Authors: A.A. Bell
Van Danik clutched tighter onto his bags.
‘Introductions first,’ suggested Colonel Kitching.
‘Colonel,’ Van Danik interrupted. ‘I need to speak with you urgently about two men I saw on the fire stairs.’
‘Not now, Doctor. I’m already aware of your errant bodyguards. They’ve been dealt with.’
‘But, sir, there were two hotel staff in the —’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ Kitching insisted. ‘First things first. Dr Zan Zhou and Dr Mitchell Van Danik, this is Senator Stephan Sloan.’ He gestured to the football-shaped man and waited for each of the doctors to greet him.
‘And this is General Caroline Garland.’
Van Danik’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected the general to be a woman, least of all a handsome, intelligent-looking woman not much older than himself. He shook her hand and stepped back, keeping his mouth shut in case he put his foot in it. He glanced at the two younger women, no longer game to assume they were just fancy-dressed personal assistants.
‘Corporals Lyn Cinq and Karin Sei,’ Kitching said. ‘Part of the general’s personal security team.’
Van Danik laughed. He couldn’t help himself.
‘What’s so amusing?’ asked General Garland. ‘Perhaps you think female bodyguards aren’t up to the task?’
‘No, ma’am … ah, General,’ he stammered. ‘They can guard my body anytime.’
‘It’s far more practical,’ she said, ‘to have a woman follow me into the ladies’ room, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I’m sure it is.’ Van Danik coughed, still trying to disgorge his Sasquatchian foot from his mouth. ‘It’s just their names: Cinq is French for five, and Sei is Italian for six. Makes me wonder if there are another four agents floating around you?’
Kitching raised an eyebrow. ‘Very perceptive of you, Doctor. Perhaps you’d prefer to codename the women Fox and Vixen, and the men as Johnson, Johnson, Smith and Johnson?’
Van Danik shuffled his feet as if shrinking five feet in everyone’s eyes also made him heavier. ‘Sir, the codenames are irrelevant. For that matter, titles and rank aren’t much better. No offence intended. Take “doctor", for example; you’d expect a certain degree of bedside manner, am I right? But it’s Zan here who holds the degrees in real medicine. My fields of expertise are physics and electronics; that’s my excuse for aetinium personality flaws and I’m sticking to it.’
Karin Sei, the brunette, laughed softly and leaned close to him. ‘Does that mean you’re only stable after one hundred and eighty-five days, or that you go off like plutonium and sink like lead?’
He blushed, both startled and charmed by her intelligence. ‘Why, Miss Sei, you’ve nailed me. Although I rarely glow blue in the dark.’
Zhou interrupted with a cough and stepped forward to shake the general’s hand. ‘It’s good to be able to put faces to the finance at last.’
‘Let’s hope you’re worth it,’ Garland replied, her eyes still lingering on Van Danik. ‘Shall we?’
Zhou nodded, fidgeting to ensure that his ears were well hidden by his long hair.
‘Shall I take your bags now?’ asked Corporal Cinq.
Van Danik hesitated, until Kitching reassured him with a nod. ‘They’re heavy,’ he warned, handing them over, but she took their weight as effortlessly as if they were handbags.
‘Shall we take our drinks through to the restaurant?’ suggested Senator Sloan.
A setting for six behind a screen in the darkest corner of the restaurant provided them with space and privacy, as well as an impressive view of an artificial waterfall and lagoon in the courtyard.
‘Colonel, our bodyguards …’ Van Danik began in a whisper.
‘Have been reassigned,’ Kitching interrupted. ‘You don’t need to worry about those incompetent fools anymore. I’m loaning you my own personal guard for the rest of the weekend … Ah, there they are now.’ He pointed through the window into the garden, where two men took up positions on the near side of the lagoon.
Van Danik recognised them from the stairwell and relaxed. ‘I should have guessed.’
Zhou took the seat beside Van Danik so they were both facing the senator and the general, and Kitching took the head of the table, with Corporal Sei taking the remaining seat opposite Kitching.
‘Won’t your lovely comrade in arms be joining us for dinner?’ asked the senator with a glance from Cinq to Sei.
‘We’re taking turns, Senator,’ Sei replied with a charming smile. ‘Rest assured we won’t let any of you out of our sight.’ She sauntered off to circulate amongst the patrons in the foyer.
