by Nikki Owen
He taps the keyboard and, after two seconds, the email appears in a blue square by the top right corner. Harriet Alexander’s face stares forwards with cheeks drawn and teeth biting down on red lips.
Patricia reads aloud from the words that appear on the computer. ‘We know about your deceased husband’s affair. We know he had an illegitimate child with a woman he was not married to… If you…’ She halts. ‘Holy Jesus. Can they do this? They can’t do this.’ She looks to Chris. ‘Can you do this?’
‘I can.’
I nod. ‘He can. He did.’ I point. ‘See?’
‘What? No, Doc, I meant—’
‘If you begin any investigation into Project Callidus or any of its activities, we will leak the story,’ Chris says over Patricia, continuing to read the confidential email. ‘If you contact MI5 about the file that you have from your husband’s illegitimate daughter, Maria Martinez, we will leak the story. If you do anything that implicates any member of the Project, past or present, we will leak the story.’ Chris stops, flops back to his seat and exhales hard. ‘My God, this could ruin her. I mean, this could ruin her career.’
I read the email again, uncertainty and worry colliding. ‘I do not understand. How could you draw that conclusion?’
‘She’s a politician. She is – was, sorry – married, happily, by public account, so if this story got out that Balthus had an affair that ended up in an illegitimate child – in you – never mind the whole Project connection, well, that kind of secret can wreck a career, especially for someone so high up in politics.’
It still it makes no sense. ‘Why would the fact that I exist damage the Home Secretary’s career?’
‘Doc, because people care about what other people think of them. People think that we all should behave in a certain way.’
‘Why? Why should it matter?’ I genuinely am flummoxed by this.
She sighs. ‘I don’t know, but it does.’
‘It should not matter what people think of each other.’
Chris nods. ‘Well said, but not everyone is immune to the bullshit that is society, like you are.’
‘Then more people should be like me.’
A smile breaks out on his face. ‘Maybe they should.’
I stare at him, at the sunken contours of his cheeks, at the stray hair on the cling film sheen of his skin. Why, when I am near him, do I feel the intense propulsion to draw back his hair from his eyes and bury my head in the nook of his neck?
‘So,’ Patricia says, ‘if the Home Secretary’s reading the email now, all the implications of it, the shit storm it throws, tell me: why is she not reacting?’
I watch the screen, curious. ‘I do not understand. What do you mean by “she is not reacting”?’
Patricia points. ‘Here, see? Her forehead? If you’re concerned about something, worried, say, you kind of frown, right? And that means you get crinkle lines on your brow. But her?’ She shrugs. ‘Nothing. Her mouth’s not even moved or anything.’
I study Harriet Alexander’s face. ‘So what does that mean?’
‘It means,’ Chris says now, head tilted, observing the screen, ‘she’s somehow not surprised at reading any of the information on the blackmail message.’
‘D’you think she knows more than she’s letting on?’
Chris looks to Patricia. ‘It’s definitely possible.’
I observe my two friends, consider, carefully, their words. How can so much be interpreted from so little? Is such whimsical body and facial language meaning not open to wild – and dangerous – misinterpretation and then I think: is that what I have done with Patricia, just in my own way? Have I analysed the facts, slotted data together and let myself be convinced by Chris that Patricia could be linked to the tracker? And if so, what are Chris’s motives and why? Did Balthus really know who Chris was? Do I really know who Patricia is? Aaaaargh. The questions fly round me so fast until they spin at such a speed that it gets too much and when the music from the band starts again it combines with the clink of distant glasses and the beep of the computer tablet and the fire flames and the slurps and the crunch of crispy baguettes. I start to rock a little in my seat and raise my hands to my ears.
‘Doc? Doc, what are you doing?’
When I can’t reply, Patricia drops her voice, spreads her fingers. ‘Doc, can you hear me? Breathe. There’s just a lot to take in, but just breathe through it. Count. You can do this.’
I watch her lips, eyes flit to Chris and the frown on his face, see his fingers too are fanned to five, and my chest starts to slow, brain rattle decreases. When, finally, the information in me settles, I inch my hands from my ears.
‘A little better now?’ Patricia asks.
