Solomon's Keepers (20 page)

‘Christ!’ Shaw whispers.

‘This is what you pay for,’ Brodzky says softly. Shaw walks closer, standing by the exposed abdomen of an obviously female form.

‘So this is the Medipac, huh?’

Brodzky is at his side and reaches forward to open the pod by lifting a hemispherical plastic lid.

‘Medipac Seven. Of course, the final version will be internal but this is just to allow us to manipulate the device.’ So saying, he plucks at a turgid sac which comes away on a transparent plastic umbilical cord. ‘A complete monitoring and management system miniaturised and equipped for remote handling. More technology in this little pod than the average ICU. Your people call it the minibar.’

For once in his life Shaw is glad to turn to administrative detail and to conclude his tour with an examination of the laboratory records system. Brodzky says he’s arranged for Shaw to meet the data manager, Isaac Penge, but he’s late and so they sit in the electronic arctic of the data centre amongst basking grey computer cabinets under gently humming white light.

‘While we’re waiting for Penge, I can show you some of the features. All the resources are monitored electronically and the life signs data are captured on computer. Every intervention is noted with the time, the member of staff and the procedure. The building is intelligent and records every entry and exit for every room.

So this is you,’ Brodzky says, typing Shaw’s visitor number into the machine, ‘…and here you are now.’ The screen shows a column of entries that follow his progress through the building. ‘We can put you on to map view,’ Shaw becomes a flashing dot in a plan of the complex, ‘and we can highlight the areas to which you have access.’ The plan turns into green and red boxes. ‘As you see, there are various places we cannot go.’

‘And if I didn’t have a badge but got in there?’

‘Your body functions would light up our systems like a beacon. There would be an alert within a half second of entry. But I can assure you that you wouldn’t get in. Our security is very tight indeed. As I’m sure you know, this facility is regularly security audited by your people.

Shaw leans forward in his plastic bucket chair and puts his elbows on his knees.

How about stuff going out?

Brodzky pauses. ‘We have RF asset tracking on everything that comes in here even down to surgical instruments. If I do this…’ Brodzky’s fingers perform a tattoo of the keys and a screen display headed Medipac comes up. ‘…here…you can see the entire Medipac inventory on site.’

The screen shows a table with every device listed by serial number and giving its location and status.

‘You’re pretty handy with this Doctor Brodzky. I’m impressed.’

Brodzky shakes his head. ‘Oh no, you’d need to get Penge to take you through it. I have only a rudimentary grasp. Is there anything in particular you’d like to cover?’

‘What happened with the guy who died here – the one who was brought here after the shooting incident?’

Brodzky seems unsurprised. ‘It was very unfortunate. He had actually made a good general physical recovery. The indications were good. Despite signs of disruption to the Solomon functionality, indications of trauma, we hoped to be able to save his life. In the end it proved impossible.’

‘What happened, exactly?’

‘Subarachnoid haemorrhage – bleeding inside the brain – blood loss from an aneurysm. When you’re dealing with Solomon resources you have to take into account that the control of the body is different. Solomon uses encoded reframing techniques to enable the individual to go beyond normal limits – to perceive their capabilities differently – to create a more powerful and determined version of themselves – but of course the physical stresses are real. The Medipac intervention will assist to a point but you can never know where the absolute limits are. It seems he was unlucky. Probably a pre-existing weakness. The damage was done.’

‘A brain haemorrhage?’

‘Indeed. It’s all in my theatre notes. There was a complete audit and a report at the time – in fact two reports because they did another one about a month later – someone else from your side – but a medical doctor that time. No doubt you’ve read them. There was an alert. I diagnosed a haemorrhage. It was clear we needed to act immediately and we did. But I’m afraid we quickly realised we were fighting a losing battle. We reached the situation where brain function could only have been maintained by artificial means. I had to make the decision – no longer really a medical decision.’

‘You mean a decision under the Solomon protocol? The point of no return?’

‘Indeed. And so we followed the specified procedures – to remove the Solomon device and have the body destroyed. Cremated. Process and procedure. It was all spelt out very clearly. Stupid.

What, not necessary, you mean?

Such a waste. All opportunity for learning closed off. What’s the risk of exposure here? It was the same with some of the early cases. Paranoia turned into policy.’

And their families?

Brodzky meets Shaw’s eyes. ‘Ashes are ashes. They knew what they signed up to.’

I see. So there’s a medical emergency. You had to act fast – you took the decision alone, you said.

