I couldn’t help, and people were going to die as a result. Feeling dizzier now, trying to block out the leaden guilt settling into my brain, I picked up the phone again with shaking hands, and my voice came out as a whisper.
“I can’t get it.”
“What?” asked David, his response coming out as a bark. “What did you say?”
“I can’t get it,” I repeated, wanting to cry. “I can’t help you. I think … I think I’m too far away.”
There was silence on the other end, but only for a moment. David, like Straub, had his job for a reason. Also like Straub, I knew absolutely nothing about him, despite spending far more time in his company than hers. The guy hardly ever spoke, and even when he did he remained utterly inscrutable.
“Right. Get dressed, and call the concierge,” said David, angrily dragging himself away mentally from the bollocking that he wanted to give me and already getting on with business. “Explain who you are and tell him that you need access to the roof; that building has a helipad, and the plan stays the same. Be ready. You’ll be transferred from the chopper to a private jet and should be back on UK soil by eleven thirty GMT.”
“You‘re still bringing me home?” I asked, confused.
“Yes,” he snapped. “I always thought you shouldn’t have been allowed out of the country, but it’s not my say-so. But if you’re useless at a distance, that’s even more reason to get you back here. It’ll probably be too late for you to be any help with the evacuation, but if you have a connection to this thing, then we might fucking well need it. Hopefully there won’t be too many dead bodies by the time you arrive.”
This was the most I’d ever heard him speak at once. A penny slowly dropped.
“There’ll be at least one dead body after I get there though, won’t there?” I said quietly, talking almost to myself as the blood drained from my face. I would be the huntsman once more.
“Nice,” said David, coldly, taking the remark as a jab. “Though I’m not sure how that makes you feel better, you idiot. Just get in the air, get the map on your smartphone up and keep trying on the way.”
I heard him hang up, and the line went dead. I thought dumbly about checking the rest of my messages, but I couldn’t face it. I felt mentally numb. I had fucked up in the worst possible way. One job to do, one that really mattered more than anything, and I’d blown it. The only one in the world who could do it, and I was in the wrong place. If I’d at least remembered to turn my phone on while it charged it would have been better—the getting home process would have started a few hours earlier, and maybe I could have helped sooner—but I hadn’t and there I was, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They’d said keep it on you, and keep it charged, and I’d gotten so casual with it that I’d blown it. There was blood on my hands again, but this time, it had been painfully, utterly avoidable. I almost made it to the toilet in time, but didn’t. I vomited half in and half out of the bathroom doorway.
As I sat on the floor, breathing slowly and trying to stop the room from spinning, I looked at my watch. Three minutes had passed already, and I had to be on the roof in seven. I dragged myself to my feet, holding on to the door handle, and got dressed. All the while my body was riddled with the pull … but it wasn’t the pull, I reminded myself, not really. I paused in the middle of reaching for the hotel’s phone to call the concierge, trying to become more aware of the sensation in my body. I was aware of that same movement that seemed to be inside my bones and skin, but this time it … what was it? It had no direction, it seemed. I was connected to the Stone Man again, or some kind of signal at least, but whether it was coming from the thing itself or its next target I had no idea, and had no more time to ponder it. I had to get onto British soil and narrow things down. I picked up receiver and called the concierge.
The next hour was a blur:
Getting into my brown Savile Row suit and making it up to the roof thanks to the concierge, desperately trying the map trick on the Blackberry’s Maps app (I still kept it, of course; I needed a smartphone as well as the government brick with its super-GPS) but still getting nothing in response. Hearing the nagging voice in my head. If you can’t do it until you’re back in the UK, how many deaths will happen because you were in America and not home in time to help? All because you had to live it up over here?
Feeling the air blast around me as the chopper landed and took me to the airport. Walking through it all like a zombie, feeling both frantic and alert with worry yet sick and despairing, trying to hold back from descending into a full blown crying fit. The guilt … I could barely walk.
The flight back was an endless nightmare. I remember, many years ago, being slightly late for an old-but-still-close university friend’s wedding, and then realising that I was actually making up time on the drive across the country. I’d felt relief wash over me. I was going to make it after all, I’d thought, and with enough time to spare so that I wasn’t going to have to burst into the church halfway through the ceremony. And then I’d hit the worst traffic jam of my life; an oil tanker had shed its load onto the M4, and all three lanes had been rendered completely stationary. And I mean completely. Engines were off, and people were walking around their cars to stretch their legs. I’d still been in my twenties, and I’d never seen such a thing before. And I can still remember the feeling—very vividly—of growing panic as I’d realised that not only was I going to be late, but that the unthinkable would happen, and that I would miss my good friend’s wedding day. And as the hours had passed, and the point of no return grew ever closer—that moment after which there would be no way for me to make it, even if the wedding was delayed—I grew more and more frantic, and there was nothing I could do to influence things. All I could do was wait. Helpless. As time wore on, my moans and groans of frustration had turned into swearing, then shouting, then punching the roof of my car, desperate for a release.
The flight back from New York on that October day was far worse.
