‘This is the only footage we have of the operation called Orpheus.’
Caleb stared as footage appeared on screen: an operating table in the middle of a room, shot from a static perspective. Three whitewashed walls and a fourth that was covered by what appeared to be hospital screens on wheels.
A Herculean act of will was taking place within Caleb. He was tethering his eyes and focus to the front wall of the stuffy room as if breaking contact would leave him forever lost at sea. He was being asked to perform the task he excelled at, projecting himself into the synthetic reality of recorded images, reading those who lived within them, reclaiming their two-dimensional traces into three-dimensional lives, skills he used on strangers but was not able to use on his own wife.
The images were black-and-white, and the quality was poor, a digital copy of an analogue image. Twenty years old, maybe more. The picture was framed awkwardly, tilting slightly to the left, giving a skewed perspective on the room, as if they were seeing things through a discarded camera that was still rolling film.
‘What you are going to see actually happened,’ said Waterman, not taking his eyes off the screen.
After a few seconds a door opened and a young girl entered, wearing medical scrubs. She must have been less than ten years old, with intense black eyes that stared out from a face dusted with freckles. Untamed brown hair tumbled on to her shoulders.
A thick-set, bearded man in an open-necked shirt carrying a briefcase followed her in and closed the door behind them. Through a porthole, Caleb could see a woman watching them from the other side of the door. She was in her early thirties, attractive. The similarities between her and the girl were striking: black shark’s eyes nestling on top of high cheekbones and a ski-slope nose.
Take a seat.
The bearded man looked at the girl and nodded towards the table.
Caleb’s mind concentrated on the images, breaking things down, synergizing, doing his best to screen everything else out.
‘It’s a mother and daughter, civilians,’ started Caleb. ‘The man isn’t the father. But like one. The professional voice and tone he is using with her is for the camera. He’s close to the girl. A mentor. This recording is for an official audience. To prove something. The man is a believer, but others he works for are not. The mother is consenting to whatever is happening, but there’s something about her …’
He hesitated. Was it real or was he imagining it? The perennial problem with intuition: is it really there or only in my head? There was something about the mother’s eyes, wide open, staring, the faintest hint of a dislocation from what she was seeing. Or was he remembering Tara, and painting a patina of his own on what he saw? The similarities were there, no doubt.
‘… she’s schizoid …’ said Caleb, looking at Waterman for support.
Waterman nodded.
On the screen, the man turned and walked directly towards the camera until his body filled the screen, blocking out the view of the room. He bent over, his face filling and fish-eyeing the lens. His shoulders twitched with the effort of some off-screen adjustment, and the camera tilted back.
The man turned around and walked back to the table.
This next part is very important. It all needs to be recorded by the camera. Do you understand?
Caleb listened to the man’s words, the action playing out on screen compelling enough that he suspended further analysis.
The man bent down to open his suitcase and reached into it. He held up what he had retrieved, addressing the camera.
Two coins.
He turned back to the girl, addressing her.
Close your eyes.
He placed the coins on the child’s closed eyelids.
Hold them, please.
The child followed the man’s directions with the seriousness of an acolyte. Caleb could tell her movements were unrehearsed. She hesitated before each action, unsure of what was coming next. She brought up her index fingers and placed one on each coin, holding them while the man returned to the briefcase and removed an amorphous lump of material.
Putty dough.
He twisted the dough into two pieces and then placed one piece over each of the coins, moulding them gently with his thumbs until they completely covered the eye sockets of the child. The man stood back to survey his work.
The result was chilling.
The grainy quality of the image smoothed out the child’s features so she resembled a sightless mannequin.
The man then returned to the briefcase and lifted a wad of material.
Bandage roll.
The child remained completely still as the man placed one end of the bandage on the bridge of her nose and then began to wrap the cloth in circles around her head. When the strip had run out, the upper part of the child’s head had been completely covered.
Caleb’s attention was fixated on the screen. He kept storing the continual feed of intuitive information from the film into a cache in his brain, unwilling to interrupt the drama he was watching.
One more item.
The man lifted a thick black sack from inside the briefcase and placed it over the child’s head. The child’s torso emerged ghoulishly from beneath the black sack.
The bearded man turned to face the camera.
This is the first test of Orpheus. 30 May 1990.
He then whispered something inaudible to the girl.
