OuT of the Dark
Chapter Four
They both kept silent for most of their trip to Aberfoyle, across the flat land of the moss towards the hills of the Trossachs and the forest, as the darkness slowly reached in spite of a veiled moonlight piercing through the trees. They were in sight of the mountains when Bodie emerged from his stupor.
"Where are we? Where are you taking me?"
Cowley spoke staidly. "We're in the West of Scotland. And we're going to stay at my cousin's place near Aberfoyle for a while."
"Why?"
"Well, to have a rest for a start, restore your health, work on your memory...I assume you want your memory back?"
Bodie's awareness was flickering like a candle in the wind. "I...don't know; I don't understand...what's going on? And what the hell am I doing with you?"
Cowley had to repeat patiently, with more details, his previous explanation. The tale of Bodie's rescue from an African jail, of his staying in Repton and his interrogation by the MI6 agents stirred little reaction from the young man. At least he seemed to apprehend some of it and get a rough draft of the whole picture. Slowly paddling out of his murky muddle...
"Why did you bring me with you?"
That was the difficult bit. "I'm in charge of you. Unofficially. There was a deal at the highest level: I offered to warrant for you so you could leave Repton."
Pause. Bodie was pondering on the implications. "You mean... I have to stay with you?"
"I am afraid so, yes."
Bodie's quirky eyebrow rose to an unprecedented height. "And what if I refuse?"
"There's not much choice in this, Bodie."
"I still can leave if I decide to."
"Where to? With what money? Whose help?" He didn't add that he always had a gun on him and was known to be a very good shot. Besides, he had no intention of using it in those circumstances. Such a threat would have been a rather poor way of winning Bodie's confidence.
Not to say that such a design was well advanced at the moment; his statement had been met by a gloomy look and a sullen face. Bodie's pouting could be judged endearing in other contexts; in this one, it was simply menacing.
However, he was visibly returning to sanity and thus, able to perceive the odds and chances of his situation. In Cowley's mind, there was little doubt that the man had all the ability to manage an escape successfully within the narrowest window of opportunity but, hopefully, not in his current condition.
"Surely, you wouldn't wish to offer Willis and his bloodhounds an occasion to chase you throughout the country – with all their resources, avowed or not - and take you back to Repton?"
Bodie didn't reply but looked gloomier. Cowley persisted. "I told you, you've nothing to fear from me. So far, the only help you've had is mine and I'm willing to maintain it. Under a single condition, that is -"
"Why?" Bodie cut in.
"What?" Cowley's gaze shifted to a remote spot up the road. No hope that question wouldn't be asked.
"Why are you doing it? Why bother with all the trouble, taking charge, looking after me? I need to know."
"Well, I could hardly leave a British national in captivity, while I was summoning all the British services abroad, official and unofficial, to help me rescue a relative of mine, young MacLaren, from his – from your common cell in this Katangese jail. A good man and a good agent by the way; you don't remember MacLaren?"
"No." Bodie's short reply was dismissive of any attempt at prevarication. Cowley sighed inwardly.
"After that, everything ensued quite naturally; you were wounded, you had to be attended to. It was simpler to put you in the same military hospital as your companion."
"Repton?"
"No, the London military hospital; I saw you there once, when I went to visit my young cousin. We talked about your prospects for the near future."
"Going to Repton?" (Sardonic you'd say. God, the boy was improving almost too quickly).
"No, your intention to go abroad to retrieve your savings.
"Savings?" Bodie said interrogatively, as if the notion didn't belong in his vocabulary. But he didn't let himself be distracted from his purpose.
"Why Repton?"
"I'm sorry about that but it was'nt my idea; I had no clout then to bar it. Wasn't even informed at first. (Not exactly the truth, not the entire truth). Seems you were quite disturbed at the time and the doctors in charge thought you needed a quiet place to rest and collect yourself."
"In a loony bin, in the good care of the MI6 goons?" The quiet bitterness in the young man's tone affected Cowley more than he would have thought or wished.
"It wasn't meant to be that way. Repton's not only for mental patients, you know; it's basically a rest home."
Bodie smirked. "Really? From the little I remember, one thing's certain: I had very little rest in there."
"I'm well aware of what you've gone through and I'd have tried to prevent it if I'd known it in time." He was growing a little impatient in spite of his wish for appeasement. "There's no sense looking back to the past when there's nothing we can do to erase it or evade the consequences. The fact is I'm in charge of you now, and that's the best you can get, so let's go with it and have a deal for the future."
"A deal?"
"Yes, to set the rules about our forthcoming cohabitation. As I was saying when you interrupted me, I'm willing to give you all the help and support I'm capable of, to spare you further interrogation and to clarify your situation with the authorities regarding your legal status. But there are two conditions." He looked through the boy's defiant eyes; "First, that you fully cooperate in everything I judge useful to restoring your memory – considering there won't be anything remotely similar to the MI6 methods – and, secondly, that you give me your word of honour you're not going to run away at the first available opportunity."
