Alice Through The Multiverse

by Brian Trenchard-Smith

CHAPTER 27

  The Global Players Club

  Twenty miles away at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, an arriving 747 slowed to a halt beside its disembarkation gantry. Outside the Customs and Immigration Hall, a man watched the ebb and flow of arriving passengers: Charles Farrell, an upper level section chief from Langley, who used the London Embassy as his coat rack whenever he was in town. It was ostensibly his liaison role with the U.S. Secret Service that had brought him to London this time. Glasses, thinning hair, he had the bland look of a bank manager, which belied his violent history as a field agent. Now he was running his own department specializing in cyber warfare.

  Farrell had been recruited by a global investment group early in his CIA career and had performed well in any task they set him. They considered he had the balls for this operation. He agreed with his clients that “the incident” could not take place on American soil. It was decided that the United States’ closest ally would provide a better venue. Greater plausibility, more sympathy from the public. Farrell mulled over their decision to have Pamela van Doren assassinated. Pity she was so young.

  To soothe a vestigial twinge of conscience, Farrell placed Pamela van Doren within a broader context. Human affairs, Farrell reflected, were decided by a handful of families, who controlled the tidal forces of economic power. They were above nationalistic rivalry and political ideology. Their wealth, by inheritance and acquisition, was incalculable. Capitalism, communism, socialism were labels for competing population control systems, changing like the seasons, watched over by these Olympian gods of econometrics. And there was no corner of the Earth they did not reach, influence or adjust. Because, in their view, they owned the Earth, their spherical garden estate floating in space, which they would plant, weed, and tend in their own way. And frack. And mine. And poison. Whatever. Pamela van Doren, herself from one of these families, was beginning to subvert this arrangement through radical environmental populism. Farrell’s clients would compensate him well for silencing her permanently.

  Farrell looked up from these reflections to see Nelson approaching through the crowd. He and Nelson had partnered in several off-the-books ventures over the past decade. The team had a track record. Pamela van Doren’s trip to London had provided an opportunity that Farrell’s clients had been looking for. Farrell was to supervise her elimination and steer the subsequent inquiry in the right direction. The payout for all concerned would be huge. Huge. Now his responsibilities were beginning to gnaw at Farrell’s liver due to problems he was only now hearing about from the British operatives of the European Security Taskforce he was running.

  Nelson reached the arrivals gate and stood beside Farrell. He had left Brandt to take care of things in London while he tried to calm the nerves of his fellow conspirator, a man who was, by personality, easily aggravated. Their conversation was somewhat like a Kabuki play, two scorpions shadowboxing behind a polite veneer.

  “My people tell me your EST people have had problems,” said Farrell.

  “ ‘EST’, indeed. What is, is. Nothing that can’t be fixed. Your CIA Boy Scout was a complication we should have known about.”

  “Agreed. Something for review when the job is done.”

  Some element in their surveillance of the Ratcatchers had failed and the person responsible would regret his error. Severely.

  “This girl, was she the best choice?”

  “At short notice, yes,” said Nelson with a hint of emphasis. He was not going to let that one pass. There had been far too little development time for an operation of this complexity. “Middle class university level female. History of mental disturbance, whose flawed judgment caused her to be seduced into aiding terrorism. No family. Fitted the profile.”

  “Do you have a backup?”

  “Of course. Brandt is preparing him now.”

  “Him?”

  “Homeless nutcase. We’ve done blood and fingerprints. Untraceable. We can give him a radical identity after the event. But things are coming back into line. We’ll have both up and running soon, and make a choice.”

  “Where will the…incident take place?”

  “Somewhere public. Small blast radius, minimal collateral casualties.”

  “But some casualties?”

  “Unavoidably. There have got to be a few to make the operation seem like a terrorist attack and not a targeted assassination.”

  “Well, try and keep it low. We want to minimize the heat.” Farrell was reassured by Nelson’s impervious confidence. But Nelson had better be aware of the consequences of failure. “This is a pivotal moment, commander.”

