by Matthew Hall
Willie, Merle, Dolly and June continued to munch their fruit in silence.
Dawn was breaking. Holst hurried from the university building trundling his carry-on suitcase and climbed into the waiting taxi. He instructed the driver to take him to Kongens Nytorv, the large square a short walk from the rendezvous point he had arranged with Drecker. During the ten-minute journey through deserted streets Holst felt as if he were floating between two realities. One was that in which he had lived for the last five years: dividing his working week between London and Copenhagen while frantically trying to keep up with the demands of two faculties, the complexities of overseeing students in two cities and the needs of his young and all too often neglected family; the other was the exhilarating life to come. He taunted himself with the thought that if some disaster were to befall him in the next few minutes it would all be for nothing. The entirety of his work and any prospect of his wife and children profiting from it would die with him. All of his data and the details of his methodology were stored in a series of secure cloud accounts to which only he knew the complex passwords of which there existed no written records. Keeping all of this to himself presented a huge danger, but at the frontiers of science, until the grand moment of unveiling, secrecy was critical. It was simply the risk he had to take.
Throughout his career Holst had sustained himself with the fantasy of one day announcing a world-changing discovery that would bring the acclamation of his peers. His introduction to Drecker, nearly two years ago to the day, had changed everything. The prospect of prizes and professorships had paled in comparison with the promise of money. It was a calculation most scientists never had the privilege to make, hence their hollow claims to be unconcerned with material wealth. Holst knew that there wasn’t a single man or woman among his colleagues who didn’t resent receiving only a paltry salary while relative dunces prospered. Dunces like an old school friend, Bo, who had once joked to him that the millions he had made in finance were nothing to do with brilliance but merely an accident of environment. If he had worked on a market stall, he liked to joke, he would have come home with pockets stuffed full with carrots and potatoes, but he worked in a bank so got to gorge himself with cash. Bo’s smug laughter had filled Holst with bitterness, jealousy and self-loathing.
Then Drecker had found him. The moment Holst had smelled money, real money, he had known that no amount of academic prestige could compete. Prestige didn’t buy luxurious homes or portfolios of investments, or afford the time in which to exercise and keep his middle-aged body from bloating and sagging. Prestige didn’t even allow for the purchase of a decent watch or a tailored suit from one of the smart boutiques that lined the street along which the taxi was now passing. He had always felt there was something seriously wrong with a world in which a man of his intelligence was forced to live like a pauper. Now was his moment to remedy the injustice.
Holst emerged from the taxi into a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea. He paid the driver in cash and completed the final few hundred yards to his destination on foot. Drecker had requested they meet outside the Skuespilhuset, a muted, modern, distinctively Danish structure that stood at the corner of the Nyhavn dock and the broad expanse of the harbour. The approach to the theatre, once a bustling quay crammed with fishing boats and cargo vessels, was now a cobbled promenade with uninterrupted views across the still water to the lights of Christianshavn on the far side. As he strolled, Holst recalled with a smile of amusement how overwhelmed he had been by the vastness of this city on his first visit from his small home town in Jutland. Twenty-five years later he no longer regarded it as a metropolis but as an agreeable, comfortably provincial town far removed from the centre of things. A place of which he remained fond, but which, without doubt, he had long outgrown.
Drecker was already waiting at the entrance to the sloping boardwalk leading to the theatre’s waterfront terrace. She was dressed, as always, in a dark, close-fitting suit and was carrying a slim attaché case.
‘Good morning, Dr Holst.’ She smiled pleasantly as he approached.
‘Good morning. I’m sorry we had to meet at such an inconvenient hour.’
‘No problem. How did it go?’ As usual, she seemed eager to dispense with small talk.
‘Entirely as anticipated. A complete success.’ He reached into the pocket of his crumpled summer-weight jacket and brought out a memory card in a transparent bag. ‘I filmed the procedure less than an hour ago.’ He handed it to her. ‘As soon as the fifteen million dollars appears in my Cayman account I’ll email all the passcodes to the technical papers. As I hope I’ve made plain from the outset, I remain willing to help or advise in any way.’ He was aware of a new note of confidence in his voice. He felt like a rich man should. ‘I plan to stay in my current posts until the end of the year, but after that I’ll be happy to place myself at your exclusive disposal – to head up a team or whatever you wish. Subject to terms, of course.’
