Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  “I think so.”

  Then she let me go.

  Sometimes you know something. You know it without evidence, without even the slightest trace of proof. But it’s still real.

  I realized now what had been nagging me, ever since that first, supposedly anomalous reading in the Beach House. The first hint that things were not the way they were supposed to be.

  Dayling said it: somewhere there’s a god with your face.

  Maybe that was him with Shailer in the picture. I couldn’t prove it. But I knew. He’d been there, sure enough.

  Now he was here.

  The rain was sluicing down. At street level, things weren’t so picturesque. Grey puddles gathered on the pavement and stretched along the roadsides; at the far end of the street, the Museum was a gray shape like an eroded cliff. I headed for the shore, the footpath by the beach. I was almost running now. My shoes and the lower parts of my pants were soaked. As I came closer to the Beach House, the light began to change. A sheen of pearly gray seemed to replace the gloom. Puddles bounced and danced in the downpour, the light refracted by them, flashing suddenly. The surf was rich with color.

  I had my phone in hand. “Shailer!” I called. “Shailer, get back to me right now, you hear? Shaaaailer—­”

  An automated voice asked me to leave a message. Then it bleeped.

  I left a message, all right. You can bet on that.

  I was drenched, but I’d been right to walk. It calmed me down. It got me thinking straight again.

  I found Farnham Kuehl relaxing at his desk. He had a new chair, bigger than the last, and tastefully upholstered in an artificial leather. He lay upon it sideways, one leg hooked across the arm. He reached out as I arrived, turning his computer screen away from me.

  “Hi, Chris. How’s it going?” But when he saw the way I looked, his handshake froze in midair.

  I said, “It’s going wonderfully, thank you. Splendidly. And how are things with you? Have you heard from Mr. Shailer recently? Everything just going swimmingly, is it? Raking in the cash? Punters queueing down the street?”

  He had sat forward in his chair, but now he settled back and leaned his head against his hand.

  “Yes, Chris. In point of fact, the whole thing is enormously successful. As a look around should reassure you, I believe.”

  ­“People are dying here.”

  “Now—­that’s not actually true. There have been victims . . . left nearby, I will admit. But no connection. Not at all. Very regrettable, of course, but really, not our business.” He spread his hands. They were very large and pink, like cured ham. “Nothing to do with me, or you, or the project. The police are dealing with it.”

  I could see what he was doing. I could see the technique. How could you be angry with a man who was so relaxed, so friendly, so entirely reasonable?

  I said, “Who else is here?”

  “Who . . . ?” He glanced around, checking the roster pinned up on the wall behind him. “Carter’s on shift, Jean Gomez, front of house. You can see the roster, if you really want to know.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t actually asking anything.

  “Who else,” I said, “besides Assur?”

  He made a little shrug, a helpless kind of twitch.

  “I . . . don’t understand the question.”

  I looked at him.

  “Chris,” he said. “If you want an answer, you need to specify—­”

  “I’m going to check a few things. Meantime, if you’re in touch with Shailer—­tell him I’m waiting. OK?”

  “Oh yes. I’ll certainly do that.”

  Chapter 55

  The Direct Approach

  Angel came to fetch me. Just as well, really. I was starting to make a prick of myself: arguing and picking fault and not telling anyone what was really bothering me. I walked around with my reader in hand, checking it at almost every corner. That’s how she found me: pointing it up at the ivy-­covered walls outside, as if he’d suddenly appear, a gargoyle on the ramparts, sticking out his tongue and mocking me.

  “Chris,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  In some ways, I suppose, I was glad of an excuse to get away. But I wasn’t going to let anyone know it, least of all her.

  “It’s fucking perfect,” I grumbled. We were sitting in her apartment. “It’s like hiding a tree in a fucking forest.”

  “You don’t even know he’s there,” she said.

  “Exactly! No one knows! The reader doesn’t even pick it up, because Assur’s too strong. I can’t be sure. So what? I just sit back, do nothing? I—­”

  “This is me, Chris. Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Well, I’m—­I’m wound up.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She gave me a mug of tea with a shot of rum. Riff lay in his dog bed with his head up, aware that there was something going on.

  “If you’re ready to listen,” she said, “I found a ­couple more pics.”

  She powered up the laptop. Two more shots. The first was one of those executive lineups, a row of grinning suits, and only one not smiling. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said that one was me.

  The second was a shot across a crowded bar. Upscale. Very nice. A table in the middle distance: me and Shailer in a pretty little tête à tête, the two of us.

  “Either of these look familiar?”

  “No.”

  “Thought not.”

  She put her hand over mine. “Chris. Can this be right? Someone who looks almost exactly like you? How’s that? How’s it happen?”

  “Not quite like me. Younger. Smarter. Better-­looking.”

  “You can’t see that in the pictures.”

  “In real life—­if you see him—­there’s a charisma. I don’t know what else you can call it.”

  “Chris—­” She was staring at me hard. “Your voice . . .” Her fingers pressed on mine. “This bothers you, doesn’t it? I mean, it really bothers you.”

  “Yes. Yes it does.”

  “Tell me.”

