Weeks in Naviras (32 page)

‘This has to go to James,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s nobody else.’

‘Definitely not. I don’t trust him.’

Even though Rav tried to talk me round I think he was unconvinced by himself. Maybe because talking to James would’ve required Rav discussing his own nirvana, one in which James had been his underling. But Rav talked through various options; the foreign secretary, the intelligence services, talking to any of them came with peril. I think despite everything Rav was still worried about damaging the government.

‘So we’re back to square one, then,’ I said.

‘Not quite, but the only other option depends on you, Ellie.’ His teeth clenched briefly. ‘James got a new phone after the attack, and I’m fairly sure it wasn’t issued by the government.’

I must have looked surprised. ‘I got a new phone, too.’

Rav nodded. ‘We all did. I checked the procurement logs and the usual paperwork’s there, present and correct. The numbers are logged on the masterlist downstairs. But it’s the masterlist that makes me wonder.’

‘How so?’

‘The file was last modified by Rosie. Now it could be..’ he paused, aware his voice had been rising. ‘It could be she was just changing her own records on the day she quit. But that’s one of the secretaries’ jobs. Procedurally speaking, she had no business changing the file.’

‘Did you ever talk to her about any of this? Before she quit, I mean.’

‘Only once,’ he gave a pained expression. ‘I told her I was having strange dreams and headaches. She just told me to man up.’

‘Have you contacted her about this?’

Rav laughed. ‘No, she said she wanted a clean break, and I’ve no desire to speak to her.’

I dwelled on that for a bit. ‘But where was she, Rav? When we were in that place, where was Rosie?’

Neither of us had an answer to that. ‘You’ll have to see what’s in James’s phone,’ Rav said. ‘Nobody else could ever get close to it.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘He’s never without it, Ellie. I’ve been watching him for a few days, it’s always about him.’ We agreed this was unusual; ever since James had been in Cabinet he’d been prone to misplacing his phone occasionally. ‘But he can’t literally have it on him all the time,’ said Rav. ‘He has to sleep, and he has to use the bathroom. They’re the only times he’s ever really on his own, and you’re the only one who can get close, then.’

For two days I stalked James’s phone. Rav had been right, it almost never left his side. At night it would rest on the bedside table next to him, turned off. I knew it would be password locked, as such not worth the risk of leaning over and trying get into it. As for my own phone, I had to keep it with me but stopped using it unless it rang. I borrowed a phone from Anushka, who’d brought in a spare from home; a decrepit old handset she’d been keeping for emergencies. I kept it on flight mode; it was only the camera I’d really needed it for.

On the Friday morning I was due to hold a reception downstairs for the launch of yet another cancer campaign, meanwhile the German chancellor was due in London for a brief bilateral. James started work even earlier than usual, but unlike most mornings he didn’t shower first thing. Instead he sat listening to the radio in his pyjamas in the living room, all the time reading and messaging. I knew the bilateral was due to start at eight, delayed getting the kids ready for school by ten minutes while I waited for him to go into the shower. Still he waited until the last possible moment, until I walked past him to Sadie’s room and noisily dressed her. Then I heard the bathroom door click and looked into the living room. He’d left his phone on the arm of the sofa, its screen still lit. I heard the hiss as James started up the shower, waited for the noise to change frequency as his body interrupted the jets.

Leaving Bobby and Sadie to their own devices I went into the living room, tried to access the phone. Initially two files appeared in a directory on the screen, a video file and a folder. I tapped on the image and it opened but there wasn’t much to see, initially, just a fuzzy purplish blur. I played the video and the blur receded, revealing itself to be the material of Rosie’s skirt as she took a step back from the camera and turned away from it, walking to the desk James’s old office in Portcullis, the one he’d occupied before the previous election.

Rosie stood there for a few moments, waiting for something, then a much younger and thinner James walked in. I knew where this footage was leading; after all I’d already watched its conclusion from a different angle with my own eyes, years before. Still I watched as they drew closer, conversation turning to touching, then a flurry of unzipping and unhooking before Rosie turned around and leaned over the desk. I stopped the video.

It’d been something I’d replayed over and over again in my mind for years, but it was oddly
re-assuring to see it in digital form. Perhaps it should’ve been upsetting, but really I was way beyond the point where it could still hurt me. If anything it was helpful, to see it all confirmed and documented. The only depressing aspect was how James had apparently hoarded the memory for years, a little piece of home-made pornography to savour.

