The Bergamese Sect (3 page)

‘
Mr Campbell,’ Castro began, but the farmer raised a hand to silence him.

‘
Eat first, then talk,’ he said pointedly.

Castro hadn’t tasted food like that for years. The waffles were heaven and the maple syrup pure nectar. He had four, swilling them down with strong coffee. He felt deeply satisfied. Campbell also ate heartily. His wife continued to work around the kitchen, tidying and cleaning, completely uninvolved with the visitor. When he’d finished, the farmer pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He took a long gulp of coffee.

‘
Right, feller,’ he said, ‘whaddya want?’

Castro watched him for a few seconds. In the last six months, there’d been many men like Campbell. Most were charlatans, many insane, but just occasionally one of them spoke with a conviction that only Castro could sense. Their words invited him to believe, to continue his search for explanations. But always there was so much missing. Tangible evidence always eluded him. The link that took his experiences out of the mind and into reality never came from these men. Few of them were concerned with the truth. They had enough to cope with just living with the memories. But one day the right words had to come from a man like Campbell. That was the only hope Castro had left.

Castro put his coffee cup down. ‘I read your story in the newspapers,’ he said. ‘I experienced something similar. I’m trying to find out what happened to me and I’d just like to ask you some questions.’

Campbell nodded as he turned and signalled his wife for more coffee.

‘
You see, there’s something in your story I’m particularly interested in.’

‘
Go on,’ said Campbell. The farmer was watching Castro intently, perhaps still not convinced of his motives.

‘
Okay, the reports said you saw men that night.’

Campbell nodded. ‘Yes, there were men there, as well as the others.’

‘
Forget the others. It’s the men I’m interested in.’

Mrs Campbell returned to the table with a fresh pot of coffee. Castro thanked her and smiled. She smiled back and returned to the stove. The farmer poured them both a cup and took another gulp.

‘
I’d like you to tell me everything you can remember about those men,’ said Castro.

Campbell sucked his teeth and thought for a moment. He shook his head slightly. ‘They were jus’ men,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see their faces. They seemed to have somethin’ over their heads. It was very dark so I can’t be sure. They wore like plastic coats, dark blue, sort of transparent. I was lying down. Men came, and the others, but I couldn’t see what they were doing. There were like voices but I couldn’t understand them. Then I was alone, I don’t know for how long, but then the men came back and were doing something to my arm. I didn’t feel any pain but I could sense something, like a needle ya know, in my skin.’ The farmer was rubbing the crease of his elbow.

‘
How many men?’

Campbell thought for a moment. ‘I’m not sure, but I’d say at least three.’

Castro was intent on the farmer’s description. His eyes narrowed, recalling something he’d driven to the back of his memory. ‘Was there anything peculiar about them? I mean, would you recognise them if you passed them in the street?’

‘
No, I don’t think so. It was dark. So dark.’ Campbell looked distant, began playing with his knife.

‘
Did you see any part of them? Or were they completely covered?’

The farmer thought again for a few seconds, running a finger slowly around the rim of his empty cup. He looked up at the window, now glowing orange with the risen sun, and then back at Castro.

‘
Yeah,’ he said. ‘I could see their hands.’

‘
Their hands?’

Campbell nodded. ‘I saw them passing things to each other.’

‘
Okay, I want you to concentrate on that memory. Was there anything peculiar about their hands, anything that made them stick in your mind?’

Again the farmer paused, then said, ‘No.’ But suddenly he looked Castro straight in the eye, his lips pursed. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘yeah, there was somethin’. One of them was wearing a ring.’

‘
A ring?’ Castro repeated excitedly.

‘
Yes, on his little finger I think,’ said the farmer, grabbing his own finger while recalling the vision.

Castro felt a twinge of excitement. He stared back at Campbell, hoping the old man’s memory wouldn’t fail him. ‘Can you describe the ring?’ he said.

Campbell squinted as if he was trying to see into the distance. ‘It was a small silver ring. With, like, ya know, a symbol set into it.’