I nod.
She smiles, but there are no eye creases, so I can’t tell if she’s happy or sad or something else. She turns to Chris. ‘Harriet Alexander knew about Maria’s mother at Weisshorn. She told her Isabella was alive.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Chris says, flicking one last key. ‘I reckon she took a risk there to tell Maria that because… Oh no.’
Patricia frowns. ‘What?’
‘Oh shit.’
‘What?’
He swallows, points. ‘This.’
On the tablet screen emails, one after another, are flying onto the screen inboxes from Harriet Alexander’s private online account. Each one of them contains another threatening message, linking to my existence and to the existence of my biological mother.
‘Jesus,’ Chris says, ‘no wonder she wasn’t surprised to get that email. They’ve been blackmailing her for ages.’ He squints at the email subject lines. ‘So the one we’ve just seen probably came as no surprise to her.’
Patricia sits very still, eyes wide. ‘That’s why she didn’t react shocked or anything.’
‘Maria – look.’ Chris jabs the screen. ‘I’ve run the program on the emails and they all seem to originate – every single one of these messages – from Weisshorn, just like the email to her does today. And’— he hesitates when he glances to Patricia— ‘I found this.’
An image of a face emerges on the computer, pixelated at first then sharp, and as it comes to full view, I take a sharp breath at the unexpected sight.
I lean in and read the name that sits underneath the police-like mugshot. ‘Isabella Bidarte.’
‘Oh my God,’ Patricia says, ‘is that her? Now? Is that your ma?’
I take the old, worn photograph and unpeel it flat on the table. My fingers are shaking a little.
Chris watches me. ‘Hey, want me to hold that?’
But I am unable to speak, concerned that if I do, I may yelp or yell. I scan the image of my mother on the screen. Her hair, still long, now flows over her shoulders and down her back in grey and silver streams, her skin once pearlescent, now muted and flat, and over her brow and mouth and by the jowls of her jaw hang wrinkles in strings of skin that wash up against the receding hairline of her scalp. Gone is the skimming skirt, the bare feet on stones, and in their place is a pale blue jumpsuit of cord and hessian, a rough cut of fabric that bunches by swollen ankles connected to feet encased in black boots so thick that the leather appears as if it has been stitched with thread made of metal.
My throat feels rough, dry and when I swallow the now lukewarm wine I feel a strange lump in my oesophagus, small and round, like a pebble.
‘Is it her?’ Patricia asks me.
I carry out a rapid facial recognition match in my brain comparing the image here with the one from the cellar. ‘The two faces are the same person.’
Chris and Patricia share a look as my sight, now oddly watery, remains locked on the face of the old and tired woman that peers out at me with eyes that once sparkled, yet now stare in downturned ovals of washed-out grey.
‘Well,’ Chris says after a second, ‘at least when we get to Weisshorn, you’ll know what she looks like.’
Patricia shakes her head. ‘No. No way. We’re not still going.’
‘Why?’ C
hris asks.
‘What? Because it’s too risky, that’s why.’
I keep my eyes on Isabella’s face. ‘We have to go there.’
‘Doc, no.’
‘Yes.’
‘What are we going to do about the blackmailing?’ Chris says. ‘If the Home Secretary doesn’t order an investigation into the Project because of it, then we’re back to square one.’
I touch my notebook. All the codes and dreams and distant drugged memories – they are the origins of who I am, the very beginning of the Project. I contemplate the thought, roll it over in my mind until the answer, the solution, appears bright, fresh and fully formed.
‘It is all connected to the source. If the emails are being sent from Weisshorn, by going there we will be able to destroy the source. And if, as we predict, the source of the blackmailing messages is someone from the Project, then if we eliminate them, we eliminate the blackmailing.’
Chris grins. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘Yes,’ I say, matter-of-fact. ‘My IQ is higher than that of Albert Einstein’s.’
He blinks at me for a second, mouth half open. ‘Um, so if we go’— he clears his throat— ‘if we go to Weisshorn where the Project is and we stop their blackmailing source, like you say, then we can redirect the messages.’
Patricia starts tapping a finger on the table. ‘What d’you mean?’