From behind me I heard a crash from Sadie’s room, the sound of toys falling to the floor with a plasticky clatter. I quickly exited the video and tapped on the other folder, refusing to allow myself any time for bitterness or anger. The screen revealed an open file:

Classified: Project Tabernacle

Andromeda
                            Chandra              Ganesha

Luna
                            Orithyia                            Ra

They were more than words, they were subfolders. I tried them in order, each was passworded until the second from last opened, the one labeled
Orithyia
. What opened on the screen was mostly was waffle, initially outlining the application of phosphates and enzymes; numbers interspersed with various compounds. Folic acid levels, heart rate, EEG readings. Then came a subsection:

Flags

1:04:43 Synapse ping at 15%. Disengagement from simulation for 0:42:56. [Item 25768 in Zone BD-9 probable cause]

1:49:01 Synapse ping at 73%, BP 180-95, Subject untraceable in simulation, synapse match in Ganesha Zone A-4. Reset approved 1:52:19.

1:52:45 Reset error. Synapse ping 83%. BP 130-78. Untraceable in Orithyia Zone A1.

1:54:12 Orithya synapse trace = true in Chandra Zone C12.

1:56:02 Deployment of monitoring agent approved by TS

On and on it went, but I’d already too long minute browsing the phone and could hear Bobbie and Sadie going berserk in their rooms. I pulled out Anushka’s phone from my handbag and took pictures of James’s screen, as many as I could before I heard the shower pulses die down. There was only so much I could fit on the phone’s small screen to photograph. I locked James’s phone and placed it back on the sofa before going back to the kids’ bedrooms.

‘The Chancellor will hear you two yelling next-door,’ James called as he left the bathroom. ‘What’s got into them, L?’

When I walked back into the living room he was already standing by the sofa in his dressing gown, phone in hand. ‘They’re happy their father’s around for breakfast,’ I said, thinly. I couldn’t quite force the breath out.

‘Really,’ he sounded vaguely pleased about it. ‘And how about you?’

‘It’s certainly nice to see you when you’re awake, for once,’ I replied, focusing on pouring cereals with my back to him, my windpipe constricting. ‘I’m going to take them to school this morning.’

‘Oh? I thought you had a full diary this morning.’

‘It’s all been cancelled. Some train problems, apparently.’ A correction: I would still lie to James if the circumstances demanded it.

Bobby and Sadie mercifully gave me no attrition and wolfed down their cereals. They brushed their teeth and then I took them downstairs, leaning into Anushka’s office as we passed it. ‘Cancel the cancer,’ I said.

She poked her head around the door as we continued down the stairs. ‘What should I tell them?’

‘The kids are sick, I’ve got to look after them,’ I said, throwing her a look as she saw Bobby and Sadie, perfectly healthy and in their school uniforms. She nodded.

It took twenty minutes to drive to their school in Southwark, once the two of them had trooped into the building the car turned around, heading back to Westminster. I told my driver to stop at a coffee shop near Waterloo, said I’d be half an hour. It had started to rain heavily, some of the customers in the café did a double take as a damp prime minister’s wife entered and ordered tea.

Sitting down at the very back of the café I began to flick through the photos I’d taken, trying to cross-reference the opaque jargon with my own memories. It took significantly longer than half an hour, but it was clear to me that I was Orithya, Rav was Ganesha and Gavin was Chandra. Who the other three were was impossible to say. I grew angrier each time I turned the page. The final flagged entry said it all:

3:43:33 Synapse ping 67%. BP 172-94. Orithyia resolution attempted in Zone A1. Andromeda agitators deployed via conduit F9. Rejection probability agreed. Disconnection from simulation approved by TS. Orithyia disconnect confirmed at 3:44:56.

A withheld number called my government phone. I rejected it, turned off my phone and stared at the rainy windows. I had half a mind to return to Number 10 and march into James’s meeting with the Germans, yell to anyone who’d listen about what they’d done to me. Done to us. But there was still the possibility in my mind that James himself was a victim, perhaps Rosie, too, somehow. I desperately wanted to call Rav but knew he’d be with the Germans.

