Cry Darkness

Twenty

A few days later Sandy Jones flew back to America with Ed, who now knew everything she did. Not only everything about the Ruders Theory, but everything about her meeting with Jimmy Cecil. She could think of no better confidante.

Ed was going home. He needed to return to his teaching job.

‘Before it’s not there anymore,’ he told her.

Jones was travelling with him partly, although she hadn’t quite admitted it to herself yet, because she simply wanted to delay their parting, and partly because she needed to see Connie. Marion Jessop’s condition had improved enough for her to be released from hospital, and Connie was caring for her at her Princeton home.

Jones and Ed arrived in Princeton late in the afternoon on a blustery Autumn day. They took a taxi to Ed’s apartment first. There was a postcard lying on the doormat. From Mikey. It had a South African postmark, and bore a picture of an elephant.

Ed was momentarily elated. He’d received no reply to a series of emails, and had continued to worry about his wayward brother.

‘What does he say?’ Jones asked.

‘“Over here on special assignment. Hope you’re well and everything sorted. See you soon. Ciao, Mikey”,’ Ed read. ‘Well that doesn’t tell us much, does it?’

‘It tells us he’s safe,’ Jones commented.

‘I don’t even know if he deserves to be safe. Not after what he did.’

‘We’re not really sure what he did do.’

‘I think we have a fair idea, Sandy.’

‘Maybe. But he would only have been a very small cog in the wheel.’

‘There’s not even any sort of an apology.’

‘Well, I suppose that would be an admission of guilt.’

‘Umm. I didn’t know Feds went abroad on assignments.’

‘Neither did I. But, hey, maybe your mad brother was only pretending to be a Fed. Maybe he’s really a spook.’

Ed chuckled. Jones was becoming increasingly fond of him. But she didn’t dare admit just how fond. Not yet. And certainly not to him. In any case, she was on a mission.

‘I’m going to go see Connie straight away,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you won’t come with me?’

‘I won’t. I need to get Jasper. Anyway, I don’t think I’d know what to say...’

‘It’s OK,’ said Jones.

‘Is it?’ Ed enquired rhetorically.

It took Jones about twenty minutes to walk from Ed’s apartment to the narrow, white-terraced house, in one of the university town’s leafiest streets, which Connie had inherited from her mother.

She opened the front door swiftly. Her hair seemed bigger and redder than ever. She was wearing a lime green top and bright orange trousers with a rip in one knee. In spite of all that had happened, some things didn’t change.

‘My God, it’s good to see you, Sandy Jones. Our saviour!’

She led Jones straight up the stairs to a light airy bedroom where Marion lay propped up in a big lace-covered bed, a cradle over one leg.

‘I’m getting to be a dab hand with bedpans.’ said Connie cheerfully.

Connie seemed almost unnaturally cheerful. Jones glanced across at Marion. The pain she was suffering was clear in her face, but she greeted Jones with a warm smile.

‘How are you doing, Marion?’ Jones asked gently.

‘Not so badly.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘She’s going to be just fine,’ interjected Connie, again with excessive cheeriness, Jones thought. ‘We can’t wait to get her a new leg, can we, Marion, sweetheart?’

Marion said nothing. She just smiled again. Rather more wanly, Jones thought.

‘Anyway, you’d never guess what’s gone on here since you hit the newsstands, Sandy,’ Connie continued, beaming at Jones. ‘They’re going to rebuild the RECAP lab. Only it’ll be even better than before. New equipment, new everything, and maybe even proper staff again. Certainly a proper budget.’

She glanced fondly towards Marion. ‘Thomas is fixing it all. Marion’s son, the Dean of Princeton, and now the other saviour of RECAP. After you, Sandy, of course.’

She turned to face Jones.

‘Isn’t it just great? Thomas says it’s the least he can do. He’s going to use some foundation money or something. I don’t know. Anything to do with finances is a mystery to me, but Thomas says he’s pretty sure he can carry the university’s governing bodies with him.’

She paused, still beaming at Jones, who made no reply.

‘It’s marvellous, isn’t it?’ Connie continued, apparently unaware of, or simply untroubled by, Jones’s silence. ‘And you won’t believe the other marvellous thing. Thomas has actually known about Marion and me for a long time, since even before his father died, we think, though he’s never said that, and he’s quite happy about it. But he says he’s grateful to us for not going public, and grateful to you too, Sandy, for being discreet about our relationship when you revealed what you did to the press.’

Jones again said nothing. Connie carried on regardless.

‘And Dom and Gaynor are coming for the weekend. We want to thank them properly for everything.’

Jones spoke then, addressing Connie directly for the first time, quite curtly, with a harsh inflection in her voice.

‘Yes, and you’ll certainly have a lot to tell them.’

‘What?’ Connie sounded puzzled, uncertain, as indeed had been Jones’s intention.

Jones turned away and walked to the window. Only when she had her back to the other two women did she start to speak again. She couldn’t look at Connie. She just couldn’t.

‘I have a copy of Paul’s Theory of Consciousness,’ she said quietly.

There was a silence in the room, broken eventually by Marion.