  “You deliver your end, I’ll deliver mine,” replied Nelson smoothly. He was looking forward to his quarter of a billion dollars and penthouse in Dubai. Courtesy of the Black Vault.

  “You will be well taken care of when the time comes.”

  Just then, doors to the customs hall slid open and a smiling Pamela van Doren emerged accompanied by her two assistants and an airline employee pushing a cart filled with elegant suitcases. Pamela had promised Emily and Paige a break from Washington as a reward for their hard work, a weekend in London visiting tourist hotspots, before participating in a conference on urban subsistence farms and indigenous seed stocks in New Delhi. Tonight, a revival of Richard III at the Old Vic. Tomorrow, a visit to the Tower of London. Sunday, the British Museum. The tour and travel arrangements had been booked in advance online; thus, surveillance of Pamela’s communications by Farrell’s cyber team had given her intended assassins the opening they needed. Time and place for a terrorist outrage.

  Nelson and Farrell spotted their target, whose bright coppery hair made her immediately recognizable.

  Game on.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mr. Broken Teeth

  In Nelson’s basement HQ, a man could be heard howling like a baby. Handcuffed to a post, a naked Mr. Broken Teeth was being washed down by Brandt using a garden hose attached to a spigot on the wall. Broken Teeth had been no lover of bathing even when he was sane. He hated getting wet, having spent too many freezing days and nights with little shelter becoming soaked by the rain. He wailed his complaints, as Brandt scrubbed away the detritus of years.

  “Stop whining, you big girl...” growled Brandt.

  An hour later, Brandt was turning Broken Teeth’s shaggy mop into a stylish cut. He was now dressed in a smart suit, and stared at a hand mirror propped up on the table. He looked handsome. “Not bad...” Broken Teeth admitted. Brandt judged that Broken Teeth would not immediately seem out of place when slipped into the crowd at the critical moment. Unless he grinned.

  “My Dad was a barber,” said Brandt.

  “Name wasn’t Sweeney Todd, was it?”

  Broken Teeth chuckled at his own wit. Brandt smiled in response. Good, let’s keep the conversation light. “How did you know?” he asked, snipping at the sideburns.

  “I’ve slit a few throats myself...” declared Broken Teeth with a degree of pride.

  Brandt took that in. No doubt the loony was boasting. But, for sure, they would not be vaporizing a total innocent. Of course, there had always been collateral damage in these kinds of operations. It was a given. Brandt’s conscience, usually impervious, had been pricked a little initially by the choice of Jane. Slender, beautiful, little more than a child. Not many years older than Brandt’s own daughter. But with the potential for dynastic wealth at stake, he had put it into perspective. All the others they had ever “processed”, the euphemism of their trade, had been bad guys, according to Nelson. National security said so. Or, if it was a corporate job, then those fellows had pissed off somebody important, which was tantamount to the same thing. The girl was unfortunate collateral damage, but Brandt would have few qualms about ridding the world of this fellow.

  When the plan was first laid out, Brandt had asked Nelson, “You sure we’re in the clear on this?” considering the extensive inquiries that alw
ays followed terrorist attacks. “Hide in plain sight,” he recalled Nelson saying with steely confidence. He and Farrell outlined how the inquiry, with a supporting media campaign, would operate. Inevitably there would be interagency finger pointing. But Nelson and Brandt would be protected men, woven into the fabric of the cover story. The bomber would be identified as a mentally-disturbed British girl, or, if she did not pan out, the vagrant whose hair Brandt was neatly trimming. A body with a credible back story was key. The predetermined report of the inquiry would be a mirror reversal of the truth, in which the victim became guilty and the guilty became heroes. But it would be plausible, given the times.

  ISIL had gone underground after being defeated militarily in Syria and Iraq. But bombings and shootings from terrorist groups of all kinds, sectarian and secular, throughout the globe and even in security-tight Moscow, meant that the total eradication of extremist violence was many years off. This bombing would be viewed as the latest in the never-ending succession of senseless atrocities.

