Prisoner of Fire (7 page)

“Not good enough!” shouted Professor Raeder. “You are not good enough, Quasimodo. You can’t kill a rat!”

Quasimodo ground his teeth in anger. Then he gave a great sigh, looked longingly at the box of Turkish delight that the Professor was holding, and closed his eyes once more. This time, the rat fell dead.

“Ha!” said Quasimodo triumphantly. “More now. You promised.”

Professor Marius Raeder and his grotesque little companion were in a small room that had been converted into the Professor’s study in a nineteenth-century house. It stood in a clearing in a deer forest in the North West Highlands of Scotland. From the air, the house was barely visible. Its roof and walls had been skilfully camouflaged; and a chopper pilot would have to be very observant and know what he was looking for in order to spot it.

Which suited Professor Raeder perfectly. And just in case the hypothetical chopper pilot became too curious and attempted to use his radio or investigate further, an automatic jammer would neutralise his transmission; and, if necessary, coned laser beams would burn him out of the sky.

Until two years before, Professor Raeder had occupied the chair of paranormal psychology at the University of Cambridge. He had been regarded as the foremost authority on this subject in Europe. He was on the point of being awarded the Nobel Prize for parapsychology for his research into the material effects of telergetic influences. Then Sir Joseph Humboldt came to political power. Professor Raeder was dismissed from his post ignominiously after a series of photographs showing him participating in a sex orgy had been
released to the news media. The Nobel Prize was given to an American scientist for his researches into precognition; and Professor Raeder rapidly became—if only for a time—the most unwanted man in the United Kingdom.

The photographs had been faked. They had been faked by Sir Joseph Humboldt’s agents. Professor Raeder was neither homosexual nor heterosexual. He just was not sexual—a fact which too many people found too hard to believe.

The photographs had been faked because Sir Joseph had a long memory, and was something of a connoisseur in the art of paying off old scores. He and Raeder had been at university together. In youth, each of them had been idealistic in his own fashion. The scholarly Marius Raeder had been a prominent member of a group of rather intellectual anarchists whose chief activity consisted of talking a great deal. Joseph Humboldt, ambitious and ruthless, was the leader of a neofascist student organisation whose aim was to dominate the Students’ Union and, ultimately, the university itself. Humboldt and his companions were not averse to violence and had already terrorised two left-wing student groups into disintegration. Marius Raeder realised it would not be long before the small group of anarchists received the attention of Humboldt and his rugger-playing zombies. He was ready for them.

The meetings of the anarchists, well publicised, took place regularly in the crypt of a disused church. When Joe Humboldt and his strong-arm boys arrived to break up a meeting and terrorise those present, Marius Raeder hastily retreated from the ensuing mêlée. He had work to do—with a camera. He took shots of the fracas. He recorded Humboldt’s hearties beating up a short-sighted anarchist whose glasses had been deliberately stamped
upon. He took a shot of a terrified girl student being forced to kiss Joe Humboldt’s boots. He even captured the look of ecstasy on Humboldt’s face when he realised that his attempt at demoralisation had totally succeeded.

Next day, prints of the photographs were on the Vice-Chancellor’s desk. By the end of the week, Joseph Humboldt and those of his followers who could be identified were rusticated.

So, the Prime Minister had settled his score, and Professor Raeder had sought refuge in the Scottish Highlands. But the contest was not yet over. Professor Raeder had one great weapon to pit against the political might of the Prime Minister. And that weapon was paranormal psychology.

The deformed boy, Quasimodo, was one unit in a small team of outstanding paranormals with which Professor Raeder, now an embittered and vengeful old man, hoped not only to deal with Sir Joseph Humboldt once and for all but also to topple a government which had become a thinly disguised autocracy.

At Cambridge, in the course of his researches, Professor Raeder had access to the files of the most gifted young paranormals discovered by the Department of Human Resources. Several of the children whose case histories he had studied now lived and trained and, with Raeder’s skilled assistance, extended their powers in this house that was discreetly hidden and well-defended in the Scottish Highlands. Some had escaped from the special schools with Raeder’s encouragement or help. Some had run away on their own initiative and had then been traced and recruited. Slowly and systematically they were all programmed to develop and combine techniques of psychological destruction.

