The Malice Box

by Martin Langfield

  I told them the truth, all the truth, immediately, with the exception of my studies in our honoured tradition. They had no need to know of such things and gave no sug gestion of any interest in them. They simply did not believe that I was telling them the full truth: that I had passed secrets to an intelligence service, though I was not sure which Mukhabarat it was.

  I told them about my father, about how I had allowed myself to become Westernized, my love for the woman who had turned out to be their agent.

  They got angry and sometimes slapped me. I was never punched. But to be slapped, hard, while naked and cold, to the laughter of other men and women, to feel so entirely defenceless and alone, is deeply distressing. I felt like a little boy.

  I was made to squat or stand for hours, for what seemed like days, in positions that slowly built up excruciating pain. When I sought to change position, they slapped me, pushed my head down violently, abused and mocked me, and forced me to assume the same position.

  Still I told them the truth. There was no more to tell. They got very angry.

  Different people came. And then they broke me.

  They Abu Ghraib-ed me.

  Other men were brought in, prisoners like me. We were made to sit on each other, form piles of bodies, perform acts I will not describe, pose in humiliating positions.

  They brought in dogs. Angry, savage dogs, inches from my face, barely controlled by their handlers. I was so frightened I urinated on myself. They laughed and told me to start telling the truth.

  Who was I really working for? What was my role in Al-Qaeda? What uses had they put my nuclear physics training to? Where was the bomb? Was there a bomb? What about dirty bombs?

  One man, after what seemed like hours of interrogation, told me it all came down to this: ‘My God is stronger than your God.’ That’s how he put it. And then he riffled the pages of a Qu’ran in front of my face and threw it against the wall.

  I began to weep uncontrollably at irregular intervals, over irrational things.

  They threatened to have me taken to another country where they would not treat me so well. Everything I had experienced, they said, was authorized and legal. They could send me to countries where they weren’t so squeamish.

  I told them again that I was an American citizen. ‘Didn’t get that memo,’ one of the men said, and laughed.

  In our tradition, as my father and grandfather passed it down to me, there are different levels of growth in spiritual power and understanding, sometimes expressed as different coloured organs across the chest, or up and down the body, sometimes expressed as mystical bodies emanating from our physical body; sometimes as properties of particular prophets. They are called lata’ if, which can be translated as ‘subtleties’. I now began to use them inside out, to chart the levels of my destruction.

  They made me feel I was removed from God: akhfa

  They made me blind to God’s love: khafi

  They made me reveal my most hidden secrets: sirr

  They destroyed my spirit: ruh

  They destroyed my heart’s compassion: qalb

  They reduced me to my primitive, animal self: nafs

  They made me fear my physical destruction: the shattering of my qalib, the mould that forms our bodies. The English word ‘calibre’ is derived from it.

  The day they made me feel as though I were drowning, time after time, when the true panic of death was upon me, I knew I had lost my dignity.

  I tried to say to them whatever they wanted me to say. I confessed to everything they had asked me about. I told them all the secrets I knew of our honoured tradition. And still they didn’t believe me. They laughed. Still the torment went on.

  I gave up. I decided to die. I wished for death.

  And that is when I acquired the power to activate the Ma’rifat’.

  6

  Trial by Mind

  Little Falls, August 31, 2004

  The Quad buzzed to indicate Robert had received a new text message. Waypoint 039.

  His regular cell phone began to vibrate on his office desk. ‘Robert? It’s Horace. We must meet.’

  ‘Is it safe for you?’

  ‘Nothing is safe any more. We do what we must do.’

  ‘There are things I need to tell you. To show you. Thank you for what you did at Hencott. How on earth did you pull that off?’

  ‘I’ll explain when we meet. Eleven o’clock. Meet me at Grand Central, at the clock. We have a lot to do, and no time. Get to the waypoint.’

  ‘Horace, I’m terrified for Kat. She’s in danger with Adam.’

