Two security guards flanked Salt as he walked quickly from his office to a private lift that led down to a basement garage.
Less than three minutes after getting the alarm, he was sitting in the back seat of his armour-plated government car, staring through bullet-proof glass as it surged up a ramp and into the halogen glow of streetlamps framed against night sky. The car was still accelerating, pressing the back of Salt’s head to the leather head rest. He knew the driver wouldn’t stop until they were on the motorway, a mile away, an asphalt escape route that would take them straight to London. The car phone built into the seat rang once, and Salt swiped it up.
‘We’re pretty sure it was a solitary intruder,’ said Waterman, without preamble. ‘We’re searching the car park for her. We believe you were the target.’
‘Who is she?’
‘We don’t know yet. Fake ID. One of the best we’ve seen. An entire alternative history.’
‘How do you know she was after me?’
‘She hacked into the neural net. Accessed only one thing: your employee file.’
Salt looked out of the window, thinking through the repercussions of what Waterman had told him. He was silent long enough that Waterman cleared his throat.
‘What about the other hack?’ said Salt.
‘Caleb Goodspeed?’ Salt could almost hear Waterman shake his head. ‘It was self-serving. He was trying to access data for his …’
Salt interrupted him.
‘There’s no coincidence in our world. Find Goodspeed. Bring him in. And send me her fake ID.’
Salt hung up and pulled an iPad from his briefcase. The car was equipped with an encrypted Wi-Fi network. He found the drive to and from home each night was his most productive time of the day. Insulated from all but the most urgent calls, he could review the crises of the day and give his mind essential time to make connections.
An email dropped into his folder from Waterman. Salt opened the attachment and looked at the copy of the plastic ID card.
Gazing at the camera was a face that stirred a memory for him. Where had he seen it before? Somewhere.
Black eyes stared at him, as if she knew, at the time the orientation picture was taken, at some point Salt would be staring back.
No earnest smile – the ubiquitous feature of their ID cards, employees projecting as much trust as they could – instead, a wary look, assessing. Like a predator watching from the safety of a thicket. Or was Salt imagining it all?
She was attractive. Enough so that she could probably make her living from her looks. But instead she devoted her life to learning about detection modalities, spyware and hacking. The skills needed to break into one of the most secure military facilities in the world.
Salt turned over the thoughts in his head. Right now, Waterman would be running her image through their databases, looking for hits. The software had been upgraded recently to run permutations on prospective physical identity changes. The system not only recognized faces from known criminal registers, but also could recognize attempts to change them from over one hundred and twenty plastic surgery, make-up and other alteration procedures. Skills as good as their mystery woman possessed would still leave footprints. Within a few hours, they would find out her identity.
Salt looked out of the window, seeing that they were entering central London, the car hovering above the west of the city, speeding along the overpass. Below, the city lights winked, spreading out into the distance like a bed of pearls on a black satin sheet.
He had vowed to never leave London, so when he agreed to take the job at GCHQ he had insisted on a car and driver so he could commute. The journey was tiring at times, but it worked in his favour to separate his private life from work. The length of the drive gave Salt the excuse he needed to avoid socializing with his work colleagues. He continued to occupy the four-storey townhouse off the King’s Road he had lived in for twenty years, the one thing he chose to keep after the divorce.
‘Do you need anything else tonight, sir?’ asked the driver, interrupting Salt’s reverie.
They were one street away from his home. There were no lights on inside any of the houses. It was as if the street itself was sleeping. In contrast with the eternal nature of operations at GCHQ, this sense of normality was precious to him.
‘No,’ he replied.
The car slid into place in front of his home.
The driver waited while Salt walked to the front door. He doubled as a wheel and body man while on Salt’s detail, charged with ensuring the head of GCHQ made it inside his front door safely each night.
Once inside, the threat of harm to Salt became so remote as to be negligible. MI5 had supplied the contractor who had reinforced the security of the house. Windows were replaced with durable, abrasion-resistant polycarbonate sheets five hundred times stronger than glass and sufficient to thwart an RPG attack. Bomb-proof iron doors sealed the house at the front and rear exits, and outward-facing locks were Israeli-made: floating, with magnetic and perpendicular tumblers and undrillable carbide plates, virtually impossible to pick.
He unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall. The maid had left dinner in the oven, and the roasty aroma clung to the air, making the house feel inhabited, which was the secondary intention. He dropped his keys into the silver tray by the door. A wedge of mail sat unopened next to the tray. Letters were addressed to a Mr Henry, who was registered on the electoral roll as a retired schoolteacher.
Susan had decorated the house, and the hallway was an especial focus for her. It was the birth canal to their home, the first experience a visitor would have of their domestic life. Elegant picture frames crowded the walls on both sides, chronicling the life they had built together. Their engagement and their wedding, the birth and growth of their two children, family holidays and family events, formal dress and vacation attire, joyful faces smiling at the camera, innocent of the rupture that was to come. Salt was the curator of this gallery, of this family that existed only in the past. Losing it was the price he had paid for his career, something he was going to make sure he never forgot.
