Flashback

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘The ichor infests him,’ Saskia said, watching her guests eat. ‘It has become part of his body and his mind. He wants, I think, to die, but the ichor stops it.’

‘How?’ asked Hrafn.

‘Perhaps it can control his muscles,’ said Karel. ‘Just as Cory can control the factor.’

‘His magic wand is a separate issue,’ replied Hrafn. He seemed uncomfortable. Saskia knew that his scepticism had pushed him to the edge of the group. She touched her lip with a napkin. Now, she decided, was the time. She took a manila envelope, which had lain next to her empty plate since the meal began, and slid it across the table.

‘Hrafn, look at this. Read the addressee first.’

‘Just your name.’

‘OK. Open it.’

Hrafn checked Saskia’s expression, then shook a leather gauntlet free from the envelope.

Danny chuckled. To nobody in particular, he said, ‘Hand delivered, I see.’

‘Jesus, Saskia,’ said Jem. ‘If he knows we’re here, then we’re done for.’

Saskia said, ‘I don’t doubt that Cory has known, perhaps precisely, the location of each of us since the moment he rendered us unconscious and escaped the Bavarian National Forest.’ She lifted her wine and considered its colours in the light.

Karel and Danny shared a look of exasperation, and Jem stared fiercely at her plate. Only Hrafn appeared undisturbed. Saskia took a mouthful of the Chianti and smiled wetly; her raised eyebrow invited his questions.

‘You said this dacha had been abandoned,’ Hrafn said. ‘That it was untraceable.’

‘It was.’

‘And yet.’

‘Please,’ said Karel. His blue-bowed skewer lay unemployed. He turned it anticlockwise on his plate. ‘I am concerned, Saskia, that this conversation has a… layer, if you will, of half-truths. We have all made sacrifices. We deserve disclosure.’

‘Spit it out, Saskia,’ said Danny. ‘Is this the glove that Cory took from the captain of the Star Dust?’

She turned to Hrafn, who seemed to debate whether he should handle the glove. Finally, he took it. He rubbed the stitching. ‘The workmanship is similar to that of old flying gloves,’ he said. ‘The liner is silk, for example. But there’s no label.’

‘You are correct, Danny,’ said Saskia. ‘That glove was worn by Commander Cook.’

Hrafn cleared his throat.

‘Do you still doubt, Thomas?’ she asked.

‘Thomas, excuse me, was the only disciple with any sense,’ he replied. ‘I want to be sure. I can accept that some distortion of memory has occurred. We have Jem’s example of that. But I’ll believe Cory’s story when I see empirical evidence of it.’

Danny replaced his wine glass loudly. ‘What other evidence is there apart from the empirical?’

‘The logical,’ said Hrafn, looking at Saskia, challenging her. ‘That which we can derive.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Danny. ‘You’ve been booted off the investigation and you’re grumpy. We understand that. But you’re taking your scepticism too far.’

‘Am I? Did that man Cory not strike you as a zealot, Danny? Turn on the television. Listen to the myths we weave for our terrorists. What do we have here but a fabrication? He was obsessed by a song called Stardust, composed by Hoagy Carmichael. Shall I name another of Carmichael’s compositions?’

‘What?’

‘Georgia On My Mind,’ said Hrafn. He paused to let the guests consider his words. ‘Was Cory ever Georgian? It could be bullshit, just a handful of ideas thrown together. It’s what spies call a ‘legend’, no more genuine than the Englishman Wilberforce or the German Wittenbacher.’ Hrafn stared at them all. ‘Cory left us with words, nothing more.’

No-one said anything. Hrafn had touched the heart of their anxiety: that the fictions were deeper, more fundamental than even Cory knew. The silence drew on until Hrafn lowered his eyes to the table. There was something apologetic in the tilt of his head.

Quietly, Jem said, ‘You only had words from me.’

‘And we believe you,’ said Hrafn. His face softened. ‘Absolutely.’

‘And me?’ asked Saskia. Another silence greeted this. Saskia let them wait. She was as indifferent as a teacher duty-bound to deliver a bitter lesson. ‘Your perception is correct. Cory’s identity was undoubtedly constructed by Jennifer Proctor. Who knows what half-remembered poems and songs inspired her?’

She could see that they did not know what to say. There was a moment, though brief, in which she wanted to drop a cryptic remark. Instead, she pulled open a small drawer in the table and produced a newspaper. She pushed it towards Karel.

‘This is a copy of The Buenos Aires Herald, a daily newspaper. It’s an archive duplicate from 1947.’

Karel began to thumb through the pages. His attentioned switched between the newspaper and Saskia.

‘What am I looking for?’

‘STENDEC,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘STEN for stentor, the Latin for ‘herald’. That’s the newspaper.’

‘I see.’

‘Next, D for the fourth page of the classifieds.’

Karel turned the newspaper over and worked his way from the back page. Hrafn, on his left, leaned in.

‘OK, I’m on the fourth page.’

‘E for the fifth column.’

His finger slid across the page.

‘And C for what?’

‘C for the third entry.’

Karel lifted the newspaper.

He read, ‘To: J. Remember flowers for grave of Algie. Love, C.’

The men looked at one another. It was clear that they did not understand the reference, and their gazes eventually settled on Jem, who was half smiling.

‘It’s a book,’ she said. ‘We had to read it for school. It’s the fictional diary of a janitor called Charlie. At the beginning, he’s got a really low IQ and gets chosen for experimental surgery that turns him into a genius. At the end of the book he goes back to being a simpleton. Algernon was, I think, the name of a laboratory mouse that underwent the surgery before Charlie. The mouse died. The title of the book comes from the last line of the diary, when Charlie asks the reader to put flowers on the grave of Algie. I guess he means he’d like someone to put flowers on his grave, too, when he dies. Hence Flowers for Algernon.’