  ‘I instructed Katherine to gather and hide as many keys as she could while staying close to Adam, but she’s starting to be worn down by the presence of the Iwnw. You are right that she is in danger. She is becoming susceptible to Adam’s suggestions, but her proximity to him is the only thing that is allowing him still to fight the Iwnw. For now, she must stay with him.’

  The GPS programme showed the waypoint was on First Avenue, near the United Nations. He had just enough time to get there before meeting Horace.

  ‘If you’re more than five minutes late, I’ll leave,’ Horace said. ‘In that case, make it noon at St Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.’

  ‘I’ll make it at eleven.’

  He drove towards Manhattan, the skyline shimmering before him on the horizon like the scale model of miniatures he had created in his study.

  He had to know what else had happened on the day of the Blackout. Everything charted back to that.

  It had been a beautiful summer’s day, he remembered. A slow news day. In the morning he’d pottered in his office, taking care of routine administrative tasks. By midday it had become deathly slow. Then Katherine had called with a saucy suggestion, something they did from time to time. They’d take a hotel room, have a late lunch, drink champagne and make love. In the evening they’d stay in town and have dinner, maybe see a show. ‘I was thinking the same thing,’ he’d told her.

  By two o’clock they were in their room. They were in the throes of lovemaking for the second time when the lights went out at four. It was always intense on their hotel-room trysts, and Katherine had made it even more so by reciting some of the sex magick words she had used on their first night together all those years before. Robert had been startled when she began, but she quickly soothed his fear away.

  Both were climaxing when the Blackout happened, and in the throes of orgasm Katherine opened her eyes wide and stifled a scream that for a split second was more terror than pleasure, and Robert experienced a blizzard of simultaneous images so fierce that he froze, muscles knotted, deep inside her.

  Robert saw strands of intense white light binding him to Katherine, Katherine to Adam, Adam to another woman, her face hidden, all of them united in a dance of fire, and, as images of each of them fired off in his mind’s eye, a shadow too joined the dance, a formless creature, and then another, a child.

  Katherine had never been able to talk to him about what she saw in her moment of terror. Robert now knew without any doubt that the second woman had been Terri. They had been picking up mental impressions of the moment of entanglement when Adam, Terri and the maker of the Ma’rifat’ became conjoined with the ring of Katherine, Robert and Adam created more than twenty years earlier. And he had believed since that day that the shadow of a child had been little Moss, or at least the possibility of little Moss, just minutes after his conception.

  But now, as he drove, new images and words came together unbidden in his consciousness: Terri’s baby. Terri’s baby. It made no sense to him. He’d seen cell division in Terri starting the day they’d made love, but these images were from more than a year earlier.

  After the violent blur of impressions at the moment of the Blackout, Katherine and he fell from each other and lay side by side, breathing heavily. Initially neither noticed nor cared that the power had gone out. Once they realized, they assumed it was just the hotel, maybe even just their floor. Then Robert’s cell phone ran
g. It was Ed at the office.

  ‘Where are you, Boss? The lights just went out.’

  ‘They’re out here too. I’m just five blocks away. Did the backup power kick in?’

  ‘Yes, we’re fine here. The screens just flickered. But we’ve got no a/c, no cable TV. Wait. Wait. The lights are out in Times Square.’

  ‘Is this an attack?’

  ‘We’re checking. There’s smoke coming from a transformer over by the United Nations. You’ve got to get back here. The lights are out in Brooklyn, in Queens… holy shit, they’re out in Boston. This is huge.’

  ‘On my way.’

  He remembered looking at Katherine. She’d turned as white as a ghost.

  Robert got to the bureau just as police were confirming they did not suspect an attack. But the scope of the power outage kept growing. Parts of Canada were out. Virtually all of the north-eastern United States was out. Thousands of people were trapped in the subway. He organized coverage just as he had on the morning of 9/11. Sent teams of reporters out. Designated the lead writers. Liaised with other bureaux. Sent key people who lived in Manhattan home to rest, so they’d be fresh in the morning. Coordinated the work of the general assignment, power, equities, treasury teams. Hooked up with facilities managers and technicians about how long their backup-power supply would last.

