*****
Base 1 ends up being the same warehouse we were at the other night, and when we reach it, it’s dark again outside. It turns out I can’t ride with Graham, there was only room for two in the front, and so my only other choice was to be in the cage in the back with Gary and Mark, and I decided against that. Frank couldn’t come with us, he had what he said was another engagement, and though Jason pushed him, he wouldn’t say what it was, so I ended up riding again with Jason, which was okay but a bit disappointing. He has at least decided to let me smoke in his car, and we stopped off on the way back for a couple of bottles of whisky – for later, Jason said, to celebrate. But celebrate what, I wonder.
“Now” says Jason, as we sit in the car, outside the warehouse, “no fuck ups this time, all right? Just keep your mouth shut. If The General asks you a question, don’t answer all right, I will cover for you.” He looks at me intently. “Have you got that?”
I nod, and gulp. I wonder for a second whether I should tell him that I didn’t get round to reading all that internet stuff, and, maybe, that I actually lost the piece of paper with the access details. But I think better of it as we get out of the car. I light up a cigarette as we walk towards the entrance. There’s nothing else around, the space truck isn’t here, but I guess they wouldn’t leave that out in the open. We get to the broken, unused door, and Jason reaches out and touches something that I can’t see and we wait. Then the door disappears, just seems to fade away, and we’re left looking into blackness.
“Come on” says Jason, and we step inside.
Everything around us is pitch black. Jason seems just to disappear into the blackness, lost, I can’t see him, can’t even hear him, it’s deathly quiet and very cold. “Jason?” I ask, but there’s no reply. I’m reaching out, touching, looking for something, where is he, where am I, what is it here and suddenly I’m very tired, so tired and I say “Jason” again but I don’t have the energy to search for him, I’ll just wait, I’ll just lie down, I’ll just…
“Come on!” and there’s light and Jason’s there, and he’s grabbed my arm, and we’re there, again, somewhere. We’re in a metal room, stainless steel walls and floor, looking at us, Jason’s leading me to the centre and making me sit down, stainless steel chairs at a stainless steel table and we’re sitting on one side, two empty chairs opposite us, waiting to be filled and I’m looking around and the room is very bare, very cold, nothing on the walls, just a door at the far end and Jason’s saying “be quiet now, calm down, for God’s sake”, and I realise my hands are shaking, and I try to stop them, put them on the freezing table but they shake more and they’re rattling the table and Jason clamps his hands on mine and hisses “Stop!” and I look at him and there’s steel in his eyes.
And the door opens, suddenly, noisily, and two people walk in, hard, tall, confident, and they march in steel boots cracking on the floor, the noise echoing all the way through the room until they take their seats opposite us. The man on the right is The General, he nods at Jason and glances at me and I stop shaking. On his left is a woman, she has long black hair and black eyes behind a striking face and I can’t help but stare into those eyes. She looks at me but doesn’t smile. The light in the room has darkened as if she is drawing it into her. And then there’s silence.
“Jason” says The General quietly, confidently.
Jason nods. “General” he whispers.
“You know my Head of Science, Sara Marks.”
They exchange a glance and Jason can look away, back at The General.
“Can I trust him?” The General asks, nodding vaguely in my direction.
“Yes.”
The General studies me for a second and I can feel the coldness creep through me again. “I heard he did a good job in the initial disposal of Starr. He wasn’t to know it was compromised.” He sighs. “OK. Look. We have a situation. It came up through intelligence we gathered very late on, through a chain of e-mail and computer records. It’s a very, very strange phenomenon, and I confess that I do not entirely understand it.” He pauses. “Or, for that matter, believe it. However, it does appear to be true.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” I ask. The General grunts, and pulls out a huge cigar, lighting it up. Gratefully I start to smoke a cigarette. Jason coughs, and The General looks at him and smiles. “Of course. We need to relax.” The table seems to split open and suddenly there is a bottle of Bourbon and four glasses on the table. “Wow” I say, and Jason nudges me. “What?” I ask. “Pour the fucking drinks” he whispers, fiercely, so I do.
