Alchemist

  He took a breath, ignoring the heat and the fumes, and worked on his mind, focusing on one thought and one thought only.

  No pain. There is no pain. I feel no pain. I am as cold as the deepest waters of the universe. I am untouchable by heat, by pain. I am the supreme master of my body and of all elements. I am now going to use the heat of the Eternal Flame of Satan to burn off all impurities from my skin, but it will not burn the skin itself.

  Then he stooped forwards without allowing himself the grace of hesitation and plunged both arms, right up to the shoulders, into the molten gold in the crucible.

  And held them there.

  His brain was locked on water. Fire could not burn water. He counted. Thirty seconds. One minute.

  Water.

  Two minutes.

  Water.

  Five minutes. He felt heat, pushed it away in his mind. The pulse of a clock beat in his head; he was tuned into the clock of the universe. Water. Seven minutes. Eight. Nine. Ten.

  He lifted his arms out and raised them above the crucible. Molten gold slid like globules of mercury from his skin back into the vessel, and within seconds his hairless arms were completely clear. There was not a mark on them.

  He stepped back. There was to be no applause, no congratulations. It was what had been expected of him, no more, no less.

  The Chief Assessor, in his Goat of Mendez mask, solemnly lifted the sacred branding iron from among the tools on the slab, placed it into the flames beneath the crucible and held it there for a full minute. Then he removed it and held it aloft, the narrow strip of Cabbalistic numbers and symbols glowing red hot.

  Theutus braced himself.

  The Assessor turned, and with a solemn nod pressed hard against Theutus’s right arm, six inches beneath the shoulder.

  This time Theutus felt the full searing sting of the burn, but still he did not flinch. He held his head high, oblivious to the stench of his own charred flesh, and silently began, with intense concentration, to work through the difficult words of the next incantation.

  108

  London. Wednesday 7 December, 1994

  There was a wall in front of him. It was covered in soft grey dimpled paper. A television that was switched off sat on a white shelf. A framed picture that had been irritating him hung on the wall near it. It was a childlike painting of sunflowers in a vase and the name of the artist eluded him.

  It was maddening Dick Bannerman more every moment as he tried to claw the name from his memory banks. An Impressionist. Like Monet; Cézanne; Degas; that crew. The name was on the tip of his tongue but just would not come. No ear. The fellow with no ear, he’d cut it off … G – G –

  It was as if part of his own brain had been cut off. He could see, hear, feel, smell, but nothing else. Couldn’t move a muscle. He closed his eyelids slowly then opened them again to test that out. No problems. But the rest of him was locked solid.

  He could see the blurred silhouette of what he took to be a nasogastric feeding tube protruding from his nostrils and could sense an obstruction in his mouth; drip lines were connected into his left hand. He could hear the steady clunk-puff of a ventilator. A light source indicated that there might be a window over to his right but he couldn’t turn his head to find out. It might just be an electric light. He had no idea what the time was, whether it was day or night, and no idea where he was.

  Someone had been in a couple of times; a tall, sun-tanned man in a business suit whom he recognized but could not place. For all he knew this character might still be in the room, out of his range of vision.

  He could see the bedclothes beyond the end of his nose rising and falling in tune with the ventilator. He was aware that he had been catheterized and he sensed he was lying on an incontinence pad.

  His memory was foggy. One minute he had been in his laboratory, his old premises, and now he was here. He couldn’t remember why he had not been in his new lab at Bendix Schere. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks. He wondered if he’d had a stroke. Where was Monty? Why hadn’t she come to see him?

  I’m a bloody vegetable.

  He stared at the painting again. G. Who the hell was that chap?

  He tried to think back clearly. Two men. But got no further. He eyed the painting again. Van Gogh. Yes, Vincent Van Gogh! He felt, suddenly, elated by his small triumph. The first vegetable that knew its art history.

  109

  Wednesday 7 December, 1994

  The plastic-coated flex felt cold against the skin of Monty’s neck, but the grip was good, secure, almost snug; it was holding her steady, helping her balance on the unsteady wooden table.

