Flashback (The Saskia Brandt Series Book Two)

by Hocking, Ian

  ‘Tomorrow more hungry than today, Mr Wilberforce.’

  Dirt cracked around Lisandro’s mouth as he smiled. Cory had sufficient anxiety to loose a curt remark, to remind him that Mr Wilberforce was an elder, not a friend, but the boy’s charm had flanked him. Cory tried on his new Dorfzaun panama hat. He pinched the brim. ‘What do you think? Too Mark Twain?’

  ‘Usted esta enojado, Señor Wilberforce. You pretty.’

  ‘Handsome, Lisandro. Not pretty.’ He smiled. The moment grew long, and he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘About the verbs. In all honesty, I won’t be coming back tomorrow. I’ll be gone. Debo irme. Lo siento.. Understand?’

  Lisandro pouted.

  Cory took a thousand peso clip from his belt buckle, tugged out a note, and placed it over the one peso coin. Lisandro stared at it with wonder.

  ‘Please pay the señora. You can keep the rest. Buy something for your mother.’

  ‘I buy her house!’

  Cory left the room and strolled along the gloomy corridor. His semi-brogue shoes - white bodies, tan heels and toes - made hollow clonks on the floor. He swung about the balustrade, ready to take the stairs two at a time, when Lisandro called, ‘Cheerio, Mr Wilberforce!’

  ‘Cheerio, Lisandro!’

  He raised his hat and clattered down the stairs. Siesta be damned.

  ~

  Tierra Argentina, land of silver, and this jewel on her eastern hip: Cory loved both. He strode through the San Telmo district, where, on his first visit, he had lingered hours over the bright collision of architectures: Spanish colonial style with Italian flourish and a nod to French Classicism. The Dutch painter, Mondrian was three years dead in 1947, but Buenos Aires held a colourful requiem. Even the streets were geometrically arranged. He skirted a pair of strutting porteños and their bandoneón accompanist. At points, the eyes of fellow European travellers marked his as though they were Geoffroy’s cats making remote acquaintance through the grasses of the pampas. He savoured the boutiques, smiled at prostitutes and declined the split coconuts with twisted straws. He moved, imperially slim, through the tea-like odour of chewed coca leaves and the fall scent of cigars. The vigour of the city awed him, yet this was siesta, the quiet time.

  Cory found a restaurant and ate a grilled local fish called abadejo along with an Argentine wine whose sharpness he countered with a Heineken. Anxious to leave, he rubbed his fingers at the waiter before the beer was empty.

  ‘Quisiera la cuenta, por favor.’

  ‘Quedate aqui, amigo. Va a llover.’

  Cory craned to see the sky beyond the awning. It was slate-coloured and close. The wind had increased.

  ‘Then I’ll buy a brolly.’

  The waiter shrugged.

  The rain caught him within a mile. Soon, Cory’s hat was battered and his jacket crushed and heavy. He ducked beneath the awning of a grocer and stood dripping on the apples and potatoes while the street shivered with water. A thin lady stopped at his elbow. She wiped her fingertips on her apron.

  ‘Las desgracias nunca vienen solas.’

  Cory smiled. ‘¿Tiene un paraguas? Se lo pagare.’

  The woman narrowed her eyes. Her features were almost oriental, and Cory wondered if she descended from the indigenous Guaraní, who had walked the pampas before the time of the conquistadores. She clacked through a beaded archway and returned with a cloth umbrella. It was tatty and decorated with dragons. ‘Umbrayla, Englishman.’

  Cory did not haggle. He gave her a note and re-entered the rain before she could overcome her surprise and shout her thanks. This was not, he knew, good tradecraft. Here he was, bright as a beacon in the empty streets of Buenos Aires carrying a faux-Chinese parasol. Cory smiled at the memory of his mentor, Blake. How much he would have given to travel this Buenos Airean street in a 1947 downpour – in 1947 by God. This was a golden age for the States. Given time, it would bankrupt the Soviet Union and live out its last days as a patrician superpower.

