease. Was it Cecil who had sent her here? Were watchers taking up position around the hotel? ‘They may have exaggerated it for the cameras,’ he said, unable to summon any other comforting words. He wanted to tell her everything, pool his suspicions. But he stopped himself, feigning control. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, nodding towards the one chair opposite the chipped wooden desk. ‘Coffee?’

  Her lips creased into a near echo of a smile. Her voice was croaky. ‘Coffee would be great.’

  Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes as the kettle boiled. Vine handed her a mug and then perched uneasily on the side of the desk, no other chair in sight. Bunched in here like this, he couldn’t help but wonder what their marriage could have been like, to spend forty, fifty years discovering their unique routines. Sometimes he had imagined that future could still be exhumed and dusted down as new. Yet here – now – he realized that had always been nothing more than fantasy.

  He tried to gather his thoughts, debating whether to ask her more about the hostage video, find out what Cecil had told her. But as he looked at her more closely, rain-soaked and huddled on the chair in front of him, he knew that she hadn’t come here for an interrogation. She had yet to ask him about Yousef and could expect the same favour in return.

  After an appropriate pause, he said: ‘Now that the operation is over, what next?’

  Rose took another sip. ‘Back to Thames House in the long term. But there’s a big UK–US commemoration service in Westminster this morning that Cecil roped me into a while back, lots of security grandees attending. The Speaker’s Office was getting pressure from the US embassy, wanted someone as intelligence liaison. The usual drill. Nothing too exciting.’

  Vine could already feel his attention being dragged elsewhere, unease beginning to crawl through his body. He thought of the fake hostage video again, unconsciously clutching the handle of the coffee mug tighter, fingers digging into the chipped enamel. The chaos of the last few days, the last few hours, pressed in on him again, clammy and distinct.

  He forced himself to continue breathing, slowly – a gentle iambic rhythm – and not rush to react. And yet, strangely, all he could feel was the terrifying idea of absence, of aloneness so acute it was almost like a physical force.

  She looked up now, the mug paused at her lips. Rain was still sliding down from her hair across her face, eyes splashed with make-up, limbs rocking softly with the cold. She knew him as well as anyone ever had, he realized, learning to distinguish the truths from the half-truths. There was no way he could bluff her. She peered at him just as she had when he first visited her flat what seemed like a lifetime ago, exposing all his calculated evasions.

  He had promised himself he wouldn’t say anything; but now, cornered by the look in her eyes, he knew he had to tell her.

  He cleared his throat, turning away from her. The words felt clumsy and raw. ‘Before he died, Cosmo Newton discovered something,’ he said. ‘Something about Gabriel’s disappearance.’ He heard the words leave his mouth, hover in the space between them. Ahead, he could see her interest begin to stir, body tensing slightly on the chair, disturbed and watchful.

  ‘Newton left me some papers. Papers about the Nobody mole and a black op masterminded by Cecil called MIDAS,’ he continued. ‘Somehow he believed the truth about the identity of the Nobody mole was connected with the MIDAS operation.’

  She didn’t respond, silent except for the muffled rhythms of her breathing. She had stopped drinking, merely cradling both palms against the side of the mug, leeching off the warmth.

  Vine paused, feeling the next thought catch. Every instinct told him not to do this, to find a way to persuade her without polluting whatever remained between them. But no answers came to him. Instead, there was just that sensation of absence again, of impending loss, stronger even than before.

  She surfaced now, eyes pinched with confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

  He heard his voice rise a fraction, self-control starting to loosen. ‘What if nothing in this case is what it appears to be?’ he said. ‘The kidnap, the hostage video … what if something else is really going on?’

  There was an almost imperceptible shake of her head, before her expression jammed for a moment, body locked rigidly forwards. She stayed like that for another second. Then it happened. Slowly her face seemed to weaken slightly, the tension caving in on itself, eyes darting warily back to his.

  ‘You told me yourself that you sometimes had doubts about what Gabriel was doing. That you thought you might spend your life on the run,’ he said. ‘I looked back at everything. The evidence is all there … We just didn’t want to see it.’