‘Why, that’s wonderful. Isn’t it, Connie? Isn’t it?’

Connie said nothing.

‘I’ve studied it thoroughly,’ Jones continued. ‘I now have a pretty damned good understanding of it.’

Connie still didn’t speak. Jones took a deep breath and swung around to face her. Connie had sat down on the chair by the bed and was staring at Jones. Her green eyes wide open.

‘And you know what that means, Connie, don’t you?’

Connie shrugged, and still did not speak.

‘It means I know that Paul’s theory makes no sense at all. It’s fake. He was no closer to solving the mystery of consciousness than I am! His paper is garbage. A load of drivel. Crap!’

Connie leaned forwards in her chair, her eyes blazing.

‘And what exactly makes you so goddamned sure of that, Dr effin’ Jones. You’re just a TV scientist. You’re the fake. Paul was the leader in his field. The number one man. You abandoned the study of consciousness over twenty years ago.’

Jones sighed. ‘No Connie. You can’t bluff and bluster your way out of this one. I have quite sufficient knowledge. I worked long enough with you both. And, as you’ve always told me yourself, I have the gift, don’t I? No, Connie, no. There is no effective theory of consciousness. Just a garbled inconsequential jumble of—’

‘Maybe you’ve lost the gift, Sandy,’ Connie interjected. ‘You’ve certainly forgotten Radin’s rule. The mystery of consciousness could only ever be explained in new language.’

‘This wasn’t language at all. I went over and over it. Paul’s theory is rubbish. And you know that. You must have known that all along.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Sandy.’

Jones laughed grimly. Short and sharp.

‘You never give up, do you Connie Pike? You could always talk the hind leg off a donkey. It won’t wash any more. You knew the theory was rubbish, and you used that, you played games with it for your own ends. But then the whole thing spiralled out of control, didn’t it? Horrendously out of control. And you hadn’t bargained for that.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sandy.’

‘Oh yes, you do.’

Connie stood up abruptly. ‘Well, if we really must have this ridiculous conversation, shall we continue it downstairs? I don’t want Marion upset.’

‘No.’ Marion’s voice was surprisingly strong. She hauled herself further up onto the pillows. ‘No. Stay here. Both of you. Please Sandy, I want to hear this.’

Jones turned to her.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You don’t know anything do you, Marion? You’ve even lost a leg because of this fucking mess, and she still hasn’t told you, has she?’

‘Told me what?’ Marion was sitting quite upright now, her eyes firmly focused on her partner. ‘What haven’t you told me, Connie?’

Connie sat down again.

‘I don’t know. I have no idea. Sandy seems to have all the answers. Let her tell us both. If she must.’

Jones looked at her. The woman had always had guts. She was still fighting to save the situation. But this time that was impossible. Even for Connie Pike.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be as brief as I can and then you can ask me any questions you like, Marion. You deserve to know everything. Paul Ruders was a sick man. A very sick man. He had Alzheimer’s Disease and his mind was barely functioning at all by the end. I know this because a rather well-connected friend of mine has been doing some investigating. He gained access to Paul’s medical records. Apparently the problems began even before Gilda died. But, like many victims of this bloody awful disease, Paul refused to accept that his mind was affected in any way. He thought, or maybe he just kidded himself, who knows with Alzheimer’s, that his work was as valid, as considered, and as properly thought-out as ever. His communication skills were so highly developed that he covered up amazingly well, certainly during relatively short periods of time spent with people. You, Connie, were the only person who spent a lot of time with him. Even Ed saw very little of Paul latterly. He told me that. You covered for Paul, Connie. But his mind was in bits. He was convinced that he had solved the mystery of consciousness, and, of course, he shared his thoughts, and his work, such as it was, with you. He always did. And he shared his allegedly ground-breaking theory with you too.

‘You, of course, were well aware the work was worthless. But you decided to use it. RECAP was indeed under threat, more than ever before, in spite of the success of the Global Consciousness Project worldwide. My friend also found out that you lost your last major grant over a year ago. You saw a way to use Paul’s deluded attempt at a theory of consciousness for your own ends. You thought that if the American government were convinced of the existence and the merit of his theory, RECAP would not only be saved, but its existence would be guaranteed. Certainly for your lifetime.’

Jones paused.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Marion, and her voice sounded very weak.

‘Connie knew about Ed’s brother, Michael, or Mikey MacEntee, being in the FBI,’ continued Jones. ‘She was also aware, as we all were, that he wasn’t the brightest kid on the block. In fact, God only knows how he got into the Feds. Anyway, Connie decided to exploit him, too. She used Mikey to draw attention to Paul’s alleged theory, a theory that she knew would attract enormous interest at the highest level—’

‘Oh my God,’ Marion interrupted.

Jones moved closer to the bed.

‘Yes, Marion. It wasn’t Ed, either knowingly or unknowingly, who was feeding his crazy brother information about RECAP. It was Connie. And Mikey, of course, jumped at the opportunity of being able to pass on exclusive, potentially revolutionary, information to his superiors, in order to acquire some self-importance. He always wanted desperately to be at the centre of things.

