Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. Thank you!
A/N: I've referred to the "Somerton Man" to highlight difficulties in cracking codes left by the dead. Just so you all know: he's not my invention, he was a real person and his murder/death is still very much unresolved.
Also, one line of text is a quote from Fitzgerald's translation of "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam". Another quote comes from "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath (taken from the "Ariel" collection).
Chapter Nine: A Necessary Evil
The numbers were swimming before Ruth's eyes. She blinked repeatedly, attempting to refocus on the figures before picking up the pen at her side. An abandoned cup of black coffee was being used as a paperweight and her new cat – a rescue moggy from the nearby shelter – fell back on old habits as he successfully scavenged the remnants of ham from a half-eaten sandwich by her feet. Lost in cracking Lucile's last code, Ruth had forgotten to feed him. After his meagre feed, he took to pawing at the balled up paper that Ruth had tried to toss into a nearby bin and missed. Distracted, she turned to watch the cat and rubbed her tired eyes once more.
Her first methods for cracking the codes had been the most obvious. Not because she truly believed Lucile would be naïve enough to actually use them, but merely to rule them out. So her first few hours of failure came as no surprise. But as the hour grew later, Ruth's methods grew exponentially more intricate and complex and still no joy. With twenty numbers; zeroes probably acting as word dividers and including repetitions, Ruth thought she may as well start pulling numbers and letters from thin air. The only clue she had was the same number/letter appearing twice in a row, the eighth and ninth places, of the second word. She kept going back to them, thinking of double letters that commonly cropped up in the English language and started jotting them down in the margin: S, O, E, T, L…. the list went on. It narrowed the possibilities, but nowhere near enough.
It was midnight by the time the phone rang. What, a few hours previously, would have been an irritant now became a welcome distraction. She leaned over to the occasional table next to the sofa and lifted the receiver before the caller could even think of hanging up. Besides, only one person ever called her after midnight.
"Harry," she greeted him before he could get a word out.
"How did you know it was me?"
Ruth smiled, holding her hand out to the cat, clicking her fingers to get his attention. "For a spy, you can you be very predictable at times."
She heard a soft laugh at the other end of the line. "I only wanted to see if you were still up."
"And what if I wasn't?" she asked.
"I knew you would be. I knew you'd still be working, as well. I'm not the only predictable one."
"Touché," she replied, grinning. But her smile faded as she faced up to her failure. "God, Harry, it's like decoding the Voynich Manuscript. The number sample isn't big enough to spot a pattern, there's no key or book reference to give us any clues and, right now, I'm plucking number sequences out of thin air."
Her exasperation was met with a brief silence, during which she could hear the unmistakable clink of glass – a late night whiskey being poured.
"Ben's back on the Grid tomorrow morning," he stated, at length. "With some luck, he's kept the codes that they were using. It was probably one of those."
"I hope you're right," Ruth sighed. "But if he's a professional spy, he would have burned them immediately after use. It's protocol, Harry. If he doesn't have the code books – which he shouldn't – then our only hope is what's left at the bunker. Was everything burned?"
"According to Jo and Lucas, the fire was only in the toilets. If Ben comes up with nothing, we'll go down there together and look," he assured her. Following another pause, he added: "Ever heard of the Somerton Man?"
"Of course. Man found dead on a beach in Adelaide, years ago. The only possible clue to his fate were a few pages of obscure codes. Something to do with The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, wasn't it?" replied Ruth.
She cast her mind back to one particular day at University. A day spent in heated debate about the mystery, followed by her intense scouring of said text. Even now, the words came back to her: "There was a door to which I found no key; there was a veil past which I could not see…" There certainly was.
"Tamam Shud," added Harry, from the end of the line. "A strange extract from a very rare copy of the text printed only in New Zealand. But even with that major clue, they still couldn't break the codes he left."
Ruth laughed drily. "If you weren't a spy, Harry, you could do a great side line in morale raising speeches."
"I'm just saying, don't be so hard on yourself," he replied, gently. "Get some sleep and we'll all come back to it in the morning. Well, all of us except Lucas and Ros, probably."
Curiosity piqued, she asked. "What are they doing in the morning?"
"Nothing, they're doing it now," he replied, enigmatically.
"Which is what, exactly?"
"Lucas, hold the torch steady!"
