Flashback (The Saskia Brandt Series Book Two)

by Hocking, Ian

  ~

  In the lounge, where the fire crackled drily, Cory had slouched in the winged armchair. His eyes moved under their lids. Murmured words were caught in bubbles of reddish spit.

  ‘Paloma,’ he whispered. ‘Where is it?’ He licked his lips. ‘You know what. The Cullinan Zero.’ He coughed. ‘Tell me.’ His fingertips fluttered and Jem saw the discarded cane twitch. ‘I have Jem.’

  She closed the door. The hallway was quiet and empty. This would be like her escape from the apartment in Berlin, easy doing it. She crept down the hallway and touched the keypad. A heartbeat throbbed in her palm. If only she could impart her desperation to the door, beg it to unlock. She remembered Cory’s lips on hers. Death as a suitor whose carriage kindly stopped. Death as Saskia, with full, relaxed lips, wanting her. Her short hair. Yes, Jem had shorn Saskia lock by lock. Wind had played with the clumps of hair.

  Ssssss. Saskia.

  Calm as, Jem, she thought. Arctic effing calm.

  She looked at the door. Her attention snapped to Cory’s reflection in the cold, black finish and she sighed, sagged against the wood.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jem made fists and turned towards him. She had never been so scared and ready to fight. She considered the idea that she was standing in the place she would die.

  ‘I have to go on alone,’ he said, into the distance, perhaps into the reflected world. A ruby tear squeezed from his eye as he smiled.

  Con him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you bleeding?’

  ‘Old wounds reopening, I guess.’

  Cory moved closer. One shoulder touched the wall. His expression was regretful as he lifted the cane. With an organic, bloating action, it became a sword.

  ‘Relaje, Paloma,’ he said.

  ‘I have a question.’ If Cory was sleepwalking, the girl in his dream – Paloma – might have been his love, to judge by the hope in his eyes. ‘Who is Paloma? Who am I?’

  ‘Two things, can happen now. Truthfully, I don’t know which. Either I put this sword through your heart or I let you live. From the perspective of five years hence, or fifty, one of those things is history. Perhaps you died here. Perhaps you died a great-grandmother. I could set the event in stone. I could collapse the wave. But I want you to understand that it isn’t really me making the decisions. I’m thinking of night or day. If you can guess which, you will leave and I will never see you again.’

  Her intellect braced for bodily revolt – tears, a moan, a whisper upon his mercy – but the muscles held. Her eyes did not leave his, though Cory still stared into the deep distance behind her, into the door. She understood that she had been dead the moment the shadows in her train compartment had gathered to form this man.

  ‘Day,’ she said, surprised by her confidence.

  Only his bloodshot eyes moved. Changes crossed his face like the rushing pages of a book. The sword edge shifted.

  Arctic.

  ‘Do you know what we call people like you where I come from?’ He smiled. There was blood on his teeth. ‘Archaeology.’

  ‘Archaeology.’

  ‘Never follow me. Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Find your brother and return to England.’

  ‘I–’

  Cool as.

  ‘–understand.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really?’

  Cory let the sword drop. It transformed into a cane and he tipped his weight upon it like the old man he could be. Jem watched him tap a number on the keypad. Bolts relaxed. He inverted his collar and turned to Jem once more, looked at her, and walked into the snow.

  ~

  Young Cory woke to a wintry Saturday in Buenos Aires. He breakfasted in a café, asked to use their candlestick telephone, and was put through to the Buenos Aires Herald. After five minutes’ conversation, he checked his pocket watch. ‘Hello? Repeat that, please.’ He paused. ‘Yes, it must run in the evening edition in the exact form I have given you. Do you understand?’

  Cory hung up. He slipped a banknote under the telephone and left. He hesitated on the porch and fitted his hat. From where he stood, the grass of the Plaza de Mayo was blotchy with shade. Cory, both hands on his cane, turned to the Casa Rosada. In his first week here, a bar-top philosopher had told him that la Casa was pink because it represented a fusion of the red and white flags of the opposing political parties extant during its construction. This explanation was countered by a snort from the man’s older companion, who went on to give his version: gouts of cow blood mixed into the paint helped protect the palace from the humidity.

