The Magdalene Cipher

by Jim Hougan

  “Exactly, and who was that? You haven’t really said.”

  “Well . . . that was . . . actually, that was a government agency.”

  “So you’re a spy.”

  Dunphy shook his head. “No. I was a spy. Now, I’m . . .” He didn’t know quite how to finish.

  “What?”

  “Well, now, I guess you’d have to say I’m unemployed.”

  “You’re redundant, then?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly it. I’m redundant. I am absolutely fucking redundant.”

  She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “And just what does that mean . . . in the spy business?”

  “Pretty much what it means anywhere else.” Suddenly, he leaned toward her with a confidential smile. “The waiter’s in love with you,” he whispered.

  She gave him a look. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a thing called ‘need to know.’ ”

  “So?”

  “You don’t have one.”

  Clementine frowned. “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  A silence fell between them. Finally, and seemingly out of the blue—and seemingly apropos of nothing—Dunphy asked, “So . . . still taking classes at King’s?”

  Clementine nodded. “Mmmm,” she said.

  “Y’know, I was wondering, about the professor. The one who died—old what’s-his-name . . . Schidlof. Do you think I could talk with one of his students?”

  “Dunno!” Clem replied, savoring an olive. “Maybe. Do you know who they are?”

  “No. I haven’t a clue,” Dunphy said. “How would I know that?”

  Clem shrugged. “You’re the bloody spy, not me. I thought the CIA knew everything.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe, but . . . at the moment, I’m not in a position to ask the Agency a lot of questions. Still . . . maybe there’s a list of some kind. I mean, the school has to keep track of who took what!”

  “Of course it does. But I don’t know anyone in the registrar’s office, and even if I did, there’s a privacy issue. They’d never give it to me.” She paused. “Why are you smiling?”

  “The way you said privacy. With a soft i. a”

  “That makes you happy a?”

  “Yeah.”

  Clementine rolled her eyes. “Well! You’re quite the cheap date, then, aren’t you?”

  The waiter delivered plates of moussaka, dolmades, and hummus to their table, and filled Dunphy’s glass with a pale yellow wine that tasted remarkably like shellac. They fell into a comfortable silence, quietly enjoying one another’s company. Suddenly, Clem looked up from her plate, leaned forward, and exclaimed, “Simon!”

  “What?”

  “Simon!”

  Dunphy looked around. “What am I supposed to do? Close my eyes? Spin around? What?”

  “Simon was taking psychology courses. It’s a big department, but . . . he might have had a class with Schidlof.”

  “Can you call him?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think he has a phone. And I don’t know his last name.”

  Dunphy’s shoulders sank. “That’s gonna make it harder.”

  “But we could see him.”

  “Where?”

  “At the market in Camden Lock. His parents have a sort of kiosk. Plumbing fixtures, old uniforms. Usual hodgepodge.”

  “You’ll introduce me?” he asked.

  “If you’ll buy me a Sgt. Pepper’s jacket—absolutely.”

  Sunday was cold, and the wind chill out of the Underground was ferocious. Riding the long escalator up to the street, Dunphy and Clementine leaned into one another, bracing against the vacuum-driven gale.

  “Fuckin’ ’ell,” Clem said. “I’m freezin’, and I’m not even outside!” She held his right arm tightly, with both hands, as if he might try to escape, and jittered on her feet to keep her toes from freezing.

  She was effortlessly beautiful, in the way that models sometimes are when they pass through airports in New York, Paris, and Milan. Her clothes were just a happenstance, the first things she’d found to wear that morning: a ratty cotton sweater (black); a pair of jeans (also black, and frayed at the knees). Soft leather boots, turned down at the tops, and a thin leather jacket that did nothing to keep her warm. The wind fanned her hair this way and that, covering her face and then revealing it. She hadn’t bothered with makeup—but, then, she never needed any. And, anyway, her clear, pale skin was rouged by the cold. Standing beside her on the escalator, rattling toward the surface at a forty-five-degree angle, Dunphy could feel the peripheral gaze of half a dozen men.

