Tempus: The Phoenix Man Read online

  ‘He looks as if he’s been in a war,’ Semple said.

  ‘This is a gunshot wound. This one is probably from a knife slash. This, I’m not sure about. It looks as if he was struck with a steak tenderizer.’

  Semple frowned at the puckered wound. It did indeed look as if a studded, blunt object had struck the man on his upper left shoulder. ‘What about his general health and fitness?’

  ‘Malnourished, dehydrated, and - as you can see - bashed and battered, but otherwise there’s no sign of major trauma. Food, sleep and a programme of physical exercise should have him back on his feet quickly enough.’

  ‘Feed and water him, by all means, but there’s no time for putting him through a course of physiotherapy. From what we’ve learned he was combat ready a moment before we jumped him back here, he’ll do.’

  ‘Physically he’s up to the mission, but I still have doubts about his mental health,’ Heller cautioned. They needed someone who was in full command of his senses if they hoped to avert a similar disaster as a nuclear holocaust happening in the here and now. Not someone unhinged by his terrifying experiences, but someone capable of executing a demanding mission that would rely more on a keen sense than his ability to beat the hell out of someone.

  ‘I’ll speak with him. Explain. Maybe it will be enough to prompt his memories. If not – no harm, no foul – his lack of memory might even suit our purpose. He won’t have a clue what kind of cushy life he missed here, will he?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the cold-hearted one,’ Heller smiled.

  Semple shrugged his shoulders, retreating a step towards the exit. ‘Sergeant David Johnston died in that nuclear wasteland; I’m more interested in who was born phoenix-like from his ashes.’ Semple again studied the sleeping patient. He lifted a manicured finger to point at the battle-scarred figure. ‘He – whatever he thinks his name is now – strikes me as a more capable warrior than the young soldier we first sent back. Unlike David, he looks the type we can rely upon to give us results this time.’

  Chapter 8

  March 30th 2018

  Undisclosed location, England

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  Rembrandt thought there was nothing else in this crazy fucked-up world he’d woken to that could surprise him, but he was wrong.

  Perhaps his question should have been delivered with a different emphasis. What the hell happened to me? The last twenty-four hours had been marked by a bewildering sequence of events, all of them mundane in their normality, but incredibly brain-sapping nonetheless.

  When he’d woken from the green-eyed doctor’s concoction of drugs he’d been clothed in a paper suit, and in a different room. This time it was reminiscent of a cell. In it was a concrete platform, upon which was a blue rubber mattress, and a toilet bowl without a seat. The room was windowless, and a steel door barred passage. His meals had been passed to him through a flap that lowered in the door, an anonymous guard shoving through plastic plates, plastic cups, and plastic cutlery. When Rembrandt tried to engage the man in conversation, he’d receive only a curt order to ‘Eat up then pass your dishes back to me when I tell you.’ Ravenous, he’d eaten, drunk his fill, pissed and defecated. He’d lain on the mattress staring up at the featureless ceiling, trying to ponder what all of this meant, but his brain was fried by the magnitude of it all and he’d spent more time in Zen-like contemplation of the institutional grey ceiling than coming to any conclusions.

  Rembrandt hammered on the door at one point, demanding to know where he was, why he was being treated like a criminal. He was ignored.

  He’d fallen asleep on the mattress, and wakened in a lather of sweat. The sopping paper suit was uncomfortable, and he’d pulled off the top and stood in the centre of the cell staring at the door.

  When nobody came to enlighten him he sat down in the corner of the cell, opposite the bed, his shoulders against the slick, cold concrete.

  He wondered if his incarceration was all part of the same nightmare he’d experienced when in the surgical theatre. None of this could be real, could it?

  But exploration of his body showed him that a cannula had been inserted in his neck and since removed, that the wounds on his lower legs had been cleaned, stitched where necessary and dressed. The sting of his wounds felt real, and therefore everything else had to be too.

