I Am Pilgrim (42 page)

I saw from his face how much it meant to him. ‘You’re probably right, though,’ I continued, ‘about

being the best. I’ll tell you this – if I ever got into a tight corner and needed computer help, you’d be the guy I’d call.’

He laughed and finished his cup of tea. ‘You wanna start?’

By the time I left, Peter Campbell was a graduate of the University of Chicago who went on to study

medicine at Harvard and then spent years helping Garrett with his research. As I had planned earlier, Campbell was the one who had found the manuscript of Garrett’s remarkable book and, because I had

access to his meticulously kept files, the publisher had asked me to edit it. As a result, I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all his cases – I mean, it was almost as if I had investigated them myself.

So when, as Peter Campbell, I stood up in front of the congregation of my peers, I started nervously but quickly found my groove. I talked about Garrett’s reclusive nature, how I was one of

the few friends he had had and the fact that, essentially, he lived a double life: while everyone knew he

was an agent with the FBI, most of his work was for agencies in what I coyly termed the ‘intelligence sphere’.

I expanded on a number of those investigations – the ones featured prominently in the book – and

when I thought I had caught their interest I opened the cases up to discussion and questions. The place exploded. I have to say I sort of began to enjoy it – it’s a weird thing to stand on a stage and hear your peers attack, analyse and praise you. A bit like reading your own obituary.

There was a woman in a turquoise shirt sitting at the front who led the charge – dissecting evidence, analysing motive and asking pointed questions. She had a good mind and an even more attractive face – hair with a natural kick, high cheekbones and eyes that always seemed close to laughter. At one point she said: ‘I noticed a few things he wrote in the text – I don’t think he liked women very much, did he?’

Where did she get that idea? I was under the impression that I liked women very much. ‘To the contrary,’ I told her. ‘Furthermore, when he did venture out, women seemed to find him extremely charming and – I don’t think I’m being indiscreet – very sexually attractive.’

She barely blinked. ‘Charming, smart –
and
sexy? God, I would have liked to have met him!’ she said, to a huge round of applause and cheering.

As I grinned at her I realized that all the months of reaching for normal might be achieving something, and I was attracted enough to hope that later in the day I might find the chance to talk to her and ask for her number.

In the meantime, I changed gear. I told them about a case which – were Jude alive – he probably would have found the most interesting of all. I told them about the day the Towers fell and the murder at the Eastside Inn.

‘Ben Bradley spoke earlier about the man in a wheelchair,’ I said. ‘What he didn’t tell you was this

– he was the one who led the group that carried the guy down.’

There was a moment of shocked silence in the auditorium, then a rolling wave of applause for him.

Ben and Marcie – she was sitting next to him – stared at me in surprise. Until then, they had no idea that I knew about Ben’s bravery, but I think they understood then why I had agreed to speak.

‘He didn’t find Jesus at all,’ Marcie said to her husband, feigning surprise.

‘No, we should have realized he’d learn the truth – he’s a damn investigator,’ Bradley said, berating himself, getting to his feet to acknowledge the crowd.

When the clapping stopped, I continued. ‘But that was a day full of remarkable events. Ben’s was

just one of them. Earlier in the morning, a young woman was running late for work. As she approached the Towers she saw the first plane hit and realized that – as far as the world was concerned – she was already at her desk, as good as dead.’

For the second time in less than a minute Bradley was taken aback. I had never shared my theory

with him, and he raised his hands, as if to say, Where the hell is this going?

So I told him – and the crowd. ‘You see, the woman whose tardiness had just saved her life wants to

kill somebody, and now she’s got the perfect alibi: she’s dead.

‘So she walks through the chaos and fear until she finds a place where she can live off the grid and nobody will find her. It’s called the Eastside Inn.

‘Whenever she goes out, she disguises herself and, on one of those trips, she borrows a textbook –

probably the definitive work on how to kill somebody and how to get away with it. We all know the

book – it was Jude Garrett’s.’

That caused a stir, a sharp intake of breath among the delegates. Bradley caught my eye and clapped

silently – yeah, he was saying, it was pretty damn good.

‘She invites a woman – young, probably attractive – to the Eastside Inn,’ I said.

‘A little drugs, a little sex. Then she kills her date – exactly by the book, so to speak, and disappears.

‘When the NYPD arrive they find a victim with no face, no fingerprints and no teeth. So that is what they’ve got – a victim nobody can identify and a killer nobody suspects because she’s dead. Why the

murder? Who are these people? Where’s the motive? What does it mean?’

I paused and looked around. People were shaking their heads in quiet admiration for the crime.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right – impressive. Jude had a name for ones like this. He called ’em the
mind-fuckers
.’

People laughed, and the comments and ideas started slowly but quickly avalanched. By then, however, I was barely listening – I had seen three men enter at the back of the hall and sit silently in the last row.

For that reason, when the attractive woman in the turquoise shirt came up with a brilliant idea, I barely registered it. Although I recalled what she had said weeks later, I still cursed myself for not paying attention to it at the time.

The only thing I could plead in my defence was that I knew the secret world and I knew what the

men at the back were doing there. They had come for me.

Part Three

Chapter One

THE FUNNEL WEB, native to Australia, is almost certainly the most venomous spider in the world –

worse even than the Brazilian wandering spider and, God knows, they’re bad enough.

A long time ago, I investigated a case where the neurotoxin from a funnel web had been used to kill

an American engineer, an asset of one of our covert agencies working in Romania. As part of the inquiry a biologist showed me one of the black, full-bodied creatures – a Sydney male, the most venomous and aggressive of the species.

