by Nicholas Lim
“Anyone saw them on the move?”
One of the expecting Dads came over for a light and company. Connell scowled at him. He went away.
“We traced a large group of travellers to a small port called Arica across the border in Chile. We think it was them from the MO. They embarked the day they arrived, all of them, on a vessel leased in advance for cash, their crews let go. The destination filed was San Juan de Lurigancho. They never arrived. That was a year ago.”
Connell sucked on his cigarette and contemplated the glowing tip. “Where the fuck do you think they all went Charles?”
White shrugged. “Pick an ocean. The five ships we know about are all under three hundred tons, so aren’t required to have AIS transponders. My guess is they rendezvoused with a bigger vessel and were scuttled.”
“What about the people we’ve picked up here in Wales?”
“We were lucky. They were expecting to leave any day. One of them handled the drug money, knew the other communes, the banks... otherwise we wouldn’t have got this far. The group appears to be obsessed with secrecy.”
“And no-one’s spilled on where the others went?”
“No. They don’t know.”
“What about the other four suicide vectors?”
White shook his head. “Same. I’m certain none of them were told. It’s impressive when you think about it. I wish our compartments were that tight.”
“Christine Garrett–”
“We intercepted this note this morning, addressed to her.” White took a saffron-orange slip of paper from his wallet and passed it to Connell.
“The story is not yet ended, it has not yet become history,
And the secret life it holds
can break out tomorrow in you or in me.”
Gershom Scholem
I will never forget you.
Osei
“Osei?”
“We think it’s the researcher from Porton,” White said. “Bryce.”
“Do you think he’ll come after her?” Connell watched the traffic passing along the road in front of the hospital. “He’d be mad to right now.”
White shrugged and shook his head. “Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we’ll catch him any time soon. This group, if they stay gone, well we aren’t going to find their tracks in the sea.”
Connell flicked ash. His mouth twisted. “So stay on the money. The pressure we’re putting on the Swiss–”
“I’ve an update for you there. We got the information an hour back.”
Connell gave a bully’s smile of pleasure. His hand said gimme.
“Three years ago the group liquidated their assets. Converted to cash deposits, then over a three-month period withdrew the lot, physically; paper bonds stacked like bricks in sacks. And there was a lot. An astonishing amount. In over a dozen separate Zurich investment houses. Bottom line: the money’s gone too.”
“Jesus.” Connell stared at the other man. “You’ve got nothing.”
When the two men returned to the Emergency Unit the head nurse was back at her station. Her voice rang out across the ward.
“You can go in now. Excuse me!”
Connell’s face darkened as he turned.
“One at a time thank you.”
"George definitely likes you," Zahra said.
Garrett raised a warning eyebrow.
"And he's very polite." Zahra considered this then added, "Maybe too polite. I don’t know about you but I like–”
She stopped as the door opened to let in a new visitor. He had inquisitive eyes. They took in and dismissed Zahra in one glance. "Christine. Andy Connell. Andy."
Garrett blinked. First name terms. The man was barely in the room. She watched him wait for her reply. His eyes, ears looked open to all signals. She was reminded of a hare. Why was he here?
His hands were clasped over his crotch. "I'm here on behalf of the Prime Minister." They managed some small talk. The man dropped a few more names. He returned to his boss. "He wishes to convey to you the debt of thanks that this country owes you. And to acknowledge your bravery."
He was waiting again. He wanted something from her. What? She understood that he had pushed hard for this interview.
"Well it’s very good of you to pop down and say hello," Zahra said firmly. "And you can thank Him too. But Christine needs to rest now."
“I don’t think you quite–” Connell started. Garrett saw the hare show its teeth, then think better of it and wait, ears flat and open. Garrett said nothing. "Of course. Well I won't disturb you any longer. Perhaps when you're feeling better you'd like to join the PM at Number Ten? He'd be delighted to see you. Consider it a standing invitation."
"Perhaps you'd like to join the PM at Number Ten?" Zahra mimicked when he had left. She rolled her eyes.
They had one more visitor. Surgeon-Commander White was an old soldier, with old-world courtesy. He sat with them talking about field hospitals he had known.
When he spoke about Garrett's courage it was a soldier's statement of what was expected but still needed to be recognized, out of a long history of example.
"Andy Connell saw you earlier."
"Yes."
"Look here. I don't usually give advice. I find the free sort not usually worth a damn." White hesitated a moment. “But I'll break my rule in this case."
"You haven't yet left this hospital room." White glanced at the window. "Out there a savage animal is waiting for you. It's called the media and it likes to eat the living and the famous. The more alive, the more infamous, the better."
"You're a celebrity. Maybe not next month, next year. But as of today, your picture is front page. In a biosafety suit, helmet off. Holding your arm on a stretcher halfway into an ambulance. Arriving here, halfway out of an ambulance." White shook his head. "Everyone has a camera in their pocket nowadays. The pictures can't be stopped."
"Andy is one of the few people who can control that animal. And even he can only do it briefly, but maybe long enough for the agenda to move on. It always does. He will want to honour you. Let him. Cut a deal. Use him. He’s already using you."