  Cory respected a government honest enough to paint the house of its executive in blood.

  His two-colour brogues swished at the tough grass as he crossed the plaza. On the Avenida de Mayo, he found the gates of el subte. His cane clicked down the stairs.

  ~

  Jem stepped onto the porch. The snow was an inch deep. She approached the ironwork gate at the front of the concrete forecourt. There was a CCTV camera high on the wall. She pushed through.

  Cars were parked either side of the boulevard. Nothing moved. No traffic drove through the slush. No Cory. She walked to the end of the block and found a yellow telephone box. She pushed a euro through the coin slot and dialled a number.

  ‘Well, it’s me.’

  ‘Good evening, Jem.’

  ‘He let me go. I don’t know why. Can you call me back?’

  ‘Wait a moment, please. There are twenty-nine mobile phones within fifty metres of your location. Nearly all of them are to be found within houses. However, one is near the front wall of the empty lot to your east.’

  ‘Somebody dropped it?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Jem smiled at her mental picture of Ego, tucked away within Resources and Parsing, lonely in a corner of the library on Fasanenstrasse. The little bookmark that could.

  She hung up and wandered towards the wreck of a petrol station on the windy side of the street. Her feet scuffed. She was cold and numb, and nausea was beginning to swill in her empty belly. It was a once-removed sensation. Her mind was relatively clear.

  A glow: greenish. Jem approached and saw the lost mobile.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me. How are you? Have you eaten? Are you cold?’

  ‘Fine, no, yes.’

  ‘Keep moving.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘South, towards the intersection.’

  Jem began to walk. ‘What’s south? Is this south?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘It’s Cory’s saliva.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Coming up is a right turn onto Karl Marx Strasser. Please take it. Do you see a silver Volkswagen Golf? It should have a large blue logo along one side that reads interRENT. It will be parked near a hotel called the Gasthaus Edelweiss.’

  ‘Wait a minute. What do you mean, Cory’s saliva? Did he put a drug in his mouth and pass it to me?’

  ‘Do you see the car?’

  ‘Answer my question.’

  The smallest of pauses. Jem kneaded her stomach.

  ‘Cory’s blood contains experimental nanoparticles in suspension. They are subject to his conscious control. The technology was developed by a group of industrialists building upon the work of a cancelled US military project. Dubbed ‘intelligent core’ or ‘I-Core’, it is known colloquially as ‘ichor’. Leaked documents suggest that the I-Core nanoparticles can build ad hoc structures within the host’s body, including electromagnetic transmitter-receivers, and chemical factories. Primarily, the nanoparticles function as a medical adjunct. Secondly, they optimise performance.’

  ‘Ichor, right.’ She steadied herself against a thin tree and saw the Gasthaus Edelweiss. It was dark but for a porch light near its sign. ‘Does Saskia have ichor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see the car.’

  ‘Reach under the front bumper and retrieve a magnetised box. It contains a k
ey. Tell me when you have entered the car.’

  The interior of the Golf was chill. She sat on the passenger side, feeling stupid, one seat away from where she needed to be. She remembered the green eyes of a German woman in a café who had known nothing of an English stranger but who had, nonetheless, offered help in the recovery of a stolen passport. A series of older memories covered this one like dealt cards: Wolfgang smoking in bed; Wolfgang planning to turn Robin Hood and steal from the rich, which was to say Saskia Dorfer, to give to the poor, which was to say Wolfgang and Jem.

  Jem watched her breath grey the windscreen.

  Never follow me. Understand?

  ‘He asked about a ‘Cullinan Zero’. What did he mean?’