  The wind ceased the moment they stepped outside, plunging into the tumult and crowds on Camden High Street. The sidewalks were thronged with the young and the stoned, edgy-looking kids in leather jackets, African vendors, drug addicts, headbangers, yuppies, punks, drunks, schizophrenics, tourists—and a mime. The air was a casserole of sweet and sour smells, of roasting chestnuts and stale beer, sausages, onions, and sweat. And all of it stirred by the contending rhythms of reggae, rap, and zouk, Yellowman, Bill Haley, and Pearl Jam. Clem held his hand tightly, her face alight as they let the crowds carry them along the street past rickety stands heaped with sweaters, racks of clothes, and trays of bootlegged tapes.

  “It’s like the summer of love,” she said. “Except it’s winter and freezing. And I guess the people look different.”

  Dunphy grunted. “I’m sure you’re right, but what do you know about the summer of love? You weren’t even protein.”

  “I saw a documentary.”

  They found Simon at his parents’ shop, which turned out to be an open storefront amid a warren of alleys, alcoves, and rooms that, long ago, had been a part of the city’s stables. Rail thin and twenty something, Simon braved the cold in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, blue jeans, and Doc Martens. A Betty Boop tattoo was embedded in the flesh where a bicep should have been. Nearby, an electric heater glowed the bright orange that hunters wear in deer season.

  Seeing Clem, Simon went off like a flare. “Hal-lo,” he cried, and staggered toward her with his arms wide. Embracing, they rocked from side to side for what Dunphy thought was a bit too long. Finally, Simon noticed him and, somewhat sheepishly, stepped back. “Cuppa tea? For you and your friend?”

  “No—”

  “ ’Course ya will!” he said, and disappeared behind a tasseled curtain.

  Dunphy looked at her. “I thought you said you didn’t know him very well.”

  Clementine shook her head. “What I actually said was, I didn’t know his last name.”

  Moments later, Simon reemerged from behind the curtain, carrying a pair of chipped and steaming cups. “Tetley. Best I can do. But it is hot.” He handed the cups to Dunphy and Clementine and plopped into one of the many easy chairs that were scattered around the room. “So,” he said, rubbing his hands together with an avaricious look, “what’s it to be? Good-as-new showerhead? Slightly used vibrator? Look no further!”

  Clem shook her head. “Not today, thanks. Jack’s interested in that professor—the one that was done.”

  “Schidlof?”

  “Right,” Clem said. “I told Jack you’d taken one of his classes—or I thought you had.”

  Simon looked at Dunphy more closely. “You a cop, then?”

  “No,” Dunphy said.

  “Friend of the family?”

  Dunphy shook his head. “Uh-uh . . . just a friend of Clem’s.”

  Simon nodded. “Right, well, she’s got more friends than Bill, doesn’t she?”

  Dunphy smiled. “I suspect she does, but . . . you did take his class, right?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “I was hoping you might have saved your notes.”

  “Wha’? From Schidlof’s class?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not likely. And if I did, the police would have ’em by now, wouldn’t they?”

  “I
don’t know. Why would they?”

  “Because they came ’round. You took the class, you got a visit.”

  “And they confiscated the students’ notes?”

  “Said they were collecting evidence. ‘Evidence of what?’ I asked. ‘Never you mind!’ they said. Real exercise in academic freedom, that was.”

  “Well,” Dunphy asked, “can you tell me about the class?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What was it about?”

  Simon looked at Clementine as if to ask, Who is a this guy? Clem shrugged, as if to say, Humor him.

  “Welllll,” Simon said, “it was a bit complicated, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “I a was. And it was very complicated.”

  “Perhaps you could be a bit more specific, Simon,” Clementine suggested.

  The kid took a deep breath and sighed. “Right,” he said, and turned to Dunphy. “Know much about Jung?”