‘But Connie and Mikey were both right out of their depth. Yes, Connie had always talked about the suspicion in which people in high places held RECAP and its work. But she was also quite sure that the American government would not be able to resist the possibility of holding the secret of consciousness in its sticky paws — out of fear as much as anything. Fear of its ultimate power would also make it highly unlikely that the government would attempt to put the theory into use, and if they did, well it was actually rubbish, so it didn’t matter anyway.

‘It didn’t occur to Connie that this fear of the power of global consciousness was so extreme that there were those in government circles who would be prepared to violently destroy not only RECAP and the Global Consciousness Project but also the people who ran them. She believed that by feeding this pack of nonsense to those in power, she would safeguard RECAP’s future. Indeed I suspect that was what she asked for in return for keeping silent about the alleged theory for the good of America — a guaranteed future for RECAP, albeit under the tacit control of the US government. And as ever, that was all Connie really cared about.’

Jones glanced towards Connie. Her face was expressionless. Then she heard a little gulp from the bed.

‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry, Marion,’ said Jones.

‘No, go on, please.’

‘Right. Well, as we’ve all said many times, Paul’s reputation was such that once it was known that he believed he’d solved this extraordinary mystery, then most outsiders would assume he had indeed done so. His status in the field would ensure—’

‘Oh come on, Sandy,’ Connie interrupted. ‘You don’t really think the American government, or any of its agencies, would take the steps they did, steps that led to the sanctioning of murder, without at least being able to authenticate Paul’s paper, do you?’

‘No I don’t. I think you supplied Mikey with a copy of Paul’s flawed theory well before the night of the break-in when the bomb was planted in the lab. I think you copied the paper onto a USB and gave it to Mikey. You knew that nobody except a real expert in the field — and there aren’t many of those — would be able to make head or tail of it, even if it were genuine. And I have to admit, the paper did look the part. It looked like a genuine and very advanced scientific document, as, of course, it would, coming from Paul, even with a messed-up brain. You knew exactly what would happen after you supplied Mikey with that paper. His bosses came to you to authenticate it. Who else would they go to?

‘You supplied it and then you authenticated it, Connie. Brilliantly simple. A full circle. But you totally underestimated the lengths the bastards would go to in order to keep the secret of consciousness just that, didn’t you?’

Connie said nothing. Marion was staring at her.

‘It’s true, Connie, isn’t it,’ she said.

It was a statement not a question.

Suddenly Connie’s face crumpled. She began to cry.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘So sorry. It’s been awful keeping what I did a secret. After the explosion, well, I knew it was all my fault. Everything had gone horrendously wrong. I just wished I’d died too, along with Paul.’

Jones shrugged.

‘You did a bloody good job of carrying on and pulling even more wool over all our eyes,’ she said. ‘You treated RECAP like a game, Connie, but you had no idea who you were playing it with.’

‘I couldn’t foresee that they were going to blow up the lab. I didn’t know that was going to happen.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jones rapped the words out.

‘What do you mean, am I sure?’

‘Well, it was quite convenient wasn’t it, to say the least, that you were outside the lab having a smoke when the place was destroyed. Am I supposed to believe that was just a happy coincidence?’

‘Sandy, what are you saying? Of course it was a coincidence. Do you think I would ever have done what I did, if I’d thought for one second Paul might be killed? They were after me too. I had an extraordinarily lucky escape, that’s all. It never occurred to me that Mikey’s people would go that far.’

Jones actually did believe her. Connie had, after all, in her twisted way, been trying to protect RECAP, and maybe Paul as well. But Jones was angry.

‘Really?’ she queried edgily.

‘I can’t see into the future, Sandy.’

‘But you don’t mind manipulating it a bit, eh?’

‘Sandy, when I phoned you, before the explosion, I was going to tell you everything. Come clean. Things were happening, like I said. I was beginning to get scared. I realized it was all getting out of control. And the only person I could think of who might be able to sort it out was you. Because of your influence, because of your contacts, because of your knowledge. But it was all too late. I never did get to tell you...’

Her voice tailed off. Neither of the other two said anything. After a while Connie continued to speak.

‘Anyway, even though I’d been the mole, the deep throat, if you like, I realized, of course, when the bomb went off that I had been a target too, and that my life would still be in danger. I knew too much. So I went into hiding with Marion, as you both know. And I made myself just think about RECAP. I decided it was my mission to see that RECAP was reborn, that the work would continue, and that I survived to make sure of that.’

She paused again, leaning forwards in her chair towards the bed.

‘I’m so sorry, Marion. I should have told you. At first I just didn’t want to admit what I’d done. I’d got it all so wrong. And then, after you were mown down by the truck, well, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. You’d been so badly injured, and that was my fault too.’

Connie reached for Marion. Marion turned away. Connie turned back to Jones. She’d stopped crying.

‘What will happen now?’ she asked.

‘Nothing much, probably,’ responded Jones. ‘It’s over, isn’t it? You won’t be brought to book for what you’ve done, Connie. The whole thing is too complex, and involves too many people in high places. You were certainly telling the truth about a cover up. That’s still going on, I can assure you. No, you could be regarded as having got away with it. In spite of all the death and suffering you caused. Apart from just two points.

