The Network - Jason Elliot [0]
JASON ELLIOT
‘Look at the inmost causes of things, stripped of their husks; note the intentions that underlie actions; study the essences of pain, pleasure, death, glory; observe how man’s disquiet is all of his own making, and how troubles come never from another’s hand, but like all else are creatures of our own opinion.’
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
PART ONE
April 2001
Herefordshire, England
Five months before 9/11
1
For a few moments the illusion is complete, as if my work is done and I am finally at rest after every threat and uncertainty has passed. My eyes are open but I am not awake, and my senses are suspended in a dream that ignores the ordinary rules of time and space. I feel neither cold nor pain. Above me stretches an expanse of sky, as featureless as you would expect for an April morning in England, onto which my eyes have opened. At the centre of this hypnotic whiteness a solitary hawk is hovering.
I see nothing else but his lonely silhouette, and my mind goes through none of its normal efforts to assign any scale or context to this vision. He hovers directly above me, like a captive of my own gaze, and seems to defy both gravity and the laws of motion. Even though his body is in constant motion, his head is as still as a sniper’s, held in a perfect equilibrium against the invisible stream in which he swims. As the wind flows over his wings, the trailing feathers tremble and flutter, and his wedge-shaped tail treads the air with incalculable speed and precision. The leading edges of his wings sweep back like those of a fighter plane, his head is streamlined like the point of a lance, and his beak resembles a scimitar poised high above its victim. Every line and movement of his body expresses the beauty and lethal prowess of the raptor. For a strange few moments it seems as though I enter into the spirit of the bird and feel what it feels. But all this takes shape in a different language, free of thinking itself, because I’m spellbound by the silhouette overhead, and my mind has yet to intervene.
Then, too fast for the eye to follow, he swerves downwards a few feet, brakes to a sudden stop, beats his wings to compensate for the loss in speed, and hovers again. He repeats the movement in an upward direction, to get a better view of his prey on the floor of the forest. I watch this faultless airborne ballet, mesmerised all the while, until a cry comes from his mate, its sound carried unevenly on the wind. The shrill call repeats, then falls in pitch and fades to silence. It is this sound that breaks the spell.
I hear a sudden breath, which is my own, entering my body like the gasp of an infant at birth and bearing with it all the burden of the senses. I struggle up in a spasm of fear, and the world and its nightmare tumbles in. My hands are swollen from scratches and thorns and I feel the toxin of fatigue that makes every muscle ache. I get to my feet and throw off the bracken that I have used for my improvised bed, which is a muddy crater left by the torn-up roots of a giant beech, and I curse out loud. I have already broken the only rule: never stop.
I wonder how long I’ve slept. Not long, going by the feeling of exhaustion. Under a half-moon I have run, walked, staggered, waded and crawled through the night. I am filthy and freezing but am grateful for the jacket that fends off the bite of the wind, which is more dangerous than the cold. Running my hands over my pockets I’m reminded they’ve been emptied, so there is no point returning to my car, even if I did know how to find my way back to it. The sudden recollection of my capture sends a shiver through my body. It’s only yesterday but, separated by the long and hateful night, now seems like years ago.
I’m returning home after a weekend session with H, most of it spent learning about improvised explosive devices and how to set them off. Useful skills, he tells me, even if we never have to call on them, though he says this about all our sessions together. He shows me how to make an anti-disturbance device