Ros was a few feet ahead of him, but he couldn't see her properly. They were both dressed head to toe in black. This far out of London, it was pitch dark and only the stars and pale sickle moon offered natural light. Other than that, a torch, the narrow beam of which seemed to cut out at will, so Lucas had to slap it against the palm of his hand to get it working again. They made their way over uneven ground; rough terrain that was privately owned and rarely used, leading around the back of a Government owned laboratory. Lucas caught glimpses of the tall, electrified perimeter fence in the moonlight, and counted his lucky stars they were not expected to actually climb over it.
While he was busy estimating the height of the fence, he stumbled once more and sent the beam of the torch dancing over the grassy bumps of the ground.
"Lucas!" Ros hissed again.
But she stopped, turned back and helped him back to his feet. Close up, he could finally see her again. Her skin and hair almost ghost-like in the pale moonlight, making her green eyes almost transparent. He could see the smile on her lips, a few loose strands of hair had fallen out from under the black woolly hat she had on. She handed the torch back to him.
"We're at least a mile from the road now, what do you think?" she asked, softly. Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed mournfully in reply. Lucas sniggered and even Ros herself was grinning when she added: "obviously a Black Flag agent right there."
"Can't be too careful," he retorted, giving the dead torch another slap. When it flared back into life, he continued: "Here will be fine, I think. But … they have remembered to deactivate the fence, haven't they?"
Ros was silent; not something Lucas took as a good sign. "Er," she said, at length. "Throw something at it?"
Something metal, Lucas thought as he shrugged the rucksack from off his shoulders. Once it was open on the floor he shone the beam of the torch inside. They had a camera to film their evening's exploits, bolt cutters to cut through the fence and various other bits and pieces. Ros knelt down as well, so they were still level with each other as they both picked up suitable looking items. They said the fence would be off from midnight, but it was only common sense to double check.
"Hey, maybe we can get one of those cows to walk into it?" Ros suggested.
"That would be a great start to my life as an Anarcho-Environmentalist, Ros," he replied, drily. "Anyway, let's try this."
He extracted a pair of bolt cutters and approached the perimeter fence again. The pair of them stood before it, side by side.
"Give me the torch," Ros instructed. "Throw when you're ready."
"If it is live, at least we get a nice romantic firework display," he mused, before lobbing the bolt cutters at the higher rungs of the fence. They bounced off the normally deadly wiring, and nothing happened.
"Ah well, not tonight it seems," said Ros as they both strode forwards.
It was Ros' job to man the camera, careful to keep Lucas' face out of shot as he cut through the fence. He worked steadily, making sure the opening was only just big enough to get them both through safely, but it was still hard work. He was flushed and sweating by the time he finished.
"You are filming this with night vision on, aren't you?" he asked, breathless and looking over his shoulder.
"Of course," she retorted. "It'll be an Anarchist friendly Blair Witch Project. Now stop looking at the camera and get on with it."
From there on in, they worked silently and stealthily. The grounds of the laboratory were smoother, better kept than the scrub land that formed a natural boundary between it and the surrounding farmlands. Before long, they were both running down a gravel path, loose stones crunching beneath heavy footfalls. The laboratory itself soon came into view, distant lights still on in the uppermost windows. They already knew where the back door was, that led into a staff room. But when they reached it, Lucas knelt down and consulted a fake plan of the building to make it look as though he didn't fully know where he was going and made sure Ros managed to get a good, lingering shot of it. After no more than another minute, he produced a lock pick from the door that he knew the night security staff had already left unlocked. But again, it had to look like a break-in for the benefit of the film. Once they were inside, he signalled to Ros to stop filming.
"Worried about your close-ups?" she asked, switching the camera off.
Lucas turned serious. "This next bit's my Oscar submission," he informed her. "I'll thank you to take it seriously."
But the joking stopped when they made it to the laboratory floor. Filming began again as they stepped into a wide, large room that was made cramped and claustrophobic by row after row of barred, metal cages. Inside each one, dead eyed rabbits curled up in corners. Some with their fur shaved, raw weeping skin on display in the torchlight. Some with strange contraptions wired into them. Others already dead. The air was sickeningly foul with the smell of animal shit and blood. As they passed the rows of cages, some of the animals limped up to the bars of their cages, seeming to watch them as they went. Lucas looked back, saw that look he had seen so many times before in the eyes of humans. Captive, trapped, in pain and scared out of their wits. Only this was worse: these tortured prisoners had no voice to scream. For just one second, Lucas understood why the activists did it. For half of that second, he admired them for it.
