Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Is it time to go home yet?” Landon asks him.

John nods lightly. “About thirty minutes ago.”

“Then let’s go.”

Clacton Road sits empty in blotches of yellow light from the street lamps. By the illumination of a porch light John eases the sedan into the driveway. Landon closes the gate and makes his way back to the house. The night is lively with the shrilling of katydids.

John goes round the house and explores the darkest part of the lawn. He returns to the porch when Landon turns on the living room lights. The kitchen catches his fancy; he surveys it thoroughly and takes a perfunctory account of the lavatory. “A police officer looked in not too long ago.” Landon tells him.

John starts carefully up the stairs. “Did you get his name?”

“Didn’t manage to remember,” he says. “Would you mind telling me what happened in my house when we’re out?”

John enters the study and examines the antiquated junk. “Infiltration.”

Landon sighs. “Care to elaborate?”

“Not now.” John moves over to the window—the one from which the spectre had spotted him. He pushes open the panes and the drapes sway in a weak draft of warm equatorial breeze. The casement shutters are swung wide against the exterior walls of the house, just as Landon had left it when he went to work. John looks down to the darkened street and at the spot where he had sat observing the house earlier that morning.

In the bedroom he finds nothing of interest in the poster bed. He surfs through the vintage bric-a-brac, looks over a few dusty bottles of cognac and stops at the sagging shelf where Landon keeps a selection of his journals.

Something catches John’s eye; from the shelf he picks out a journal that is slightly displaced. Its spine is unusually dustless, as if deliberately wiped clean. To an operative the implication couldn’t have been more flagrant.

Someone has left him a message.

“Would you mind turning on the lights in the other rooms?” he says to Landon, who is standing at the door restlessly picking at the bowl of a calabash pipe.

Grudgingly, Landon exits the room. Outside the corridor light comes on. In Landon’s absence, John slides out the leather-bound journal and flips to its first page. On it is written, in the calligraphic manner of a dip pen: 1859 to 1860 .

He hears the flick of Bakelite switches in the last two rooms down the corridor, and without hesitation sends the journal spinning out of the bedroom window and into the shrubbery near the gate. He then makes a spurious but convincing attempt at scrutinising the red Mandarin gown through its poly-sheet when Landon returns.

“Found anything?” drawls Landon grumpily.

“No,” says John. “Mind if I see the other rooms?”

“You don’t tell me much, do you?”

“It’s better to know less.”

“Hey, get your security company to bill me when all this is finished.” Landon follows him out of the room. “No free lunches, right?”

John doesn’t acknowledge the sarcasm. He marches on, room after room, window after window, scanning every corner of the space more keenly than a prospective buyer. Until at last he returns to the corridor, and with his fists on his hips, does a final survey of the lofty and mouldering vestibule of the old house. Then he asks for the deed to the house and takes pictures of it.

“Now for the important part.” He turns to Landon. “I don’t think you’re in too much danger yet, but neither are you completely out of it. If you aren’t one of the original Chronomorphs I need to know if you had connections to one who might have given you the Serum.”

“Long shot, but I’ll try.”

“Were you entrusted with keeping anything? An object, a property?”

“Funny you should ask.” Landon’s expression struggles to conceal surprise. “My home—it’s like an heirloom thing. I’m not allowed to sell it. I had it written down so I wouldn’t forget; it must be important.”

“Do you have any homes other than this?”

“Not as far as I know.”

John mutters a curse, then: “In time I might have to make arrangements for you to stay elsewhere.” He pulls out a chromium device and taps away on it. When he catches Landon looking at him he turns away.

“Doesn’t sound like a good thing,” Landon comments.

John stows the device in his pocket and takes two objects out of his bag. He hands one to Landon—a silver capsule that ejects an inch-long needle when twisted. “Use this if you get darted—”

“Darted?”

“It’s unlikely, but someone might attempt to trigger a cardiac arrest by darting you with a nano-infusion,” John explains. “In operative lingo it’s called tagging someone. You’d feel the sting, and once that happens push the capsule up your arm.”

Landon rolls the device in his palm. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Next,” John hands him a small device resembling a remote car key. “Keep this with your house keys, or somewhere accessible. It’s a caller for when you think you’re in danger. Just slide the tab, press, and someone will come for you within minutes.” After he does a dry demonstration of it he starts walking out to the driveway.

“Aren’t you supposed to do this round the clock?”

John gets into his car and rolls down the window. “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”

The engine neighs and rumbles. John backs out of the driveway and cruises away.

In the dead of the night, John returns.

He leaps dexterously over the padlocked gate, retrieves the journal from the shrubbery, and departs without a hitch.

AT FOURBEES, HAPPY Hour concludes at the stroke of midnight, and the last few patrons depart. Landon bids them goodbye as they hobble past the counter with pink faces frozen in alcohol-fuelled rapture.

He hears Donovan in the kitchen. Once the door shuts the clanging and scrubbing gets louder. The music goes off and white lights come on behind the bar. Tables are cleared and re-laid. Soiled napkins, aprons, and tablecloths go into the laundry bags for pickup. Water fills the kitchen sink and slops over the edge. The dishes are the first of chores to be done because the last food orders were in by ten, and the kitchen guys started washing early. Landon cleans out his espresso machine, upends the hopper and draws a mop across the dining floor. This is usually Sam’s job, but she’s off tonight.

The crew leaves and Raymond hunches by the counter, poring through the day’s accounts over a glass of port. Landon mounts a ladder and touches up their little jocular rhyme with pieces of coloured chalk.

“Go home,” Raymond’s voice rises above an Etude from the speakers. “I’ll have Andy touch it up in the morning.”

“Be done in a minute.” He takes a damp rag and polishes the birch panels that frame the chalkboard. They open to reveal compartments half-filled with bottles of rum, vermouth, gin, and syrups. Along a small section of the wall runs a conduit bearing a tiny spray-painted arrow and stencilled letters that read: GAS. A spanking new meter has been attached to it.

“We replaced the meter?” he asks Raymond.

Raymond sips his port and punches the calculator. “The gas man came by yesterday. Part of some upgrading works for the area. Replaced some pipes in the back too.”

Landon squints at the jumping numbers on the dial. “The meter’s moving.”

“Fast?”

“No, crawling.”

“Residual.” Raymond sloshes his port and sips it again. “It’s always running a little. That way they make us pay a few cents more each day.”

“Really?”

Raymond turns to him, his reading glasses perched low over his nose. “You got a good nose. Smell any leaks?”