Two hours of constantly checking the atlas on my offline laptop, of regular calls on the plane’s phone from the UK asking for an update. Two hours of desperately searching with my mind, trying to home in, and getting maddeningly, crazily nowhere, all the while knowing that people could start dying at any minute (after all, the Stone Man had started to walk earlier than this last time. Based on its previous schedule, it was overdue). Two hours of constantly expecting to hear that the Stone Man had not only set off but had hit its first building. It could set off along any point of the compass, after all; how do you prepare to evacuate a whole country? They would have protocols in place to an extent, I knew, but they could only do so much, and besides, how do you keep a lid on worldwide religious hysteria? The last few minutes of those first two hours were agonising—as I reached that point of no return in my window of opportunity—but this time I was not sitting alone. This time I was flanked by a few secret service men, as well as soldiers in full fatigues, seated in the small, airline-style seats of the private jet. I’d gotten used to business class, and this thing wasn’t far off. I assumed this transport was normally reserved for state VIPs, but even so, the luxury was wasted on me in my state of mind, so desperate was I to fix my mistake. I was stuck in my seat, frantically trying to redeem myself before any loss of life began and knowing that to do so was impossible. I was going to run out of time, and by a long way; on this occasion, however, I had no choice but to bottle it up inside me until I was ready to explode. I couldn’t freak out, like I had in my car on that wedding day, in front of these men. I just couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
And then two hours became three with still no report that the Stone Man had begun to walk. As three hours became four, and the situation remained the same, hope teasingly began to creep in. Could something different be happening this time? The hope made things worse, as I couldn’t allow myself to believe it. I knew that the second I thought everything might be all right, we’d get the call to say the Stone Man was walking. It was torturous beyond belief. I star
ted to sweat, never once leaving the map screen on my laptop but still somehow getting nothing.
Four hours became five, and I thought that I was going to melt. The pull in my body wasn’t getting any stronger either, I realised. I’d half-thought that it would begin to build as we neared Britain, but it didn’t. I wondered dimly if it were simply that it would only increase once I was within a few hundred miles of the target, like before, and that made sense. Either way, the hunt hadn’t even begun yet, and as five hours became six, the situation showed no signs of changing. I knew now that it would be just as we arrived—just as I finally started to allow myself to think that I might make it—that the Fates would reveal that they’d been waiting until the cruellest possible moment to twist the knife, and the Stone Man would begin its path of destruction just as I reached the finish line. But six hours became seven, and we were now over UK airspace, surely within detection distance of the target, and I still had nothing.
The feeling was one of both relief and nervousness. I could still help. I could still avoid the guilt … but it didn’t make sense. Was the time of my arrival irrelevant then? Had being in America and letting my phone die made no difference whatsoever, as for some reason I could no longer sense a target? Wait … was that it? Could I simply have lost the ability to do what I did before? Or perhaps I was only able to sense Patrick?
Relief and nervousness increased on both sides. I’d be out of the loop, of no use to anyone, and it meant that they’d have no choice but to wait until its walk was begun to start mapping a route of evacuation and response … but it also meant I’d be absolved, as I never could have been of any help in the first place. I desperately, desperately hoped that was true, of course, but at the edge of that thought my mind was already turning over something else, to my amazement. I know, you’d think that the relief would be enough after that journey of self-recrimination, but as ever, I was thinking already.
It would mean I’d no longer be one of the most important men in the world.
We landed just after 12:00 p.m., and still nothing had changed, amping up simultaneous relief and nerves further; even with both feet firmly on UK soil, I had nothing but the same throb in my bones that I’d had upon waking in New York. We’d arrived under grey skies at RAF Northolt, and were met by Straub (to my mild surprise) and David, with their escorts waiting in jeeps on the runway. I wondered what level of authority David had here, if any, and assumed he was just here in the context of being my handler. Straub shook my hand as she led us hurriedly towards the waiting jeep; David didn’t offer his. He looked more miserable than ever; slightly bald on top with a decidedly Friar-Tuckish haircut below, glasses perched on his curved nose and a mouth that seemed built to remain permanently in the stiff-lipped position. As I say, I’d guessed his age to be around fifty-five, but I had no idea if that was right. It was the first time that I’d seen him without a suit, and as he was in just trousers, shirt and tie in this early October weather, he must have been pretty cold. I hoped he was.
“Any news? Anything changed now you’re here?” asked Straub, as the jeep turned in a sharp semicircle and led us towards the barracks.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. The wind was up today, and I had to raise my voice slightly to be heard over that and the jeep’s engine. “Nothing at all. I thought it might increase as we got closer, but it hasn’t changed one bit. Not even now, when I’m in the country. I can feel it, I know the Stone Man is here and that there’s also a target … but that’s it.”
“Brilliant,” sniffed David, shaking his head. “All the coke and booze have fucked the one thing about you that makes you useful.”
I turned to him and glared. I had no idea what David’s actual rank was, what his official title was supposed to be, and all I had was a mere suspicion of his probable spookdom. That was it. At the very least, right now, he didn’t know for certain if he needed me or not. As far as I was concerned, that gave me the freedom to talk as I pleased.
