The Bergamese Sect (29 page)

‘
I’m not sure.’

There was a moment’s silence. A calm look came over Clara. Her blue eyes were dazzling. ‘I’m sorry about all this, Matt,’ she said. ‘I don’t enjoy seeing you suffer because of our aims, and I wish you were able to grasp the importance of this. But I can’t let this mystery man get away.’ She pointed up the trail. ‘That disk up there. It’s the only thing that gives us hope. Hope that we’ll find the truth. We’ve got to find out where this man is. When we do, you can make up your own mind. If you still think we’re crazy, then that’s fine.’

Smiling, she stood, adjusted her backpack and walked off up the trail. ‘C’mon,’ she called back, ‘we need to get there before dark.’

Matt began to stand but Henric reached out, placing a hand on his arm, gesturing to wait. When Clara had put twenty yards between them, he took his hand away.

‘
Take it easy with Clara, Matt,’ he said softly. ‘There’s something not quite right there. Obsession can make people do drastic things. She seems to be cracking under the pressure, becoming unstable. Keep your head down and you’ll be out of this nightmare before you know it. Don’t get yourself shot over a difference of opinion.’ Henric stood quickly, emphasised his words with a stern expression and walked off.

Matt watched them ascending the trail. He turned and looked back from where they’d come. The trees were thick along the path, but on the other side of the stream, long grass covered the ground, the peaks pulling up from the greenery beyond.

As he watched, through a gap between the trees, something moved. It was distant, perhaps a mile or more down the valley, and only just noticeable. Something dark, a spot of black against the lush vegetation. It was a person, perhaps two, moving slowly along the track.

Matt jumped up, turned, about to shout at the others, to warn them of approaching danger. But he stopped. The figures were probably backcountry walkers, or skiers hiking up to the snow-covered upper reaches of the valley. It was still summer, the mountains full of vacationers.

Matt looked back down the trail, but the figures had gone.

Chapter 17

The landscape was like a circuit board, the miniscule workings of a microprocessor. Or some sort of bacterial rash. Hamlets, spots of life, spreading wildly, uncontrollably over the checkerboard of cultivation.

A vast expanse of sunlit Earth filled half of Castro’s vision. The other half was an enormous grey wing; its tip bobbing in the rushing turbulence, the sturdy metal taught as it held the huge aircraft aloft. Heavy jet engines dangled below, exhaling a noisy belch that billowed into a rush of steam.

Some way off Castro spotted a large town, the complexity of its construction lost in the distance. Dark arteries snaked from it; roads lined with trees, a canal that flashed in the glare of the sun, the thin brown line of a rail network. The vast golden fields that surrounded the town were stained with brown scorch-like patches.

Directly below, the land was vivid in the light of the afternoon sun. But with growing distance a milky white haze gathered in strength, dimming and blurring the world until its features were lost in a purple gaseous strip beneath a clear sky.

The dark band of the horizon caught Castro’s attention. Something in its geometry seemed strange. He’d been staring at it for ten minutes, but only now did he realise that which faintly bothered him. The horizon wasn’t a straight line. It was almost unnoticeably, but quite definitely, curved.

Suddenly the gravity of that fact rushed in on him. In an instant, he saw, not just a foreign land slipping away beneath him, but an entire planet. Planet Earth; a solid, limited object; a feeble object he could almost reach out and weigh in his palm, cradling it like a handful of sand scooped from the shore.

Everything he knew was contained in that handful. Loves, hatreds, aspirations, his eternal quest. It seemed all of it, his entire existence, could be placed in his outstretched palm. The enormity, the complexity of the planet made him feel small, insignificant, worthless.

The sky above was dark, the plane flying high above the dulling water vapour. It seemed almost too dark to be real.

He was half way to space. A short hop and he’d be in an environment few humans had experienced. A place devoid of gas, full of dangerous energies.

