Regrouping, she tried something more subtle. Again, nothing. It was like a barrier of steel, smooth and solid. A barrier she’d never met before. She feinted, tried to sidestep, to slide in or around. Without success. She could feel the agitation building in Jay, ruthlessly controlled. But he wasn’t strong enough yet. He couldn’t take much more.
She had to end it.
Reluctantly she moved back, drawing on her reserves to soothe the raw edges of emotions that brushed against her as she disengaged. Her head was spinning. The table seemed to be moving.
‘Are you okay?’ Jay’s eyes were on her, his hand still in hers. He looked dazed, as if he’d been punched. For a moment they clung together. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. His eyes were the only thing stopping her from reeling into the walls. When finally she nodded, he let her go.
‘Thanks.’ His voice was jagged. ‘I felt what you did as you were coming out. It helped.’
‘Uh.’ She waved her hand, then put it to her forehead. Something throbbed briefly, then stopped. ‘I don’t get this. Normally subjects don’t feel anything. You spoke to me in there!’
‘I’m not normal.’ He gave a bitter bark of laughter. ‘You know what I mean now. The thing like a wall.’
‘It’s there.’ She nodded, mouth grim. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I shook you up, pushing like that. I’m sorry.’
‘If you can get through, I can put up with anything.’ He was studying the table, tracing a pattern with one finger. Madison sat motionless. She didn’t have to be in his head to know he was struggling with what he wanted to say. ‘I know we have a deal, and I have no right to ask this—’ He swallowed. ‘You’re the first chance I’ve had … the first possibility … Will you … Can you help me?’
Something twisted inside her. He was big and powerful and lost.
‘Yes.’ She gave his hand, still on the table, a small shake. ‘Did you really think I’d say no? You,’ she pointed her finger, ‘are the most interesting thing I have come across in the whole of my professional career. You will not get away from me. I will help. Whether I can is another matter. We can only try.’
He was smiling. He had the kind of smile that could get a woman into deep, serious trouble. When he’d had the beard, she’d been safe. Madison dredged up every atom in her body that was scientist, not woman.
‘That’s good enough,’ he confirmed.
‘It’s going to be exhausting and uncomfortable.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He brushed that aside. ‘You want to renegotiate our deal?’
‘Renegotiate? How?’
‘I let you take me apart, do whatever experiments you want on me – you try and get my memory back.’
‘Getting your memory back would be the biggest experiment I’d ever want to do.’ She grabbed his hands, still fidgeting on the table. ‘There are things we can try and if none of them work, we’ll think up more. I’ll go on the Internet this morning to see what I can find. I want to do this. You do not have to make bargains.’
‘Does that mean I still get my hundred pounds, then?’ The grin was evil, but she saw the relief and excitement under it. It lit something inside her. She chose to ignore the flicker of danger. Professional enthusiasm, that’s all.
‘Huh! Memory or not, you are a devious, scheming opportunist. You ambushed me last night. You knew I didn’t have any option but to pay up if I wanted to keep you,’ she accused.
‘I simply worked with what was there. I think it’s called negotiation. I wasn’t asking to stay. You were the one who offered me money.’ He paused, frowning. ‘If your porter had put me back on the street—’
‘—I might never have seen you again.’ The desolation that swept over her made her tighten her grip on his hands. She saw his reaction of surprise. ‘Sorry.’ She let go. Shouldn’t be doing that. Physical contact with the subject to be kept to absolute minimum. Strictly a need-to-touch basis. She crunched down on a peculiar feeling, low in her belly.
He was frowning. ‘Actually, I’m not sure about that. It … it’s kind of hazy, like a lot of stuff …’ She saw exasperation flare in his eyes. ‘I don’t know if I would have gone far. For the last couple of days I’ve felt as if something was drawing me here, to this part of the city. That I knew I had to find … something. Does that sound as weird to you as it does to me?’
‘Not necessarily.’ She breathed. ‘Maybe you have connections here – or you might have heard the men from one of the homeless hostels talking about working for the lab.’