  ‘Now lower your hands, Monty,’ Dr Crowe said. ‘Place them by your side.’

  She hesitated for a moment, then saw the kindness in his expression, felt the sincerity deep inside his heart, and knew she could trust him totally; if he told her to put her arms down, it was safe to do so.

  Slowly she lowered them. The flex bit sharply into her neck as she swayed, but it helped to steady her, took the strain of her weight. The flex felt good, it would stop her from falling. Safe. She felt utterly safe. Dr Crowe was her new protector and he was a wonderful man.

  ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Very good! We’re all so proud of you, my dear.’ Dr Crowe smiled and Monty felt a thrill inside, glad that she was pleasing him, glad to be making amends for all the bad thoughts she’d had about him in the past. That was all forgotten and they had a new understanding. What was it Conor had said? That was then and this is now. Something like that. She understood now what he meant.

  ‘You don’t need the table any more, Monty, it’s getting in your way. Push it away with your feet, push it hard! Get rid of it!’

  Obediently she pressed down hard with the soles of her feet. The table began to rock. Dr Crowe smiled, approvingly. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Push it.’

  The howl of slithering, locked tyres. Headlights momentarily lit up the interior of Tabitha Donoghue’s Mercedes, then another car careered past them, rotating sideways like something that had broken free on a fair-ground ride. There was a sickening bang, followed by a deep, hollow rumbling, like a hundred oil drums rolling along corrugated iron. A truck had hurtled into the pile-up and something beyond it, almost instantaneously, exploded in a ball of fire.

  A solitary horn blared. Tyres shrieked like wounded animals. Cars were slewing to a halt all over the highway. One slammed into the central reservation and overturned; another cannonballed into it, sending a small bundle, which might have been a baby, catapulting out.

  Conor saw one car with its roof shearing off like a discarded skin. At the same time there was a faint, high-pitched whistle. The pitch changed, dropping then rising again, becoming rapidly louder. A siren. He stared through the windscreen of his mother’s Mercedes, urgently wanting to get out and help, but something was holding him back; a signal, weak at the moment, but growing stronger every second.

  Monty.

  Another car rammed into the wreckage ahead of them. At least four cars were burning. He could hear screams as well as sirens. But all the time there was something else.

  Monty. Distress. The signal was growing.

  People were running towards the wrecks, trying to free jammed doors; one man in a bus driver’s uniform began squirting a tiny fire extinguisher at the inferno raging in an upturned car. Traffic on the far carriageway was moving at a crawl, the occupants rubbernecking the scene.

  Monty.

  The sirens were close now. The police cars had screamed on to the scene. But surely this wasn’t the way pile-ups happened, not so quickly as this. This had to have been staged, maybe they were shooting a movie, or the emergency services were rehearsing the scenario for –

  Monty.

  Monty.

  Monty.

  A bolt of fear suddenly swathed through Conor’s guts. He saw her face; a cord around her neck; saw her legs dangling, kicking in the air. Gotta get back to her.

  ‘Ma! Mom!’ He shook his mother into life.


  She gestured at the carriageway ahead, which was completely blocked. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

  He twisted, peering out through the rear window at the traffic backing up solid behind them. ‘Reverse – go up the shoulder, there’s an exit about half a mile back.’ As he spoke he saw the lights of an emergency vehicle weaving down the shoulder past all the slewed cars. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Something’s happening to Monty.’

  Galvanized by the urgency in his voice, she waited until the flashing lights had passed, slammed into reverse and stamped on the gas pedal. The Mercedes jerked backwards, snaking wildly. Another emergency vehicle was coming down, making her swerve, then they were hurtling at the exit, and down the ramp. Conor sat panicking, his mother’s house keys ready in his hand, until they pulled up in front of the porch. He threw himself out of the car, sprinted to the front door, unlocked it and burst through.

  ‘Monty!’ he screamed.

  His voice was ripped away as a wind exploded from nowhere with the force of a hurricane, hurling him outside again and on to his back. The door crashed shut with a splintering crunch.

