(2013) Looks Could Kill

by David Ellis

  Emma and Fred left Petros to ponder the results of the tests and walked back down the corridor to the stairs.

  “Fred, one thing I don’t understand is why the people watching me didn’t intervene when I was younger, as in the case of Pablo and Sonia, for instance?” asked Emma.

  “Well, it’s generally our policy to let abilities develop without interference unless there’s some critical event, which was the case with both Pablo and Sonia. In retrospect, we probably should have intervened following your near miss on the top of the multi-storey car park, but that could have deflected you from your career in medicine and the development of your empathic skills. We could also have intervened following the death of the vicar or after the incident in the classroom, but you’d have just ended up a Pablo or a Sonia with a single, unusual ability and under MI5's microscope for the rest of your life. For reasons we don’t fully comprehend, there’s a synergism between your genetically-defined ocular ability and your personality-driven empathic skills and that’s not something we’ve ever seen before. But now it’s time for lunch, which I think you’ve well deserved.”

  August 2005, two days later

  Emma and Fred were sitting at the breakfast bar in her kitchen. She was relieved to be home despite the concerns voiced by Professor Cuthbertson that she might be kidnapped. Before leaving The Manor, there’d been another video conference and Jemma and Tim had invited her to stay when she had a free weekend. It was agreed that Fred would stay with her in the house and basically be her bodyguard until things settled down. All the locks had been changed and a hi-tech alarm system installed.

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking, Fred, but what happened to Tony?”

  “No, that’s okay. He was pretty high maintenance, really. I loved him but he was still more in love with Michael than me. But I could live with that. Unfortunately, he developed acute myeloid leukaemia and died whilst he was having chemo.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that, Fred,” said Emma. “Were you working for MI5 back then?”

  “No, it was after his death that I signed up with MI5,” explained Fred. “I’d been in the Territorial Army and had a PhD in physics plus language skills, so the transition wasn’t difficult.”

  “And you met Petros on the job, so to speak?” asked Emma.

  “Yes, love at first sight,” said Fred. “I’ve always had a soft spot for hairy Greeks.”

  They both laughed.

  “Actually, the two days in The Manor was a real eye-opener for me, and particularly when Petros went through the results from the scans,” said Emma.

  “I thought you’d find it helpful,” said Fred, “but you ought to know that MI5 will probably want you to sign the official secrets act and do some work for them from time to time.”

  “I half expected that,” said Emma. “Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with my medical work. And speaking of which, I need to make some phone calls to my colleagues in the Foundation as they’re probably wondering where I’ve been the last few days.”

  “Okay, but remember that walls have ears,” said Fred.

  “You mean that someone could be listening?” asked Emma.

  “Something like that,” said Fred.

  Emma went next door into the sitting room where she had a desk that served as her home office. She thumbed through a rolodex for the phone numbers for Michael Moore and Janna Roit. She dialled the two numbers for a conference call. Both answered more or less immediately suggesting that they were probably waiting for her call.

  “Hi, Michael, hi, Janna,” said Emma. “Sorry if I’ve been incommunicado for the last few days but I needed to recharge my batteries. What’s been happening in my absence?”

  “Good to hear from you, Emma,” said Michael. “We were a bit worried that e-mails weren’t being answered. A couple of therapists have had cold feet and dropped out, so we’re down to just four now. We’ve got some office space sorted and there’s room to store the equipment. Janna’s had a reccy of the wards to identify some suitable candidates.”

  “Hi, Emma,” said Janna. “I’ve concentrated on surgical and oncology wards so far. The medical and nursing teams have been briefed, so I don’t anticipate major problems. I’ve given them the start date of Monday, 5 September.”

  “Excellent, Janna and Michael,” said Emma. “Let’s keep in touch by e-mail with updates, but otherwise I’ll see everyone in our office in two weeks’ time. Thanks for all your hard work.”