Again Chris hesitates. I try to interpret his facial expression – the way his brows wrinkle, the way his mouth hangs slightly open and then his teeth bite down on his bottom lip.
‘We compile new messages,’ he says now, ‘so it looks as if they’re halting the blackmailing, backtracking on it. We can send the Home Secretary an email that looks like it’s from the Project, via Weisshorn, saying that, I don’t know, something huge has happened and they need her onside, and so they won’t be blackmailing her anymore. That way, she’s free to investigate Callidus.’
‘But why would she just go, “Sure. Okay.”,’ Patricia says, ‘and accept that explanation out of the blue?’
‘What? You’d rather stall and do nothing?’ A beat. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘I never said I wanted to stall.’
‘But you’re questioning what I’m doing.’
‘You’re questioning what I’m doing.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are.’
Chris blows out a breath, flicks his eyes to me then Patricia then shakes his head, throwing up his hands. I watch, unsure what is happening.
Patricia holds her chin high, whips a nod then speaks. ‘How about if the message has a clause that says they will keep the illegitimate daughter story out of the press if, say, the investigation the government carry out is kept away from the public arena. It can acknowledge they know she’s already been talking to the Deputy Prime Minister, and that, for the Project, that’s serious shite. You know, so the message can say she can investigate, but the Project tells her to just keep it, well, hidden from view, away from the public eye. That way it seems as if the Project is cooperating, finally, but not too much, not so out of the blue. Surely that seems more plausible?’ She stares at Chris. ‘And not stalling at all?’
Chris rolls his eyes. ‘I guess… I guess it’s a good idea.’
‘Thank you.’
Another eye roll. ‘So, you’re talking about asking a politician to keep secrets from the voting public?’ He shrugs. ‘Yeah, I’d say it’s plausible.’
We look to the screen, to Harriet Alexander’s ivory freckled face.
‘So, we’re going then?’ Patricia says after a moment. ‘We’re going to this Weisshorn place in Geneva?’
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘And there’s no way… there’s no way I can talk you out of it?’
I start packing up all my belongings into my rucksack. ‘No.’
She presses together her lips but doesn’t reply.
As Chris shuts down the computer, Patricia shakes her head and sighs, then, tutting, begins to gather her belongings. Done, she stands. ‘I’m going to nip to the loo first. Doc, you okay? You got everything?’
I stand, too. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’ A glimmer of something crosses her face, but I’m unsure what look it is. ‘See you in a sec.’
Chris watches Patricia leave and, as soon as she’s out of sight, he pulls himself up and turns to me. ‘We mustn’t say anything about the tracker yet, agreed?’
I glance to the toilet door, to the band where they too are now packing up, to the fire and the flames and the old man behind the bar. ‘She may have nothing to do with the tracker.’
‘I know. I know but…’ His shoulders drop, he moves closer; I find I don’t move back. ‘Look, the block is on, and the Project, if it’s them who’re involved, won’t think that’s unusual – they’ll be expecting it. So we’re safe. Kind of. And yeah, you’re right, it might not be anything to do with Patricia – why would it be – but… it’s kind of like… I guess we have to be careful.’
‘Careful.’
He watches my face. ‘Careful.’
We stand there the two of us, the table by our side, my eyes on his shoulders, unable to make eye contact, and curious, keen, but scared, unsure. There’s a spec of fluff on his shoulder; I reach forward, pick it off.
Watching me, Chris smiles, then, oddly, stumbles a little as he tries to move – I assume his injured leg must hurt. ‘I… You… My bag…’
I blow the fluff from my fingers, letting it free, watching it float for a moment then fall. I secure my rucksack and watch Chris gather all his belongings and turn, and feel a strange sense of calm.
‘How about,’ he says now, slotting a sim card into his phone, fingers shaking, ‘we check the tracker situation when we get to Weisshorn, say to Patricia that we have to test everything’s okay before we go near there and so we need to check her phone.’
‘We have to test everything?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Then why would we lie?’
‘To, well, to save her feelings.’
‘Oh.’ I think this through, unsure what it means. ‘Feelings.’
‘Yeah.’
