‘Not even allowed parole?’
Richards’ chuckle sounded a little forced. He spread his hands wide. ‘I’m not compelling you to do anything! But we do have a genuine need which only you can meet. We know that there are cells of hostile people living within this country. Some of them have terrorist training and, we have reason to believe, the equipment to go with it. The two who have attacked you so far were just the tip of the iceberg. Their organisation is very tight and difficult to penetrate, but we have accumulated evidence to suggest that they are planning a series of bomb attacks, aimed at killing as many innocent civilians as possible. We need to find them as a matter of urgency.’
‘Any idea where they might be?’
‘The evidence suggests one group in London and one in Birmingham.’
‘Big places.’
‘Yes, but there are particular areas we could start to search as they generally like to lose themselves in concentrations of people of the same ethnic origin. Do you think you would be able to pick up their – what d’you call them – emissions? If we drove past their building?’
I thought about that for a moment. ‘Very unlikely I would say. I essentially pick up emotional states – I can’t read minds. If they were absorbed in a television programme or a conversation about something innocent I wouldn’t be able to detect them even if they were right in front of me. Even if they were planning their actions in a dispassionate way, well, they could be planning anything. Only if they were absorbed with murderous thoughts would I stand any chance of spotting them – and then I’d somehow have to separate them out from all of the rest of the population who are feeling murderous for all sorts of reasons – an unfaithful spouse, a horse which fell at the last jump, or even a case of road rage. I generally try to block out other people’s emotions whenever I’m near heavy traffic – you wouldn’t believe the volume of hate and frustration produced.’
‘Oh, I would,’ Richards chuckled grimly. He paused to think for a while, pursing his lips. ‘They would probably be tense and nervous for much of the time, and if any of them were planning to be suicide bombers that might affect their mental state as well.’
‘Yes it would, but those aren’t strong emotions and would be swamped by the “noise” of other people.’
He looked at me. ‘What about filtering? Suppose we showed you a captured terrorist we’ve got so you could recognise the mind-set. Could you then sensitise your receptivity, so to speak, to pick up that kind of mind?’
That was a new idea to me, but as I thought about it I realised it had some merit. ‘It’s worth a try.’
Richards looked relieved. ‘All right then, I’ll set that up.’
I saw nothing of the prison from the outside since for reasons of my own security I was concealed inside an anonymous delivery van. Very appropriate, I thought, I’ve become a package, a commodity, to be delivered wherever I’m needed. I worried about what kind of life I was getting myself into, forever at the beck and call of those who wanted me. But Richards’ request was reasonable; how could I stand by and do nothing if I could prevent terrorist atrocities?
I was led to a familiar pattern of divided interview room with a view through one-way glass into the other side. After a few minutes a man of Middle Eastern appearance was led into the room by a guard, who stood by the door. The man looked around the room for a moment, sneered at the mirror then, before sitting down, ostentatiously turned the chair around so that he was facing the other way. That didn’t concern me; he could stand on his head for all I cared.
I carefully closed down my concentration, shutting out the background noise from the prison in order to focus on the terrorist’s mind. Then I mentally reached towards him.
Black and white. That was my first impression. This man didn’t think in greys, in shades of meaning, in relative moral choices. He thought only of right and wrong. Right was his beliefs, inextricably intertwined with his religion; wrong was everything else. And everyone else. Apart from my two putative assassins, who were little more than hired guns, I had never sensed a mind so indifferent to the rest of humanity. He simply didn’t care how much people suffered and how many died as a result of his actions. Whatever he did in the name of his cause was justified – nothing else mattered. The iron certainty of his beliefs contrasted with his impatient contempt for the rest of the world, for anyone not on his side.
This was a man who would willingly kill himself, all right, if he felt this would advance his cause, especially if he could take a large number of the weak and godless westerners with him. I probed his beliefs further, and came up against an inflexible wall of fanaticism. Where any sane person was a hotch-potch of ideas tempered by doubt and uncertainty, here was just unthinking, uncritical belief. It was as if all of his critical faculties, his judgment, his understanding and empathy, had been amputated.
I shivered involuntarily. I may have looked alien from the outside but this man was alien inside, a creature driven by hate. Richards had been right so far; he had an unmistakable mental signature. Now, could I pick that out against the background of a teeming city, filled with emotions?
The next few weeks settled into a pattern. The first target was believed to be Birmingham, so after deferring future patients until further notice I was moved to a “safe house” in the suburbs, with the much-appreciated benefit of a private garden not overlooked by any other properties. At my insistence, arrangements were made with a local health club for me to have my usual night-time access to their swimming pool. I don’t know what pressure Richards exerted, but it worked, and the owners kept well away.
The days were spent in the back of that delivery van. The view of the interior, the noise of the engine, the bouncing of the unladen suspension and a rasp from the exhaust at certain resonant frequencies all became almost as familiar to me as the functioning of my own body. I never saw the districts we travelled through – never needed to. My normal senses were suppressed while I focused my sensitivity, sweeping like a radar scanner though the streets, sifting and discarding the myriad minds, all the time holding up in front of my mental gaze the pattern of the terrorist. I became afraid that my mind was being numbed by the endless repetition, the constant stream of emotions flowing over me.
In the late evening of the ninth day I detected my targets – two of them, together. My sweep hit their minds with a shock; it was all there, the arrogant certainty, the coiling hate, the juvenile sense of superiority through being involved in something secret and important. They had just left a building and a quick scan showed me two more of them, high up in a flat. I sensed that the two outside were walking towards something important – there was a suppressed excitement in their minds. ‘Contact.’ I told the driver.
His bored mind instantly sharpened to alertness. ‘Where?’
‘Two of them, walking in the same direction, our side of the road. Two more in a flat upstairs, just behind us.’
‘Got ’em – only two within sight.’
‘They’re heading towards something that matters – we should find out what it is.’
‘Right. I’ll pull ahead then park up.’
The van duly stopped a few seconds later. I kept the link to their minds, noticed that they were turning away just as the driver announced, ‘they’ve gone down a side street.’
Looking ahead through the windscreen I could see that we were in an urban street in a run-down area, lined by tall terraced buildings with shops and cafes on the ground floor, some boarded up and the rest closed for the night. Litter blew about in the gutters. There were few people around, and the street lighting was dim and irregular. ‘I’ll follow them. I can keep out of sight and still keep a mental link.’