Another road takes him towards the giant observation wheel, now closed but still illuminated in a ring of blue light. A street-sweeping vehicle closes in from behind, its circular bristles scrubbing away at the kerb gutters, and Landon imagines someone leaping off it and slitting his throat. Farther on a car turns into view, and its headlights blind him.
It does a turnaround and pulls up beside him. The rear window rolls down and he prepares for a fatal shot. Instead, Julian’s face appears. “Mr Lock,” he calls out.
Landon walks sullenly on.
“I was hoping you’d come with us, if John meant anything to you.”
The words hit home. Landon halts and the rear door swings open.
Julian taps the seat beside him and Landon enters. The airconditioned interior is dreadfully cold and Landon’s damp clothes worsen the chill. There are two others in the car: the driver and a passenger in front.
After riding in silence for a while Julian asks to be dropped off at the Fullerton Hotel. Before he leaves the car he offers a hand and Landon, still in a state of considerable shock, takes it absently. “I wouldn’t worry about Marco,” he says. “We’ve been tracking him for years before we gathered enough grub to take care of him. He’s been spinning tales and getting elimination orders to serve his interests. This guy’s got many enemies. You’re just one of them.”
Landon listens with a drab expression and makes nothing of it.
Julian eyes him searchingly. “That day at your home wasn’t the first time we met.”
Landon looks up at him, his sights finally drawing focus.
“Day of the sepoy mutiny,” Julian smiles. “You were driving a donkey cart then.”
“I was?”
He taps Landon on the shoulder. “You’ll remember.”
The door shuts and the car cruises on. Landon watches the tinted windows and in his own wretched reflection he sees the face of a wimp. He despises himself for his weakness, for his failure to even weep and mourn for Amal, for John.
For Hannah.
Now there is nothing in him but an insidious void that threatens to grow and dominate his entire existence. It quenches all emotions and puts him in a state of unnerving quietude. It turns him placid, and allows him to discover the source of his fatalistic apathy.
He is preparing himself for his turn.
“I hope you’re mourning for John,” says the man in the front passenger seat. He looks over his shoulder and Landon finds his olive-shaped face familiar, along with his long snowy sideburns and sprigs of hair sprouting from the top of his ears. “He was a dear friend of mine.”
“His daughter…” Landon says softly. “Is she ill?”
“Her name’s Fanny. Diagnosed with terminal neuroblastoma.”
Landon, unspeaking, turns his eyes back to the window.
“I’m Thaddeus, by the way,” says the man. “I don’t suppose you remember me.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Thaddeus faces front. “Someplace safe.”
When the car passes a landmark at a traffic junction Landon knows they are heading for Labrador Reserve down at the southwestern coast of the island. A straight and narrow road takes them to a car park where they alight. They follow a mouldering brick path that winds into the forest. Thaddeus leads the way with a penlight and Landon can tell they are now trudging uphill. The ground transitions from brick to asphalt and then to concrete, and he finds himself in an old bunker. Just ahead he makes out the glint of metal and the barrel of a large gun emplacement.
Thaddeus fishes out something and speaks into it. He does not rush the phrase, but articulates it with precision. “Iftahya simsim.”
“What is it?” says Landon.
“Arabic.”
“What does it say?”
In the darkness he hears Thaddeus chuckle. “Open sesame.”
There is the grinding of stone and the moan of metal, and Landon blinks hard against the gloom to clear his sight. The massive gun is swivelling impossibly on its base, as if it has suddenly become operational after a century of disuse. A ring of light pours through a gap in the floor as the gun detaches itself from its base, rises to a mechanical whine and reveals a cylindrical elevator and its shaft.
“I’m surprised you didn’t blindfold me on the way up,” says Landon.
“Open sesame and a secret hideout?” Thaddeus ushers him into the lift. “Try telling that to the authorities.”
“Won’t anyone else see this?”
“This park has more eyes than you know.”
The elevator descends upon magnetic rails, slowly at first, then accelerates for a few seconds before slowing down to the cushioning of an opposing magnetic field. Its metallic walls revolve to reveal a circular room cladded in some kind of ceramic material. Landon sees a few pods set against a wall punctuated by tunnels just large enough for the passage of a grown man.
“We call this the torpedo room.” Thaddeus tells him. “You may lie down here, head to the tunnel, please.”
Landon complies and two assistants move forward to buckle the straps.
“What is it?”
“Transport,” says Thaddeus. “Don’t lock your knees. There’ll be a bit of a jar.”
A burst of pneumatic energy sends Landon careering through the tunnel. The narrow space is lit at regular intervals in thin bands of light, and the air in it is rather cold. For a minute or so he beholds an endless rush of lights and pipework, and the spot of light at the end of the tunnel explodes into a vast, cavernous space of craggy rock walls and rows of powerful droplights illuminating an immense laboratory-like facility.
A jet of air slows the pod and a different group of assistants moves in to unbuckle Landon and help him to his feet. One of them even hands him a towel, which he gratefully drapes over his shoulders. Thaddeus arrives in another pod and unstraps himself as if he’s done it a thousand times over. “We’re under the seabed,” he says, taking Landon by the elbow. “Best way to hide from prying satellites and submarines.”
“What kind of facility is this?”
“The classified kind.”
Landon trails Thaddeus broodingly. The experience alone would have blown anyone away but he is too tormented by the icy gazes of the facility staff to savour it. In every pair of eyes he finds indictment—that he alone is culpable of the deaths of all the people he owes his existence to.
“I can’t help but feel responsible for everything,” he confesses.
Thaddeus struts down a corridor that leads to another part of the cavern. “Spare us the guilt, Mr Lock,” he says. “Every operative is prepared for this. Our job is to monitor Chronies and let them live their lives with as little intervention as possible. If you must, blame it on the day you fouled up.”
“You could’ve brought me here right from the start.”
“And do what?” Thaddeus’ unflinching gaze shifts to him. “If you’re good by yourself we’d be happy to leave you that way, as a means of protecting what you represent. We intervene selectively because it’s all about priorities, Mr Lock.”
“Are there many of—my kind?”
“In almost every major city we know.” Thaddeus taps a button and enters a white corridor. “Every one of them struggling to live by their masquerades, their own surrogate protocols. Their lives entwining with ours, their tragedies unfolding as we speak.”
Landon lets his gaze drop to the spotless floor. “It was much easier in the past. These days you can’t get by without an identity.”
“The world forces one upon you.” Thaddeus’ brisk strides show no signs of slowing. “You groom yourself to be seen. You are defined by the world because you care too much about what people think of you. Principles are eroded, values and ethics contorted. It’s now glitz and glamour, fame and comfort—a societal show-business no longer confined to the entertainment industry but fuelled by it, ever more this century than others. And history tells us that when things get to this stage they often precede change.”