The Deceit

by Knox, Tom

  Rothley spoke to the CCTV camera, flourishing his syringe. ‘In this syringe is a weaponized version of the neurotoxin of Ampulex compressa, the emerald jewel wasp. Also known, colloquially, as the zombie cockroach wasp. As early as the 1940s it was reported that female wasps of this species are in the habit of stinging cockroaches, usually of the species Periplaneta americana, or Nauphoeta rhombipholia. The wasps do this as part of a truly remarkable reproductive cycle. Later studies have revealed the precise procedure adopted by the wasp. As we now know, don’t we, Samuel, the wasp stings the roach twice. Firstly, it stings the cockroach in the vicinity of the thoracic ganglia, so as to mildly paralyse the victim …’ Rothley was frowning, distantly, as he spoke. ‘This loss of mobility in the cockroach facilitates a second venomous sting, at a precise spot in the victim’s brain, which removes what is left of the victim’s escape reflex.’ He squirted a little of the fluid from the syringe. Even with his diminished sight Ryan could see the silvery sparkle of the venom. The girl’s eyes followed Rothley’s actions, quite bewitched. Or hypnotized.

  Rothley continued, his voice flat and laconic. ‘In layman’s terms, the magic of the emerald jewel wasp is that by injecting its mind-altering venom directly into the little brain of the cockroach it induces the much larger, more powerful roach to become a slave. And now, Sam, the second sting.’

  Turning to his left Rothley slid the needle into Herzog’s neck. The shining needle sank deep. The young man withdrew the syringe, then tapped it with a fingernail, scrutinizing it carefully.

  ‘With the neuromodulator injected in the roach’s tiny brain, the wasp has total control over the cockroach. So what does it do? The wasp then proceeds to chew off a segment of the roach’s antennae. Researchers believe that the wasp chews off the antennae to replenish its own fluids, or possibly to regulate the amount of venom in the victim.’

  Rothley turned to Herzog. ‘I’m going to cut your hand off.’

  Herzog meekly lifted a wrist. As if he was a bride waiting for the groom to kiss her hand. But Rothley was brandishing a knife; and it was large and serrated.

  ‘Oh Jesus.’ The lab assistant turned away from the screen.

  The police crowded around the TV monitor. One of them, a young woman, snapped angrily at the nearest assistant, ‘Can we talk to him, to Rothley, in the safe room? Is there a speaker?’

  The whitecoat nodded. ‘This is the button. Press and talk.’

  The policewoman pressed. And talked. Her voice carried electronically to the safe room. ‘Rothley, I’m Karen Trevithick, I’m a detective, Scotland Yard—’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Rothley’s voice was lucid and distinct.

  The policewoman snapped out, ‘The girl, Rothley. Give us the girl. Zara Parkinson. Give her to us!’

  Rothley seemed to shrug. ‘I need her.’

  ‘Rothley!’

  But Rothley ignored the questions, turning to his hostage. ‘OK, Sam. Lift your arm a little more.’

  Ryan gazed, and squinted. The few degrees of vision he had left were quite enough.

  Rothley was now sawing at Herzog’s wrist. The job was laborious: the blood came in dribbles at first, but then it spat like stormwater from a gutter. The wrist bones split, and the severed hand fell to the floor. Rothley set the knife on a table. Herzog stared curiously at the stump of his own arm, squirting blood. The girl also stared at the stump. Frowning.

  Meanwhile, Rothley gazed at the camera with confident languor. ‘OK. Having semi-paralysed the cockroach, the wasp completes the reproductive cycle. As the wasp is too small to carry the roach, it leads the cockroach victim to the wasp’s burrow, by pulling at the severed stumps of the roach’s antennae. Once they reach the burrow, the wasp lays a little white egg on top of the roach’s abdomen. The emerald jewel wasp then, finally, exits.’

