Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

This was the real crisis I was facing, and in the end, it came back – again – to Vernon’s little black notebook. Somewhere in that list of names and telephone numbers there had to be someone who knew about MDT, about its origins, and about how dosage levels worked, and maybe even about how to get a new supply line up and running. Because if I was to have any chance of fulfilling this great, unlooked-for destiny that was stretching out before me, I had to address these issues – either or both of them, dosage and supply, and I had to do it now .

I took out the notebook and went through it again. Using a red pen, I crossed out the numbers I’d already tried. On a separate piece of paper, I made a fresh list of selected numbers I hadn’t tried. The first number on this new list was Deke Tauber’s. I’d been reluctant to call him before, because I hadn’t imagined there’d be much chance I’d get through to him. In the 1980s he’d been a bond-salesman, a Wall Street jock, but now he’d recreated himself and was the reclusive leader of an eponymous self-improvement cult – Dekedelia.

The more I thought about it, however, the more sense it made for me to call him. Regardless of how weird or reclusive he’d become, he would still know who I was. He’d known Melissa. I could invoke the old days .

I dialled the number and waited.

‘Mr Tauber’s office.’

‘Hello, could I speak to Mr Tauber please.’

Suspicious pause.

Shit .

‘Who may I ask is calling?’

‘Erm… tell him it’s an old friend, Eddie Spinola.’

Another pause.

‘How did you get hold of this number?’

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business. Now, may I speak to Mr Tauber, please?’

Click .

I really didn’t like people hanging up on me – but I knew it was probably going to keep happening.

I looked at the list of numbers again.

Who is this?

What do you want?

How did you get hold of this number?

The thought of going through the list and crossing each number out, one after the other, was too demoralizing, so I decided to persist with Tauber for a while. I visited the Dekedelia website and read about the courses they offered and about the selection of books and videos they sold. It all seemed very commercial and had clearly been designed to attract new recruits.

I surfed around for a bit, and found links to a wide range of other sites. There was a directory of fringe religions, an awareness network called CultWatch, various ‘concerned parents’ organizations and other sites dealing with issues such as mind control and ‘recovery facilitation’. I ended up at the homepage of a qualified exit counsellor in Seattle, someone who had lost his son fifteen years previously to a group called the Shining Venusians. Since this person had mentioned Dekedelia on his homepage, I decided to find his number and give him a call. We spoke for a few minutes and although he wasn’t much help he did give me the number of a concerned parents group in New York. I then spoke to the secretary of this group – a concerned and clearly deranged parent – and got the name, in turn, of a private investigation agency which was conducting surveillance of Dekedelia on behalf of some members of the group. After several attempts and a lot of dissembling, I got to speak to one of the agency’s operatives, Kenny Sanchez.

I said I had some information about Deke Tauber that might be of interest to him, but that I was looking for some information in return. He was cagey at first, but eventually agreed to meet me – at the skating rink in Rockerfeller Plaza.

Two hours later we were pacing up and down Forty-seventh Street. Then we drifted on to Sixth Avenue, past Radio City Music Hall and up towards Central Park South.

Kenny Sanchez was short and paunchy and wore a brown suit. Although he was serious and obviously very circumspect when it came to his work, he started to relax after about ten minutes and even became quite chatty. Exaggerating slightly, I told him I’d been a friend of Deke Tauber’s for a while in the 1980s, but that we’d lost touch. This seemed to fascinate him, and he asked me a few questions about it. By answering these freely, I created the impression that I was willing to share any information I had – which meant that by the time I started asking him questions, I had pretty much won him over.

‘The basic tenet of this cult, Eddie,’ he told me, in confidential tones, ‘is that each individual needs to escape the inherent dysfunction of the family matrix, and – get this – to re-create themselves independently in an alternative environment.’

He stopped for a moment and shrugged his shoulders, as if to distance himself from what he’d just said. Then he continued walking.

‘When it started up, Dekedelia was no more, or less, flaky than any of a dozen other of these outfits – you know, with lectures and meditation sessions and newsletters. Like all the others, too, it had an aura of cheap, second-hand mysticism about it – but things changed pretty quickly, and before you knew it the leader of this quote-unquote spiritual movement was producing best-selling books and videos.’

I took an occasional sidelong glance at Kenny Sanchez as he spoke. He was articulate and this stuff was obviously vivid in his mind, but I also felt he was anxious to let me know that he was on top of his brief.

‘The problems started soon after that. A succession of people – always young, usually stuck in dead-end jobs – seemed to just disappear into the cult. But there was nothing illegal about it, because the members were always careful to write “goodbye” letters to their families, thus…’ – he held up the index finger of his right hand – ‘… cleverly pre-empting any missing-person investigations by the police.’

He was focusing on three individual cases, he said, young people who had disappeared within the past year, and he gave me a few details about each of them – stuff I didn’t particularly need to hear.

‘So, how are your investigations going now?’ I asked.

‘Erm… not so well, I’m afraid.’ He clearly hadn’t wanted to say it, but it didn’t look as if there’d been much choice. Then, as though to compensate, he added, ‘But there seems to be something strange going on at the moment. Within the past week or two, rumours have been circulating that Deke Tauber has taken ill. He hasn’t been seen, hasn’t given any lectures, hasn’t done any book-signings. He can’t be reached. He’s effectively incommunicado.’

‘Hhmm.’

I felt the time had now come for me to show my hand.

I said I had reason to believe that Deke Tauber was taking a strange, physically addictive designer drug and that if he was ill it might be because the only known supplier of the drug had… disappeared recently, leaving all of his clients high and dry – as it were. Kenny Sanchez was naturally very interested in this, though I did keep it quite vague and told him almost immediately what I needed – which was information on an associate of Tauber’s, a Todd-something. I told him that if he helped me out with this, I’d pass on any further information I managed to uncover about the drug thing.

In trying to impress me, Kenny Sanchez had lost his professional bearings somewhat, but he still managed to balk convincingly at the notion of revealing, to a third party, information he had learned during the course of an investigation.

‘Information on an associate of Tauber’s? I don’t know, Eddie – that’s not going to be easy. I mean, we’re bound by rules of confidentiality…’ – he paused – ‘… and ethics… and stuff…’