‘The first is that if RECAP is ever relaunched, I, and the people I know, will make absolutely sure you never have anything to do with it again. And do not think for one moment that I can’t do that.

‘The second is that you have to live with what you’ve done, and with the woman you love knowing what you have been responsible for, including the loss of her leg.’

‘I didn’t drive that truck, Sandy, and I would rather it had been me beneath it than Marion,’ said Connie, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘You are every bit as guilty as those who did drive that truck, Connie. Possibly more so. It was you who began it all.’

Jones paused. Connie said nothing more.

‘You know what,’ Jones continued, ‘I used to think you were the most unselfish person in the world, Connie. Now I think you might be the most selfish. You have irretrievably harmed the reputation of the very area of science which has always meant so much to you. One way and another the truth about Paul’s paper will get out, like these things do, which will be not only a blow to the project but also a tragic slur on the man. Because that man was no longer there when he wrote his flawed paper.’

Connie just stared at Jones, her facial expression undiscernible now.

‘Remember the question you used to ask all the time? Can six men in a room change the world?’

Connie nodded.

‘Yes, and they’re the only ones who can,’ she murmured.

‘But not if they lie, Connie. Not if they damned well lie.’

Jones didn’t want to be in the same place as Connie Pike any more. She hadn’t fully realized quite how much Connie had always meant to her. Suddenly it all seemed so meaningless. She headed for the door, turning to look back one last time.

Connie had moved closer to the bed, and was again reaching out towards Marion. Once more Marion pulled away.

Outside Jones half ran down the street. She was in a hurry to get away from Connie. She was also in a hurry to get back to Ed. Ed who knew what she knew. Ed who understood.

He met her at the door, Jasper jumping about at his feet. He must have been watching the street, waiting for her to return. His face was a picture of concern. Jones took one look at him and burst into tears.

She had been totally in control until she’d confronted Connie. She and Ed had been over everything again and again. It had been such a shock for both of them to discover what Connie Pike had done. But Jones had thought they’d each already more or less come to terms with it.

Coming face to face with Connie like that under such horrible twisted circumstances, the woman she had so admired for so long, had been much more traumatic than Jones had expected. She couldn’t get over Connie’s duplicity. Connie had put almost everyone she was in contact with at risk, including her own partner. Even after the RECAP explosion and Paul’s death she’d duped Jones into becoming involved in order to save her own skin — and to protect the future of RECAP, of course.

Jones could still hardly believe it.

Ed took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen, gesturing for her to take a seat at the little table. He made tea, and waited patiently until Jones was calm enough to give an account of her harrowing meeting with the two women.

‘You’ve been very brave, I just couldn’t face it,’ Ed said, when Jones had finished. ‘At least Connie knows now that she hasn’t got away with it after all. Not totally, anyway.’

He asked if Jones would like a proper drink. Jones said she would.

‘I’ve got some bourbon somewhere,’ said Ed.

He wandered off and started opening and shutting cupboard doors.

The television in one corner of the kitchen was switched on. Jones stared at it out of habit. A news bulletin washed over her. There was a curious item about an FBI agent who had been found dead in bed in Hawaii with his younger male lover, also a Fed. Apparently they’d both been strangled. There seemed to be a suggestion that they may have succeeded in strangling each other. Hawaii State Police reported that they suspected some kind of gay sex ritual.

Jones barely registered that item or any other. She’d done what she’d come to do. She’d needed to confront Connie, painful though that had been. And, Jones had to admit, not entirely satisfactory, either.

There’d been a look in Connie’s eye when Jones told her what she had learned and what she thought of her. And it had been a look Jones had not quite been able to fathom. She couldn’t help think that there still might be something more, another secret that Connie was keeping.

Jones gave herself a mental shaking. It was over. Really over. She must stop dealing with fantasy and get on with her life. A life she was beginning to hope Ed might one day become part of again. Although she knew that was going to take time.

She also knew that scientific research into the mystery of consciousness would continue all over the world. Without Paul. And without Connie.

Twenty-One

A couple of weeks later in his South Bank office, on the top floor of a very tall building, Jimmy Cecil sat with his chair fully reclined and his feet on his desk. He was reading a confidential report, fresh from Washington, on the RECAP affair.

By and large, the American cousins had glossed over it all quite effectively, he thought. For once. It could have been far more embarrassing, not just for the cousins, but for the UK and a number of the other countries, all UN affiliated, who had been privy to the existence of the Ruders Theory. In America the relevant government departments and the various security forces involved continued to publicly insist that the Princeton explosion had been caused by animal rights protesters, and there was no evidence to the contrary. Or no evidence that anyone was prepared to put forward, at any rate.

All copies of the flawed theory had now allegedly been destroyed. As indeed it had been planned to destroy the theory had it been genuine. Although Cecil had always feared that in reality that would never have happened. At least one copy would have survived in the dusty archives of some secret place somewhere, and ultimately, eventually, would have surfaced. Then the whole kerfuffle would have begun again.