  Dazed and dimly aware of a foreign smell in the air, he met his mother’s eyes as she walked past him into the porch, then opened her purse and rummaged inside it. After a moment, she removed a folded square of paper that he had seen many times before, and opened it out. Then, making an imposing figure in her full-length black velvet coat, she closed her eyes and began to murmur the barely audible words of an incantation.

  When she had finished, she thrust the door open and strode in, braced to wedge it with her body if necessary. Out of the howling maelstrom inside, a small glass paperweight hurtled past her head, shattering a window in the Mercedes. The gusts blasted her hair so that it trailed from her like reeds in a flood tide, but she stood her ground, eyes blazing with anger.

  Conor felt the wind tearing at the roots of his hair too, but already he could sense it was less strong than before. It was beginning to wane under his mother’s commands.

  Head down, he forced his way in, pushing into the hall through air that felt as dense as water, grimacing at its vile smell. There was a cacophony of rattling furniture and fittings. All the candles had gone out; a painting suddenly detached itself from the wall and hurtled straight at Conor. He ducked, then heard it smash something behind him.

  ‘Monty!’ he bellowed. ‘Monty!’

  The wind seemed to find new strength. It caught him, sent him reeling sideways, and he fell over. But his mother had found the eye of the storm and she stood upright.

  ‘Out!’ she commanded, her voice deep. ‘I order you to leave this house before I throw you out!’

  The smell was worsening; the foul, putrid stench of sour milk, decaying flesh and excrement, the reek of pure, malevolent, evil.

  Conor rose and pushed his way forward, moving in slow motion as if he was in a nightmare where he was trying to run, but his legs would not work. Christ, where the hell was Monty?

  He yelled her name again and again. And then, suddenly, he had her! Was picking her up clearly, knew exactly where she was. He broke into a loping run, reached the door he was seeking, grabbed the ball-shaped handle and turned it sharply. It sheared clean off.

  In disbelief, he hammered on the door instead. ‘Monty? Monty!’ He stepped back and charged the door with his shoulder. It did not yield.

  He kicked it hard, then again felt the door shaking but not giving. Again. Blam! Hyperventilating with panic, he charged it once more, striking it with his full weight behind his shoulder. It splintered open and he lurched through into the gloom. It was some seconds before he realized he was not alone.

  Monty was hanging by her neck from the ceiling light flex, her head lolled forward at a ghastly, unnatural angle, her eyes wide open and sightless.

  110

  London. Wednesday 7 December, 1994

  Dick Bannerman heard a door open then close, and sensed someone in the room. Moments later, Dr Crowe strode into his line of vision. He was accompanied by a figure in a navy suit, who wore black-rimmed glasses. The geneticist tried to place him.

  Both men stopped at the end of the bed and studied him for a moment, as if he were an exhibit of marginal interest in zoo. Crowe stood at ease with his hands behind his back; the other man walked along the bed and reached above Dick Bannerman’s head, apparently adjusting something.

  Crowe produced an envelope. ‘Sir Neil Rorke asked me to bring this to you, Dr Bannerman. He was most upset to hear of your illness and asked me to convey his best wishes for a speedy recovery. Would you like me to open it for you?’

  Dick Bannerman tried to nod, and to his surprise found he was able to move his head a fraction.

  ‘You’ll be able to breathe normally in a couple of minutes; then Dr Seligman will remove your ventilator tube and we’ll be able to talk.’ Crowe flipped open the envelope, and held a ‘Get Well’ card in front of Bannerman’s face. The message inside was handwritten and said simply:

  ‘Strokes are beastly things but I’m sure you will make a complete recovery and be back with us soon. Neil Rorke.’

  The scientist’s heart sank. That was it, his worst fears confirmed; he’d had a stroke. Struth, how bad was it? Total paralysis? And yet – something felt wrong about it. Something was stirring in his mind. Last night? Dr Crowe, and another man. Gunn? Yes! That was his name, the Director of Security. The memory was foggy. They had come to his old lab, now he had woken up here. God, if they had not been there he might be dead. But what had they wanted?

