by PJ Adams
Her lab was toward the rear of the building, with windows overlooking the river. At a glance it was more high-tech office than laboratory, with comfy seating and beanbags, and a big digital whiteboard occupying one wall, where she would gather with the research group to brainstorm whatever they were working on. The autoclaves, ovens, incubators and all the rest were in the lab next door – here there was barely even a test tube in sight.
Sunita had an L-shaped desk in one corner of the lab. The other desks scattered throughout the big room were maybe half occupied today by fellow researchers who’d greeted her as she walked through.
She sat, the well-sprung chair tilting back as she did so. She tapped the spacebar on her keyboard to bring the machine to life, then typed her password. Emails, Facebook, a flurry of news alerts.
Hard to focus.
Normally she was good at flipping from one thing to another, shifting focus from matters of university administration to her research at the flick of a switch, but today...
Today had got to her.
Halliday’s cryptic warning from yesterday, her encounter with Alex Mitchell and the way he had misread her interest, the paranoia that had crept into her thoughts.
She was a scientist. Changing the world for the better.
She could do clever shit that most other people had no hope of understanding even when summarized and simplified.
She was living the dream.
Some time later, her phone rang, the double ring that indicated a call from off-campus. She was tempted to ignore it, having finally settled into work, tweaking the parameters of a computer model she was building of damping factors on pathogen transmission. For all the fancy lab gear available to her at the University, she did most of her work like this, on a computer. She often joked she could sling her lab in a shoulder bag and work anywhere – preferably at a beach bar miles from the nearest phone.
She reached for the receiver.
“Yeah? Sunita Chakravarti.”
“Dr Chakravarti. Please, do forgive the intrusion. I hope this is not an inconvenient time? Bernard Bowler. I’ve been following your work closely, and I rather hoped you might be free to brief me on its progress some time, yes?”
She had to do that thing again, flipping from one mode of thinking to another. In this case, it was a switch from intense analysis of statistics to what the actual fuck?
“Bernard Bowler.” As in chatshow populist kind-of-politician whose libertarian soundbites tapped into something nasty in the popular imagination. That Bernard Bowler.
“Yes. My apologies, as I say, for calling out of the blue. Perhaps we could arrange to meet?”
Sunita was rarely stuck for words, but... “I...”
How did he know about her work? And why on earth would he have any interest?
“I saw your interim report. Fascinating stuff.”
It clicked into place then. One of the bodies funding her work was the Stockwell Trust, a charitable organization that fed research money into humanitarian work. She knew the Trust’s board included various worthy figures including a bishop, and several prominent businesspeople – was that where she’d seen Bowler’s name recently? It must be something like that.
But why the direct approach?
“I’m flattered, but it’s all at a very early stage.”
“Oh, false modesty,” he said. “Don’t belittle your own breakthroughs, Dr Chakravarti. You’re onto something. I really would like to discuss your work.”
“You’re very kind,” she said, still struggling to equate this strange approach with the man she knew from TV. As a successful young woman of Asian descent, she knew all about the kind of hostility and discrimination Bowler’s populist stirring encouraged, even if he was careful not to espouse the more extreme views of some of his followers himself.
“However,” she went on, “as I’m sure you’re aware, my work is covered by strict non- disclosure agreements.”
“Official secrets, eh?”
She remained silent.
“I’m sure we could talk around the fringes without contravening your agreements,” he said.
She didn’t even know it was actually him. The direct approach, rather than having one of his people make the call, fitted with his reputation for directness, but it also fitted with the possibility that this was some kind of prank call. Or perhaps a test of some sort.
She really was paranoid today!
“Okay, let’s cut to the core,” he said, a new seriousness in his voice. “I have a proposition for you, Dr Chakravarti. A way to progress your work without the shackles of government funding, and answering to so- called charitable trusts that are, in fact, fronts for the security services. Wouldn’t you like to free yourself from answering to MI5?”
It was easy to maintain her stony silence, because again she was lost for words.
“Surely there’s no harm in meeting to discuss your options, Dr Chakravarti?”
“Thank you for your interest, Mr Bowler,” she finally said. “But I think it would be best for both of us if we terminated this conversation right now.”
She hung up, and sat staring at the phone in its rest for what felt like minutes.
She still couldn’t bring herself to believe that the call had been genuine, that her life was being pulled about like this.
She should tell Halliday.
If he didn’t already know, of course – she wouldn’t be at all surprised if her phone was tapped.
She leaned back in her chair and stared out over the river, trying to free her head of the madness that had descended.
So many questions swirled around in her brain, but perhaps the biggest of them all was this: why did someone like Bernard Bowler seem to think she’d made a breakthrough even she wasn’t aware of?
5. Alex, a month earlier
The cold was nothing to him. The wind. The sudden blast of sleety rain that was driving down at an angle into his face.
He walked back through the puddles and the rubbish, everything the same gray. Another long meeting behind him. Another day almost done, but not done enough.
Mitchell pushed inside the main University Registry building and went to the stairs, smoothing his wet hair back.