And from there he’d see the reality of the human situation. Fleeting existences, forgotten within three or four generations, meaningful only to those who lived them. Seven billion lives that came and went, like summer showers. He was cruising above a mote of dust in a colossal universe. And in every direction the cosmos was fanning out to unlimited depths – silent, dark, foreboding. The mystery of it was soul wrenching.

That’s why mankind deluded himself, gave himself importance. It was the worst fallacy of the human mind, the greatest expression of the species’ ego. But Castro was as shackled to that conceit as anyone. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t change that. Even clinging to the rationalisation of science didn’t prevent him from succumbing to the desire for explanation, the need for a sense of belonging.

He tried to put his faith in that science, to embrace its conclusions. It told him to reject any notion that he had a special place in the universe. He was just an accident of chemistry.

But it also gave him another certainty. Certainty that man wasn’t a lone voice in the inky stillness. The vastness of the sky demanded it. The primeval slime was spread thickly, like mud splattered from the wheels of a speeding truck. A rich infestation of life, countless beings on countless worlds, pondering the same eternal questions.

But civilisations could come and go, sparking into existence for only a brief time, like a swarm of fireflies with no two ever flashing in unison. Innumerable worlds whispering greetings, but one after another, never hearing each other’s call from the depths.

Castro sighed, rested his head on the Perspex window. These speculations were far removed from the possibility that haunted his life.

Visitation.

The vastness above, the very thing that gave certainty to extra-terrestrial life, also denied it congress. The distance, the limitation of physical laws, conspired to keep them apart. The investment in energy, in lifetimes, was surely beyond them. It was that which made Castro a sceptic. It wasn’t the conceit of man that stopped him believing. It was the truth of science.

And that science was often flouted. Castro had read all the hype – von Daniken, Velikovsky and all the other charlatans. One of them was a fraud and the others couldn’t even grasp the basic tenets of good scientific investigation. The language they used, the corrupt deduction, the reverse engineering of facts, the plain fallacious or erroneous statements they made. The dismissal of ancient abilities, inspiration and ingenuity.

None of it denounced. It astounded him, angered him.

He remembered a challenge Allan Kennedy had given him; write the book that proved him wrong. He’d love to do that. If only he had the time, the patience, the will. It would run to three volumes.

But no amount of rationalisation could extinguish the one thing Castro knew to be true. That he had experienced something extraordinary; that demanded solution.

He suddenly felt a wave of claustrophobia sweep through him. The cosmos was floating past the window, and he was stuck inside a flimsy metal tube, fragile and insignificant. The truth seemed further away now than ever.

Reflexively, Castro sucked in a gasp of air. The claustrophobia was condensing into panic. Helplessness, confusion, and, Castro suddenly realised, a gaping loneliness.

In that baking desert, a part of his soul had been ripped out. But the rest of it had left with Holly and the kids. His longing to be with them churned his stomach, deflated him.

With a smile that brought more light to the world than a sunrise, Castro saw his daughter’s face. The gleam of her eyes that could mean mischief, deceit, frustration, longing or simply love. Her laughter that brimmed over, filling everyone with an indescribable lust for living. The perfect cherub-like snub of her nose, the spider-thread softness of her hair, the sweet bedtime whispers of ‘one more kiss, Daddy’. Her fragile innocence, her inquisitiveness, the sheer determination in her expression.

She was the most precious thing in Castro’s life. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms, instil in her all the greatest qualities of her race, imbue her with grace, beauty, charm, compassion, intelligence. He wanted to cloak her in the warmest certainty that she was loved, needed. That she was immeasurably more than a speck of dust in an infinite void.

The pain of their separation was an injustice. The longing was like a knife in Castro’s chest, the tears almost lapping over the brim of his emotions.

He glared at the sky again, but the cruel vastness just stared back.

―
§ ―

There was a tap on Castro’s shoulder. He turned back from the window.

Armin Koestler was looking at him quizzically. Beyond the German, a flight attendant was smiling, her hand poised over a tower of plastic cups.

‘
What would you like to drink?’ she asked in a southern drawl. She adjusted the coverall over her dark blue United Airlines uniform, brushed her long blonde hair out of her face, which was heavily smeared with cracking pink cosmetic.

