Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (2 page)

Jennifer wanted to leave the pavilion and enter the artificial sunshine once more. “What can I do?”

Hartfield turned to her. “Talk to him. Tell him to be careful. Tell him to stay in Oxford.”

Jennifer Proctor, who was twenty years old, had never dealt with a man like Hartfield before. But she was fiercely intelligent. “Mr Hartfield, may I ask you something directly, and you’ll forgive my frankness?”

“By all means.”

“Does the danger come from you?”

Hartfield laughed – like his smile, it was fake – and stood up. He shuffled his legs to stir their blood. “I must go. Can I rely on you impress upon your father the severity of the situation?”

She nodded once. He touched the rim of his nine-gallon hat and walked away.

When he was gone, Jennifer listened to the wind of the air conditioning system. She thought about her dream again. She thought about her father running down smoke-filled corridors calling for his dead wife.

FIB Headquarters, Brussels

Sunday, 10th September 2023

Saskia Brandt examined her reflection. It was unfamiliar. She reached down and splashed some water over her face. There was something wrong. The water soothed the burn on her forehead. She touched it with her finger. It still throbbed; it still retained its heat, its energy.

Something wrong.

You are a detective, she scolded. Detect.

There was a bottle of hand-soap near the sink. The label read ‘Föderatives Investigationsbüro’, the Federal Investigations Bureau, German section.

She recalled the day’s events.

She had taken the lift to 51st floor and walked to her office. She had greeted some people. It was a hot day. Brussels was enjoying an Indian summer. Once in her office, she had told the computer to open the blinds…

“Yes, Saskia.”

“Dim the lights.”

“Yes, Saskia.”

Saskia wiped away the last of her tears. The window wall darkened. There was a picture on her desk: Simon, her English boyfriend. It rested on top of an antique blotter from the 1920s, which rested upon an austere wooden desk, which backed against the window wall.

“Why is it so hot in here? Lower the temperature by five degrees.”

Saskia took off her blouse and flapped it. The heat seemed to lean against her.

“The air conditioning is broken,” said the computer.

Saskia groaned and paced the room. From two corners, cameras followed her movements. Each kept a tight watch on her mouth.

“What happened?”

“I do not know. A repair man should arrive soon. Perhaps you could take a cold shower.”

She stopped and looked at one of the cameras. For the computer, her expression was statistically infrequent and quite unreadable. “Thanks for the advice.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Where is my secretary? Why didn’t she report it?”

There was a pause as the computer interpreted her words, a task made difficult by the jump in context. “Your secretary is on holiday. You are also on holiday.”

Saskia grunted. Her holiday had been one day old when she had been called by Jobanique, her immediate superior, who had an urgent case. Her boyfriend, Simon, had been cooking pasta for a romantic meal and, without discernible romance, thrown the pot across the room. Saskia’s forehead had been splashed and burned. She had walked from the room with a coldness that told both of them it was over, finally. When she had found a taxi for the airport, she had lain on the back seat and cried. But Simon had not seen her.

From Marseilles she had flown to Paris and caught a connecting flight to Brussels. The proverbial sleepless night in the flat. The so-typical call to her mother. The predictable whisky at four in the morning watching the rain. How stereotypical. How ordinary.

She walked into the second anteroom. It was a small kitchen. There was a refrigerator. It contained cold, still mineral water. She pulled the handle and her secretary fell out. A bottle of water rolled out too. Its label read ‘best served chilled’. As for the secretary, she was dead.

West Lothian, Scotland

Sunday, 10th September 2023

Around midday, the rain eased. A car arrived at the Park Hotel. The ruin of the West Lothian Research Centre lay beneath its foundations. Its entrances were capped. It lay dormant. No longer were approaching vehicles checked, visitors searched, or the expansive woodlands patrolled. The hotel was open for business as a retreat for writers and anglers.

Inside the car, the arrival gazed out. He had grown in the years since he had cradled the head of his dead wife. On that autumn morning in 2023, David Proctor was an Oxford professor in his early fifties. He looked at the hotel and felt like he was attending a school reunion.

“Destination reached,” said his computer.