  There was no reply. In its place the silence lingered, stretching out unendurably. His breathing was ragged and loud, and he tried to calm himself. But his heart continued to beat violently in his chest, a bone-rattling sensation that disorientated him for a moment. Now that he had said it, all h
e could think of was the sight of Gabriel Wilde in the soiled orange prison uniform, the knife cleaned and sharpened, etching its route around his neck. Of Rose seeing the footage for the first time.

  Just when he couldn’t bear the silence any longer, he heard a rustle of movement and glanced over to see her placing the mug down on the carpet, standing up awkwardly from the chair. She seemed unable to look at him, eyes carefully tracking the paces between her and the door.

  ‘Please, don’t …’

  ‘This was a mistake,’ she said, fastening the last of the buttons on her coat, addressing him almost like a stranger. ‘I should never have come.’

  Vine felt a different sensation grip him now, tracking slowly through his body, a heat clawing at his neck and up into his mouth. It tasted a lot like shame.

  She was soon at the door, fingers grazing the handle. The words spilled out before he had a chance to stop them, a garbled rush: ‘But Newton was convinced …’

  She stopped him in mid-sentence, turning her gaze towards him for a final time. Looking closer now, he saw a thin line spreading itself down her cheek. For a second, he couldn’t tell whether it was residue from the rain or something else entirely.

  When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, broken, washed out with tiredness. ‘Newton was an old man, Solomon. An old man with a crazy theory about my husband and a black op from half a decade ago. He might not have known better. But you should have.’

  Without another word, she opened the door and slipped through, letting the crunch of the lock swing closed behind her, vanishing into the atmosphere as if she had never arrived at all.

  58

  Vine didn’t move for a long time, body and mind numb from what had just happened. For once, his brain didn’t whirr with thoughts. Instead, he just stood there, like a container emptied of its cargo, waiting to rust over and decay. Only as he saw the alarm clock blink towards 7.45 did he push himself forwards to the poky bathroom. He jabbed on the light and began peeling off his clothes, stepping into a lukewarm trickle. He stayed there as it went completely cold, unmoved by the icy hit on his face, still unable to wash away the hot, clinging feeling of shame. Finally, when his skin began to get scratchy with too much water, he reluctantly turned it off. He couldn’t face crawling back into the clothes he had with him and wrapped himself in the brittle excuse of a robe that hung from the bathroom door, slopping moisture out on to the carpet with his feet.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of paper poking through from under the door. No longer caring about the consequences, Vine opened the door and stooped down to retrieve the edition of The Times that had been left outside.

  He took a seat and glanced blankly at the front page. A screenshot of Gabriel Wilde from the hostage video stared back at him. He turned the page and then caught a photo of Ahmed Yousef, another of himself and several frenzied paragraphs concerning the ongoing police inquiry. He ignored both; his eyes fell on a story further down the page. EXTRA SECURITY FOR WWII COMMEMORATION SERVICE. He scanned down to read the main text:

  Security has been tightened around the Palace of Westminster in anticipation of a service today in the Crypt Chapel to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Presidential Proclamation 2714, signed by President Truman in 1946 to formally declare the cessation of hostilities in the Second World War. Though the final guest list is not publicly known, sources suggest attendees will include key members of the Diplomatic Service, representatives from the White House, State Department and CIA as well as Britain’s senior spymasters, including the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Director-General of the Security Service (MI5). Following a short parade down Whitehall at 8.30 a.m. involving British and American troops, the service is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.

  It was the service Rose had mentioned, a jamboree for the security establishment. Vine felt ill even at the memory of their conversation. He endured the story for as long as he could before folding the paper and chucking it in the direction of the bin. He tipped his head back and let his eyes fall shut again. Was Rose right? Had Cosmo Newton been just an old man with too much time, unanchored since his wife died, happy to lose himself in half-remembered spy games? Was Vine allowing his grief at Newton’s death and unacknowledged feelings for Rose to affect his judgement, ultimately blaming Gabriel Wilde for his own failings? He looked around at the dull furnishings of the room and the threadbare carpeting. He could still taste the aftermath of Rose’s perfume. For a moment, he saw all the paths he wished he had taken stretch out before him. There were so many decisions he wanted to undo. If he had been more malleable, more of a company man, willing to shelve his conscience and simply comply, perhaps then life would have been different. Instead, he was locked in a zero-sum game he was sure to lose. Every port would be alerted, as would all airports. It was only a matter of time now before they found him.

