by Trevor Hoyle
Gribble’s mouth fell open. ‘That simple?’
‘Simple when you know how,’ Annie remarked dryly.
‘Well, who’d have thought?’ Gribble mused in admiration, and then wondered if he wasn’t pushing the dumb act a mite too far. He cleared his throat and spelt out the first line, starting at the bottom.
‘T-o-w-e-r.’ Gribble then read out the next vertical line from the bottom. ‘E-n-t-e-r.’ He glanced at her.
‘“Tower Enter”? Don’t make any sense.’ Annie’s eyes narrowed a fraction, and he quickly decided to see the light
‘Ah, gotcha! If everything’s reversed, these are the last words in the sequence. We gotta read it backward, yeah? Start with the right-hand column, not the left.’
‘You catch on mighty quick,’ Annie Lorentz said in a tone of stupendous astonishment, goggling at him. ‘I thought for a minute there we might be here till midnight.’
Gribble bent over the keyboard, avoiding her eyes. ‘OK, I have it now, I got it. We’ll take the drudge out, let the machine reverse the sequence, and see what comes up, huh?’
He tapped keys. The block of letters scrolled up the screen, and in its place appeared:
The two of them studied it in silence. Annie Lorentz stroked the tip of her nose. ‘There’s your answer, Gil.’
‘Answer?’ Gribble’s face showed bewilderment, and this time it wasn’t faked. This time he was genuinely mystified. ‘None of it makes any sense, Annie. What does “Thane” mean for a start?’
‘It’s from Macbeth. The Thane of Cawdor.’
‘Then why does it say “Thane” when it means “Cawdor”?’
‘Because “Cawdor” has six letters, and the message is limited to five-letter words. Everything there, for whatever reason, is in groups of five.’
Gribble read out aloud, ‘Cawdor dream comes alive today…’ He paused, then stiffened a little as Annie moved up close alongside. Her face was next to his, and he breathed in her perfume. He kept his eyes glued to the screen, feeling a blush creeping up his neck.
Annie said, ‘What he’s trying to do, Gil, is tell us something about his dreams.’ She went on as if thinking aloud. ‘They’re coming “alive” – he means coming true. Jeff couldn’t speak to you at the hospital, so he had to find another way. And this is how.’
Gribble felt a stirring of excitement, and Annie Lorentz wasn’t the only cause. He read on, ‘Grace media seeks creed power. Any idea what “Grace media” is?’
Annie shook her head. ‘Is there a company of that name? Grace Media…?’ She suddenly made the connection. ‘Hey, remember? In his trance Jeff talked about the Shouters. When I checked up on it, that’s one of the names used by an ancient religious cult called the Messengers of the Fall from Grace.’
They looked at one another. Annie was high, her eyes sparkling. Gribble beamed back at her. He felt suddenly feverish, what with her presence and their shared excitement. Though he buckled down dutifully and gave it his full attention as Annie worked through the message, line by line.
The gist of it, he gathered, went something like this:
‘THANE DREAM COMES ALIVE TODAY’ meant that the dreams that had plagued Cawdor over recent months were coming true.
‘GRACE MEDIA SEEKS CREED POWER’ referred to a cult that was seeking religious domination.
‘KERSH BRAIN RULES WORLD DECAY’ brought them both to a grinding halt. Who was Kersh? And as for his brain ruling over world decay, that was totally baffling.
With the next line they were back on track.
‘ANNIE SENDS THANE TROTH BOUND’ surely meant that Cawdor was asking Annie to send – or take him – to the Troth Foundation.
Gribble turned surly. ‘How come he asked you and not me?’
Annie patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t get upset, Gil. “Gribble” has seven letters, ‘Annie’ has five. He was limited – don’t ask me why – to groups of five, and my name fits the bill.’
‘THANE NEEDS BEAST ENTER TOWER.’
They studied the last line in silence. In his dream-trance, Gribble recalled, Cawdor had spoken of an immensely tall tower reaching up into the sky. He needed to enter it. That much was plain. But now it was Annie who was at a loss, it seemed from the way she was biting her lip.
‘I get the tower reference – that’s pretty clear. What the heck is “beast” though?’
