by John Meaney
Shadowed movement, once more.
"It's done. We have power." Reinhard reached out. "All I do is press this—"
The shadow spoke.
"Je croix que non."
Jean-Paul swung himself from behind the vane—
"Nein!"
—and kicked the laser over.
It was as simple as that.
Reinhard threw himself at Jean-Paul, but my old mentor knew how to enter the centre of a whirlwind. His hook punch travelled maybe two inches, then he was rotating, grabbing, spinning Reinhard around. Reinhard was airborne. His head snapped against a ledge next to me, then he toppled down onto the observation balcony and lay there.
Dark blood pooled from beneath his head.
Enemy down.
Shaking, I climbed back down to the observation balcony. Brummie helped me descend to the flagstones. Jean-Paul came down without assistance.
"David."
"Jean-Paul. We got Fern. Away from... them."
"Ah." He closed his eyes, opened them. "Thank God."
"She'll be all right."
"And who rescued her?" The question was a challenge. "You?"
"Thank them." I gestured towards Brummie and Rob. "They did the hard work."
"But you love her," he said. "Don't you, David?"
Shit.
So this was it. The gauntlet, lying there before me.
"I do." I exhaled. "And so do you."
"C'est exact."
"Which is exactly why—"
Don't do it.
But I had to.
"—she's your wife, and I'd not jeopardize that."
Jean-Paul's eyes were almost as dark as Fern's. Killer's eyes. He could kill me, if he had to.
"Good." He held out his callused hand. "Good."
We shook.
Then: "It's all wrong," I said, not knowing where the words came from.
"But—"
"No. I mean..." I turned to Briggs, who had come out onto the deck. "The fat guy in the suit, downstairs. With the two bodyguards. One of them was an ex-cop."
"Yeah, guarding His Honour. No one's supposed to know the Mayor of New York goes to see a shrink. Like, regularly, for months."
I thought of Moshe, dead. Fern, in the apartment, owned by a fake Jewish production company, who were to be blamed once the bomb went up. She'd said they had radio triggers.
Of Moskowitz seeing a therapist, someone he trusted to help him through life.
"It's not what we thought," I said. "Oh, fuck."
Enemy down, but the mission was not accomplished.
Moshe. Roosevelt Island. Evidence of Jewish agents with a tripod in place. An apartment in Tudor City, on the same bloody road as the United Nations building. So fucking obvious, and I was supposed to be trained in tactical thinking.
"All the careful evidence," I added, "implicating New Jerusalem. If Manhattan disappeared in an atomic fireball, so would every piece of paperwork, every object indicating our involvement. Other than the TV broadcast, the sculpture glowing before it went up—" I stopped. "It might be convincing, but they want something even worse."
"Well, bugger me," said Brummie.
"No thanks," muttered Rob.
I remembered Charles Montagu in Paris. He'd used the term 'dirty bomb', which I'd not come across before.
"It's set to explode all right," I said. "But not go atomic. It'll blow radioactive shit across the city, causing massive evacuation, death from radiation burns and cancer, and make Manhattan uninhabitable for years. But not a Hiroshima explosion."
And the laser and all the rest... That was just for show. Massive deception. Call it sleight of hand, or sleight of mind.
Brummie grinned.
"Good job we nailed the buggers."
But the grin diminished as he saw my reaction.
"Briggs," I said. "You mentioned a psychiatrist?".
"On the same floor as Neuhof."
The real enemy.
"How convenient for them."
"For who?"
Professor Edmund Strang.
"Come on, Jean-Paul," I said. "We should be the ones to finish this."
"D'accord."
THIRTY-SIX:
NEW YORK, November 1963
I threw up in the lift. Partly it was the memory of what I'd done to Eisenmenger. My thumbs were still sticky with the fluid from his eyeballs. Jean-Paul patted my shoulder, oblivious to the vomit smell.
"Sorry."
"You're fine."
The lift opened, and we went out into the corridor. We went to the Neuhof Productions office, where four of Blackstone's men were still in place. There was no sign of the secretary.
"Taken her away?" I pointed to the empty chair.
"To the field office. Everything OK up on the deck?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "We got the bastards."
"Good job."
I went back out into the corridor, Jean-Paul following me.
"We're looking for a psychiatrist's office," he said. "Unless there are lots of them, it should be easy to find."
"Should be." I wiped my mouth, then pointed to a door. "Look. Sign says Dr Steinberg."
"Has to be him."
Jean-Paul went in ahead of me.
"It's urgent," he said, to a grey-haired woman behind a desk. "I need to see him now."
"Then go in." The woman gave a smile without emotion. "Please."
"Um. Thank you." To me, Jean-Paul said: "Wait here."
"What do you—? Yes. OK."
Because it was Fern who'd been their prisoner, after all.
Jean-Paul's wife. Madame Segal.
Of course it was his right.
"Go ahead," I said, but the inner door was already shut. Jean-Paul was inside with Steinberg, who had to be Strang.
I looked at the secretary.
