by Alexandra Kitty.
I
Pope,
If I did not think you were deep down an honest man caught up in someone else’s self-serving lies, I would let you rot in a place below Hell and feel good about it as I wrote the front page story of your sorry demise. So I am going to do you a favour the way she saved me when I was drowning as I was once serving those cretins at the Circle in the Sky. Yes, I know you are in with La Nuit du Bas, but I was once a pawn in those miserable games just like you and you are worth saving.
Her name is Miss Magnus Lyme, but she won’t help you unless you know her codename, which I have included on the back of the receipt that came with this note. Even if you know the first code, you have to know the second or else everything is lost. I have drawn you a map to her house. Whatever you do, just level with her and put all your cards on the table. She knows when you lie and hold back and then there is no turning back for you. Destroy this note and memorize the information on the receipt and then destroy that, too. Save yourself – those monsters aren’t worth your soul or your life.
Your Secret Friend.
II
The Toronto Standard
The Daily Chronicles of the World Class City
The Mind’s Eye: How the Boswell Institute is changing the way the world sees the developing brain
By Petra Street, Science Reporter
Toronto – They are the world innovators and the voice of rationality when it comes to children’s cognitive development and they reside in a modest stucco building right in our own backyard.
The celebrated Boswell Institute is a think tank and policy innovator that has won countless accolades as its researchers use their knowledge to help guide advocates, doctors, and politicians to finding better treatments for our most vulnerable segments of society. Pharmaceutical giant Concentrax has recently recognized Boswell with a generous grant to continue their research, but they are not the only ones who hold the group in high esteem.
“They use their science wisely and compassionately,” says Dr. Richard Stryker, head of the Salt Research Centre. “They look at the facts and the data without getting bogged down with politics or political correctness. That’s why they keep getting it right.”
Continued…
III
If he were a cornered rabbit caught in the talons of a famished kestrel as well as the claws of an angry fox, he would not feel more afraid than he did as he walked in the darkness toward the small house in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It was never supposed to come to this feeling of the prey’s shattered terror: he was trained to be a victorious and satiated predator, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and until now, he would have thought the guise and the games of cloak and dagger suited him perfectly.
He was recruited by La Nuit as a young, restless lad in university and he fell for the seductive lies without question. He learned to lie to his parents and lovers as he climbed up the corporate ladder one dirty deed at a time in Toronto. Betrayal was simple enough as were the games of back-stabbing, and when he mastered them both, he was rewarded for his efforts by his masters’ demands that he fake his research and then sell his toxic lies to governments and the public alike. Just as he had exchanged another piece of his soul to appease his superiors, they thrashed him about and demanded more.
It was never enough for them, but he was more than enough for him. He wished to break free, but he was cornered by La Nuit du Bas, who were his alleged benefactors, but also their sworn enemies known as the Circle in the Sky. The Circle was gunning for him, he knew, and La Nuit was on to his secret mutiny. If either side caught him, he was as good as dead. Tonight was a most dangerous move: they could wait until he reached a desolate part of the road, carefully take him away where no cameras or witnesses could catch them, before carting him off, torturing him to get out whatever information they could, and then finish him off.
Yet it was an earlier incident that drove him to take the risk in the first place. His wife terrorized him right out of his wits the night before when she threw another one of her tirades, demanding they go on a cruise together, or else she would humiliate him in front of everyone. He suddenly realized what La Nuit had planned. They would throw him overboard and he would be just another person lost in the night. After all, she was in deep with La Nuit just as he was. When La Nuit demanded he give a press conference the following morning without the usual careful planning and script, he knew they were ready to jettison him without hesitation, ensuring his anxious performance in front of a hostile media was seen as the contributing factor to his staged suicide.
He was in over his head, but the burden he was carrying was making matters worse. Where could he turn? He could see the fox and kestrel circling him and he had run out of places to hide. It was only when a belligerent reporter he was trying to ditch cornered him, looked him in the eye and, sensing his grave situation, slapped his shoulder and whispered that something was sticking out of his jacket pocket. When he took a look, he had found a note and scribbling on a receipt. The message made his heart sing.