‘I guess I know the answer to that one,’ Gribble said with a smug grin. One up for him.
He pointed grandly to the workbench. On it sat the VR headset in a tangle of cables and wires. ‘That’s what I call it – the Beast.’
Then it dawned on Gribble what Cawdor meant. The Zone Virtual Reality program was the key to all this. Not just a pile of recalcitrant junk with a mind of its own after all. It had a real function, a true purpose. Maybe this was the very reason he’d invented the crazy box of tricks in the first place.
Annie Lorentz got up and stretched. Gribble looked away as her plaid shirt was pulled taut, outlining her lean boyish figure. He said, ‘You realise he can’t be moved, not right now? Jeff’s one sick guy, according to Doctor Straus. Anyway, he’s in good hands at Mount Sinai. We’ll have to put this on hold, I guess.’
‘You’re right, Gil, we’ll leave it for now,’ Annie agreed. ‘I guess there’s time for this later. We’re not in any hurry.’
Gribble gave her a swift glance. It was on the tip of his tongue to suggest they step along to the Italian place down the street. Or maybe even a bar. He dithered, and by then she had shrugged into her green corduroy jacket, and the moment had been lost. He tried anyway.
‘Little early. After five is all.’ He got up, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘But there’s a bar that sells Italian spaghetti round the corner.’ That didn’t sound right. ‘I mean, there’s a spot that does Italian beer and spaghetti… and stuff.’
He was floundering. It was hopeless.
‘I’d love to, Gil,’ Annie Lorentz said. ‘But I can’t this evening, sorry.’ She moved to the door. ‘Rain check?’
Gribble nodded, dry-mouthed. Smitten and in love.
‘Can Jeff receive visitors? I’d like to go see him.’
‘Uh-huh,’ was all Gribble could manage.
‘I adore Italian.’
‘Uh. Good.’
‘We’ll make it soon.’
‘Uh.’
Gil Gribble sat for a while in reverie. It seemed to him that she really liked him, incredibly. His imagination took a step forward. Him and Annie Lorentz having dinner together, somewhere intimate and romantic, with candles on the tables. Maybe a gypsy violin (no, back off, that was Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in soft-focus Technicolor). The two of them strolling in the park. Tossing bread to the ducks. Smiling in the sunshine, laughing in the rain (now he was in Neil Sedaka territory).
He knew his fancies were running away with him, and he didn’t mind. He felt happy. Gil Gribble and Annie Lorentz an item. It was a distinct possibility, not just a hopeless daydream. He sat there with a soppy look on his face.
No candlelit dinner with Annie, so the next best thing.
He spent fifteen minutes in the cubbyhole of a kitchen, sweating over the griddle, and emerged with a double cheeseburger topped with onions, and a Twinkie bar and can of Carlsberg from the fridge. His thoughts of a golden future that included Annie Lorentz had given him an appetite. He’d taken a big munching bite, the juice running down his wrist, when the phone rang.
His heart leapt upon hearing a female voice, thinking it was Annie, but he knew at once that it wasn’t. This voice was low and husky, breathing into the phone.
‘Sorry to interrupt your meal, Mr Gribble.’
Gribble swallowed the mouthful of cheeseburger that had made him sound like a pig at the trough. ‘That’s OK. Who’s this?’
‘My name is BeCalla, of SPF. Can you spare a minute?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, sorry. Syndicated Press Features. We’re doing a piece on the 747 hijack. You know – t
he one that landed in Florida? I believe you’re a friend of someone who was on board?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s a big human-interest story, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. We’re trying to trace all the people on that flight, follow up their personal experiences. Can you help me?’
Gribble covered a belch. ‘What d’ya wanna know?’
‘Your friend, a Mr…’ There was a rustle of paper. ‘Mr Cawdor, I believe? We’d like to find out how he’s coming along.’
Gribble became wary. ‘Listen, Miss … er… there’s just no chance you can see him or speak to him. He’s at a real delicate stage at this point in time. Some slimy bastard shot him all to hell. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘But he is recovering?’ The husky voice sounded concerned, which reassured him somewhat. Last thing he wanted was a sensation-seeking reporter making capital out of Jeff’s plight.