  Briefly he feared that he was lying in a coma some place, and it was his brain’s coping mechanism that conjured these images, to keep him tethered to life. If he was locked in a cell, his wounds patched, there was no way he could transcend to the afterlife. Except he didn’t believe in the afterlife, heaven, hell or anything else, and so knew he was bullshitting himself. He wasn’t lying in the med bay at The Castle, aware of the pain in his wounds, having been carried unconscious from the catacombs of the museum. He was here. He just had no idea of where here was.

  Food and drink was delivered to him again, and once more his questions ignored. He considered grabbing the hand of the guard who passed the food to him, dragging the arm through the narrow slot and threatening to snap it in two if he didn’t receive an explanation. He didn’t: he ate the food, swallowed the drink. He had to conserve his energy for when a better opportunity arose.

  He sat in the corner.

  After a few hours he got up and paced his cell.

  Then he slept some more.

  After that it was feeding time at the zoo once more.

  He ate, drank, pissed and shit.

  Slept some more.

  When the door finally opened he was back on his feet, fists bunched, chest rising and falling as he sucked in oxygen.

  He was greeted by a phalanx of armoured guards, prepared for action with Perspex shields and batons. The batons were tipped with copper nubs, and he understood what he risked if he challenged the men sent to contain him. He turned his back on them, his feet planted at shoulder width and wrists crossed at his lower back. While the guards cuffed and shackled him, he gave them no trouble, though he suspected one or two of the gruff men would prefer him to try. They looked the type who enjoyed using their Taser batons on recalcitrant or troublesome prisoners.

  Rembrandt wasn’t allowed to walk when they took him from the cell. He was loaded onto a wheeled contraption that struck him as a cross between a wheelchair and a stack-barrow used for carting heavy loads. He was strapped to the chair by sturdy leather belts and buckles.

  One of the guards made a joke at his expense. ‘You’d think he was friggin’ Hannibal Lecter with all these precautions.’ Rembrandt hadn’t a clue whom the guard was referring to. The guard leaned in close. ‘What, you never seen that old movie?’ He chattered his teeth and sucked air through them, mentioned something about fava beans and Chianti: more references that were lost on Rembrandt.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ another of the guards scolded. ‘He’s not a criminal. He’s one of us.’

  ‘He’s fucked up is what he is,’ said the movie buff. ‘Look at him, fucking nuts. He’s like a wild animal.’

  He’s one of us. Rembrandt thanked the guard silently for his slip, but the man didn’t understand his look of gratitude.

  ‘Just behave yourself and everything will be fine,’ the friendly guard said.

  ‘I’m troubling nobody,’ Rembrandt said. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘It’s debrief time, mate.’

  Rembrandt was wheeled down a corridor that gave no obvious hint to where he was, though he developed more of a sense of the building. This was unlike any prison, or hospital for that matter, that he’d ever been in. The place smelled of lime dust, ozone, must, humanity, and he could sense the weight of countless tons of dirt and rock above his head. Likely he had woken in a subterranean military base.

  He was delivered to a lift. Pushed inside, two of the guards backed off, leaving him in the elevator with only four men. Movie Buff tapped his electric baton against his thigh as they rode the elevator. He looked as if he would rather be somewhere else now that the opportunity t
o fry Rembrandt hadn’t presented itself. Rembrandt knew the bully’s type. He’d fucked a few of them over in his time, pulled them down a peg or two. Some – like the cannibalistic Warren Frome – he’d completely put out of the picture. Rembrandt hoped that when the time came for him to make his break, Movie Buff would be the one to try to stop him. He’d regret it if the guard who’d shown him kindness was there too, but it wouldn’t halt him.

  Arriving at another floor of the institutional structure, Rembrandt was delivered to two large men dressed as orderlies. He didn’t get a look at their faces, because they appeared from an alcove behind his chair, and one of them took control of it, dismissing the heavy mob. ‘We’ll take him from here,’ one of the orderlies stated, and his tone brooked no challenge. The guards went back into the lift as Rembrandt was wheeled on.

  Neither orderly spoke to him. Neither did they speak to each other.

  The men were familiar to Rembrandt, or at least their stern presence was. He believed they were the same two men who’d held him down so that the green-eyed doctor could dope him into compliance yesterday.