Cecil walked to the window and looked out at the sweeping view it presented of the River Thames, iron grey and threatening on a dull winter’s day, snaking along past Westminster, under Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridge, towards St Paul’s and beyond.

For a while he stood there mulling things over. The untimely deaths of the Enforcer and his Apprentice had been regrettable. It was also regrettable, if perhaps inevitable, that they’d already been identified as FBI agents. But that had caused only a minor scandal compared with the uproar which would have occurred if certain of their recent activities had ever become public knowledge.

Duke Johnson wasn’t saying exactly what fate may or may not have befallen that loose cannon Mikey MacEntee. Johnson, of course, was not a man given to imparting any more information than he had to. It went against his nature. But it seemed that, at the very least, the young man was safely out of the way. And Jimmy Cecil considered it highly unlikely that the MacEntee connection would cause any further problems. Johnson had dealt with the matter rather skilfully, he thought. Any more definite solution concerning the brother of the former man in Sandy Jones’s life — or possibly not former any more, Cecil reckoned — may have stirred her up again, which nobody wanted. She had proven to be quite a formidable adversary. For an academic.

A fire boat, on exercise, swept past the riverside building, heading downstream at speed, all its hoses pumping foaming funnels of river water into great arcs which splashed spectacularly back into the Thames. Cecil thought it quite majestic. He watched idly for a few seconds, even though his mind was far away.

All in all, he reflected, the damage limitation exercise had been fairly successfully completed.

It had, of course, been Johnson who had executed the original plan, the bombing of RECAP and all that followed. But Johnson had been operating not only with the off-the-record authority of those in much higher places in America, but also with the tacit approval of the United Nations states involved — something all of them would deny, naturally. Just as Cecil had explained to Sandy Jones.

It was unfortunate that the entire exercise had subsequently proved to have been unnecessary. Jimmy Cecil disapproved of avoidable violence, needless loss of life. But these things happened. And he was pleased that it had ultimately been possible to allow Sandy Jones, a woman he’d always rather liked and admired, to come to no harm. Indeed, not so much possible as obligatory, once the celebrity boffin had so cleverly thrown herself and the whole messed-up operation into the public arena.

It had been a close call though, far closer for both Sandy Jones and Ed MacEntee than either of them would ever know.

Cecil had been left with little choice but to support Marmaduke Johnson when Jones and MacEntee had gone on the run. And he’d then been more or less forced to follow through when the pair of them had managed to get themselves back to the UK — even though they had displayed a level of initiative with which Cecil had been secretly rather impressed.

Individuals were always dispensable. They had to be in the circles Jimmy Cecil moved in. Even individuals you liked and respected. Nonetheless, he had been relieved to have been able to so dramatically rescind, at the eleventh hour, the order to eliminate Jones and MacEntee.

It was, of course, a much greater relief to Cecil that there was actually no effective Theory of Consciousness in existence, and, it seemed, never had been. Neither RECAP, nor any other of the world’s scientists, had yet managed to solve humanity’s greatest mystery after all.

As far as Cecil was concerned that was good news. The status quo would continue. The people of the world were not going to rise as one against their governments, not for the time being anyway. Cecil had believed for years that one day there would be an almighty sea change. After all, there was little doubt that the vast majority of individuals in the vast majority of countries no longer had much belief or confidence in those who ruled their lives.

Jimmy Cecil was a realist. Jimmy Cecil was a pragmatist. He knew about people, and the way their minds worked. He believed it was absurd to suppose that existence could only be physical. And he had little doubt that the scientific community would one day solve the mystery of consciousness, thus taking a conceptual leap which would be far greater even than the leap from the power of fire to that of nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, Cecil remained devoted to the traditions of conventional government. He remained convinced that any dramatic change in what he regarded to be the natural order of things would lead to a total breakdown in international order, and should be held at bay for as long as possible.

By and large, Jimmy Cecil liked the world just how it was, and intended to continue to do all he could to keep it that way.

Marmaduke Johnson sat alone in his White House office, a small austere room tucked away in an almost forgotten corner. Naturally the president, although highly unlikely ever to publicly recognize his existence, knew where to find him. So did the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and a number of others, similarly eminent, who would also deny that he existed.

Jimmy Cecil had been absolutely right of course. Johnson had made sure Mikey emailed him a copy of the Ruders Theory right at the very beginning. Just in case. Duke Johnson believed it was his job to ensure that both he and America were always a step ahead.

When he’d heard from Cecil that the paper was not what had been believed, that the Ruders Theory did not stand up, Johnson had decided on a second opinion. After all, Duke Johnson didn’t trust anybody. And he certainly didn’t trust Jimmy Cecil, even though the two men, and a small group of others like them worldwide, had been supposed to be working as a team over the RECAP affair.

Apart from Connie Pike, there were two, maybe three, scientists in the world who were capable of judging Paul Ruders’ work. Johnson had called in the one he thought might be most attracted to the material gain he would be able to put his way, and had presented the paper as if he believed it were genuine. Less than a week later the somewhat bewildered scientist had confirmed that the theory was, to put it bluntly, nonsense.

