Alice Through The Multiverse

by Brian Trenchard-Smith

  Nelson’s entry into the conference room was greeted by spontaneous applause. Word traveled fast in anti-terrorism circles. At the dawn raid in Walthamstow, although, regrettably, a high-value target had been killed, material evidence had been recovered that promised to yield a trove of useful intelligence. Nelson smiled with feigned modesty, nodding thanks as he strode to the podium. He adjusted his cufflinks and signaled for the applause to stop. It did immediately.

  Selwyn measured a quarter teaspoon of sugar into a cup. Nelson was as particular about the precise degree of sweetness to be accorded to Darjeeling as he was about the cut of his suits. Selwyn stirred the cup, then handed it to Nelson, who sipped, then nodded approval.

  “Alright then. Let’s get started. Preliminary examination of the computers and cellphones we’ve recovered indicates there’s a new crew in town, one of them experienced in explosives. In view of the heightened threat level, all leave is canceled for the time being. I’ll be issuing new surveillance assignments later today. Here’s what we know at this point...”

  After the briefing, Brandt brought cheese and chutney sandwiches in to Nelson’s office for a belated lunch. They chewed together silently while scrolling through images on Nelson’s computer. The subject was Pamela van Doren, a young woman with a direct gaze and striking red-gold hair. She would be arriving in London the next day for a brief visit to the U.K. before attending a conference in New Delhi.

  Pamela van Doren was the young inheritor of old money, from a respected family in upstate New York. Her father had assiduously augmented the already considerable family fortune, and had left his daughter in control of serious wealth. Egalitarian by instinct, Pamela was regarded by others in the top tier as a class traitor. Mid-twenties, hip and attractive, with her signature flame-colored mane, Pamela devoted her time, energy and fortune to various progressive causes, but what mattered most to her was promoting the availability of adequate, sustainable and wholesome food and water to the world’s population, opposing the privatization of human necessities. Her indictment of corporations that absorbed public water supplies, opposed labeling GMOs, drove farmers to suicide, poisoned bees and other wildlife, etc., was unoriginal. What made her different was having the charisma, the profile and the means to energize activism against them globally. She had made powerful enemies.

  CHAPTER 8

  Strike Three

  The door to Room 5B whirred shut. Alice, hair wrapped in a towel, sat on the bed in her hospital gown, a tray of food and a mound of clothing beside her. The glimpses of the life she knew had ended when the strange women had stopped bathing and dunking her underwater. Did they not believe her when she told them that she had been baptized? These women had kept hissing at her like village geese. Nattering about the 21st century, whatever that meant…Alice’s mind was reeling from contradictions. She had not died, or at least she had no memory of death. James’ saving her from death was her last recollection. Yet here she was in another world. Certainly not Heaven, nor did this seem the molten pits of Hell. Was it Purgatory, mayhap? Lost and frightened, Alice put her hands together, bowed her head and began to pray. She begged God to forgive her lapses of faith. She should have trusted Him to rescue James, as He did. She prayed for strength to beat back doubt and fear that she might face the trials to come.

  Alice surveyed her cell. She glanced dubiously at the clothing by her side. She was unsure how to put on the narrow breeches they had given her, and why she should be asked to dress as a man. She regarded the tray of food balanced on an unsteady stand. She had pecked at the meal, but the potato was a watery pulp and the meat had no blood in its fibers. It was bland, neither sweet nor rich to the taste, unlike the victuals her mother put on the family table. The memory filled Alice’s eyes with tears. Was her family safe? Where were they? Alice took another bite. There was some taste to the food. That told Alice she was not dreaming. Was this to be her real life now, and the life she had known before just a dream that started and stopped? Nay; the smell of the horse she had galloped through the forest was real, the pain of her bursting lungs, the joyous reunion with James and Ben, all real.