  He busied himself with studying the passage they moved through, seeking a way out. Doors appeared at regular intervals, but they were all shut, either by chance or design. They did not bear any indicators or clues to their use, having only sequential numbers. They didn’t appear to be cell doors, at least. Unlike the steel monstrosity that had barred his room, these doors were wooden, glossy with varnish. The corridor was also moderately comfortable, with a runner of carpet to soften the footsteps and shades on the lamps so they weren’t so stark.

  He was pushed to the far end of the corridor, and was greeted by two imposing wooden doors. One of the orderlies moved forward, rapped his knuckles on the door and then pushed them open without waiting. The second giant wheeled Rembrandt inside, and then jostled him into position in front of a large walnut desk, complete with a large blotter and banker’s lamp with a green glass shade. Oil paintings dotted the walls. Rembrandt suffered a creeping sense of déjà vu, even before the high-backed chair swung round and he faced the man sitting in it.

  ‘What the hell happened to me?’ Terrence Semple asked in reply to Rembrandt’s question, bemused as he laced his hands together over his stomach. ‘You know me?’

  ‘Of course I know you, Guvnor…it’s just you look…’

  ‘Older?’ Semple offered.

  There were extra lines around Semple’s eyes, his mouth, on his forehead. His thick hair was receding, styled differently, and white as opposed to steel-grey. He didn’t wear glasses now, his eyes augmented by contact lenses. ‘Much older,’ Rembrandt said.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Semple said. ‘You knew me as a younger man?’

  ‘It was only two days ago…’

  ‘That’s how it feels to you,’ Semple corrected.

  ‘What happened to me, Guvnor? I was seriously injured? I’ve been in a coma for years? What?’

  ‘You ask those questions and already you know they aren’t the truth.’

  ‘Then what is the truth? What happened to me? Where are we? What happened to you?’

  ‘So many questions,’ Semple said. ‘I’m afraid if I tried to answer them all in one go you’d be bombarded, overloaded with facts. For starters I will tell you one thing: I’m not the person you think I am.’

  ‘Bollocks! You’re Terrence Semple. Even with the wrinkles and white hair, I’d know you anywhere.’ Rembrandt craned round, so he could get a look at the orderlies. They were younger, not aged as Semple was, but there was no denying why they struck him with such familiarity. ‘Those two are your body detail. I’ve seen them a thousand times. What’s going on, Guv? What is this charade?’

  ‘Before I answer any more questions, I’d like to ask one myself.’

  ‘Go on, then. What is it?’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘You know my name.’

  ‘I’d like to hear you say it.’

  ‘You know it already. Christ, Guv, it was you who gave me my bloody name!’

  ‘Then tell me it.’

  ‘Rembrandt. James Rembrandt. Ring a bell?’

  ‘Rembrandt?’ Semple looked amused. He even glanced at the paintings on the walls. ‘And you say that I named you that?’

  ‘You know you did, Guv. Come on. Is this some kind of sick joke?’

  ‘It’s no joke, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A punishment then? For failing to bring you Lady Layard for your collection.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Lady Layard?’

  ‘The painting of your great-great aunt or whoever she was.’

  ‘I’m aware of my familial connection to Lady Layard. That’s what you were doing at the British Museum: fetching a painting of her?’

  ‘For your collection. Yes. You know it’s why I was there. You sent me and my team to the catacombs.’

  ‘So my younger self was a collector of rare artwork? And he named you Rembrandt? How odd. And yet, I admit to having more than a passing interest in art myself.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Rembrandt said. He hung his head momentarily, before looking up once more. He thought this some weird trick, a test perhaps, and that Semple and his body detail had disguised themselves by some incredibly realistic stage make-up. But no. Semple had aged. The giant guards had grown younger. He looked to where his hands were locked down by the leather straps. They looked identical to what they’d looked two days previously. Rembrandt didn’t feel as if he’d changed by the same number of years as those standing around him. He clenched his fists. ‘What year is this?’

  ‘Ah, I see you begin to suspect the truth?’ Semple said.

  ‘What fucking year is it?’

  ‘The date,’ Semple said, ‘is March thirtieth twenty-eighteen.’

