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  “We can’t let that happen,” said Cooper. “We already know the Russians are developing perceiver spies, as demonstrated so dramatically at the G8 summit. If we squander our advantage now, we’ll never get it back.”

  Michael glanced over the table at Pankhurst. “You told him about that?”

  Pankhurst shrugged in reply as if to say that he may have mentioned it.

  “The working group all pride themselves on coming at the problem with an open mind,” said Michael. “Apart from the woman from the cure programme who thinks she’ll get a promotion and a bump in salary if a new programme is set up to cure every single perceiver in the country. None of the others came to the table with any ideas on how to solve the mess.”

  “I think,” said Pankhurst. “That the idea is they go away, investigate, and come back with some ideas that aren’t informed by preconceived notions. It’s how these things work.”

  “So I gather,” said Michael, inwardly thinking that the word ‘work’ was ill chosen.

  Pankhurst looked at his watch. “I have some reading to do ahead of this afternoon’s visit to this new railway line the government’s found itself spending a bloody fortune on,” he said. “I’m going to need you there, Michael. The place is going to be full of people you haven’t vetted and I have to go round shaking babies and kissing the hands of builders.” He paused to adopt a quizzical expression. “Or is it the other way round?”

  He got off the sofa, grinning at his own joke, and headed towards the door.

  “What time, sir?” Michael asked after him.

  “Barrington’s going to give you all the details,” said Pankhurst. “But it’s not for a few hours yet, so it’ll give you two plenty of time to talk.”

  As Pankhurst hurried out, he took with him the calming sense of mediation that he had somehow brought to the room. Perhaps that’s why he had succeeded in politics.

  The door closed and Michael was left alone with Cooper.

  “You should have told me,” said Cooper. “About your powers.”

  “Once you signed off on that paperwork, I was no longer yours to order around,” said Michael. “I’m still not yours, I work for the Prime Minister.”

  “Do you think that’s going to do you any good?” said Cooper. “This working group nonsense is just something to give Pankhurst some ammunition to fire at the press. If anyone asks what he’s doing about the perceiver situation, he can point to the working group and say he’s got people looking into it. But things are moving too fast to wait for reports to be written and committees to discuss them.”

  “I know,” said Michael.

  “I got a call this morning to say protestors have gathered outside the base demanding that perceiver spies come out and make themselves known. The news is full of people baying for blood.”

  “I know!”

  “I’m not going to let everything I worked for be torn down.”

  Michael stood up and turned away from him. Cooper was so arrogant that he even admitted that all he was concerned about was himself. Not the perceivers, like Pauline, who lived in Galen House and had more to lose if they were exposed than he did. If it came to it, Cooper could probably retire on a decent pension and take up golf or gardening somewhere remote. The perceivers in his charge had nothing. Having been separated from their families to live and train at Galen House, it was their home, their work and their life.

  Michael went to the window and looked out across the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, covered in droppings left by the pigeons. He took a deep breath and worked to push aside his personal dislike of Cooper. “What do you know about the Russian perceiver programme?”

  He turned his back on the window to see that Cooper was reclining on the sofa like he was perfectly at home. “I know what you know, that Doctor Lucas was trying to breed perceivers while developing a serum to give norms perceiver powers.”

  “What would you say if I told you I have information that Lucas and the Russians appear to have lost interest in the breeding programme?” said Michael.

  “I would say, that’s very interesting, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if they want home-grown perceivers which they can use as spies – and I’m sure they do – it’s their best shot. The serum only works for a short while before it turns people suicidal: a problem which we know Lucas wasn’t able to fix because of the mess at the G8. If the Russians were going to use it to turn their secret service agents into perceivers, pretty soon they wouldn’t have any secret service agents left.”

  “So why use it at all?” said Michael.

  “They were probably desperate for the information they could perceive from the heads of state at the summit. It’s a spy’s all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “But you don’t think that now?” said Cooper.

  “I don’t know what to think. It’s just that having one of your soldiers kill himself at one of the highest profile meetings in the world doesn’t do much to keep their work secret.”

  “Perhaps you should tell me more about the source of this information.”

  Michael hesitated. “Pauline said I should.”

  “She’s a very sensible woman.”

  “If I tell you who told me, can I trust you to look after her?”

  “You can always trust me, Michael,” said Cooper.

  Michael had never trusted Agent Cooper, but he told him anyway. All things considered, he had no one else to tell.

  Thirteen

  England was dark. The blackness of the night closed in and embraced the black of the tarmac on the motorway. Through it, in his black car and wearing his black suit, drove Cooper at a speed-limit-busting ninety miles per hour.

  His headlights, and the headlights of the other drivers, could only illuminate a small patch of night in front of them. Sometimes the lights of the drivers on the opposite carriageway hurt their eyes as they sped towards them, meaning that, ironically, the bright lights caused them to see less.

  Katya sat in the passenger seat up front. “It’s a shame we couldn’t have gone in the day,” she said. “I would have liked to have seen some of the English countryside.”

