Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

‘You sound as British as ever.’

David feared this conversation would skim the surface of their hurt when it needed to plunge. ‘Jesus,’ he blurted, ‘we need to talk.’

‘Go on.’

‘I sent you to New York too soon.’

‘You sent me away, Dad.’ Jennifer spoke without intonation. David wondered if she had rehearsed the statement with a psychiatrist. ‘You sent the freak to the freaks, then skipped the country.’

‘You couldn’t stay in Oxford any more. You wouldn’t have realised your potential.’ David rubbed his sore neck. ‘We’ve been through this.’

‘I was the one who had to go through it, not you. Do you know what it was like in that school?’

‘I got your e-mails.’

‘I didn’t get yours.’

Now his anger threatened to match hers. ‘Jennifer, why did you call?’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at the old research centre in West Lothian.’

‘Crap, already? What are you doing there?’

‘I can’t tell you that on the phone.’

‘This isn’t a phone, Dad.’ The tone: amusement that the old duffer could even check his email.

‘OK, I can tell you it’s a matter of national security. Now you know as much as me.’ There was one fact, however, that David omitted. That morning, before the official summons to West Lothian had come through, a mysterious, female caller had instructed him to carry out an act so extraordinary that he had laughed into the telephone. But, as her credibility built with each minute, his humour had died away. He had agreed to her plan. And here he was.

These thoughts flickered through his mind in the time it took to smile, and say, ‘Well, I figured out your encryption.’

‘You mean your Ego unit did. Sounds like a nice toy.’

‘He’s clever, but a bit buggy. A prototype.’

David reached into his jacket. ‘Do you know what I brought with me, Jenny?’

‘Dad, listen for second. Go back.’

He froze. ‘Has someone been talking to you?’

‘Dad? Go back to Oxford. Go home.’ She might have been five years old again. ‘Please now.’

The high ribwork of the orangery adjoining the hotel joined a sternum thirty feet above the floor. Evening had turned the roof panes dark blue. McWhirter sat but David stood with his elbow on the mantel of the empty fireplace, spinning the ice in his whisky with metronomic tips of his wrist. Otherwise, the orangery was deserted. Rain invisible but there, like passing traffic.

‘Somehow,’ said McWhirter, scratching the translucent skin of his knuckles, ‘he broke into your old laboratory.’

‘Tell me what it’s like down there.’

‘A steady five degrees. Structurally, it isn’t safe. We’ve had two cave-ins.’

‘His physical condition?’

‘I thought you could take a look at him.’

‘Medical school was a long time ago. Don’t you have your own people for that?’

‘You’ll do.’

David abandoned the hearth for a winged chair opposite McWhirter. He noticed the broadsheet newspapers. Dead-tree editions for the old fossils of the Park Hotel. How long had it been closed? He disliked the malt, but sipped. ‘So you want me to go down there. Triffic.’

‘You know the layout as well as anyone.’

‘I worked here. So did you. I’ll guard the whisky and you go down. What say you?’

‘The bomber knew this place too.’

‘No argument. It was an inside job.’

‘He knew where to set the explosives,’ continued McWhirter, unblinking. ‘He knew when the scientists would be in the hall and away from danger. He knew which project to bomb.’

David could hear the ping of his heartbeat. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be playing games?’

‘Just between us. We’re alone. Did you do it?’

‘My wife died in the explosion.’ David let the moment stretch out until it snapped. ‘My Helen. If I ever found the man who did it, I would kill him. Someone put you in charge of security, McWhirter, and they made a mistake. You’ve both had twenty years to get over it.’

McWhirter crossed his legs. The faded jeans were at odds with the smartness of the man David remembered. His crew-cut hair and combed moustache had whitened. He had a sailor’s squint. McWhirter looked at his glass. ‘Bruce has put Onogoro back online.’

‘Bollocks he has. It was destroyed.’

‘Evidently not.’

‘It needs a dedicated power plant just to boot.’

‘Twenty years ago, maybe, when you were working on it. Welcome to the future. The power spike is how we got wind of the whole business.’

‘I thought the entrances were capped.’

‘We cut through them.’

‘“We”?’ David surveyed the neat, empty tables and chairs. ‘So you and I are not alone in the hotel.’

‘This is the future. Nobody is alone anymore.’

‘You got grumpy with age, McWhirter.’

‘I was always grumpy. Now I’ve grown into it, like my ears. David?’

‘What?’

‘I can’t send any more of my people down there. It’s too dangerous.’

‘But you’re happy to risk me?’

‘We have to. Nobody else can operate that device. And remember that Bruce needs you. He was your best friend.’

Idly, David put his nose into the whisky glass. ‘He was. He was.’

The preparations for David’s descent into the abandoned research centre were carried out by McWhirter alone. David saw nobody else. McWhiter claimed that this would protect the identities of his team. David appreciated that this made his presence ever more ghostly and asked McWhirter, with a crooked smile, whether he had anything to worry about besides the airborne contaminants down there.

McWhirter gave him a serious look. ‘Yeah, the cold. Put this on.’

It was an all-in-one encounter suit with a clam-shell helmet and respirator. As David climbed into the suit, he looked around the cloakroom. Those years ago, he would have stood exactly as he did now, placed his thumb on the wall and waited for the computer to scan his blood. Then the room would drop. But there was no longer a computer. Instead, there was a rough hole in the floor with a ladder leaning against its edge.

David fastened the collar.

‘What happened to the lift?’ he asked.

‘It was dismantled. All part of the clean-up.’

David paused. He did not want to talk about that. The regrets were shards of glass.

‘Anything else?’

McWhirter nodded. He took a body-harness—the kind a mountaineer might wear. David put it on.

‘Am I going potholing too?’

‘It’s a possibility. We’ve already lost a guard.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘He was checking out one of the higher levels and the floor gave way.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Pay attention down there. When you get to the bottom, attach both the carabiners on that harness to the safety line. It runs all the way to your old lab.’

‘Anyone else down there, or is it just me?’

‘Just you.’

David closed the clam-shell helmet and tested the respirator. When the valve opened, his forelock moved in the dry air.

‘Are they going to give me a medal for this?’

‘Down you go. The clock’s ticking.’

David sat on the edge of the hole, slid his weight forward, and began to descend. When his head passed below the level of the floor, he looked down and saw a circle of lighting twenty metres below. He had told his daughter that he had returned to the West Lothian Centre for reasons of national security. That was not true. He cared little about the clandestine world and its problems, all of which threatened national security if one defined national security as the interests of the men in charge. He was here for Bruce. He had been given an opportunity to make amends. The form of those amends would make McWhirter very, very angry.