As he spoke, Holst became aware of a large black car approaching along the road that ran along the side of the promenade. At first he paid it scant attention, assuming it would turn left into Kvæsthusgade, but it passed the junction and continued towards them, slowing to little more than walking pace.
‘We assumed as much,’ Drecker replied. ‘So my colleagues and I have discussed the matter and decided to make you a very attractive proposition based on some of our previous discussions.’
‘You have? You want to create a dedicated facility?’ Holst’s excitement was tempered by the steady approach of the car. He now assumed it was Drecker’s transport, but why wasn’t it waiting when he arrived? Behind the bluish glare of the halogen headlights he made out the silhouettes of a driver and passenger.
‘We would like to talk with you somewhere more comfortable. Now would be a good time.’
‘I’m afraid I have to leave for the airport.’
The car came to a stop a short distance away. The passenger, a tall man with an olive complexion, climbed out and stood in readiness to receive them.
‘Please, Dr Holst. It’s most important.’ She gestured towards the vehicle.
‘I can’t. It’s too late for me to change my arrangements – I’ve classes to teach in London today.’
‘Do we have an agreement or not, Doctor?’ she said sharply, dropping all pretence at cordiality.
‘We have a contract of sale for my intellectual property –’ he pleaded, his voice losing all its authority.
‘But your work alone is not sufficient for our purposes, Dr Holst. It’s only part of the equation, which is why we need to talk about what happens next.’
‘I beg your pardon? I’m sorry, Ms Drecker, but if you’re trying to renegotiate terms I’m afraid it’s out of the question.’
Drecker reached into her jacket and brought out a pistol, sleek and black, which she levelled at his chest. Holst tasted bile in his throat. The strength bled from his limbs. His legs quivered and threatened to collapse beneath him.
Now he understood the reason she had chosen this isolated spot for their meeting.
‘You can’t kill me. You’ll have nothing if you do,’ he protested feebly.
‘Please, Dr Holst. Do as I ask and get in the car. I don’t want to have to hurt you.’
5
The allotted hour was over, but the first-year students in the history faculty’s lecture hall showed no sign of leaving. Dr Leo Black did his best to referee the spiky debate that had erupted following his presentation on President Truman’s decision to drop the atom bomb.
‘He called them animals. He dismissed the whole population as sub-human in order to justify himself. It was the leaders who were the criminals, not the ordinary people, not the women and children. Any leader who claims to be civilized has an absolute duty to do everything in his power to avoid killing innocent civilians. Truman did the opposite.’ The young woman in the front row spoke with arresting passion. Helen Mount was never shy of voicing her opinions both in class and in the columns of Cherwell, the universi
ty’s most prestigious student newspaper. She had earned a reputation as a political radical and fierce opponent of anything that smacked of injustice. ‘If he wanted to prove that fighting on was futile, why not drop a bomb somewhere uninhabited? Why not show the Japanese High Command what it could do and give them the option of surrender? He had other options, but he didn’t take them. He went straight in and destroyed a whole city. If that isn’t a war crime, I don’t know what is.’
‘Powerful point,’ Black said. ‘Does anyone want to come back on that?’
No one took up the offer. Most of the students present were wary of challenging Helen in any debate in which she held strong opinions. The usual outcome was humiliation.
‘Well, if you’re all agreed –’
‘I don’t agree with that.’ The voice came from a seat in the back row of the hall. It belonged to a young man Black couldn’t recall having seen before. He was seated alone with empty seats either side of him. The left half of his face was hidden behind a curtain of blond fringe. ‘The US only had two bombs ready at the time and Truman needed to make them count. Nobody likes what happened, but it didn’t kill many more than the fire-bombing of Tokyo. You can call it a crime as much as you like, but it would have been a far bigger crime not to have used it. Millions might have died, not just thousands.’
