I promise you, if you had never seen a spider before – if you didn’t know an arachnid from a hole in the ground – the moment you saw a funnel web you would know you were looking at something deadly. There are men – and a few women – like that in the secret world. You sense immediately that they haven’t been touched by the humanity that inhabits most people. It is one of the reasons I was pleased to leave their environment and chance my hand in the sunlight.
It was three of them who were waiting at the back of the auditorium for the session of the forum to end. As soon as the delegates had filed out for lunch, leaving just myself and Bradley at the front and the two Bosnians sleeping it off near the sound console, they made their way towards us.
Bradley had seen them earlier. ‘You know them?’
‘In a way,’ I replied.
‘Who are they?’
‘Better not to ask, Ben.’
The cop recognized the danger in them, and he certainly didn’t like the way they were rolling, but I put my hand on his arm. ‘You’d better go,’ I said quietly.
He wasn’t convinced. I was his colleague and, if there was going to be trouble, he wanted to be there for me. But I knew why men like that had been given the job – somebody was sending me a message: there won’t be any negotiation, just do what they tell you. ‘Go, Ben,’ I repeated.
Reluctantly, glancing over his shoulder, he headed for the door. The spiders stopped in front of me.
‘Scott Murdoch?’ the tallest of them, and obviously the team leader, asked.
Scott Murdoch, I thought to myself – so, it was that far in the past. ‘Yeah, that’s as good as any,’ I replied.
‘Are you ready, Dr Murdoch?’
I bent and picked up my fine leather briefcase – a gift to myself when I had first arrived in New York and mistakenly thought it was possible to leave my other life behind.
There was no point in asking the men where we were going – I knew they wouldn’t tell me the truth and I wasn’t ready yet for all the lies. I thought I deserved just a few more moments of sunshine.
Chapter Two
THEY DROVE ME to the east river first. At the heliport a chopper was waiting, and we flew to an airport in Jersey, where a business jet took off the moment we were on board.
An hour before sunset, I saw the monuments of Washington silhouetted against the darkening sky. We landed at Andrews Air Force Base and three SUVs driven by guys in suits were waiting for us. I guessed they were FBI or Secret Service, but I was wrong – it was far above that.
The guy in the lead vehicle hit his bubblegum lights and we made good time through the choking traffic. We turned into 17th Street, reached the Old Executive Office Building, passed through a security checkpoint and headed down a ramp into a parking area.
That was as far as the spiders were going – they handed me off to four guys in suits who took me through a reception area, along a windowless corridor and into an elevator. It only went down. We stepped out into an underground area manned by armed guards. There was no need to empty my pockets – I was put into a backscatter X-ray and it saw everything, both metal and biological, in intimate detail.
Screened and passed, we got on to a golf cart and drove down a series of broad passages. As disorienting as it was, that wasn’t the strangest thing: I got the sense nobody was looking at me, as if they had all been told to glance away.
We reached another elevator – this one ascended for what felt like six floors – and the four guys in suits handed me over to an older man, better dressed, with greying hair. ‘Follow me please, Mr Jackson,’ he said.
My name wasn’t Jackson, I had never heard of Jackson, my many aliases had never included Jackson. I realized then that I was a ghost, a shadow without a presence or name. If I didn’t know before how serious it was, I did then.
The silver fox led me through a windowless area of work stations but, again, nobody looked in my direction. We went through a small kitchen and into a much more expansive office. At last there were some windows, but the gloom outside and the distortion caused by what I supposed was bulletproof glass made it impossible to get any sense of where we were.
The silver fox spoke quietly into his lapel mic, waited for an answer, then opened a door. He motioned me forward and I stepped inside.
Chapter Three
THE FIRST THING that strikes you about the oval office is that it’s much smaller than it appears on TV. The president, on the other hand, seemed much bigger.
Six-two, his jacket off, heavy bags under his eyes, he rose from behind his desk, shook hands and indicated we should move to the couches in the corner. As I turned towards them I saw that we weren’t alone: a man was sitting in the gloom. I should have guessed of course – he was the person who had dispatched the spiders, the one who wanted to make sure I understood that the summons was non-negotiable.