“Now” sighs The General, “Miss Mark will explain the situation.”
Sara Marks takes a deep breath puts her hands on the table. “As a matter of routine, following the successful apprehension of all the band members, we sent in teams afterwards to take documentation. Things like computers, paperwork, and suchlike. Anything that could be important, or in any way relevant. We put a team on them as soon as we obtained them, to strip everything down and see if there was anything that we needed to be aware of. Things like have they been in touch with the police, are there any further safeguards they have in place, will security teams be alerted if specific criteria aren’t met. We know they were aware that there was a security risk for them, and therefore they may been very cautious.”
“But we didn’t find anything like that, did we?” says The General.
She gives him an annoyed glance. “Well, we found a little of it, but nothing that would concern us. Nothing that, for instance may compromise our location. And no real mentions of the police, so we weren’t too concerned there either. However…”
“However!” interrupts The General, “we did find something very strange, that led us to…”
“You want to tell this?” she asks, curtly, and he flinches. “No” he says, quietly.
“We did, however, find something very strange. It took us a long time to decipher it, it was very well protected, quite impressive actually, but our teams are very good, and we have managed to understand the basics behind it.” She pauses, and takes a large drink. The whisky is very good. “A few weeks ago, it seems that Gary, as leader of the band, was contacted by a man who calls himself Dr Z. Draman. One of a number of people who contact them, offering support and services, most can be ignored, but we picked up on this one because it was done in a very secure environment, almost impossible to identify. That set my alarm bells ringing and I instructed the team to investigate it fully.”
“You did well” smiles The General, but she ignores him.
“The nature of the email suggested that Draman had a method of securing the safety of all five members of Four Ways West, which was guaranteed to work and could not be broken. It was very unusual, and the initial emails didn’t explain exactly what it was, but clearly it piqued enough interest from Starr to want to pursue it further.
“It seems that they set up a meeting, two weeks ago, in a neutral location. We think it was a small town near Paris, we’re not entirely sure and I don’t know if it is relevant. However, the meeting definitely took place, and Draman explained the nature of his offer to Starr. We don’t think that at this point Starr had talked to the other band members, because when he returned he sent a number of mails saying that they needed to meet urgently to discuss something ‘seriously fucking important’. Now, this is where it gets harder, because there’s very very little that’s documented after this, so we have had to piece together what we know from a variety of sources and small clues. It looks like Starr told everyone not to send mails about this, and it also looks like they met a number of times around that time, which was unusual, because until that point they had been keeping quite separate. However, it looks like Robbie Billson, the third member of the band, had trouble following instructions, as he sent a couple of mails that we have managed to obtain. They were deleted straight away however, as you may know, it is possible to obtain a twilight copy if you have intelligent enough people on it.
“This hasn’
t given us a lot, but it has given us something to work with. And there was enough evidence here that pointed to a significant concern with our current strategy, which is why I ordered the intervention…”
The General coughs, and she looks around at him. “Yes?”
“You recommended the intervention” he says. She looks at him quizzically. “I ordered it” he adds, but she just rolls her eyes, and, slightly embarrassed, The General takes a drink of whisky. Some misses his mouth and I watch with fascination as it rolls slowly down his chin.
“The intervention,” Sara continues, “was based on three key pieces of evidence that we were able to ascertain. The first two were fairly straightforward and wouldn’t in themselves have caused us to act.” She glances at The General, but he is staring into his glass. “Firstly, that the entire group travelled, four days ago, to a small town called Wesola, just to the east of Warsaw…that’s in Poland” she adds, glancing at me. “They travelled separately, different flights, different hotels, different taxis or hire cars, everything, but we traced their movements to the metre and they definitely met at a small, local hotel, at which point they rendezvoused with Zoltan Draman. Any questions so far?”
“How did you manage to trace them?” asks Jason.
