The Devil's Sanctuary

by Marie Hermanson

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Aren’t you going to congratulate me? Isn’t it great news?”

  “Great news? It’s a miracle,” Doctor Fischer said drily.

  “You’re absolutely right there. Every child is a miracle.”

  Karl Fischer nodded solemnly.

  “But you’ve been sterilized, which makes the whole thing much bigger. Even if the surgeon was having a bad day and you’re still fertile in spite of the operation—which does happen, once in a thousand cases—then it’s hardly likely that he would have made the same mistake with another resident. And”—he looked at his glasses, breathed on them, and resumed his polishing—“even if that were the case, the chance of the two of you taking a liking to each other is still infinitesimal. So I would prefer to regard it as a miracle.”

  He put his glasses back on again, turned to his computer, and tapped at the keyboard. Text scrolled down the screen.

  “Here it is,” he cried happily, pointing his finger at one detail on the screen. “Max Brant. All snipped and dealt with.”

  “Which proves that I’m not Max,” Daniel said calmly. “If necessary, the mother is prepared to have an amniocentesis to prove that I’m the father. That was the second thing. The third proof that I’m not Max is easily checked with your magnetic imaging camera. Max had a chip inserted in his brain after he entered Zone Two. There’s no chip in my brain. Didn’t you notice that when you scanned my brain in that contraption?”

  Karl Fischer was looking properly surprised now.

  “That wasn’t something we were looking for at the time. Who have you been talking to?”

  “That isn’t important,” Daniel said, pleased at least to see a hint of uncertainty in the doctor. “But I want you to check my brain again. If you don’t find the chip, then you’re keeping the wrong person locked up here, and you’ll have to let me go.”

  Doctor Fischer took a deep breath. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, rubbed his eyes, and pulled a face.

  “You’ve talked to Doctor Obermann, haven’t you? She’s told you about the Pinocchio Project? Oh well. No matter. It’s been something of a failure, if you want my opinion. But the sky is supposed to be the limit here in Himmelstal, and we’re meant to try unconventional methods. The Pinocchio Project is Doctor Pierce’s pet. He’s been fighting for it for years, and in the end I let him go ahead. You had a chip inserted, that’s true. We’ve still got the images of your last MRI scan, so we don’t need to repeat that. Shall we go down and take a look now, to get it over and done with?”

  “If you don’t find a chip in my brain, will you believe me?” Daniel asked as they waited for the elevator.

  Doctor Fischer gave him a look full of wounded pride.

  “I don’t deal in belief, my friend, I deal in certainty. If you don’t have a chip, then you can’t be the person we operated on, can you?”

  They got into the elevator. Doctor Fischer pressed the button and they glided down through the transparent tube. On one side of the glass walls the floors rushed past at speed, and on the other the shiny stone floor of the lobby got closer and closer. Daniel could see the guard leaning against one of the pillars.

  But, to his astonishment, instead of slowing the elevator carried on downwards. Through the floor of the lobby. They were no longer in a transparent glass tube but a dark shaft, and the elevator was illuminated by a small lamp that he hadn’t noticed while they had been surrounded by the light of the lobby.

  This was wrong. As far as Daniel could remember, the scanner was in a room on the ground floor. They should have gotten out there, then gone down the corridor farther into the building.

  He looked at Doctor Fischer in surprise, but before he could think of how to phrase his question the elevator stopped.

  Doctor Fischer held the door open for him.

  50

  THE FRESHLY polished linoleum floor shone under the fluorescent lights.

  “We need to walk a bit farther down the tunnel,” Doctor Fischer said, marching quickly ahead of him through the windowless passageway toward a junction.

  “Where are we going?” Daniel asked, bewildered.

  “To my room.”

  “But weren’t we in your room just now? Up in the doctors’ corridor?”

  The doctor seemed to be in a great hurry all of a sudden, and Daniel almost had to run to keep up with him. Beneath them their reflections flitted along like hazy ghosts in the shiny floor.

  “I have another room. We’re taking a shortcut. We’re under the park now. If you turn right here”—Fischer pointed at the passageway leading off from the junction—“you reach the library. You can get to all the buildings in the clinic through these tunnels. If you know the codes for the doors, that is. It’s very practical in the winter. But we mainly do it for security reasons, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

  That explained why the doctors were so seldom seen outside.

  They carried on along the passageway, passing other turnings every now and then. Occasionally there were staircases and metal doors marked with letters and numbers. Daniel guessed that one of these passageways connected the doctors’ residential compound with the clinic. Only once, on that sunny morning, had he ever seen the doctors walking through the park as a pack, on their way to work in the care center. It was clear that they had to have a different way of getting there.

  “Well, here we are,” Doctor Fischer said suddenly, tapping a code onto a keypad beside a steel door.

  Inside was a small room, with another door that the doctor opened with an ordinary key.

  “Can I offer you a cup of tea?” he asked.

  Several small lamps came on simultaneously around the room. They were in a fairly large, heavily furnished room with Oriental rugs on the floor. The walls were lined with bookcases and pictures, and in one corner there was a narrow bed covered by a red bedspread. The room was so cozy and so comfortably lit that you hardly noticed that it was underground and had no windows. Daniel looked around at the inlaid bureau, the neatly made bed, and the cardigan with patched elbows hanging on the back of a chair. There was no doubt about it: This was Karl Fischer’s home.

