Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

and gasped. Blood filled his head. The helmet was stuffy because he was no longer moving. He tore clumsily at the strap and rolled it from his head. It fell to the floor and bounced into a nearby car.

The car park was a great, gleaming mass. It was nearly full. Security lights illuminated islands with orange signs that marked position. A car pulled in and David felt a brief flush of panic. But he calmed himself. Nobody knew where he was.

The voice, the sensible voice, said: Remember the bikers up in Northumbria? Forgotten about them? I bet they haven’t forgotten about you. They weren’t farm workers. They were professionals.

David sighed. It was pointless standing around. He slapped his face, hard. He shook his head like a dog throwing off water. He needed to be awake now. He needed to be careful.

“Ego, I’m at the airport.”

“Excellent,” said the voice in his ear. David had long abandoned reading human emotions into Ego’s tone, but it was hard to ignore its obvious surprise. “Change your clothes then find locker J371.”

“Am I going to fly?”

“I am not in a position to tell you that. If you are captured, it is better that you know nothing, in case you jeopardise a future escape attempt.”

David watched his breath condense. His eyes followed the vapour and continued to stare long after it became invisible, as though even the muscles of his eyes were exhausted. “So the minister is still around? The fake one?”

“I do not know. I suspect she has avoided capture.” Ego paused. “You must change now. Time is short. You must change.”

David checked his immediate surroundings. He did so in the manner of a careful drunk. There was a small hedge that ran along the back of the row. It was nothing more than a trough of blackened wood chippings with regularly-spaced shrubs. It held no cover. He looked at the car that he had hit with his helmet. It was a high-sided eight-seater. That would do.

He took off his clothes piece by piece. First the coat, then the jacket, then the inner fleece. He removed his waterproof trousers, his riding trousers and his boots. He laid them all in a heap. He opened the carrying container that he had bought in a town he had forgotten and retrieved the beige briefcase. He ripped off the transparent wrapper. Underneath, it was pristine. Shivering, he transferred his essential documents from his jacket to the briefcase. There were some non-essential items too: in the event, he had carried with him most of the bathroom from that little bed and breakfast. There were a couple of sachets of shampoo and a useless little soap. He kept them.

He grabbed new underwear from the container and stuffed it into the briefcase. In another bag he found a pair of tinted glasses, a shaving kit, a wedding ring and a belt. He packed those too. He found a travel iron and wondered why he bought it. He left it in the container.

There was a pair of paper overalls at the bottom. He donned these carefully, though the paper was tough. He put his boots back on, but not his bike jacket. Instead he retrieved a light nylon coat and threw it across his shoulders. Now he was an invisible everyman, albeit a very cold, tired one. Along one side of the container was a dry-cleaning bag with a complete suit inside. He rummaged some more and found a bottle of aftershave. He tossed it into the briefcase, closed it, and set about stuffing his old clothes into the bike container with one hand. In the other he held the suit.

Finally he closed the container and unfastened it. He walked to the front of the bike and remembered his escape from the farm hands two days before. He had roared from that ditch and jumped the hedge like a champion showjumper. He smiled and patted the light. It didn’t feel like a bike; it felt like a horse.

“Ego, can you hear me?”

Ego was inside the briefcase. “Perfectly.”

“Is it alright to leave the bike?”

“Of course. Where better to hide a tree than a forest? And, because this car park is designed to issue tickets on the way out, it should be a long time before anybody notices anything suspicious.”

“Did you read that in a spy novel?”

“Yes.”

David walked towards the terminal building with the container under one arm and the briefcase under the other. He lengthened his stride. The physical pain of the past few days seemed to hang one pace behind. He was nearing the next stage. After miles on the bike, things were moving again.

The sky had cleared. The moon shone. Saskia watched an aeroplane land. In the moment before its wheels touched the ground, it seemed motionless. It seemed too big to fly. It seemed an impertinence.

“Scottie, do you believe in God?”

Hannah sat with his collar upturned. He seemed occupied with the traffic around them. They were about to pull into the airport. Teri had suggested Terminal 5 because most transatlantic flights originated from there. “Do you?” he asked.

Do I? she thought. Is religion a memory or a feeling?

“I don’t know.”

“I hope I never have to find out.”

She smiled. “Die, do you mean?”

“That’s the word.” He looked out of the window again. This time, he watched the sky. “When I was wee – when I was a boy – I thought that God was the sea. The sea was the biggest and most scariest thing I knew. It took my old dad.”

“I am sorry.”

He shrugged. “He was a fisherman. He took a gamble one day and he lost.”

“Do you think,” she began, and then stopped. Hannah glanced at her.

“Say it.”

“Do you think religion is a memory or a feeling?”

“Feeling,” he said. His eyes darted forward at the two police officers and Saskia realised she had embarrassed him. But then he said loudly, “Do you ever get a religious feeling, Dan?”

“Only when Teri’s driving, sir,” he replied.

Saskia grinned. Inside, she