Yes and no. It was the middle of the night and I did what I had to do – with no recourse to any external assistance. But of course all the facilities here. Which is a better environment than anywhere else, of course. I have everything here, everything. But for the decision – I had already received a very unambiguous briefing from the officer they sent to watch him, Lieutenant Danvers. She made it clear what should happen under specific circumstances we were likely to encounter, that we were to observe the Solomon protocol and that, now the programme had transferred, this individual would not be considered a case for any overrides for further research. Your people were taking no chances on a non-US national they hadn’t really wanted on board in the first place. The clinical decision was not the difficulty. I imagine the intricacies of that situation might be more intelligible to you as a lawyer than to me. My understanding was that a deceased Solomon resource, this resource in particular, was a liability to be removed as soon as possible. That is what happened.’

‘Danvers wasn’t present?’

‘She had returned to The States. She found little to do here and there was…some pretext or other, something that required her attention.’

‘You didn’t get on?’

‘This is a specialist unit. What we do is world class and unique. It is a grown up business. What could she bring?’

‘And so you destroyed the body, you cremated him and returned the Solomon device to Belvoir. As you had to do.’

‘Yes. The device was returned whole and untouched and the body cremated and pulverised.’

‘Taking no chances.’

‘That’s the idea. They didn’t want identification by the teeth. You’re the lawyer.’

‘But there was a DNA test I read about – in Belvoir. How did they do that?’

‘Yes – traces on the device itself. The priority was to despatch it. A quick clean – but there would have been some traces…some blood adhering. So they got a little blood on their hands after all – after all that effort to stay clean.’

The silence that follows as Shaw digests this is interrupted by the arrival of a slim, balding man who turns out to be Penge. Brodzky excuses himself and hands over to the younger man. Penge holds out a drooping hand to be shaken, or perhaps kissed.

‘Isaac Penge,’ he says in a borrowed bass voice. ‘Data and things administrative, ancient and modern. Sorry I missed your arrival. Circumstances, in the form of a skills updating course and the exigencies of air traffic control, conspired to take me away over the last few days and return me late today. Dr Brodzky is very keen for me to keep up with the latest techniques. I hope I shall be slightly more useful to you as a result.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Penge.’

Shaw already knows that Isaac Penge had postponed, probably permanently, his post-graduate studies in medieval history in order to earn some money as a contractor managing the databases and procedures of this facility. He begins by asking him to explain the administrative system and the way that the information is held. Penge calls it the architecture. It is stupendously boring and Penge’s sonorous rumbling voice makes it all the more soporific. Shaw comes to at the point where Penge seems to be repeating the overview of the security and monitoring system that Brodzky had already covered. ‘The computer keeps an up to date record of each member of staff, resource or visitor. It can tell where every single one is at any time. Here is a list.’ He prods the keyboard a couple of times. ‘No, sorry, you have to enter the ID number, there. So you see you are Shaw, John, then the date and number 9. We enter that here and…there you are.’ The screen shows a panel with a column for each room in the complex. Penge puts his finger to the screen to show their respective ID numbers. I can pick you up and flip to follow your visit…like this.’

‘And there’s a map view that shows where I can go, isn’t there?’ Shaw adds, close to sleep.

‘Mmm, you could be right,’ says Penge.

‘And this is all stored is it? You’d be able to look me up in say three months and still see where I went?’

‘Oh yes, it all gets archived. I can show you, for example where I was…let’s say…the same day last year.’

Shaw gives him another idea. He asks him to go to the date that Rees died.

‘Show me what happened that night. Show me who was where.’

Penge’s fingers peck slowly and a dialogue box comes up. Penge taps in the date, twice, messing it up the first time. The columns come up. Shaw can see the entries that time stamp Brodzky’s movements through the building.

‘It’s a bit confusing. Talk me through it.’

Penge double clicks on Brodzky and selects an option to show progress. ‘So here he is. I see what’s going on. The first entry on that date is actually him leaving. This is his car being logged out of the car park at 12.04. He left just after midnight. Typical Jozef. Then he’s back at 02.48. See the flag there – he was auto-paged at 02.11. That’s a system alarm he’d have set. If you check that reference – if I right click that, no, if I go to options and then select ID – there it is. You see? Rees. And if we switch back…Here he is back in the car park and again at the security doors – where we came in…’

‘So he was paged automatically and came back in at two-thirty in the morning?’

‘That’s right. Middle of the night.’

‘On his own?’