  After the initial fear of an attack subsided, New Yorkers took the Blackout largely in their stride. People slept out in the streets that night, unafraid. There were parties. Crime went down. At around three in the morning, after keeping overnight writers and reporters company for a while, he went back to the hotel with four staffers who couldn’t get to their homes. Katherine was a good sport about it and let them sleep in the room.

  With the Republican Convention in town, driving across Manhattan was asking for trouble. Robert parked on the West Side near Ninth Avenue and took the Shuttle subway from Times Square across to Grand Central. From there he walked the three and a half long blocks over to the United Nations.

  Emerging on to First Avenue at the end of 42nd Street, he checked the Quad. It was pointing him left, and began flashing ‘Arriving destination’ as soon as he started walking. The great green-blue slab of the UN Secretariat and the East River were to his right. Ahead of him, a shining silver needle rose in a tiny park, bounded at its northern end by a soaring, curved retaining wall of heavy stone blocks. Twisting stairs led up the face of the wall to 43rd Street and the small town-within-a-town called Tudor City. Carved into the great wall in gold lettering were lines from the Book of Isaiah:

  They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

  The waypoint was at the Isaiah Wall.

  Robert thought about trying some kind of manoeuvre to see if he was expected or being watched – abruptly changing direction or darting for a cab, seeing who involuntarily jumped or was shocked out of their anonymity by the sudden fear of losing him – but decided it was futile. Nothing is safe. We do what we must do. His own gift, the one he had been terrified of his entire adult life, had emerged into the light. He was in plain sight for whoever needed to see him, let the chips fall where they may. If anyone came after him now, he would give them a damn good fight.

  The Quad buzzed. A text message, from the Watchman:

  Another digit, to find the widget

  In seeking sex, you’ll get the hex

  Follow your hunch, you’ll find a bunch

  At number one, the battle’s won

  To find your kind

  Pass the Trial by Mind

  He strode over to the silver-steel obelisk. Peace Form Number One, it was called. It was a digit, in the sense of a single pointing finger, like the Emmet obelisk at St Paul’s. And it stood in a park named for a diplomat called Bunche.

  He knelt and looked at the base of the sculpture. He searched among the candle-holders and flowers left by people holding peace vigils opposite the United Nations. He reached with his fingers up inside the slots at the bottom of the monument. With his fingertips, lodged atop a metal spar, he felt another film container, taped in place and sealed in a plastic sandwichbag. He extracted it carefully with his fingers and opened it. There was nothing in it but a slip of paper with a handwritten message, all in capital letters. You are losing, it said.

  ‘Damn!’

  He crushed the plastic container in his fist, cursing into the air around him. It had to have been Katherine. Only she and Horace knew the waypoints. Would she give them directly to Adam? Would he force her to? Fear knotted in his stomach.

  He rubbed his face with his hands. At least he had the major key, the Malice Box. Without it, surely, they could not properly detonate the weapon?

  He realized he had only a few minutes if he was going to meet Horace on time. He jogged back to 42nd Street and turned right, heading west towards Midtown.

  The parabolas and inverted Vs of the Chrysler Building’s gleaming tower rose directly ahead in the sky, like angular ripples on a pond. He had walked this street once with Horace, taking in the Art Deco masterpieces that studded it like jewels – the News Building, the Chrysler, the Chanin. Outside the Chrysler, Horace had talked about its closed observation deck, and the legendary elegance of the Cloud Club atop the building, as well as the curiously cramped, curved spaces at the very top of the tower, which Horace had been privileged to visit.