He heard about her. She was known to the global elites as the world’s most dangerous woman. A former journalist who had played both La Nuit and the Circle by infiltrating both and exposing their methods. A modern day Intrepid who cracked their codes, she lived to tell the tale and had both bowing to her.
She was his only hope left and as he reached the door, he had to squint to see the whimsical wood sign in the faint street light as he held his briefcase tightly in his hand:
The Path to Paradise
He knocked on the door, his free hand shaking in despair. Within moments, the door opened and there she was, a lovely, gentle, and graceful woman who was looking at him serenely.
“This is the Path to Paradise,” she said sweetly as she smiled. “I am the one who shows you the ways to enlightenment to find your peace of mind.”
He then remembered what the journalist told him about breaking her code. “You are the Red Queen?”
She straightened her back as she became alert, yet still retaining a playful, dainty air. “I am. What would you like me to read for you tonight? The Runes, the Tarot, the Hanafuda, or the Playing Cards?”
“The Tarot,” he said more anxiously than he hoped.
“A business problem, I see. Come on in, I will put on a pot of tea, and you can tell me what La Nuit has done to make you fear for your life.”
IV
“Mr. Pope, I am glad to see you calming down after a soothing spot of camomile. Now, perhaps, you have gathered your thoughts…” Miss Lyme said as she straightened her simple and elegant black turtleneck dress.
“How did you know I was with La Nuit?”
“They are proficient in instilling fear, but the other strain is vintage Circle. You have the air of a man who is used to taking care of himself. Besides, I follow the news, and saw that dreadful press conference. They want you to look as if you are floundering so they can get rid of you without question. Hold nothing back. I am not here to judge you, and I assume your life is filled with regrets and mistakes. I have seen it all before. Don’t put a sunny spin on whatever you did.”
He nodded as he held the cup of tea tightly. “No point in pretending anymore; that’s what got me into this mess in the first place. I am the supposed head of a pharmaceutical company called Concentrax. As you can see from that press conference, I am not a naturally articulate man. I was shy because everyone always made fun of my name, and my father always told me I would never make it in business if I was that reticent; so when I was in university, one of my professors suggested I take a weekend workshop in assertiveness, which turned out to be how La Nuit recruited students. I was a pleaser who did everything they asked.”
“Which was?”
“Fake data. I was trained how to make it sound more convincing and logical than the real thing, which was surreal, especially since I wasn’t a science student, but an economics major. I had to be proficient in all kinds of rigging, hiding, and distortions, not just commerce and science, but psychology, sociology, ecology, any discipline that was dependent on experimental research.”
“You excelled.”
“I had a good-paying job waiting for me by the time I graduated, not some lowly entry-level position, but a posh-sounding title that made my parents beam with pride. I couldn’t tell them why I got that job or that it was as fake as the studies I doctored. The tears in my father’s eyes were all too real, and not an honest thing I did in my life before got him to connect with me like that. I never felt so empty or lost before, either.”
“Go on.”
“I produced convincing studies of whatever La Nuit wished to be put in the public discourse as true. If their struck a deal with a Chinese manufacturer who polluted their waters, I would rig the study to show the pollutants weren’t hazardous, and in a way that the results would be hard to disprove. I rigged crime statistics to help crooked mayors get re-elected – the ones, at least, who were friendly toward La Nuit fronts, and currently I make one pharmaceutical company’s new drugs seem more effective than the current gold standard. The medications are not bad or ineffective, but they are no better than what is out there now, only more expensive – with the extra proceeds being used to fund a South American election campaign to put in one of La Nuit’s frontmen. I faked data all my adult life, but recently, the nature of my job changed.”
“How so?”
“I got a promotion requiring me to give media interviews about the efficacy of new drugs and how our science is superior to the so-called Establishment, you know, the Circle. It’s about optics and inspiring gullible university brats to join the ranks. I hated going public, but they said they could exploit my likable, quiet demeanour and capture the imaginations of high school kids who would see me as a trusted science source as they were being indoctrinated as to how to think while believing they were special individuals who did their own thing. Everything was scripted – La Nuit’s reporters were told what to ask, as was I…I’m sorry. When I tell it to you just as it is, I feel evil…no wonder my life is in danger…”
She smiled. “Nellie McClung said never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done. I will deal with the inevitable howling after you tell me your problem. It’s not the pious who want your head on a platter. You can deal with your moral issues later.”