  September 2005, two weeks later

  Emma was finding the eighth month of pregnancy hard work and squeezing herself into a NHS lift at 9:00 a.m. on a Monday was only asking for trouble. Fred had wanted to come to the hospital with her but she’d persuaded him to take the day off for some retail therapy with Petros. Apart from one non-clinical member of staff who smiled at her, all the other occupants of the lift seemed to regard her condition with disdain, almost as if her healthy fecundity didn’t belong in an institution where illness was the norm.

  Getting out of the lift like a pea being popped from its pod, she saw a temporary sign that read ‘OAE Pilot’. She found the office and was impressed by the amount of space they’d been allocated. Michael, Jim, Janna and the OAE therapists were already seated at the table and looked eager to get going.

  “Morning, everyone,” said Emma easing herself into the only vacant chair.

  “Gosh, you look ready to pop,” said Michael with his customary jocularity.

  The other occupants laughed and looked sympathetically at her.

  “Righto,” said Emma, “I suggest we pair up and allocate cases. So, who’ve we got today?”

  By the end of the week, the OAE team had got into the swing of things with the therapists generally finding it possible to work unaided and simply letting the augmented empathy and neurobiofeedback work their magic. Fred had stopped by on a few occasions to check on security issues and Emma’s general well-being and seemed satisfied by what he found. When Emma arrived on the Friday, she discovered that one of the therapists had developed food poisoning overnight so she agreed to see a patient herself. The patient was an American called Robert in his 40s with pancreatic cancer. His wife was by his bedside most of the time and wanted to be present for the therapy.

  Emma found him in a side room that was usually set aside for private patients. She glanced briefly through the window set in the door. Her patient to be was leaning back against the pillow and his face had the sallow look typical of terminal illness. From time to time a grimace of pain crossed his features. There was a wheelchair next to his bed which helped to define the extent of his disability. His wife appeared younger than him and was wearing a full-length coat. She was looking at him intently and holding his hands. A touching scene, Emma thought. She knocked on the door and went in.

  “Good morning, I’m Dr Emma Jones,” she announced. “You must be Robert.” She went over to his bed and shook his hand. “And this must be your wife.”

  “Hi, doctor, I’m Chantelle. We’re so grateful that you’ve come to see Robert as the pain is just eating him up.” She grasped his hands and smiled at him.

  “Okay, Robert,” said Emma. “Let me explain what the therapy involves. What I’m going to do is look into your eyes and visualise the pain centres in your brain. Then I’m going to imagine cutting the activation of those areas and then project that instruction into your brain using my eyes. You won’t feel anything but it should ease the pain. Do you have any questions before I start?”

  “No, doctor,” he whispered. “I’m ready.”

  Emma arranged her chair so that she was directly opposite Robert and at the same level.

  “Okay, Robert, eyes wide open, please.”

  As Emma looked into Robert’s eyes she had a fleeting recognition of having seen his eyes before. Before this thought could be processed any further she was aware of something being held firmly against her nose and then she lapsed into unconsciousness.

  “Well, that was almost too easy,” said Bo
b. He climbed out of bed and took off his dressing gown to reveal medical scrubs.

  “Yes, like taking candy from a baby,” said his ‘wife’. She took off her coat to reveal a nurse’s uniform.

  “Right, let’s get her in the wheelchair and out of here,” said Bob.

  The two of them manhandled Emma into the wheelchair, which wasn’t an easy feat given her heavily pregnant condition, and then covered her with a blanket taken from the bed.

  They wheeled Emma out of the side room and down the length of the ward without anyone paying them the slightest attention. The lift arrived and took them down to the main entrance where a driver was waiting to take them away.

  ***

  “Jim, have you seen Emma recently?” asked Janna.

  “No, I haven’t. Wasn’t she seeing that patient with pancreatic cancer?” replied Jim.

  “I’ll go and check to see how she’s doing as we need to meet to debrief,” said Janna.

  Janna returned a few minutes later looking worried.