He stopped halfway down the hallway, in front of the locked door that led to his study. Salt wanted to check to see if Waterman had uncovered any further information on today’s trespasser.
Before he opened the door, he found himself staring at a small frame, the size of a hardback book, on the wall in front of him. This was his one concession from the family wall. It was his first MI5 identity card, ornamentally placed on a black background. Salt often contemplated that card, and the Polaroid picture of his twenty-five-year-old face staring from it. At times, he felt a will to connect with his younger self that was so powerful it kept him rooted to the spot for what seemed like hours. He wanted to reach into the picture, reach back through time, and speak directly to the man he used to be, ask him whether he was disappointed with the man Salt had become.
His career had begun in a blaze of glory. Anything seemed possible. At the time the ID card picture was taken, an asset had walked into Salt’s life who promised to reshape the entire face of British intelligence. Salt’s career trajectory had no limits. The restart of Operation Orpheus was the most dramatic development in British military intelligence in the last seventy years.
Salt kept the identity card because he wanted a reminder of the look on his face. The look of a young Caesar, his rule about to begin, looking down on a world to be reshaped.
Within a few years, the asset would have disappeared and the operation abandoned. Salt’s career would continue down a more traditional path, not an everyday life by any means, but not one that redefined his world. The look on his face came to be replaced by the look of a man who must play a part, even if unremarkable. Salt touched the picture, as if it was a holy relic, and unlocked the door.
The stairs led down to a set of rooms he had converted into an office. The floors were new, a redesign prompted by the installation of secure communication cables running under the floor.
He sat down in his chair, wincing slightly from the back pain. Too much time spent sitting was wreaking havoc on his lumbar region. He switched on his desk lamp, not bothering to turn on the overhead lights when he went in, and powered up his laptop.
He had just signed into his email account when he realized he was not alone.
His fingers froze, suspended over the keyboard, senses becoming suddenly keen, every hair standing on end, adrenaline coursing through his system, a rolling wave of fear surging up his neck and scalp.
He looked up as his hand slipped below the desk. The rest of the room was deep in shadow, he could not see the back walls, but he could just about see the outline of the person sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room.
‘How did you get in?’
Salt’s voice was calm, curious, like he was addressing a friend.
On the underside of the desk, his finger rested on the ornamental pearl button. He pressed it once, sending a bolt of data at light speed through cables. The warning LED would light up almost immediately in the main communications room at MI5 HQ at Thames House. In the drills conducted a year ago, the police and armed services vehicles arrived nine minutes later. They were waiting for the signal to be given that time, so Salt factored an extra minute for additional preparation. Ten minutes. He had to survive for ten minutes before unmarked vans arrived and stormed the house with lethal force.
‘Do you remember me?’
It was a woman’s voice. Equally neutral, devoid of any agitation. This was not a break-in by a fanatic or madman.
The outline stood up and walked out of the shadows. She moved slowly, and Salt found that his heart was jack-hammering before she stepped into the light.
She sat down in the chair in front of his desk.
The same face as on the ID card.
And it was then that he placed it.
A faint resemblance of the girl, like the first sketch from which an oil painting is created.
‘The prodigal returns,’ he said at last, almost to himself. ‘Of course I remember you.’
Something flew up from where she sat. It landed on his desk, lying sideways across his blotter.
It was an old Polaroid photograph. Salt’s face looked out at him.
He recognized the picture immediately. Knew where and when it was taken. It was the moment it all began to slip away for him. Phoebe had just run away with Orpheus. He was personally leading the search, combing the streets near the safe house, a sense of growing desperation in his chest. He was the man who had captured a unicorn only to lose it.
Phoebe must have been less than fifty feet from him when she took the picture. He was so close.
He turned the picture over and read the warning on the back. It was ironic: the mother’s picture had unwittingly led to a quest that had brought Sara back to him a quarter of a century later.
‘Why do I have this picture?’ asked the woman.
Salt’s eyes flicked at the clock on the wall.
Eight and a half minutes to go.
Right now, boots were running into covered garages, unlocking ammunition cases, pulling sub-machine guns from the armoury wall, checking siege armaments – stun and flash grenades, repelling equipment – slamming doors. Corrugated metal garage screens were clack-clacking as invisible hands in dark interiors propelled them upwards. The firing sounds of ignitions were coming from within, followed by the throttled sounds of engines. Headlights were flipping on, like the eyes of malevolent monsters opening in dark caves.
He had to keep her talking.
There was only one way to keep her attention: tell her the truth.
‘We first made the connection in the Second World War. Intelligence won that war. In both senses of the word. Turing, Welchman, Alexander and Milner-Barry: the finest minds of their generation. Chess champions, mathematicians, scientists. Their IQs were off the charts.’
He shifted in his seat. Seven minutes.
‘And that’s what got military intelligence thinking. Because humans have two very different operating systems. The left side is the newer part of our brain, developed after prehistoric times. It’s analytical and conscious. Perfect for solving puzzles. Quantified by IQ. When you compared Turing and the others with regular people, they were like gods. So, we thought, what about the other side of the brain? The limbic system, our subconscious. It’s the oldest part of our brain. Instinctual. Among other things, it houses intuition. The question we asked ourselves was: could we find the gods of this side of the mind?’