“I wasn’t happy, but I figured it was all make pretend and the public didn’t care about these things.”
“Something changed your mind.”
“I was told the drugs were good, but when I was rigging one set, I noticed some data was missing. Taking out undesirable results is usually my job, but someone beat me to it, and I got a sinking feeling.”
“What is the medication for? Do you know?”
“I am not told the specifics, just what La Nuit wants to prove is reality. The researchers’ hands are clean and they can honestly say they didn’t rig the experiments and I can feign ignorance of the experiment – I’m just the media-friendly executive. It’s a bastardization of the double blind technique, but the missing data troubled me because my numbers could not add up. I was told not to worry, but then I did something impulsive – subjects are usually assigned a number, but someone new was overseeing the experiment and mistakenly gave me the names of the subjects when I asked for them – too many subjects had trendy names, and then I realized the test was on children.”
“What then?”
“The drug caused cognitive lapses for children with emotional problems when they drugs wore off – and that’s what they wanted so that parents would become more dependent on medication to control their children. The pills were laced with some sort of narcotic that regular blood and urine tests wouldn’t find. I rebelled and collected as much as I could, no easy feat considering the surveillance, yet pretended everything was fine.”
“You have a child who is having such problems or a sibling? Something must have touched your heart to take such a risk.”
The man bowed down his head. “My baby brother. He took his own life as a teenager. It shook me to the core, and this study was the last straw.”
“I understand. What lead to the press conference?”
“I played a stupid game.”
“You must know that whenever you play a game or make a deal with either side, you know you’ll lose.”
“If I could trick them a little, I would expose them without exposing myself. I juggled the numbers in a way that if anyone looked carefully enough, they would see something was off, and then I presented the data to encourage the one who wrote up the studies to use a bolder statement to the drug’s effectiveness, to tweak the nose of the Circle, so they would be sure to scrutinize things just a little more, but the consequences weren’t what I expected.”
“I am listening.”
“You are told just a little bit of the side you work for, and you aren’t always told what the ultimate goals are. The study was a gateway to this once neutral and influential think tank called the Boswell Institute that fell on hard times and was now ready to be taken by the highest bidder. It is a huge deal – and my study at first gave La Nuit a strategic edge – and they went with La Nuit. It’s a done deal.”
“At first?”
“The Circle didn’t take it well because the day Boswell went with La Nuit. I had a flat tire on the way to work and when I went on the side of the road to fix it, I found a piece of paper in the trunk of my car with a circle written in blood. I thought the Circle would expose my study as a fraud, but then my superior congratulated me on my work, but the way he said it made me nervous. I then got a call from a reporter who asked me if the rumours were true that the subjects in our study weren’t as ill as we proclaimed they were, making the results seem more impressive than they were. I panicked. I denied it all, but how can I prove anything when exposing the raw data exposes the lies? The story got worse and I was forced to hold a press conference with no prepared statement. I’ve ticked off La Nuit and the Circle, and I am lost.”
“It was your supervisor who set up the press conference?”
“Yes, but on the command of his supervisor.”
“And the threat was placed in your car, was it placed there at home or at work?”
“I was halfway to work when I found it. A tire is round – I got the message.”
“Have you ever been threatened by the Circle before?”
“Never.”
Miss Lyme got up from her chair. “I have to go for a few minutes, Mr. Pope.”
“To research my case?”
“No, to feed my animals and give my eldest cat a belly rub. He gets insecure if he doesn’t get one at this time of day. I will only take a few minutes. You can sleep on the couch here tonight – that way you know you will live until tomorrow when we can straighten out this tintinnabulation.”
“You have a plan?”
“You have all the files you gathered?”
“Right here in my briefcase.”
“Then I have a plan after I take a look at what is inside.”
V
The next morning, Mr. Pope opened his eyes and looked at the elegant woman with the breakfast tray and the flattering white knee-length A-line dress standing in front of him.