‘
You can remember that much detail?’ asked Castro, surprised.

‘
Yes, I remember now because I saw the symbol again later on.’

Castro jumped at the chance to pull the memory free of uncertainty. ‘What was the symbol?’

With no hesitation, the farmer answered, and as he did so, he drew a shape with his finger on the table, slowly and definitely.

‘
It was like a capital ‘e’, but with the horizontal strokes going both ways.’

Castro’s heart raced. He grabbed the man’s hand as he finished drawing the shape, pulled it toward him and looked hard at the farmer. Campbell was shocked at the sudden display of enthusiasm, pulled his hand away and stared back at Castro.

‘
Are you absolutely sure that was the symbol?’ Castro asked, quickly.

‘
Yes,’ Campbell replied without hesitation. A deep frown creased his brow.

‘
And you saw it more than once?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Had you ever seen that symbol before, or seen it since?’

‘
No, never.’

Castro sat back in his chair, almost breathless. He’d searched long and hard for the clue he needed – the tiniest shred of evidence that proved this was all real. With a few simple words, the ageing man by his side had saved his sanity. A definite link, something tangible, certain, corroborated.

Suddenly Castro felt an emotion uncommon to him – hope. He took a deep breath. Smiling, he reached for his coffee cup.

Chapter 2

Larry Walsh sat in his office on the eighth floor of the Masheder Building. It was evening, a little before nine. He felt uneasy. He’d got a nervous lump in his throat that afternoon and it was still there. Something important was spilling onto his desk and he didn’t like it. He rose and paced the floor, scratching his cheek. Returning to the desk, he moved the sheets of paper about, trying to see some order to them.

‘
Damn it,’ he said quietly, ‘where’s Petersen?’

Crossing to the window, he looked out across the capital. In the distance, the Washington Monument peeped above a dark line of trees. Below, the warm night was orange, lit up by traffic on Virginia Avenue.

The Masheder Building towered above the busy street, a geometric block of metal and concrete. Dark glass glinted on its four sides. Columns of thin steam blew steadily from the heating vents on the roof.

In the lobby, potted palms draped themselves over comfortable white leather chairs and a small fountain chattered away to itself. A blue-shirted guard read a magazine at reception, ignoring the array of security camera images that flashed in front of him. It was an average sort of office block with a dull list of occupants etched on the brass plate by the entrance door. By day, throngs of insurance brokers and financial consultants pored over their numbers in the dismal offices. But as they worked, a sinister purpose infested the arteries of Walsh’s workplace.

In the basement, a vast metal conduit fed countless optical fibres from the outside world to the eighth floor. An electronic highway protected by intelligent, evolving security systems. Through the fibres coursed information of every conceivable form. From every part of the globe. It gathered within some of the most complex software ever developed. Digital fingers felt back along the optical threads, searching the ever-changing global networks, monitoring every known gateway. Sniffing, probing, documenting.

The eighth floor of the Masheder Building was as close to The All-Knowing as electronics could get, but no hacker in the world was even aware of its existence. It was home to the National Security Agency. The
real
home of the NSA. Not the visibly guarded eavesdropping complex, the public face of deceit, over in Maryland. The
real
NSA hid away among the dull suits of Virginia Avenue, behind a plaque that read
East Michigan Electrics
.

Here, information ruled. Pulsating at the heart of the complex lay a virtual world of politics, commerce and conflict. A model of reality. And at the periphery of this universe of information sat the most sensitive, the most dangerous secrets of the civilised world. Here, decisions were made that even governments were not a party to. Decisions that could change the world in the blink of an eye. Here too, death could be ordered as easy as pizza.

The building was a temple of security. It made the inner echelons of the Pentagon look like a shopping mall. Millions of detectors, of every possible type, hid away among the pleasant façade – in the drinking fountains, the sanitary towel dispensers, in the tips of ballpoint pens. Every movement was monitored, motives checked, profiles calculated. The Masheder Building was almost organic, but the revolving door in the entrance lobby looked just like any other. The brokers and consultants filed through in blissful ignorance. The deception was perfect; the cover impenetrable.