I think. ‘Is this the same as with the Home Secretary where what other people think of us matters?’
He hesitates. ‘Yes, no. Sort of.’
I battle with the concept. Despite my IQ, nothing, sometimes in this world, makes any sense at all and, after a moment of contemplating what it could possibly all mean, Patricia bounds back, slightly out of breath. ‘Ready?’
Chris throws me a glance and this time, I catch his eye. Patricia stares at the two of us. ‘What’s going on?’
Chris’s face flushes red. ‘Huh? What? Nothing.’
I watch him. Is he doing that thing he talked about? Lying to protect other people’s feelings? I decide he must be and so try the same. ‘We were just staring at each other for a longer than expected amount of time. It is common when people like each other for the blood in their faces and cheeks to rush at greater than normal speed to the surface of the epidermis.’ I halt, look between them, satisfied that I have played my part.
Patricia bites her lip, pushing down a smile. ‘Okay.’
I begin to stride to the door. ‘Do you have the book from the woman at the train station?’ I say.
‘Huh? Oh, yeah.’ Patricia taps her rucksack. ‘In here.’
We walk over towards the exit, past the wall made of wood and fresh pine, through the fug of beer and vin chaud and sweet cinnamon scent, past the singers and their guitars and their checked shirts and pianos with soft lullaby melodies about love and friendship and not being afraid anymore. I shut down my ears as much as possible to block out the assortment of it all and keep my body as close to Chris and Patricia as I can bear for protection. I suck in the last pocket of warm air before the outside comes in.
As he opens the door, Patricia walking through, Chris turns back for a second and looks to me. ‘You ready?’
We step out into the silent snow-sprinkled night. The air is crisp and the black sky is punctured by silver fairy lights tinged with twinkles of blue and yellow. When I look to my thumb where the bandage on it cuts into my skin, I spot blood on the edge.
‘Doc,’ Patricia calls to me, five fingers outstretched to me, ‘let’s go.’
I look at her hand, at her pillow soft face. She can’t know, can she, about the tracker? She is good to me, kind, how could I think otherwise?
‘Google? We gotta go.’
Quickly pressing my palm into my thumb, I check the dressing is fixed to the wound, then looking ahead to where Patricia and Chris now wait under the wooden eaves of the old tavern, I pack up my thoughts and walk out, cold and shaking under the deep cover of the night and into the sharp slap of Alpine snow.
Behind me in the tavern, the flames in the grate lap warm at the hearth, and the people at the tables tuck cosily into their drinks and laugh with each other as the barman cleans his glasses, and serves baguettes and plates of oozing cheese.
Chapter 17
Deep cover Project facility.
Present day
I am led to another room by the perimeter of the facility by Black Eyes and the officer. Once we stop, the officer walks away.
Everything in the building is neat and in order and, while my brain is reassured by it all, the hallucination or memory or whatever I saw in the sensory deprivation room is playing in my mind over and over, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot shake it away. The woman, the daughter, deaths and the age: thirty-three.
A door is unlocked and I pass a silver plate on the wall that reads Situation Room. Black Eyes gestures for me to enter and as we do, I am presented with a cavernous airplane hangar of a space. It yawns wide open to reveal what appear to be rows upon rows of subjects dressed in soft cotton clothes of grey and black, all of them stretching out before us into the distance, each attached to a laptop and communications pod, tapping on keyboards, swiping data on screens and talking into devices linked from their ear to their mouths.
Black Eyes strides ahead and instructs me to follow. The lights, as we move, are low and cream, no flickering of what would be normal bulbs within the glass encasings, instead they are consistent, calm, long lines of light subdued for subject brains to cope with. The room has been designed, as all have in the facility, to mute the extent of sound, to soften it and make it easier for subjects to deal with, yet, I have never before, until now, seen it work in such mass action, the robotic nature of it, the neat, prim, far-reaching order. I have never before seen so many subject numbers together at one time. When I observe them now, their steel-straight spines, their non-existent eye contact, their fast calculations of infinite and complex numbers, something about them bothers me, creates inside me an alert that, despite my training and control, I find hard to ignore. The hallucination from the chamber whispers in my mind.