Ruders, and that mad woman who’d worked with him, had just been crazy eccentrics, it seemed, believing in the impossible, deluding themselves. Paul Ruders had had an excuse, Johnson supposed. He’d been suffering from Alzheimer’s. But Johnson still couldn’t understand what made the other one tick. It had been Connie Pike who’d supplied the copy of Ruders’ work to Mikey. And, as probably the second most foremost figure in the field, nobody had suspected a thing when she’d confirmed its authenticity.

Johnson lit another black cheroot from the stub of the one he had already been smoking. Nobody else smoked in the White House, as far as he knew — and, of course, if they did, he would know. But Marmaduke Johnson’s world was a thing apart, a place where he, and only he, made up the rules as he went along.

The little room was hazy with smoke. Johnson liked that, an unsavoury fog providing the illusion of yet another screen behind which he could conceal himself from the prying eyes of democracy.

He leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply.

With the wonderful benefit of hindsight he wondered how on earth he could have fallen for any of the RECAP mumbo jumbo in the first place.

Unlike Jimmy Cecil, Marmaduke Johnson was not inclined to believe in anything much that he couldn’t see with his own eyes, right in front of him, and preferably reach out and touch.

Sandy Jones was at home in Northdown House enjoying an early-evening gin and tonic and a wonderful wintry sunset over the sea, and looking forward to the next day more than she had looked forward to anything in what felt like a very long time.

Three months had passed since the RECAP explosion and all that followed. Life had moved on. In the morning Jones and her twin sons would be flying to New York together to spend Christmas there. She was paying, of course. She didn’t mind. She hadn’t seen nearly enough of Matt and Lee lately.

She was also hoping to see something of Ed MacEntee. They had been keeping in touch regularly, mostly via Facetime. The old friendship, so easy and natural, had definitely been fully restored. Whether or not the old love affair could ever be resurrected still remained to be seen. Jones was beginning to hope quite strongly that it could.

These were comfortable thoughts. But she also couldn’t stop thinking about Connie, which was not nearly so comfortable. At first Jones had been so angered by what Connie Pike had done, and had felt so let down by her, that she hadn’t been able to be objective.

Since then, as she’d expected would happen, somebody somewhere had leaked to the press that the Ruders Theory didn’t stand up. That it was gobbledygook. And eventually sections of the unfortunate piece of work had turned up in various newsrooms. Jones wondered if Jimmy Cecil had been responsible for that. If not, it had been somebody rather like him, she suspected.

Predictably a certain amount of the newspaper flak which followed had been directed at Jones as well as Connie, but most of the thrust in the press still focused on the question of whether or not there had been a major conspiracy and at what level. There was speculation, accurate speculation as it happened, that the security forces and various relevant government departments which may have been involved hadn’t known the theory was worthless. However, the American government ignored that, and instead presented the revelation as proof that there had been no conspiracy. The discrediting of the Ruders Theory surely removed any possible reason for there ever having been one, it was argued.

Three months on, the White House spin doctors continued to stick like glue to the original assertion that the Princeton bombing had been instigated by animal rights campaigners, and the RECAP lab destroyed by chance. It was also claimed that Marion Jessop had been accidentally mown down by a hit-and-run driver yet to be traced — which made no sense, of course. Jones had seen the incident. There had been other witnesses. And the lethal Chevy truck had returned for a second go. But this was attributed to its driver panicking, and as Jones was now keeping her head down and neither Connie nor Marion stepped forward to contradict anything, the new official version stood.

Jones had decided that the best thing to do under the circumstances was to step back from it all. The revelation that the Ruders Theory was worthless had not done her reputation any good, because it was she who had first gone public about the theory and claimed that there was a major conspiracy over it.

However, three months was a long time in the world of science. And, fortunately, it seemed that both the media and her colleagues in academia now took the attitude that her earlier outburst had been prompted only by loyalty to old friends — misguided, perhaps, but mildly laudable, all the same.

Jones was still going to be installed as Chancellor of Oxford in the New Year, although she’d heard on the grapevine that there had indeed been those amongst the university’s hierarchy who’d made it clear that they would have liked to overturn the vote of the Convocation had they been able to do so.

Her BBC bosses seemed to have taken the attitude that her sudden burst of international fame, albeit tinged with notoriety and linked to a questionable area of science, had added a touch of spice to her image which was not entirely unwelcome. It appeared that they believed her programmes would be all the more popular, and possibly attract a whole new section of the viewing public, in addition to her already established audience.

Her totally out of character behaviour in cancelling filming days at the very last minute was never mentioned again. They had been rescheduled and she was now well into her new series.

But Jones felt that she couldn’t take the RECAP affair any further, even if she still wished to, without doing herself irrevocable damage. And she didn’t see the point. It was over. Surely it was over?