  ‘At the very top it’s open to the elements, you can feel the gusts. Feels so fragile, but it’s tremendously strong,’ he said. ‘Not many people know this, but there’s a cult movie called Q that has many scenes shot up in the pinnacle. Some nonsense about the plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl having a nest up there and prowling the skies of Manhattan, eating rooftop sunbathers.’

  ‘Sounds like you quite enjoyed it, Horace.’

  ‘Terrible nonsense, though Quetzalcoatl the man, the Toltec priest, repays further examination. Take a good look up if you can at the radiator-cap decorations, can you see? Borrow my binoculars if you like.’

  He’d done so. ‘Looks like they have wings on them?’

  ‘Yes, wings of Mercury. Or Hermes, to give him his Greek name. We’ll see the same thing at Grand Central. Hermes everywhere, and sculpted wheels set with his wings. It’s about speed, you see. The fleet-footed messenger.’

  That innocent walk with Horace seemed a long time ago now. The old man had spoken of all the closed observation decks in Manhattan.

  ‘We are so fearful,’ he had said. ‘We should reopen them all. The Woolworth Building. Chanin. Chrysler. Flatiron. Rockefeller Center, especially. Are we afraid of what we’d see up there?’

  Now Robert understood that he had been talking about more than the upper reaches of New York’s buildings. And now Robert was on the verge of breaking through to the true sweeping vistas and high places Horace had meant: those of his own nature.

  He pressed on, crossing Lexington Avenue. His own offices at GBN, to which he felt no compulsion whatever to return, were nine blocks north.

  At last he came to Grand Central Terminal. Just before he entered, the Quad buzzed with a text message: ‘New Waypoint: X87.’

  The GPS programme suggested it lay inside the New York Public Library, just a few blocks further west.

  It was three minutes to eleven. He hurried to the central information booth under the four-faced clock. The great hall of the station was buzzing with people criss-crossing its floor, not manically, as at rushhour, but in a constant flow.

  He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Horace.

  ‘We meet at the confluence of Time and Information,’ he said, pointing to the sign above the booth. ‘Let’s walk as we talk. There is someone here that we don’t want to see.’

  Robert looked around, unsure what he was looking for, as Horace clamped a hand firmly on to his elbow. He steered Robert north towards the platforms, and they entered a walkway signposted as ‘The North-east Passage’. As they
went, Robert reached into his pocket and extracted a small packet.

  ‘This is the major key,’ he said, handing it to Horace. ‘I took it from Adam yesterday. I’m afraid that in doing so I’ve taken away his last protection against the Iwnw.’

  Horace took it quickly from him and slipped it into an inner pocket of his jacket. ‘Thank heaven. Well done. This buys us some time, since they have all the rest. Keep moving.’

  ‘Who is here, Horace?’

  ‘I saw a member of the Iwnw. I am sure of it.’

  Robert turned and looked behind them. No one had followed them.

  ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘White hair. About my age. Listen. We need to talk quickly. First, regarding Adam. He still has Katherine by him. She will help.’

  ‘He tried to kill her yesterday.’

  Horace eyed him with a faint smile. ‘Yes, he did. It also helped you to make a breakthrough on the Path. Perhaps he’s not as far gone as you think. Now, pay attention. There is a very interesting piece of artwork along these passages,’ Horace said. ‘It is called As Above, So Below. It will be instructive to explore one or two parts of it. As we walk, please report. What do you understand of the situation?’

  Could Adam truly be pulling off sucha double game? And now Horace was echoing the letter he had received at university from his anonymous relative. As above, so below; as within, so without.

  ‘Let me think.’

  ‘Your intellect won’t help you,’ Horace said. ‘Thinking alone can’t help you any more. Let it go. Tell me what your deeper impressions are. Use all of your mind.’

  ‘The waypoint just now. The key was gone. I think Katherine took it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now footsteps echoed in the passage behind them. Robert looked back and saw a fit-looking older man in a dark business suit walking unhurriedly behind them.

  ‘Is he Iwnw?’