Out of the Sun (24 page)

It had been a night of mental as well as physical intimacy. A meeting of minds as well as a joining of bodies. Harry had told Donna more of the truth about himself than he had divulged to any other living soul. And Donna had been similarly revealing about herself.

Born in Seattle thirty years ago, the youngest of three daughters of an aeronautical engineer, Donna, like so many of Globescope's victims, had been an academic prodigy, absorbed into the hothouse world of scientific research just as computers were making that world their own. From the Neurosciences Institute in New York, where she had cut her teeth on the quest to create artificial intelligence, she had gone on to teach at Berkeley. There, during a conference about the definition of consciousness, in the fall of 1990, she had met David Yenning. Their immediate and mutual attraction had foundered on Donna's fallacious assumption that David loved his wife. When they had met again, at Globescope two years later, David and Hope were in the throes of a divorce. It soon became apparent that he had recommended Donna to Lazenby as a suitable recruit partly in order to renew their acquaintance, which had swiftly ripened into love. They had set up house together. They had planned to marry. They had talked about children. They had been happy. And then, just when David's divorce made it possible for them to implement their plans, something had gone wrong. A rift over scientific theory had articulated for Donna her suspicion that David thought his intellectual potential necessarily greater than hers, that motherhood and domesticity would win for him the arguments he might otherwise lose. Complicated by the brewing confrontation with Lazenby, their relationship had fallen apart. She had moved into an apartment of her own. They had ceased to understand each other, even though a form of armed truce had enabled them to continue working together.

Then the crisis at Globescope had broken and made their differences irretrievable. David must have seen his secret deal with Lazenby as a way of proving his point once and for all: proving himself cleverer and subtler than Donna while saving her from herself. The collapse of their relationship and the reasons for it seeped into his fateful decision to betray her along with the others.

And there, for Harry, was the harshest rub of all. He was supposed to be helping his son, not seducing the woman his son had loved. This was worse than desertion. This was dereliction. How, if David recovered, would Harry explain it to him? How would he make it sound other than shameful?

It was his fault and nobody else's. Donna would say otherwise,

of course. She would say that what had happened between two frightened lonely people required no explanation and conferred no blame on either party. She would be as gently realistic as Harry suspected she always was. But she would be wrong. Because realism had been overtaken by the tangled reproaches of Harry's past. From a house in Swindon to a hotel room in Washington, across thirty-four years during which he should so often have known better, the thread stretched taut. But it did not break.

Decisiveness came to him then, undisguised as certainty. When Donna woke, she would try to talk him into calling off his appointment with Lazenby. And she was so tenderly reasonable that she might well succeed. Even if she failed, Harry would be left playing the part of her heroic protector, which was the worst possible way of ensuring that what had begun last night did not continue. The answer was clear. He must not be there when she woke. He must not be near her till his business with Lazenby was settled.

Slowly, he slid out of his side of the bed, uttering a silent prayer of thanks for the high quality springing of the Hay-Adams's mattresses. Donna stirred faintly, but did not wake. Looking down at her, sleeping the sleep of peaceful exhaustion, one arm and a smooth-skinned flank exposed by the flung-back sheet, he shook his head in regret.

He dressed swiftly and cautiously, watching her all the time. But her eyelids did not so much as flicker. She slept on, unaware. When he was ready to go, he felt a sudden impulse to kiss her forehead, clear and cool and unfurrowed as it was beneath the ruffled fringe of her hair. But he resisted. This leave-taking was between him and his conscience only.

He moved to the door, eased it open, stepped out into the corridor and closed the door softly behind him. He paused in case there should be a tell-tale noise from within, a puzzled murmur of "Harry, where are you?" But there was nothing. With a nod of satisfaction, he walked along to his own room and made as surreptitious an entrance as he had just made an exit.

He stripped, showered and shaved hurriedly, then put on the clothes he had kept back for the challenge this day held. Within twenty minutes, he was on his way, as slickly senatorial in appearance as he was queasily apprehensive in mood. All was still quiet in the corridor. Silently, he wished Donna a late untroubled waking. Then he headed for the lift.

