The Black Art of Killing

by Matthew Hall

  The shorter of the two spoke: ‘Wait here, please.’

  Black looked from one to the other. ‘Wait? For what?’

  ‘Police.’ He pointed towards a chair at the side of the French doors.

  ‘The police? I merely wanted to see where it happened.’

  They stared at him with impassive faces, their outsize shoulders straining the seams of their jackets.

  ‘What offence do you say I’ve committed?’

  No answer.

  Black persisted with his reasonable tone. ‘Perhaps you might tell me where I can find Sebastian Pirot? I presume you dealt with him during the conference last week.’

  Dead eyes looked back at him. Black sensed they were relishing the moment. A real-life intruder and a foreigner to boot. He tried to remain calm and decided to let them justify their wages by having the satisfaction of seeing him have to explain himself to a gendarme, but then a single word, ‘Sit’ – spat rather than spoken – tripped a switch in his brain.

  The effect was both physical and psychological and bypassed all rational faculties. A burst of adrenalin coursed through his veins. The two men in front of him seemed to diminish in size. They became ridiculous, clumsy, comic-book figures.

  ‘Kindly step aside, gentlemen.’

  ‘Sit.’ Shorty stepped in front of his colleague and crossed his thick arms across his barrel chest.

  A beginner’s error.

  Black lunged forward and pushed the man’s crossed wrists hard against his sternum. As he stumbled backwards against his colleague, Black aimed a kick into his exposed groin. Clutching his crotch, the security guard collapsed, winded, on to the carpet. The bigger man had now regained his balance and was filling the width of the short passageway, barring Black’s way to the door. He squared up, fists cocked in front of his face like a trained boxer. Only the fear in his eyes gave him away as an amateur. Black feinted, causing him to unleash with a straight right. Black slipped left, hooked his right arm inside the oncoming fist and drove the heel of his left palm into his biceps, causing him to swivel and slam forehead first into the wall, but not before his shoulder was wrenched from its socket. As he went down, clutching an arm that now hung uselessly from the middle of his ribs to below his knee, he made a sound like the dying groan of a slaughtered ox.

  Black stepped over his prone body, wrenched the solid brass handle from the door and tossed it out into the now empty corridor. He pulled the door closed behind him, locking the two injured men inside. Then he made his way to the stairs.

  Moments later, Black emerged into the lobby where business continued as normal. Descending the hotel’s carpeted front steps, he exchanged nods with the doormen and climbed into a taxi.

  ‘La Gare du Nord, s’il vous plaît.’

  9

  A metal gate clanged shut behind them.

  ‘Arrêtez.’ Stop.

  He winced at the harshness of the light and immediately shut his eyes tight. Holst felt the same rough hands cut through the cable ties binding his wrists in front of his body and remove his blindfold, daring only to open his eyes slowly, by tiny degrees, as his pupils contracted.

  They were in a room painted white in a single-storey building that carried the breeze-block-and-cement smell of recent construction. There were sturdy, gleaming steel bars at the window. Several figures came into focus: Susan Drecker and a tall, unnaturally thin man, both dressed in military fatigues, stood opposite; next to them stood a middle-aged man of Middle Eastern appearance dressed in a blue short-sleeved civilian shirt.

  Holst glanced to his right and saw a young woman with dark matted hair, also blinking painfully into the light. To his left were two men dressed in matching khaki shorts and T-shirts, one aged thirty or so, the other closer to sixty. Both wore glasses and had the soft features and shapeless limbs of professional men. Holst knew instantly and by instinct that both they and the young woman were fellow scientists.

  The older man spoke. ‘Sarah? Are you all right?’

  ‘She’s fine. Shut up.’ The rebuke, spoken in a pronounced Afrikaans accent, came from the skeletal figure alongside Drecker. He gestured to someone standing behind them. Two large Hispanic-looking men dressed in similar lightweight military clothing stepped away from the group of four scientists and took up position either side of the prison-style gate that acted as a secure inner door to the building. Beyond it was a further solid door to the outside. Holst noticed the absence of any insignia or markings on their uniforms.