Sara Marks smiles “It’s new technology, quite clever. Body passporting, we are calling it. I don’t want to spend the time going into too many details, but in essence, each body leaves its own electrical footprint that can be traced for up to five days after the body has moved on.”
“So…” starts Jason, scratching his head.
“Like I said, I don’t want to go into it right now. Basically, we established that this meeting took place with Draman. Secondly, we have established that a considerable sum of money was transferred from each band member on the day of the meeting, into what appears to be Draman’s account. It’s proved very difficult to establish exactly which account was used, because very advanced deconstruction methods were used, however it is clear that the money left, and all went to the same place. Naturally, this gives us enough hard evidence that an arrangement was made, and that it was paid for. Each of the band members returned the following evening. Now for the third piece of evidence…”
The General puts his hand over Sara’s wrist, and you can see her flinch visibly, but he’s acting as if he doesn’t notice. He clears his throat, “I think we all need a drink before this third piece of evidence.” He glances at me, and hey, I’m good at pouring drinks at least. “Now, “ he continues, leaning forward and resting his head on his hands, he looks closely at Jason, “I want you to keep a very open mind for this last piece of evidence. It does sound fantastical, and we’d normally ignore it, wouldn’t we, Sara” (he doesn’t wait for an answer) “but…” and he puts his hand up as if we’re already protesting, “there is precedent, although not proven. On that you will have to trust us, Jason.” I nod, but he doesn’t seem to realize. “Go on Sara” he smiles.
She looks like she wants to slap him, but manages not to. Probably a good thing. “Yes, there is precedent. Although we’ve seen it before, we have never got this close to actually isolating it, and most importantly, its source. It seems…” she swallows and takes a long, slow drink of whisky, “it seems that all members of the band entered into a pact that would…prolong their lives indefinitely.”
Jason looks puzzled. “You mean, what exactly?”
She sighs. “I mean, effectively, make them immortal. Not quite. Actually, make their spirits immortal. Or, if you like, their souls” she finishes, whispering the word souls.
“I thought souls were already immortal?” I ask, puzzled too, now.
“Hmph” says The General, “good point.” I smile and he looks quizzically at Sara. She puts her hands in front of her, as if holding something. “I’m not talking about the soul that is enshrined in religion or spirituality, I’m talking about the essence of a person, whatever you choose to call it. The personality, the experiences, the memory, the thoughts, that captures who you are. Understand?” she stares at me, and her eyes are piercing, and I can only nod.
“Let me call it the essence, then. That essence can be protected, transferred from one body to another, in quite a special way.”
“You mean…” asks Jason
“I mean” she says slowly, “that if the person is killed, or dies in whatever way, then the essence can be transferred to someone else, thus enabling the person to effectively live on.” She and Jason regard each other.
“And you think…” he starts.
“And we think that there is a procedure that has been developed to enable this to happen. Provided very specific protocols are used. And we believe that Zoltan Draman developed it, and that he applied it to the five members of Four Ways West.”
“For a considerable sum of money” adds The General.
“For a considerable sum of money” nods Sara.
“So you’re seriously saying that this Draman guy has made our guys… immortal?” Jason looks bewildered.
“In a manner of speaking” says Sara.
“For a considerable sum of money” says The General.
“And you… actually … believe this?”
Sara and The General glance at each other. “Like we said, there is a precedent” says The General quietly.
“Like what?” asks Jason, bemused.
Sara coughs. “We, er, can’t go into that right now.”
Jason looks at her, looks back at The General and back at her, shaking his head, he seems to be deciding whether to push more or not. Then he sighs. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. You’re saying this Draman guy has developed this? He’s like, what a scientist or something?”
“In a manner of speaking” Sara replies vaguely.
“He is or he isn’t?”
She looks uncomfortable. “Let’s just say, he operates at the edge of science.” She looks down.
Jason waves his hands in the air and shakes his head. “The edge of science? What’s at the edge of science?”
“Magic” says The General.