  She watched the toilet bowl refill once again. Its function had been explained to her, in a tone that conveyed she was meant to know such things, though Alice felt that mullein was far better for cleaning oneself than the flimsy white fluff they gave her, that tore and crumbled at her touch. But, to be sure, this was the grandest privy she had ever seen. Like a child with a new toy, she had pressed the metal button on top of the cistern over and over. But the novelty of the swirling, gurgling water was wearing off. Her spirits sank under the weight of unanswerable questions. She curled up to avoid them in sleep.

  Hours later, Paul was back at the hospital after a nap and a snack at The Bishop’s Table Hotel, his official residence during his internship at Farnham. He paused beside 5B and watched Alice through the one-way glass portal in the door. Further contact with her was a risk. But Alice was the key to his investigation. He considered quickly slipping inside the room and asking her questions before she could be transferred—to the pro bono clinic in London or wherever else. But there was too much traffic up and down the corridor. The swing shift Duty Nurse was probably aware of Dr. Picton’s prohibition. Paul considered leaving it for later. No, he finally decided, he couldn’t risk Alice being spirited away. Now was the time.

  Paul casually glanced behind himself. The nurse at the other end of the corridor was busy with paperwork. But someone else was watching Paul as he observed the patient in 5B. June Daly looked up from her video game, wondering why the American’s interest in the transfer patient persisted.

  Alice’s prayers had foundered; she was again experiencing a momentary crisis of theodicy. What was her great offense that God should punish her so? As if to scold her for a blasphemous thought, the door to her room slid into the wall with an unsettling hiss. She startled. There, standing in the doorway, was James. Not the James she knew, who had, but an hour ago, saved her from drowning, before she was thrust back into this strange world of bright light, smooth polished surfaces, and doors that opened and shut themselves. This was the James who denied her.

  Paul looked at the sad frightened girl. How did she fit into the puzzle? “May I come in?” He stepped inside without waiting for reply. Alice watched the door miraculously slide itself shut.

  “I see they’ve brought you some clothes,” Paul said, seeing the sneakers, leggings, and tunic top still neatly piled on the bed beside her. She was silent. “Let me know if they are not your size.” It was the first of a series of questions he would pose to probe the sincerity of her delusion. If she was playing a part, he needed to know.

  “I thank you, Sir.”

  “It’s ‘Sir’, now, not James?”

  Alice shrugged, disconsolate. Paul pressed for an answer. “You don’t think I’m James anymore?”

  Alice stared at him for a moment. “You share his countenance and form...but you talk funny.”

  “In America we’d think you talk funny.” His attempt to lighten the mood fell on stony ground. He sat down at the end of the bed. “America, that’s where I’m from.” Alice stared at him blankly.

  After a moment, she responded. “Am I dreamin’ or has someone put a spell on me?”

  “That’s a good way to think of it,” Paul offered. “You are under a spell, but with your help we are going to break that spell and give you back the life you should be having.”

  Alice shot him a quizzical glance. “Life..?”

  Paul watched her carefully as he continued to set his traps. “Friends...your job…”

  Alice looked confused by the word. “Job?”

  “Work. For money.”

  “My Da gives me three pence every week.” Thoughts of her family turned her silent again. Paul tried another approach.

  “What king sits on the throne of England?” Paul asked, matter of fact.

 
“No king. A queen.”

  “Really?” Paul wondered if she referred to Queen Elizabeth II. Was this the first crack in her story? Paul realized that in fact he preferred her to be deluded, not a dissembler.

  “Mary reigns now.”

  Mary? Then he tracked her logic.

  “Mary? You mean Bloody Mary?”

  “I would not call her that, not if you know what’s good for you.” Alice’s mood sank further. Tears welled in her eyes. “I am not in Heaven, am I?” Her voice quavered for the first time. “I am in the other place ’cos of what my Da does...”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s a headsman.”

  “An executioner?”

  “Like his father before him, and his granddad. You’re born to it...there’s no shame...till someone you know is to be put to death. Till it was you...”

  “Me?” Paul was stunned. Obviously she meant this James, the love of her life. Executed by her father? Interesting. Was there a Freudian factor at work in her condition? Paul wondered. Alice fought back the tears.