‘Maybe.’ He considered the idea. ‘Probably. Why else? I don’t remember it, but that’s not exactly a surprise. Yeah, else why now? Why not when I first woke up?’ His shoulders sagged.
Madison sat looking at him uncertainly, watching the way he went into himself, containing the misery. Unbelievable courage. Should she—
She got up abruptly and began clearing the table, not quite sure why she wasn’t going to tell him that she’d only arrived back home two days ago, after three months in Washington, DC.
The tower block was huge, dwarfing most of the surrounding buildings. Faceless glass and metal, it could have been part of the skyline anywhere in the world – New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong. The lower floors housed the kind of outfits that anyone would expect to find in the City of London – brokers, insurance houses, legal firms.
The top floor was different.
The directory of the building’s occupants, which covered one wall of the sleek, minimalist foyer, many floors below, contained no listing for these offices. The Organisation liked to preserve its anonymity – it owned the building, although its ownership was not acknowledged in any official documents. The Organisation, a collection of nominally autonomous local cells, without even an official name, existed for one purpose only – to make money. The people at the very top were shadows: men, and a few women, who walked the corridors of power on five continents, sustained by profit and vast influence, never acknowledging responsibility or blame, protected by violence as stealthy as it was ruthless. No one crossed the Organisation and lived. That was the legend. But if you worked for them that didn’t matter. The Organisation made money. Unbelievable amounts of money. In unbelievable ways.
Alec Calver strode along the wide, silent corridor. He stopped when he reached the door at the end, straightened his tie, looked up into the overhead camera and knocked.
The intercom panel beside the door crackled.
‘In.’
As the door closed behind him, Calver took a moment to adjust. After the subdued illumination of the corridor, this office was flooded with light. Only high-flying birds and the occasional plane ever overlooked it.
‘Alec.’ The man behind the desk gestured to a chair. ‘Sit.’
Calver didn’t let his impatience show. Let the guy have his power trip. He placed the file he held in the centre of an otherwise empty desk.
‘Madison Albi?’
‘Subject B,’ Calver corrected. He took the chair indicated, hitching the knees of his impeccably pressed trousers. In contrast, the man behind the desk looked like an unmade bed. The expensive suit was rumpled, tie askew. The top button of his shirt strained under the pressure of a neck the thickness of a young tree. A fuzz of coarse hair was visible over the button. The hair extended, too, at the cuffs of his shirt, down over the backs of the broad hands. The CEO resembled nothing so much as a large ape. The mind inside the ape was as sharp and unyielding as a steel trap.
‘Developments?’ He prodded the file.
Calver nodded, without speaking.
‘Good.’ The CEO moved restlessly. ‘I still think we should have bugged the woman’s apartment, and the laboratory.’
‘It’s still a possibility,’ Calver conceded. ‘But bugs need someone to monitor them – which means bringing in more operatives, simply to lis
ten to her taking a shower, or feeding the cat.’
The ape behind the desk gave a strangled noise that passed for a laugh. ‘The shower sounds enticing. I will pass on the cat.’
‘Which is a good thing, as she doesn’t have one.’ Calver let a small smile through.
‘A beautiful woman.’ The CEO leaned back in his chair. ‘A superlative body, housing a gifted and inventive mind. Does she bring these talents to her sexual encounters, do you suppose?’
‘I wouldn’t care to speculate – sir.’ Calver kept his eyes down to hide the glint. ‘She is known to be fastidious in her choices. There’s been nothing of that nature since the death of her fiancé, nearly two years ago.’
‘No?’ The CEO breathed out the word, considering. ‘An excellent move on our part, then. She sees men socially?’
‘Yes, but mostly colleagues and no one in particular. Her most frequent escort is Jonathan Ellis.’
‘The faggot from the lab?’
Calver looked at the view. ‘They go to the theatre together.’
‘She’ll be ripe, then, to put someone new in her bed. So – is subject A going to get lucky?’
‘It’s to be hoped so.’
