Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (13 page)

“How do I do that with my hands cuffed?”

She stopped and scratched her head. Then she grabbed the rucksack and began to untie the straps. Obviously she would re-tie them around his arms. “Look,” he said, taking advantage of the lull, “thanks for helping. But what do I call you?”

She pulled a strap tight. “Not ‘Your Holiness’. I’m not a priest. The real minister is otherwise engaged.”

She grabbed two strips of sacking and pushed them under his cuffs.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

She checked the computer. Then she studied the pink notepaper and, with crossed fingers, pressed a key. “It’s done. There’s not much time. Let’s go.” She flung open the door.

As they ran outside, David heard a noise behind him. In the far corner, some rags moved to reveal an elderly lady, woken by the sunshine. It had to be the real minister. The fake one grabbed his arm and said, “David, come on, keep moving.”

The day was dull, but he felt the light as a physical force. He almost tripped. The minister zigzagged through the graveyard and jumped over the wall. David followed. The autumn wind blew up the valley, which, after his spell in the cool church, cut him to the bone. They headed towards a lonely tree. He found that he could not run very fast with his hands tied. He panted. At the back of his mind was the thought that men younger and fitter than him had been known to collapse and die for less.

They reached the tree and the woman checked her watch. “A few more seconds,” she said. “Give me a boost.”

“What?” David gasped.

“A boost.”

David just did it. She put her foot in the stirrup made by the handcuffs and, before David could whisper that his wrists were breaking, she was gone. He waited. He glanced at the church: no sign of pursuit. He stamped his feet to warm them. His slippers were wet.

“What the hell are you doing?” he called. “How far do you think I can climb with my hands cuffed? What a crap escape plan.”

“Like I said,” she shouted down, “you’ll need those cuffs.” She looked back towards the church. “Scheisse. They’re coming.”

David turned. The entire congregation had poured from the church. In his bright orange overalls, he was not challenging to locate. Leading the charge was Mary, the WPC. They would reach the tree in half a minute.

“Can we move on to the next stage? Hello? Hello?” There was no sound from the tree. David stepped about, peered into the branches. He couldn’t see her. But he did notice something circling overhead. It was the glider he had spotted earlier. It circled like a vulture and trailed a cable.

“Look out,” the minister called. She landed nimbly next to him. In her hand was a thick cable with a hook at the end.

David looked at the hook.

He looked at the glider.

He looked at her.

He looked at the crowd running towards him.

He backed away. “What I said about things only happening in cartoons...” He looked up again. The glider was no longer circling. It had peeled away. Its tow cable grew taut.

Mary, the WPC, rushed up. She grabbed his arm. “Gotcha.”

“Then hold tight,” the minister said, and looped the hook around the chain between his cuffs. David felt the cuffs rub against the sacking she had stuffed underneath them. The sacking would not prevent his wrists from breaking.

Mary frowned. David took a breath. The minister said, “Until we meet again.”

And then David was jerked towards the sky with such force that his rising arms struck his face. He tore through the tree and departed the church and the funeral unconscious. He did not hear Mary cry out in frustration, or the minister whoop with delight, or the fluttering of his paper overalls in the wind.

Jennifer flew over the edge of the waterfall and, as the ground fell away, she gasped. It was a world perfectly imagined. She could discern not the slightest error in perspective. The forest continued on either side. The fall erupted into a large lake. In the distance, she could see the beginnings of a large delta, and perhaps the ocean. She settled on a rock near the lip of the fall.

She would soon have to leave for her meeting with Michaels.

And then a black speck appeared in the sky. It was impossible to tell its size, but it fell in a straight line. It passed through a rainbow and landed in the lake with a brief flash of foam. Jennifer craned to see it. As she squinted, the computer read her thoughts and propelled her towards the centre of the lake, towards the landing splash.

Her stomach lurched. She was aware that she was both flying, somehow, but that she was standing perfectly still. The images washed around her. The world moved. She remained at rest.

The lake rushed up. The water was calmer here. It was perhaps twenty or thirty metres deep, though it was near the shelf. The water was very clear. Fish swam in shoals and a naked man rose to the surface.