  ‘Just a moment. The term refers to a mythical counterpart to the Cullinan diamond, which is the world’s largest rough gem-quality diamond. The first polished gem made from the diamond was called the Cullinan I, or the Great Star of Africa, and was presented to King Edward VII in 1905 on his sixty-fourth birthday. The Cullinan II was a smaller cut from the remainder, the Cullinan III smaller still, and so on, until we reach the Cullinan IX. Rumours of a larger diamond began to circulate after the geologist who first examined the uncut Cullinan indicated that it was likely to comprise less than half of a larger, distorted octahedral crystal. However, the existence of the so-called ‘Cullinan Zero’ has never been independently established.’

  Jem tried to put this into focus. ‘So he thinks I’ve stolen a diamond?’

  ‘Or know its whereabouts.’

  ‘Do you think Saskia knew?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Saskia may still be alive.’

  Jem looked at the driver’s seat and felt the absence of her once lover.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You don’t need to believe me. Not yet.’

  She looked for Cory on the white, blank street.

  ‘What if he let me leave, knowing I’d contact you? What if he’s watching me?’

  Slowly, she turned to the back seat.

  It was empty.

  ‘Ego?’ she continued. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Jem, press the red button next to the satellite navigation device. This will connect you to a response specialist. Pretend that you’ve lost your swipe card. Try a Latvian accent. He or she will give a code that you must enter into the navigation device. This will start the car.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Near Regensburg

  Hrafn Óskarson lifted the peak of his yellow baseball cap and looked at the wall of the school’s assembly room. On it, Little Red Riding Hood fled through a paper forest. Hrafn turned away from the display and crossed the hall. He wondered why the memories of his childhood in Iceland quickened as he entered middle age. He could remember a morning in his tenth year when he and his younger brother Ragnar had raced to their aunt’s farm near Akureyri hoping to dissuade her from making their beloved rabbits into gloves. She had laughed at their naïvety, at the last of their childhood. This was not news. The rabbits had been born for gloves. Ragnar had cried all the long trip home while Hrafn had framed the experience as his first dose of adult medicine. Children petted rabbits; men wore rabbit gloves.

  Why that? he thought. Why remember that, here, when I haven’t thought about it in years?

  Hrafn took the passport from his jacket and rubbed away the blood from the gold-stamped title, which read Unione Europea Repubblica Italiana. Inside, the photograph showed a pretty woman with shoulder length, auburn hair. He let her eyes imprint his vision.

  In the hours following the loss of DFU323, the Regensburg authorities had sent requests for assistance to the Federal Ministry of Transport, who in turn engaged the Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation. The Gold Group of Dr Hrafn Óskarson – a veteran of sixteen inquiries – had been instructed to fly from Lower Saxony to Munich and rendezvous with specialists from Europe and the United States: external field investigation experts, psychologists, and engineers from Boeing. Meanwhile, disaster management teams in Regensburg set about requisitioning administrative offices for Gold Group, hangar space for wreckage, and, as an emergency morgue, a local primary school, where the dead now lay.

  Hrafn crouched. Gently, he selected one of the two-dozen recovery bags that covered a third of the floorspace. Its zip moved with a low, throaty sound.

  The smell: raw hamburger meat, aviation fuel, soil.

  The smell recalled the closed investigations of his career. They formed a crossing, each like a stone in a brook, back to the night his Boeing 747 experienced an uncommanded rudder hardover on the approach to Singapore Changi Airport. The anxiety of the memory stung him even now. That roaring thought: No; not on my watch. The full starboard rudder lock would have put the 747 into the Singapore Strait in the time it took to take ten breaths. Only a rapid turn using the ailerons and a sudden push on the stick had saved the aircraft and its three hundred passengers. His luck had been astounding. He had repeated the manoeuvre a dozen times in the simulator and failed to bring her home.

  The next day, during the pauses in his interview with safety investigators, Hrafn had composed his resignation letter. He returned, by land and sea, to that cold farm near Akureyri, where his aunt was preparing for the last months of her life. He went back to school and recovered his love of engineering. Five years later, having gained his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he joined the FBAAI.

  On a whiteboard next to the assembly hall door – here, among the art of children – a doctor had written, Mortui Vivis Praecipant.

  Let the dead teach the living.