‘To business,’ Kitching declared. ‘Progress report, Doctors; have you achieved the success rate you were after?’
‘Indeed,’ Zhou replied. ‘We’ve achieved infallibility regardless of age, sex, race or state of mind. Anything less and it would have been back to the drawing board — which it was, as you know, many times during the early stages.’
He and Van Danik spent the next ten minutes summarising the results from their worldwide population samples over the last year. In particular they reported on diamond miners in Botswana, terrorist detainees at Guantánamo Bay, military personnel at a Siberian army base, civilian prisoners in an Indonesian jail, astronauts in training for NASA, cadets from the Queen’s Guard in London, Japanese stock market analysts, Australian kindergarten classes, high-school students, handicapped adults and, most recently, blind students.
Van Danik rapped his fork against the table. ‘We even nailed elements from an African nomadic tribe of village raiders and ten families of Eskimos — all through military translators obviously. We didn’t mess around.’
‘And from all of these,’ Zhou said, ‘we can now recommend a handful of individuals who may suit your purposes as public test cases. Firstly, there’s an Afghani goat herder who’s currently being detained at the US facility at Guantánamo Bay on suspicion of terrorism. When first captured with detonator caps and a number of dynamite sticks in his possession, he claimed he’d stolen them from a neighbour to excavate a new cave for sheltering his animals in winter. But since interrogation involved nearly everything from feathers to shock treatment, he’s pleaded guilty to virtually every accusation they’ve thrown at him, from terrorist activities to stealing food out of the bowl of their most vicious guard dog.’
‘That’s the risk of acquiring information or cooperation by force,’ Kitching commented. ‘We already know that a weak mind can be forced to confess anything, while trained soldiers can take up to two hundred hours to break.’
‘The main dilemma in this particular case,’ Zhou cautioned, ‘is that this goat herder also happens to be the brother of a high-ranking politician in his own country who’s taken a stance against the United States. He’s been replaced by a CIA look-alike until it can be confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that he’s guilty. No major international incident that way. In the meantime, his family have no idea where he really is, so his case isn’t politically convenient for publicity — at least not in the foreseeable future.’
The senator scratched the bald spot at the back of his head. ‘So who’s next?’
‘A French-Canadian woman,’ Van Danik replied, ‘who was working for the FBI in Toronto until her partner stumbled onto evidence that she was selling national secrets.’
‘In this case,’ Zhou continued, ‘it’s the details of her contacts and buyers that are more valuable than she is. She fell off a building during capture and is currently in a coma, so interrogation of her all-seeing, all-hearing subconscious is the only way to reach the information that’s locked inside her head — what’s left of it, that is. Her case would also be helpful in demonstrating our work’s application for debriefing critically wounded soldiers or unconscious victims of crime, which brings me to our next suggestion — a British serial killer who attempted to hang himself in jail. At no stage has he ever revealed the locations of his fourteen murder victims, despite being roomed for long periods with a very talented mole. However, he’s attempted suicide twice and was on life support at the time we interrogated his subconscious, and so far, results from our preliminary session have turned up the burial sites for his first two victims.’
‘He was unconscious during the procedure?’ asked Kitching.
Van Danik nodded. ‘That was the whole point. It made the process long and tedious — like interrogating a light bulb to find its favourite room in a city — but ultimately successful. The only dilemma in this case is that our boy is virtually brain dead after his last attempt at suicide, so we’d need to keep him alive long enough to find the other twelve burial sites — which could stir up a legal rights battle.’
‘That doesn’t faze me,’ said the senator. ‘I’m sure, that if it came down to a court challenge, the wishes of the victims’ families would outweigh the rights of a brain-dead criminal. And either way, the extra media attention would be ideal. So forget the terrorist. We only intend to fund two public test cases.’
‘Well, there are two other interesting options,’ Zhou said. ‘Firstly, the case of Mr Bennet Chiron, a thirty-two-year-old local man who was framed for an armed robbery that resulted in death. He was asleep in the house of the real perpetrators at the time of the robbery. The evidence that he’d overheard while sleeping had remained locked in his unconscious until our session.’
‘Interesting indeed!’ remarked the senator. ‘I wonder how beneficial it could be to interrogate my political opponents while they’re sleeping? I might discover plans for their next smear campaign in time to help it backfire.’
He chuckled, but Zhou exchanged a nervous glance with Van Danik.