“You look much better this morning.”
He nodded and paused before he spoke. “May I ask you something, Miss Lyme?”
“Please.”
“Why do you use divination cards as a code at all? I mean, you aren’t a psychic, and I don’t think you even pretend to be one. Nothing in your office here even suggests it.”
“I am sensible. Tyrants are impossible people who dabble in the occult and divination because they need someone to reinforce the rules of combat to them for reassurance, but in a way that strokes their egos as they get the justification for their sins. You are supposed to harm others on your quest for the paper crown – you are destined to be the god of gods, that sort of rubbish. This way, they are forced to admit their delusions and excuses as they walk in through my front door.”
“So you aren’t a spiritual sort…”
“I believe in a higher power. I don’t believe higher powers live our lives for us or tell us how to do it. Now, as to the problem and solution…”
“You have solved it?”
“Yes,” Miss Lyme replied as she passed a plate of pecan scones and strawberry jam to Mr. Pope. “You are a pawn in two separate games. La Nuit sees you as a sacrifice pawn, and are baiting the Circle to take you down. We take away the reason to sacrifice you, and the Circle leaves you alone, then you only have La Nuit to contend with.”
Mr. Pope looked turned around. “You said there were two games. What is the other?”
“Do you love your wife?”
“I am resigned to her.”
“She is not resigned to you. If you could sense exactly how someone wanted to kill you, that tells me the second plot deviates from La Nuit’s playbook. The second schemer’s plan hinges on a Zugzwang strategy – someone forcing your every move, cornering you to frame your for your own death – why bother if they already were setting up the Circle to dispose of you for them in the first place? Someone has a Plan B because they don’t know Plan A is already in place – and has now inadvertently made you aware of both plots.”
“You think that will save me?”
“Yes, remove the benefits of killing you and you are safe. Now, let us first deal with the Circle since they pride themselves on being enlightened, then we deal with the impossible ones.”
“But I thought you said La Nuit was behind it all.”
“If we cut them off at the pass, the Circle will have no reason to do their bidding for them.”
“I understand.”
“Do you also understand that the note in your trunk was planted by someone other than the Circle?”
Mr. Pope threw his head back. “How do you know?”
“They don’t threaten with anonymous notes, but they started the rumour about the study, most likely because La Nuit has a double agent and tipped them off. The Circle then confronted you about it, but deliberately made a wrong accusation to make you panic because you couldn’t use the data to exonerate yourself. They are being set up to kill you; so that La Nuit destroys their credibility. Freshen up and we will go to the Circle to reason with them.”
“Go there when they are trying to kill me?”
“If they see you fear them, they will think you are prey. You go to them and you cease to be one.”
VI
After breakfast, Mr. Pope and Miss Lyme drove up to Toronto to the Salt Research Centre. Mr. Pope had been anxious, while his companion remained quiet and reposed.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” he asked as he looked out the window.
“Yes, the lead researcher here praised Boswell effusively in the press until last week. He would be the target to be manipulated into having you killed. He is with the Circle.”
“Should we even do this?”
“Why not? They just want to have some dirt to gloat with and you don’t need it. Boswell will be exposed as will the dubious studies.”
Miss Lyme and Mr. Pope walked into the building and headed straight for the office in question, where she breezily walked past the receptionist and into the office where she closed the door after her client hopped inside. “Good morning, Dr. Stryker. We will not take long.”
“Lyme! What you are you doing here?”
“I have a request on the behest of my client, Mr. Pope. He demands that you spare him his life in exchange for something the Circle will find more lucrative and rewarding than killing him, however discreetly.”
“What is it?” asked the doctor as he looked intensely at Miss Lyme.
“He’s not even denying it?” whispered Mr. Pope in her ear.
“Pope here fakes data, but to do that, he has to work with real data – he hides the results of experiments so that La Nuit has the edge over the Circle. You get the data, your superiors salivate, and Pope is left unharmed.”
“But what’s stop them from blackmailing me or ignoring…”
Dr. Stryker interrupted him. “Let me see this data.”
“Mr. Pope? The stick, please.”