  Now Rothley seemed to be looking in a bag. He spoke as he rummaged. ‘With its escape reflex disabled, the stung roach will simply rest in the burrow, even as the wasp egg hatches on its abdomen. The new-born wasp-larva then grows by chewing and feeding, for maybe five days, on the exposed flesh of the living roach. After that it chews its way right into the roach’s abdomen and proceeds to live as an endoparasite.’ Still he rummaged, and talked. ‘Over a further period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the roach’s internal organs in an order which maximizes the likelihood that the roach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage. Now it forms a cocoon inside the roach’s body. Only at this juncture does the roach finally die. All that is left is for the fully-grown wasp to chew its way free from the cockroach’s hollowed corpse, so as to begin its adult life.’ He turned, and smiled faintly. ‘Development is faster in the warm season.’

  A lab technician slammed the button. ‘Luke, stop it, stop it, you’re not an executioner! Let the girl go. Let them all go. Sam doesn’t deserve to die like this! You’re infected: you think you’re Crowley, a magician, but it’s delusional, the Bastet Parasite—’

  The policewoman was also shouting. ‘The girl! Just give us the girl – you don’t need her any more – you’ve got what you want!’

  From the safe room Rothley’s voice was calm and distinct: ‘Come here, Samuel.’

  Ryan could see that Rothley was holding something – some kind of glass vial, or large test tube.

  Rothley spoke again. ‘Of course, I haven’t got any wasp larvae. But I do have a scientific correlative: one of your own offspring, Samuel. The saliva of the parasitic blowfly maggot, Calliphoria vomitoria – remember we developed a weaponized version of this saliva as a flesh-eater in our early days in Israel? Samuel?’

  Herzog said nothing. He was still staring at the blood that dripped from his severed wrist. The girl stood behind them, a hovering shade in seraphic white.

  Rothley nodded. ‘In sufficient quantities a synthetic version of Calliphoria saliva is equivalent to a Bronsted superacid. Dangerously strong, and formidably corrosive of mammalian flesh.’

  He put on thick black rubber gloves. Flexing his fingers, he unstoppered the glass tube, paused and looked at Sam Herzog. ‘It will burn out your throat as it goes down, and then it will dissolve your insides. You will, essentially, melt.’ He lifted the unstoppered vial over Herzog’s head.

  Herzog obediently nodded. He leaned back, and tipped his head up. Rothley poured the pale liquid down his victim’s mouth.

  The reaction was immediate.

  Initially, Herzog’s lips burned, then his entire mouth appeared to smoke, as the liquid scorched into his tongue and his cheeks. Seconds later, the fluid reached his throat. Livid scarlet holes appeared in his neck, bleeding sockets of flesh. And now the jawbone collapsed and just fell away. Blood was dripping creamily down his chest even as fumes rose from the remaining half of his face. Herzog was disintegrating.

  Rothley stood back to watch his victim’s legs twitch and spasm as he lay, collapsed, on the floor. Half corroded. And surely dead.

  His back to the camera, Rothley extracted another item from his rucksack, then he turned and held it up, so that everyone could see.

  But Ryan couldn’t see, the last degrees of sight had very nearly gone. The blackness was triumphing. He whispered, to Helen, ‘What is it? What’s he holding?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  A loud ticking emanated. ‘The ticking is theatrical, the bomb is real.’ Rothley told them all. ‘The laboratory must also be destroyed. In toto. The girl’s immolation is the final act. What is a man, that he should presume to kill God? This bomb is therefore big enough to level the entire building. But you have four minutes to evacuate.’

  The policewoman, Trevithick, slammed the button. ‘Stop it: stop the bomb. You’re going to die first. This is suicide! Why not give us the girl?’

  ‘Meginah, Elinala, Gelagon.’

  Rothley intoned the strange words, slowly and deliberately.

  ‘Stop the bomb.’

  ‘Magid, Akori, Happir, Haluteb.’

  ‘Rothley!’


  ‘Sagal, Apara.’

  It snapped into place. In his blindness, Ryan recognized the words. It was the Abra-Melin death ritual, the same ritual inscribed on the second Sokar papyrus. Ryan knew this spell, he knew it by heart. How many times had he read it these last weeks, trying to decipher the Sokar Hoard?

  And the death ritual had a counter-spell. That was also on the Sokar papyrus.

  If Rothley believed he was doing magic, he would necessarily believe in counter-magic.

  Ryan shouted across the lab, ‘Sizigos, Iporusu, Maregan.’

  The effect was instant.