Penge flicks through another series of options and a different list pops up. ‘Looks like he was joined by two others. That would be the surgical standby team. It looks like more but they to and fro a bit – probably brought some equipment in.’

‘Can you show Rees?’

Rees’s final hours at the hospital flip up on screen. ‘Yep, there’s the alarm. I don’t know what that code is; Dr Brodzky would have to tell you – heart rate, bloods, could be any of a number of things that he’d have set up. He sort of does that side of it himself. Then here he is moving out of his room and you see him going into B1 – that’s theatre. See there? I’m afraid these data seem rather meagre when one thinks…’

‘And what are these other entries below?’

‘Well, the tag is still running. So what you see here is, I’m afraid, after they’ve done all they can and the poor chap’s body is being moved to a spare room and then…I’d guess the tag was taken off there. This code looks like an asset tag. I think he’s logged the tag to the…er equipment they removed. If there’s a possibility of reuse or some tests required or some such then that’s what happens. I’m not sure what that code is.’

Are there spares? You have a stock of, say, the Solomon circuits themselves?

God, loads of everything. Dr Brodzky goes ape if anything runs out. There is so much experimentation all the time.

‘I suppose you can’t…or do you keep a track of the bodies…?’

Penge looks at him as though considering a mordant joke. He decides against it. ‘The medical side of the system is really more of a monitoring application than, er, stock control. All this RF stuff is really about tracking the kit. I’m afraid there’s rather more emphasis on the silicon than on the carbon, if I could put it that way.’

‘What happened next?’

‘To The body? There’d be a sign off to move him. But he’s off this system once he’s separated from the asset itself.’

‘So the system is tracking the circuit from that point on, right?’

‘That’s right. It was signed out of our inventory. The code, there. The next day. If we open the flag…there…that means it was dispatched off site. I believe it would have gone to your people in Virginia. We don’t have it any more: you do.’

‘And the people – on that night. Can we see them all leave?’

‘Yes. We can go down to the main exit, here. Looks like the backup leaves around five. Brodzky stays on. I don’t see him leave. Ah – there he goes – not till nearly seven. No wonder he takes the next day off.’

Eighteen

‘Good evening, Eva, my name is Euan Summer. I am calling from Network One in London. I understand you have some information regarding KomViva? I’m an assistant to Mr. Matzov. I’ll make sure it gets dealt with in the right way.’

Eva feels a sudden scampering in her guts.

‘Hello,’ she says.

‘Mr. Matzov is away at the moment but I will try to help you. It’s Eva Aguilar, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ she says.

‘Great, well, Eva, I appreciate your getting in touch. Why don’t you fill me in on what this is all about and we’ll take things from there?’

‘I know who KomViva is. I want to talk to him.’

There’s a brief pause at the other end. ‘I see. Well, I guess a lot of people would like to do that. He’s a very popular figure, a pretty busy one too. He’s travelling right now. I’d certainly be happy to relay a message to him…’ He pauses but Eva doesn’t speak. She’s thinking about the way he had used her surname. She hadn’t given it. She’d like to think that meant Rees had told them and was sending a message back but she realises that it probably means they have checked her out. The mobile number would have been enough to get them started.

‘If you can tell me what you want to talk about, I’ll see what I can do. Just as a matter of fact there is an email address that you can always use to send a message to him and I can guarantee you that it will be read. What I can’t do is just hook you up to speak to him directly but I can…’

‘That’s a shame. I thought I left a clear enough message. It doesn’t sound as though I’m being taken very seriously. I said I know who he is. I know where he came from. I gave a specific indication, an initial, just so we could avoid any of this messing around. I think Reuben Matzov would appreciate what that means. Perhaps it doesn’t have the same significance for you.’

‘Well, I handle a lot of important things for Mr. Matzov. He trusts me to work out what is and isn’t significant. We get a lot of people speculating and coming up with all sorts of theories and identities for KomViva that they try out on us. It’s sport for a lot of journalists too. So I’m sure you’ll understand that we have to be cautious. But I’m calling you now so why don’t you tell me what it is that you know, or at least think you know?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Do I know him? Yes of course. I don’t have dealings with him personally but I know who he is…’

‘If you don’t deal with him personally then I don’t see how you will help me. I need to speak to him. I’m not interested in anything else. It’s a personal matter. Do you understand? Is that such a peculiar request?’

