by Nick Louth
‘No, Max. You’re not wrong,’ Alex chuckled. ‘But I figured pretty soon we underestimated you. That’s why we want you aboard. You’ve done well already. We’re getting details of a barge bought two years ago for de Wit under the company name Xenix Environmental. We just don’t know where it is yet. Maybe we could find it by noon tomorrow.’
‘If I could trust you guys to back me up, I’d go for it, just for a chance to find Erica. But I’m not sure you’re on the level with me. What if I kill Anvil, okay? You would let me take the rap on my lonesome?’
‘Max, Max, Max. Of course we wouldn’t. We’d back you one hundred and ten per cent.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Hold on.’ Alex muted the phone for a minute. ‘Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to introduce you to our head of strategy, face to face and his real name. We’re going way out on a limb for you here. Go to the Oude Kerk, which is an old church smack in the middle of Amsterdam’s Red Light Area. He’ll find you there. Wait at the tomb of Cornelis de Graeff, which is near a marble partition at the western end.’
‘What time?’
‘We’re in a hurry. It’s quarter of six now. I guess you can make it by quarter past. When you meet him you will trust us, of that I assure you.’
I am more and more convinced Jarman is going crazy. I can hear scraping every night. He has loosened one of the bars in the grille and uses it to scrape away at the cinderblock. He talks to himself all the time as he does it. I have told him it is pointless, that there is nowhere to run to out here, but he doesn’t listen. This is a dangerous time for us. The government isn’t ready to talk, and we don’t seem to be worth much as hostages. If they find out Jarman is trying to escape, I fear we may both be killed.
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
Penny Ryan tore open the Fedex parcel, and pulled out the thick wad of documents, copies of entries made in Pharmstar Corp’s huge database of patents in Atlanta. Professor Friederikson was at her side, comparing a thick ledger of patented compounds with Pharmstar’s entries.
‘What about this one?’ Penny said, pointing to a slim entry. ‘It just says “extract of unripe fruit of an equatorial tree called gwuia. Supposed anti-malarial properties found in monkey tests”.’
‘Is that all the detail it gives?’ Friederikson peered over her shoulder. ‘The dates match. Yes, the chemical formula is identical too. So Pharmstar does own rights to Xenix’s drug.’
‘No wonder it took so long to find. Pharmstar only acquired the patent when they bought a Swiss testing company, Tetro-Meyer oHG, in 1992.’
‘And it looks like they never really investigated it,’ Friederikson said.
Penny looked up. ‘Ever heard of the gwuia tree?’
‘No. But I can look it up, and where it comes from.’
‘And now I have the exact date I can cross reference it to the clinical committee. Then we can get the names of everyone who was there when it was discussed.’
Gaptooth and Rambo-Rambo discovered the damaged cinderblock in Jarman’s cell this morning. I think Jarman was expecting to be beaten up, but the guards just looked at each other and nodded before leaving. I was relieved when he told me, but he said he had a bad feeling about it.
He was right.
Fifteen minutes later there was a rumbling noise outside. Something was being manhandled close to the wall. Gaptooth walked above us on the grille, threading cables under the zinc eaves. I shrank into a corner of the cell when I heard Crocodile’s voice. He ignored me, but stood over Jarman’s cell. What he said next I will never forget:
‘Dr Herrera, we have brought you electricity, as we promised.’
Then I heard the cough-cough of the generator starting up. I had never heard it before except in the evenings, when Crocodile ran his lights and refrigerator. Rambo-Rambo and Gaptooth dragged Jarman to an empty cell at the far end of the building. Something panicked him when he got there, and there was a scuffle. I heard Jarman pleading. He kept saying ‘please no.’ He said he was sorry for the trouble he had caused, but the only reply was laughter. I had never heard him crying before. Something was absolutely terrifying him.
Then the generator revved up, and there was a buzzing noise from the cables threaded over the cells.