  ‘Dr Holst, Dr Bellman, I’m Colonel Brennan. You both know Captain Drecker, but allow me to introduce our colleague and Director of Scientific Operations, Dr Ammal Razia.’

  The man in the blue shirt gave a solemn nod of greeting. ‘We apologize for the manner of your transportation and for the basic nature of your accommodation. Unfortunately, all our quarters are similarly lacking in creature comforts at the present time. This facility is new and very much a work in progress. We hope to make our conditions considerably more comfortable over the coming months. Our priority has been equipping our laboratories.’ His voice was cultured, his tone apologetic and his accent suggested an English education.

  ‘What are you doing? Where are we?’ the young woman to Holst’s right demanded in a tone that bordered on the hysterical.

  Brennan silenced her with a look and a sideways glance to the two uniformed guards at the gate.

  The older man to Holst’s left held up his hands as if urging her to stay calm and listen.

  ‘You have been brought here to work together,’ Brennan said. ‘Regrettably, this was the only viable method to stay ahead of the competition. Each of you is a leader in your field and fighting to stay ahead of the pack, and each of you has agreed to sell your research to our mutual employer for substantial sums of money. So before you object too vociferously to your circumstances, I would urge you to consider the wider picture. The sooner this project is completed, the sooner you will get paid and go home. If you had been entirely trustworthy counterparts in our negotiations, none of this may have been necessary, but –’ he gave a thin, philosophical smile – ‘we’re all of us only human.’

  Holst noticed an exchange of glances between Bellman and the older man, as if both were equally surprised and appalled by the other.

  ‘Yes,’ Drecker interjected, addressing her remarks to him, ‘I’m afraid your protégée turned out to be as mercenary as you, Professor Kennedy. Even more so, as a matter of fact.’ She smiled in a way that Holst remembered from several of their discussions concerning his remuneration. It was as if she were revelling in a feeling of moral superiority at having exposed their hypocritical greed.

  Brennan gestured to Dr Razia to take the floor. He stepped forward and addressed the new arrivals as matter-of-factly as if they had come of their own free will.

  ‘Allow me to make some introductions. Dr Bellman and Professor Kennedy are close colleagues at Oxford, of course, but aside from that I suspect you may be strangers to each other. Let us start with Dr Angelos Sphyris.’ He nodded to the slight young man to Holst’s left. ‘Dr Sphyris is a computer scientist turned neuromorphologist based in Cambridge, who is well on the way to mapping the one hundred billion neurons in the human brain with the aid of artificial intelligence. This remarkable AI has proved almost infallibly accurate in predicting the function of each new neural circuit it identifies. Dr Alec Kennedy is one of the foremost pioneers of nano-engineering and has created minute particles capable of releasing heat in response to microwave frequencies. These particles stimulate activity in the cells to which they attach. His colleague, Dr Sarah Bellman, has developed an ingenious mechanism capable of delivering a payload of such particles to any cell in the body. Lastly, Dr Lars Holst. His work has focused on the reward and aversion centres of the brain and initially it is these you will be concentrating on.

  ‘Our considerable investment is being committed in the belief that together you will combine your knowledge to create a technology capable of numerous applicatio
ns, which we will discuss in due course. But first things first. We must show the new arrivals to their accommodation, and later we will begin work on ordering the necessary equipment and supplies for your laboratories.’ Razia paused and gave an almost kindly smile. ‘It may please you to know that here you won’t find yourselves bound by the usual ethical constraints. You may experiment at will on primates and, if necessary, on human subjects. I suggest you start to factor that into your thinking.’ He spread his palms as if in a gesture of goodwill. ‘I very much look forward to working with you.’

  ‘Two hours’ rest,’ Drecker said. ‘Then we get to work.’

  She turned to the gate with Brennan and Razia.

  ‘That’s it? We don’t get to ask any questions?’ The defiant challenge came from Dr Bellman.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Drecker said with forced patience.