As Mr. Pope handed over the memory stick, the doctor placed it into his computer and began opening files, reading and nodding. Dr. Stryker looked up. “How on earth did La Nuit get their mitts on these findings?”
“They don’t tell him. He is on the cogwheel of deception, not procurement, and you ought to know about keeping the spheres of operation separate. Mr. Pope is retiring; so there is no more for him to give.”
“La Nuit will be angry at his betrayal.”
“They will be too busy punishing his superiors for their lackadaisical ways to care. What say you?”
“It’s a deal. Just get out before my superiors come.”
“That’s it?” spluttered Mr. Pope.
“Yes,” said Dr. Stryker. “This saves us three years’ worth of espionage, and enough ammunition to destroy Boswell. Now go.”
Miss Lyme and Mr. Pope left the office as quickly as they arrived and as Miss Lyme started her car, her client moaned. “We just signed my death warrant…”
“No, we let the Circle know you are no threat to them and you gave them more than what they could have ever dreamed of obtaining with their traditional methods, as well as signal that if they wish to pick a fight, it’s your superior they have to go after, not you. Half your worries are over – the professional half.”
“And the other half?”
“Now, we pay a visit to your superior’s wife.”
“Whatever for?”
“You need to form a single alliance and she’s it. When we secure her freedom, we secure yours.”
“Freedom?”
“Yes, just as you have been resigned to your marriage, she has been resigned to hers.”
“What’s this got to do with anything…my wife and my boss?”
“The personal half. She suggested the cruise of death right before he pushed you on to the plank, and she sabotaged your tire and slipped in that note. But before we do that, let me treat you to lunch and I need to change into something more colourful and friendly.”
VII
The nervous woman opened her front door and saw an equally nervous, but familiar face standing next an elegant and calm-looking woman wearing a yellow blouse and full-length skirt with a matching wide-brim hat and a pair of large black sunglasses.
“Mr. Pope? What are you doing here? Is my husband all right?” the woman asked as she felt her stomach plunge.
Miss Lyme shook her head as she removed her sunglasses. “Let us be sensible, madam, from the start. Your husband is having an affair with my client’s wife and they are trying to stage his suicide. A path will be cleared, and when he is gone, where does that leave your pretty neck?”
The woman held her throat. “What do you need from me?”
“They call it a safe for a reason. Do you know where you husband makes his secret papers safe?”
The woman nodded as she signalled for the two guests to enter. “In his den. I can take you there, but I don’t know the combination.”
Miss Lyme followed the woman to the rustic-looking den and looked at the wall safe the woman showed her. Without saying a word, she looked at the keypad and entered four digits and the safe opened immediately.
“But how did you know it?” asked the woman breathlessly.
“La Nuit henchmen are silly – they almost always pick the year of the organization’s founding as a numerical code.”
“Seriously?” gasped the woman.
Mr. Pope looked sheepishly and nodded. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Shame for you, Mr. Pope, for falling for that subtle suggestion so easily. Their computer passwords are usually ‘nightfall.’”
“I know where he keeps his laptop!” shouted the woman brightly as she ran out of the room.
The woman eagerly returned and turned on the machine, and when the password ‘nightfall’ proved to be correct, she began typing and clicking, quickly finding a file of racy picture files and showing them to Miss Lyme as she angrily cursed. Miss Lyme looked at the pictures and whistled. “I bet she never did this for you, Mr. Pope.”
Mr. Pope sighed sadly as he grimaced at the screen. “Not once.”
“He never did that for me, either,” interrupted the woman angrily. “I always felt so trapped and stuck in this nightmare marriage.”
“Do you mind sharing this with us?” asked Miss Lyme.
“Anything you want,” said the woman. “Is he going to pay for this!”
“Almost done. We’ll have an early supper and I know the little club La Nuit middle managers go to unwind. One more wardrobe change for me and then we wrap things up. They don’t call me the Red Queen for nothing.”
“I thought it was because of your red hair.”
“That, too.”
VIII
“It’s Lyme!” bellowed the man in the expensive navy blue business suit as she sauntered into the lounge in her long, form-fitting red dress. “What do you want?”
