Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (ebook reader that looks like a book .TXT) 📗

She leaned forward and smiled. It was Saskia, but she was older. He smiled back until the heaviness reached even his mind. He slept.

Part III

The ravine was widest at their point of landing. To their left, rock had tumbled from the face to form a scree slope. To their right was a flat plateau of shingle. It stretched out for nearly a kilometre before it met the right-hand wall of the ravine. At its face was a little hut. It was crude but sturdy. From this distance, nothing could be seen but for a bonfire set before it.

The Devil, Jobanique and the Deep Blue Sea

The mirror buzzed against its screws. Somewhere, a woman laughed. Saskia looked at her eyes. In a staring contest the reflection was always last to look away. She considered Proctor’s story. It was plausible. He lacked the edge of Hannah, the menace of Jobanique. Her mind floated as a compass above an inscrutable magnetic source – her lost memories, perhaps – and believed Proctor.

She reached into her jacket and removed her badge. The golden letters of the Föderatives Investigationsbüro reflected her many times. Underneath, ‘Saskia Brandt’ had been stamped on the metal. It was not her name. She was not Saskia Brandt. She was a German woman in her late twenties; she knew nothing more. Her skills were fake. Her knowledge of arrest procedure: inserted. Digital.

Did she believe Proctor?

Could he help her?

You are a detective. Detect.

Her eyes closed. Sleep was close. In her mind, she saw the witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.

Who were the fates?

There was a knock at the bathroom door.

“Yes?” she called.

“I really need the bathroom.”

“Of course.”

She collected her things. She guessed she had been staring in the mirror for nearly ten minutes. It was an indescribable feeling to find one’s own face unfamiliar.

She found Proctor in the bar. He was sitting as she had left him: slumped, exhausted. She had said virtually nothing for the past two hours. For Proctor, by contrast, words had been a great pressure inside him. She had sipped her gin and tonic. He had sipped his whisky.

“I have thought about your proposal,” she said. She sat but did not unbutton her jacket. She did not want Proctor to reach for her gun, though the captain had insisted that she unload it.

“Go on,” he said. His eyes moved around the small room. Occasionally they settled on her. Mostly they settled on his glass.

“It is unacceptable.”

Proctor nodded. “Ah.”

“Professor Proctor –”

“David.”

“– it is not within my power to release you. You do not even know where you are going.”

Proctor smiled. “No. My guide has become curiously silent on the matter.”

Saskia swivelled on her stool to face him. “I have arrested you. It is my duty to return you to England. There you will face the British authorities.”

“But you believe me.”

“I do not have the luxury of believing you or disbelieving, Professor. I only have my orders.”

Proctor rolled the empty glass between his palms. Saskia half-smiled. It was a curious gesture. She recalled an old memory

– surely from her former self – of man sitting at a bar, making the exact same action. He was a sheriff in the American Wild West, but character in a film, building his courage, drop by drop, so that he could run the bandits out of town. “Look,” she said. “Tell them what you have told me. If you are speaking the truth, you will be acquitted.”

He laughed. He wobbled the glass at the steward and Saskia, as her attention switched, remembered the film’s name: High Noon. “There may be a trial. You know what happens in these David-and-Goliath contests, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “David beats Goliath.”

“No, that’s the fiction. The truth is that David is beaten every time.”

Proctor surrendered his glass to the steward. The man placed the glass under a small bottle that was attached to the wall. The bottle was upside-down. He pressed against the nozzle and some amber liquid fell into the glass. As liquid fell, bubbles rose. Saskia watched David. The process fascinated him. When he received the glass, he took a sip and tossed the liquid around his mouth like a wine taster. He swallowed. “Detective Brandt, I’m sorry. You remember what I told you about your role?”

“Yes. You said that were certain that I have a further part to play. But you cannot tell me how you came to this conclusion.”

“You must come with me.”

Saskia held his gaze. “Professor Proctor, I have spoken to you from politeness because I am curious and this is a long flight. It is well within my power to have you chained to a bulkhead in the cargo bay. You can keep the poodles company.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

Saskia raised an eyebrow. It was difficult to feel threatened by a scruffy, middle-aged man who had protested his pacifism only moments before. “Go on.”

“Your full name is Saskia Maria Brandt. You speak German, English and a little French. You are proficient in firearms and aikijutsu. You live on Rue Franz Merjay, 1070 Ixelles, Bruxelles. Your FIB badge number is 077-439-001.”

She dropped her hand to rest on her thigh. She needed to feel closer to the gun. Professor Proctor was not an unthinking zealot after all. He had researched her. She should have realised earlier. “Who told you that?”

“It is being dictated to me by my personal computer, which is always on the look out for other friendly computers. Like the one in your brain. My personal computer wonders if I want to deactivate it.”

Saskia did not blink. She did not wet her lips, swallow, or cough. She had no bullets. There would not be time to find them, load the gun, and blow her malfunctioning brains out.

“You have spent nearly two hours explaining your principles, Professor. Have they now deserted you?”

He smiled. “David. No. They haven’t deserted me. In fact I still hold them in high