  With the last of his eyesight Ryan could see Rothley’s face, puzzled, frowning, staring intently at the camera. Angry.

  Ryan continued: ‘Dodim. Abala. Darac.’

  Rothley shouted back, but he was stammering now. ‘Sicafel, Sic – Sic – Iperige – Maregan—’

  ‘Zara, run – please run!’

  ‘Sizigos, KAILAH—’

  ‘Run, Zara, get out!’

  The policewoman was yelling. Ryan squinted. The girl appeared to be stirring, her bewitchment weakening. Maybe she could sense Rothley’s faltering hold.

  ‘Zara! GET OUT!’

  Zara was running for the door of the safe room. Yet Rothley didn’t even notice. He was staring straight ahead at the camera, his eyes wild and blazing.

  ‘Situk, Irape, Situk, Irape!’

  Almost the last thing Ryan saw was the blonde hair of the girl, outside the safe room, as she ran to save her own life, ran into the arms of the policewoman – and then everyone was running. Ryan could hear urgent footsteps all around. The entire place was evacuating, the bomb was still ticking. But Ryan was stuck on the stretcher. For the last time, he tried to move: but he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t see. And it didn’t matter. He had saved the girl. He could die. Here. Listening to Rothley’s manic chanting.

  Ryan lay back, but then he felt arms and hands – Helen, lifting him up, assisted by someone else, hauling him off the stretcher, hoisting him over their shoulders.

  How much time was left? Maybe sixty seconds.

  Doors slammed open, the shouts of fear echoed, as they dragged Ryan down the corridor, as they kicked open the final doors.

  Fifty seconds.

  Now they were in the fresh air: he could feel it, as they carried him, painfully, laboriously, to some kind of safety.

  Forty seconds?

  They carried him upwards, maybe up the white slopes of kaolin tailings.

  Twenty seconds …

  Moving higher still: surely they must be looking down at the lab?

  Someone shouted: ‘Get down!’

  The explosion was so vivid it gave Ryan a final few seconds of sight: he glimpsed a monstrous fireball surging into the air, poisoned with chemicals, hellish and glowing, then evolving into a wild tornado of smoke, and flame, and kaolin dust. Ryan stared. The policewoman was cradling the weeping blonde girl, in her arms.

  And then the God Parasite sealed the last chink of light in Ryan’s mind; and it was just blackness. And silence. And infinity.

  51

  University College, London

  ‘I never even knew there was a collection here,’ said Karen, gazing across the sunny quadrangle. They were sitting on the great stone steps, almost alone. The college was largely deserted because of the Easter holidays.

  Ryan nodded. ‘It’s the third biggest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. Flinders-Petrie gave it all to UCL.’ He reached and fumbled for his plastic cup of coffee on the granite steps; Karen found it and handed it to him, wrapping his fingers around the cup.

  With a smile, Ryan thanked her. ‘I have partial sight now. It’s no longer improving, but it’s better than total blindness.’ He gestured at the classical buildings to their left. ‘We have the earliest example of metal from all of ancient Egypt, two magnificent lions from the temple of Min at Coptos, and a fine pair of socks from Alexandria. Probably Roman.’

  Karen said, ‘You like working here.’

  ‘Yes I do. And of course, this is where I attended Sassoon’s lectures, which is poignant.’

  Karen gazed at him. It was four months since the explosion. ‘Obviously you’re not going to go back to Egypt?’

  ‘Even if they’d let me in? No. I couldn’t function anyway.’

  ‘And Helen?’

  ‘She’s fine, she’s great. She looks after me. We have very little money, but we are OK.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Karen hesitated, then pressed on. ‘The blindness. It was meant to be irreversible. And terminal. You were meant to die?’

  Ryan sipped his coffee. ‘Yes, but we worked this out. Acts, Chapter Nine.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Saul, the persecutor of Christians, is visited by a flaming vision of God. “And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight …” But then a few days later he is visited by the Holy Ghost. “And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”’ Ryan shrugged. ‘It seems the blindness of the conversion experience can be temporary, even reversible. Or maybe it really is a miracle? Maybe God works through the God Parasite. How can we know?’ He acknowledged her expression of surprise. ‘Yes. The irony of it all is that I do believe. The parasite has done its work. And belief is good. I like it.’ He sighed, but not unhappily. ‘Anyway, Herzog lied. Guess he just wanted me in his lab to test his parasite-killer, the parasiticide, the one he intended to use against the faithful.’