‘Theoretically that might be possible, Senator,’ Zhou said, ‘but it would only work if there was any dirt for your opponents to dig up.’
‘Quite so, quite so!’ Sloan chuckled. ‘No need to kiss my ass, though, Doctor. You’ve already got my attention — and funding for the final stage of your project. It’s a long time since I’ve been so pleased by preliminary findings from research and development. A very long time.’
‘Then perhaps there was no need to leave the most intriguing case for last?’ Zhou said with a smile. ‘Atwenty-two-year-old blind woman who was orphaned aged ten and was institutionalised as a ward of the state two years later. She’s suffered several conflicting diagnoses over the years in regards to her rare medical condition, which we’ve already cracked, to a certain degree, in a single brief session.’
‘Bingo,’ said the senator. ‘She holds three of the trump cards for attracting public sympathy — female, handicapped and an orphan.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed the general. ‘And as a ward of the state, technically she’s already ours.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Zhou replied. ‘She’s a rather strong-willed young woman who only cooperates when it suits her.’
‘But she did volunteer to cooperate for the tests?’ asked Garland. ‘And she knows what to expect when her case becomes a media circus?’
‘She did and she does,’ Van Danik replied. ‘But that’s all still subject to the tenuous blessing of the matron at Serenity — the woman’s current legal guardian — and I wouldn’t rely too heavily on getting or keeping
her
long-term support. Not long enough to see the case through court to a successful conclusion, anyway. Matron Sanchez is a force of nature. I can mathematically prove it.’
Kitching rapped his fingers on the table. ‘If you want the woman, Senator, you’ve got her. I can use my authority to transfer her guardianship to you or one of the other docs until we’re finished with her.’
‘She’s not a box of ammunition,’ Zhou argued. ‘She’s a wilful young woman with special needs.’
‘I thought you said she was mentally retarded?’ asked the senator.
‘The motion of a ship may be retarded,’ Zhou replied, ‘or the progress of a political campaign, but it’s not appropriate to use that term in relation to people.’
‘You know what I mean. She’s from the shallow end of the gene pool, none too intellectually stellar. Am I right?’
‘On paper it may seem that way. Her last IQ test suggested she has the mental acuity of a twelve-year-old, but in all fairness she
was
twelve years old at the time, and considering the learning challenges she must have experienced as her problem developed, I’d consider that score to be quite a compliment. We have every reason to believe that she’s developed well beyond that since then, despite any formal recognition of it in her files.’
‘Cut to the bottom line,’ snapped the senator. ‘Can she be bent to our needs or not?’
‘Yes, sir, but —’
‘Funding isn’t bottomless,’ warned the general. ‘So let’s forget that Chiron fellow for now as well as the terrorist and —’
‘General,’ Zhou interrupted, ‘there are complications with Miss Chambers that you need to know about. We didn’t get as much time with her as we needed, so we’ve still got a fair amount of prep work to do for her case. And she’ll require an operation afterwards, as part of the deal for delaying or cancelling the surgery that’s already scheduled for this Monday.’
‘Expensive surgery?’ asked Garland.
‘Not in the grand scheme of things. It’s a relatively simple optical procedure, but it can’t be done before we’re finished with her court case. There’s a chance she may regain normal vision, which would damage our ability to gather last-minute evidence or demonstrations, if required.’
‘Consider it funded,’ Garland replied. ‘By controlling the timing of her surgery, we can also ensure that we’re seen to give her tragic tale a happy ending. All the better for publicity.’
‘You must also understand that she’s psychologically unstable,’ Zhou said with a tentative glance around the table. ‘It may be risky to allow the resulting court case to drag on for months just to maximise media coverage. That’s something you could only do with Chiron.’
‘Is there any risk to Miss Chambers if we delay her surgery?’ asked Garland.
Zhou shrugged. ‘I won’t know that until I can get a better look inside her eyes.’
‘Then get to it,’ Kitching ordered. ‘We can’t afford to be accused of delaying her recovery for our own benefit. Do whatever it takes — whatever she needs — over the weekend. And get back to me.’
B
lindfolded by his T-shirt, Ben crouched in front of the open refrigerator, feeling clumsily around for the shapes of potatoes, cabbage and cobs of sweetcorn. He hoped to surprise his mother with a cooked meal when she came in, which only gave him a few minutes. He could hear her back already, rewaxing her surfboard in the adjoining garage.