‘A hollow joke, then,’ said Karel. ‘What was Cory, if not a similar experiment?’

‘It’s not a joke,’ said Jem. ‘It’s a message telling Jennifer that Harkes is dead, that’s all. Mission accomplished.’

‘Why would he send it aboard Star Dust?’ asked Hrafn.

‘He told us,’ said Danny. ‘It was to smoke Harkes out. Make him drop his guard.’

‘Are we going to smoke Cory out too?’ said Hrafn, looking at Saskia.

She shrugged.

An hour of conversation passed—the apartment, the investigation of DFU323, families, spare time—before Saskia turned to Hrafn and said, ‘I wish to accept your offer of a small expedition to Mount Tupungato. I will take care of the outlay.’

‘I’d love to. Genuinely. But what do you expect me to find? Another glove?’

‘There’s something else,’ she pressed. ‘I need you to locate a man in Santiago. He has details of a shotgun suicide in December of 1947.’

Danny tugged an earlobe. ‘You think Cory tried to kill himself just a few months after the Star Dust hijack?’

‘No. I think he did kill himself.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Hrafn.

‘What do you see in my chair? A corpse or a woman?’ Saskia swallowed a fast mouthful of the Chianti. She had eaten little throughout the meal and the alcohol numbed her throat. ‘I reiterate that Cory knows exactly where we are.’

‘Let us put our hands on the table about this,’ said Karel. ‘We mean to kill him. Do we not? This is a conspiracy of murder.’

‘My hope, gentlemen and lady, is that he wishes for us to complete what he cannot.’

‘His suicide,’ said Jem. ‘Like in the poem. ‘Richard Cory went home and put a bullet in his head.’’

‘How did you come to that conclusion?’ asked Hrafn.

‘Turn over the parcel that glove came in and read the return address.’

‘I already checked. There isn’t one.’

‘There’s the name of the sender.’

‘Is there?’ Hrafn peered closer. ‘I see it. ‘Mr Juan Pájaro… Rojo.’’

‘Two weeks ago, a small Buenos Airean newspaper filed a story that described how a man called Mr Pájaro Rojo contacted an elderly widow with details of a curious bequest: a house of her choosing. The man left following the purchase. Previously, the widow lived in the neighbourhood where Cory claimed to have stayed prior to his attack on Star Dust.’

‘How old is she?’ asked Hrafn.

‘Old enough to be the mother of Lisandro, the boy Cory killed. Lisandro wanted to buy her a house, remember?’

‘She must have had him very young.’

‘I think she did.’

‘But this is a coincidence,’ pressed Hrafn. ‘You think it’s Cory settling his debts?’

‘I feel him.’

‘I took Spanish at university,’ said Karel, ‘and, of course, I now have time. I’ll interview her to confirm it. If what you say is true, it will add weight to your argument about redemption.’

‘Thank you, Karel,’ said Saskia.

‘I’ll go with him,’ Danny said, looking at her, accepting the exile.

‘The glove is the start of a trail, Hrafn,’ said Saskia, ‘and it leads to Cory. It is a challenge. An invitation.’

‘To murder?’ he asked sharply.

‘Certainly.’

‘To redeem? To avenge?’

‘Choose one.’

‘Which do you think Jennifer Proctor would have picked, given the murder of her father?’ His face had reddened. ‘How much value would she have placed upon the hundreds who died because of the chain of events she triggered?’

Saskia steepled her fingers and pointed them at him. ‘It isn’t a chain, Hrafn. Understand that at least. It’s a snake swallowing itself. It’s fucked up. No-one at this table can understand because it is not meant to be understood. You want narrative. That’s something your brain applies to unconnected facts in the absence of meaning, because you can’t bear to live in a world without it.’ She felt the sharpening edge of a migraine, but she pushed through with what she needed to say. ‘I’ve prepared a safety deposit box for Cory’s ashes. Next to them, I will place the smart matter. And perhaps a flower, for Jennifer’s Algernon. For her Huckleberry. I will then draft instructions for a legal firm that both be made available to Jennifer Proctor years from now following David Proctor’s death.’

‘Saskia,’ said Jem. ‘Your nose.’

‘Oh,’ she said, catching a blood drop on her knuckle. ‘Forget it.’

Saskia raised her glass and the other diners joined her. Hrafn’s held fruit juice; Karel’s water. She watched the chandelier through the red liquid. ‘To–’

Revenge.

‘The future,’ said Jem, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Both known and unknown.’

‘The future.’

The last of the evening unwound. Saskia whispered her goodbyes and padded through the house and fell across her bed, exhausted. Before her precise, internal chronometer marked midnight, she imagined a reversal: Star Dust reforming from the closing flower of its destruction. She saw the power to turn all evil to good by simple rewind. How close she was to being Cory. He was her Harkes. She was Cory’s Huckleberry. In her stupor, she looked at the door and smouldered with a prayer for Jem to open it, step through, and lie with her to soothe the aches and seal the cracks in her bones, the stresses of her death.

Saskia awoke when it was still dark. There was a voice in her head.

I said, can you hear me clearly? It’s Ego.

She shifted. Her wrist hurt.

I can hear you. Is this a dream?

No.

Where have you been?

On loan, so to speak. However, I note that you were sleeping. My apologies. I wanted to test this connection immediately. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Sleep well, Saskia.

She turned to her side. Jem was not in the bed.

Good night.