‘Anything we can do, to help it along?’
‘No.’ Calver shook his head, eyes hooded. ‘But there’s every chance. Propinquity is a great aphrodisiac.’
‘Hmm.’ The other man ran a finger over the file. ‘You have a tail on them?’
‘Not yet.’
‘No bugs and no tail? How the fuck d’you expect to know what’s going on?’
‘It only needs the lightest of surveillance at present, sir. Trust me on this one. Anything more might attract attention. Remember who we’re dealing with. This way we have capacity to increase, should it become necessary.’
‘Plenty, as you seem to be doing fuck all at the moment.’
‘Everything is going according to plan, sir.’
‘You’re not watching and you’re not listening, but everything is going according to plan. Just dandy.’
‘It’s all in there.’ Calver nodded to the file.
‘Précis for me. How do we know the contact has been made?’
‘We know.’ There was satisfaction in Calver’s voice. ‘This morning Madison Albi began to trawl the Internet for information on amnesia.’
When Calver had gone, the CEO rifled through the file, grunting in approval, before dropping it into the drawer of the desk and locking it. The information was presented in the most guarded terms. In the unlikely event of anyone but himself or Calver reading it, almost all they would get would be that subject A was male, subject B female. There was nothing on the page about the scope of the project, or the untold billions of pounds, dollars, euros and yen that it was expected to generate.
On the other side of the building Alec Calver entered an empty room. Passing through it, he shoved open a door, kicking it shut behind him. One hand loosened his tie; the other patted over his pockets.
‘Sod it!’
‘Here.’ The shaven-headed giant, lounging in front of a computer screen, tossed over a pack of cigarettes. Calver caught it and extracted one, pocketing the remainder with a swift glance upward to the smoke sensor above him. The complex wiring, designed to keep the building smoke-free, had been carefully dismantled and rerouted away from this room.
The man at the computer clicked his fingers. ‘Packet.’
‘What?’
‘I want the packet back, you thieving bastard.’
‘Oh.’ Alec dug it out and handed it over. ‘Sorry, Vic. Mind on other things.’
‘Yeah,’ Vic agreed sceptically. ‘So – did we make King Kong happy?’
‘Ecstatic, as far as I could tell.’ Alec lit the cigarette and leaned on the desk, drawing deep, and blowing a perfect smoke ring in the direction of the defunct detector. ‘He’s still banging on about bugs and surveillance, though.’
‘Plenty of time for that.’
‘That’s what I told him. The bitch is sharp. No point in leaving trails if we don’t need to.’
Vic’s eyes narrowed. ‘You ever know me to leave a trail?’
‘You never handled anything like Madison Albi before. This one reads minds.’
‘She wouldn’t need a crystal ball to read mine.’ Vic made a graphic gesture. ‘I’d like to handle her, no problem.’
‘Get in line, sucker.’
Vic gave a crack of laughter. ‘You, too?’ His eyes widened as he sorted through the implications. ‘And old hairy arse upstairs?’
‘Him, too. He thinks she has a superlative body and an inventive mind.’
Vic whistled. ‘Didn’t think he knew words that long.’ He laughed again. ‘Who would have thought it, me and ape-face, brothers under the skin. Inventive. I like that. Some of the stuff I’d like to do to her might be classed as inventive.’
He gestured to the computer. A picture of Madison, taken with a long lens, had been enhanced and cropped and made into a screensaver.
‘That is crude.’
‘Like I haven’t seen you looking,’ Vic taunted. ‘Say, how about when this is all done, we scoop up what’s left of her and bring her over here? Have a little fun. Take turns like. Might be a laugh, watching ape-face fuck her.’ He saw the spasm cross Alec’s face. ‘Pansy.’
Calver ignored the jibe. ‘She still online?’
‘Nah, logged off a few minutes ago.’ He tapped a key, and the screensaver dissolved. ‘This one is interesting. Cutting edge research on memory loss.’
‘Yeah,’ Alec agreed. ‘Keep your eye on that one.’