  “One of those things you hope won’t happen. But you know it’s going to. One day.” I shrugged. Fucking Shailer,” I said. But swearing didn’t seem to help.

  I told her everything, then. Shailer in Esztergom, that first retrieval. Then the stuff at GH9. The god they’d designated Seven, which had made this, this thing. This Seven B.

  “Seven B,” she said. “Well, that makes sense, then.”

  “How?”

  She showed me her records. She’d been checking back. The flights she’d booked, hotels she’d dealt with. All for the Registry. One name, booked into Chicago, and not out again; no reference for him at the Beach House, none with the Registry in general, in fact. Just one name, out of hundreds that she’d dealt with.

  Steven Benedict.

  I stared at it, not quite believing for a moment.

  “He’s got a name,” I said. “A real name.”

  “An I.D., too. He came in on an ordinary, commercial flight, Chris. Business class. Three, four months back. And guess who was with him? Your pal, Adam Shailer. What d’you make of that?”

  I called Shailer again.

  Voice mail.

  I switched off.

  “Kuehl’s probably let him know,” she said. “Told him something’s up.”

  “He knows anyway. I’ve been phoning him. He knows I’m angry, too.”

  “He doesn’t respond to you yelling at him. I don’t blame him, either.”

  She put a finger to her cheek.

  “This is our plan,” she told me. “Here is what we’re going to do. Direct approach, right?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We e-­mail, or we text—­or both—­the photos straight to Shaile
r. From you. No comment, nothing. Two photos, maybe. Leave something in reserve.”

  “ ‘I know what you did.’ ” I looked at her. “When did you come up with this?”

  “While you were out playing macho man. And then we wait, OK?”

  We didn’t have to wait for long.

  Chapter 56

  The Pyramid Analogy

  From the apartment window I looked out towards the Beach House. As the rain eased, so the light around it seemed to die, the soft halo of color growing darker, less distinct. I was no longer certain what was real and what hallucination. The edge between the inner and the outer world was blurring, and not just for me. I pictured, not the curious or reverend sightseers to the House itself, but the odd figures who would linger outside, perhaps too poor or too deranged to enter: listless zombies, tuned to some vibration no one else could hear, catching the hum of the electric wires, the scent of sheathed lightning, harnessed, pouring out into the city . . .

  The phone rang.

  I was calm now. I was very calm. I looked at it. Then Angel picked it up, and passed it to me.

  Shailer said, “This isn’t what you think.”

  I hit END CALL, and waited.

  Presently, he phoned me back.

  “You don’t know what I think,” I said.

  “Chris, listen. I can guess. This is why—­oh, fuck it. I should’ve just been straight with you, right from the start. You’re smart, you’ll see the sense of it. Jeez. I got things wrong. I screwed up, OK? Can we start over? Can we?”

  “ ‘Jeez,’ ” I said.

  “What?”

  “Very difficult to trust the sincerity of a grown man who says ‘Jeez.’ ”

  “Oh, come on! If we’re going to quibble over words—­”

  “Not words. Pictures. I have more, as well.”

  “OK, OK! Look—­I’m in—­I don’t know where I am exactly. Somewhere on the way to Boston. I can free up time in a ­couple of days, get out to see you. I’ll explain. I’ll explain everything. Till then, Chris, can you promise me—­don’t take any action till I get there. OK? Will you promise that?”

  “No. Don’t think I fucking will.”

  “Chris—­”

  I wrinkled my nose at Angel, made my hand into a claw like I was strangling him.

  I said, “Every step of the way, I’ve had ­people lying to me. And at the bottom of it, who do I find? Adam fucking Shailer. Adam Shailer sends me to Iraq, Adam Shailer’s minions take the flask off me in Paris, Adam Shailer sets me up with a nice job at the Beach House. You’re in charge, Chris, you’re in charge. Then this—­”

  “Sins of omission, Chris. Sins of omission. Or—­how about, a slow reveal? Bit by bit, till the full picture—­”

  “Fuck off.”

  Silence.

  I said, “Seven B. Steven Benedict. That’s witty, that. Very . . . subtle.”

  He gave an awkward laugh. “That was . . . yeah. We probably took that a step too far.”

  He was still on the phone. He needed me. I said, “You two are pretty pally, then. Good mates?”

  “No. Not—­not really. The truth is—­” that awkward laugh again, “he scares the shit out of me. It’s like . . . Jesus. You’ve met him, right? He could just . . . suck the life right out of you. And he wants to. You can see it. It’s like palling up with a nuclear reactor. But—­you see—­he understands. He understands the future, how it has to work. We have an ally, Chris, and—­”

  “He was in the Beach House with us, wasn’t he? All that time back. Right from the fucking start.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “That’s why I got that reading. And you knew it.” I drew a breath. “Is he still there?”

  Another pause.

  “Shailer!”

  “Chris, I don’t want you—­I—­look. This is our chance to make things happen. Good things. Listen to me, bear with me, will you? Just listen. Here’s my analogy. Have you been to Egypt, Chris? Seen the pyramids? Impressive, right? Yeah?”

  “Get on with this.”