After the visitors had left they slept. Zahra woke first. She listened to the familiar noises of the hospital through the walls. She thought of the way Fly spoke about Cherry; he dealt with his loss by speaking about it. Garrett didn't. But Garrett was different.
Zahra watched the evening sun throw the bright square of the window across Garrett's bed. It moved across the covers like a negative shadow. It was late by the time it reached her face, lending the skin warmth and eventually drawing some gold from her hair.
Garrett accepted her luck at face value. Daytime, she chatted with Zahra and read magazines; television was too intrusive. She never mentioned Jason. More visitors came. She found if she concentrated hard she could arrange all the facts she had heard in order long enough to understand them. Her mind cleared as the Dilaudid dosage went down.
She took each day as it came. The worst time was when she was awake and Zahra asleep. She began to notice a routine: the changing of the drips, check-ups, meals arriving and leaving, the long echoing nights. Time restarted. Her strength returned. The nursing staff began to insist she finish her meals. The need to endure was hard to endure.
At night she watched the hands of the clock turn through the long hours. Daytime, she watched the sun’s shadow move across her bed. Mostly she slept.
***
Jim Da Costa kept them both a full month. By then the Reaction programme had the epidemic under full control. The early death toll had peaked at two thousand. With the wide availability of Paris, fatalities were rare, due mainly to delayed reporting.
The disease had become just another story, one picture in the rolling wallpaper of news. Reinnalt Bryce provided the only sustaining interest, as public enemy number one, a monster enlarged by his disappearance. Her own exposure had been brief. She had taken White’s advice. Andy Connell had got his boss her public handshake at her hospital bedside;
the tabloids were muzzled.
In the end, impatient with Da Costa’s caution, she checked herself out of the hospital. She went back to her large echoing house overlooking a suburb of Brighton. A water pipe had burst and flooded the basement. September was mild, occasionally drizzly, colder than expected.
The chilly home was silent. After a month sharing a room with Zahra it was hard to adjust. The girl’s chatter had been a sort of sunshine. Without that protective weather Garrett discovered it was best to have voices in the house. She left the television on in the background, something she had always hated.
She took a sabbatical but tried to keep busy. The house needed sorting out. She went through David’s study. No point shying away any more. She kept only what she had to – his notebooks, a decent jumper, an old pair of reading glasses which worked for her too. Sorted lives; boxes for keeping, black bags for throwing.
She kept meaning to start Jason’s room.
Zahra stayed in touch, mainly by text. About random happenings across the day or night – gossip about the baby, bad jokes, conveyed messages. “Fly says…” “George asks…” “When you coming over?” A little of that sunshine still filtered through. George Skinner e-mailed. News. Some gossip. Her replies were brief, to discourage.
She rose early. The grey autumn mornings brought no warmth and she disliked the cold bed. One night late in September she first had the dream. It started with a phone call.
"Hello mother."
The rhythm of her heart adjusted.
"Mum you there?"
"Jason?"
“It’s my duty call.”
Another adjustment of the heart.
“Good to hear your voice,” she said. She listened at the phone as though at a door.
“Everyone is saying you saved the world. I guess you think you were right after all. Just as you always were.”
“It’s not like that.”
“True or false. Your world is so simple. You’re the great scientist and that simplifies life for you, doesn’t it?”
“No.” She felt a sharp pain in her mouth.
“People must be such a disappointment. Unsolveable. Chaotic. Uncontrollable.”
“I don’t want to control anyone.”
“You tried to control me. You couldn’t listen.”
Garrett was silent a moment. “I was wrong.”
She clenched her teeth against more words even though it tasted like blackmail. She listened, but he was gone.
She sat up in bed and shook her head to free it of the dream. She found blood in her mouth.
It was still the middle of the night. She went down to the kitchen for a drink. She rinsed around her teeth and felt with her fingertips where she had bitten her cheek. She ran water into the sink over her wrists then stood at the back window watching for first light, holding her elbows for an hour; she waited unrewarded, like darkness at a mirror. Down the hall, she could see the boxes and bags stacked by the study door.
She spent the morning sorting through old photos and data disks. By lunchtime she’d had enough. She sat at the kitchen table and watched the television. The afternoon stretched out before her.
The silence in the rest of the house was unbearable. She put on her boots and walked down to the beach. Wandering aimlessly she found a row of deckchairs and sat down. A few seats along, a tramp was singing tunelessly to himself.
“Hello Jimmy.”
He looked alarmed and began to polish his eyebrows.
“It’s Christine, remember?”
“Oh yes! Hi Christine. Nice to see you again. You been busy?”
Garrett smiled. “How have you been, Jimmy?”
They talked about the beach. Then about children. Jimmy pointed to a girl running between windbreaks with a bowed kite.
“My son used to love kites,” Garrett said.
Jimmy reached down beneath his deckchair. He produced an opened bottle and took a swig. His head nodded up and down as he followed the kite. The child was learning to pull on the strings.
“He used to make them with his father.”
Garrett talked about Jason. Jimmy nodded, smiling at her from time to time, and at the sea and the sky. He watched the child pulling the kite up the wind, hand over hand, as though it were the weight of a bucket of water.