‘Watch this,’ said Waterman.
The man took two steps back and put his hand into his pocket. He threw his hand in the air, releasing four coins in a shower towards the child. Faster than Caleb’s eyes could track the movement, the girl flipped down on to the ground and snatched the coins, both hands punching the air with lightning stabs.
Caleb looked around at Waterman in complete astonishment.
‘Play that again.’
Waterman shook his head.
‘Watch what’s coming.’
Wait. What are you doing?
The mother spoke for the first time, the pitch of her voice rising in alarm. Her voice sounded digitized, and Caleb realized she must be speaking through a loudspeaker from the other side of the door.
The man had pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket and was walking to the hospital screens.
Calm down, Phoebe. This is something your daughter and I have been working on. No cause for alarm.
He pulled the screens backwards, concertinaing them and revealing that the room in which they were standing was one corner of a much longer space. Positioned at intervals were three hooded men tied to chairs. They sat motionless, bodies slumped and propped up by thick rope wrapped around their torsos.
The woman’s voice was shrill, panicked. Both of her hands were pressed to the inside of the glass, her palms white.
The bearded man walked quickly to the door and flipped a switch housed in a panel on the wall. The woman’s voice cut off immediately, although Caleb could see her mouth miming increasingly frantic cries.
I thought you would be proud.
He addressed the camera.
Orpheus, show me what you can do.
He balanced the gun in the palm of his hand and then threw it high in the air. The next few seconds happened so fast Caleb’s brain struggled to catch up with what his eyes were registering.
The gun was snatched in mid-air, the girl was moving, rolling, kneeling, a shot was fired, the report deafening in the enclosed space, the head of a detainee jerking backwards, then two more head shots, then the gun was sailing in a long parabola back in the man’s direction.
Caleb glanced at the woman standing on the other side of the door. Her face was wet with tears, and her shoulders were heaving with sobs. Both fists hit the glass with a slow but steady drumbeat.
The man walked to the chairs in the deep recessed area of the room and took off the masks one by one.
They were dummies; sackcloth stuffed with straw.
‘You think the kid, now an adult, attacked your base?’ asked Caleb, breaking away from the screen and turning to face Waterman.
‘What do you think?’ said Waterman, looking at Caleb in a measured way.
Caleb took a deep breath and then blew out a low whistle.
‘How do you know this film is real?’
‘The man is Lionel Dobbs. MI5,’ said Waterman. ‘The film was shot at a safe house in England. The tape has never left our possession. It’s real.’
‘Why isn’t the mother a suspect?’ asked Caleb.
Waterman stiffened. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because she’s like the girl. They have the same abilities,’ said Caleb.
Waterman looked back in surprise. ‘How do you know that?’
Caleb ignored the question.
‘Tell me more about Operation Orpheus,’ asked Caleb.
Waterman shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Up to you. You’re the one wanting answers,’ said Caleb, sitting back in his chair.
Waterman chewed his lip meditatively and then gave Caleb a tentative nod.
‘Started in the Second World War. Concerned a particular family, tracked through the generations. But it was abandoned after the child escaped. Been missing ever since. That’s all I can say.’
Caleb turned back to the screen, where the footage had cut to a different scene.
A white room, as bare as a cell, shot from a stationary camera in a ceiling corner. A timer in the corner of the screen tumbled over, recording fractions of seconds.
The child sat on the floor at the far end of the room, still in her surgical scrubs. The impediments had been removed from her eyes. She held a handkerchief in one hand and dabbed periodically at her ears, which appeared to be bleeding.
The mother paced in the centre of the room, her arms tightly folded. Her movements were erratic, and she cursed and mumbled to herself. She suddenly veered and ran towards the camera, fixing it with an intense gaze and screaming at the top of her voice.
‘You lied to me! This is not what we agreed! We are not your prisoners!’
Caleb picked up the remote control and paused the film. It froze on a close-up of the woman’s snarling features, her face contorted into a rictus of fury.
Caleb scrutinized the remote control.
‘Can we close up on the image?’
‘The mother?’ asked Waterman.
‘No, the girl.’
Waterman pointed to a button on the remote and Caleb toggled it several times until the screen magnified the image of the girl so it filled the screen.
A locket hung from the girl’s neck, and on her arm was a design – a tattoo or a birthmark – in the shape of an infinity sign.