  The traffic of Bloomsbury rumbled beyond the railings. Ryan added, ‘What’s more, I can use disabled parking bays. So it’s not all bad, not at all. Especially when you consider the alternative.’

  Karen gently smiled. ‘I suppose that’s true.’ She reached in her bag. ‘By the way, I mustn’t forget this: it’s one reason I wanted to see you.’

  He was gazing at her, frowning; she hurried on.

  ‘You know we are still sifting the evidence at Rescorla, at the site of the explosion? Well, we found this digital camera. It was in the burned remains of Helen’s bag. It looks quite intact, and it seems to work. We’ve finished with it, certainly for the moment.’

  She handed it over, placing it carefully in his hands. Ryan squinted at the camera, with an astonished expression.

  The pause was slightly awkward. Perhaps it was time to go.

  Ryan threaded his arm through hers, and they strolled towards the gates of the quad.

  ‘Eleanor is good?’

  ‘She is. We’re going down to Cornwall, for Easter.’ Karen checked her watch. ‘I’m picking her up from the childminder’s, we’re meeting the cousins down there. Should be a nice break.’

  Ryan smiled. ‘I’d like to have kids one day.’

  ‘I hope you do. They are the very worst and very best thing that can happen to you. At the same time.’

  For a few moments, the two of them chatted about families and children. Then Ryan frowned. ‘By the way, how is Zara Parkinson?’

  ‘She’s fine. Considering. Traumatized of course, but alive.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘She owes her life to you.’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘No, she doesn’t … I just … did what I could. I still wonder why Rothley didn’t try and escape, once he’d lost the girl.’

  Karen nodded. ‘It is a bit strange. Best guess is he was just crazy, in the end – handling all those parasites, it must have got to him. We’d have liked to test his body for antigens, but there isn’t a lot to go on; in fact, nothing. He was vaporized. It happens with big explosions.’ Another silence. Less awkward, but a silence. It really was time to leave.

  They said their goodbyes and Karen stepped into the urban melee of Gower Street. Her car was parked very close, by the university library. Turning the ignition, she drove to the childminder’s, collected an excited and chirrupi
ng Eleanor, and they began the five-hour journey to Cornwall.

  Leaving the day before Good Friday meant the traffic was not too bad. So they arrived at twilight, cresting the hill at Carbis Bay just in time to see the sun setting over St Ives, where she and Eleanor – and Alan and Julie and the twins – had all rented a holiday apartment.

  The following day dawned blue and fine. Ideal weather for a picnic on Maenporth Beach.

  The children played on the sands in the sun, writing their names with big sticks. Karen sat on the blanket and chatted with Alan and Julie. As the kids chased the surf, Karen turned and gazed at the cliffs behind, where a small Cornish chapel, ancient and humble, stood in its seaside graveyard.

  She recalled the comparison she had once made, between chapels and tin mines, both remnants of an exhausted industry, the ruins of what was no more.

  But was that true?

  This morning she had read in the local paper a report that claimed there was, supposedly, more tin under Cornwall still waiting to be mined than all the tin taken out so far. It was just inaccessible.

  But one day they might find a way to tap into the seams.

  52

  Department of Parasitology, Imperial College, London

  Graham Moffat almost dropped his rooibos tea as he stared at his laptop screen. There was no disputing it. The white detritus recovered from the air-conditioning units of the Rescorla laboratory was indeed TS.

  Dead, but TS.

  So far he and his superior had discussed this odd white detritus with no one, not even the Met police. There hadn’t been any reason: the entire forensic analysis of the murder site in Cornwall had produced no real surprises; indeed, as the months had gone by what had initially felt like an interesting parasitological assignment had turned into a bothersome chore, and Graham had openly questioned – in staff meetings – whether Imperial College should be wasting valuable laboratory time in this way, even if they were assisting the police, and even if they were pretty well remunerated.

  But this discovery? This changed everything.