  “You would have probably seen a traffic jam,” said Cooper. “Going tonight is better, honestly.”

  Michael and Pauline sat in the back among the takeaway burger wrappers they had collected at the drive-through on the way out of London. The oil that the chips were cooked in and the fat of the burgers left a greasy smell in the car. At least he hadn’t had to pay. He had won his bet with Pauline and dinner was on her, even if it hadn’t been the most sophisticated of dining experiences.

  I perceived Katya while you were out swanning around with the Prime Minister, thought Pauline.

  And? thought Michael.

  You’re right, she’s telling the truth as she sees it.

  You still think she could be a plant by the Russians?

  If she is, she’s in the perfect place, thought Pauline. She barely stepped off the plane forty-eight hours ago and she’s in a car with a man who runs the British perceiver programme, and another man who works with the Prime Minister. On the way to a military base that houses the country’s strongest and most highly trained perceivers.

  Where else would you have her taken? thought Michael. You were the one who suggested I tell Cooper about her. He says she’ll be safest at Galen House.

  Because he wants to keep an eye on that perceiver baby of hers, if indeed that’s what it is. I didn’t say I had any better ideas, Michael, just reservations.

  “Are we going to your home, Pauline?” called Katya from the front seat.

  “If you want to call it that,” she said, just as Cooper went past an articulated lorry which created a surge of road noise.

  “Pardon?” said Katya.

  “Yes, we’re going to where I live.” She turned to Michael. “At least I’ll be able to pick up some of my stuff. I didn’t ex
actly pack a change of clothes before I ended up staying at your place. I feel all dirty in these ones.” She pulled at her blouse where it was buttoned over her chest and let it go again like it was some disgusting rag.

  “Well, you look fine from where I’m sitting,” said Michael. It was nice to be sitting next to her again. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it.

  Cooper reached forward to the car radio and turned it on. The calming notes of a tenor sax playing a jazz riff swept out of the speakers hidden in the car doors. Michael closed his eyes and listened to its soothing tones mix with the whoosh of passing traffic.

  Pauline was there with him in his head. He perceived that her need to get back to the only place she could call home jostled with her anxiety over what she might find there.

  She thought about the last phone call she had made to Galen House and allowed Michael to share in her memory. Her fellow perceivers had been locked in for two days and the base was still plagued by journalists and protestors.

  You didn’t have to come, you know, said Pauline’s thoughts, joining her emotions in Michael’s head.

  I’d promised to look out for Katya, he thought back. I need to make sure she’s safe.

  That’s very chivalrous of you.

  Also because I think you’re right. It’s all too convenient to believe that her showing up like this is just about a scared young woman who’s worried about what will happen to her baby.

  Michael must have fallen asleep because the next thing he was aware of was the tick of the car indicators waiting to turn left off a main road. The jazz music had long finished and there was quiet in the car. He perceived, other than Cooper who was concentrating on driving, the others were drowsy too.

  Cooper turned onto a minor road without street lights and the dark closed in even further. Michael recognised it as the road that led to the army base where he had once lived. It gave him an eerie feeling. He had told himself that he would never go back there, and now he was breaking that promise.

  He shouldn’t be able to perceive anyone from that distance. Except, perhaps, the soldiers at the gate. And yet he could sense as many as twenty minds.

  “People,” said Michael.

  “What?” said Cooper.

  “I perceive people.”

  “At this time of night?” He swore. “Get down on the floor of the car and cover yourself in coats or something.”

  “What are we afraid of?” said Pauline.

  “Being seen,” said Cooper. Taking one hand off the wheel, he turned up the collar of his jacket and tried to hunch down into it. It wasn’t much of a disguise.

  Something hard struck the windscreen. Katya yelped. A sticky gloop, with broken bits of shell in it, oozed down the glass. Someone had thrown an egg.

  Pauline was already in the footwell at the back of the car and pulling at Michael’s sleeve for him to join her. Michael folded up his legs to crouch among the grit that had fallen off his shoes onto the interior carpet.

  “I can’t get on the floor!” said Katya. “I’m too pregnant.” There was fear in her voice and a rising panic in her mind.

  “Then cover your face,” said Cooper.

  As they got closer to the base, Michael perceived the mass of minds separate into those who were angry and those who were curious. The curious ones he suspected were journalists who sent bright flashes of light through the windows of the car to try to take pictures of those inside. The angry ones were protestors who slapped on the sides and the roof of the car with their palms, their fists and their feet. They shouted unpleasant things that Michael was able to only half hear through the banging.

  Katya was understandably shaken by the time they got past the guards on the gate into the relative tranquillity of the base itself.

  When Cooper drew up outside of Galen House and helped her out of the car, she leant on him like an elderly woman with arthritis.

  “I’m sorry about the people outside,” Cooper told her as he led her into the main door of Galen House. “I thought they would be gone by now, but if the TV news is doing a live report, they hang around to make a nuisance of themselves.”