‘I’m saying he had a duty to take all reasonable steps,’ Helen shot back. ‘Unless we act according to humanitarian principals, we’re not even worthy of being called human.’
‘So it’s just the procedure you object to, is it? Let’s say he did try dropping one as a warning but the Japanese had fought on regardless. Would bombing Hiroshima have been justified then? The innocent women and children would have been killed just the same.’
‘It would have been better.’
‘For whom …? Him? It would have been far worse for the hundreds being killed every day the war kept going.’
‘That’s purely hypothetical. We don’t know what would have happened. The point is, he pressed the button while he still had alternatives.’
‘OK. What if he had ignored the committee advising him to drop it and decided it was a step too far – that no civilized human being could wreak that much destruction in one go?’
‘He would have been perfectly justified.’
‘So you would have preferred him to send in thousands of conscripted American troops even though the final body count would have been far higher?’
Helen hesitated.
The young man pressed his advantage. ‘It’s a simple choice – troops or bomb? Which one is morally preferable?’
‘I don’t believe that there can ever be a moral use of an immoral weapon,’ Helen said. She sat back and crossed her arms defiantly across her chest.
Heads around the hall nodded in agreement. Helen smiled, sensing that she had neatly summed up the mood of her fellow students.
Unfazed, her opponent countered, ‘That’s irrational. You can tolerate the idea of spreading the blood of millions of civilians across the hands of thousands of soldiers, but you can’t stomach the idea of fewer deaths being caused by just one man. Luckily for us, Truman was able to make the cold calculation: kill thousands to save millions. Squeamishness like yours amounts to a death wish.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Helen snapped back. ‘Trying your best to avoid unnecessary violence is about valuing life and not wanting to cause death.’
‘You’re living in a fool’s paradise,’ the young man said. ‘History proves time after time that if you want to stay alive, it’s kill or be killed. It’s just a fact. If you truly value life you’d better be ready to rub the enemy out as fast as possible.’
‘Now you’re being childish.’
‘The world’s uglier than you want to believe. You’re the one who’s being naive.’
His response prompted a ripple of laughter.
‘All right, I think we’d better leave it there,’ Black said, sensing that constructive debate was coming to an end. ‘Next week we’ll explore General MacArthur’s reconstruction of Japan and consider the obligations of the victor.’
Helen slammed her file shut, thrust it into her bag and marched out of the door ahead of the crowd, annoyed at not having scored an emphatic victory and even more infuriated at having been laughed at. Black gathered his lecture notes into his battered canvas satchel feeling a measure of sympathy for her. He admired Helen’s youthful idealism. For a man who knew what it was to have plumbed the depths of cynicism only to sink even lower, teaching students brimming with desire to build a better future was like being cleansed. Optimism like hers gave him fresh hope each day.
He made his way to the exit. The young man with the fringe hurried down the hall steps and came after him.
‘Can I ask you something, Dr Black?’
‘Fire away.’
‘Sam Wright, by the way – I’m actually a PP student – Physics and Philosophy. A friend of mine tipped me off that you were worth listening to.’
‘I’m glad someone thinks so. What’s your question?’
‘Truman said men make history, not the other way around. Do you believe that? I mean, isn’t he the most obvious example of a man swept along by history you can think of? He’s a small-town guy from Missouri who’s appointed vice president as a compromise candidate, but then Roosevelt dies and leaves him with the gravest decision that’s ever been made. It’s like he was destined for it.’
‘It’s a tempting thought, but, no, I think I’m with Truman. I can’t see how the idea of destiny does anything to help us analyse or understand events, which is what we’re trying to do, after all. I’d have to put destiny in the category of attractive but fanciful concepts.’
Sam mulled this for a moment. ‘I heard you spent a long time in the army.’
‘A very long time.’ There had been no point in keeping it a secret from the students. A simple internet search would have revealed Black to be one of the oldest junior lecturers in the university, having been awarded his PhD only a year before at the age of forty-nine. But of the intervening quarter-century between his graduating in history and returning to his old college, there would have been no mention. If he hadn’t filled in the gap himself, rumour and gossip would soon have done it for him.