  By Cory’s time, the republic would be in pieces. He well remembered the public debates of his childhood. They had been led by old, white men behind lecterns stamped with the Seal of Georgia. The debates concerned the undoing of a centuries-old compact, made when the pressure to unite the states had been equal to that of continents colliding. By Cory’s teenage years, waters had fouled, cities starved, and blood was bad. Talk was suspended, then sense. A posse hanged Cory’s uncle and blinded his father. His mother was sodomised, so a friend told him. The transitional government moved his family to a camp on the Rio Grande run by charities from Europe and China, but the cholera was there too and Cory was back in Georgia before winter, lying about his age, saddling up for the militia. He became a sharpshooter and fought at Chicago.

  Cory angled the umbrella to look for a street sign. This was it. On the opposite side of the plaza, high on a building, a red shirt hung in the rain. Lisandro had been correct. After twenty days without contact, there was a message waiting for him at the dead drop.

  ~

  Five feral cats watched him through the gate of the Cementerio de la Recoleta. The rain had stopped. His umbrella was furled but his suit had not dried. He opened the gate and stepped over water-filled bowls that, on his last visit, had contained kitchen scraps. A tabby drove its forehead into his leg as he surveyed the cemetery. It was almost empty of visitors, occupied two city blocks and was grassless and consciously urban. It looked like a trap.

  Minutes later, when he found the tiny mausoleum, he saw that there was a vermillion rose on its lintel. On his last visit, the rose had pointed east. Today it pointed west.

  Never the twain shall meet, he thought, removing his hat.

  He took the long key from around his neck, pushed it into the lock, twisted, and felt the resistance give. The door shuddered open. Inside, the mausoleum was sparsely appointed. The altar held a dry bouquet of wildflowers, a tallow candle, and a cross. Cory lifted the candle and took the note. He read it voraciously.

  ... beneath a Jacaranda tree...

  ... the whetstone...

  There was a sound behind him, a swish of rat tail through a puddle, perhaps, but he feared that the discovery of the note had compromised his situational awareness. Someone was standing at the door. Cory struggled to sense the stranger’s electrical signature. It was a skill he had yet to master; the human-shaped ghost was fainter than an afterimage.

  Cory reached inside his jacket and removed a cigarette lighter. In a flash of solvent, the note was nothing. He drew his cane from the folds of the umbrella, and, turning,

  (Transform, he thought, clear in his intention.)

  aimed the gun at the intruder.

  ‘Amigo, Señor Will-for!’ cried Lisandro.

  Chapter Ten

  Berlin

  Jem woke fully clothed on Saskia’s bed. As the fog of sleep cleared and the events of the day before pulled into focus, she noticed Ego sitting in a patch of streetlight near the edge of the duvet. He blinked a slow greeting and looked towards the window.

  ‘What’s new, pussycat?’ she asked, following his gaze.

  There was nothing to be seen through the window but the corner of an apartment block. She turned back. The cat was gone.

  ‘Ego?’ She shifted the duvet and checked the floor. ‘Where are you?’

  But Ego was staying with a Turkish friend of Saskia on the other side of Berlin. Jem had overheard Saskia making the arrangements.

  ‘I’m hallucinating cats. Different.’

  Jem checked her phone. Now, in the dark, she understood that its vibrating alert had woken her. She rubbed her eyes. The bright egg timer tumbled twice before a message appeared.

  Wer sind Sie? Who are you? İsminiz ne? ¿Quiénes son usted?

  She replied:

  Funny one, Danny. How did you get my number?

  She flopped back against the oversized German pillow, but a new text arrived before she closed her eyes.

  I am not Danny. I am in your apartment.

  Jem remain
ed staring at the words until the display dimmed. She could admit that she was scared. No need for lies; not here. Be honest: she had slept fully dressed because there was something odd about Cory. In fact, hadn’t she come in here intending to give it an hour before leaving unnoticed? She must have fallen asleep.

  What to do? Who was sending her messages?

  She thumbed out a reply:

  I called the police. Who are you?

  She waited, drumming the back of the phone. She looked at the door. Was it locked? Yes. Her heart was sprinting.