  But it was also an office. A large desk with a computer on it faced out into the room, and the bookcase beside it was full of files and journals. That explained why the doctor’s office upstairs had been so bare and impersonal: He only used it on the rare occasions when he saw his patients. The bulk of his work was done in this underground lair.

  The doctor went over to the desk and switched the computer on. While it started up he went into a small kitchen. Daniel heard him running some water.

  “I have some Indian tea that I really do recommend,” Fischer called. “I usually have a couple of cups when I need to wind down. Do you take milk?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The kettle started to rattle as Doctor Fischer got out the pot of tea and some cups, whistling a little tune. It was obvious that he felt at home here.

  Daniel stood in the middle of the room, letting his eyes roam over the spines of the books, mostly psychiatric and neurological textbooks, a few prints of old buildings, and a couple of framed photographs. These caught his interest and he took a step closer.

  The first was a group shot of the Himmelstal research team. If they could actually be called a team. Daniel had a feeling that they were a group of very distinct individuals. But here at least they were standing shoulder to shoulder with Doctor Fischer at their center in front of the main building, smiling confidently. Gisela Obermann looked surprisingly alert and happy.

  The other framed picture was also a group photograph. It was taken indoors, six men and two women, most of them young, lined up like a football team. None of them was smiling. They looked determined and focused. Except for one of them, a young blond-haired man. He wasn’t looking into the camera but had his face turned toward one of the women, with a rather tender expression. Daniel had never seen him before, but he recognized the woman. It was Corinne.
He recognized some of the others as well, from the village, the bierstube, and the cafeteria. At the edge of the group, like a teacher or coach, stood Doctor Pierce.

  “Here we are,” Karl Fischer said, coming out of the kitchen with two steaming cups. He passed one of them to Daniel.

  “I added a splash of milk anyway. Just a touch. This sort of tea can easily taste a little bitter otherwise.” He nodded toward the photograph. “Doctor Pierce and his newly hatched crickets,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Who’s that?”

  Daniel pointed at the blond man who was staring at Corinne. It looked as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Or else he had just happened to turn his head to say something at the very moment the picture was taken.

  “That’s Mattias Block. Handsome, wasn’t he?”

  Daniel looked at the gentle, soft face and suddenly recalled the message on Corinne’s mobile phone, from “M”: I feel happy every time I see you. Be careful.

  “The poor bastards had no idea what they were getting into,” Doctor Fischer said with a cold laugh. “Three months of intensive physical and mental training on the fourth floor. Never going out at all. Then they were given their instruments and implanted in the valley as newly arrived residents and told to make contact with their targets on their own. Courageous men and women, don’t you think?”

  “What sort of people are they?” Daniel asked.

  “A mixed bag.” Doctor Fischer pointed at them one by one: “A former spy. An advertising guru. A confidence trickster. A hypnotist. An expert in animal communication. And an actress. I don’t remember the other two.”

  “What does an expert in animal communication do?” Daniel asked. Doctor Fischer had been pointing at Mattias Block.

  “Talks to animals. He was supposed to be able to, anyway. Talking to people’s dogs and other pets about their problems. Doctor Pierce thought that would be a particularly useful skill in these circumstances. He handpicked these individuals with great care.” Fischer sighed and shook his head, and with that he seemed to regard the matter as concluded. “But my dear fellow, do sit down. We were going to look at your brain, weren’t we?”

  Daniel sat down hesitantly on one of the wing chairs. The doctor settled down at his desk, adjusted his glasses, and began to search the computer’s database.

  “Here it is,” he said happily, turning the screen so that Daniel could see it. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  A bisected brain was spinning on its axis, shimmering blue like the earth from space.

  “Is that mine?” Daniel asked.

  “Your very own brain,” Doctor Fischer confirmed.

  He turned the screen back again and used the mouse and keyboard to mark off and enhance one part of the brain. He enlarged it, twisted it this way and that, then enlarged it even more. Fascinated, Daniel watched what the doctor was doing from behind his chair.

  Karl Fischer seemed to be playing with his brain. He made it turn somersaults and rolled it like a ball to the left, then the right. He cut it into manageable sections, like slices of watermelon. He made the slices even thinner, fanned through them like a pack of cards, lifted them out one at a time and inspected them, then bundled them all back into their original shape.

  Daniel’s brain disappeared from the screen and the doctor went and sat down in one of the armchairs as he stirred his cup of tea in silence.

  “Did you find a chip, Doctor Fischer?” Daniel asked cautiously.

  “No.” The doctor sipped the hot tea, then put the cup down on the saucer. “But then I wasn’t expecting to.”

  “No? But you were so sure a little while ago. So now you realize that I can’t possibly be Max?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “I’ve known that all along.”

  51

  DANIEL LOOKED at him in astonishment. Doctor Fischer was without any shadow of a doubt a bewildering character.

  “In that case, I don’t understand why you’ve been keeping me here.”

