Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [30]
“The Ahasuerus Foundation thanks you for bringing this matter to our attention,” the red-haired woman said, reading from the screen. “The Ahasuerus Foundation intends to cooperate fully with Interpol and suggests that you do the same. If the Ahasuerus Foundation can help in any way to locate and liberate Silas Arnett it will certainly do so.”
Damon knew that he was being slyly rebuked for not taking the note straight to Hiru Yamanaka, but he couldn’t guess whether the rebuke was sincere or not. He had no way of knowing whether coming here had made the general situation better or worse—or, for that matter, what might count as “better” or “worse.” When he saw that she was finished, he rose to his feet.
“I’m afraid I have a plane to catch,” he said. He knew perfectly well that he was about to be thrown out, but figured that he might as well seize whatever initiative remained to be seized. “If I hear any further mention of the foundation I’ll be happy to pass the news on. I take it that my discretion wasn’t necessary, and that you won’t mind in the least if I simply use the phone in future?”
“We have nothing to hide,” said Rachel Trehaine as she came to her feet, “but that doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate your discretion, Mr. Hart. Privacy is a very precious commodity in today’s world, and we value it as much as anyone.”
Damon took that to mean that she would definitely prefer it if he exercised the utmost discretion in passing on any further information, but that she wasn’t about to feed anyone’s paranoid suspicions by saying so explicitly.
As soon as he got back to his car Damon checked into the net-board where Operator 101 had posted the notice Yamanaka had showed him, but there was nothing new. There were no messages from Madoc Tamlin or Eveline Hywood awaiting his attention. Having decided that everything else could wait, Damon sent the car forth into the traffic.
He had no doubt that his movements were being monitored by Interpol, and that the fact of his visit to Ahasuerus, if not its content, would be known to Yamanaka. His eastward expedition would also have been observed and noted, but Tamlin could be trusted to evade any surveillance to which he was subject as and when he wished.
While the car made its silent way along the city streets, observing the speed limit with mechanical precision, Damon took out the folded note yet again and scanned the tantalizing lines for the hundredth time. He had expected no more from Ahasuerus than he had got and he had no doubt that he would have got no more from Rachel Trehaine no matter what tack he had adopted in making conversation, but he couldn’t help wondering whether he had concentrated on the wrong part of the puzzle. The most remarkable allegation it made was not that Eveline Hywood and the Ahasuerus Foundation knew something significantly shady about Conrad Helier’s past but that Conrad Helier was still alive. How could that be, when so much solid evidence remained of his death?
Damon wondered whether the kind of reconstructive somatic engineering that had been used to make Rachel Trehaine look younger than she was could be used to alter a man’s appearance out of all recognition. And if some more extravagant version of it did exist, if only as an experimental prototype, might it be applied to other applications? Specifically, might it transform the cells of one body in such a way that genetic analysis would conclude that they belonged to an entirely different person? In sum, how easy was it, in this day and age, for a man to fake his own death, even to the extent of providing a misidentifiable corpse? And if it were possible today, what was the likelihood that it had been equally possible fifty years ago?
“Paranoid fantasies,” Damon muttered as the stream of unanswerable questions