‘Well, we’re hoping so. I spoke with the doctor in charge of the case, but it’s too soon to say. We won’t really know till Jeff – that is, Mr Cawdor – regains consciousness.’
‘He’s in a coma, then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I see. Let’s pray he comes out of it very soon.’
‘You and me both,’ Gribble said. This woman sounded OK. Her compassion had a genuine ring to it. Not all reporters were out-and-out shits, he decided. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘you’ll have to excuse me. Thanks for your interest, Miss … ah…’
‘BeCalla. SPF. May I leave my number with you, Mr Gribble? I’d very much welcome and appreciate an update on Mr Cawdor in due course, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
Gribble jotted down the number she gave him.
‘Thank you so much for your time,’ the husky voice breathed in his ear. ‘I’m certain your friend will recover. It’s amazing what medical science can do these days, especially with a surgeon of that calibre looking after him.’
‘If anyone can do it, I’m pretty confident Doctor Straus can. He’s the best.’
‘He certainly is,’ she agreed. ‘And thanks again.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ Gribble hung up. Munching his cheeseburger with onions, a smile on his face, he took a swallow of Carlsberg and gazed out of the window, dreaming of Annie.
3
The day after, the weather changed completely. From cool and showery to hot and muggy. It marked the beginning of high summer in the city, when air conditioning would be humming full blast for the next two months, designer blouses and lightweight suits would be on the streets, and the calmest temperaments would start to unravel.
Mara BeCalla dressed for both comfort and style. Her button-through crepe de Chine dress with scoop neckline, fitted waist and full skirt was in a striking combination of jade and tiny dots of white. Her high-heeled shoes matched the jade, and so did her eyes as near as damnit. She turned heads as she walked from the basement parking garage on 98th Street and along Fifth Avenue. Men ogled and lusted; women cast sidewise louring looks of unfair sisterly competition.
The main entrance of Mount Sinai Hospital faced Central Park, across four lanes of dense traffic. Garish sportswear and Day-Glo lycra flashed in the bright sunlight as the joggers, blade-skaters and cyclists circulated through the park in an endless riot of colour. On that side of Fifth there was a straggling line for the Metropolitan Museum of Art; on this side an orderly one for the Guggenheim.
The hospital was vast, the second biggest in the state, taking up one whole block. Mara BeCalla stood in the busy main hall, scanning the board that listed over seventy specialist departments. The American Medical Association directory had located Doctor Theodore Straus at Mount Sinai for her, and a call earlier that morning to the hospital’s general-inquiry desk had established that he was chief house resident of Surgical Trauma Wing E-4. She found it on the board and moved to the elevator.
The receptionist on the sixth floor didn’t bother examining her press accreditation card too closely; she was far too busy. She said shortly, ‘You can’t possibly see Doctor Straus without prior arrangement. You media people, I don’t know who you think you are.’
‘Is he presently in the building, do you know?’
‘You expect me to keep track of senior surgical staff every minute of the day?’ The receptionist scowled, snatching up a phone that was flashing. She said, ‘Hold on,’ and covered the mouthpiece. ‘He could be in his office, or in the ER suite, or doing his rounds in Recovery.’ Her pink-lidded eyes behind round, rimless glasses roamed towards the ceiling. ‘But, as you haven’t done the courtesy of making an appointment, it doesn’t actually matter, does it?’
She turned away on the swivel chair, speaking into the phone.
Waiting for the elevator, arms folded, her slim leather purse under her arm, Mara BeCalla casually took in the pale-yellow signboard covered in a sheet of clear plastic. Her eyes drifted down.
E-4 Wing. Recovery Unit – level 9.
The doors slid open. She entered the elevator and pressed for level nine.
If there was any security on the ninth floor it certainly wasn’t obvious. The elevator opened on to a corridor with a green rubbery floor on which her heels were perfectly soundless. She glided along silently like a beautiful ghost. The observation windows, as she passed by, showed the reflection of a golden-skinned woman with a mass of tumbled black hair wearing a shawl of Spanish lace.
Without pausing, Mara BeCalla shot swift glances to left and right through the thin gaps in the Venetian blinds, and checked off the names on white pasteboard cards in the brass door slots.