‘So why do you think you survived? Was it because you made good decisions or did you walk away from situations you shouldn’t have?’
Black considered the purpose of the question, wondering where Sam was trying to lead him. ‘A bit of both, I suppose.’
‘But you still don’t believe in destiny? Or put it another way – what if the young Hitler had died of his wounds in the trenches, or the young Churchill had been run through with a spear during his cavalry charge in the Sudan, what then?’
‘I’m not a great fan of alternative histories. Isn’t the point to learn from past experience in the hope of informing future decisions?’
‘With respect, I would argue that’s outmoded thinking.’
‘I see.’ Black tried not to feel affronted. Unlike army officers, academics were meant to welcome contradiction as a spur to new ideas, even when it came from a nineteen-year-old undergraduate. ‘In what respect exactly?’
‘Think of quantum physics –’
‘Physics?’
‘Yes. If you fire particles at two slits in a piece of card it turns out they don’t just travel in a straight line and hit the wall behind. Some of them travel through both slits, perhaps thousands, even millions of times. According to the maths, they could have taken every possible route to arrive at their destination and might even have been in several places at once. That’s mind-blowing, right? Almost inconceivable. But so is the fact that despite the randomness of their journey, they still have an ultimate destination which they all reach. They couldn’t buck their destiny.’
‘I like it. Clever,’ Black said, trying to be generous. ‘But as far as I know, there’s a practical use for quantum theory. It’s a theoretical model that exp
lains previously inexplicable phenomena. What does your destiny model do for history?’
‘It gives ultimate meaning. Events unfold only because they’re heading towards an inevitable conclusion.’
‘Which means that we’re nothing more than puppets at the whim of some greater force?’
‘Nothing whimsical about it. There are many eminent physicists who truly believe we’re just complex robots operating according to a program. I’m not saying I like it or wish it wasn’t so. Not many accepted quantum theory or even relativity until they were proved to be true. Maybe one day we’ll learn how to rewrite the program ourselves? Maybe that’s our ultimate destiny?’
They exited through the main doors of the faculty into bright sunlight.
‘Well, it’s a fun theory, though I’m not sure it would score you many marks in finals.’
‘Watch this space. Give it ten years, I bet you it’ll be mainstream. Great lecture by the way. Five stars. I’ll be back.’ Sam smiled and hurried on down the steps.
The digital generation. They felt free to rate everything. Black tried to imagine how his old tutor, Godfrey Lane, would have reacted to being marked out of five by his students. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Black made his way along the path through the small garden that stood in front of the history faculty. On the far side of the railings the pavements of George Street were busy with students and tourists from around the globe. A group of Hungarian musicians was playing a wild reel straight from the market squares of medieval Budapest. Black was struck, as he so often was, by the extraordinary collision of so many times, places and ideas in this one small spot in the middle of England. There was something in its vibrant chaos that seemed to strike a chord with Sam’s outlandish theory of predetermination: Black couldn’t deny that on occasions he did feel as if all the tangled threads of his own complex and violent history had been winding their way here all along. To this oasis. The embodiment of all that he had fought to protect.
He stepped out into the throng and headed back towards his college. Much as he had come to feel at home in the university, his position within it was precarious. For the past year he had been a college tutor without tenure, earning a wage that barely covered his food and lodging. He wouldn’t see his army pension until he was sixty-five and nearly all of his savings, such as they were, had been swallowed up financing three years of study for his doctorate. He had applied for a junior research fellowship, but the decision, which wouldn’t be made until early September, lay with the existing college fellows, a body of men and women intensely protective of their reputation as world-class scholars. Most were avowedly liberal (though hardly liberal in the sense of being tolerant of opinions other than their own) whose politics came with an instinctive suspicion of people like him. It would take a small miracle for them to admit a fifty-year-old former soldier into their gilded circle and Black met few of their criteria. He had no body of published work and, as yet, no academic reputation to speak of. All he had to offer was an insider’s insight into the workings of the international military machine and an ambition to put that knowledge to use.