Joseph stopped. His face was white and his hands were trembling with the horror of that memory. Ben watched as Annie stretched out her arm and placed it consolingly on the old man's leg.
'LSD gives you hallucinations — hours and hours of hallucinations, many of them totally terrifying. When they set me free, I was a mess,' he told them quietly. 'I was not fit to cope in society, and it wasn't long before I was placed in an institution for the insane. I tried to tell them what had happened to me, but of course nobody believed me. And that had been Lucian's plan all along.' Joseph winced slightly. 'In those days, mental institutions were not what they are today. I should know — I've seen enough of them over the past fifty years.'
'Fifty years?' Annie said disbelievingly. 'Is that how long you've been in institutions?'
Joseph nodded. 'Yes,' he said simply.
'And the place with the rats,' Ben asked him gently. 'The place we've just been. That was where—'
'That was where they gave me the injections,' Joseph finished his sentence for him. 'And that was why I had to come back. For fifty years they've been telling me that my memories are the figments of a paranoid imagination. I had to see the place once more just to prove to myself that they weren't.'
Annie was still staring at the old man. 'Fifty years,' she repeated. 'Fifty years in institutions, and you're not even mad.'
Joseph blinked. Then he smiled. He turned his bloodshot eyes to look at Annie. He stared at her for a full thirty seconds, and she winced under the force of that terrible gaze. Finally the old man spoke in a cracked, hoarse whisper.
'Oh, I'm mad, young lady,' he said. 'If that's the word you want to use, I'm perfectly mad. The drugs did their work very, very well. I'm prone to frequent psychotic episodes. I always was, even as a child, but milder then, easier to pass off as eccentricity; Lucian's treatment had the effect he wanted it to. And now, you see, I am without my medication, which only makes things worse.'
Ben and Annie glanced nervously at each other.
'But,' Joseph said suddenly and with a certain amount of force that startled the two of them, 'just because I'm mad, it doesn't make me wrong.' And as he spoke, the full vigour of his belief shone in his face. It made him look wild.
Annie shuffled uncomfortably, but Ben had another question. 'Joseph,' he asked seriously, 'if you've been in an institution for fifty years, if you're still prone to psychosis, if you need medication to keep it under control, can I ask you one thing?'
'What?' the old man said flatly.
'Why did they let you out?'
Joseph raised an eyebrow, as though he was surprised that Ben should have asked such a question. 'Let me out?' he said. 'Oh, they didn't let me out.'
'Then how—?' But Ben knew what the old man would say almost before he said it.
'I escaped,' Joseph replied matter-of-factly.
And as if that were an end to the matter, he huddled himself up again and carried on staring ahead of him, as if Ben and Annie weren't even there.
Chapter Fourteen
Air Commodore James Macpherson walked briskly down London's Horseferry Road and abruptly turned the corner into Marsham Street. It was dark now, and he was silently cursing to himself. He should have been on the motorway by this time, driving back up to Macclesfield for twenty-four hours' well-deserved leave. He had been looking forward to seeing his wife for ages, and it was just a shame Annie was away for a couple of days with her cousin. He smiled briefly to himself. Little Annie had grown up so fast — who'd have thought that she was old enough now to take a holiday on her own. At least she was just bird-watching — something nice and sedate, something safe, not like the kind of things some teenagers got up to nowadays.
Anyway, if he could get this meeting over and done with, maybe it wasn't too late to make a move. He looked up ahead of him and saw the modern black and white building of the Home Office looming up ahead. It didn't fill him with much hope for an early getaway — meetings at the Home Office were seldom speedy.
Minutes later he was being ushered to a far corner of the building, where a prim secretary asked him to wait in the comfortable ante-room to the office of the man he was coming to see. His name was Richardson. He had the bearing of a military man, but Macpherson did not know where or with whom he had served; that sort of information was classified. All he knew was that what Richardson didn't know about security matters you could write on the back of a postage stamp, and although he was irritated at the prospect of having to meet him, he was intrigued as well.
It was difficult for Macpherson to sit with his characteristically straight back in the comfortable leather chair he had been given, and he was glad when Richardson's door clicked open and the man himself beckoned him in with a wordless nod.
'Air Commodore,' Richardson greeted him curtly once they were both inside.
'It's nice to see you again,' Macpherson replied blandly.
'Have a seat. There's something I'd like you to take a look at.' Macpherson sat opposite Richardson's large oak desk and was handed two pieces of paper. He studied them closely.
One of them contained a short paragraph of text in a language he didn't understand — Chinese, maybe, he thought to himself. He flicked to the second sheet, which was in English, presumably a translation.
I have to write quickly, because they will find me soon. A weapon codenamed Vortex is being developed in the UK. It has been commissioned by a Russian oligarch and bought for a great price by the government of my country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Strikes are planned against London, Los Angeles, New York and Madrid, and the weapons detection systems of none of these countries will be sufficient to counteract it. All I know is that the weapon is being developed covertly at a UK air force base without the knowledge of the authorities, and that its delivery is imminent. This must not happen. I cannot write more. They are coming for me. It is in your hands now.
The air commodore read it through several times, then looked up enquiringly at Richardson.
'North Korean origin,' the Home Office man said shortly. 'It came through earlier today.'
'Authentic?'
'That's what we're trying to determine. There's been a certain amount of intelligence chatter — satellite intercepts and the like — about the word "vortex", which is why this was brought to my attention so quickly. But a lot of things don't make sense.'
'Such as?'
Richardson stood up. 'You are aware that this discussion falls under the constraints of the Official Secrets Act?'
'Of course.'
'Good. All right then. Only a small percentage of North Koreans have access to the Internet. Those who do are closely monitored. It is unlikely that anyone would be able to get a message like this through to the Ministry of Defence servers unless they were extremely technically adept.'
'You're saying it's a hoax?'
'I'm not saying anything yet. It certainly came from North Korea; but we know for sure that there are certain factions in their government who do not like the recent nuclear step-down that the Koreans are hinting at. This looks to me like a fairly standard piece of misinformation.'
'By some kind of breakaway group that wants to see North Korea as a major nuclear power?'