My driver came into the cafe, scanning the customers quickly before walking over to me. ‘Mrs Weeks, I’ve been told to bring you back to Number 10 immediately.’ His face was as non-negotiable as his tone. I asked what was happening and he wouldn’t say. ‘We have to go, straight away.’ He paid little attention to traffic lights on the way back, practically driving like a police car in pursuit. Gripping the little handle on the inside of the car door as we took corners at speed, I speculated that James had rumbled me on some level, maybe for lying about my schedule, perhaps for accessing his phone. But he wouldn’t cancel the Germans just for that, surely?

I returned to Number 10 by the back door. ‘Mrs. Weeks secured,’ my driver said into his earpiece as the gate closed behind us. Inside a young female staffer rushed past me in tears. Slowly I walked into James’s offices. Once again it was standing room only, everyone silently watching Morgan Cross’s face on the large TV screen, her giant smile fixed. It was a still image, a photograph. The sound was turned down. I asked a secretary standing next to me what was happening.

‘She’s in hospital,’ she replied, her voice flat like she didn’t believe what she was saying. ‘Word is, she’s dead.’

Rav was
right, the bathroom is the only place a nation’s leader is ever truly alone. All the bodyguards and secret agents in the world can’t protect you in there. If Morgan had been assassinated or lost a brave battle with some terminal disease, maybe she would’ve had a decent epitaph. Instead she’d slipped getting out of the bath, had fallen backwards and sustained a fatal head injury.

It undermined her; whatever people thought about her policy before the attack, she’d battled to get into the White House against all the odds. It was grossly wrong for her to leave it feet first. Of course there were conspiracy theories but the Surgeon General’s report was unequivocal, pictures of Morgan’s head injury leaked. The vice president took the oath at noon the same day, immediately saying Gavin was welcome to remain in the White House as long as he needed to. I laughed to myself.

Two days later Gavin surprised the world by giving an interview
corroborating
the official story. I watched him answer the gentle questions, his sullen eyes looking away. ‘I heard her fall from the bedroom, I went to see if she was okay and found her on the floor, bleeding. Everyone did everything they could.’

It was patently obvious that despite everything he said to the contrary, James was looking forward to Morgan’s funeral. He was smiling to himself on the plane to Washington. We were at the very front, in our own luxurious private pod. Rav was with us, but spent most of the flight co-ordinating little divulgences. Nuggets of nonsense to feed the press, cooped up in the cheap seats behind us. James was far more pre-occupied with the details of his first bilateral with the new president than Morgan’s funeral. I had mixed views; upset at once again being parted from the kids, apprehensive about the future but looking forward to speaking with Gavin.

Four hours into the flight James put down his phone, resting it on the little shelf next to his seat which he reclined until it was flat before dimming the lights.  I watched him doze off, calculating whether I could reach across him to pick up the phone. I knew the phone would lock itself shortly. It was a precision call, allowing him to drift off deeply enough but not waiting too long until I couldn’t make use of my quarry. But I knew that James suspected many things about me already, because he’d read my file. But as I looked at him I wondered if he was aware that he himself had also been in the simulation. Was the James I saw there really him, or a construction?

Morgan was lying in state in the Rotunda on Capitol Hill. People queued up to file past her coffin, flanked by Marines, but the crowds weren’t as large as people had predicted. Perhaps it was because of the way she’d died, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Not an assassination, and she’d not been in the White House long enough to be fully embraced by the nation. Still it was a major national occasion, and she was due to be given the most opulent send-off, rivalling Kennedy’s funeral in grandeur. Thirty world leaders had been invited, and the new president had made it clear that the Israeli prime minister would be the first to have a bilateral.

I knew James was trying as hard as he could to prevent me talking at length to Gavin, had done everything he could to pair me off with the new First Lady. ‘It’s really important we gel with them properly this time,’ he said to me in the limo from Dulles to our hotel. What he meant by ‘this time’ was unclear.

My first time alone with Gavin was on the morning of the funeral, when James was pre-occupied with interviews and protocol. Through Anushka I enquired as to whether Gavin would like a visitor, the reply came back yes, of course. I made my way to the White House alone, met him in the East Wing where his possessions and Morgan’s were being boxed up, ready for shipment to California. As I walked through the White House I marveled at how plush it was, so unlike Number 10. The Americans never scrimped when it came to things like that, no matter how bad things were in the country outside. Good for them, I thought.

