Delivering Caliban

by Tim Stevens

  The decorations were few: framed photographs of a woman in her thirties with a child of ten or so, whom Pope knew were Ramirez and her mother; considerably more of an older woman who resembled both of the other two. The grandmother. Ramirez had lived with her from childhood and through college, Pope knew.

  Of her father there were no pictures.

  Most of what passed for ornamentation in the flat was related to music. There were coffee-table tomes on the great violinists, on the history of the instrument itself. Two framed prints on the walls were facsimiles of yellowing musical scores: Paganini, Khachaturian. A wall-mounted unit revealed an array of CDs and DVDs, almost all of classical recordings.

  At nine twenty he saw the first flicker of blue and red lights across the wall opposite the main bay window.

  Quickly he moved at a crouch to the window and peered out. Police black-and-whites were pulling up, four of them.

  Without stopping to consider what this meant he strode across the room. The tiny bathroom was at the rear of the flat. He stood on the toilet lid and pushed open the window as far as it would go. An alley behind the flat stretched away for ten yards and then bent to the left.

  Pope dragged himself through the window, snagging his belt buckle for one moment before tearing free. The apartment was on the second floor - an American would say the first - and the drop was an easy one.

  After putting two blocks between himself and the flat he doubled back by another route until he had a vantage point of the front of the complex. There was no doorman, just a simple keycode entry system. Four uniformed cops milled about on the pavement at the front. It meant four had gone inside, probably, and they were expecting her to make a run for it.

  He took a few seconds to absorb this new information and try to process it. Nothing came up. There was no way anyone could have known he was heading here. Purkiss himself couldn’t possibly have worked out the connection yet, not without supernatural powers of some kind.

  When the lights came on at the second-floor windows he knew it was Ramirez’s flat they’d come to visit.

  He debated waiting but decided nothing would come of it. At most he’d see a group of police officers emerge in a few minutes’ time with nothing to show for their search. Pope turned away and began walking, pondering his next move.

  He knew a lot about the girl, but nothing about her friends in the city. He did know she hadn’t gone away: there were signs of recent habitation in the flat, such as dishes unwashed on the kitchen surface. So presumably she was in the city somewhere. Where precisely, he had no way of knowing.

  Pope had the grandmother’s old address but that was unlikely to be of much use; he knew the house had been sold since her death. He knew also that the girl was a musician and therefore presumably had musical friends and acquaintances, but again finding them was going to be difficult.

  He’d never been to Charlottesville before but had learned a little of the basic layout, and headed towards Main Street and the Mall. It was a picturesque city, he noted distantly, with a lively atmosphere even on a Monday evening.

  As often happened, he ran a segment of the diary through his head to occupy his thoughts while the rest of his mind worked on the problem of what to do next.

  18th October

  Signs are that the hurricane is going to hit us in a week or so. Z is getting nervous - once more, he handles his tension well, but he can’t conceal it completely. He’s started “precautionary measures”, as he calls them. It’s not quite an evacuation, yet, but the beginnings of one. Little of the equipment has been moved, and the storm shutters are being hammered into place with admirable speed. But nobody here really believes the operation is going to be able to continue after the storm hits, even if the Box isn’t completely destroyed. For one thing, relief ships and aircraft are going to be prowling the area and the likelihood of discovery will be enormous.

  Still the subjects - prisoners, let’s call them that and have done with it - continue to come in, sometimes in a trickle, at other times en masse. It’s almost as though Z is desperate having come this far to process as many as he can before everything ends. I don’t know quite what’s driving him. The results so far have been clear. Caliban is a failure. Or, at least, the result has been a negative one, which is not quite the same thing. But given what’s gone into the project, with regard to manpower and secrecy, an outcome like this is nothing less than disappointing.

  The core people, Jablonsky and Taylor and Grosvenor and of course Z himself, are still here. Around thirty per cent of the support personnel remain, including the three medics. I haven’t learned their names. They’re guilty, of course, but they’re small fry and can be mopped up afterwards. The other four names are the important ones.

  20th October

  Another evening talking with Z. If he’s been tainted by Taylor’s suspicions of me, he’s hiding it well. Alone with me he makes less of an effort to disguise the tension he’s experiencing. He doesn’t talk about the approaching storm much, though. Instead he speaks of Caliban as if it’s still a going concern, a project that’s far from over let alone dead in the water.

  He’s deeply preoccupied with the science of it. ‘It’s the serotonin that’s doing it,’ he says. ‘The deaths. We’re overloading them with it. Probably the norepinephrine, too. The corticosteroids were contributing, but the content has been reduced and although we’ve had a reduction in mortality since then, it’s still unacceptably high.’

  We’re in the mess, seated at one of the tables. There’s coffee in a pot on the hotplate. No booze. Z doesn’t drink. The others do, but not him. His face is waxy pale in the fluorescent light from above. Even if the storm leaves the Box intact, it’s going to take out the generators and that’ll be it. No power, no more project.

  ‘Autopsies,’ he says. ‘God damn it, we need them. And we don’t have them.’