  A porch light led their way and Michael and Pauline followed Cooper and Katya into the building.

  Michael hadn’t realised Galen House felt different to the outside world, but as soon as he walked through the entrance into the common area where he had once shared meals and social time with his fellow perceivers, he sensed it. He remembered sitting around one of the dining tables laughing with Alex as they struggled to eat army catering. There were other fun times, too: shouting at the television with the others in the communal area as they watched England lose a rugby match; drinking alcohol that someone had smuggled in and hiding it from Norm the Norm; playing football – badly – with Alex on the grass outside.

  But the good memories were still outweighed by the bad: the roll calls, the army drills, the toilet-cleaning punishment duties. They seemed to seep out from everywhere, from the rows of dining tables laid out at the back, from the walls and even the floor. He realised he was standing not two metres away from where Kev had collapsed on the floor and told them how Peter had been killed in a stupid stunt designed to heighten his powers. Bad memories indeed.

  No one was there now. It was after lights out and the perceivers would be in their beds. It made the empty room feel unexpectedly spacious.

  “I need to go park the car,” said Cooper. “The sergeant will come down on me like a ton of bricks if I leave my car outside the front.”

  As he turned to walk out, the click of an opening door above them made everyone look up to the balcony corridor that ran outside a row of offices on the floor above.

  Michael perceived who it was before he saw him. He had probably perceived Sergeant Norman Macaulay’s mind more in his life than anyone else he could remember. It was strangely nostalgic to perceive him again.

  Norm the Norm was dressed, as always, in immaculate uniform. But, as he descended the stairs to join them, it was obvious the body inside of his neat and carefully ironed clothes was starting to feel its age. He came down slowly and somewhat stiffly while he clutched the handrail as if he needed it.

  “You must be Katya,” he said as he reached them.

  Katya nodded, shyly.

  “Welcome to Galen House,” said Norm the Norm. “Normally, I would show you round, but it’s late and I’m sure you would like to rest. We’ve prepared a room for you. Tomorrow we can get you checked over by the doctor and talk about things.” He turned to Pauline. “Would you mind showing her to room A7?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pauline. She took Katya by the hand and led her towards the accommodation wing.

  Michael became the only one left standing with Norm.

  “I didn’t think we’d see you here again, Michael,” said Norm.

  “Me neither.”

  “We gave your room away to another perceiver. A nice lad, much less trouble than you.” He grinned. “Room B10 is free at the moment and you’re welcome to use that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Michael. The ‘sir’ came out automatically like he had never left.

  Cooper returned from parking his car and nodded an acknowledgement to Norm. “Evening, Sergeant, sorry it’s so late.”

  Norm turned to Michael. “Agent Cooper and I have some midnight oil to burn,” he said. “I’m sure you can find your own way to B10.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Michael.

  Michael heard their receding voices as Norm led Cooper back up the stairs.

  “How was your meeting with the Prime Minister?” asked Norm.

  “He apologised for not warning us about his announcement,” said Cooper. “He said it had been urgent and he couldn’t wait for me to get to London. Sanctimonious git …”

  Michael headed off to the accommodation wing and realised he didn’t even have to think about how to get there. The route had been programmed into his mind.

  The room was spotless, as was to be expected from an
army which was very particular about keeping things clean. Other than that, there was not much to it. Just a bed with sheets pulled taut over the mattress and a wooden chair tucked under an empty desk. It felt like a place to be imprisoned rather than a place to be comfortable.

  Michael turned his back on it and returned to the corridor. He followed the trail to where he knew Pauline’s room was and paused outside the door. He opened his perception enough to check she was there and knocked.

  Pauline must have been halfway through getting undressed because, as she opened the door, she was clasping her unbuttoned blouse closed over her chest. But she hadn’t pulled it up over her shoulder properly and the black strap of her bra was showing.

  “Sorry,” said Michael, slightly embarrassed. “I came to ask how Katya was doing?”

  “No you didn’t,” said Pauline. “You better come in.”

  Pauline’s room was the same as the one Michael had left, except it was entirely different.

  It had the bed made to army regulations, it had the desk and chair, but it also had things that belonged to Pauline. There was a wardrobe so stuffed with clothes that the doors didn’t shut properly. The desk had been turned from a formal workspace into more of a dressing table with hairbrush, lots of little pots of make-up and an ornament of a woman with the chains of several necklaces hanging from her arms. The objects in themselves didn’t mean anything. It was the way that, somehow, they seemed to make the room hold Pauline’s essence.

  “I get into trouble if I have boys in my room after lights out, you know that,” she said, doing up the buttons of her blouse.

  “I’m twenty years old, Pauline. I’m hardly a boy anymore.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think Norm’s got too much on his mind to worry about two adults being in the same room together,” said Michael. “I really am here to ask about Katya. At least, that’s one of the reasons. Is she all right?”

  “She’s scared – who wouldn’t be after that drive in? – but she’s also very tired, so I think she will sleep. Being eight months pregnant takes it out of you, apparently.”