In the Systems Admin general office, he stopped by Maggie’s desk and said, “I’m buggering off early, Mags. Feel like shit. Bad head.”
She nodded, narrowing her eyes at his language. “Lot of it about,” she said. “Reckon it’s the weather. Global warming and all that. Okay – you take care. I’ll deal with your diary.”
He went back out, down the stairs, into the street. He’d had enough for today.
Laura would be at home by now. All these early shifts. She’d probably be in bed, catching up. Maybe they could pick up where they’d left off on Valentine’s night.
Where they’d barely even started, in truth.
The two of them really needed to get back into synch. Stop allowing life to keep slipping through their fingers.
He paused, turned left into the park, taking the longer walk home. What to tell her? Did he want to admit that the paranoia was bothering him again? The anxiety. She knew it sometimes got like this. She’d traveled this journey with him – Istanbul and all the rest. They both had baggage from their past lives.
But sometimes... sometimes she let her frustration show. Resentment, perhaps, that he could play the damaged card while she just battled on.
He wouldn’t say anything, he decided. Time to man up.
He straightened. He had always been the strong one. He needed to sort himself out again. These last two years, this new life... they had lulled him into taking the easy options, relying on others. Relying on Laura.
It was time he took control.
The apartment they shared was the upper floor of an eighteenth-century cottage, part of a terrace on a cobbled street in the old part of town. Laura had always loved the wonky nature of the building, no angle perfect, no surface level. Mitchell loved that she liked all
that, and he’d let it override his own preference for neat, ordered symmetry.
He opened the front door, saw the mail still on the doormat. Laura never bothered with it if there was nothing for her.
He hung his coat, then stooped to pick up the envelopes before heading up the narrow staircase to the flat.
For a short time, he thought she wasn’t here, had maybe called in on Jenny or Cath on the way back from the hospital.
For a short time, this part of his world was not irrevocably shattered.
He dropped the mail onto the breakfast bar, and then he saw her bag on the sofa, her shoes on the floor, abandoned where she’d kicked them off. Those black wedge-soled ankle boots she’d bought in London just before Christmas, one standing, the other toppled over onto its side.
He heard voices.
Laura. Someone else. A man.
He stepped into the small corridor that led to the bathroom, the two bedrooms. One bedroom wasn’t even a bedroom at all any more, nominally an office but in reality a repository for the accumulated debris of their lives.
The other bedroom: the master bedroom, their bedroom... the door was ajar. It always stuck on the carpet, needed an extra push to close.
The voices again, no words distinguishable, perhaps not even words at all.
Mitchell was calm. Breathing and heartbeat constant. You don’t forget. Or at least, if you do, it all comes back when you need it. The training, the control.
He moved to the door, silent.
He paused, unwittingly stealing a few more seconds before his world would be torn apart.
A hand flat against the door, he pushed gently.
They were there on the bed. Laura, and a man.
Laura was on top, her back to Mitchell. The narrowing of her waist, the perfect spread of her ass. How was he so shallow he could notice such elements, even now?
The man’s beige slacks were bunched around his knees.
Mitchell could see the soles of Laura’s feet, her toes curled tight, the perfect illustration of that sexual tension, the tightening of muscles. Her ass, the man’s balls, the dark shadow where they joined – where he entered her, where his cock fucked her. He had a chunky hand on her hip, another further up, curling around her rib-cage.
He saw her freeze, a new tension snapping through her body. She must have heard the scuff of door on carpet.
He saw her straighten, and twist at the waist, saw the movement stop, saw her narrow face framed by short, chestnut hair, the point of her nose, the green eyes narrowing, widening, the slit mouth opening in a cartoon ‘O’.
The man cried out at that moment, spent, spending, finished. Maybe the new tensing of Laura’s frame, the twisting of her body, the resulting roll of her pelvis, had been all it took to ease him over the edge into climax. The arching of his back pushed her up slightly, and Mitchell saw the flexing of the muscles at the back of her thighs, her calves.
“Mitch,” Laura said.
The man’s hand slid down from her rib-cage to her hip, the top of her thigh. “Babe,” he said, still not realizing, perhaps thinking she’d spoken the wrong name in the throes of whatever passion they shared.
“Mitch... I...”
Alex backed away, frightened.
Scared by his own reaction, by how close he suddenly was...
His hands were in his jacket pockets.
His right hand was wrapped around the grip of his SIG Sauer, his finger on the trigger.
There’s a theory that we live in a multitude of parallel worlds. Mitchell had read about it in the New Scientist once. At every decision point – run or fight, invade or negotiate, left or right – a new world branches off. In one world you run, invade, head left, in the other you fight, negotiate, head right.
Mitchell branched. In this world, he chose not to release the P229’s safety, not to take aim and squeeze the trigger, not to blow that dirty fucker’s brains out against the wall.
He turned and headed through the living room, down the stairs, and out into what remained of the cold, wet day.