  “Because I’m not finished with you yet, my friend. You interest me a great deal, you know. In fact I find you the most interesting of my patients. My favorite patient, if you like.”

  He chuckled happily over the rim of his teacup.

  “But I’m only here by mistake,” Daniel objected.

  The doctor shook his head firmly.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. That was no mistake. You see,” he said, putting his cup down, “I was interested in you the moment I found out that you existed.”

  “And when did you find that out?”

  “When Max was admitted here. I saw in his file that he had a brother with the same date of birth, a twin in other words. As I’m sure you know, twins are a dream come true for anyone researching human nature. If they’re identical twins, of course, and I soon found out that that was the case with you.”

  “How?” Daniel asked, with a growing sense of unease.

  “I have a wide network of international contacts. I can find out most things about our residents and their relatives. It’s part of my job. I found out that you had no criminal convictions and had a decent career, which made me even more interested. You ought by rights to have inherited the same characteristics as Max. Why is he a psychopath and you aren’t? Or”—Karl Fischer leaned forward, frowned in mock sternness, and pointed at Daniel—“are you just better at hiding it?”

  Daniel gasped, insulted.

  “So you’re suggesting…”

  “No, no, no. It’s far too early to be suggesting anything. But the possibility exists that you’re a different sort of psychopath. One who doesn’t act rashly and impulsively. Who has the patience to wait for the right opportunity and is calm enough to tidy up after himself and conceal what he’s done. Who can calculate reward and risk. And who therefore never gets caught for any crime. We in Himmelstal never get to see psychopaths of that sort. This is the most interesting type of psychopath, and hardly any research has been done into them.”

  Daniel snorted.

  “I’ve heard so much rubbish since I got here that nothing surprises me anymore. How do you actually know that that sort even exists if they never get caught? Have you ever met one?”

  Doctor Fischer leaned his head back, appeared to reflect for a moment, then said, “In my whole life I’ve met only two, possibly three, psychopaths of that sort. They’re very difficult to recognize. And the reason why I couldn’t unmask them was quite simply”—he gestured apologetically—“that I myself am one of them.”

  “You have an odd sense of humor, Doctor Fischer.”

  The doctor shook his head.

  “I’m completely serious. I had the typical childhood for a psychopath: I stole money from my mother’s purse, I hit my friends if they didn’t do as I said, and I took great pleasure in torturing toads, cats, and any other animals I could get hold of. I’m practically a textbook example. It seemed perfectly natural to me. I assumed that everyone was like me.”

  “None of that is particularly unusual among children,” Daniel said in a well-intentioned attempt to alleviate the doctor’s unpleasant supposition.

  But Karl Fischer persisted. “That sort of behavior is extremely unusual among children who grow up in comfortable circumstances. Of course I soon learned that behavior of that sort led to punishment and wasn’t beneficial to me in the long term. As a result I had to one, select actions that would truly be to my advantage. And two, carry them out in complete secrecy. But you’ve hardly touched your tea. Don’t you like it? The taste is a little unusual, but once you get used to it it’s easy to get rather addicted to it.”

  “I like it,” Daniel said, obediently taking several large sips.

  Karl Fischer looked happy.

  The taste really was rather unusual. It tasted of Christmas—cinnamon, cloves, cardamom—and something else, something dry and bitter that was hard to identify.

  Daniel wasn’t at all sure how to read Karl Fischer. Did he mean what he was saying, or was his astonishing confession just
an expression of some sort of dark professional sense of humor? Either way, he didn’t seem to be the right person to talk to, and Daniel made up his mind to conclude the visit as quickly as he could.

  But the doctor leaned back and went on: “When I was young my parents were terribly worried about me, but once I started school they became extremely proud of me. Everyone said I had ‘matured.’ I was very intelligent, skipped two grades, and outside school I carried on my own studies at a level that astonished everyone around me. I studied mathematics, biology, and chemistry, but what interested me most was medicine. How human beings are constructed. The skeleton that holds us up. The heart that pumps life into us. The brain that produces thoughts, memories, and dreams, then hides them away in its nooks and crannies. It fascinated me immensely. I believe I was seeking an answer to who I was in all of this. Because it was abundantly clear to me that I wasn’t the same as everyone else.”

  With growing surprise Daniel listened to his doctor. He didn’t know what to think.

  “Empathy, love, and compassion were alien emotions to me. I kept hearing about them. As concepts they were as familiar to me as the jungles of Africa. I knew what they looked like, but I had never been there, so to speak.” The doctor went on calmly: “And I realized that I was never going to get there. At the same time, it was quite clear to me that these strange ideas were regarded as entirely natural by everyone else. Like someone who can’t read, I learned various strategies to hide my shortcomings. I became good at watching and imitating other people’s behavior. I learned when you were supposed to cry, comfort someone, or tell them you love them. During my early teenage years I was regarded as a bit odd and anxious, but I smoothed off most of the rough edges over time. When I was studying medicine the other students would say that I was spontaneous, charming, even sensitive. You’re looking at me so oddly, Daniel. Is there something you recognize in what I’m saying?”

  Daniel shook his head in amazement.