‘You know, I’ve been wondering – if the man wants bugs – it would be no big deal to add a camera or two, like in the shower and over the bed, maybe. Catch all the action.’ Vic watched Calver’s face out of the corner of his eye.
‘It’s an idea.’ Calver was studying the screen.
‘So – how long before they start shagging?’
‘God, doesn’t your mind ever get above your belt?’
‘Not if I can help it.’ Vic lit up a cigarette and offered the packet again. Alec hesitated, then took one, lighting it from the stub of the last. ‘How long before he shags her?’ Vic persisted.
‘It’s too soon. We factored it in, but only as one scenario.’
‘The best one, though.’
‘Oh yes.’ Alec dragged on the cigarette.
‘What’s Kong think?’
‘Same as you, it would appear.’
‘Brothers under the fucking skin – or maybe fur.’ Vic smirked. ‘Good old Alec though, he’s sitting on the fence. You want to watch it mate, you’ll get splinters in your backside.’
A half-smile drifted over Calver’s face. ‘Kong wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help them along.’
‘Christ! What was he expecting – we pitch up and offer them a lecture on the birds and the bees?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘So—’ Vic looked up at Alec. ‘What do you think? Really.’
‘I think it’s quite likely that they will end up in bed together, yes. He bears sufficient resemblance to the fiancé for us to assume that he’s her physically preferred type. That was factored in, too.’
‘And him? You know him better than anyone else.’
‘Subject A?’ Calver turned away from the computer. ‘I think there’s more than a distinct possibility. She is definitely his type.’
‘You know this because—?’
Alec laughed. ‘I know it because he chose her himself.’
Chapter Four
Madison pressed her fingers to her forehead and leaned back in her chair. She hadn’t really expected the answer to Jay’s amnesia to pop right out of the computer screen at her,
but she had hoped there might be more. Come on, what did you expect? A nice Wikipedia entry? Loss of memory – cure of – c.f. mind reading?
What she had found had started a disturbing chain of thought.
She checked her e-mail, smiling at Jonathan’s response to the one she had sent, confirming that she had made it safely through the night, before logging off. The machine seemed to hesitate for a moment, before closing down. It was slow to respond on occasions, too. Probably needed an overhaul. Which meant transporting it to the lab. Something for the to-do list. Later.
She sucked the end of her pen, assessing the brief notes she had made about Jay’s status. She would need to make up a file. Which might be pretty thick by the time you’re finished. She frowned. The amnesia – was it linked in some way to his ESP abilities, or just a hideously frustrating coincidence? Here she had a man who appeared to be well educated and who was interested in science, yet was living on the street. She knew, from experience, that it happened. What had put Jay there? Accident, misfortune, a cataclysmic life event? She doodled on the edge of the pad. Amnesia – cause, effect – or irrelevance? A slight shiver ran along her arm. He could feel her, inside his head. He’d spoken to her, while she was in his mind, yet he didn’t seem to be aware of having power of his own. Was the amnesia covering something up? Something that even Jay doesn’t know?
With a sigh she stood and stretched the kinks out of her neck, checking her watch. Breakfast TV had kept Jay quiet for over an hour. Which surprised her. She’d have bet on him tracking her down way before this.
He was asleep on the sofa, remote control in hand.
She gave him a long, considering look, then went to make tea. She tipped half a packet of biscuits on to a plate. Not one of the major nutritional groups, but hell – food was food.
Deep in thought, she licked the chocolate off a digestive as the kettle heated. Feeding a man. She opened the fridge. There was healthy stuff in here. Salad, fresh pasta, Sandra’s home-made spaghetti sauce. She shook the container. Neil had done all the creative stuff in the kitchen. She’d been strictly slicing and chopping. Sometimes he’d let her grind herbs and stir things. She cooked a decent fry-up, and her knowledge of the controls on the microwave was second to none, but that was all. She puffed out her lower lip. Spaghetti sauce. How hard can it be to boil tomatoes?
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