Dark Matter (12 page)

Unsure what to do, Saeb Tibi turned again to prayer.  The small compass inside his watch pointed the way and he knelt down to pray.

10:37                03 November  [16:37  03 November GMT]

Prison Transfer Bus to Reclusorio Norte Prison, Mexico City, Mexico.

Benjamin Yogev and Saeb Tibi boarded the bus in chains.  Criminals under Mexico's legal system, they could not hope to prove their innocence.  They were bound for a prison just outside Mexico City.  Destined to spend at least a year of their lives there, according to their lawyer, before a trial that, again according to their lawyer, would just be a formality followed by sentencing.  Another formality apparently.  That they were both innocent didn't seem to matter.  It had become readily apparent that even if the cover stories were real, they would still be in the same boat.  Their only hope lay in declaring their true identities neither was prepared to do this.  They kept to their cover stories as neither wanted to betray their country or their cause.  Neither wanted to look weak in front of the other.

As they boarded the prison bus the smells of the police station, decaying bodily fluids slowly being digested by the bacteria covering every surface, evaporated from them as they were assaulted by the intensity of the new odours aboard the bus.  The heat of the day combined with the crush of sweating criminals amplified the smell.  Benjamin hung his head, closed his eyes, and tried to block out the motion of the bus.  Sitting over the back axle just made it worse.  The glare of the sun, coming straight through the side window, slammed down on the back of his head.  Saeb watched as all the colour left Benjamin’s face. 

'Try to imagine,' Saeb began talking to Benjamin, 'that you are somewhere where you want to be, travelling to a favourite picnic spot.  Do not close your eyes; instead try to see with your mind's eye.  Imagine you can hear the birds singing and smell the flowers.'

Benjamin concentrated and a little colour returned to his face.

Saeb was having a different problem with the smell and confinement.  It was taking him back to the camps in Palestine where he grew up.  The lack of proper sanitation.  The sheer density of people both in each tent and within the camps.  There was no escape from other people or the odours they created; they permeated the air, the tents, and your clothes.  They sat upon your top lip to be inhaled with every breath.  They rolled over your tongue so you could literally taste the smell.  Your bed smelt of the people of the camp, so did your food.  There was nowhere to be elsewhere.  After a while, it became everything you knew as normal, until a fresh wind would blow and then you would remember what real air was.  The return of camp air depressed you further still.  The memory of fresh air would stay with you for weeks after, making every breath of stale camp air an ordeal.

These thoughts occupied Saeb's mind whilst the bus made its way ever closer to the prison. 
This is not good,
he thought to himself,
I must maintain a positive attitude otherwise I am doomed to fail in my mission
.  He had prayed hard now for three days and nights and each time he had prayed for guidance he had found his mind returning to the same thing, w
hy were Benjamin and I the sole survivors?  That has to have meaning, purpose, I was asked by the most senior representatives of my people to negotiate on their behalf; Benjamin was asked the same by his. 
His mind was ticking over now in a way it had not since their capture.
  We have not been separated; indeed, we have been thrust together for a long time indeed. 
Calm descended over Saeb.  His thoughts cleared.
My important journey, my Great Thing.  It is starting now, I can feel it.  This was the reason for it all.  For my life.  For Benjamin's life.  The loss of the American and his two guards.  All the briefings we have had.  We know all that we need to know.  We can continue negotiations.  We can do this.  We can serve our people.  Thank you Allah.  Thank you for giving me this chance to serve.

Benjamin awoke with a start; the road had become much worse.

'Where are we?'

'I think we are near our destination.  I think this must be the road to the Prison.'  Saeb replied in a matter of fact way.

'How long was I asleep?'

'About forty minutes.  Do you feel better?’  Saeb asked.

'Yes, I dreamt about a meadow.  I don't know why though.'  Benjamin continued, 'Do you know anything about it?'

'Simple suggestion, nothing more I assure you.  I just merely planted the seed of the idea in your mind and suggested that you should relax.  The rest came naturally.  No pun intended.' 

Their first sight of the prison was the white concrete guard towers rising four stories above the top of the prison allowing the guards to see for miles.  Then they saw the slab like walls of the prison perimeter itself.  This wasn't architecture, this was function mixed with an attitude of spend the least but make it intimidating.  They could see open sections now, surrounded by steel wire fencing and topped with razor wire; neither knew their function but guessed at one being an exercise yard.  The bus stopped at an outer gate.  The driver only continuing when one of the prison guards joined the bus and told him it was safe to proceed.  The bus stopped after driving in just past the outer gate.  After a thorough inspection, it proceeded through the inner gate.

The bus came to a halt again and this time prison guards appeared in number to surround the bus.  As they were instructed to leave the bus, they were lined up.  A roll call was taken and each prisoner told his number and to remember it.  The guard then told them the main prison rules and that failure to follow any one of them would result in punishments of varying degrees.

16:36                03 November  [22:36  03 November GMT]

Exercise Yard, Reclusorio Norte Prison, Mexico City, Mexico.

The first three days in prison for Saeb were probably the hardest; he imagined that the same was probably true for Benjamin. 

Adjusting to life behind bars in your own land, amongst your own people, with foods you recognise and a language you understand is hard enough for most people.  However, prison in a foreign land, with people not like you, with unrecognisable foods, a language you do not speak is bad enough.  One, which also relies upon its inmates for a lot of its funding, is not for the faint of heart.  Theirs was just such a prison.  A prison for incarceration, with little hope of redemption or education for a better life.  Benjamin walked over and sat down next to Saeb.