The cure for every cancer is in this room, he told himself. The cure for AIDS, the cure for Dementia, the cure for every bastard sickness and disease that wreaked havoc on the lives of everyone. But in that moment, even that reasoning felt hollow. His breath was ragged by the time he reached the cages of their planted animals. There were six in total, and Lucas found himself virtually tearing the metal cage doors off in anger and grief. He stuffed the squirming animals down the front of his jacket, handing others to Ros who threw the camera down and did the same. No longer caring whether they got their staged break in on camera, all Lucas needed was to rescue the stooge bunnies and get out of their as quick as possible.
Within a second of the final animal being "liberated" they were running full pelt back down the corridor and out through the staff room again. Once back outside, Lucas doubled over and sucked in deep lungfuls of clean air. When he looked back up again, he saw Ros standing over him, still cradling three of the six rabbits they took. To his almost boundless shock, tears were drying on her face. He could see it in the glare of the trip lights before the door.
"Don't look at me like that," she said. "I'm only human, you know."
He was about to say something, when his words were cut off by a low, menacing growl from the shadows. Alarmed, they both cast around, looking for the dogs. Amber eyes reflected in the light, snarling muzzles close behind as the huge Alsatians came slinking out of the shadows. They both froze and backed up against the wall of the lab, hugging the rabbits close.
"Shit, Lucas!" Ros hissed, low. "No one said anything about damn guard dogs!"
"They want the rabbits," he guessed, desperately trying to figure a way out.
Just as they began slowly backing away, however, a high whistle cut through the air. As though a spell had been broken, the dogs fell silent and ran back in the same direction from whence they came. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief as a middle aged man rounded the corner. A short man and portly, he was clearly well used to the guard dogs.
"Hello there," he greeted them. "Harry said you'd be coming tonight. I take you've done what needed doing then?"
Still apprehensive with the dogs so close and sniffing at the man's coat pocket, Ros could only manage a stiff nod.
"I'll get the caretakers to lock up then," the man said, reaching into his pocket and tossing biscuits to the dogs. He looked back at Lucas and Ros apologetically. "I'm sorry," he said, looking forlorn. "We have to do it, you know. If there was any other way … well, you know. We don't do cosmetics, here. Never, ever cosmetics; only new medicines."
It took Lucas a moment to realise he was talking about his job and he was clearly used to justifying himself. He probably did it all day, every day. But the sad fact was that he was right; there was no other way.
"We understand," Lucas replied.
The man raised a pained smile. "It's a truly necessary evil," he replied, sadly. "You'll be okay to get out again, or should I call one of the caretakers?"
"Oh, we're fine," Ros assured him.
They left the way they came, only in even more of a hurry. There was just one last thing left to do: release the rabbits in the wild and catch it on camera. With the time pushing on for three am, they wasted no more time. They found the opening they made in the fence and forced their way back through it. Ros started up the camera again as the released the rabbits. For a few seconds, they filmed them poking around in the undergrowth, feeling their way to freedom.
"That'll do," said Lucas. "Now let's go home."
He was already walking away, however Ros didn't follow him. He looked back over his shoulder, seeing what was holding her up.
"We can't," she said. "We need to get the little buggers back."
They were bred in captivity and bound for a petting farm in the morning; Lucas had quite forgotten. They would never survive in the wild.
"Oh, shit!"
"And Jo borrowed an extra one off her niece," Ros pointed out. "I think she did, anyway."
It was like catching smoke. They ended up crawling on their bellies as close as possible to the rabbits and launching themselves towards them in a surprise ambush, taking them at unawares. More than once, the little bastards squirmed out of their hands like a bag of hyperactive snakes. Ros tore her trousers and Lucas bashed his knee agonisingly on a jutting stone. His curses resounding across the countryside. They stashed the rabbits in the rucksack and carried the equipment in their arms back to the car.
"I bet they wish they were still in the cage," said Ros as they finally made it back.
The sun was rising. He would drop the film footage into Thames House before going home. Malcolm would doctor it as needed and add it to Lucas' new website. He looked across as Ros, starting up the car engine. She had lost her hat.
"You've got cow shit in your hair," he pointed out.
"Just like any other day at the office," she pointed out, indifferently. But when she turned to Lucas, just before driving away, she was completely serious. "Are you okay? It was pretty grim back there."