Bodie avoided his gaze and remained silent for several minutes. He was visibly checking the possibilities of escape and discarding them one after another. "I can't promise to stay with you for too long. No more than a few days…"
Cowley exploded. "Come on, man! I'm not proposing you to share my life!" He went on more calmly; "I was intending to spend two or three weeks here, at the most. The doctors at Repton agreed that there was a good chance you'd recover your memory (actually they had said 'sanity') within days, incrementally, as your blood cleared of the psycho-active drugs you'd been on." He didn't specify they had no idea about the long lasting effects of the brain-washing and electric shocks he'd been subjected to. "Seems the cocktail was unexpectedly aggressive, or you're unusually intolerant."
"They should have thought about it beforehand." Bodie grumbled.
"Most of your, er, treatment was prescribed by the MI6 specialists under their responsibility and administered by their own medical team. The Repton physicians had no say about it." Having finally exhausted his reserve of patience, he stammered, "Are you, or are you not, going to stay put for two weeks, working on your memory with me? Knowing that if you choose not to cooperate, if I don't get in touch with my contact twice a day, you are fair game for all the special forces of the Kingdom…"
Bodie just yawned. "I'm tired, want to sleep." He slouched back in his seat, pushing it backwards with a snap while stretching his legs full length. Through half shut eyelids, he must have caught a glimpse of warning on the older man's face for he relented, "I suppose I might try, for two weeks…"
That was as good a promise as it came. Cowley nodded in silent assessment. He was pleased with the boy's progress. Too soon.
Bodie didn't get back to sleep, but he kept to himself during the last part of the trip, oddly quiet, just looking through the car's window at the mountain ridge, sharply outlined in black against the deep blue of the night sky. The moon now was high and full above the pine-trees, bright enough to dull the stars, its silvery light pervading the landscape all around with a pale shimmer. Bodie's face was pale too in this lightning, his skin ashen and his neatly chiselled lips discoloured. His still profile, framed by the car's window, unpleasantly reminded Cowley of a funeral mask.
He fought the eerie feeling that was getting to him; his passenger's fast change of moods, from aggressiveness to withdrawal, though clearly down to his state of intoxication, was becoming an annoyance. He suddenly needed to hear the sound of a voice, even his own, if the damned stubborn son of a bitch was going to persist in his spooky act.
"Look, laddie, we're almost there. Have you made up your mind? I need a firm assurance of your good will, not some vague, "I suppose I might try"; so, what's your last word?" His voice was dry and clipped, devoid of all its previous studied gentleness.
Swivelling briskly, Bodie came back to life in a flash. "You told me I had no choice. Looks like you're right. I couldn't run away for long, even if I wanted to." He paused. "I don't want to. I feel tired. I don't understand anything. I just want to sleep and not wake up for a hundred years."
At that, Cowley almost choked on a laugh. "I'm a patient and persistent man, as you'll see, but that's too long a wait for my life expectancy. I can only give you the rest of the night and the next morning. Till noon, no more."
Shrugging, Bodie went back to his pose of indifference (Cowley had decided it was a pose), which he maintained during the last twenty minutes of the drive. They didn't pass through Aberfoyle; turning left before they reached it, Cowley followed a narrow road, bordered by the southern bank of the loch on one side and the forest slopes on the other, down to a small village with the name of Blairhullichan. Then he took a dirt lane, hardly suitable for urban vehicles, which led uphill to a massive stone building.
He intended to leave the car in the farmyard; no need to wake the old man at two in the morning. He heard the dogs barking, far away. So, Angus had taken them to the old kennel so as not to be disturbed. Cowley didn't like the idea of being such a burden to a seventy year old pensioner, but Angus was Army, better: Navy, and besides, as strong as an oak.
Bodie was looking at him interrogatively. Cowley opened the door. "We're not there yet. The lodge is by the river down there, not by the loch, about half way from here. We've to walk down through the forest." He grasped his travel bag and showed Bodie the heavy hemp bag with the food supply and a remaining large suitcase. "Take those; I don't want to come back tomorrow morning." Bodie's little smile irritated him. "Come on, man; you seem well enough fit to carry them both. I've to hold the torch." A swift glance at the other's sleepy look and slouching posture, with the sudden memory of his precious fresh eggs, gave him an afterthought. "I'll take the food. Try not to drop the suitcase, there are bottles in it."
They started cautiously stepping down a pretty steep forest path. Confronted by a Scottish repeat of his previous nightmarish trek on the slippery Yorkshire road, Cowley cursed his choice of a shelter and the unwise partiality for fresh food that had brought him twice in a day to the same ridiculous and painful predicament. This was a surviving hedonistic streak in his otherwise well honed habits of discipline, which he sternly promised himself to put a check on in the future.
Sunk in his thoughts, he tripped on a root and slipped; he would have lost his balance if his companion hadn't held him firmly with his free arm. The gesture was more instinctive than friendly, but it touched him oddly. During the briefest of moments he yielded to the embrace, wrapped in the warmth of a young and strong body. Then he straightened himself and shifted off, bending to pick up the travel bag he had dropped. Suddenly he felt cold and queasy.
"Thanks, Bodie," he said uneasily."
"Let me have the heavy bag. You're tired; I can take both actually."
