Authors: Mark Clark
Leslie looked on in wonder as Sebastian Levi began a long conference conversation with P’YongYang, Kabul and Teheran. Leslie couldn’t understand what the conversations were about because Levi was somehow able to speak in their native tongues. He appeared to be selling something to each government, because every so often he would mention a price and he repeatedly used the term ‘units’. But what most impressed Leslie, as he watched the magnificently confident Levi, all swarthy and dark-eyed in his dark suit and tie, was the efficiency with which he not only presided over the conversation, but the ease with which he also simultaneously wrote out the entire transcript of all parties as the conversation occurred. Page after page he wrote, presumably in the same copperplate hand, whilst quoting technical details to convince whoever he was speaking to that he could achieve whatever it was he had obviously claimed in previous conversations: not only that, but since none of the voices on the other end of the satellite link were speaking in English, Levi must be translating his notes into English in real time and at the same time running the conference. It was startling – and enormously worrying.
After twenty minutes or so, through which Elizabeth had not moved a muscle or contributed one word, Levi terminated the conference and replaced the book into the desk drawer. Elizabeth sat, motionless, to one side. She reminded Leslie of an obedient, well-trained dog.
But as Sebastian stood and stretched his back Johannes made a small movement that resulted in a barely audible noise. Levi heard it.
‘What was that?’ he whispered. Cautiously, he moved towards the slatted swinging doors. Then with a massive thrust, he opened them. He turned on the light. Nothing. He took one step into the wardrobe and crinkled up his nose. ‘It stinks in here,’ he said. ‘Smells like rat shit.’ He turned from the doors and towards Elizabeth. ‘Come,’ he ordered and she followed him from the room.
In the deep recess of the wardrobe Leslie sat with his hand clasped lightly over Johannes’ mouth. He removed it. ‘You do stink,’ he commented.
Leslie listened as the strange machine started up on the road outside. And he continued to listen as its whelping, yawning whistle disappeared into the background night.
He re-entered the radio room and stared down at the drawer for a while. Should he take the book? He wasn’t sure. If he took it Levi would know it was probably him. He couldn’t risk it. He must return at some other time to read it fully, but he couldn’t resist taking one quick look at the English translation of the conversation he had just heard.
He turned to the last entry and his eyes were immediately drawn to one isolated section of numbers. It read: Teheran – 20; P’YongYang – 20; Kabul – 10.
The top of the column, under which these numbers were listed, was headed: ‘I.Q. Transference Units’.
The manufacturing company was clearly listed further up the same page: Hill Enterprises.
*
‘So why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘Steady on.’
‘I will not steady on. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Leslie was furious with Damien. Johannes listened on with interest.
‘Because I don’t want to die. Okay? Is that a good enough reason for you?’ Damien was walking around his apartment like a caged lion.
‘You could have told me. I thought you were my friend. How long have you been working for him?’
Damien stopped walking and stood face to face with Leslie. ‘A couple of weeks.’
‘What?’ Leslie squealed. ‘What about our project? Or have you shelved that?’
‘No, but mate, this is a royal bloody edict. I can’t refuse. They’ve got me making those transference units twenty four hours a day.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Leslie blurted, more out of exasperation than anger.
Damien caught him by the elbow. ‘Listen, I’ve been trying to tell you – things are getting very dangerous around here.’
‘And what about that thing . . . that helicopter thing? I suppose you made that for that evil bastard from his precious blueprints too, did you?’
‘Les,’ Damien said quietly, but emphatically, ‘I didn’t build the damn thing. He did. He welded it together in one of my factories. He built the engine up from nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Leslie blinked. He thought back to the radio room. ‘He built it?’
Damien nodded. ‘In a couple of days. From the ground up.’