Koestler continued to stare, sipping on the cup of red wine the attendant had just poured him.

‘
Er…, Jack Daniels please, and an orange juice.’

The attendant handed Castro the drinks with an attractive gesture and pushed her cart off down the aisle.

‘
Are you okay?’ Koestler asked.

‘
Sure.’

‘
You seem a bit distracted.’

‘
Sorry, I’m just tired.’ Castro sniffed.

The German flicked open the in-flight magazine and began to browse.

Castro felt an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. After that phone call to Italy, learning of Lanza’s unfortunate death, his
murder
, he’d almost confessed his worst nightmares to Koestler. He’d wanted to reach out to another human being, ask for protection, reassurance. Even though that human was a complete stranger.

He’d almost done it, but stopped. The implications of that confession were too fantastic, its madness still too vague.

The two men hadn’t talked much during the two days they’d been together. Perhaps they’d needed that time for trust to germinate. Honesty, openness were only a later part of the process. First had to come understanding, familiarity, an insight into each man’s motivation. Those two days had given them that insight, and Castro now sensed Koestler was hungry for explanation. But the prospect made him nervous.

He made a grab for the miniature bottle of Jack Daniels, sloshed it into the plastic cup and took a sip.

Koestler looked up from the magazine, sighed and stuffed it back in the pocket. ‘So, David,’ he said, ‘I think we should talk.’

‘
Sure,’ Castro answered.

‘
I’ll tell you what I know. And then you can explain why you’re after Schlessinger.’

Castro paused. ‘Okay,’ he said.

‘
I told you about my suspicions about the Schlessinger documents,’ Koestler began. ‘That they were fakes. And that I started getting threatening phone calls. Well, this was about eighteen months ago now. I decided to leave Germany for a while to research my book. I began by looking at declassified documents in London, mainly ULTRA intercepts, messages between German radio stations that were decrypted by the British intelligence services at Bletchley Park. Most of it was irrelevant to my work, but I did find a few messages that mentioned the officers I was interested in. Then, quite by chance, I came across something very interesting involving the name Schlessinger. It was a translator’s report of a radio message intercepted in early May 1945, just as the fighting was ending in Europe. It seemed to originate from a control centre in German-occupied Austria, but had no indication of its intended recipient. Some of the code groups weren’t recovered by the interception and the translator had struggled with some of the words. He thought the message had been sent hurriedly or by an inexperienced operator. Anyway, the main body of the message was intact.’

‘
What did it say?’

‘
Not much. It read ‘the
metusor
is recovered, request salvation, Schlessinger’. Of course, what grabbed my attention was the name. And that strange word Schlessinger had used in his diaries.’

Castro repeated the message to himself. He understood part of it; Schlessinger was referring to the de Morillo portrait. He had recovered it and was letting someone know. Why was this painting so important?

Koestler took a sip of wine. ‘I had no idea what this message meant but was intrigued, naturally. I took copies of the documents and went on to Washington. In the US, I put in some requests for wartime documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Again, I was interested in my other subjects, but just in case, I also asked for anything relating to the name Schlessinger. I didn’t expect to find anything, but two documents turned up. The first of these was surprising. It was a communiqué to Allied Command in Austria, dated 25th May 1945. It was a request to divisional commanders currently processing surrendered troops. It said the US government wanted Schlessinger apprehended alive, protected and escorted back to the US.’

Castro’s expression widened. ‘So someone was after Schlessinger at the end of the war. Perhaps he had some expertise the Allies were keen to get hold of. Like Von Braun and his rocket technology. Many German nationals were escorted back to the US. They put us on the Moon!’

‘
That’s right. But why Schlessinger? He wasn’t a brilliant engineer, a scientist, or even a military strategist. I can’t see why they’d want him. Anyway, that wasn’t the strangest part.’

‘
No?’ Castro said, frowning. He took another gulp of Jack Daniels.