  You are in danger. Meet me at the door to the apartment. Cory is a killer. This is the last message I can send.

  The screen faded. Its stamp-sized afterimage floated before her eyes as she glanced around the room, checking shadows.

  Was someone really waiting for her downstairs? She imagined a man in the coats, studying the darkness of the upper hallway for a sign that she had emerged. With a suddenness that surprised her, Jem decided it was the policeman she had spotted outside Wolfgang’s apartment. What was the connection between Wolfgang and Cory? Why send her a text message? If the policeman had evidence that Cory was dangerous, why not arrest him?

  Yet the message felt genuine. She eased herself from the bed, walked to the door and turned its key. The hallway was gloomy and quiet. She strained to hear something from downstairs, but there was no breath, shoe scuff, or creak. The door to the spare bedroom, through which Cory had retired, was still closed.

  She stepped out and rolled each foot heel-to-toe. Her rucksack was near the telephone. The rucksack found her shoulder with a practised swing. Another glance at Cory’s door. At the top of the stairs, she checked for Cory once more, and, as an afterthought, swiped her knickers from the kung fu wooden man.

  Midway down the landing, she strained to look at the entrance space. Its coats were bulky enough to conceal her caller, and the scattered shoes might obscure his feet, but she felt certain that she was alone in the flat with Cory.

  She took careful seconds over the final steps and let her rucksack slip, easy doing it, to the floor. A riser creaked behind her. She looked up. Nobody there. Just cooling wood. She put her eye to the spy hole and checked the outside hall: empty.

  She texted:

  I’m here. Where are you?

  Jem looked at the door and its array of locks. Her doubt rested on the warning about Cory. He had not convinced her that he was the father of Saskia, but, then, there was not a great deal to know about Saskia, as the woman herself had said on countless occasions over the past month.

  Her phone vibrated again.

  From behind her came the sound of a footstep. She turned time-lapse slow.

  Cory’s white cane had fallen across the lowest riser. Jem blew out her trapped breath and replaced the cane among the umbrellas.

  The phone felt wet in her grip.

  You’re close. Look for an envelope.

  Why is his cane down here when he’s up there?

  Faster now, she played the glowing screen of the mobile across the black trainers, a pair of Birkenstocks, her own boots, and found nothing. Then she remembered that, two days before, when she and Saskia had returned from their shopping trip, Saskia had asked her to collect her post from the box in the lobby. Had there actually been any post? Jem could not remember either finding any or giving it to Saskia. She reached now into the outer pocket of her duffle coat and withdrew two items of junk mail. The first announced that Saskia had won a lottery and the second that she had been selected for a limited-offer credit card. The latter was dusty and dented. It had been redirected three times. The sender was ‘Proctor Prospects’ and its exterior read, ‘We deliver same day, next working day, and last week!’ Jem flexed the envelope. There was something stiff inside.

  She ripped it open and fanned the contents across the floor. The covering letter was dated December. There was nothing in that, or the enclosed leaflet, or the fake credit card, that could be a message from her mysterious correspondent – but, as she looked, a handwritten message appeared near the foot of the leaflet. It read, ‘Hold on, Saskia – D.’ Jem blinked and looked again. It was gone.

  A white light pulsed on the floor and she reached towards it, expecting another text. But the phone was already in her hand. This radiance came instead from the credit card. Bemused, Jem touched it. The card was warm. She looked close and saw the long number slide away. The coloured sections parted. It became a pale tile.

  Text scrolled across the centre.

  Please attach the earpiece.

  ‘There is no earpiece,’ she whispered. ‘Who are you? Where are you sending these messages from?’

  Lower your voice. Where is Saskia?

  ‘Stop asking me that. Saskia’s dead.’

  The text scrolled away. Absurdly, Jem felt that the card was thinking.

  How?

  ‘Her plane crashed.’

  Where did it crash?

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  She rose and tugged on her boots. But before she zipped them, curiosity returned her eyes to the card.

  WAIT.

  ‘What?’

  We can help each other.

  ‘How? Who says I need help?’

