‘In spite of that, or maybe because of that, I am going to confide in you further,’ Jones continued. ‘There is something else. Something our government, America and all the other governments apparently so preoccupied with the power of human consciousness should probably know. And, as I was well aware from the moment you called to invite me to lunch, Jimmy, I have little doubt that you are the man to pass on the message.’
Jimmy Cecil speared a particularly succulent looking piece of kidney on his fork and paused with it still a few inches from his mouth.
‘I’m all ears, old girl,’ he said.
It was almost a couple of hours later before Cecil set off to walk back over Waterloo Bridge to his South Bank base. He hoped the fresh air would help him think.
His American visitor was waiting in his office, as he had expected. He had met Marmaduke Johnson the Second several times before, of course, and trans-Atlantic telephone calls between the two men were not unusual. Indeed, they had become rather frequent over the last few days. Johnson was, after all, the nearest thing there was, for Jimmy Cecil, to an opposite number across the pond. Nonetheless Johnson almost always had the same effect on the Englishman. There was something about Marmaduke Johnson that made the muscles at the back of Jimmy Cecil’s neck lock solid, and sent an alert signal to every nerve end in his body.
‘How ya doing, Jimbo,’ said Johnson, by way of greeting, at the same time grasping Cecil’s right hand in a hearty handshake.
Cecil forced a smile of welcome, which he feared was rather more of a grimace.
The tall American was wearing an unnecessarily loud checked suit, Jimmy Cecil thought. But it fitted in well with his good-old-boy personae, or at least the personae he chose to present to the world.
‘I’m doing fine, Duke,’ responded Cecil, feeling the usual tweak of embarrassment he always felt when addressing the American by the abbreviation he had more or less been ordered to use from the beginning.
Johnson had coat-hanger shoulders, a paunch, no hair, and very white teeth which seemed both too big and too numerous for his mouth. His eyes were small, set rather too far apart for comfort, and were not entirely synchronized. Instead each appeared to be looking in a marginally different direction. And as he came closer, Cecil was reminded again of how difficult it was to focus on both Duke Johnson’s eyes at once.
‘So what tidings do you bring from the great doctor?’
Johnson’s accent was so Deep South it was almost comic book. Jimmy Cecil had always suspected that it could not possibly be genuine. The apparently obligatory black cheroot dangled precariously from the American’s lips. A puff of foul-smelling smoke hit Cecil straight in the face. He recoiled. But he knew better than to even attempt to remind Marmaduke Johnson of his building’s no smoking rule.
One of Johnson’s disconcertingly pale blue eyes was staring intently at Cecil through the unsavoury grey cloud he had created. The other appeared to be studying the closed door of the Englishman’s private bathroom.
Jimmy Cecil lowered himself stiffly onto the chair at his desk and turned slightly away from the American, so that he did not have to deal with the distraction of attempting eye contact.
‘I think we may need to put a fairly substantial damage limitation operation into effect, Duke old boy,’ he said.
The aircraft had flown across the Atlantic from New York and was about to touch down in South Africa, at Johannesburg. A passenger wearing khaki fatigues with a strongly military flavour and spanking new, almost orange, Timberland boots peered through the window. The cloud was low, and he could see very little. He wondered anxiously what might await him below.
Mikey MacEntee was no longer the Man in Black, as Jones had dubbed him at Princeton police station. That phase had ended. The dark suit, white shirt, and black tie had been consigned to the back of his wardrobe. Only the shades remained in place. Mikey had been told that he was going undercover in Africa. He had therefore done his best to dress in what he considered to be an appropriate manner. As he always did in his perennially futile efforts to fit in. The wide-brimmed bush hat, which he held on his lap, completed his new outfit. This was his Out of Africa look. Or so he thought.
One or two other passengers on the flight glanced at him curiously. Mikey didn’t notice.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to be asked to do once he arrived in Johannesburg, but he knew that his country was involved in all kinds of undercover activity throughout Africa. Much of it connected with international terrorism. And he realized this new job must be important. He had been told he should travel immediately.
Mikey had been taken by surprise. The FBI ran around fifty attaché offices at US embassies and consulates throughout the world, and FBI operatives were not infrequently dispatched overseas to investigate almost anything that might adversely concern America, but he had never expected to be chosen for such an assignment. The overseas appointments were coveted among agents. To be dispatched on a mission abroad such as this surely indicated that he had finally been accepted as a front-line Fed. And Mikey wasn’t used to being accepted by anyone, which is why he always worked so hard at trying to be so.
He had been mightily relieved by the way Mr Johnson had reacted after he’d got shot by that lady cop. Mr Johnson had arranged everything. The damage to Mikey’s leg had turned out to be not nearly as bad as he’d feared — the bullet had narrowly missed his thigh bone causing only a nasty flesh wound — and Mr Johnson had arranged for medical treatment straight away, just as Mikey had hoped.
Mikey had expected to be in deep trouble after his part in an operation which had gone so pear-shaped. But Mr Johnson had appeared to be really quite sympathetic.
Mikey had been eating a Chinese — garlic prawns, mixed vegetables with garlic, and fried noodles with garlic — while watching a television news report of Sandy Jones’s revelations, when he’d received the call despatching him to Africa.
He’d always boasted within the Bureau about his access to information concerning RECAP, and grossly exaggerated his closeness to the project. It had been purely by chance, really, that he’d found out about the Ruders Theory of Consciousness. He’d put a bug on his brother’s phone some months previously, a new device he’d acquired online, more to check it out than anything else. Mikey had never been able to resist experimenting with surveillance gadgets. It was a habit.
But then he’d overheard a conversation between Ed and Professor Ruders which had clearly indicated the existence of an effective theory of consciousness. Mikey had not been greatly excited by this himself, after all he believed that more or less everything about RECAP was nonsense. However he knew how interested his superiors were in the project, even though that had always rather surprised him, and saw an opportunity to increase his standing at the Bureau. So he reported back at once, which led his Agent in Charge to put him in touch with Mr Johnson.
Mikey still didn’t know exactly who or what Mr Johnson was, but he knew the man was mighty powerful, that was for sure. And from the moment he’d become aware of the plan to blow up the RECAP lab, Mikey had deeply regretted his rashness, his compulsion to show off and play the big shot. Secretly, because he didn’t dare let Mr Johnson know, he had been horrified by such a drastic and murderous turn of events. Particularly as his brother was involved. He’d never expected anything like it.
Mikey was by then in so deep, however, that he could do nothing except continue to play the part he’d created for himself. But the intrigue concerning Connie Pike’s survival and the consequent second, and somewhat inept, attempt on her life, resulting in Marion being so grievously injured, had turned him into a complete nervous wreck.