Miss Lyme looked over the man as her client looked on. “My client Mr. Pope came to me because he wishes that your diabolical plans for his untimely demise be scuttled immediately.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Denials are futile. Mr. Pope, show him what we have found on our afternoon fact-finding mission.”
Mr. Pope gave a copy of the file to his supervisor and the man snatched the papers as his hands shook.
“Where did you get these?”
“Your wife’s house. She was happy that there was enough in that safe and on your laptop to secure her freedom from you.”
“Pope, you miserable…”
“He did not have an affair with your wife, but she got herself an excellent lawyer with connections to the Circle, and is feeling fierce with all the information she suddenly has at her disposal to share with the courts and media alike.”
“This will ruin me!”
“I also forwarded a copy of everything here to your superiors as well theirs, and they want you to give an impromptu press conference announcing your resignation as they give your golden handshake to your soon-to-be ex-wife. They told me to tell you that Mr. Pope is to be left alive. Good day, sir.”
Miss Lyme and Mr. Pope left the building and hopped into her car. When Miss Lyme pulled out of the parking lot, Mr. Pope began to laugh as he cried.
“That wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. That’s all it took?”
“I support sensible solutions to impossible problems, and nothing is more sensible than putting all of their cards on the table, besides, murder is not just heinous, it is rude.”
“I can just imagine the scene going on in there right now. I am happy it’s not me in there.”
“They are howling, Mr. Pope, as I promised they would. Neither side will kill you, but your days of holding posh-sounding titles are done. You will have to do the best a shy and honest man can do these days.”
“After all those years of sheer misery, there is nothing I want more than that, but how do you manage to tangle with those two?”
Miss Lyme crinkled her nose as she smiled. “People choose opposing sides of the same silly coin for no good or right reason and decide to hate, destroy, and make the other side admit they are wrong even though they are no more right than the other. Though we are always wrong, we survive and thrive in war as in peace and systems of control are meaningless. Yet this world thinks up crueler ways to hold campaigns, competitions and combats and use the same ridiculous standards even though we can get along without the manipulation and propaganda.” She laughed sweetly and paused. “Had he and I but met by some old ancient inn…”
Mr. Pope smiled. “The Man He Killed. I know that poem.”
“So many think they do, too.”
“At least I am not one of the dead, and for that I owe you so much. And Miss Lyme?”
“Yes?”
“You shoot a fellow down you’d treat, if met where any bar is, or help to half a crown. I now know it by heart.” There was silence until they reached Miss Lyme’s home and got out of the car. “Thank you for treating me to half a crown – and I promise I will do the same for any other refugee from La Nuit – or the Circle. Goodbye and I hope we can meet again under kinder circumstances.”
The man leaned over and gave Miss Lyme a gentle kiss on the cheek, before walking toward his own car as he looked toward the starry sky, happy that for the first time he could remember, he had no reason to cower or weep all while keeping a game face. Miss Lyme took her briefcase in her hand and walked leisurely back to her house, happy that she would be in time to feed her animals and nourish her garden for they were as excited to see her as she was to see them.
IX
To: magnus@missmlyme.com
From: bpope@homewebs.com
Re: Life is good
Maggie,
I just signed the papers for my new place, and the new beau my ex snagged is a real higher-up at La Nuit; so the divorce is progressing fast. They want to wash their hands of me; the split is clean without cleaning me out. I reconnected with one of my old friends back in the days when I should have known better and we hit it off. She wants to meet you and refuses to wait for the house-warming; we’ll come sometime this week when you are free with a couple of picnic baskets – one for the three of us, and one for your furry and feathered friends. My new career is going a long way in undoing everything I was complicit in the past. Things are looking up.
Before I forget, when I was at the courthouse today, one of the judges looked distressed and I heard her say something and knew she was in with the Circle. I introduced myself and told her I used to be with La Nuit, but got out – she began to cry and told me her daughter is in university and the Circle is trying to recruit her. She’s terrified; she was a single mother and joined to secure her future but now everything is falling apart. She is coming to see you tonight.
Just let me know when you would like us over for the picnic and we’ll see you then!
Take care,
Bishop.