Dresner … Jackson … Dugdill … Trewin … Wildenstein… Fisher… Perlmann…
In some of the rooms nurses were attending to patients, but there were none, so far, in the corridor. This floor didn’t have the rush and bustle of a general ward; the work went on quietly and unseen in an atmosphere that was poised precariously on the lip of life and death. Eternity was close by, waiting, heartbeats away.
A nurse appeared from the glass-fronted room of the nurses’ station. Mara BeCalla slowed her silent pace, watching as the nurse set off purposefully in the other direction without looking her way. Now she could hear the murmur of voices. She could also see the chill light from a bank of monitoring screens reflected in the large panes of glass fronting the corridor. She stopped. She hadn’t yet found the room she was seeking, so logically it was further along.
Striding out, she marched along the corridor as if she had every right to be there, and carried on past the nurses’ station without wavering for a moment, eyes to the front. It took half a dozen strides for her to be on the other side and out of view.
The corridor stretched emptily ahead, the green floor gleaming under the frosted globes.
‘Can I help you?’ The voice was sharp, authoritative. It belonged to a tall, thin, hollow-cheeked woman in the dark-blue uniform of a senior staff nurse. She wore a white starched cap set back on a severe cut of straight grey hair. She remained in the open door of the nurses’ station, her head thrust forward on a stringy neck.
‘Do you realise where you are? This is a private recovery unit of the hospital. You can’t just walk in unannounced.’
Mara BeCalla hung her head. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said meekly. ‘But I was told there wasn’t much time. And I did so want to be with him when he…’ She let her hands dangle forlornly at her sides, clutching her purse.
‘Told by whom? Are you visiting?’ The name tab on the breast of the dark-blue uniform identified her as S/N Kelsall. Staff Nurse Kelsall stepped forward, folding her arms, and saw that the eyes of the dark-haired woman were shiny and moist. Mara BeCalla blinked her long lashes and two perfectly formed tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Are you here to visit someone?’ Staff Nurse Kelsall asked, pitching her voice in a softer key.
Mara BeCalla nodded. She tried to stifle a sob, but it escaped. ‘My husband.’
‘And you are?’
‘Mrs Cawdor.’
‘Tha
t is completely untrue.’
‘What?’ Mara BeCalla stiffened.
Staff Nurse Kelsall allowed herself a tight smile. ‘You have been misinformed, Mrs Cawdor. Your husband is in no immediate danger. His condition is stable. Come in here, please.’
Mara BeCalla followed her into the nurses’ station.
Behind the low counter a young nurse in an all-white uniform was seated in front of the bank of screens, drinking from a mug. She turned the page of a magazine and looked up. The senior staff nurse was flicking through sheets on a clipboard. ‘Do you have any ID on your person, Mrs Cawdor? I have to ask – it’s hospital policy.’
Mara BeCalla made a show of hunting inside her purse, and halfway through shook her head distractedly, as if suddenly remembering. She snatched out a tissue and pressed it to her nose.
‘I’m sorry, no, I don’t have it with me.’ She sniffed. ‘I keep my licence in the glove compartment of my car.’ She gazed tearfully at Staff Nurse Kelsall.
‘I see.’ She was a tough nut to crack, this Staff Nurse Kelsall. A hardened professional who had seen it all. ‘May I ask who it was said your husband was critically ill, Mrs Cawdor?’
‘A very close and dear friend of ours – Jeff and myself. Mr Gribble.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Cawdor, I don’t quite understand. Your husband has been here three days now and this is your first visit? Am I correct?’
‘Yes. I’ve been…’ Mara BeCalla stared down at the wadded tissue in her fist. ‘I was travelling in Europe. Mr Gribble finally reached me in Hamburg. I got back this morning on the first flight. A priest very kindly gave up his seat so that I could be with my –’
She bent her head, hawking up wretched sobs. Staff Nurse Kelsall hurried round the counter and took the poor woman’s arm.
‘Please, don’t distress yourself. Come with me, I’ll take you to him. Your husband is in D-16. His surgeon, Doctor Straus, is hopeful, Mrs Cawdor, very hopeful. You have every reason to be optimistic.’ She led Mara BeCalla into the corridor. ‘He really is receiving the best possible care.’