He burst through with enough force to rise halfway out of the water. He took an enormous breath, went under, and then bobbed up once more, treading water, choking, wiping the long, matted hair from his face and wringing the water from his beard.

For moment Jennifer thought he was crying, but it was hysterical laughter.

Thursday, 14th September 2023

First, he noticed the wind. It was loud and strong. Then the wetness beneath his head and legs. Then the cramp. He opened his eyes. It was evening. He remembered everything. He had been grabbed by the ankles, pulled down into the crypt, had walked around the land of dead with the fake minister, and been yanked into the sky by the tow cable of a glider. He smiled. Things were unreal: memories from someone else, inserted into his mind piece by piece with no attention to overall coherence.

He was dangerously cold. His neck was stiff. It was difficult to breathe. There was a familiar pain in his chest. An old rowing injury. He raised his head. He was on a hillside. In the darkness he could see grass in every direction. The sky was grey-black. The bleating of sheep came from lower down the field.

He stood and the wind brushed the last traces of heat from his body. He was too cold to shiver. Deep inside his mind, where the cold had yet to penetrate, a voice said, Find shelter.

He staggered forward. His wrists were bleeding from the cuffs. The blood did not feel warm. The chains around his legs jingled like the bells on Santa’s sled. The ground became white. Was it snow beneath his feet? Could he hear children singing? Was it Christmas?

The voice said, Hallucinations. Your core temperature is dropping.

He raised his head to the wind and sniffed. Yes. There was...something. A clue in the air. It was not an odour. It was heat. Warmth.

He shuffled windward. Somewhere ahead of him, in the darkness, was shelter. There had to be.

What month was it? September? October? Perhaps it was even December. Christmas time. He smiled. The warmth of the fire. A good brandy in the right hand, TV remote control in the left. Funny paper hat on the head. King’s speech.

There was something white ahead. It was not a building or a sleigh. It shined; it was plastic. It jutted skyward.

Jingle-jingle, went his chains. Whose ghost was he? Bob Marley. That was it. The Dickens story. Bob Marley’s ghost.

He wanted to whistle that he had shot the sheriff, but his lips would not work. They were broken. If he was in Jamaica, he would be warm. He wouldn’t be able to even imagine the cold. It would be a hot night, the shirt stuck to his back, the buzz of mosquitoes, a rum and coke.

David tripped and seesawed over the glider’s fuselage. He regained his composure and, with a clearer mind, looked hard at the glider. It canted to one side because the design meant it would never stay upright while it was on the ground. David blinked, slowly, and examined the cockpit. It had some markings. Some letters. He tried to read them, but he could not. Interesting. His brain had become so cold that he could no longer read.

The voice in his head piped up: It says ‘rescue’. The word points to a handle. Now, pull the handle.

David did so. He did not pay any mind to who was telling who. He just did it, expecting the canopy to swing up like the boot of a car. It did not. Instead, it wobbled on a simple hinge like the door from his old Citroen 2CV. That had been a great little car. Real character.

Get in.

He tumbled into the dark interior and felt his slippered feet crunch some equipment. For a horrifying moment he wondered if there was room for him. There had been a computer in the crypt and instructions on the pink paper. Perhaps the cockpit was full of remote control equipment. But there was room on the bucket-style seat and he settled in gratefully. He closed the canopy. It did not close with a satisfying clunk. It clicked like the spring in a cheap pen. He hadn’t climbed into the glider as much as put it on. Worse, it was freezing inside. Removing the wind chill would not do enough to warm him up, to beat the hypothermia.

I’m going to die, he thought. But I’m tired. And then he thought: No. What am I going to tell Jennifer? She’ll kill me.

His hands, still cuffed, groped around the cockpit. It was utterly dark and tilted, stuck in a phantom turn. Some stray moonlight caught the canopy sideways and highlighted its imperfections, scratches, insect-pits. His fingers touched upon the control panel. Something sharp cut his finger. He swore, though he felt no pain.

There was a control lever, a group of circular dials and very little else. The glider had no engine. No warmth. A battery? Perhaps. He began to flick switches and press buttons, but soon gave up. They were all dead.