“Sorry my inexplicable mental link isn’t working perfectly for you, David,” I snapped. “You could try some of your human rights violating shit to get it working again though? Extraordinary rendition? Waterboarding? Something classy like that perhaps? Although, with you up on your moral high horse today, wouldn’t something like that rather contradict your current stance?”
I was pretty pleased with myself for that, but to both my surprise and disappointment, David smiled. I’d never seen that before.
“For you, I’d make an exception,” he said, grinning, and I damn near pissed my pants. I found myself harshly reminded that this bookish-looking, miserable man could well be one of the most dangerous people I’d ever met. I tried to hide it, by simply shaking my head at him as bravely as I could, and went back to looking through the windscreen. We were already nearing the barracks.
“Okay, gentlemen, that’ll do for the pissing contest,” said Straub, looking at some notes on a clipboard she was carrying. “Mr Pointer, Mr Winter is waiting inside. You two will be put under escort and expected to immediately begin trying to identify Caementum’s latest target, if it all there is one. Maps and a GPS system have been provided. Caementum has shown no signs of movement since its arrival, not even so much as the straightening-up action it performed within the first sixty minutes of its previous visit. Police are on alert across the country, and quite frankly we’re hoping that you two together can give us, and them, a far greater head start.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, but I was starting to believe that my best wasn’t going to be good enough. I had nothing, after all, and I’d found myself expecting that to change the moment my feet touched the UK, but it obviously hadn’t happened. If physical contact with Paul didn’t do anything, then I was out of ideas. A horrible thought struck me: what if that means everyone will think I’m some kind of fraud? I’d be the laughing stock of every scene I’d become a part of. No, worse; I’d be hated.
But there was no time to think about that, as we’d actually driven around the barracks, not towards them as I’d thought, and were now pulling up outside another, smaller building. David and Straub were getting out, and so I did the same. We quickly entered into this other building, and I now found myself inside what appeared to be a medium-sized meeting room, the sort kept plain enough so as to be adaptable to suit whatever group of people was using it that day. At one end there was a large whiteboard with a rolled-up projector screen above it, and several rows of chairs. These were empty. The walls had large windows running along each side, and behind the last row of seats were several long tables, and these were occupied. I’d half expected more bulky computer terminals and lab-coated scientists running everywhere, but instead there were simply several normal-looking computers, a few soldiers, and a pair of nervous-looking and laminated pass-wearing civilians. I assumed these two were the sum total of the intelligence/science personnel we were getting here, as this was clearly not the main hub of operations. I surmised that this was some sort of a quick, mobile set up arranged for the benefit of my arrival, a halfway house of information where I could—ideally—quickly get the info they wanted so they could pass it back to the actual HQ. I thought this because, behind the farthest table back, looking intently at a computer screen of his own and wearing a T-shirt that said No, YOU’RE ten minutes EARLY, was Paul.
Despite the situation, I was delighted to see him. He looked up as we came in, and my delight turned to mild shock. He’d lost a lot of weight since our last handshake. He was still a big man, his size standing out in the spartan room, but his eyes were more sunken, and his general facial features were more defined, his skin slightly less healthy looking. He hadn’t turned into a zombie by any means, but it was clear that he had physically lessened in the last three months. He’d obviously had even more sleep troubles than he’d let on, and even darker issues than I’d suspected. It was concerning.
He grinned upon seeing me though, and then that twinkle was back in his eyes; he wasn’t a complete wreck yet. He
came around the table, extending his hand, and I strode over, doing the same. I got the impression that he was equally pleased to see me, but as we drew closer, I saw his expression change to one of surprised realisation. I stopped walking, surprised myself. Paul cocked his head, raised an eyebrow and pulled his hand back towards himself, where he held it up for me to see.
I understood.
“Crunch time, eh?” I said, forcing a smile as my nerves spoilt my pleasure at seeing Paul. This would be the moment when I found out either that I’d let people die, people that I could have saved … or that I was useless, and about to become a possible figure of public hate.
“Apparently you’ve not been able to get anything on the guy it’s here for … any changes since you landed?” Paul asked.
“Nope. This is basically shit or bust.”
Paul nodded slowly, then waggled his fingers and blew on them.
“Okey dokey,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I was about to say it’s good to see you, but I’ve got a feeling another bloody kick in the nuts is coming my way very shortly. We have to stop meeting like this.”
He smiled, wry but nervous, and slowly extended his hand again. I closed the distance between us, holding out my hand as I did so, and stopped just before touching his. I don’t really know why I hesitated. I was just very aware of the gravity of the moment, what hinged on it. I admit it; I was scared. Not only of the unpredictability of the situation, but frightened that nothing would happen. I could feel every eye in the room on us, from the soldiers to the civilians to Straub and David, who had hung back near the whiteboard as I’d approached Paul. Nobody said anything.
“Come on, then,” said Paul, wiggling his hand. “Reach out and touch someone.” But his eyes looked scared as well.
“Do you feel anything at all? I mean, have you felt anything?” I asked, almost in a whisper.
Paul shook his head.
“Nothing, buddy,” he said, softly. “No visions … not even a tingle. I’ve been telling them, but they’ve had me zooming in and out of GPS maps all day anyway.”
The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller Page 27