"Unless there's someone with the doctor," she said, "I always send the patient in, if they say it's urgent. That's what the doctor said I should do."
"Well. Good."
"He's a wonderful man."
I stared down at the floor, then looked up as the door opened and Jean-Paul came out. He had a cynical smile on his long Gallic face.
"Our little mistake, my friend."
"Mistake?"
"Not the right man at all." And, to the secretary: "Sorry to have troubled you."
"Oh," she said. "No trouble at all."
There was no point in checking further. We walked along the corridor, back to the Neuhof Productions office.
"Balls," I said. "Maybe we should check in with these guys again."
"If you like."
He went in first, and walked to the centre of the office. But I remained well back, close to the wall as I ripped the Beretta from the small of my back.
"Hold him," I said.
Four CIA men froze.
"What?"
"Hey, David—"
"Shut up, Jean-Paul. This is not your fault. But shut up." To the CIA guys I said: "No time. One of you contact Blackstone. The other three of you keep this man at gunpoint. He's a friend but right now he's a traitor and doesn't know it. And get some reinforcements."
They looked confused, but still drew their weapons.
"Good," I said. "Je regrette, mon ami."
Then I left, moving fast now, keeping the Beretta in my hand. Strang's methods might be subtle, but sometimes ordinary weapons are all you need.
"May I help—?" The secretary rose from her chair as I entered the Steinberg offices.
"No."
I walked straight past her, and pushed open the inner door.
Stepped inside.
"Oh, shit," I said. "I'm sorry."
Because the man sitting behind the big polished desk was bald, with patches of short grey hair over his ears, wearing round-lensed glasses. His face was squarish, and his hands were marked with what looked like burn scars. His tweed suit looked rumpled.
Not Strang.
He was the right age, but otherwise totally unlike
the elegant Professor Strang with the trim grey goatee and impeccable clothes.
"Quite all right." The man's voice had a New Jerusalem accent. "Your friend explained there was a mix-up."
"I really apologize."
"No need."
"I'll just... Go. Now."
"That'll be fine." His voice was very calm, scarcely inflected. I guess that's how psychiatrists have to speak. "Perfectly fine."
"Thank you," I said, "for being understanding."
I was an idiot.
As I reached for the door handle, I thought about Berlin: an image from nowhere. You know what I think about the power of intuition. And I wasn't just thinking of Berlin in general, but a specific location: Lotti Handel's flat.
Not just her flat.
The photographs.
I remembered the mantelpiece, and the range of photos. Her husband was the man with the beard – Saul, who looked like Hemingway, or so Lotti Handel liked to think. As an agent, you might forgive her a minor literary pretension. Other photographs had shown a third figure, Lotti Handel's most successful client: Peter Moskowitz, Berlin's foremost sculptor. Balding, with round glasses.
The man in the chair behind me.
"Where is he, Moskowitz?" I turned around. "Where's Strang?"
"I don't—"
This man had created the Peace Globe that right now was filled with radioactive material and high explosive, just down the road from here. And it would only take one press of a button on a radio trigger: Black Path's Plan B, which was deadly enough.
But Moskowitz, if he'd been worked on by Strang, might not even know his own name. I had a Beretta in my hand, but this wasn't a time for shooting.
Jean-Paul and Zeev had trained me well enough, yet Manny Silverberg's psych techniques were always fascinating. And I like challenges, or couldn't you tell?
I walked over to Moskowitz, who remained sitting. I fanned my fingertips across his eyelids and said one word, although it's the timing and intonation that matter. If you've ever seen a hypnotist on stage, you've seen what appeared to be a single gesture and maybe a word causing instant descent into trance.
"Sleep."
Moskowitz's head drooped. Possibly I hadn't just put him into trance – he might have been there already. Just because someone's eyes are open, doesn't mean they're conscious. But if I was going to circumvent whatever psychic booby-traps Strang might have left in Moskowitz's mind, I was going to have to take him deeper still.
"You can relax... deeper now..." I made my voice more soothing. "That's right... While in trance... you can enter... the trance inside the trance."
Perhaps Moskowitz knew Strang as Steinberg. Here, with the established identity of R.A. Steinberg, M.D., Ph.D. – I'd glanced at the certificates on the walls – Strang/Steinberg, if he was 'treating' the mayor, probably had a whole range of high profile, influential clients.
If the Peace Globe went up, the mayor would take charge of the emergency, of the evacuation. I wondered how many other city officials would have post-hypnotic suggestions kicking in, triggered by the explosion. It is the human way to find evidence for theories we like, and fail to see contrary facts. And that's without implanted false memories, laying a trail of blame to New Jerusalem's door.
And if hysteria was fanned into a great enough heat, could anti-Semitism and concentration camps be that far away? Even here?
Strang was probably a genius.
" I want to talk... to your unconscious... directly. Is that part of you... willing?"
A nod.
Hypnotherapists prefer to use finger signals – ideomotor responses – because the other approach seems too like demonic possession. But here's the thing: whether you're literally talking to the subconscious or not, whatever information you retrieve this way, it's accurate.