  ‘What if we choose not to cooperate?’

  ‘The time to ask that question was before you agreed to sell your soul for eight million dollars, Dr Bellman,’ Brennan said. ‘No one gets rich without paying the price. Ask anyone who’s done it – it’s paid in sweat or conscience. Every penny.’

  He smiled, his taut skin creasing like a lizard’s.

  From somewhere deeper in the building Holst heard a macaque screech and shake the bars of its cage.

  10

  Black walked at a steady pace across the concourse of the Gare du Nord, aware that his senses remained on full alert. He saw each face, heard every footstep, registered colours, smells and the tiniest flickers of movement, even those from the pigeons roosting on the great iron beams of the station’s vaulted roof. The violent encounter in the hotel room had flung him straight back into the vivid hyper-reality from which he had banished himself nearly five years before. And like a wise, dry alcoholic who had inadvertently taken a drink, he attempted to observe his altered state from one remove. He told himself it was a temporary condition, an aberration forced on him by circumstances beyond his control. Equilibrium and normality would soon return.

  The shift in consciousness was seductive, nonetheless. Along with ultra-acuity came a sense of invulnerability and physical prowess; he felt like a leopard walking among sheep. Supreme self-confidence is what the army had termed it. It was present in the smile of a psychopath and in the eyes of a paratrooper during the moments before a drop. It was the quality capable of being expressed by a small percentage of human beings who, in life-threatening circumstances, are able to harness both intellect and aggression to the exclusion of fear. All Special Service personnel possessed it, and it was both their blessing and their curse.

  With no conscious effort, he picked out the numerous armed police officers moving among the bustling crowds as clearly as if they were dressed in high-vis jackets. The names of their weapons sprang unprompted from dormant recesses of his memory: the St Étienne M12SD submachine gun, the Mousqueton AMD select-fire carbine and the Sig Sauer P2022 handguns holstered at their waists. His eyes scanned the human tide for plain-clothes detectives, each tell-tale signal firing like a point of light: female, late twenties, athletic build, no luggage; male, forties, shaved head, sunglasses; a second male, thirty, touching a hidden receiver in his right ear. The station was crawling with them, but none gave him a second glance. They were hunting for lone-wolf killers and their darkest fear: another gang of marauding home-grown jihadis. A suited Englishman faded as surely into the background as chewing gum into the pavement. He passed through the ticket barrier and passport control without hindrance and made it to the platform.

  Only once the train had cleared the Parisian suburbs and was heading towards the north coast at 200 miles per hour did Black feel himself begin to unwind. He closed his eyes and in a deliberate attempt to limit the stimulus to his brain, felt his right forearm resting heavily on his thigh. He turned his focus inwards and tried to hear only the steady rhythm of his heart. Two years of cognitive behavioural therapy had achieved less than a long weekend retreat in a Yorkshire monastery, where an elderly Cistercian monk had imparted the simple techniques that had guided him through a lifetime of inward contemplation.

  Black’s body relaxed but his brain stubbornly refused to quieten. An image of Finn’s mutilated corpse, photographic in detail, refused to leave him. Resisting the urge to force his attention elsewhere, he followed the monk’s stern counsel never to shrink ‘but always to look Satan in the eye’ and confronted the picture of his dead comrade. Against the gentle, rocking rhythm of the carriage, he took in every detail: the waxy skin drawn across the cheekbones, the bruised and punctured muscles of his chest, the fading tattoos criss-crossed with defensive wounds on his thick forearms and the bloody stubs of fingers.

  By slow and painful degrees the raw horror receded and with it the fury and blind urges to revenge it had provoked. In their place came the numb sensation of shock and disbelief that accompanies sudden and unexpected loss. A bitter residue of anger still remained, but cool and rational thoughts returned to hold it in check. Satisfied that he had regained as much balance as he was able, he opened his eyes to be greeted by the patchwork fields of the Kent countryside.