“Children bring out the best in us. And the worst.” Jimmy took a drink.
Garrett found herself describing her dream.
“He accused me of not listening. I – I didn’t.” She was silent a moment. “Not in the way he needed.” Garrett tried to sit up but slipped back in the sling of the deckchair. “There was always this gap – just like after David died.” Garrett shook her head. “If I’d just listened–” She shook her head again. “I see that now.”
The kite was up, tugged up, a coloured wing held back by the thinnest thread. Garrett stared at Jimmy without seeing him. “Instead I told him why he was wrong.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he was! Christ Jimmy, don’t you read the news?” Garrett tasted bitter anger on her tongue.
“No.” Jimmy smiled. “I read this beach. It tells me what I need to know.” He raised an arm. The little girl with the kite was running again. Jimmy’s hand followed a failed flight in small loops before dropping back into his lap.
“He was misguided.” Garrett stared at the sea. An outgoing wave drew back over the pebbles in a soft roar.
Jimmy watched the child with the kite. She was crying. The string had broken. A man stood over the little girl, explaining as he wound a loose end around a plastic handle.
Jimmy emptied his bottle and stood up. “Come on.”
Garrett didn’t move.
“I want to show you something.”
He marched out across the pebbles. Garrett closed her eyes.
“Come on slow coach!”
The faint cry reached her through the sound of the surf. Garrett squinted against the low sun. She could see Jimmy waving his straw hat.
She wondered if he had ever undergone an evaluation, whether he could be helped. She watched him wandering up and down at the edge of the water. He was looking down, intent, as if searching for something lost. She stood up and walked down to him.
“Look.”
He held out a handful of glass pebbles.
“Aren’t they beautiful? When they’re dry it’s like they’re covered in frost; they’re hard to spot. But when you dip them in the sea you can see their clear colours. Doesn’t it remind you of–” The roar of a wave downed his words. Garrett looked out across the beach, each stone a hope, and thought of the faith healer’s remedies and of medical trials. “Come on, I’ll show you where to look.”
They wandered along the hissing shingle, feet bare. Garrett strung her boots around her neck.
“If you see a blue one show me! They’re very rare! I once found one this big!”
“Do you have it?”
“Oh no, I throw what I collect away at the end of the day. I can always find more.” He swept his arm out to take in the beach and the sea beyond. “They’ll never run out.”
When they tired of searching for pebbles they found a bench to sit on at the end of the pier. The sun had gone down, leaving a sky sprinkled with stars. Garrett listened to the withdrawing sighs of the sea and the breath of the night wind.
Jimmy pointed. “Such a beautiful star.”
Garrett identified the planet Venus near the horizon on the ecliptic. She held herself still.
“Jimmy I miss my son.”
They sat still together a while. Jimmy turned to her.
“Christine! I remember you! You’re the one who likes Larkin.”
Garrett gave Jimmy a faint smile.
“Remember the almost truth?” He nodded at the sea.
Garrett watched then said softly, “The waves come in undated, between the rocks.”
Jimmy tilted his head.
“What will survive of us is love,” Garrett whispered. She bent
over her empty stomach and held her knees. She began to cry, deep repeated sobs she couldn’t stop. Salt water fell into the sea below. Jimmy sat beside her humming a tune on one note, over and over, as the waves crashed ceaselessly into the legs of the pier.
When Garrett opened her eyes the sky overhead was dark. She felt emptied out, exhausted as though she had run all night. She took a deep clean breath. Beside her, Jimmy’s eyes were two glints.
“I’m hungry. Think I’ll go up the beach. You?”
Garrett shook her head.
She sat until she grew cold then began walking. The movement entered her thoughts, calming them step by step. She walked up onto the South Downs, pushed by an urge to climb higher. The chalk footpath was slippery with evening dew.
Feathery seeds of thistledown floated past. Hundreds, thousands of the delicate parachutes drifted through the air. Garrett watched the complex patterns they made around her, intricately changing, careless beyond comprehension, a snowfall of genes. Asteraceae Cirsium. She reached out and caught one. She studied the seed as though it could unlock a secret.
It started to rain. Garrett stopped beneath a sheltering Holm oak. Further along the coast she could see the emerging constellation of Brighton. The lights of thousands of ordinary lives stood out against the dark. It was suppertime. Meals were being prepared, newspapers read, arguments had; ordinary people speaking their minds and listening, making and sharing a common sense. She studied the notch in the sky made by a church steeple, the highest point in the land, then her eyes lifted, her attention caught by what looked like a fast-moving star. Envisat II? Hubble? She thought of higher, more rational hopes.
From her vantage point she could see a beaded thread of lights leading out into the dark. Brighton Pier. She scratched at her left arm just below the elbow and remembered the five men sent out with death in their veins: human mosquitoes, part of a divine plan. They had been lucky.
Was Arshu still alive? Had he ever existed? She thought of the black cave in the painting of the Harrowing in St Andrew’s, and the dark empty centre of the Eye of Faith in Asari Valley. Superstition. The needed fight.