  “Well. Once upon a time, they thought the pyramids were built by slaves. You see it in old movies. ­People being whipped to pull these blocks of stone and everything, you know?”

  I took the phone from my ear.

  “Little shit,” I mouthed at Angel.

  “The current thought,” Shailer was lecturing, smooth as they come, “is that no way could it be slaves who built them, for a simple reason: slaves don’t have that dedication. That willingness to be precise, accurate. To get the job done right.

  “If we’re going to use the gods, Chris, there is only one way. We need them to cooperate. We need to work together. There’s got to be something for both sides . . . you follow me now? Do you?”

  Chapter 57

  My Options

  “You look as if you want to kill someone.”

  Angel was watching me, the way you’d watch a sick man, or a lunatic.

  “I always said I would. Sort of wish I’d done it, too.”

  “Well . . . he’s easy to dislike, I’ll give you that. Now what? Sit tight until he gets here? Like he says?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Chris.”

  “Like I said. Maybe.”

  “Call your Mr. Seddon. He could help. He could sort it out . . .”

  “Firstly, he can’t. Secondly, if it goes through Seddon, it’s official. Unless he deems it otherwise. I’m not sure I want it official. Or not just yet, at least.”

  She said, very slowly, “Chris. This isn’t the time to be stupid.”

  It was one of those moments. I had walked out on her before, and it had been a bad thing to do. Now, I was on the edge of doing something else that would put our relationship at risk—­put me at risk, as well.

  I said, “I want to . . . keep my options open.”

  “It’s not your job.”

  “It’s no one else’s.”

  “Fuck it! You’re not—­you’re not paid for this—­”

  I sat there, and I didn’t move.

  “Chris!” she said. “Talk to me, will you? Just fucking talk?”

  I could have run. Physically, metaphorically. I thought about it, both ways. But I knew that if I had, the whole thing would have hung over my head forever. Sleepless nights. Waiting. Worry.

  So I went back to the Beach House. Alone. I kissed Angel on the cheek, which she accepted, but she didn’t kiss me in return. Kuehl was gone when I arrived. That was good. I got some looks but I ignored them. I got comments, and I acted like I didn’t hear.

  I went out to the compound. The weekday visitors were there. The regulars: I knew some of the faces. Woollard and his pals had tracked them all, reviewed their records, checked out anything suspect. These ­people were like hopefuls come to Lourdes, praying for a miracle. You saw the eagerness, the way they’d wait and wait, then suddenly, they’d rouse, stirred by some sound, a change in light, some current in the air which only they perceived . . .

  Finally, when it was quiet, I went up to the rail and peered into the shifting mass of shadows that I’d brought back from Iraq.

  “I want to talk,” I said, then, very slowly, clearly, I said, “Steven Benedict. Seven B. I want to know what’s going on. And why you want me here.”

  The shadows moved. They seemed to unfold, like the petals on some huge, half-­seen flower, and then closed again in silence.

  I waited, and I waited.

  Chapter 58

  The Beach House

  I watched the last few visitors go home. I watched housekeeping come and tidy up, sweep away the paper cups and candy wrappers, wipe the seats and tables, empty out the bins. I watched the day staff leave, the night staff coming on. I watched the sky grow dark even while the glass roof grew transparent, clear enough to see the stars. I watched the
night-­lights on the courtyard walls, unwinking orange eyes, and the red dots of cameras, always on, always watching.

  But most of all, I watched the god Assur, the force I’d roused and caught and brought back to the West. I watched it measuring the length and breadth and depth of its captivity, never resting, never stopping now, as if the long, long centuries of sleep had been too much. A somnolence that, once shaken off, could never be regained.

  I seemed to see it better in the half-­light, as though it grew more solid with the dark. It filled out its domain, thrusting its way into the corners, arching up against the fields which held it. Dayling had once claimed it spoke to him, and now I, too, seemed to hear a whispering, right in the center of my skull, a voice that never quite made sense yet had some urgent message to impart—­so I imagined. The slightest movement of my head would silence it. The least distraction and it vanished from my consciousness. But if I sat still, cleared my thoughts, it was there again, right on the edge of hearing. Almost words. Almost . . .

  The sound of an opening door brought me back to myself. One of the night staff appeared, bringing coffee. It was unexpected. I felt suddenly centered, grounded once again. I was probably too profuse in my thanks; the sudden human contact caught me by surprise, made me realize how immersed I’d been.

  I drank about a half a cup. Then it went cold beside me.

  The voice, or whatever it was, came back.

  There were shapes there, moving in the dark. I had the impression of some great mass, heaving itself repeatedly at the containment wall. Here was a being ancient beyond memory, that had perhaps prefigured human life itself, that had existed long before the first buildings were raised at Ur, long before Assur itself was built. Simply being in its presence conjured images, feelings, thoughts, for the perception of it worked directly on the nerves, on the tissues of the brain itself. I had a sense of sharp, feral eyes, peering at me. The thing was aware. It knew me; knew who I was and what I’d done. The pressure of its interest touched me like a physical power. Was this what Dayling had experienced? If so, then there was nothing pleasant in it. I shifted in my seat, briefly breaking its hold on me, and bringing me back to myself.