  The public always preferred a simple story with recognizable villains. And heroes too, like Nelson and Brandt. As would be depicted by a breathless media, the combined efforts of the British division of EST and the CIA had almost prevented the terrible event. Without their efforts, it might have been far worse.

  “We’re going to be heroes, Angus. Rich heroes. Trust me.” Nelson reasoned that even if both governments knew the truth, it would be in the geopolitical interest of neither Washington nor Whitehall to question the report and open Pandora’s Box. To them and to the inhabitants of Mount Olympus, it would be risky to open up matters so damaging in their implications that confidence in institutional authority of any kind would be undermined.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Much suspected...”

  Princess Elizabeth held a diamond ring between two fingers and contemplated scratching a message to posterity into a pane of glass: “Much suspected....” Her apartment in the Bell Tower was small but well appointed. Decent food and drink were provided. She was treated with the deference due to the Queen’s half-sister. She was nonetheless a prisoner under suspicion, locked in at night, escorted at all times, denied an audience with Mary. Thomas Wyatt had wrought such mischief with his ill-fated rebellion! The Queen’s ministers possessed damning correspondence in which Elizabeth’s name was mentioned. But she had not engaged in treasonous activity; letters she had purportedly written were forgeries. Her accusers would not present her with evidence. They questioned her repeatedly on matters about which she knew nothing. All that she did know was that her future was uncertain, that she might share the fate of her mother, Anne Boleyn. So today she was considering leaving a record incised in glass, a brief apologia pro vita sua. Before she could act, she heard the jangle of keys outside the door. She slipped the ring back on a finger.

  The door to Princess Elizabeth’s room opened and guards thrust a dirty, unkempt girl inside, the young woman possessed by the demon Superbia, whom Sir Giles had brought her to see an hour before. Elizabeth had thought his offer of a new companion another of his cruel japes, aimed to intimidate her into signing a document renouncing any future claim to the throne, in return for pardon and freedom. Elizabeth, in fact, did not want the throne, especially if claiming it meant war with Philip of Spain and the Habsburg Empire. She was tempted to live a more private life, in comfort and peace. Yet just as she had resisted passing through the Traitor’s Gate, she would resist this vile suasion, although she knew that there would be a rising penalty for refusal. Elizabeth recalled with horror and fear seeing the rebels’ heads on spikes. She wondered how much more she could endure. Now Sir Giles had made good his threat and had placed the female demoniac within her very chamber. The Princess commanded the guards to remove the girl. They ignored her and left.

  Elizabeth turned to face the mad thing crouched on the floor. It raised its head and fixed her with an eager look. The princess shuddered with fear. Demons could leap from one captive host to another. She might become mad and be put away for the rest of her life. Perhaps that was how they connived to discredit and dispose of her. She was doomed unless God intervened. The possessed creature rose to its feet. Elizabeth shrank against a wall, holding up the pendant crucifix she wore, intoning a prayer to ward off the unclean spirit.

  “I renounce you, Satan, and all your works! I adjure you, angel of iniquity, ancient serpent. Leave without any harm to body or soul...” The Archbishop of Canterbury had taught her this prayer in preparation for her confirmation. The possessed girl started to move toward her. Elizabeth’s prayer faltered. “You have power to tempt, not to possess...not to possess!” The demoniac moved closer. Elizabeth thrust the crucifix out towards the thing: “Please God, come to my aid, do not permit me to become possessed!”

  The demon stopped inches from the crucifix and spoke: “If I am a demon, the cross will burn me.” The voice was refined, yet odd in timbre. It was known that demoniacs could speak in other dialects and tongues. Elizabeth’s extended hand trembled. But she held it out resolutely.

  Jane bent forward. She gently kissed the crucifix.

  “See? No smoke, no fire. I’m not a demon, not even a witch. I’m just... passing through.”