I have heard screams in my life before. But nothing, absolutely nothing, can come close to this. I clamped my hands over my ears, but the agony they put Jarman through played in my head like an endless tape. My nose prickled with the stench of scorched flesh and the tang of ozone. The fifteen minutes of animal howling seemed like an eternity. When they brought him back, he couldn’t speak. I asked him repeatedly how he was. When he finally spoke, more than an hour later, his voice was slow and ragged: ‘I cursed my mother for having borne me into the world to endure that. Erica, whatever they ask you to do, do it. Don’t risk suffering what I suffered.’
He said they had attached electrodes to his nipples and genitals and inside his mouth. I had no words. Instead I reached out my arm through the grille until I could feel his. I felt the grip, trembling, but still strong.
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
The last time Max had seen the Oude Kerk was on his way to Purple Haze, and finding it again among the maze of Red Light District alleyways took a while. In windows lit by fluorescent purple or pink strip lights, bored hookers in lingerie perched on stools, an occasional smile or wink breaking through the indifference. Groups of nervous youths passed by, laughing and pointing.
The church itself was massive, half shrouded in plastic sheeting and scaffolding where workmen had been spray cleaning the outside. Max picked his way through the orange plastic barriers, piles of roof tiles and pick-up trucks to a sign which in six different languages stated the obvious: closed for renovation.
The door wasn’t locked, and from inside came the whine of power tools. He walked through a small vestibule and stepped over a bunch of cables into the cavernous interior, which was arranged like a basilica. The central nave, high and airy, was laid out with chairs and lined with family stalls, like raised wooden theatre boxes, with their own gates and roofs. Parallel to the nave were two vaulted arcades the size of tennis courts, floored with worn flagstones and tombs, but otherwise empty.
Where the transept crossed the nave stood four massive octagonal pillars. Thirty feet up the nearest one, two workmen in hardhats were sitting drinking coffee on a scaffolding platform laden with power tools. They looked at Max, but said nothing as he picked his way over the cables towards the tomb of Cornelis der Graeff, Amsterdam’s first mayor, who died in 1645.
The tomb was a tiny marble chapel, entered via a barred gateway in a marble partition. Max put down his bag and looked around, inhaling the thick musty air. Apart from the workmen, making an echoing racket with their tools, he was alone. At his feet the flagstones were carved with numbers and dedications, each a lid for centuries-old bones. Max rested his forehead against the cool marble of the chapel and tried to remember what life was like before any of this happened. Just him and Erica and their dreams.
Awareness of a whining noise approaching came gradually. Max turned, one hand grasping the reassuring weight of the gun in his raincoat pocket.
Dr Grzalawicz was looking right at Max from the wheelchair. The delicate balding head rested sideways on a pillow, an egg in a nest. His emaciated arms writhed ceaselessly on a blanket, hands hooked and twisted as if all their tendons had been relentlessly tightened. The doctor’s mouth was, as before, hooked up via a cable to the wheelchair’s computer screen and this time to a hearing aid too. The wheelchair moved up close so Max could see the screen.
Alex sends his regards.
Max felt his mouth hanging open, so he shut it.
Yes, I’m always surprising people. Cripples don’t run anything, do they? Not even in a politically correct age.
‘Why meet here?’ Max whispered. ‘It’s not exactly secure.’
This place is a keeper of miracles. Nowhere is safer.
‘Oh, yeah? Well, I’ve been havin
g a bad month, miracle-wise.’
In 1376 not far from here, a sick man taking communion at home vomited the host, a most symbolic rejection. The host was thrown into a fire, but it would not burn. A chapel was later erected around the fire, and for decades the host remained, intact and uncharred, on the grate. Then the chapel burned down. Only the host remained unburned. The host was brought here. Pilgrims came by the thousand to see the enduring body of Christ. It was a bona fide miracle.
Max was suddenly aware of another presence. He looked up and a few yards away saw a woman in leather jacket, jeans, pink sneakers and matching baseball cap, vigorously chewing gum and scanning the church. It was Mary-Anne, Grzalawicz’s wife, or the woman he had assumed was his wife. On his first day in Amsterdam Max had helped her carry Grzalawicz up the stairs of the Erwin Hotel. Mary-Anne looked athletic and tense now. She had a discreet secret service-style earpiece, and her right hand thrust in a bulging jacket pocket. Her tension made Max feel for his gun too.