  None of the doctors involved were pathologists. W hadn’t recruited any beforehand. Any deaths that were to occur would probably be the result of excessively forceful restraint, suicide, or escape attempts. So the thinking went. Nobody had anticipated a significant mortality rate from the drug itself.

  While I watch Z’s eyes – he has a habit of looking away while he’s talking, like many people – I’m thinking. I need to make a move, imminently. If I wait until the storm hits, I might not survive, or at the very least it may be too late to provide any proof of what’s happened here. I know now that I’m unlikely to catch the big one, discover who the connection high up in Washington or the corporate world is. But that doesn’t matter now.

  I’m going to dictate this diary over the next twenty-four hours, every word of it that I’ve kept in my head. A backup copy, in case I disappear.

  *

  It was an idea. Not the most brilliant one, but better than anything else he could come up with.

  Pope found a payphone and dialled enquiries. To his surprise, the girl’s number was listed. The phone rang twice before it was answered.

  The voice was cautious, a man’s. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh.’ Pope put surprise and mild dismay in his tone. ‘Is, ah, is Nina there?’

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘I’m a friend.’ He let a touch of belligerence creep in. ‘Who’re you?’

  Silence for a beat. Then: ‘Sir, this is the police. Could you please identify yourself?’

  ‘The police? What’s – is Nina okay?’

  ‘Kindly identify yourself.’

  ‘My name is Thomas Beaumont. Like I say, I’m a friend. What’s going on?’

  ‘Were you expecting Ms Ramirez at home?’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I rang.’ Pope cursed himself silently. An American would say called, not rang. ‘Officer, please can you tell me what –’

  ‘When did you last see Ms Ramirez?’

  ‘Two days ago? No, three. Friday night. A bunch of us went out for drinks.’

  ‘And your connection with Ms Ramirez is what, again, exactly?’

&n
bsp; Pope thought about the musical paraphernalia in the flat. ‘We’re in the same music group. She plays violin.’ He raised his voice a fraction. ‘Has something happened to her?’

  ‘Mr Beaumont, she’s believed to have fled a murder scene.’

  ‘What? Nina?’

  ‘We don’t think she’s responsible. But we need to speak to her.’

  ‘Who’s been murdered?’ Pope didn’t expect an answer; he’d said it to buy time while he tried to process what the cop had said.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose that, Mr Beaumont.’ The cop muttered something to someone in the background, then came back. ‘Sir, two things. One, do you have Ms Ramirez’s cell phone number?’

  ‘She doesn’t give it out to many people. Only those she’s closest to.’ A trace of bitterness. It explained at least why he was ringing her home number.

  ‘Okay. Second, we need to ask you some questions. Where are you right now?’

  Pope twisted round to peer at the signs. Making up a fictional location wouldn’t work. ‘Corner of West Main and, uh, Fifth.’

  ‘Stay there. A squad car will pick you up.’

  Pope hung up, stepped out of the booth and began walking rapidly, putting space between himself and the corner.

  It didn’t make sense. Conceivably, it was a coincidence. He had little idea what Ramirez was like as a person. She might hang out with a druggy or gangbanger crowd, and they might have been partying tonight and lost control. Except he did have an idea what Ramirez was like. She was a graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in music, and a violinist. Her flat hadn’t looked like a drug den in the slightest.

  No. The murder scene she’d fled had something to do with his presence here. He had no idea what. And there was little point speculating at the moment, because he needed to focus on the consequences.

  She was on the run from the police. That meant she’d either gone to ground with friends somewhere, or left the city. He knew Charlottesville had a population of under 45,000 souls. And people like her, of Hispanic ethnicity, were in a tiny minority compared with African-Americans and whites.

  If it were him, he’d have left the city behind.

  There was the airport, but it was eight miles away and the police would have sent a description of her there already. She might have taken a car, either her own or a rental, in which case he had no chance of finding her in time, even if he somehow managed to discover her licence plate number or the rental agency she’d used.

  That left public transport. A train, or that icon of American intercity travel: the Greyhound.

  He remembered that the station he’d arrived at by train doubled as a bus station, and was a little further up Main.

  Fifteen

  Langley, Virginia

  Monday 20 May, 3.25 pm

  Naomi came in without knocking and stood across the desk from Giordano, hand poised and holding a sheet of paper. He took the hint and dug a gap between the piles of articles and memoranda. Never a tidy man, Giordano had let his desk come to resemble one of those recycling bins Adrienne was always encouraging him to use for their waste.

  He peered through his glasses at the printout Naomi dropped in front of him. It showed a copy of a passport’s photo page with name, date of birth and the usual other data.

  John Purkiss. The face gazed back affably, the hair dark, the cheeks a little shadowed.

  Giordano raised his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’

  ‘British SIS. Arrived JFK from London at two this afternoon, alone as far as we can tell. The Feds took him in for a little light questioning. Let him go after ten minutes.’

  ‘Today…’

  ‘Yes sir.’ She meant that she understood the potential significance of the timing. Known foreign agents came and went all the time. This one had arrived sixteen hours after a Company operative had been murdered, in the same city.