Gavin and I embraced briefly. ‘You look incredible, Ellie.’ He made no secret of looking me up and down. ‘I’m glad your hat doesn’t have one of those horrible shrouds.’

‘Well they’re all the rage, at the moment.’ I couldn’t be sad around Gavin, and suspected that wasn’t what he wanted, anyway. Shortly he sent his personal assistant away on an errand and I asked him whether Morgan would have wanted to be interred at Arlington? ‘I think she’d be pretty pleased with this, yeah,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have any objections, I mean there didn’t seem to be much point carting her all the way back to California.’

‘I don’t know what to say, really,’ The assistant closed the door behind her. ‘Sorry doesn’t quite fit.’

‘Nah, it doesn’t, you’re right.’ He was scratching the side of his temples, staring at all the boxes in front of him. ‘I’ve had it with all this, shall we take a walk?’

He went to open the large French windows and we stepped out into the gardens outside. ‘This is the Jackie Kennedy garden,’ he said. ‘I’ll miss it, I will admit it.’

‘It’s lovely,’ I said, admiring the red snapdragons lining the colonnade.

‘Not my doing, my predecessors all took an interest in the rotation of the flowers. Staffers took all that on when I got here. You know what geeks say a walled garden is? Somewhere online where you can’t escape, so nice you wouldn’t want to ever leave.’

‘There’s one in Downing Street,’ I said, not wanting to be too expansive in case there were microphones in the dahlias. ‘Only that one has barbed wire at the top of the walls.’

Gavin led me out into the middle of the lawn, as far possible from the secret service agent standing in the colonnade. ‘I know we don’t have long,’ We stopped and he spoke quietly. ‘I feel like I killed her, you know?’

‘What?’

‘She cut her wrists,’ his eyes looked straight down. ‘We argued just an hour before. A week ago when we got back from Europe, I told her everything you told me, along with the fragments I remembered. I was surprised when she took it calmly.’

‘Really?’

‘Too calmly.’

‘Did she have any memories of it?

‘She wouldn’t say, she just looked frightened. I haven’t seen her like that in years.’

‘Did you tell her about how I saw her, with the bees?’

‘Only on the third night, the last night, when she came up to the residence.’ He turned slightly away from me. ‘It only took me that long because I was trying to decide, whether or not you were credible. I’m sorry about that, but I hadn’t seen what you saw. And I knew you weren’t well.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘She’d been in the situation room for three hours, and when she came back I asked her if she’d been warned about the air strikes. She said she hadn’t only been aware of them or sanctioned them, she’d urged the Israelis to do them. Nobody knows this, not on the outside.’

‘Not yet.’

His forehead creased. ‘I doubt the new administration would leak it. I told her she was being reckless, that she was endangering everything on a hunch. That was when I told her what you’d seen, the part about the bees. She had to go throw up.’

‘Like Rav did, when he started to remember.’

‘Yeah,’ Gavin’s voice croaked. ‘When she came back from the bathroom she was crying, as in sobbing. I’ve seen her weep before but never cry, in that way.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I tried to keep her quiet. I held her, the first time I’d done that in years.’

‘So she acknowledged it all?’

‘We lay on her bed for about an hour. She said she remembered it. Then she said it was the Rendering.’ He looked at me. ‘She just repeated that word, over and over. Eventually I got her to calm down a bit, and she said the Rendering had been a secret project. They needed to find a way of torturing people without anyone finding out.’

‘They’ve long been able to do that without leaving a mark,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but the victims still remember, it always comes out, eventually. So they came up with the Rendering. A neural and physical interface. You’ve seen it, I know.’

‘And Morgan knew about it?’

‘That’s just it, Ellie, she said she’d been the one to veto, privately, when she took office. She ordered the research to be destroyed, and said a lot of people in government hated her for it.’

‘I almost could’ve expected her to love that sort of thing. Sorry,’ I added.