  Dunphy shook his head. “Not really.”

  “Well, that makes it harder, then, doesn’t it? I mean—this wasn’t a basic course. It was a seminar.”

  “In Jung?”

  “It was called Mapping the Archetypal Field, and what it was about was . . .” Simon glanced helplessly at Clem, who reassured him with a twinkle. With a smile, he took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and turned to Dunphy. “Right!” he repeated. “What it was about was: Jung. Founder of analytic psychology. Colleague of Freud. Now regarded with a measure of suspicion for what critics say was an inordinate interest in volkish matters. Which is to say, he’s suspected of taking a few too many phone calls from the bunker. Not to mention that he’s said to have fabricated patient histories. I could mention the Solar Phallus Man.”

  “The who?”

  “The Solar Phallus Man.”

  “And who was he?”

  Simon shrugged. “A nutter,” he said. “But not a relevant one, at least not to us. Because we didn’t study the case. I’m just giving you a bit of background. Because it’s a big subject. I mean, old Jung had lots of ideas—about religion. Myth. Alchemy. Synchronicity. a”

  “What’s that?” Clem asked.

  Simon frowned, and his eyes asked, How to put it a?

  “It’s the idea that coincidences are something other than coincidental,” Dunphy told her.

  “Very good!” Simon exclaimed. “That’s exactly right. Synchronicity is . . . just what you said: it’s the idea of meaningful coincidence.”

  “Is that what the seminar was about?” Dunphy asked.

  “No,” Simon replied. “It was supposed to be an exploration of the collective unconscious—which is . . .” The kid fell into thought, his breath hanging in the cold like cumulus clouds. Dunphy was about to break the silence when the younger man put a finger in the air, looked up, and began to quote from memory: “Which is a . . . a ‘matrix . . . of images and dreams, embodying’—I hope you’re listening, because every word’s a jewel—‘embodying the phylogenetic experience of all mankind, connecting and affecting everyone, everywhere.’ ” Simon shut his trap and smiled.

  Dunphy nodded, but Clem was unimpressed. “What’s that, then?” she asked.

  Simon sighed, the wind gone from his sails. Finally, he said, “It’s like the Internet—except without the advertising. Or you could say it’s a cloud of ideas and images, but big ideas and powerful images—the kind that can fuck you up—and they’re everywhere and nowhere, all at once. And the modem, the modem’s hardwired into the back of your head. The main difference being, you don’t jack into the collective unconscious. It jacks into you. a”

  Clem smiled. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “I’ve always believed that.” Dunphy did a double take. She was seated beside him in a tattered easy chair with her legs crossed, leaning forward and hugging herself against the cold. Her right foot tapped the air, impatient or freezing or both. “Now, give it up,” she said, turning to Dunphy.

  “Give what up?”

  “The wallet. You promised me a coat. So let’s have it.”

  Dunphy grimaced, reached into his back pocket, and handed his wallet to her.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” she told them. “I know just where I’m going.” And with that, she got to her feet, turned on her heel, and sauntered off. Dunphy and Simon looked after her until she turned a corner, and then they returned to the subject at hand.

  “Where were we?” Simon asked.

  “ ‘It jacks into you,’ ” Dunphy answered.

  “And so it does.”

  Dunphy thought for a moment. His feet were frozen, toes numb. Finally, he said, “The thing is, I don’t see how any of that could get anyone killed.”

  “Well, you had to be there. Schidlof could be pretty lethal at eight in the morning. I mean, some of us were bored to death.”

  Dunphy acknowledged the pun with a thin smile and asked, “But what was his take on it all? You said it was a seminar, a seminar in . . . what? Mapping—”

  “—the archetypal field. Right! As I said. But what you have to understand is Schidlof was a believer. To him, this wasn’t just a theory. The unconscious—the collective unconscious—was as real as you or me. Which meant that it could be described—or mapped—or enumerated—at least in terms of its contents.”

  “What contents?”