"Mind your own business, young man," he snapped. He hated his rudeness, and he hated even more the gleam of compassion he had seen in the boy's gaze. "There is no point anyway," he added grudgingly, "the lodge is only a few yards away now."
That was right. The path soon got wider and easier. They could distinctly hear the river lapping on its rocky banks just before they entered a rather large clearing surrounded by oaks. The house in the centre, small but solidly built of grey stone and wood beams, was a welcome sight for both men. With intense relief, Cowley noticed the light above the door. The power was on; the generator was working. There would be no need for struggling to start the beastly machine and its oil feeding in the middle of the night. He fervently blessed his cousin's good will and support. Things hadn't always been that hospitable between the MacFarlanes and the MacGregors, even in the family circle, but Angus MacFarlane was the best of his ilk!
He retrieved the key from under the usual flat stone, left of the threshold (silly hiding place by the way but there was not much to steal in the lodge and it was difficult to reach it by any other way than the loch and the river).
The room inside was chilly. Cowley remembered that the small electric heater was broken the last time he was here, last summer; apparently it hadn't been repaired since then. The weather had been quite mild and pleasant during the past days but May in this area was not a month when you can do without a little heating at night.
"It's damp," complained Bodie.
"Yes, it is," Cowley retorted sourly, "That's spring in Scotland, we're close to the river, what do you expect?"
Bodie mumbled something indistinct.
"I assume you know how to light a fire; so, try to make you useful while I unpack and set the bedding."
Bodie nodded and obeyed silently. Everything necessary was on display in the fireplace: logs, sticks and twigs, with matches close by. Soon, a pleasant blaze was dancing in the hearth. "Quick and efficient," noted Cowley, as he was laying sheets and quilt on a narow bunk by the fireplace. Not for the first time he wondered whether the man wasn't acting; not from the beginning - that was unlikely - … though? It was not impossible to simulate while drugged; he knew that; he had done it himself. Anyway, whatever the case, the solution was the same. He had to regain the boy's trust.
Which boy, at the moment, really looked as exhausted and sleepy as he claimed to be, and Cowley wasn't any better. Gathering all his strength, he had made his bed in the main bedroom and arranged his clothes in the big oak wardrobe. His first move had been to take the RT out of his travel bag and to put it in full sight on the chest of drawers. There was actually no settlement for regular radio checking signals, contrary to his previous assertion, but Bodie didn't need to know that. The gun had been unloaded, wrapped in a wool scarf and hidden beneath a removable floorboard under the bed, its empty holster lying near the RT. He had no intention of using it and he wanted it to be out of Bodie's reach; if the man got wild again, there still would be Harrington's remedy. Though he loathed the idea, it would be better than a bullet. The medication's innocuous looking package had been placed in the kitchen cupboard, behind a stack of various tins and cans, a single dose remaining in Cowley's pocket, thus available at any moment.
Now, after a quick snack, he was sitting at the table, in front of Bodie, each one sipping his own comfort drink: hot strong tea for Bodie and single malt for Cowley: Laphroaigh, 16 years old.
"I don't think I should offer you alcohol in your condition," Cowley apologised.
"I don't want it," replied Bodie; "By the way, where did this bottle come from?"
"From my suitcase, where it was keeping company with its twin and two fine old bottles of burgundy."
Bodie seemed to ponder the information. "Why the suitcase? Did you come to Repton with the intention of taking me out with you?"
"Of course not; the suitcase has been in the boot of my car since the week-end I spent with the MacLarens, two weeks ago. Jamie MacLaren was released soon after my first visit to the London hospital, as you know."
Bodie's gaze was blank. "I don't remember anything. I told you."
"Well," said Cowley, uncompromisingly, "Seems my memory is not so good either. I'd forgotten the suitcase and the bottles. I hope the variations of temperature didn't alter the wine's quality; this vintage is exceptional. Fergie is a real connoisseur." Bodie looked abysmally uninterested, so Cowley stopped the small talk. "Whatever, this oblivion was lucky in a way; at least I have proper clothes for the place and the season." He considered the athletic young man in front of him, "I'm afraid none of them would suit you, but Angus always used to leave a lot of his old things here and he must be about your size."
"Where can I sleep?" Bodie cut in abruptly.
"I take the bedroom; you've got the bunk by the fireplace."
"Of course!"
"What d'you mean, 'of course'!" Cowley exclaimed, sounding indignant, "I give you the warm place; I'm left with the cold room. What are you complaining about?"
"It's narrow, and it's hard."
"What a sissy boy we've got here! Was the vermin infested pallet I found you on in Katanga more comfortable?"
"I know nothing about Katanga," Bodie answered calmly and slowly, "I know nothing about Africa or about anything from my past, just what you told me yourself. And I repeat I have no memory beyond the moment I saw you in Repton."
"Not even vague reminiscences, images, sounds, scenes relived in dreams?"
"Not even that, or if I have, I forget them as soon as I'm awake." Bodie cast a piercing look at his minder. "You don't believe me. Do you think I'm faking?"
That was too close to home. Cowley lied: "No, I believe you."
Bodie smiled, a curious little resigned smile; "You don't trust me." He paused. "That's funny; because I trusted you."
He sounded sincere.
End of Chapter Four