Leslie moved towards the scraper window. He looked out over the city lights. He imagined the rich in the scrapers and the poor on the streets. He imagined a better world where there was less inequality. He sifted through his mind and tried to find such a place in history. He found none. In his mind he listened to the Marxist chant of the big red bearded man, who was no doubt watching him right at this moment as he stared out of the window. And he shook his head with sorrow at the realisation that Mao’s idea of continuous revolution could never be a possibility in a part of the universe where humans had individual stomachs and minds and where those who rule grow very keen, very quickly, on maintaining the status quo. And he thought about Sebastian Levi – what had Damien quipped? - the Rasputin in the queen’s ear, was it? And he realised what he had suspected for some time – that Sebastian Levi, librarian, had risen above his station and in a blaze of opportunity, that he, Leslie, idiot consul and inventor, had largely and unwittingly provided, had fed his mind upon the honey dew of others and was about to bring about a social change Karl Marx could only have dreamed of, but for all the wrong reasons and ultimately, with all the wrong results.
He turned back to face Damien and Johannes who had watched his rumination patiently from a distance. ‘We have to stop him,’ he said.
There was a sudden noise in the corridor outside of the room. Damien and Leslie shared eye contact. Was this the police?
Edgar burst through the door with tears streaming down his fine-featured face. He staggered towards Leslie, reached him, looked desperately into his eyes and uttered in broken gasps, ‘Dad’s dead.’ He buried his face into Leslie’s chest and sobbed like a young woman betrayed by her first lover.
Leslie embraced him. He looked towards Damien and then towards Johannes. Both looked downward.
For some time the apartment was wrenched with the sound of human sorrow. Grief, that greatest plague of man, permeated the room as the young man wailed for the loss of his father, the volume of his agony muffled by Leslie’s body.
When at last the tears would flow no more, for even tears have a limit, he raised his eyes for comfort and looked up towards Leslie.
‘It was arsenic,’ said Leslie, in response to Edgar’s silent question. This renewed the young man’s tears.
When, once again they subsided, Leslie sat him down. He sat beside him. ‘Your father was poisoned,’ said Leslie, quietly, ‘and we’re going to find out who was responsible. I promise you. Come on. I’ll take you back to my apartment.’
‘No you can’t,’ Edgar replied, suddenly free of grief and full of urgency.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re everywhere.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘At your apartment – there are men everywhere. Police. Big, dumb police. I saw them taking things from your room.’
‘What sort of things?’ Leslie asked, the indignation growing within him.
‘Everything. Furniture. Everything,’ Edgar replied, grasping on to Leslie as if not to let him go there.
‘What does this mean?’ Johannes asked.
Damien answered for Leslie. ‘It means, old chum, that the game is up. They’re on to you.’
‘Levi knew that we were there tonight,’ said Leslie. His eyes were quietly alive with realisation. Suddenly he stood. ‘Quickly. We must get away before we incriminate you, Damien, and you, Edgar.’
Damien laughed and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I think it’s a bit late for that now, mate.’
Johannes stepped forward. ‘What about my wife and child?’
‘They were taken away,’ replied Edgar, his eyes soft and sad like a puppy’s. ‘I don’t know where.’
‘They’re in danger,’ replied Leslie, looking towards Johannes with pent fury in his eyes. He thought - ‘What can I do?’ He moved instinctively once again towards the window and the space that this afforded his caged mind.
‘We go to the library,’ replied Johannes. ‘We go to the library, if that’s where he’s taken them. Is it?’
‘Yes,’ Leslie replied. ‘Almost certainly.’
‘Then we go to library and we save them.’
‘But how can we get in?’ asked Leslie, ‘The whole damn place is crawling with police. It has been all week. It’ll be covered in them now.’
‘We use a back door,’ Johannes replied.
‘And you know one?’ asked Leslie, off-hand, as if he knew the answer already.
‘Yes, I do,’ the large man replied, unexpectedly. ‘And I’m going there right now, with you bastards, or without you.’
The electricity buzzed and crackled. Elizabeth’s eyes widened and lost some of their lustre. Above, in the console room, Sebastian watched a stream of numbers flow across his computer screen.
‘And how do you feel, my dear,’ he asked her as she joined him beside the console.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied uncertainly. ‘Okay, I think.’
‘Excellent. Now it’s my turn. It’s all set up. All you have to do is push this button.’ He pointed to the console.
Elizabeth stared at him vacantly. He laughed lightly and repeated, ‘This button, my dear.’
This time she saw the button and nodded.