“Thank you, Ego.” He opened the door and relished the cool, damp air. It had been a five-hour journey.

“One moment, please. Professor Proctor, you have a phone call.”

“Tell them I’m busy,” he said.

“It is your daughter.”

David paused. He pulled his leg back into the car and closed the door. He steepled his fingers and tried to think. It didn’t work.

“Professor Proctor? Your caller is waiting.”

“Fine. Put her on.”

The computer displayed a little egg-timer and did nothing. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

“The communication appears to be encrypted. I do not know the cipher.”

David smiled. “Find and read the file on Jennifer’s highschool maths project.”

“Understood.”

Immediately, the image of his daughter appeared.

Jennifer. David drew a breath. He had last seen her aged sixteen. She wore thick glasses, no make-up, and she had scraped her hair into a bun. She was pale and stern. She looked like her mother.

“Hello, Jennifer.”

“Hi, dad.”

David laughed. She had an American accent. Jennifer, in contrast, remained calm. His laughter died. “I’m glad you called,” he said.

“Are you?”

“Yes. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk, then.”

David watched the rain run down the windscreen. He wasn’t ready for this. Not now. “I – I’m sorry. After you went to New York, I thought maybe you needed some time to yourself.”

“You sent me away. You sent the freak to the freaks then skipped the country.”

“Look, you couldn’t stay in Oxford any more. You would have been shunned because of your – because of the way you were. You wouldn’t have realised your full potential.” David sighed softly, but his heart thumped in his chest. “We’ve been through this.”

Jennifer leaned towards the camera. “I was the one who had to go through it, not you. Do you know what it was like in that school?”

“I got your emails.”

“I didn’t get yours.”

“Jennifer, why did you call?”

“Not to sing happy birthday,” she said. She blinked a few times. “I have a message for you.”

David looked at her. “What is it?”

She paused. “Where are you?”

“Actually I’m at the old research centre, in West Lothian.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I can’t tell you that on the phone.”

“This isn’t a phone, Dad,” she said. She had the trace of a smile.

“I know. It’s a secure server. You’ve encrypted the transmission.”

She nodded. “You remembered it.”

“What’s wrong, Jenny?”

“Just – can you go back? I need you to go back.”

David gazed around him. The hotel looked tearful. “I haven’t passed the point of no-return, I suppose. But why should I go back? Has someone been talking to you?”

Jennifer said softly, “Be careful. Watch your back. Something may happen.”

He was grim. “Something already has happened. And I’m late. Can I call you later?”

Jennifer smiled. It was hollow. But it was an effort. “Sure.”

She cut the connection.

David Proctor removed his personal assistant from the dashboard and put it in his wallet. It would pass for a bank card. He stepped from the car and his jacket flew open. He inhaled the Scottish air. Around him, high firs bowed and produced a sound that, to David, had always been indistinguishable from crashing waves.

He began to walk towards the hotel. He nodded to the doorman. The doorman turned and nodded to someone in the bushes. David glanced at the bushes and saw a suited man with an earpiece nod in yet another direction. Nothing else happened. David went inside.

Ahead of him, across the large foyer, a tall man with steel-grey hair was speaking to an elderly receptionist. It was the inimitable Colonel McWhirter. He turned at the sound of David’s footsteps and smiled. They had met only twice in the past twenty years. “I see they haven’t changed the décor,” David said.

“Hello again, Dr. Proctor,” said McWhirter. They shook hands.

“I’ve had my title changed to ‘professor’,” he replied, deadpan, “so that it doesn’t rhyme.”

McWhirter took one look at him, blinked, and they laughed. The receptionist frowned.

“Professor.”

“David, to you, Colonel.”

“It’s been six years.”

“The robotics conference.”

“Yeah.”

The banter evaporated and McWhirter rubbed his hands. The foyer was cold.

“Can you fill me in?” David asked.

The colonel took his elbow and steered him from the receptionist. “It’s Bruce. He managed to break into the lower levels and get to your old laboratory. Last Wednesday morning, he put New World back on-line.”

David tried to look surprised. “Wow. Where’s he getting the power from?”