‘That’s okay, you didn’t know her that well, but I did.’ His breath came out unevenly through his nose as he looked at me. I’d upset him. ‘She thought if it proliferated, it could destabilise society, turn everyone into zombies.’ He sighed. ‘After that she started to cry again, asking over and over what had she done, what she’d started. She said she’d been a fool. Morgan’s always learned from her mistakes, I’d never heard her talk about herself like that before, ever.’ Gavin was angry, like me. I found it difficult to see past my own anger into his, though.

Gavin went on. ‘She told me she’d resign. I couldn’t believe that, told her that things could be reversed, surely.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I certainly didn’t want the vice president to take over. He’s even worse. She told me she’d think about it, then said she wanted to think in the bath. I turned on the TV, watched the explosions on the news, the people running away covered in blood. I was glad she didn’t see that.’

He was talking more quickly. ‘It was only after half an hour when she seemed quiet in there that I called to her. She didn’t respond, so I tried the door but it was locked on the inside.’ A tear had formed in one of Gavin’s eyes. ‘We had to get secret service to kick it in, that’s when we found her. In the bath, the water red. She’d used my razor.’

I wasn’t surprised Gavin didn’t weep or break down. Had it been me in his shoes with James dead and me leaving Downing Street, I wouldn’t be crying.

Time was short, as ever. I pulled out my phone and showed Gavin the screengrabs I’d taken from James’s files. He read them slowly.

‘They panicked,’ he concluded. ‘They messed up and then they panicked. You ended up somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, so they tried to send you back, but you ended up in Catseye with me.’

I told Gavin about the brain scans they’d performed on me in the hospital, of how James had been asking me about medication and me lying to him. ‘Maybe it was the pills I was taking,’ I said. ‘James never knew I was on them. But why do all this, Gavin. What is Project Tabernacle?’

‘I don’t know. You need to find out the identities of each of these files,’ said Gavin. ‘And it’ll have to be you who does, Ellie. Because I’m out of here in the morning, I’m going back to California, and I’m not looking back. There’s no way I’ll be able to find out anything.’

‘So you’re just going to wash your hands of all this,’ I said.

‘No, I’ll help you, if I can,’ he said. ‘And in a way, it’ll be easier for us to talk to each other once I’m out of here.’

‘But they’ll watch you, Gavin. They know where you’ve been, they’ll watch you for the rest of your life. What if you have some kind of accident? I wouldn’t put it past them.’

He nodded. ‘You say
them
, but neither of us knows exactly who you’re talking about. Whoever they are, they’re small.’

‘It has to be military.’

‘Agreed. And transnational. But one thing I’m clear about is this; the Israelis didn’t want any of this. They can’t win the war on their own and they know it. It must’ve been the White House that pumped them up, gave them evidence that the attack on Ben Gurion was orchestrated by the Arab states.’

‘There’s no way I can investigate this. It’s too big.’

‘There’s only one thing you can do, and that’s ask James. You have to discuss this with him. Whatever they’ve done, he knows. He has to know. It’s all there in his phone.’

‘But I don’t have any leverage.’

‘Don’t you, Ellie? You can imagine what they’re going to say, once the funeral’s over. They’ll say a woman wasn’t up to the job.’

‘Would a man do any better? I mean if James…’ I stopped. Like the tumblers in Lottie’s safe, everything clicked into place. Things I’d known, things I’d already wondered about, they were like bits of the combination lock. Gavin had given me the final number.

‘James knows,’ I whispered. ‘He’s in on it.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Think about it, Gavin. In this… Rendering, Casa Amanhã was connected by the wine cellar to Parliament, and James was definitely there. I found that link out by accident, but James made his way all the way from the Commons to the beach in Naviras.’ I drew in a deep breath. ‘He wasn’t moved there by anyone, because everyone who
was
moved suddenly, me you, Lottie, afterwards they weren’t young anymore. He made his own way there, because he knew exactly how to get there.’

I shook my head from side to side. I felt giddy; not in the ways I’d felt in the previous days and weeks when I’d felt confused, quite the opposite. The giddiness, the goosebumps, they felt triumphant and horrific at once. ‘You didn’t kill Morgan, Gavin. James did.’

Gavin didn’t speak, so I did. ‘I’m going to worry about you, out there, Gavin.’

‘I know, I’m a lot safer in here.’

‘You think?’

‘No. In fact, I’m not even sure if Morgan killed herself at all, thinking about this now. Maybe they got into the bathroom, somehow.’