  His thinking was becoming more focused every second. He’d been working on the Maternox, had identified the DNA in them. ‘M – M – M’ his voice was coming back. Then he choked and coughed violently from the obstruction in his throat. The breathing tube, he realized.

  Crowe was looking at his watch. ‘Just a couple of minutes, Dr Bannerman. Don’t try to speak with the tube in.’

  He could feel his hands again, his feet. He wiggled his toes. He was able to move his head a little, then more; until, suddenly, he could rotate it completely. Could see where he was: in a bland hospital bedroom. Windowless. Like the Bendix Building.

  He tested his body as he waited, working on each limb in turn, flexing the muscles, raising, lowering, to test his motor control. He was relieved to discover there was movement in all areas, even if only very local at the moment. As long as there was movement, it could be worked on; physiotherapy; he had read somewhere that it was vital to start physio as quickly as possible after a stroke.

  Maternox. Last night was becoming clearer all the time. The results of his tests! Anger simmered inside him.

  ‘Just going to slip your ventilator out now,’ Seligman said, reaching forward and beginning to pull.

  Bannerman felt a choking, tickling sensation in his gullet and for a moment panicked as he could not breathe; finally, he saw the long, white plastic endotracheal tube slowly appear, and then he was breathing freely, gulping down deep draughts of air, his throat feeling swollen and parched.

  The ventilator hissed one final time then fell silent.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Crowe asked calmly.

  ‘I’ve had a stroke?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. A very minor one. You’ve been lucky.’

  ‘That’s not what I call lucky. I’m only fifty-eight.’

  ‘Well, they can happen at any age. You’re in good hands here. I believe you may have met Dr Seligman, Director of our Clinics?’

  The geneticist raised his head to watch Seligman twist a flow valve.

  ‘You are comfortable, I trust?’ Crowe asked.

  ‘Bugger being comfortable! Where the hell am I?’

  ‘You’re in the Hammersmith Bendix.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘That will depend.’

  ‘On what?’

  Dick Bannerman watched Crowe’s face become evasive; his expression was communicating the wrong signals. Was the stroke worse than he was telling him? Was he a
bout to have another?

  ‘Dr Bannerman, in modern medicine a very great deal is down to the patient’s attitude.’

  ‘Where’s my daughter? Has she been told?’

  ‘Someone is trying to contact her. We believe she may be in America.’

  The geneticist cursed as he remembered. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Damnit – I – I have to be – the White House, Friday. I have a speech, I –’ He glanced round for a phone and was surprised not to see one.

  ‘They’ll understand,’ Crowe said sympathetically. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all taken care of.’

  Dick Bannerman was thinking. About Maternox. He had to get his information to Monty in case he had another stroke and went gaga; or died. Ideally he ought to get confirmation that Crowe was involved, but warning bells were starting to ring. He glanced at Seligman and decided he did not like the look of him either. Saying nothing, he tried to shift his body and sit up but could not make it; it was as if half his internal connections had been switched off. He saw Seligman watching his efforts with what looked like a faint smirk on his face.

  Meanwhile, Crowe moved slowly around the room, his eyes alighting, bird-like, on one object then another. He stopped beside the television, picked up the remote channel changer, and commented as if at random, ‘So many wonderful things in modern technology, don’t you think, Dr Bannerman?’

  ‘Yes and no is the answer to that. Like a lot of my colleagues in genetics, I fear some lunatic may go too far one day. Just imagine, for instance, what the work of one isolated madman could do to Bendix Schere’s long-term corporate strategy.’

  Crowe went over to the Van Gogh painting of sunflowers and tapped it with his finger. ‘This is the work of an isolated madman. A tortured genius who died in anguish and poverty. Now his paintings sell for more than the gross national product of some countries. In their lifetimes the Impressionists were ridiculed as charlatans because they dared to be different. In the judgement of posterity, they were the geniuses who liberated painting from the shackles that were strangling it.’