Max tipped his head towards Mary-Anne. ‘I’m pleased to see you’re hedging your bets on the miracle front, Doc.’
Absolutely. I’ve experienced one miracle in my lifetime, I’m not counting on another.
‘Lucky you. Lisbeth de Laan never got hers. In love with a dead man, and sleeping with his killer.’
That wasn’t coincidence. D’Anville heard a lot about Lisbeth from Johnny Gee, after all they were commandos together even before the Protection Unit was formed. I imagine that to d’Anville the idea of seeking out and seducing his victim’s fiancée appealed enormously.
‘I’m just glad she never knew.’
Don’t be naïve. D’Anville never wastes an opportunity to inflict suffering, mental or physical. You cannot kill anyone by strangulation in less than a minute. That’s plenty of time to tell her, and to feed on the reaction.
Max felt nauseous, and changed the subject. ‘There’s one gap in the d’Anville story Alex told me, and that’s a motive. Okay, so d’Anville’s a psycho, but he had a job to do in Zaire. Why kill the ambassador?’
Ambassador Douglas resented the Belgians bringing in their guys from the start, he didn’t trust them. D’Anville was sweeping the dining room for bugging devices and found one attached under the table where the two leaders were going to sit. Tensions got high. D’Anville had pocketed the device to give to the Belgians. Douglas ordered him to hand it over for the embassy to take care of. D’Anville just laughed and turned away. The ambassador felt humiliated being laughed at in front of the waiting staff and made a big mistake. He seized d’Anville’s wrist, maybe trying some kind of old Marine arm lock, we’ll never know.
D’Anville spun around, grabbed a dessert fork off the table and thrust it hard under the ambassador’s right eye, on and up into his brain, killing him instantly. He didn’t even have time to scream. Johnny Gee heard a waitress scream and rushed in from the lobby. What he saw was D’Anville pulling a funny pout. Ambassador Douglas’s startled eye was staring out of his mouth.
Johnny hesitated until d’Anville spat the eyeball in his face, then he went for his weapon. D’Anville was quicker, as always. He snatched a knife from the table and thrust it into Gee’s neck. The first wound penetrated between the first and second cervical vertebrae, severing the spinal cord. The second pierced the base of the brain and broke the tip off the knife.
Max stared at the screen and then at Dr Grzalawicz. The brown eyes were steady for a moment before more letters appeared on the screen.
D’Anville knew there was no going back. He jumped from a second floor window. He killed a U.S. embassy guard as he crossed the garden, climbed the wall, escaped into the city. The embassy doctor arrived just as Johnny’s heart stopped beating. He was dead for two minutes while they massaged his heart, and then he breathed again. But what they got back was not the old Johnny Gee anymore. It was me.
Max stared numbly at the wreck of twisted tendons, claw-like hands and emaciated limbs. ‘You are Johnny Gee?’
Risen from the dead, yes. Johan Grzalawicz is my real name, of course. When I started boxing, my manager told me you had to have a name people could remember. Grzalawicz you couldn’t even pronounce, so I became Johnny Gee. That was a long time ago.
‘Hold on. Alex told me Johnny Gee was buried, got the full state funeral, the works.’
The only thing that was buried in my coffin was the truth. The Americans needed a cover up because of who the ambassador was, and the Belgians needed one because of who killed him. Cover-ups are easier in Kinshasa than in Washington or Brussels.
The first few days were awful. All I could do was wave my tongue and twitch one eyeball. I imagine the security chiefs had mixed feelings when they figured out I wasn’t in a vegetative state. Instead of shunting me off under a false name to some institution they had to persuade me to collude in my own death. But they were also desperate to debrief me, and some bright technician designed this clever little ‘mouth-mouse’ for the laptop which I operate by moving a tongue stud against a touch sensitive plate. Thank God for body-piercing. I would be lost without it since it operates the wheelchair as well as the computer.
‘How do you feel about what happened? To go from being a world class athlete to…’ Max rotated his hand, unable to locate suitable words.