  “Am I cracked? Am I a mad girl?”

  Dr. Picton’s face hardened as he listened to Paul’s reply. Although it was nighttime, he had not yet left the hospital, due to a visit from June Daly. She stood beside him, observing 5B’s security camera output enlarged on a separate screen while he listened in on headphones.

  “We don’t use words like that,” Paul was saying. “It’s Alice, that’s your name, isn’t it? Alice, you are sick, but we’re going to get you well again.”

  Paul knew how to impersonate a doctor. He gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder, as a doctor might. Something about this girl was reaching through his defenses. Underneath the delusion she had genuine warmth, purity of heart, considerations it was wise to ignore in his line of work. She looked at him piteously, clutched his hand and kissed it. He allowed her to hold it for a moment, then disengaged it slowly.

  Picton’s voice issued from the ceiling speaker: “Dr. Montgomery, come to the Nurses’ Station straightaway.”

  Alice shrank into a corner. Paul froze. He had weighed the options, chosen the bold move because time was pressing, but his play had not worked out as intended. Fancy footwork was ahead of him.

  “He plots an evil deed,” whispered Alice.

  Paul looked at her. What does she know? Was there some reality buried in her delusion? Once again his instincts kicked in. Yes, there was. It was a hunch, but a powerful one. Picton spoke again, the tone more acidic.

  “Dr. Montgomery, now...please.”

  Paul gave Alice an encouraging nod, then left the room. He walked up the corridor to the Nurses’ Station, where he saw a grim faced Picton, watched by a sheepish-looking June Daly, who had decided, with considerable regret, to put job security before recreational sex. Two security guards stood nearby.

  “It is becoming clear that this arrangement is not working out.”

  “Sir, may we discuss this privately?” offered Paul in the most conciliatory voice he could muster. He had a cover story prepared about a specific need this patient could fulfill for his research.

  “There’s nothing to discuss. You disobeyed my direct orders. Again. Three strikes and you’re out, isn’t that the way you Americans like to put it? Well, this is the third time you have displeased me today. Strike three. I shall inform NYU that you had inappropriate contact with a patient and had to be dismissed.”

  “I did no such…”

  But Picton swiftly interrupted: “Witnessed by staff and myself, recorded on this monitor.” June Daly had rewound the image to freeze at the moment when Paul and the patient appeared to be holding hands. “Not an argument you will win if you choose to pursue it.”

  Dr. Picton did not need any more complications in his life right now. He had not, at any rate, wanted to have an American therapist, however purportedly brilliant, walking around his facility, but had been pressured into it by an influential emeritus at NYU. Picton had taken an instant dislike to this cocky young man. Today’s behavior was definitely suspect. Could he be picking up some spending money from a tabloid for snooping? A disgruntled patient had set the dogs on his hospital once before, but happily his colleagues in the British Medical Association had stood by him and it had all blown over. He recognized that he was probably ruining a young doctor’s prospects for a top career, but the man was clearly a loose cannon, whom he did not want interfering with his work for an important client. Besides, an example every now and again was good for staff discipline.

  “Hand over your security pass and leave the building immediately.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Compromised

  Alice was confused and dispirited. She would try to sleep again now. Turning her head to the pillow, she shrank back into the fetal position. Perhaps when she awoke the nightmare would be over.

  Dr. Picton watched her on the monitor. He would not sedate her again. He would leave that up to the men who would come to collect her, a day ahead of schedule in light of his concerns. And they would be arriving soon.

  The security guard gave Paul a look of deep contempt as he passed through the small steel gate in the hospital wall out into the car park. The gate clanged shut behind him. Paul walked on, then began talking in a wry tone, apparently to himself. “That went well, as no doubt you heard... A lot more going on here than we thought. I’m headed for my car, so call me on my cell.”