Connie had been totally discredited. It was leaked to the press that she had more or less co-written the worthless paper with Paul Ruders. The full story of her involvement had yet to be revealed, and quite probably never would be. But her scientific standing had plummeted — along sadly with that of the whole consciousness project worldwide, at least temporarily — and Connie Pike was unlikely to work again, either at Princeton, in the unlikely event of RECAP ever being relaunched, or at any other reputable academic establishment. Somewhat to her surprise, Jones found, as the dust began to settle, that she wished the woman no further harm. And she could only imagine how Connie’s relationship with Marion would have suffered.

However, as the days and weeks passed, Jones had also become more and more convinced that she’d missed something. Ultimately it had all been explained in ways that now seemed just a tad too convenient. A little too neat. There was something somewhere that didn’t quite add up. And she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that Connie Pike had not told her everything.

But this time, there really was nothing in the world Sandy Jones could do about it.

Twenty-Two

The previous night the first snow of winter had fallen on Princeton. Connie Pike opened the kitchen door into her little garden at the back and stood for a few moments looking out.

A pale December sun had in places turned the snow the colour of clotted cream, with tinges of blue in the shade. Icicles hanging from the fruit trees shone like white gold. Nobody had yet set foot on the lawn which was covered in a perfect milky white carpet. It was picture book stuff. It was beautiful. It was joyous. But Connie felt no joy. She did not believe she would ever feel joy again.

Her life’s work, was no more. Not for her, at any rate, whatever happened ultimately. After the flawed Ruders paper had been made public, discrediting the entire Global Consciousness Project in general, as well as Connie and Paul in particular, Thomas Jessop and the rest of the Princeton supremacy had swiftly reneged on their pledge to rebuild and reinstate RECAP.

Marion, the woman Connie had loved for twenty-five years, was spending more and more time in her own home. Alone. She had told Connie that she’d forgiven her, that she understood. But Connie knew that wasn’t true. And as she watched Marion struggling to learn to walk on an artificial leg, while coping with the severe pain which still seemed to be almost continual, Connie could hardly blame her.

She so wanted to tell Marion everything. But she didn’t dare. She had unwittingly damaged her partner quite enough. If the whole truth were known it would all begin again. Connie was quite certain of that. And this time the repercussions would surely reverberate worldwide. Many more innocent people could suffer.

Connie took a step outside, walking across the paved area close to her house, the house she was brought up in, and onto the pristine lawn, her rubber boots leaving behind a trail of dark footprints.

She was wearing a shocking pink anorak, lined in orange nylon fur which protruded around the collar and the cuffs, clashing spectacularly with her red hair.

In one green woollen gloved hand she carried a spade. She walked straight to the young apple tree furthest from the house, turned smartly left and took five carefully measured steps towards the now frozen birdbath by the fence. Then she stopped and, quite gently, exploratively, pushed the blade of her spade into the snow.

The snow was still soft, as was the earth beneath it, kept warm by its thick white blanket. But Connie knew that could change any day soon, the snow turn to ice, and the soil beneath it freeze. If she didn’t dig now, it might be weeks, or even months, before she would be able to get a spade into the ground again.

She looked up at the cold blue sky and shivered. She was actually warm inside her pink coat, but she shivered because of all that had happened and the quite monumental decision she had made last summer. A decision which had caused terrible death and destruction, but one she had stuck to throughout, because she was quite sure that what had happened already was nothing compared with what would have happened had she taken a different path.

Not only had she so wanted to tell Marion the truth, she’d also been desperate to tell Sandy Jones. She hated knowing that Sandy now thought so badly of her, although believed it likely the English doctor still wouldn’t have approved of what Connie had done. Nor accepted her reasoning. Sandy was probably too worldly for that. And, in spite of the risks she had taken in speaking out about RECAP, Connie, the explosion, and so on, Sandy Jones was an ambitious woman who would not have taken kindly to any damage that might have been done to her celebrated career.

Sandy would never have been able to keep the secret. She wouldn’t have been able to resist telling the world.

Connie Pike didn’t think the world was ready. She hadn’t thought the world was ready before the lunatics, who did the dirty work for the other lunatics who dared to sit in government offices, had so horrendously confirmed it. After they had ruthlessly blown up half of Princeton’s scientific research block in order to destroy RECAP and murder her and Paul, she’d known that the world wasn’t ready.

Connie didn’t wish to share the destiny of Carl Oppenheimer. Connie did not wish to be a shatterer of worlds. And neither did she want that to be Paul Ruders’ legacy. Paul had been a great humanitarian as well as a genius. And his genius had been such that it had at first risen above the terrible disease of the mind which had so cruelly struck him down.

Indeed the workings of the human mind never failed to amaze Connie, even though she’d spent her entire life studying just that in one way or another. It had been almost as if the early stages of Alzheimer’s had opened up certain areas of Paul Ruders’ mind, even as they’d closed others, and given him a freedom of thought he would not otherwise have had. All along, of course, he’d confided in Connie, shared his discoveries with her, just as he always had. Although she’d kept that a secret too. But as Paul had become more deluded so he’d proceeded to destroy much of his work, while being convinced that he was improving it. And all the while the interest of the outside agencies which Paul must somehow inadvertently have aroused — and Connie still did not know how — grew more and more sinister.