  He was about to get up when he felt his left foot hit against a solid object beneath the desk. Vine bent down and pulled out his bag, still heavy with Wilde’s edition of The Odyssey. He eased it out of the bag and leaned back in the chair, idly teasing the cover open and admiring the feel of the pages on his fingertips. There was still an unfathomable and unsettling quality to it. If he wasn’t holding it in his palms, it seemed like something he might have invented at his most fevered and paranoid, an inexplicable oddity that defied all reason and explanation. Still the question beat at him: why had Gabriel Wilde sent this just a matter of days, hours even, before he disappeared?

  Vine could feel the claws of his old obsessions begin to dig in, connotations starting to build. He stopped. That way madness lay. He had wasted enough time indulging in such fantasies, anything to avoid the fact that Cosmo Newton was dead, that he was now alone for good, trapped in a terminal solitude entirely of his own making. He looked over at the discarded copy of The Times, debating whether the bin was large enough to house the book as well, content with the thought that it would be gathered up by a cleaner and spirited out of his life for good.

  He was just about to try, when he caught himself glancing down at the inscription, hovering instinctively over each word.

  Dear Solomon,

  In case we don’t meet again, I want you to have this. All wisdom lies in this book. Take care of Rose for me.

  Yours,

  Gabriel

  He couldn’t help but weigh the words again, one final time. In case we don’t meet again. It seemed like a taunt, daring Vine to catch him. All wisdom lies in this book. The meaning appeared simple, ditching any need for cipher and plaintext. And yet it meant nothing, simply a shapely line without substance.

  Vine found his eyes lingering over the rest of the page. There was the title of the book, Wilde’s name and then the library codes carefully outlined in pencil near the bottom.

  He was about to obey the voice in his head telling him to shut the book and stop himself, when he paused for a moment on the library codes. He had checked for any mathematical pattern before and dismissed them as numerical nonsense. And yet now they seemed to itch at him, a detail he had paid little attention to before. He had been so caught up in chasing other explanations, propelled by the weight of emotional history, that he had never given his mind the chance to disentangle them.

  He peered more closely and noticed the handwriting looked different, the swirls of the inscription contrasting with the prim neatness of the pencil markings. The codes looked so forgettable, barely legible against the firm cursive of the inscription. If Wilde had meant to obscure them from view, it had been expertly done.

  Everything told him to walk away, to stop before he drove himself further into the ground. But Vine found his body disobeying his brain, hands scrabbling around in his jacket pocket for Newton’s first sheet of paper from the file. He uncapped a pen and began noting down the numbers on the piece of paper.

  034

  697

  15024

  On the surface, they looked meaningless. He was sure they were a numeri
cal jumble, with no logic behind them. That narrowed down the potential solutions. He could feel his heartbeat racing as he then turned to the book again and began trying to flesh out any possible pattern. He took the first three numbers, ascribing each number to the most logical progression he could think of.

  034. Page 0. Line 3. Word 4.

  Page 0 seemed to make no sense at first. The opening line of the translation began on page 1. The most likely candidate before that was the title page with the inscription.

  Vine looked at it once again. Line 3. In case we don’t meet again, I want you to have this. All wisdom lies in this book. Take care of Rose for me. Wilde had always been something of a grammatical purist, given his classical education. The dependent clause in the first sentence wouldn’t have counted as a line in itself, despite the fact that it took up a line’s worth of page space. Vine concentrated, instead, on the third sentence.

  Word 4. He carefully counted along to the fourth word to make sure there was no possible chance of a mistake. If this was a proper old-fashioned book cipher – the sort that had been used ever since the codex was first invented – exact accuracy in tracking from the cipher to the plaintext was essential. One careless misattribution and the entire message could be rendered useless.

  Take (1) care (2) of (3) Rose (4) for (5) me (6).

  Curiosity piqued, Vine slowly noted down the word, double-checking for errors. Then he turned to the second trio of numbers.

  697. Page 6. Line 9. Word 7.

  He methodically turned the pages until he reached the sixth page. With the pen in hand, he counted down to the ninth line. But he felt his resolve lessen as he read the half-sentence. It appeared to be meaningless. Even so, he tapped along to the seventh word with the tip of the pen and noted it down.

  … not (1) even (2) from (3) rumours (4) that (5) he (6) is (7) returning (8) home (9).