There remained one person—or, more properly, one type of person—necessary to unite the talents of these
gifted and perverted children so that they would become an effective death squad. That person—that type of person—must have the ability to receive simultaneously and handle simultaneously several different telesends. That person would be an extremely sensitive telepath, passive rather than aggressive. That person would have to be able to accept a total invasion of the mind.

Such a person was Vanessa. For some time, Professor Raeder’s best pupils had been monitoring her uncontrolled transmissions. They knew when and how she had left Random Hill. They had been able to tap some of her experiences thereafter.

Professor Raeder pointed to another rat in a cage by the side of that containing the dead one.

“Kill,” he commanded Quasimodo. This time there was no hesitation. Quasimodo was contented briefly with his intake of Turkish delight. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and the rat fell dead.

“Very good,” said Professor Raeder. “Very good indeed. All we need now is the burning glass.”

Quasimodo opened his eyes, and nodded vigorously. “Vanessa,” he said with a knowing look. “Vanessa Smith. May I have some more Turkish delight?”

V
ANESSA RECOVERED RAPIDLY
. She
was young and resilient. All she needed was rest, warmth and food. She got it. The man who had conditioned her to call him and think of him as Oliver saw to that. He could not do much to protect her against the frequency with which pleading, insistent, or malign voices entered her mind. She would have to look to her own psychic protection. But he could and did give her physical security. It was enough. She was grateful.

She was grateful even for the monotonous rigours of the conditioning process, the wearing sessions of question and answer. With painstaking attention to detail, he constructed an entirely new past for himself. The conditioning had to be faultless. He, too, had to be convinced of the credibility of his new persona.

One morning, while Vanessa was sleeping, he had taken the car he now used but rarely and had driven fifty miles to a town he had never before visited in his life. There he had bought a great quantity of artists’ materials: canvas, oil paints, brushes, palette knives, an easel, sketch blocks, charcoal sticks, pastel colours and several books on advanced techniques. He had also bought a sheepskin jacket, shirts, trousers and country shoes for Vanessa—but nothing feminine.

When he returned to his cottage, he took the clothes
that Vanessa had arrived in and burned them. Then he began to turn one room of the house into a typical studio. While Vanessa watched in wonder, he deliberately spilled paints and turpentine on to the carpet and trod the colours in. Then he drank some whisky and sloshed quantities of colour on to a large piece of canvas board propped on the studio easel. Somehow, he managed to work the colour with a palette knife so that the final effect was of a primitive landscape, full of violence and mystery. The effect was pleasing or, at least, startling. He regarded it with pleasure. Then he daubed a ragged black line through it, flung the canvas board to one side, and started something else.

While he worked, he invented his past. He had a keen ear for accents and an ability to emulate them. Roland Badel had been born in the south of England, had a cultivated accent and a university education. But Roland Badel was to be put into suspended animation. Oliver Anderson was a northerner, coming from a poor family, and poorly educated. His parents had separated when he was quite young; and, though he had lived with his mother for a time, he had run away from home when he was sixteen. He had drifted for a time, working as a casual labourer for the money he needed to keep from starving. He had washed dishes in restaurants, helped build the monorail tracks that connected London with its four airports, mowed lawns for old ladies, worked as a roughneck on North Sea drilling rigs, picked apples in Devonshire orchards.

All these activities were things that a stranger called Dr. Roland Badel knew about intimately. His patients had told him. Therefore Oliver Anderson could create a past that was not too difficult for him to absorb.

When he was about twenty, he met a tramp who had a fantastic talent for painting. In a couple of hours
, with the right materials, he could produce a Picasso, or a Modigliani, or a Klee, or a Van Gogh, or a Pollock that would confound the experts. (Dr. Badel, late psychologist, had encountered such a person who had served ten years for art forgeries). It was from this tramp that Oliver Anderson learned to appreciate the magic of colour, the occult beauty of line.

As he tackled another canvas and talked to the amazed girl who sat watching him, Badel found himself slipping into his new role easily. The northern accent with its short
a
and its lost
h
seemed to come quite naturally. He found that he enjoyed painting. Perhaps he should have been a painter, a real one…

“What’s me name, love?”

“Oliver.” The response was now automatic.

