Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

Pope went up to the window to pay rather than coming into the shop, almost as if he respected Nina’s right to be alone with her thoughts. She walked back outside, feeling the midnight chill bite her. Back in the car she waited.

He started the engine, sat for a moment without pulling away.

‘Do you trust me?’ he said.

Because you’ve just demonstrated that you trust me , Nina thought. She said, ‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll explain.’

*

Afterwards she sat pressed back as though melded to her seat, feeling as though she never wanted to move again.

Pope’s sentences had been like a collection of tiny numbing needles, each one insinuating itself into her and becoming part of her, never to be separated. The emotions began to blur until they were indistinguishable, a warm fug like the layers of anaesthetic she remembered disappearing under when she’d had a wisdom tooth extracted at seventeen.

Through it all, she was aware of a notion — not a feeling, but an abstract concept, sharp as ice in its clarity — that she had difficulty putting a name to at first. It came to her in the silence after Pope had finished.

Vindication .

The Watchers had been there. Perhaps not literally all the time, but often enough that her natural fearfulness had supplied them when they were absent. The voices, she accepted, were pathological. A product of misfiring neurones or faulty levels of neurotransmitters or something. But again, the voices tended to appear when her levels of stress were exceptionally high, and wasn’t that usually when she felt most watched?

For years, as far back as she could remember, Nina had worn guilt like a straitjacket, and she hadn’t understood why. Perhaps part of it was an irrational, child-like guilt at having failed to keep her mother alive, against the power of the storm. But for the first time now she recognised that most it was guilt about being alone; about keeping people at a distance, even those who were trying to help and understand her. And about resisting the impulse, sometimes almost overwhelming, to reach out to her father, to penetrate the incomprehensible wall he’d built between himself and the child he’d left behind.

The guilt loosened itself palpably, and it was as though her very chest was expanding, drawing in air hungrily as if it had been starved. From having been fused to her seta, she now felt as though she was about to float outwards, filling the confines of the car and spilling beyond.

The sense of liberation was terrifying.

Pope glanced across at her, caught her eye. He nodded, and in that nod she saw an understanding she’d never known anybody to manage to convey in words.

We’re the same.

They’d each lost their fathers, and in each case there’d been complexities in the relationship that hadn’t been resolved. The difference was that Pope wouldn’t get a second chance with his father. Nina would with hers, in a twisted way. And Pope was offering her that chance.

The flood of feeling — unidentifiable, intense — threatened to choke her.

‘Where are we going?’ she said.

‘New York City.’

Sussex County, New Jersey

Monday 20 May, 11.45 pm

‘It gets us so far, but no more,’ said Purkiss.

The four of them were alone in the diner. Berg had called the owner from the back room and said that they might be there a while, that he should go home and come back in the morning. For all his surly demeanour he looked surprisingly cheerful.

‘Uncle Sam’s dime,’ he said, and left.

Kendrick was cooking something behind the counter, the sizzling from the hotplate almost difficult to hear over. Berg and Nakamura lounged in their chairs, the laptop open but in sleep mode on the table. Purkiss paced.

He often found recapitulation useful as it produced multiple slightly different drafts of a story, one or more of which might yield new insights. So he began again.

‘Pope’s father is under cover in the US, investigating something to do with interrogation techniques, around the same time a group within the CIA is conducting unauthorised trials of an interrogation-related drug in collaboration with Holtzmann Solar. The possibilities are: Pope senior infiltrated the cell within the CIA, or Holtzmann Solar itself.’

‘Or,’ said Nakamura, ‘he set things up so he was one of the trial subjects.’

‘Good point,’ said Purkiss. ‘We’ve no way of knowing at the moment which it was. My man in London is trying to get some more details about Pope senior’s last mission, but he’s probably not going to find out much more. Next, Pope’s body is fished out of the Caribbean in the wake of the hurricane.’

Berg had looked up both Hurricane Mitch and the reports of the plane wreck. The FBI files had a record of it: the remains of a Cessna piston-engined light aircraft had been found by the Guatemalan coastguard during the cleaning-up operations following the hurricane. Three bodies had been recovered: two suspected Honduran and one British national. The British man had been positively identified by SIS as Geoffrey Pope, a supposed former employee, though a file note mentioned that it was likely he was still in their pay at the time of his death. Purkiss recognised the tactic. When an agent was found dead, it was routine for the Service to deny that he was still active.

‘We know Pope junior was given a few effects that were found with his father’s body, but there’s no record of his reaction to the death, or of any attempts on his part to look into the circumstances. Darius was only seventeen years old at the time, of course, and still at school. More than fourteen years pass, and Darius gets through university and joins the Service. Has a solid, unflashy career.’

‘Biding his time, maybe,’ said Berg.

‘Quite possibly. Then, one day, starts hunting down and killing CIA operatives, three so far, all of whom Crosby implicated in the Holtzmann Solar drug trials.’

He took a moment to channel his thoughts. ‘Two possibilities. Either he’s mopping up on someone’s behalf, eliminating all traces of the trials including those who took part in the affair. In which case, at whose instigation? Was his father crooked, helping to conduct the trials, and did he somehow issue instructions to Darius to continue his work after his death and clean up afterwards? Or is somebody else pulling Pope’s strings now? The same person who sent these rogue CIA men after me and to kill Crosby?

‘The other possibility is that Pope senior was genuinely investigating the Caliban operation and managed to get word to his son about what was going on. Darius is now avenging his father, or at least vindicating him, by conducting reprisals against the people involved.’

Berg rocked forward off the back legs of her chair and stood up, stretching in frustration. ‘Either way, Purkiss, like you say this all takes us only so far. We don’t know where Pope is, who his next target is, or even if there’s going to be a next target.’

‘No.’ But there was something they were missing, something that held a clue. Purkiss was sure of it.

*

Kendrick came over carrying two trays laden with plates. An enormous dish held eggs, bacon, sausages and four steaks, almost afloat in a swamp of grease.

‘What the hell’s this?’ said Nakamura.

‘Soldier’s food.’ Kendrick began tucking in. ‘Help yourselves.’

‘Heart attack city.’

Kendrick said, his mouth full: ‘I thought you Yanks were supposed to be always stuffing your faces.’

‘You’re a forces guy?’ Nakamura said.

‘Yeah. Second Parachute Division. Two Para.’

Nakamura bobbed his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, those guys were all right. Where’d you serve?’