Downstairs, businessmen's breakfasts were being wordlessly consumed in the restaurant overlooking the park. But hungry as he was, and badly in need of coffee, Harry did not linger any longer than it took to extract directions from the concierge to Globescope's offices at 25 Dupont Circle. "Time spent in reconnaissance," Right Sergeant Hughes had never tired of telling him during his R.A.F career, 'is seldom wasted." And Harry had plenty of time to put to use.

He headed north along 16th Street, west along K, then northwest up Connecticut Avenue, straight as an arrow towards Dupont Circle, past shops and offices not yet open for business, knots of commuters stamping their feet at bus stops, hooded joggers flexing their muscles against fire hydrants, ragged down-and-outs emerging from their cardboard nightclothes. The city stretched and yawned around him, sniffing dubiously at the dan kish day. It paid him no heed. And he returned the compliment.

Dupont Circle lay at the junction of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire Avenues. The traffic generated by these three roads surged round a bedraggled cluster of trees and benches, overlooked by an assortment of stylish old Beaux-Arts mansions and sleek new office blocks. The Globescope Building contrived to keep a foot in both camps. Its seven storeys of glass and concrete were clearly modern, but its mansard roof, intricate pedimenting and mock balconies paid architectural homage to the past. For the headquarters of an organization that concerned itself with the future, it seemed curiously ambivalent about which direction it was looking in.

Harry surveyed it from the crowded refuge of Starbucks Coffee Shop, sipping at a cup of scalding espresso and chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes, which as far as he was concerned the cowboys could keep, while pretending to read a copy of the Washington Post somebody had left on his stool. It was a window-seat, giving him an uninterrupted view across a corner of the park of the Globescope Building's main door and the shuttered entrance to its underground car park. Two or three cars had descended into it since he had taken up this position, their drivers waiting on the threshold for the shutter to be raised, and twenty or so workers of indeterminate status had arrived on foot, using security cards of some kind to open the door. Passers-by were clearly not encouraged to wander in off the street. And the office windows were tinted reflectively to prevent idle glimpses of what went on behind them. The building, at first glance stolidly anonymous, revealed under prolonged scrutiny an air of well-mannered secrecy.

It was not what Harry had expected. And this made his visit to Lazenby's office that afternoon seem a more uncertain prospect than ever. How was he going to pull it off? Exactly how? With Woodrow riding shotgun, the plan would have been clear. Now there was no plan at all. Just a hopeful bet on Harry's powers of improvisation.

His gloomy train of thought was suddenly derailed by a snatch of conversation between the man and woman who had occupied the pair of stools beside him. They were dressed in off-the-peg executive garb and were sharing a pre-nine-to-five dose of cappuccino and office gossip. Gossip in this case about a colleague who had died recently in mysterious circumstances, supposedly of a brain haemorrhage.

"Do you really buy that?" the woman asked in a guarded undertone.

"Could be true," the man muttered back, breaking off to bite open his sugar sachet. "Can't be healthy to be as cerebrally charged up as he always seemed to be."

"But it makes four out of seven. I trained as an actuary, Rogerand I have to tell you that's way off any mortality scale I ever saw."

"Seven's an unrepresentative sample. You oughta know that. Anyhow, there are only three actual deaths, so we're still below fifty per cent'

"Three deaths and one deep coma, if we're going to be picky. It still stinks."

"But of what?"

She shrugged. "How should I know?"

"Do you think he could enlighten us?" Roger gestured through the window with his cup as a pale-blue Rolls Royce purred into the circle and tracked slowly round towards Globescope. Reclining in the back seat, with a telephone to his ear, was a broadly built, spiky-haired figure whose eyes virtually matched the paintwork of the car. Recognition hit Harry almost as a physical blow, shocking him into a throat-singeing gulp of coffee. It was the man he had encountered leaving David's hospital room, the man he had mistaken for a doctor till corrected on the point by a nurse. A colleague of David's, she had said. Well, maybe that was what he had said. Because colleague was so much simpler than former employer. Simpler and less suspicious.