“Oliver what, you girt bitch?”

“Oliver Anderson.”

“Where did I meet you?”

“London. I was mainlining. You got me off it.”

“That’s right. I got you off it for the screws, you understand. Nothing personal.”

“Yes, Oliver, you got me off it for the screws.” To Vanessa, it was still an unreal game. “Am I good enough in bed then?”

He looked at her calmly. “I’ve had better, and I’ve had worse. You’ll do for the time being.”

Vanessa laughed. He hit her.

“Put on some music, you stupid child. Play anything that will block you. Understand?”

Tears trickled down her face, Vanessa nodded dumbly. She selected the 1812 once more. The cannons seemed to be shooting straight at her.

He came and held her close. “Listen, little one. The charade is for real. We are trying to ensure that they cannot trace you through me. You don’t know where
you are, but you do know who you are with. Let them steal that information while you are sleeping, relaxed, unguarded, and the air will be black with Security choppers… Who am I?”

“Oliver Anderson.” She wiped away the tears and smiled. “Probably the worst painter in the United Kingdom.”

“Misunderstood,” he said, in his best northern accent, “just misunderstood. I’m ahead of my time, love. Not to worry. Posterity will accord me the honour that is due.”

“I love you,” said Vanessa, as the cannon crashed loud. “You really care about me. You are the first
adult
to really care about me. I love you.”

He kissed her. “Darling Vanessa, I love you also, as you well know. But try to remember that you are supposed to be here just for the screws. Unless you can be sure of your blocks—and you can’t—you must think of me as a rather crude middle-aged failure still thinking he can make the big time, as they say in stone-age movies. I’m good for a bed and food and a few hand-outs, but not much else. You are simply using me and waiting until you can steal enough money to get across to France, or Germany or Denmark. If you are as good as I think you are, the people who are trying to trace you will be utterly ruthless. They will stop at nothing to get you back or take you out. It will help if they think you are planning to leave the country.”

“Take me out?” Vanessa did not understand.

“It means kill, love. Very probably, if they think you could be an embarrassment, they will try to kill you.”

She was amazed. “Why should anyone want to kill me?”

He sighed. “Until you came along, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the world. As you
know, I have no tri-di, no V-phone. I have taped music and a transistor radio that I never used. But, since you came, I began to listen to the newscasts. There was a Parliamentary Question about you, Vanessa. Sir Joseph Humboldt didn’t like it. He was of the implied opinion that you don’t exist. There will be few people who want to prove him wrong, and a number of highly trained specialists who will be well paid to prove him right. Do I make myself clear?”

Vanessa shuddered. “I’m frightened. I’m so frightened. I didn’t realise that—“

The 1812 came to an end.

Oliver Anderson said: “Don’t worry, love. Oliver will take care of you. Just open your legs at the right time, and strike a few quasi-erotic poses as required, and you’ve got it made.”

Vanessa gazed at him, and forced herself to see only a middle-aged fourth-rate painter.

Many miles away, Dugal Nemo received her impression and reported it.

Farther away still, so did Quasimodo.

D
ENZIL
I
NGRAM SAT
nursing
the gin and tonic that Simon Pargetter had just poured for him. Jenny, sitting opposite him, also with a gin and tonic, tried to appear calm and detached, but could not disguise her anxiety. Her eyes were bright—too bright—and she could not keep still.

Ingram’s trained mind came up with the answer: drugs or, just possibly, prescribed sedatives and emotional trauma. She knew something. If she didn’t tell it, she would have to be probed. Normally, Ingram would have left this kind of follow-up to a junior; but the stakes had suddenly become high.

The Opposition seemed to think they had a sporting chance of using the case of Vanessa Smith to force a defeat on the Security of the State Bill. If that happened, the Prime Minister could fall. He had not yet mustered quite enough backing to assume dictatorial powers. Sir Joseph Humboldt, the prospect of absolute power almost within his grasp, was not a man to prevaricate. The word had come down that if Ingram could take out Vanessa before the Opposition got a line on her, he would be well rewarded—a knighthood possibly, financial benefits certainly, also the prospect of advancement even, perhaps, to Security Control. If, on
the other hand, he failed, he could only expect total professional disaster.