  I know what you want.

  Jem paused. The world bled brightly from the edges of the door and through its spy-hole. Behind her, Cory might have been on the topmost riser, watching. She whispered, ‘Her system?’

  I will show you, but not here. It’s not safe.’

  Jem stood. She was coiled again, set for release. Berlin was out there and ready to absorb her like an electric current, earthed, escaping to everywhere.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Angleterre Hotel was not far from Potsdamer Platz. Jem approached it carefully, sizing up the silver roof and the facade brimming with glass. She felt hollowed out, scruffy. It was 3 a.m. and Berlin was an inversion of its daylight self. The living people were dead in their beds. The dead – zombies like her, like Saskia – wandered. As Jem entered the hotel, she expected a random icy bitch to refuse her a room on grounds of hair colour, but she found a tall, smiling concierge called Simon, English as leather on willow, who ushered her through the relevant paperwork while monologuing over the sights of Berlin. He moved the pages with the expertise of a croupier.

  On the way to the lift, Jem saw a framed British government poster from World War Two. It read: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’

  ‘Roger,’ she said, as the lift closed, yawning. ‘And out.’

  Running for her life was not fun, exactly, but it was doable.

  ~

  Jem was woken by the tones of a xylophone. She opened her eyes and blinked at an unfamiliar window. Through it, she saw morning light. She struggled to configure her place in the world. She was in Germany, not England. This was a hotel, not Saskia’s apartment. Jem scratched at the sleep in her eyes.

  The xylophone played again.

  ‘Jem,’ said a rich, unaccented voice. The strange card was flashing on her night table. ‘You have a phone call. It is your brother. He has phoned four times in the past hour.’

  Jem made a wounded sound. What did this thing know about Danny? She slid from the bed, gasping as she put weight on her feet. They felt bruised. She snatched her jeans – Saskia’s jeans – and looked for the silent, buzzing phone in its pockets.

  When she answered, she aimed for indifference. ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘Jem?’ asked Danny. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I asked you how you got this number.’

  ‘Someone called Self phoned me. It doesn’t matter.’

  She looked at the card. ‘Well, they had no right to.’

  ‘Jem, will you just listen?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m in Berlin. Don’t hang–’

  She released the phone’s battery over the wastebasket, dealt the SIM card onto the rug, and threw the gutted husk at the wardrobe, where it marked the long mirror with a sugary star. All the things she had left in
England – her failure, the betrayal – were about to come visiting and she had no headspace in which to deal with them. Wolfgang was gone. Saskia was dead. Cory was... Jem didn’t know what he was. There was a perfect storm of shit brewing, and Jem, though talented at finding the eye of such things, did not rate her chances.

  She sank to a crouch and considered herself as a reflection in the broken mirror: just a girl in knickers and a T-shirt and stupid, blue hair.

  ~

  When she was cried out, she put the phone back together and took a shower. She brushed her teeth. She dressed. She called for breakfast and watched it arrive on something that resembled a float from the Love Parade. There were bread rolls, sliced meats, mango balls and grapefruit rings. A tumbler of orange juice. German-strength coffee.

  ‘You there,’ she said, ‘who do you think you are, calling my brother like that?’

  ‘I am me,’ the card said.

  ‘No, I mean whose idea was it to call him?’

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I want to know who is controlling this device.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I understand that. But where are you and who are you?’

  ‘I am here and my name is Ego.’

  Jem frowned. ‘Like the cat. Saskia’s cat is called Ego.’

  A pause. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘What do you know, Ego?’

  ‘Many things.’

  She tore a roll and dressed the wound with salami. ‘When I studied computer science, you know what was the most disappointing thing? Artificial intelligence is crap. You can’t make a camera that sees like an eye, or a microphone that hears. Forget conversation. Forget language, full stop. There are no machines on Earth capable of having this conversation with me.’

  ‘One seems capable.’

  ‘Exactly my point. Am I the mark for a con?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What model are you?’

  ‘I’m an Ego-class assistant, third version.’

  ‘Processor speed? Memory capacity? Juicy details, and quick.’