'I've been thinking about what you said the other day.'  Benjamin said.

Saeb had outlined his idea that they should continue the negotiations.

'And?' replied Saeb.

'How do you see it working?'

'I see no reason,' Saeb continued, 'to change the way we were making progress.  It looks like we are going to have plenty of time here.'  Saeb chuckled at his own joke.

‘Go on.’  Benjamin urged, managing a weak smile. 

'We continue to set the ground work for negotiations.  A lot of the work has been done for us.  This is the location.  We start as soon as we can and finish whenever we want, before we die.'  He chuckled again.  'The who is you and I.  We can either do this or not.  We are here either way and at least we would have purpose.'

'We will need supplies.  Paper, pens, pencils, Maps.’  Benjamin offered by way of agreement.

'What we need' replied Saeb 'is money.  I don't know about you but I don’t have access to any more than I had on me and we have to pay rent on our cells, for our food, everything it seems.  Getting the supplies should be OK.  We need the money first though.'

Saeb couldn't help but let some of the desperation he felt creep into his voice.  Money had been on his mind for some time now, and he still didn't have a clue how to raise any.  It depressed him even further to realise that Benjamin was in the same position.

'What have we got that we could trade?' asked Saeb.

'What about ourselves?' replied Benjamin brightly.

'Well you can if you want but I'd rather die first!'

'No, no!’  Benjamin countered, 'I didn't mean anything like that, absolutely not.  But it seems to me that you and I are, how should I put it, experienced in both the defensive and offensive arts.  We, together, could provide protection, in exchange for money.'

'You mean a protection racket.'  Saeb couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice.

'No, I mean a genuine service.  We cannot be the only innocent people in here.  One or more of them may feel threatened; we protect them and get paid.  Call us Soldiers of Fortune.'

'OK' replied Saeb, convinced.  'Soldiers of Fortune it is.  So how do we find someone who wants protection?'

'We shall watch the new arrivals.  God will provide.'

17:40 
              04 November  [17:40  04 November GMT]

The Dining Room, The Branchflower Clinic, Cambridge, England.

John was entering his fourth week in the clinic when Eddie joined him and the other patients for dinner.  John just assumed that Eddie was after a “free” meal.  As the dishes of the main course were cleared the lights dimmed, and the patients and staff started up a rousing course of “Happy Birthday” to both Eddie and John.  John looked at Eddie knowing without doubt that this was his idea, he also noticed something that suggested that Jane was in on it too.

After the last of the birthday cake was finished Eddie went to his car and returned with a large pile of clothes, a carton of cigarettes and some cash for John.  They ventured outside to sit in the Smoking Hut, and after passing on the birthday wishes from their parents Eddie asked John about the accident again. 

John recounted the details of the explosion, how he was still at a loss to explain it and the speed and the unusual offer from his Research Angel.

'What does unlimited mean?’  Eddie asked.

'That' replied John, 'was a question I asked.  Apparently, the Research Angel is with one of the biggest and soundest banks in Switzerland and when the vice-chancellor inquired, he was told simply that all costs in my research would be met, professional and personal.  All of them, without question.'

'You should get a Ferrari.'  Eddie quipped.  'I could get you a great deal on a second-hand one, not that you would need a great deal, heck I might double the price and get one for myself.'

John's tutting brought Eddie back from his daydream. 

'I need to know what happened Eddie, I really need to know.'

'OK little bro' talk me through what you were doing.'  Eddie replied.

'Well,' John began 'the experiment is run on a purpose built machine, and believe me you could buy a fleet of Ferraris for what it cost, several fleets in fact.  It provides a small reservoir, around four cubic millimetres, into which is placed some finely ground gold ore.  It is pressurised to ten thousand atmospheres, cooled to minus two hundred and fifty degrees Celsius, and subjected to an intense electromagnetic field.  It was the field that I ramped up to maximum on the last run, when it exploded.'

'OK' said Eddie, 'what could have caused the explosion?'

'That's just it I don't know.'  

Eddie smiled and continued.

'I don't care what you know or don't know; I just want to know what could have caused such an explosion.'

There it lay before them both; the truth was that John hadn't been thinking straight. 

'Let's make a list shall we?' offered Eddie.

They went down the list, when a thought occurred to John. 

'You know,' he said to Eddie, 'there wasn’t any heat, none.'

'Is that important?' asked Eddie. 

John told him it was and that it meant that most of the explosion types on the list could be excluded for that very reason. 

'It comes back to pressure' John told Eddie 'but the chamber was only four cubic millimetres.  At ten thousand atmospheres, that’s forty thousand cubic millimetres, which is a cube roughly three and a half centimetres on each side.  That’s smaller than a cricket or baseball.  There’s no way that could have removed the quarter of a ton of solid steel that was broken from the machine and went through the wall.'

John remembered the hole in the wall and the fact that the quarter ton block of steel from the machine had been angled slightly downwards and had therefore buried itself in the ground, otherwise the result to the cafeteria would have been devastating.  He lit another cigarette and drew on it heavily. 
Something
, John told himself,
had impacted on the wall of the chamber with enough force to smash a solid forged steel machine table into two pieces.
  He couldn’t see how anything in the chamber could have done it.  Even if the elements in the chamber had reacted with one another, they couldn’t have gained enough momentum nor had enough mass to do the damage.  However, he also had to admit that the force of the explosion was localised in the chamber so it had definitely originated there.

'So,' he announced to Eddie, vocalising his thoughts 'what I have is a large explosion, with no heat, originating from the test chamber where nothing in it could have caused it.'