  As Hrafn left the assembly room for the open air, he realised why he had recalled the memory of Ragnar and him hurrying to save the rabbits. Tomorrow would be his brother’s birthday.

  ~

  Flurries of snow blazed in the glow of the temporary lights that ringed the playground. He passed police disaster cabins, parked fire engines, and the skyward satellite dishes of the media village. Nobody else was around. He stopped, just to appreciate the quiet. Then he pushed on. He was late for a meeting with Human Factors.

  ~

  Hrafn, and the small audience, leaned forward to scrutinise the photograph that Marcus Bower of Human Factors projected on the screen. The image had been recovered from a charred digital camera. It was pixellated and oddly coloured. It showed a woman in mid sprint. She was running down the aisle of the aircraft. A blur in her hand might have been a gun. Hrafn studied the object as Marcus zoomed into it and resumed his interpretation. There was a Holmesian touch to the fervour with which the psychologists and engineers swooped on the slightest of details. Did the shape of her hair indicate acceleration, and thus the aircraft’s movement? Did lighting inconsistencies imply electrical problems? And, at root, was this person working for the good of the passengers, or had she precipitated the crash? Both? Hrafn accepted a coffee as Marcus wrapped up his presentation. It was midnight, and he had a 6 a.m. appointment with Chancellor Schröder. He said, ‘Marcus, I just came from the morgue. Nicolleta Valli has red hair in her passport photograph, but she recently dyed it blond. That leaves Saskia Dorfer as our candidate for Ms X.’

  ‘Sure you looked at the right body?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘If we go for Saskia, then there’s a Berlin angle.’

  ‘How?’

  One of the group leaned into the coloured beam of the projector. ‘Dr Óskarson, a passenger called Jem Shaw, a Brit, failed to board. Shaw’s ticket was bought using the same EC card as Dorfer. The Berlin police report that Dorfer’s apartment was destroyed by fire several hours after she boarded the plane.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Marcus, ‘Petersen, the hiker who filmed the crash, told me about a camouflaged man he saw hanging around the scene. We think the guy is a reclusive woodsman called Tolsdorf. Some kind of Boo Radley figure to the locals, I understand. He only comes down to th
e village at Christmas for a good feed. But he robbed the local Aldi this morning. Beer.’

  ‘So? It must get lonely up in the woods.’

  Marcus smiled. ‘He left the beer.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Emptied the bottles before he left the car park, then took the bottles with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That is the question.’

  ‘OK. Goodnight, everyone. Tomorrow, we’ll talk to Shaw.’

  ~

  In the hallway, Hrafn found a cleaner mopping the floor. He smiled apologetically and stepped across the wet laminate. He entered the adjacent classroom. Its walls were covered with circuit whiteprints and telemetry plots. Beneath them, partly obscured, were lists of English verbs and pictures of Tony Blair and Big Ben. Trays of wiring and smashed equipment had been laid across the low tables. A dozen men probed the avionics with their pencils, delicate as watchmakers. Hrafn found a warmish coffee near a stack of miniature chairs and touched the shoulder of William Daker, who straightened. He was an old-school Boeing engineer. Gone were the days, told his weary expression, of analogue flight instruments whose dials held their readings at the point of impact.

  ‘What do you have?’

  ‘Bad news,’ said William. He indicated a blackened, curved piece of metal. ‘Here are the docking pins for the cockpit CVR/FDR breaker. The short version? The fuse was deliberately removed before impact. I think we can forget the flight recorder data. It’ll be blank.’

  Hrafn sighed. If he were abandoned by his primary diagnostic tools – the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder – he might never file a worthwhile report. The solid-state recording chips in each engine were poor substitutes for the parameterised data of the dedicated recorders.

  ‘Walk me through it. And slowly; it’s late.’

  ‘If the fuse had been present at impact, we’d expect damage between the pins, where the fuse scoured the housing. But the damage is uniform. The very fact that we haven’t found the fuse is also telling. It should have been near this breaker. We can give you a ninety per cent certainty that the fuse was not on the flight deck at impact. I’ll know when it turns up.’