"Is Dr Steinberg," I said, "the man who treated you in Berlin?"
"Yes."
"What are you going to do after the bomb explodes?"
"Confess. To the papers. To the police."
Shit.
'Confess' meant that he held himself responsible. Like Appleton: convinced of his own guilt as part of a Zionist conspiracy.
They say you can't be hypnotized to do anything against your will, and strictly, that's true. But what if I set you on a rooftop with your eyes closed, and convinced you that an endless meadow stretched out before you, a wonderful place to run free and happy? I mean really convinced you, creating an hallucination crisper and more vivid than reality in your mind. So what would happen then?
Would you scream or laugh on the way down?
"Moskowitz. Do you know where Steinberg is right now?"
"Yes."
The subconscious is what you might call literal-minded. Ask a yes-no question, get a yes-no answer.
"Tell me where he is."
"He's—"
Something covered my eyes.
No.
"—here."
"Sleep," sounded in my ear.
During advanced training, Manny Silverberg drills us in what he calls Mutual Autohypnosis. Two people – I did this with Braun, having worked with him on several missions – sit opposite each other. And put each other into trance.
As I practiced this with Braun, I would speak aloud a phrase designed to induce trance in myself. The thing is, it would act on him as well. He would respond with his own autohypnotic phrase. Then it would be my turn again. As we proceeded to sink deeper, the pauses between sentences became longer, our words became distant. Finally, we were silent, lost inside a deep, calm, meditative state.
But Braun was my friend, not my enemy.
In my ears now, I heard: "You can feel comfort... sweeping down... through your body."
It was relaxing. The sounds washed through me.
Strang. You're very good.
Thoughts can drift through your awareness, even as you sink deeper into trance. At this moment, I had that familiar trance-state feeling: that I could move about if only I wanted to, yet somehow I didn't want to.
Do something.
I managed to fractionally open my eyes. Into slits through which the word was grey and flickering.
Strang was excellent.
"All the way down, even... into your arms... your wrists..."
My eyes closed, opened a fraction. A glimpse of a goatee beard. But soon I would be asleep.
So relaxed.
"Even into... your... fingers."
Without volition, both hands relaxed.
Distantly, I heard my Beretta drop to the floor. Maybe it would distract Strang, just a little.
But I was so deeply—
Just speak. Now.
"Look. At the..." My words slurred. Like a punchdrunk boxer trying to fight back. "Reflection shining on... the... gun."
A pause. Had he glanced at the fallen gun?
"You slip... Deeper." Strang's voice shifted. "Into... trance... inside the..."
Using my own words.
"The trance..." I murmured. "You can... relax..."
But I was sliding deeper, too.
"Soon... you will..."
"See..." I said, "the shifting... light as you..."
"Go deeper and..."
"Deeper into..."
There might have been a pause.
"This..."
"Relaxed..."
Perhaps a longer interval, in which neither of us spoke.
"State..."
And silence.
In deep trance, time distorts in ways the waking mind cannot comprehend. Have you ever spent years inside a dream, when in fact it took up seconds of your nighttime sleep?
A century passed. A million years, and the Earth was an arid zone in which life still thrived, none of it human. Then ten million years, when I saw a swollen crimson sun, and fled to future epochs where the galaxy grew dim as the universe expanded all around, dissipating into dark silence, and no energy moved as the cosmos itself fell...
So peaceful now.
...asleep.
He had things for me to do.
"Turn around..." he continued. "Now..."
My feet moved.
"Are you alone in my offices?"
"Y...Yes," my mouth said, as my body turned.
"Is anyone waiting outside in the corridor?"
"No."
I felt I could stop the process if I wanted to. But I didn't want to, that was the thing.
"You can... Stand..." I tried to say words to myself, but it was hard for me to form them, to hold coherent thoughts. "Still..."
"As you... walk... forward one pace... then another..."
My left foot moved. My right.
"Like sleep..." I said, trying to entrance him back. "You can go... deeper..."
"As you take... another step... that's right..."
Another slow pace. Another.
"You can... relax your voice..."
"As you... take one more... step, and... stop here... my words..."
"Will allow you... to... stop talking..."
"As your unconscious... learns what to do, to..."
"Awaken..." Commanding myself, not Strang. "Wake up..."
"To your obligation... to bend down, beside the desk..."
I was losing this.
Wake up.
I needed to give myself a strong command to rise up from trance, before he—
"And see the... treasure chest..."
"Rise... up..."
"The lid rises open... and you see..."
Oh God. It looks so—
"No."
—bright.
"The treasure..."
"Uh. Trigger."
Because a part of me knew precisely what the redness was, the button whose operation would be cataclysmic as the world exploded like the sun. The bright sun swelling in the future where everything was a dream.
"As it triggers your deep desire... that's right... to reach for it now... for the big red... jewel..."
A shining ruby, so wonderful, attracting my hand like a magnet. If I pressed it the world would end, but it was so lovely.
"...lowering your hand... so slowly..."
Like moving through deep water, through comforting pressure.
"...and in five minutes... you will... press down..."