Walsh left the window and came back to the desk cluttered with reports. The papers glared back at him, offering no solution.

‘
Shit!’ he said. ‘What’s this guy up to?’

He drummed his fingers on the desk in agitation. Not the normal kind of agitation that came with the territory, but a strange feeling that at any moment his control would slip away like an avalanche. All he had worked for was on the line and it made him feel sick. But he was careful to conceal his concerns. With the secrets in his charge, the slightest hint of indecision would see his rapid replacement. Even he, Assistant Director (Covert Operations) of the NSA, was painfully aware that retirement wasn’t a gold watch and a beach house at Chesapeake. Your career in this game ended when you lay dead, one way or the other.

A knock sounded at the door. It opened before Walsh had a chance to reply and a man dressed in a grey suit entered.

‘
Ah, Petersen, what the hell’s going on?’

The other man closed the door quietly and ran his fingers along the edge of a yellow file under his arm. He was tall and blonde, his forty or so years not yet turning the gold of his hair to ash, his features keen and angular. Looking at Walsh, a hint of resignation crossed his face.

‘
We identified the contact, about eight hours ago. London,’ he said, taking a seat in front of the desk.

Walsh also sat, brushing the papers into a pile at his side. He looked at Petersen expectantly. ‘Did you intercept?’

Petersen crossed his legs defensively and fingered the file again. ‘Afraid not,’ he admitted. ‘Two operatives killed; Andrews and his partner. And one subversive. We’ve now lost the target, though I don’t think they’ll get far.’ He threw the file on the desk.

Walsh cursed under his breath and stared at Petersen harshly. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘do we at least know who’s helping him?’

‘
No. We identified him only ten minutes after contact was made. It’s possibly a militant arm of NICAP, renegade APRO or CAUS, but we have no way of confirming that. But it’s more likely some other group; with similar aims. One we’re unaware of.’

Walsh pulled Petersen’s file across the desk and flicked through several pages. There were reams of thin yellow paper; yellow for the highest level of security. Each sheet was stamped in red with the word ‘Sebastian’ and each carried the NSA badge. He read a few paragraphs and started drumming his fingers again.

‘
I can’t see APRO or CAUS having the resources for this kind of operation, can you?’ he said.

Petersen raised his eyebrows. ‘Not really. I don’t think lawyers and mid-west cranks would be prepared to kill for the truth. These people are professionals.’

Walsh nodded his agreement. ‘What did the contact receive?’

‘
Well, we’ve got very little to go on there,’ replied Petersen. ‘It was planted by email, we know that for sure. But we don’t know its origin or what it contained. We were on the lookout for exactly this kind of transmission. We just didn’t catch the data as it went through.’

‘
So, you’re telling me we still know nothing about the whereabouts of Sebastian?’

‘
Nothing.’

Walsh turned to the reports again, leafing through them, turning a few sheets backwards and forwards. He gripped his forehead, squeezed his temples and sighed.

Petersen was one of his top men. He’d been years in the field; just a code name somewhere, feeding information into that global model, building the encyclopaedic intelligence resource. Now he was a trusted link in Walsh’s entourage, plugged in, like some human antenna, to the most powerful surveillance tool on the planet. Petersen was a master of digital espionage. But this time the trusted agent had failed to catch their prey.

Sebastian – a code word for Walsh’s worse nightmare. Within the NSA, Walsh was the only one who knew the real threat this man represented. Even his top men, Petersen included, were spared the full reality of Sebastian’s dangerous knowledge. But Walsh was cunning – he had to be. He frequently tested his charges, probing what they knew, protecting what they shouldn’t.

‘
What do
you
think he’s planted, Petersen?’ Walsh asked.

‘
Something important, I’m sure. At a guess, I’d say he’s trying to lead this group to him, safely. He wouldn’t risk a full disclosure remotely. That gives his claims no credence. You need the murder weapon, so to speak.’