‘Eva, we both know that the peculiar thing here is the nature of KomViva itself. It has its own ground rules and one of them is strict secrecy. Everyone on the team has to make their peace with that. No contact. They all had a choice. But you’re talking to a senior executive and I’ll do my best to help you. It looks as though you’re on a trail that others have been on before. I’m afraid it’s not a trail that anyone is really going to gain anything from following.’

‘I see. I repeat, I know who KomViva really is and I want to speak to him. Are you going to facilitate that?’

Another pause.

‘Eva, a number of people have been convinced as to who KomViva really is. There are some reasons people form these views that may be worth explaining to you. Each has been entirely convinced and yet none has been right. It’s actually a syndrome we’re quite familiar with and can explain. Remember that the experience of KomViva is mediated by your own mind. Where strong emotions are concerned the mind is a powerful tool. It plays an active role in creating the experience, in bringing its own desires. Perhaps if you tell me more about what you think then I can comment.’

‘I don’t think. I know! I know who he is. I want to speak to him. If it makes it easier I’ll tell you that I don’t want to blow his cover. I have no interest in doing that – unless I can’t speak to him otherwise.’

‘And what is it that makes you so convinced you know who he is?’

‘That’s my business. I don’t think you’d have called unless you knew I was right. All I want to know is whether you’re going to let me speak to him.’

‘Eva, I think you should know that you are going over some old ground. I can’t elaborate over the phone but I will say this: It’s not that you’re right. You’re not. It’s that you’re wrong for the same reasons as some others before you. We have people barking up the wrong tree every day of the week and we’re cool with it – but you’re falling in with a particular conspiracy theory that has already been dealt with and which has necessitated legal action and some severe steps by the governments both here and in the US. There are some things…things which have nothing to do with us but which seem connected…that must remain secret. And if that doesn’t daunt you I suspect you’ll care more about the unnecessary distress to the family concerned. I think we both know what I’m talking about. Now, let me ask you one thing, Eva. Have you shared your beliefs with anyone else? I hope not with the family? Perhaps with – shall I call him your friend R’s – former colleagues?’

‘If I get an explanation as to what the hell is going on then I won’t need to.’

‘Good. Because I can tell you that Mr. Matzov himself took a close personal interest in all aspects of the case and he wants to help you. I can assure you the story has not got a scrap of truth to it. However, if you mean what you say and this is a personal quest then I can let you see for yourself that you’re mistaken.’

‘I’m mistaken? Categorically – I’ve got the wrong person? It’s not…R?’

‘Absolutely not. You’re not the first to make that mistake, Eva. I’m sorry. I can’t bring him back but I can help you lay that story to rest, unequivocally, if you want.’

‘How?’

‘I’m sorry to stress this – but for legal reasons I have to – if this really is personal – and if you can convince me that you are acting alone and that we are solely concerned with helping you settle something in your own mind about your private life…if this is not a foraging exercise for some other motive – then we’ll have you meet the real KomViva. You’ll very quickly be able to verify what I’m saying. But I must warn you not to fool around if this is all about getting the inside story on who he really is. You may think you know what you’re dealing with but I assure you that you don’t. It is not Network One that is being protected here. Mr. Matzov is a very generous man on personal issues. He also understands this situation better than you ever will.’

‘And if I’m not convinced?’

‘You will be.’

‘OK, so how do we do it?’

‘I give you a time and a place. All you do is sign a standard undertaking when we meet that you will not publish or convey to anyone else anything of our meeting or anything you learn in it or anything about your views as to the identity of KomViva or why you might hold them. Is that clear?’

‘You’ll email me this undertaking?’

‘No – that’s what we’d do if you were working professionally. This will need to be entirely off the record and at no point will we mention any names. No silliness. No telling friends and family or anyone else anything about it.’

‘When can we do this?’

‘I’ll have to fit it into the schedule. Can I confirm with you on this number?’

All Eva is thinking is that she can get a closer look at KomViva. She can feel her doubts stirring under his confident offer to lay the story to rest.

‘Yes, um…when will you know?’

‘I’ll call you within 48 hours with details of what to do. It’s a personal favour from Mr. Matzov. The KomViva schedule is not common knowledge and if it leaks it will have to change and we’ll call everything off. Now, we need to be assured that you come alone, you tell no one about this conversation. Anything at all on this, anything and we call it off.’

She manages to say OK before the tears come.

‘Thanks again for getting in touch. I’m sorry it won’t be the outcome you’d hoped for – but at least we can clear something up. I’ll look forward to meeting you.’

She puts the phone down. She can’t be sure now.

Yes she can.

‘You lying bastard.’