She had noticed, he thought to himself. But he raised a pained, sad smile. "I'm fine. Honestly," he lied.
It was dawn again. A sickly sliver of pale light piercing the darkness on the horizon. Leon hid from it in the kitchen, where the blinds were drawn and black coffee grew cold in his hands. Sitting at the breakfast table in silence, he marked the passage of time since he became a killer. Twenty four hours, now. He still felt sick. He had tried to sleep, but lay there on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. Every time he closed his eyes, the paralysis set in instantly. Immobilised, feeling like the breath was being wrung out of his lungs, he would see her again. He would force his eyes to open and the image would project into the real world around him. Still dripping wet, she was beside him, imploring him to speak to Lady Lazarus. Even when he snapped out of it and the hallucinations cleared, he would be left breathless and terrified.
For the last twenty-four hours, he had moved through a haze in a state of physical inertia while his emotions wreaked havoc. The next steps he decided on ranged from suicide, to running away and handing himself in to the police to confess all. But all the time, Lucile's last command returned; it echoed through his mind. Speak to Lady Lazarus; it's inside her and it's got his name on it. She didn't say what 'it' was, but she said Lady Lazarus would understand. It was just as well, because he didn't understand any of it.
"Leon."
His father's voice jolted him out of his tortured reverie. Whirling round, he saw his father still in pyjama bottoms and an old t-shirt. His normally smart, short cropped hair stuck up at angles like a hedgehog and his eyes were reddened from lack of sleep. David Shelley raised a pained smile. "You couldn't sleep either, then?"
Leon got up to put the kettle on. "No, sorry."
He apologised; finding himself apologising a lot. He filled the kettle and left it to boil.
"Dad," he said. "Who is Lady Lazarus? Wasn't she in the Bible?"
Shelley Senior managed a smile and a dry laugh. "Not quite," he replied. "Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus, that's right enough. But Lady Lazarus is a poem by Sylvia Plath about her failed suicide attempts." He paused as he recollected the poem in question, with all its disturbing references to death, self-destruction and the Holocaust. "Dying is an art form," he recalled. "And like everything else, I do it exceptionally well."
The quote made Leon shiver. To hide his distress, he continued making the tea. Meanwhile, his father was still musing on the poetry of Sylvia Plath – a poet of whom Leon had never heard.
"That was her third attempt, if I recall rightly," he was saying. "So clearly, she wasn't exceptionally good at it. Still, she got there in the end."
Shocked at his father's flippant attitude, Leon almost spilled boiling water on himself.
"Maybe there's more than one type of death," he said, looking back at his father.
David Shelley sat at the table, in Leon's recently vacated spot, looking somewhat concerned.
"Leon," he said, "bring over the pot and sit down."
Realising he had raised suspicion, Leon sat down reluctantly. He poured tea only for his father and left his own recently used mug storing cold dregs of coffee. His father watched him carefully.
"If there was something wrong," he began. "You would tell me, wouldn't you?"
Leon shrugged, trying to be casual although he felt anything but. "It's just the assassination," he said. "What if they come for you next?"
"Leon," David sighed in response. "The PM has tightened our security up a hundred fold. No one will be allowed to get within a thousand feet of any MP until this business is dealt with. Do you understand?"
Leon nodded. "I guess so."
"Still not sure of the Plath connection, though."
"It's nothing," replied Leon, just as his phone beeped, warning him of a text message. "She's just someone I need to speak to."
David frowned. "You'll have your work cut out. She killed herself back in the sixties."
"Oh not her, I mean someone else … someone different," Leon blurted out as he got up. "I need to check this," he added, snatching his phone up.
He read Emma's message out in the hallway. There was yet another surprise coming, later that morning. All he felt was a cold, sickening dread.
The news flashed up on Ruth's computer screen at ten am, that morning. In the middle of doing something else, she almost ignored it. But the tagline caught her eye in time: "Black Flag claim responsibility for assassination." She opened it up then and called out to the others. Jo Portman, Harry and Ben Kaplan – only just back on the Grid after the horror of the previous day. They convened moments later in the meeting room, gathered around the screen to catch the announcement on the news.
They listened in silence, feeling the acute sense of failure all over again. Everything now hinged on Lucas' moonlighting as a fringe activist, enticing these misfits into their traps.
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