Mikey had approached Connie and Paul quite aggressively, and told them that he knew Paul had produced an effective theory of consciousness, and that he represented government bodies who insisted upon immediate access. For the good of America.

‘If you tell anybody I’ve made this approach it will be all the worse, for you two and for RECAP,’ Mikey had threatened.

Connie hadn’t been afraid of Mikey MacEntee, whom she knew vaguely as Ed’s rather fanciful brother, but she was afraid of the kind of people she suspected he worked for. So she dismissed at once her first instinct, which was to confide in Ed. She didn’t think Mikey MacEntee would harm his own brother. But she feared that his employers might. She feared they might harm almost anyone who got in their way.

Paul, of course, forgot about the confrontation with Mikey almost as it happened, leaving Connie to deal with it. At first Connie stalled. She knew about Mikey’s Walter Mitty tendencies. She told herself he might just be playing one of his games again, even though he had been pretty convincing. But when she and Paul suddenly started being pressurized — and the Internal Revenue investigations and the speeding tickets and all the rest of it began to happen — Connie came to realize that this was no game.

She ultimately decided to appear to comply with Mikey, partly in order to protect Paul himself, but more importantly to protect Paul’s work.

It had seemed like such a good idea, at first, to supply Mikey and his employers with one of Paul’s later efforts — a completely worthless paper. That way Connie had hoped she would safeguard much more than the future of RECAP.

And as she stood in her back garden on that quite glorious winter’s afternoon, Connie Pike still had no intention of allowing the wrong people to get their hands on the real Ruders Theory.

It did exist, of course. Paul Ruders had produced something near miraculous. Something magnificent. And from the beginning Connie Pike had been all too aware of how terribly it could be misused. She remained determined not to let that happen.

Connie didn’t know what Jimmy Cecil had told Sandy Jones. Connie didn’t even know there was a Jimmy Cecil. But, just like the somewhat mysterious Englishman, she’d always believed that the solution to the secret of consciousness would ultimately prove to be potentially a far more powerful weapon than the splitting of the atom. And that continued to frighten her. Which was partly why she had much preferred the journey of RECAP to the concept of reaching a destination.

Connie Pike tightened her grip on her spade, pushed it more forcefully into the ground, and, using her foot to put extra pressure on the top edge of the blade, began to dig.

She had already played God once, and now she was doing it again. But then, she didn’t believe in God. She believed only in the power of the human mind. She believed that, ultimately, human beings held sole responsibility for the future destiny of their race. And that, in the modern world, scientists carried far greater responsibility than anyone in government, because knowledge was so much more powerful than politics. More powerful even than any force, military or otherwise, that governments could exert. She also believed, looking back on the mistakes of the past, that it was not necessarily a straightforward progression for science to meekly hand over to national government a discovery which would have colossal impact on the entire planet.

A metallic clank echoed through the clear air as the cutting edge of Connie Pike’s spade hit metal. She dug around, pushing the soil aside, until a steel box, about a foot long, ten inches wide, and six inches deep, was revealed. Then she lifted the box out of the ground and dropped it on to the snow by her feet.

Connie had destroyed every computer file of the original Paul Ruders Theory, and she had done so irrevocably. She’d known the Crime Scenes Investigators would find nothing on the desktop iMac at Paul’s house, even though it was true that she had been somehow drawn there after the explosion. Perhaps as a kind of pilgrimage. Or maybe just out of guilt. She wasn’t sure. But she’d lied to Sandy Jones about that too. She’d been to the house days earlier, when she had known Paul was at the university, using the key he’d kept hidden in a plant pot in his potting shed. She’d checked out the iMac, and thrown Paul’s laptop — which did contain a copy of the theory — into Lake Carnegie, replacing it with another, confident that he was at a stage in his degenerative illness when he was past noticing.

She had half wanted to destroy the theory altogether. And for ever. But the scientist in her, the explorer of the mind, had been congenitally unable to do so.

She’d kept just one copy of the true Ruders Theory of Consciousness. Nobody else in the world knew of its existence. It was a hard copy. It was, in fact, the original. An extraordinary document comprising over 300 pages of A4 paper, covered with words, figures, and equations all in Paul Ruders’ neat and meticulous hand. And it lay, wrapped in several layers of plastic, within the steel box at her feet.

Connie did not intend to do anything with the document. Not yet. After all, more than ever before she believed the world wasn’t ready. She wanted only to look at it again. To hold it. To study it. To be privy once more to mankind’s greatest mystery. Then she would bury it again in her garden.

A bolt of excitement shot through her as she carried the steel box indoors, opened it, and removed the contents. She unravelled the protective plastic and held out, on the upturned palms of both hands, the thick sheaf of handwritten pages.

The real Ruders paper lay before her. Not only Paul’s finest achievement, but almost certainly the most remarkable scientific advancement of modern times. Possibly the most remarkable scientific advancement of any time.

She had in her grasp The Secret of Consciousness. Humanity’s last great mystery. Her eyes filled with tears.

It was pretty much all that Connie Pike had left now. And, one day, she hoped, perhaps one day, it would be possible to give this great gift of a great man to the world. Without fear.