He was getting colder. But his cut finger had begun to throb with pain, and he was glad. It offered something to focus upon. And then he closed his eyes. Not to sleep, which was tempting, but to think. Whoever devised this plan would have anticipated this. Hypothermia in Scottish field at night was surely a likely contingency. What would be the best way to counter that?

“A flask of oxtail soup and a blanket wouldn’t go amiss,” he said. His voice startled him. It was slow. He sounded like a person who had experienced a stroke.

Hmm. Might he have had a stroke? He touched the left and right sides of his face. Each had about the same level of sensation. He waggled his fingers. They moved slowly. “OK, stroke’s unlikely.” he said. “Now about that soup.”

He raked his fingers around the foot well and felt a shiny, crinkly surface. He grabbed it and held it up to the moonlight. It was heavy. It shone brightly. In its surface he saw, or imagined, finishing marathon runners hugged by paramedics with great sheets of silver foil. A so-called ‘space blanket’. He unfurled it. “Nice one. Things are...”

He stopped. A metal flask had tumbled into his lap. David unscrewed the lid. He did it by sight because his fingers were numb. When the cap sprang off, a plume of steam rose up and fogged the glider’s canopy.

Oxtail soup. His favourite.

“...getting weird.”

Friday, 15th September 2023

Saskia Brandt carefully opened her fridge. Some cheese. A little bread. Space. She closed it and the kitchen darkened. She hadn’t opened the curtains. Perhaps the neighbours would think she was in mourning. Perhaps not. It was an exclusive, isolated apartment block. She sipped her whisky.

She returned to the living room of the studio. Like the fridge, its signature was emptiness. She had not bought a single item since moving in. She felt like a burglar without the courtesy to leave.

She swapped her whisky for her gun. It was a heavy little revolver. She relished its weight. She wandered back into her bedroom and stared at the full length mirror.

She was naked. She had found clothes in the wardrobe but couldn’t wear them. Whose clothes were they? Who had they been bought for? Had the real Saskia Brandt been murdered and this impostor – there she was, in the mirror – inserted in her place?

She jumped into a firing position. Nobody had taught her. She just knew. She aimed at her scowling, determined face. It was quite beautiful. So beautiful on the outside, so ugly within.

She put pressure on the trigger. The barrel turned and the hammer yawned. She increased the pressure. The barrel offered a new chamber and the hammer snapped home. There was nothing but the sound of a firing pin on dead metal. It sounded like a sculptor tapping a chunk from his masterpiece.

Saskia growled. She put the gun to her temple. Pulled the trigger. Snick.

Back to the woman in the mirror. Pulled the trigger. Snick.

Head. Snick.

Mirror.

The mirror exploded. There was a thumping sensation in her shoulders. Her palm stung. A blue wisp drifted into her eyes, making them water, and when the tears left the mirror had gone. She looked at the shards on the floor. A thousand of them. Not safety glass. But the mirror-Saskia had not been killed at all. She stared back at the real Saskia with a thousand eyes.

Saskia went back to her bedroom and collapsed on the bed. She wept hysterically and wished that Simon, her English boyfriend, would put a hand on her shoulder, lie next to her and promise to help her.

But Simon was fiction. Romantic fiction.

She fell asleep.

In her dream, she saw three witches.

The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.

Spin, measure, snip.

“Saskia, wake up, Saskia, Saskia, wake up –”

“Wha...who’s there?”

“This is your apartment computer,” said a female voice. “You have not yet given me a name. Shall we give me a name?”

“Fuck off.”

There was a pause. Saskia opened one eyelid. Through a crack in the curtains she could see daylight outside. She had not slept long. She stretched and found that the revolver was still in her hand, pointing to her chin.

“Saskia, you have a call.”

“Who is it?”

“It is Jobanique. I have the authority to wake you if Jobanique calls. If you wish to review your authority list, you may do so at any time.”

“Fuck off.”

The computer paused again. “Shall I tell him to call back?”

“No, tell him,” she paused, smiled, “to fuck off.”