He paused, waiting for her to respond, but she stared at him, drinking him in. It was then that he realized he was being assessed. Her eyes scanned his, flicked down to his mouth, then his neck, then dropped to his chest to gauge his breathing.
She was seeing if he was lying.
He’d forgotten what it was like communicating with Orpheus. Was she doing it intentionally, or was it second nature? It was impossible to tell. If she didn’t like an answer he knew she was capable of leaping across the desk and snapping his neck in one fluid movement, before his nervous response system would even have a chance to send a signal to his body to react.
The great white whale of British intelligence was sitting in front of him. If his strategy in the next hour was sound, if he played things perfectly, he could achieve his most profound wish – to recapture the past, to step back in time a quarter of a century and bring Orpheus back into the fold.
‘We were interested in a specific part of the limbic system,’ he continued, trying not to let his voice betray his excitement. ‘A tiny area of the hypothalamic region called the parahippocampal gyrus. The seat of intuition. People with ability like yours have high levels of brainwave activity in this area. Unlike analytical intelligence, it seems to be genetic.’
‘You don’t need to keep looking at the clock,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you when they get here.’
Salt’s entire body stiffened, like the predator hunting his prey who realizes he is himself being stalked. Never underestimate your own creation.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked, his curiosity cutting through the artifice. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to keep talking.’
Salt kept his eyes away from the clock, keeping them on hers. It must be five minutes now.
‘The Naval Intelligence Department, the precursor to MI6, led the search. They met with stage performers, gypsies, mystics, anyone they thought might have that alternative power. The majority were frauds. As is often the case, it was difficult to gauge that at the time. The one exception was a Scot called Helen Duncan. Your great-grandmother. The reality of her powers took the entire British military establishment by surprise. Unfortunately, the story does not end well for her. She made enemies in powerful places. They soon realized they could not control her, and ordered her arrest in 1941. Helen became the last person to be tried in Great Britain under the Witchcraft Act 1735, and was convicted and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. The government then began a secret campaign to smear her reputation. After that war, and as the Cold War was beginning, we realized our mistake and reapproached her, but she refused to have anything to do with us. We reached out to her children, but none of them had the same abilities …’
The convoy of trucks would be flying through Victoria now, their sirens screaming as they ploughed a furrow through the traffic. When they arrived, he would need to use them as leverage, to bargain with Orpheus and show her there was no way out, other than agreeing to come back into his protection.
‘It took us a year to find out about Aileen, your grandmother. Helen had her when she was sixteen, illegitimately. Aileen refused us as well. Aileen then had Phoebe, your mother. She was the first to make a deal with us. We would pay for your education, and in return, we would train you and her …’
‘Train us as what?’ she interrupted. She was sitting forwards in her seat, fully engaged.
‘As spies, of course,’ replied Salt. ‘That was the agenda. To weaponize intuition.’
He let the words hang in the air. This was his phrase, one that laced each of the confidential memos he wrote about Orpheus at the time.
‘What happened to my mother?’
‘After hiding you, she came right back to us. The programme continued,’ said Salt. ‘We never understood how you disappeared for so long. Someone with your abilities we were sure would surface sooner rather than later. But Phoebe told us she had made sure you would never be found.’
He watched her as she processed this, the grotesque irony of her lifelong search settling on her. Phoebe’s brainwashing was likely intended not only to make Orpheus forget but also to damage her hypothalamic region, stunting her supersensory abilities. A clean start. But Phoebe couldn’t reboot Orpheus’ nature. That persisted, tugging its subject remorselessly back. Orpheus was Orpheus, and a thousand lifetimes would bring her back here, to him.
Two minutes or less, by his count. When they arrived, sniper units would take positions behind the bonnets of the cars, combing the rooftops, while tactical teams would pull battering rams from the backs of vehicles and prepare stun grenades. Even if she thought she knew what was coming, there was little she could do about it.
They would be near Sloane Square now, driving at high speed, weaving through cars, racing through traffic lights, flashing across intersections.
‘How did the programme continue without me?’
Salt looked at her, in confusion for the first time.
‘You don’t remember anything?’
She shook her head.
Salt sat back in his chair, a realization dawning over him.
‘When you escaped, we found a new recruit. He became Orpheus …’
He lifted his arms in a dramatic flourish.
‘The king is dead. Long live the king.’
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘Your brother. Christian,’ said Salt.
That’s when he heard it. The faintest sound, like a sigh coming from outside, brake pads compressing in a sudden, controlled stop. He looked at her. She had heard it too. Before she could say anything, he pulled open the drawer of his desk, grabbing for the Taser.
Even as he gripped it, she was kicking the desk from the other side, lifting it up and tipping it over him. He stood up as quickly as he could, scrambling backwards, avoiding the heavy oak bureau as it crashed towards him, stepping back over the chair as it tipped to one side.
By the time he regained his balance and lifted the Taser up, she was gone.