  He glanced at his watch: more than ninety minutes had passed. He sank back into his seat and glanced at the nearby passengers, smiling, talking and tapping on their phones. He envied their lives lived in a single and predictable reality. Until the incident at the George V he had convinced himself that he had left his past behind and rejoined them. He slowly exhaled and silently prayed that it would never happen again.

  The train pulled into St Pancras station. Black disembarked and merged once more into a shifting sea of travellers, unaware that his reassuring sense of anonymity was an illusion. The concealed cameras of the UK Border Force picked out his face and logged his presence. Once detected, he was unerringly followed by other unseen electronic eyes that would track him through the London Underground to Paddington station, watch him drink a large whisky at the bar, and follow him on to the nine p.m. train to Oxford. Microseconds after it was gathered, the surveillance footage was processed by software that analysed the minutiae of his body language and facial expressions, piecing them together to form a more accurate appraisal of his mental state than any he could have articulated himself.

  The man watching the results on his computer screen was heartened by what he saw. It had cost him much of his diminishing supply of goodwill to keep the French from detaining Major Leo Black following his unfortunate fracas, and he badly needed a return on his investment.

  11

  Holst lay awake on a thin mattress in a locked room that in most respects was distinguished from a prison cell only by the presence of an air-conditioning unit.

  Such spartan conditions were, he supposed, designed to concentrate minds. It was effective. He could think of nothing except the need to complete their project as soon as possible and being released to enjoy the fruits of his labours.

  Bellman, though, seemed incapable of resigning herself to their situation. For the past two hours her persistent sobbing had leaked mournfully through the thin wall that separated them, denying him any possibility of sleep. From his room on the far side of hers Holst could hear Kennedy pleading with her to remain calm. He was having no luck. She was like a stubborn child, somehow convinced that if she made herself wretched enough her suffering would end. He suppressed the desire to yell at her to shut up and think of the money, knowing that it would only make her worse.

  Through a thick fog of tiredness Holst tried to reconcile himself to their situation. He resigned himself to the fact that he would have no opportunity to communicate with the outside world and would be confined for months, if not longer. It was a grim prospect. He tried not to think too hard about how his wife would be reacting or what she would tell their children. On the upside, if Brennan and Drecker and whoever they were working for held good to their contract, he and his family could look forward to a comfortable future. This was the hope he had to cling to. If he were forced to organize
a similar project, he would be tempted to follow similar methods. Secrecy and speed were paramount. There had been many occasions during the past century when governments eager to develop and exploit nascent technologies had bribed, cajoled or deliberately sequestered scientists to the service of the state. The competition to develop the atom bomb, the cracking of wartime codes and the race to put men into space had all been organized with military methods and efficiency. In the age of global business the state had simply been replaced by a different kind of rapacious and self-serving entity.

  He heard footsteps in the corridor. Doors were unlocked: Bellman’s first, then his. One of the two guards yelled in at him. ‘Allez, debout!’ Get up!

  He dragged himself to his feet and rolled his stiff neck around his shoulders. More orders were shouted in French, instructing them to return to the room at the end of the corridor. He made his way along the narrow tiled passageway and joined Kennedy and Sphyris who were already seated at a table with Brennan and Drecker. Each of them had a laptop computer. Two more were waiting for him and Bellman.

  Brennan directed Holst to a seat between the other scientists. ‘Dr Razia will join us shortly.’

  ‘Lèves-toi!’ The angry command came from the entrance to Bellman’s room. She was evidently refusing to cooperate.

  Holst glanced along the length of the corridor and saw the two guards standing in her doorway.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Drecker got up from her chair and made her way towards them.

  ‘Professor Kennedy and Dr Sphyris have already received much of their inventory as you’ll see when we show you the labs,’ Brennan said to Holst, ignoring the distraction. ‘Whatever else they require will be ordered in collaboration with you and Dr Bellman. The company is prepared to offer you an unlimited budget – within reason – so please feel free to order all that you need.’ He nodded to the laptop. ‘This is your machine. For obvious reasons there’s no internet connection, but you’ll find catalogues from all the major suppliers in the documents folder.’