  “No sign of her or the patient, and when I looked in the side room someone had left a dressing gown and coat behind.”

  “Christ, no!” exclaimed Jim. “We need to call that number that Emma gave us if there were any problems.” He reached in his pocket and looked at the card. He grabbed the phone on the table and entered the digits.

  “It’s Jim here, Fred. Emma’s disappeared. I think she’s been kidnapped.”

  September 2005, an hour later

  Emma woke feeling extremely groggy. She was aware of sitting on a chair but she couldn’t see anything and was unable to move her hands or feet. In fact, she was blindfolded and had her hands and feet tied to the chair. She could hear voices behind her which she recognised as belonging to the man masquerading as a patient and the woman pretending to be his wife. She considered her options. She could pretend to go into labour but she didn’t think her performance would be as convincing as that of the woman calling herself Chantelle. So, if it was to be fight rather than flight, what did she have to fight with? She thought back to what Dr Kyriakides had said when he scanned her eyes: “it’s almost as if you’ve got a solid-state laser in the centre of your retina.” If she could boost the intensity of the emission and then focus it onto the blindfold material, would that be sufficient to burn a hole that she could see out of? It was a long shot. Emma took a few deep breaths as quietly as she could and then used her visualisation to imagine increasing the blood flow to the retina. She saw the blood pulsing through the ophthalmic and central retinal arteries. She imagined the centre of the retina pulsing light in rhythm with the arterial pulse. She visualised the pulsing getting faster and faster and focused her eyes on where she imagined the blindfold to be. She took another deep breath and then exhaled as quickly as she could, at the same time imagining the release of an intense pulse of light. Miraculously, two tiny holes appeared in the blindfold, too small to be seen by her kidnappers but sufficient for her to see out of like a pinhole camera.

  Looking around, she was now able to see that she was in a room about ten feet square. Next to her there was a trolley with some vacutainer needles and collection tubes. Directly in front of her, she could see a flat screen TV that was displaying someone’s office. A man’s face came into view and seemed to be peering at her intently. Although his hair was grey and his face fleshier, there was no mistaking that the features belonged to Daniel’s father.

  “I see that the sleeper has awakened,” he said in a Scottish/American accent. “Even with the blindfold on I can see why Daniel was so captivated by you. You must forgive me for plucking you from your workplace but my needs are greater than those of your patients. In short, you have something that I want: the droch-shùil.

  “Your voice gives you away, Mr Armstrong, or should I say, father-in-law,” said Emma. “Actually, I believe in giving rather than taking and I also take exception to deception and kidnapping. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want any harm to come to your grandchild.”

  “Indeed, daughter-in-law, but you can rest assured that I’ve taken that into account as my colleagues here are fully trained paramedics and will assist if necessary. Ideally, I’d like you to be my guest over here but getting you out of the UK would be difficult now that you have MI5 on your tail.”

  “So, how do you propose obtaining the droch-shùil?” asked Emma. “You’re not seriously proposing removing one of my eyes, are you?”

  “Goodness no, nothing as crude as that,” he replied. “It might interest you to know that my scientists have also been investigating your interesting condition. The complete heterochromia you have is actually an autosomal dominant condition and I’m informed the genes responsible are the OCA2 and HERC2 genes on chromosome 15. We’ve identified a regulatory region proximal to these genes which turn out to be two adjacent regulatory regions, one of which is permanently switched off. Our theory is that by switching this region on we could activate the droch-shùil even in normal individuals. But first we need to study an individual with that region already activated, which is where you come in. To start with, we’ll need a specimen of your blood which we’ll put through our gene sequencer next door. Your co-operation would be greatly appreciated. Bob, would you do the honours, please.”