‘This is the big one,’ he explained. ‘I’m doubling my I.Q. to 1000.’
He may as well have not spoken. Elizabeth looked back at him with bovine serenity.
Sebastian entered the transference room and attached himself to the metal headpiece. He waved his hand. Elizabeth took the cue. She pushed the button.
Below them, crawling through the old Tank Stream, were Leslie, Damien, Johannes and Edgar. Johannes was holding a torch and leading the way. ‘This was the city’s water supply about four hundred years ago,’ he explained. ‘About a hundred years ago, after the bombs, a group of people used to live down here.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Leslie, suddenly reefing some cobweb from the side of his mouth.
‘Because I’m a well-read man.’ He hesitated, ‘Also, I’ve hidden down here from the police a few times.’
Ahead was a breach in the ancient stone. The four men crawled through it, until at last they found themselves ascending into a dark, disused corridor. They moved slowly in the darkness, guided only by the faint light of Johannes’ torch. Eventually, they reached a door. It was the door under which Weena had felt the first pangs of love for Rueben well over one hundred years before. Quietly they stepped into the lowest level of the library, surrounded by magazines stacked to a man’s height.
Johannes turned off the torch. ‘Where to?’
Leslie led the way and onward they trod. He remembered approximately where the room was but he remembered also that it was concealed. So he must be cautious not to miss it.
He need not have worried. Almost immediately he saw a light ahead. Its shaft was emanating from the room he sought. Unfortunately, illuminated by it was a very large man, holding a rifle. He stood with his back to the source of light and stared obediently forward into the gloom of the musty, old library.
‘There’s a guard,’ whispered Leslie, holding the others back with his extended arm. ‘He’s got a gun.’
‘Out of my way,’ stated Johannes. And before anyone could stop him he had marched down the corridor and approached the guard who, as the other three men could clearly see, was now holding his rifle menacingly towards his chest.
Johannes raised his hands as if to surrender and immediately the guard motioned with his rifle for Johannes to enter the room behind him. But at this instant, just as the guard cocked his gun ever so slightly at an angle away from Johannes’ body, the Viking-like man grabbed the rifle with both hands, thrust the butt directly into the guard’s face, pulverising his nose, and then, before the guard could regain his senses, Johannes slipped behind him, pulled the rifle hard up into the man’s throat and strangled him with his own weapon. Silently, the guard slumped to the floor; dead.
Leslie and the others crept up and looked down at the fallen man.
‘Can’t fight, eh?’ Johannes whispered to Leslie.
Leslie placed his hand on his back in silent apology.
Within the lighted room was all crackle and electrical hum. The men moved cautiously into the space. Johannes held the fallen guard’s gun at the ready. There was an interior door before them and a stairwell to their left. From beyond the door ahead came a sudden flash of light, accompanied by a loud guttural scream. It was a human sound, but it sounded something between an animal in inestimable pain and a man in the throes of massive orgasm.
Whatever it was, Johannes was in no mood to procrastinate. He turned the door handle, left the door ajar and kicked it with all his might. It swang so hard that it knocked back into his body as he raced into the room, rifle at the ready.
There he found Sebastian leaning back into his chair with a metal helmet attached to his head. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were glazed with a dream-like aura, as if he had reached a sudden satori and had not quite yet returned. He shook his head, blinked and turned his eyes towards the four intruders as they entered the room. Slowly he removed the metal headpiece.
‘One thousand,’ he muttered. ‘It’s all so simple really.’
‘What are talking about, Levi?’ asked Leslie.
‘My name’s not Levi, boy,’ replied Sebastian.
‘Then what is it? Stalin?’
‘Oh yes. How clever. An allusion. Man of steel. Yes, I like that. Like superman. It fits.’
‘You’re talking in riddles, Levi,’ Leslie retorted. He had become the group’s mouthpiece. Johannes held the gun and stood beside him, but Edgar and Damien kept their distance. There were ominous, raging clouds of anger silently growing beneath the calm exterior of this enigma. They could all feel it. Levi was a gathering storm.
Leslie looked up. He saw Elizabeth standing behind the window to the console room. He looked back to Sebastian for an explanation.