I promise you, if you had never seen a spider before – if you didn’t know an arachnid from a hole

in the ground – the moment you saw a funnel web you would know you were looking at something

deadly. There are men – and a few women – like that in the secret world. You sense immediately that

they haven’t been touched by the humanity that inhabits most people. It is one of the reasons I was pleased to leave their environment and chance my hand in the sunlight.

It was three of them who were waiting at the back of the auditorium for the session of the forum to

end. As soon as the delegates had filed out for lunch, leaving just myself and Bradley at the front and the two Bosnians sleeping it off near the sound console, they made their way towards us.

Bradley had seen them earlier. ‘You know them?’

‘In a way,’ I replied.

‘Who are they?’

‘Better not to ask, Ben.’

The cop recognized the danger in them, and he certainly didn’t like the way they were rolling, but I put my hand on his arm. ‘You’d better go,’ I said quietly.

He wasn’t convinced. I was his colleague and, if there was going to be trouble, he wanted to be there for me. But I knew why men like that had been given the job – somebody was sending me a message: there won’t be any negotiation, just do what they tell you. ‘Go, Ben,’ I repeated.

Reluctantly, glancing over his shoulder, he headed for the door. The spiders stopped in front of me.

‘Scott Murdoch?’ the tallest of them, and obviously the team leader, asked.

Scott Murdoch
, I thought to myself – so, it was that far in the past. ‘Yeah, that’s as good as any,’ I replied.

‘Are you ready, Dr Murdoch?’

I bent and picked up my fine leather briefcase – a gift to myself when I had first arrived in New York and mistakenly thought it was possible to leave my other life behind.

There was no point in asking the men where we were going – I knew they wouldn’t tell me the truth

and I wasn’t ready yet for all the lies. I thought I deserved just a few more moments of sunshine.

Chapter Two

THEY DROVE ME to the east river first. At the heliport a chopper was waiting, and we flew to an airport in Jersey, where a business jet took off the moment we were on board.

An hour before sunset, I saw the monuments of Washington silhouetted against the darkening sky.

We landed at Andrews Air Force Base and three SUVs driven by guys in suits were waiting for us. I

guessed they were FBI or Secret Service, but I was wrong – it was far above that.

The guy in the lead vehicle hit his bubblegum lights and we made good time through the choking

traffic. We turned into 17th Street, reached the Old Executive Office Building, passed through a security checkpoint and headed down a ramp into a parking area.

That was as far as the spiders were going – they handed me off to four guys in suits who took me

through a reception area, along a windowless corridor and into an elevator. It only went down. We stepped out into an underground area manned by armed guards. There was no need to empty my pockets – I was put into a backscatter X-ray and it saw everything, both metal and biological, in intimate detail.

Screened and passed, we got on to a golf cart and drove down a series of broad passages. As disorienting as it was, that wasn’t the strangest thing: I got the sense nobody was looking at me, as if they had all been told to glance away.

We reached another elevator – this one ascended for what felt like six floors – and the four guys in suits handed me over to an older man, better dressed, with greying hair. ‘Follow me please, Mr Jackson,’ he said.

My name wasn’t Jackson, I had never heard of Jackson, my many aliases had never included Jackson. I realized then that I was a ghost, a shadow without a presence or name. If I didn’t know before how serious it was, I did then.

The silver fox led me through a windowless area of work stations but, again, nobody looked in my

direction. We went through a small kitchen and into a much more expansive office. At last there were some windows, but the gloom outside and the distortion caused by what I supposed was bulletproof

glass made it impossible to get any sense of where we were.

The silver fox spoke quietly into his lapel mic, waited for an answer, then opened a door. He motioned me forward and I stepped inside.

Chapter Three

THE FIRST THING that strikes you about the oval office is that it’s much smaller than it appears on TV.

The president, on the other hand, seemed much bigger.

Six-two, his jacket off, heavy bags under his eyes, he rose from behind his desk, shook hands and

indicated we should move to the couches in the corner. As I turned towards them I saw that we weren’t alone: a man was sitting in the gloom. I should have guessed of course – he was the person who had

dispatched the spiders, the one who wanted to make sure I understood that the summons was non-negotiable.

‘Hello, Scott,’ he said.

‘Hello, Whisperer,’ I replied.

Back in the day, we had met a number of times. Twenty years older than me, he was already elbowing his way to the top of the intelligence heap while I was a fast-rising star at The Division.

Then the Twin Towers fell and I took a different path. People say that on that afternoon – and late into the evening of September eleventh – he wrote a long and stunning deconstruction of the entire US

intelligence community and its comprehensive failings.

Although nobody I knew had ever read it, apparently it was so vicious in its appraisal of individuals

– including himself – and so unsparing in its critique of the FBI and CIA that there was no hope for his career once he had given it to the president and the four congressional leaders. Being an intelligent man, he must have known what the result would be: he was committing professional suicide.

Instead, as the full scale of the disaster became apparent, the then-president decided he was the only person who appeared hell-bent on honesty rather than covering their ass. Whatever the Latin is for

‘Out of Anger, Victory’ should be Whisperer ’s motto; within a year he had been appointed Director

of National Intelligence.

I can’t say that during our professional encounters we liked each other much, but there was always

a wary admiration, as if a Great White had come face to face with a salt-water croc. ‘We’ve got a small problem,’ he said as we sat down. ‘It concerns smallpox.’

I was now the tenth person to know.

The president was sitting to my right and I sensed him watching me, trying to gauge my reaction.

Whisperer, too. But I had none – no reaction, at least not in the conventional sense. Yes, I felt despair, but not surprise. My only real thought was about a man I had met once in Berlin, but it wasn’t exactly the situation in which to mention it, so I just nodded. ‘Go on,’ I said.