  “Certainly, Mr Armstrong,” replied Bob. He moved around to where Emma was sitting and put on some latex gloves. He fastened a tourniquet above her left elbow and swabbed the skin over the brachial vein. Emma tried to pull her arm away but it was fixed firmly to the arm of the chair. Bob picked up the vacutainer needle and approached her arm. Momentarily, he looked up at Emma. In that fleeting moment, she unleashed the most intense pulse of light she could muster, trying to reconstruct the incident in the classroom and the anger she felt towards the girl humiliating her. Bob suddenly dropped the needle and put his hands to his head. He screamed in anguish and convulsed for a few seconds before falling to the floor. His colleague rushed over to help him. At the same moment, there was a loud crash and Fred and two colleagues burst through the door. Guns were immediately trained on the incapacitated Bob and his colleague.

  “So the cavalry has finally arrived,” said Emma. “I thought the GPS device you planted on me was meant to activate automatically as soon as I left the hospital premises.”

  “Well, it did,” said Fred, “but no-one picked it up at HQ until sometime later. Then Bill and Ben here couldn’t agree on the plan of action, so I had to make the executive decision to force entry and break down the door. But it looks as if you did pretty well by yourself. MI5 would be proud of you. Let’s get you untied and back home before you go into premature labour.”

  Untied and with the blindfold removed, Emma turned to see whether Mr Armstrong was watching but the screen was blank. She figured that wasn’t the last she’d see of him.

  September 2005, a day later

  Emma had seen the MI5 headquarters many times before when crossing Lambeth Bridge. From the outside, Thames House was just another Grade II listed building with a long heritage, none of which had anything remotely to do with the Security Service until the mid-90s. She wasn’t surprised to be summoned for a debriefing following the events of yesterday, but she was glad that Fred was going to be present. In fact, she was quite relieved that someone else was going to be doing the thinking about the latest evolution in her ability. At home last night, she had tried her laser trick on some tissue paper held in front of her eyes, but nothing had happened. She actually found that rather reassuring, as otherwise she might be back to wearing sunglasses fulltime.

  Arriving at the Thames House visitors’ entrance, she was impressed by how the doors were opened without her even having to ring a bell. She was also struck by how quickly she was processed through security, which she thought was probably because she was rather too near to going into labour for anyone to feel comfortable about delays. She was shown into a bright, smartly appointed office and someone she took to be Fred’s senior stood up to greet her. His military bearing was unmistakable des
pite the incongruity of him wearing sunglasses indoors.

  “Good morning, Dr Jones,” said Major Chisholm, shaking her hand with a warm smile, and then pulling out a chair for her to sit down. “I’m sorry for taking you away from your home, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate the need to explore the events of yesterday in a bit more detail. As you can see, I have taken some, er, precautions for our first meeting. Mr Bannister should be joining us shortly. Let me explain a bit about my role. I’m Director of International Counter Terrorism, Counter Espionage and Proliferation, commonly known as ‘ICTCEP’, and we basically try to stop things from happening, including the kidnap of a heavily pregnant doctor for nefarious purposes. Sadly we don’t always get it right and I must apologise for that.”

  Emma nodded her appreciation of this gesture.

  An intercom buzzer sounded which Major Chisholm responded to: “Yes, please send him in.”

  Fred entered the office through an adjoining door. “Good morning, Emma. I hope the guys looked after you okay last night.”

  “Morning, Fred,” she said. “Yes, they were as quiet as church mice, although I’d obviously have preferred having your company if protection is really that essential.”

  “Sadly, Dr Jones, we believe that will be the case for the foreseeable future,” explained the Director. “We really can’t risk a repetition. Of course, Her Majesty’s Government will be footing the bill.” He turned to look at Fred. “Thank you for your detailed report, Mr Bannister. We will obviously examine certain, er, procedural irregularities at a later time, but I think now we should hear Dr Jones’s account of the events. Would you mind, Dr Jones?” he asked, looking inquisitively at Emma.

  “Of course, sir,” replied Emma. “Would you like me to commence from when I went to the hospital in the morning?” The Director nodded. “Well, I arrived at the hospital just before 9 for the fifth day of our OAE pilot. There hadn’t been any problems during the week, so I went in on my own.”