  “The archetypes. When Schidlof talked about the collective unconscious, he was talking about a field of archetypes a—primordial images, pictures, and pictograms that go back to the beginning of time. Which is mind-blowing when you think of it.”

  “And the point of all this was . . . what?” Dunphy asked.

  Simon thought for a moment and said, “I think Schidlof was trying to prove a theory.”

  “A theory of what?” Dunphy asked.

  “It’s just a guess.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “He was working on a biography of Jung, and apparently, he found some papers—in Switzerland. He was always going to Zürich for research. To interview people and—”

  “What papers?”

  “Letters. Something no one had ever seen before. He said it would make a splash when his book came out.”

  Dunphy thought about it. Finally he asked, “So what do you think he was trying to prove?”

  Simon pursed his lips and grimaced. “He didn’t talk about it much, but once or twice, he let on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, he thought someone—or something—he never said what—but he thought . . . well, he thought . . . someone was manipulating things.”

  “What things?”

  “The collective unconscious.”

  “What?”

  “He thought someone was reprogramming the collective unconscious—introducing new archetypes, revitalizing old ones.”

  “And just how would you do that?” Dunphy asked, his voice thick with skepticism.

  Simon shrugged. “Dunno. But if you did . . . well, you’d rewire the human race, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’d be sitting right at the switchboard. You’d have your hands on the back brain of the whole planet! So what Schidlof was up to with the seminar—and this is just my idea, you understand—I think he wanted to make an inventory, a sort of catalog, of the archetypes—to see if we could identify any of the new ones. Or any that we felt had been . . . revitalized.”

  “And did you?”

  Simon surprised him. “Yeah,” he said. “I think we did.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, UFOs, obviously—”

  “Obviously?”

  “Yeah. Obviously, because Jung wrote a book about them, back in the fifties, and . . . well, he said it then. He called them ‘an emerging new archetype.’ And the ‘forerunner of the Messiah.’ That’s a quote. And he said they signaled the birth of a new age.” Simon paused and, with a twinkle, added, “So that was a pretty good clue.”

  “What else?”

  Simon tilted his head from one side to another. “We talked ab
out crop circles, cattle mutilations, lots of—What a?”

  Dunphy shook his head, which seemed to be spinning. “Nothing,” he replied.

  “Well, anyway, the next thing you know, the professor was popped, the cops took our notes—and that was that. End of seminar.”

  Dunphy was quiet for a moment. Finally he asked, “Why cattle mutilations?”

  Simon snorted. “Well, it’s an animal sacrifice, i’nit? Old as the hills. Schidlof said someone was stirring the pot. ‘Revitalizing a dormant archetype.’ ”

  “But why a?”

  Simon shook his head. “Dunno. But if you believe Jung—and in Schidlof’s class, you’d better believe Jung—it’s all tied up with religion. Second Coming. New age. That sort of thing.” The kid looked around for a moment and started to get up. “Look,” he said, “I’m losing customers . . .”

  “There’s fifty quid in it for you.”

  He sat back down. “Anyway,” Simon went on, “if you ask me, it’s bollocks.”

  Dunphy nodded, eyes on the floor, trying hard to connect the dots. Finally he shook his head.

  “If you want to know what I think . . . ,” Simon said.

  “About what?” Dunphy asked.

  “Schidlof’s death. If it was me and I was interested, I’d call traffic control out at bloody Heathrow. Ask them what they saw.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the fucking helicopter.”

  “What helicopter?”

  “Quiet. The papers didn’t report it, but it was seen. I read about it on the Internet: alt.rec.mutes. The kid what found old Schidlof said the papers were wrong: he didn’t trip over the professor. Kid said this great, bloody chopper was sittin’ in the air over the Inner Temple—but so quiet, it was more like an animated helicopter than a real one. And the next thing he knew, the guv’ner falls out the door and drops with a plop on the lawn. Said he fell about fifty feet.”

  “Fuck,” Dunphy said.