  ‘Any idea where he is now?’

  ‘No sir. This info came through just a minute ago.’ It was now three-thirty p.m. Naomi looked genuinely sorry. ‘Our ears in the British Embassy are on alert, of course, in case he goes there.’

  ‘All right.’ He gave the little wave that so many people found annoying: run along now.

  In a moment he looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘Boss, why would the FBI question him?’

  Giordano considered, tonguing lunch chicken out of a tooth. ‘Like you said, it was over in ten minutes. They probably just wanted to put the frighteners on him, let him know they were on to his presence in the city. Who understands the arcane workings of the Feeb mind? I didn’t say that, by the way.’

  When she’d gone, Giordano took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Naomi was right. The Feds, even the paranoid New York ones, didn’t normally routinely haul in foreign spooks for a pep talk, least of all British ones. The Brits were our buddies again, after all, as the President kept saying now that he’d got the reelection business over and could concentrate on establishing his international legacy.

  The FBI people had collared Purkiss for a reason. Probably they hadn’t got much from him and were tailing him even now.

  Which meant they knew why he was here.

  Giordano debated getting up and walking the ten yards or so after Naomi to call her back. Instead he picked up the phone and heard it ringing in her office down the corridor. She answered it in a rush.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Another word?’

  When she’d come back, he said: ‘Find out who the Feds were that spoke to Purkiss. Give the job to Kenny if you like.’

  ‘That’s okay, boss. I’ll do it.’ She beamed, vindicated. ‘Want me to have them put under surveillance?’

  ‘No, I want you to have them terminated with extreme prejudice.’ After a full five seconds he laughed at her expression. ‘Good God, girl. Too many Jason Bourne movies on your TiVo. Just their names is fine. If I need to speak with them I’ll make a couple of calls myself.’ He placed the glasses back on his nose like a pair of pince-nez. ‘And may I remind you, Agent, that the Central Intelligence Agency is forbidden by federal law from conducting surveillance activities on US soil.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  One of these days, he thought, she was going to put her tongue out at him. He let them run rings around him like a big teddybear of an uncle.

  *

  Giordano called Adrienne, something he often did when under pressure. Just the sound of her calm, no-bullshit tone was enough to both ease and lift his spirits. He told her it was ‘staff trouble’ he was having, which was as much as he could reveal. After he’d offloaded, she in turn told him about the difficult conversation she’d had with her son Adam, Giordano’s stepson. The boy was a grad student in business at Columbia who was talking about jacking it all in and becoming an aid worker in Somalia. Adrienne was disappointed but supportive of her son. Giordano thought he was nuts, and had told both him and Adrienne as much. Adam now referred to his stepfather as “that fascist”. Resorting to the F word put you beyond the bounds of rational debate, in Giordano’s opinion.

  He wondered not for the first time what his and Adrienne’s own kids would have been like, if they’d met ten years earlier and had had any. It might have been an attractive combination: her warmth and people skills with his analytical mind and drive. On the other hand, he thought, surveying his desk, they might have ended up overweight slobs like him with the added handicap of their mom’s driving abilities.

  After the call he sat with the phone in his hands. He was kidding himself. The call to Adrienne had been a distraction, a way of stalling.

  This Purkiss. Not Grosvenor’s killer, because he’d arrived the day after her murder. Did he have an accomplice? It was the only explanation that made sense.

  Giordano heaved himself over the desk, picked up the phone.

  .

  Sixteen

  New York City

  Monday 20 May, 4.05 pm

  The trick, Purkiss had learned, was to fix on
a distant point and allow it to dwindle so that it became a pinpoint, then to focus your vision on it so intently that the rest of the visual field seemed to expand around it.

  He chose the Statue of Liberty. The green figure, so familiar even to those who hadn’t seen it, stretched skywards over to his left. It drew his gaze and held it.

  The movement from his left was both seen and felt. At the same time, his heightened awareness told him something was happening behind him and on his right.

  Two men approaching. At least.

  Purkiss did what would be least expected and instead of turning one way or the other, stepped backwards and rightwards. He collided with the man just as the one on the left moved fully into view, and brought his elbow round as he did so. He felt it collide with the solid bulk of a torso and heard a gasp.

  The blow came so suddenly and unexpectedly that Purkiss didn’t even make an effort to parry it: a knuckle strike to the left side of his neck that seemed to punch all voluntary control from his body so that he was inhabiting it but unable to manipulate it in any way. He saw the railing rush towards him, the water tilting beyond; felt hands grab each arm and jerk him back before he collided with the rail; heard shrieks on either side along the esplanade. He was dropped to his knees, the hard concrete of the walkway biting through the material of his trouser legs, and lowered only fractionally more gently to the ground so that his face was turned sideways and through his swimming, roiling vision he identified a pair of tasselled loafers inches from his face.

  His arms were jerked behind his back and he felt the ratcheting grind of cuffs being clamped shut around his wrists. Hands hauled him to a sitting position against the railing. He tipped sideways a little and vomited thinly. Around him people were backing away, in some cases running.