  Elizabeth was now confused as well as frightened. The Cross did not lie. Surely not. Jane felt composed, if a little excited, quite unlike how she had felt an hour before. She had experienced an epiphany.

  After the golden-haired young woman had been escorted out of the chamber, and they had hooded Jane again while the assembled clergy chanted, Jane’s two principal persecutors had conversed in front of her as if she were not there. Who would listen to a madwoman’s tale in any case? Jane had learned that she was to be used to frighten the Princess Elizabeth into submission. Then it had come to Jane; that perhaps she was not experiencing a drug-induced fantasy after all, rather, that she had somehow actually been transported to the era that had fascinated her since childhood and had become the obsessive focus of her studies. Somehow she really was present at a critical point in the Princess Elizabeth’s detention. There was a purpose to this impossible situation. She, Jane Benedict, was there to use her historical knowledge to change things, to reverse an improper outcome. She was the tool of cosmic forces beyond understanding. Perhaps there really was a higher power. At last she had found a meaning for the pain and strangeness of her life. It was all intended to bring her to this moment. So when guards came to escort her to the Princess’ quarters, Jane did not resist. The realization of her destiny now made her almost giddy with excitement.

  “You’re terrified. I would be too,” said Jane with as much reassurance as she could muster. “I’m pretty scary on a good day. They put me here to frighten you. Heard them talking. But, don’t worry, I am here to guide you.”

  Elizabeth lowered the crucifix. There was some sense in her ravings. Jane stepped back.

  “Wow, this is fantastic. You’re precisely like your portrait, but younger. You really are Good Queen Bess…or you will be.”

  The Princess stiffened at the familiar tone. “I am the Princess Elizabeth, daughter to the late King Henry, half-sister to the Queen,” she said, a little steel hardening into her voice. “No stranger should enter my presence head unbowed.”

  Jane lowered her head. Slightly. “And your head may fall from your shoulders like your mother’s did…unless you listen to me.”

  Images of beheading had a particular potency for Elizabeth. Early in childhood, a cruel governess had recounted the fate of her mother as a caution against disobedience. She told of how Queen Anne had requested a French swordsman to carry out her execution, due to the poor reputation for accuracy of British axe men. It was a clean death, though legend had it that when her severed head was held high the crowd saw her lips moving, begging good King Henry for pardon. Like other children of executed persons, the manner of her mother’s death lurked in the back of her mind, and in her nightmares. But Elizabeth found that sh
e was not offended by the madwoman causing her to imagine it again for the thousandth time. The madwoman’s speech was strange, yet it was clearly the result of education, in a regional dialect Elizabeth had never heard before. Yet there was a sincerity to her.

  “You’re fairly frightened now, right?” Jane continued, a grin all over her face, her epiphany making her a little manic, “I started to wig out myself, then I had a flash. Blinding flash. Everything made sense.”

  None of this made sense to Elizabeth, but she no longer felt threatened by the girl.

  “I’m here for a reason…I’m here to help you survive, so that you can do all the great things you are destined to accomplish. You must continue to defend yourself. ‘Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be. Quoth Elizabeth Prisoner.’ ” Jane had read an account of Elizabeth’s inscribed message just the previous week.

  Elizabeth gasped. How could this mad girl quote what she herself had only thought about writing? Only God could know what she had not yet written.

  Elizabeth sank to her knees and crossed herself. “Have you been sent to me by God?” she asked.

  “As strange as it may sound...I think I may have been, yes,” replied Jane.

  Elizabeth started whispering a prayer in Latin.

  “I’m suddenly...happy,” Jane felt obliged to tell her. “I know, I’m sounding crazy. I mean, I know I am crazy, but in a good way. You see…there may be a God...and She loves me after all!”

  Jane giggled at her own blasphemy. But the Princess did not hear. She was lost in prayer, thanking God for sending her a guide.

  CHAPTER 30

  Crossing the Line

  “I’m on the track of a terrorist plot. I don’t know what the situation is, I just know that something is going down.”