“The hotel supply. That’s how we got wind of the whole business,” he added.

“I see. What’s the environmental situation down there?”

“Not good. Near freezing. We’ve got some temporary lighting, nothing else.”

“And Bruce’s physical condition?”

“Well,” the colonel said in a quiet tone, “not good, but stable. I thought maybe you could take a look at him.”

“Medical school was a long time ago. I had long hair then. Christ, I had hair.”

“Ah, you’ll do fine.” McWhirter’s eyes were humourless. “Shall we go?”

“Where?”

“Down below.”

David took a step backward. It was important to play on McWhirter’s expectations. “You want me to go down there?”

“Come on, David. I didn’t invite you here for the fishing. I need an expert to assess the situation.”

The emeritus professor, once a young and irascible scientist, now a cold, meticulous thinker, nodded and said, “You’re right. The old route?”

“The old route.”

They walked through a connecting door to the west wing. A conservatory on their right boasted a view of the hotel’s rear grounds. On their left was a smoking lounge. He imagined old men talking in lowered tones over their broadsheets. But there was nobody. The hotel had been emptied the day before.

They turned left into the cloakroom. It was the size of a snooker table. In the old days, David would stand exactly as he did now, place his thumb on the wall and wait for the computer to recognise his blood. Then the whole room would sink downwards. But there was no longer a computer. Instead there was a splintered hole in the floor with a ladder leaning against its edge.

“What happened to the lift?”

“It was dismantled. All part of the clean-up operation following the bombing.”

David paused. He did not want to the talk about that. The regrets were shards of glass. “Me first?”

“No, me. The guard knows my face.” He cupped his hands and shouted down the hole: “Two coming down!” There was no reply.

The colonel had twenty years on David but he shinnied down the ladder without complaint. David waited until his head was out of sight and then pulled a card from his wallet. It was Ego. He tapped it once and its exterior assumed the contours of a female face.

“Send an email to my daughter,” David said quickly. “Tell her I’ve gone past the point of no return.”

“Unfortunately I cannot get a good signal,” replied the machine. It was already back in his wallet but the voice was clear. David had a microscopic earpiece.

“Alright, just stand by,” he said.

“David,” called a voice from below. “Are you alright?”

“Fine. I have a thing about ladders and heights.” Which was true. “I’ll be right with you.”

The professor stepped gingerly on to the ladder and began to climb down. There was a safety line. After some consideration, he hooked it to his belt buckle. When his head passed below the level of the floor, he looked down and saw a circle of temporary lighting. It was twenty metres below – the lowest floor of the research centre.

One minute later, his feet made contact with the ground and he unhooked the safety line. Four spotlights blazed. They made impenetrable shadows in the corners, which were full of odd-looking shapes. It seemed that nobody had cleared the area before it was sealed. There were broken cabinets, chairs, and computer monitors. There was even an old mattress. Paper was everywhere. In the centre, a space had been made for the lighting rig. Cables snaked away to nowhere, though, in the distance, David could hear the put-put of a diesel generator. Standing motionless in the cramped space, next to the ladder, was an armed man. He wore a builder’s hard-hat and outdoor clothing. He avoided David’s polite nod.

“Going up is more difficult,” said McWhirter.

“I can hardly wait.”

“Shall we?”

“After you.”

They stepped from the chamber into a corridor that was as derelict as the lift shaft. David remembered an air-conditioned expanse with beautifully decorated walls and light muzak. Now there was nothing more than a sense of space in the darkness, and he hugged himself against the cold.

McWhirter threw a relay. Lights erupted along the corridor – perhaps fifty metres – clang after clang. It was much larger than he remembered. The fire doors were gone. The walls were black as charcoal. Doors leading from the corridor were now nothing more than gaping holes, some filled with cabinets and chairs, others with wood and masonry. Like the lift shaft, there was paper everywhere.

“Take this,” said McWhirter. It was a heavy outdoor coat. “It’s a steady five degrees in here.” He also handed David a hard hat, some gloves, a first-aid kit, and a laminated map of the complex. “We’ll need to keep in contact if we get separated. Do you have a computer?”