"How does he stay so cool?" the woman pondered.

"Dunno. Wish I had his secret, though."

"But which secret? There are so many to choose from."

The Rolls pulled up in front of the Globescope Building. The chauffeur jumped out and opened the rear door for Byron Lazenby to make his presidential exit. He emerged, faintly smiling, onto the pavement, his telephone call neatly concluded, his suit crease-less and expertly cut to flatter his bulky frame, a slim leather briefcase held lightly in one hand. As the chauffeur drove on to the car park, Lazenby took a deep breath of the damp Washington air, then strode into the building, its door yielding before him, either by magic or the agency of some attentive lackey within.

"Do you know why he always does that, Roger? I mean, get out of the car out front instead of taking the elevator from the car park?"

"Likes to make a grand entrance, I guess."

"Could be. But I reckon he dislikes those dark corners down in the basement."

"Afraid somebody might be lying in wait for him, you mean?"

"Something like that."

"Heaven help anyone who was." Roger sniggered. "Getting the jump on Byron has to be the original mission impossible."

THIRTY-EIGHT

Harry left Starbucks in a daze and wandered south-west along New Hampshire Avenue. His only aim was to quit Dupont Circle without heading back to the Hay-Adams. No destination no purpose, let alone a plan had formed in his mind. The probability that Lazenby would recognize him rendered the whole Page-Muirson pretence un sustainable And his objective in setting up their meeting unachievable. His fond notions of simultaneously defeating Lazenby, rescuing Donna and saving David were in ruins.

He reached Washington Circle and shambled round it, uncertain which direction to take. A down-and-out clutching a half-bottle of Jamaican rum and smelling strongly of the contents propositioned him for a hand-out, no doubt deceived by his gleaming shoes and cashmere overcoat. Harry gave him a dollar and seriously contemplated asking him for a swig of rum in return.

He chose 23rd Street more or less at random, trudging down through the university precincts and on past dour well-spaced government buildings towards the distant bulk of the Lincoln Memorial. The working day was in full swing now, the administrative machine up and cranking. Back at Globescope, Byron Lazenby was probably sipping a cup of freshly filtered coffee and casting an eagle eye over his diary for the day. A call on this influential politician; a check on that province of his empire. A meeting here; an appointment there. And at four o'clock: Messrs Page and Coraford of Page-Muirson Ltd. One way or the other,

it was unavoidable. The only question was: should Harry call it off or simply not show up? Postponement was obviously the sensible course. But the cut and run option was sorely tempting.

He found himself on Constitution Avenue, separated by surging traffic from the greenery of the Mall. A view of the Washington Monument above the trees gave him a fix on where he was in relation to the Hay-Adams. Then, through the bushes on his left, he saw a familiar face gazing benignly at him. It was a statue of Albert Einstein.

Harry walked round to the giant bronze likeness of the physicist, depicted lounging on a low wall in sandal led feet, holding a parchment in his left hand with the final workings of his most famous theory inscribed on it. Harry sat down beside him and smoked a cigarette. He recalled Einstein's photograph on Dr. Tilson's study wall, along with his own vague and partial understanding of relativity. Something to do with tiny amounts of matter containing vast amounts of energy. Hence the atom bomb. Something to do with the elasticity of time. Hence clocks moving faster on an orbiting spaceship than on Earth. Or was it slower? He could do with a slowing down of time just now, he really could. He could do with four o'clock never coming. But he did not suppose Einstein could have arranged that even before he was cast in bronze.

Suddenly, time's status as a higher dimension in its own right burst into Harry's thoughts. In some sense he did not comprehend, that was the key to relativity. And it had placed previously undreamt-of power in human hands. But time itself remained invisible and untouchable, just like all those other preposterously numerous higher dimensions the theoreticians had conjured up. What if each of them could unlock just as much power as time? Or more? At last he felt he grasped something of their meaning. And something of the irresistibility of their appeal to David. E = me2 x n. The universe, not just the world, made his oyster. And he became .. . scarcely less than a god.