Revelation

I daren't use a taxi.

The briefcase was the killer. Look for a man carrying a medium-sized black briefcase. He thought of ditching it, abandoning the record of his last fifteen eventful years. But the diaries were also his passport. Without them, he was doomed.

Change the briefcase? It was too early. The shops were still closed. And for that matter, the streets were too quiet and he was still only ten minutes away from Kristel's house and he had effectively shouted 'Come and get me!' at the Poughkeepsie station.

Hire a car?

Certainly sir, just wait here a moment while I check availability and incidentally, since you fit the description which has just come through, make a quick telephone call.

Stay put? Hide away in some quiet park as he had done in Leipzig?

Leipzig was overnight, and a major city. This was early morning in a small town. Staying put would just give them time to close the net. He walked the main street in despair, lugging the briefcase which shouted, rang bells and blew whistles, with Rosenblum's phrase 'toast in Alcatraz' filling his head.

24 Executive Lounge

Sunshine. And cappuccinos in little hill-town bars, and buzzing little motofurgonis carrying big flagons of wine. Clattering dishes and noisy Italian chatter. Monasteries in Greece, and creepy religious fanatics, and treacherous friends and strangulation in dark alleys. Findhorn woke up, the lurid pastiche from his dreamworld fading for ever. Grey London light peeked under the curtains and his watch said eight a.m. He dressed quickly, trying to put his mind into gear as he stumbled down the stairs. Past the dining room, where a few Italian tourists were enjoying a full English breakfast, adding a notch to their cholesterol counts. He skipped breakfast, settled with the lady of the house, a plump, grey-haired little woman, and headed out in search of a business centre, a cybercafe, anywhere to plug into his e-mail.

There was a new message, a single telephone number with an American code. He thought it might be New York and if so it would be three in the morning. He dialled through.

'Fred?' She sounded excited.

'Where are you?'

'La Guardia, in New York. I'm just about to board Concorde.'

'What?'

'Relax, Fred, your brother's financing me. Stefi and Doug are coming down from Edinburgh. We're all going to have a council of war at Heathrow in three hours. Where are you?'

Findhorn had to look around for a moment. 'London.'

'Terrific, we gambled on that. I'll see you in three hours, then. We'll rendezvous at the Pizza Hut in Terminal One.'

'The Pizza Hut. You'll probably get there before me.'

'Doug wants you to phone him as soon as you can. Must fly — ha ha.'

Findhorn dialled Doug's Edinburgh flat. 'Dougie?'

'Fred, you're alive. Okay listen, we're just leaving for the airport.'

'Romella explained. I'll see you shortly.'

'Yes, but listen. I've been working hard on your behalf. I've been into the green Merc question etcetera and I've got things to tell you.'

Findhorn smiled. Little Brother was psyching himself up for the financial pitch. 'I look forward to hearing it.'

'And I'm picking up the tab from here on.'

'All right, you greedy little sod, how much are you in for?'

'Thirty per cent of the action. I'm taking a risk, it could be thirty per cent of zero.'

'A risk? You don't know the meaning of the word. I've been climbing icebergs, avoiding assassins…'

'But, Mister Bond, do you have the shekels to keep going?'

'Without the diaries this thing would never have flown. Ten per cent.'

'Flown? Without me you've crash landed. My legal contacts are refreshing the parts other people can't reach. And there's my flat, a safe house if ever there was one. Twenty-five per cent.'

'I don't need you,' Findhorn lied. 'Twenty.'

'Done. See you shortly.'

In the event Findhorn was the first to reach the Pizza Hut. After his second coffee he got up and prowled around restlessly, wandering through the Sock Shop, the Tie Rack, Past Times and Thorntons. In W.H. Smith he browsed aimlessly. The blurb on one book, Nemesis, proclaimed that 'This may be the last thriller you ever read'. He put it back hastily; it threatened to be prophetic.

He was on his third coffee when Stefi and Doug emerged from the airport crowds. She was wearing a white fur coat and Findhorn marvelled at how she could do it on her post-graduate income. Doug bore little physical resemblance to Findhorn, except for a slight roundness of the jaw, inherited from the paternal line as far back as the family photographs went. He was shorter than Fred, stouter, had hair which was, surprisingly for a young man, already beginning to thin, and had thick black spectacles. He was wearing a pinstripe suit and a long dark Gucci trenchcoat, and was carrying an expensive-looking tanned leather briefcase.

Stefi pecked Findhorn on the cheek.

'Breakfast, quick,' said Doug.

Findhorn let them get on with hash browns, fried eggs and sausages without disturbing them. A family of five spread themselves over two adjacent tables, spilling drinks and squabbling. The children had runny noses, and the parents seemed to have given up on the discipline thing.

On their second coffee, Romella turned up with an overnight bag. A light blue greatcoat was draped over her shoulders, she was wearing a plain white blouse and a short black skirt, and she was looking ragged. Findhorn introduced his brother.

'Okay,' said Findhorn, 'shall we confab here?'

Romella waved away the menu which Doug proffered her. 'If you like. But I can get us into the BA executive lounge on my Concorde ticket.'

There was a rapid exodus.

* * *

'Me first,' Findhorn said. 'I've discovered the nature of the Petrosian machine.' And he told them about the energy of the vacuum, how it might be nothing or vast beyond comprehension, and how Petrosian had found some way — or thought he'd found some way — of tapping into it, and that it might be the dawn of a new world or, depending on unknown physics, the end of it. He told them about the near miss with the atom bomb and how he thought that Petrosian's mind had been sensitized to instability by the experience. And he told them how he, Findhorn, was worried about instability in complex systems too, although in a much smaller way and in a different field. And he told them that he had failed to find the secret, the actual mechanism whereby Petrosian believed the vacuum energy could be tapped.

Stefi was wide-eyed. 'I'm overwhelmed, Fred. If you're right, and this is some machine for getting energy from nothing, it could turn the world on its head.'

Doug was open-mouthed. 'The financial possibilities are unbelievable.'

'Remember the caveat. It would need to be examined for stability.'

'Stefi and I think we know who kidnapped Romella, and who's lying behind the effort to get the diaries. And what you're telling us fits beautifully with what we've found. It provides the motive.'

'Surely it's the Temple of Celestial Truth?'

'I think they're just stooges. I believe they've been triggered by a much more powerful outfit.'

Findhorn felt his scalp prickling slightly. He leaned forward. Doug pulled a square white envelope from his briefcase. He glanced surreptitiously around the lounge before handing it over. 'These were taken by security cameras in the Edinburgh Sheraton. Anyone you recognize in them?'

The lens was wide-angle and gave a full view of a hotel corridor at the cost of a slight distortion of the field. Little numbers in the top right hand corner of the black and white pictures recorded the time. Findhorn flicked through the first half-dozen, recognized nobody. Numbers seven through eleven amounted to a series of stills; they recorded an inebriated man emerging from an elevator, standing in a confused attitude, making his way to a door, vanishing. The time on the last picture was 23.47. Edinburgh pubs closed at eleven thirty.