A shrivelled cripple? I feel very little about it. The splinter of Anvil’s knife still in my cerebellum began the destruction of certain nerve cells, and removed my sense of taste and smell. But other things improved, cognitive functions, the ability to think. My memory was unimpaired, but shorn of emotional value. It was as if someone had invented a past for me. Believe me, resurrection changes everything.
Max watched the brown eyes dancing. ‘After your “funeral” you couldn’t go back to any of your old life, could you? No old friends, no family, no Lisbeth. Nothing that might blow the cover. Doesn’t that make you a kind of prisoner?’
No. To return to my old friends would make me a prisoner, of pity. For my family I would be a burden, a stranger, disturbing the images which grief and healing need. By ceasing to exist as Johnny Gee I have become free, to start a wholly new life. I live on my own terms. Don’t worry about what you see before you. I am an optimist. It’s a good century to have a wrecked body so long as you also have money, and each year gets better. Radio, TV, medical advances, computing, e-mail, cyberdates. I met a lady from Minnesota in an Internet chat room who wants to test the exceptional stamina of my pierced tongue. Even I can be a stud, if you’ll forgive the pun.
‘And what about Lisbeth?’
For Lisbeth, the new me would have shattered everything. Even if she did not reject me, I could not have reciprocated the love, or any of the emotions she had a right to expect.
‘But her whole crazy life was an attempt at laying the ghost of Johnny Gee. She died a captive to her love for you. You say you are free now. You could have freed her too, just by allowing her to know you survived.’
No. That would have been crazy. I suspected Anvil would track Lisbeth down. She would have no reason to hide the news of my survival from him, because she was in the dark about what really happened in Zaire. She thought he and I were military buddies. If Anvil knew about my survival it would have ended up a pretty short survival.
‘What she felt counted for nothing, did it? Didn’t even enter the equation.’
You can project your own guilt about Lisbeth’s death onto me if you want, Max. But please acknowledge that feeling for what it is. Guilt is a luxury you have and I do not. No-one in my position would jeopardise bringing a killer to justice just to make themselves feel easier about their own behaviour.
‘I’m having trouble figuring out what part of humanity was saved from the ruined body of Johnny Gee,’ Max said. ‘Consciousness but not conscience. The rule book of justice is still wired in your head, but there’s no trace of the kind of feelings that ever prompted mankind to draw it up in the first place.’
Your conduct with Lisbeth is hardly blame free. In any ca
se, she’s free of her past now, just as I’m free of mine. There’s not much I can offer the world, but I’m giving what I can. I know the mind of Poul Stefan d’Anville better than anyone still alive. Indeed, I have a better chance of continued survival than most, precisely because he ticked me off his hit list years ago. There are great advantages to being dead.
Max sighed and looked around the church. He’d taken this argument about as far as it could go. There were still a few pieces missing from the puzzle, answers he wanted to hear. ‘Okay. How come Anvil wasn’t tracked down in the first few days, in Zaire? He should have stood out like a sore thumb.’
It was unfortunate that a diplomatic row after the killing drove a wedge between Mobutu and our two countries. We got no cooperation tracing d’Anville, then we started hearing rumours that a Belgian mercenary was fighting alongside an irregular force of Zairean government troops against rebels in the north east. There were stories he was paid one carat in uncut diamonds for every rebel ear he presented. True or not, he was widely feared, and very effective.
‘He still is, Doctor. He found Lisbeth in that bar faster than a shark finds a sinking cruise liner. I’ve no idea how, and it scares the heck out of me.’
Then, Max, you might regard this as bad news. I’m pretty sure d’Anville knows precisely where you are now. He’ll be on his way.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It is the middle of the night and the Brigadier’s generator has just started up again. I am sitting bolt upright, fear gripping my chest like a corset. I can sense Jarman’s terror, can smell his sweat, hear his panicky breathing.
Is it for him or is it for me?
The door to the hut is opening, stealthily. The hinges are squealing. I can hear slow footsteps and fast breathing. Someone is in front of my cage door. My cage, not Jarman’s. I can’t see, but the breathing is deep and heavy. I hear keys. This is no usual guard. It took him several attempts to find the right key. Now the door is opening.