  Paul sat in his late-model BMW, stripping off his white coat and removing the listening device he had been wearing. He extracted the transmitter from the small of his back, while speaking into the microphone taped to his collarbone. In this way, his colleagues had been able to record all his conversations, and any observations he passed on privately. Previously, they had spoken briefly about the risks of the step he was contemplating, which had now become reality. He had been told to go for it. Now a new plan was needed.

  “Come on guys, check in.”

  He opened the glove compartment. It was where he kept his Tanfoglio Force 9mm, an eccentric choice of weapon, but he liked its 850 gram weight, and its magazine carried twelve rounds. The pistol sat on top of an envelope. Paul extracted its contents, duplicate hospital key cards to the ones he had handed in. He put them in his pocket. Staring at his phone did not make it ring. A beat later he speed-dialed on his cell. Voice mail. What were the guys doing? He got out of the car, clipped the pistol to his belt, and headed into the nearby woods.

  Paul moved swiftly but cautiously through the moonlit trees. Various options for what was happening, and strategies for dealing with it, competed for priority in his mind. The current game was speed chess, at which he normally excelled. He had made a bold gambit, and been checked. Now his choice lay between retreat and an even bolder move. He needed input from his boss and mentor, Section Chief Rick Almaraz, who had recruited him at Georgetown to join the CIA and pushed him through years of training, before bringing him into his own department at Central Intelligence, the Internal Affairs Investigation Unit under the Office of the Inspector General. Rick Almaraz’ brief was to hunt down rogue agents. In national security circles his unit was known as The Ratcatchers. Not a great way to make friends. But Special Agent Paul Montgomery had recognized its importance and embraced it with zeal.

  The unending war on terror had expanded the ranks of intelligence services all over the world. This inevitably attracted agents with an entrepreneurial bent, which with the rise of corporatist ideology in government encouraged the abuse of power at all levels. Lucrative opportunities for pliable senior agents were available from transnational corporations and corrupt regimes with problems that required solutions outside legal channels. Globalization had conveniently muddied jurisdictional waters. A whistleblowing employee or a business rival could be removed for interrogation, then disappeared to some secret foreign prison until the dispute was resolved, or fed alive to pigs. Although the cowboy
days were over, pockets of rogue agents remained, and Paul’s department had the job of hunting them down.

  Now it seemed that there was rogue activity in the U.K. A protected source in London had alleged that a group of unknown agents from the European Security Taskforce had been making sporadic visits to Farnham Psychiatric, a private hospital, for a number of years. The informant, who had briefly hooked up with an indiscrete nurse at the facility named June Daly, suspected a kind of human trafficking, involving the clandestine use of patients designated for immediate transfer. Given the inflammatory nature of the allegation, before Washington could alert Whitehall, the Ratcatchers were to provide hard evidence that agents of a loyal ally were corrupt.

  The informant also suspected that something new was about to go down. There was no time for orderly preparation. Section Chief Almaraz had selected Paul to infiltrate the hospital and had given him a week to absorb enough information to play plausibly the role of a new psychiatric M.D. who needed to serve an internship at a foreign mental health facility in order to fulfill requirements for a major grant. An obliging senior academic, whose requests were never refused in psychiatric circles, made the call to Farnham Psychiatric. Paul joined the staff ten days later. He waited to see whether a patient would be marked for quick transfer. Last night the girl, Alice, had mysteriously turned up.

  Two fellow agents had accompanied him to England at the outset of the investigation and recorded Paul’s daily interaction with staff from a van parked in nearby woods. Now Paul could dimly see their vehicle through the trees ahead, parked in a small clearing. He walked swiftly towards it, still turning over in his mind how he was going to explain to Rick what had just happened. Paul needed to use the secure satellite phone in the van rather than his cell. It was going to be embarrassing to have to explain his expulsion from the target of surveillance in front of his subordinates, both of whom had more field experience than he did. But it had to be done. Rick Almaraz, whom Paul deeply respected, was not going to be happy that an impulsive maneuver had hindered the investigation, so selling him on an even bolder move wasn’t going to be easy.