He so wanted to be in the other branch, the other parallel, the one where he had released the safety, squeezed, killed.
In one world, he stopped now, took the gun from his pocket and turned it on himself.
In this one, he carried on walking.
He had always been the strong one. He needed to sort himself out again. These last two years, this new life... he had been a fool.
Such a fool.
6. Alex, Thursday afternoon, a month later
Alex Mitchell sat in the chair Halliday had indicated. He waited politely while the professor poured him a cup of tea, and then slid the plate of biscuits toward him.
His breathing was steady, his pulse constant, his training kicking in.
He’d had all manner of firearms aimed at him from close range, he’d talked down a kid with a hand grenade, he’d walked in on a stranger in mid-climax inside his girlfriend, and always he’d found that island of calmness and control.
The room was large, as SAU offices went. Room to maneuver. Overloaded bookshelves, dark oak paneling on the walls and doors, another coat-stand, Halliday’s wide desk. There were three exit routes: the main door, a second door behind Halliday, which must be where the heavy who had lifted his P229 had come back in, and the window, where there was a one-floor drop to the ground outside.
But Mitchell was unarmed, and he was fairly certain that at least two of the others in the room must be carrying.
His only course of action, for now, was to sit tight, pay attention to his surroundings, learn what he could about this situation. Drink tea and eat a Garibaldi biscuit.
Outside, snow plastered the window like bad Christmas decoration from a spray can.
§
“I expect you’re wondering why I asked you here,” said Halliday, with a small, brief smile.
“It’s not just that you don’t like Garibaldis, then?” said Mitchell.
“There’s that.”
The man next to Mitchell, the one with the military cut and manner, leaned forward and squeezed a slice of lemon into his tea. The one by the window stood with his arms folded, not looking directly at anyone but taking everything in.
“These gentlemen,” said Halliday, indicating the two strangers, “have some business with you. They’re from the Company.”
Mitchell had known. As soon as he stepped into the room he had known.
The Company. The in-house name for an off-shoot of the security services, a select group that occupied the murky hinterland between MI5, MI6 and the limits of international law.
Mitchell had left all that behind more than two years ago.
The man in the chair next to him nodded. “Mitchell,” he said, in an incongruously soft voice. “We have a job for you.”
Mitchell shook his head. “I don’t do that stuff any more,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake. I left the Company over two years ago. Fully discharged on medical grounds. Post-traumatic stress.”
The man shook his head. “Oh no, Mitchell,” he said. “You know it doesn’t work like that. You’re always in the Company. To the grave.”
§
Mitchell looked at Halliday. Why here? What did the professor have to do with all this?
“What he says is true, Alex,” said the professor. “You’re always with the Company.”
He didn’t need to say any more. His words made it clear that Halliday had been with the Company, too. Was still with the Company, if ever they called on him. Halliday was in his late fifties or early sixties: when he was Mitchell’s age the Cold War would still have been going on, Germany divided into capitalist West and communist East. The Soviet Union had still existed. Had Halliday’s East European specialism come before his recruitment by the Company, or after?
The pieces slotted together in a rush.
After Mitchell had left the Service, after his extraction from the Istanbul siege, after all the counseling and rebuilding... he had been g
iven a new life, a new start.
Had they placed him here so Halliday could look out for him? He had never noticed the professor taking any kind of special interest in his activities or life, but then he wouldn’t if Halliday was any good. Or maybe it was just coincidence: two former Company operatives working in different branches of a reasonably large educational establishment.
Mitchell believed in coincidences like that about as much as he did the Tooth Fairy.
“Job?” said Mitchell, turning his attention back to the senior of the two strangers in Halliday’s office. “You said you had a job for me.”
He didn’t want it. He wouldn’t take it. But first of all he had to know what it was that he was going to refuse.
The man nodded, as if all was decided. “Bernard Bowler,” he said. “I expect you’ve heard all about his impending visit.”
Mitchell nodded. “No getting away from it,” he said. “There was a student chained to a radiator in the Registry this morning. As if that was going to change anything.”
“We believe his life is in danger.”
For a moment Mitchell thought the man meant the student’s life was in danger, but then, no, he must mean Bowler. “And...?”
“Naturally enough, he will be well-protected. There will be uniformed and plain-clothes presence. But–”
“–you want someone inside the organization, too. Me.”
“Comprehensive coverage. We want someone who is not obviously from the police or security services, on the inside, ready to act.”
“On your return to your desk,” said Halliday, “you’ll receive a call from Penny Rayner in the Press Office to say I’ve recommended you act as the University’s liaison for the Bowler visit. She was very grateful: you’re seen as a safe pair of hands, unlikely to do anything like tell Mr Bowler what a dick he is.”
Mitchell could think of a few people who would do just that.
“Penny will explain that your role is to ensure the smooth running of the visit. That you will personally escort Mr Bowler and his contingent in order to minimize the risk of interruption by protesters... or anyone else, for that matter. We want him to arrive, do whatever he has to do, and leave, in as efficient and timely a manner as possible.”