  ‘Twenty-eighteen?’ Rembrandt’s voice was now a hoarse croak.

  ‘Since two-thousand-and-two you’ve lost the best part of sixteen years,’ Semple confirmed. ‘To us, we lost you for more than that. Although, that depends on how you look at the paradoxes of time. In reality we lost you for only fifty hours-or-so, but those fifty hours we experienced encompassed thirteen years for you.’

  Rembrandt’s mouth hung open in incredulity. He wanted to challenge Semple’s words yet again, because the Guvnor simply had to be joking. Was he talking about time travel?

  Semple beat him to the punch. ‘Tell me, what is your earliest memory?’

  Rembrandt said, ‘We’ve been over this before…dozens of times.’

  ‘Indulge me, please. My memory isn’t what it used to be.’

  ‘Now you’re taking the piss, Guv?’

  ‘Not at all, I merely need to hear it from you.’

  ‘OK. My earliest recollection is of you finding me. I was injured, burned, barely alive. When you discovered me, I was sheltering beneath a Rembrandt portrait in the ruins of the National Gallery. Hence your choice of names for me.’

  ‘What year was this?’

  ‘I don’t fully remember. It took a while for me to be coaxed back to health; I have little memory of those early days.’

  ‘And nothing before that?’

  Rembrandt shook his head.

  ‘You don’t recall how you suffered your injuries?’

  ‘Only in nightmares,’ Rembrandt said. ‘Filled with featureless ogres and burning rain.’

  ‘It’s understandable, perhaps. The trauma would be enough to break many men. You have a scar on your scalp. You were delivered a heavy blow. It was probably the source of your amnesia. The condition persists in you to this day, so you possibly suffered some mild brain damage.’

  ‘I’m not crazy,’ Rembrandt snarled.

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘But I am mad. Please tell me what the hell is going on before I totally lose it.’

  The orderlies stirred, expecting trouble, but Semple waved them off. Disgruntled they stepped back into Rembrandt’s periphery.

  ‘The world you knew, the person you thought you were, th
ey were all lies,’ Semple said.

  ‘They were real enough to me,’ Rembrandt said.

  ‘I didn’t say they weren’t real. They simply weren’t the world or the name you were born to. You are not James Rembrandt. You are David James Johnston, and until a few days ago you were a soldier in Her Majesty’s service.’

  ‘What are you going on about?’

  ‘You worked for me – indirectly, I may add – and you volunteered to be a test subject. You were twenty years old, young, fit and courageous. An ideal candidate for transvection.’

  ‘Transvection: what the hell is that?’

  ‘Let’s call it a jump…much easier to get your tongue around don’t you think?’

  ‘A jump? Backwards through time? You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘Not just through time,’ Semple said. ‘And not strictly backwards. More obliquely. You were sent back twenty-nine years to nineteen eighty-nine, but into a parallel dimension. You were stuck for thirteen years in that dimension until we pulled you out of it in two thousand and two, bringing you back to our dimension in the present.’

  Lost for words, Rembrandt stared at the man who wore the aged face of Terrence Semple, a man he’d both loved and feared with equal measure. He felt no love for this man and his terror threatened to enfold him. He struggled against the knowledge facing him. None of it could be true. It was the stuff of science fiction, for Christ’s sake. And yet, what other crazy explanation could there be?

  Semple understood he’d probably over-stated his case. Rembrandt was suffering overload, and if he didn’t back off, he might yet crash and burn, and be as useless to them as Elizabeth Heller warned.

  Yet there was one last thing Semple wished to impart before this session could end.

  ‘You were jumped for the purpose of collecting data, and reporting back the status of that world, which we’d previously discovered had suffered a devastating war. You were supposed to be returned to us within minutes, although to you it would have felt like a few hours, but we lost your signal and had to leave you there until your point of death. We could not have anticipated that you’d be stranded in this alternate world for over thirteen years, but alas that’s what happened. James Rembrandt was a creation of that alternate reality, but even there he no longer exists. He certainly does not exist here and now. Welcome home, Sergeant Johnston.’