18Langley
WHERE THERE HAD BEEN a wall, there was instead a deep, dark chasm. He was falling into it. He had a rope, but it wasn’t anchored. Instead it was attached to a bell, and he was pulling it, making the bell toll, vibrating through his skull, making his jaws rattle. Some amount of time passed, and he was walking through a dark cavern full of file cabinets. One of them held something he needed. He’d forgotten which one. The batteries in his flashlight were running out. It flickered. He hit it. It flickered. It illuminated a bed. His bed. At home. The torch went out. His eyes opened. He was lying in a hospital room.
Newt blinked. He didn’t feel like he could move any more than that. He could hear a steady beeping, in the distance, but no ringing. Something made a noise next to him.
He rolled his eyes to the left. Hermann was asleep in the armchair next to his bed, arms hugging himself, one hand tucked under his chin. In his sleep, he frowned.
Newt refocused on the room around him. With his expanding awareness, a sense of urgency was returning to him. Everything was out of focus without his glasses, but there was a large number “8” on the wall opposite his bed. Was it the date?
Suddenly a sharp pain lanced into the center of his skull and he squeezed his eyes shut. The pain ebbed after a moment.
Eyes still closed, Newt counted forwards from the last date he remembered. What day had the conference started? The 3rd of June. But he couldn’t remember how many days and hotels had come after that. The gig, the gig had been on Wednesday. Which meant he had passed out on Thursday, right? Thursday was even more distant, like a film he half-remembered. But there was something about it, something important he had to remember...
“Hermann,” he croaked. Nothing happened. He rallied and tried lifting a hand, and found it easier than he’d expected. He reached sideways and swatted gently at Hermann’s arm. “Hermann. What day of the week is it?”
Hermann grimaced, then squeezed his eyes shut more tightly and turned away, mumbling, “It’s Friday.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Newt, exhaling.
He looked back at the ceiling, leaving his hand resting on Hermann’s arm.
“Can you pass me my glasses?” he croaked after another moment.
Hermann inhaled sharply through his nose, and sat up. “You’re awake!”
“Yes. I am. Hi. Sorry. Glasses?”
“How do you feel? Are you all right? You can hear me? What do you remember? You’re in a hospital...”
Newt took his glasses and put them on. “Yes, I can see that. I feel great. Except my muscles have been liquefied and my bones have been turned into bricks. And I feel like someone is inside my skull redecorating with a sledgehammer. How long was I out? Tell me it was a day, and not a week” A horrible thought occurred. “Or weeks.”
“No. No. Just a day. Twenty-four hours, just—about.”
Hermann’s fragmented voice made Newt look up. He could see Hermann more clearly now. His face was drawn, and the shadows under his eyes were deep purple. He was listening to Newt attentively, but his eyes looked defeated.
“A day… It feels much longer,” he said, quietly.
“Hey. Are you okay?” said Newt, sitting up and reaching for him. “What’s wrong, did something happen?”
Hermann looked over his shoulder at the door, the window to the hallway. Then he hunched forward, catching Newt’s outstretched hand and clasping it between both of his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice quiet.
“Hermann? What happened?”
“Shh, shh.” Hermann looked back at the window again. There was no one visible, but you could never know for sure.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s been a paperwork mix-up,” Hermann whispered, “and they believe you are Dr. Hermann Gottlieb. I’d like to keep it that way. So please keep your voice down.”
Newt propped himself up on his hands and tried to rise. “Ew. Why?”
Hermann put a hand on his chest to stop him. “Because there’s a warrant out for Newton Geiszler’s arrest.”
“A warrant?”
“Yes.”
“...Because they think I’m Orpheus.”
“Yes.”
Newt looked at Hermann, who was staring at him too intensely. His heart shrank away.
“And so do you,” said Newt.
Hermann shook his head.
“I’m not,” said Newt.
“It’s all right,” said Hermann quietly.
“No, really—I know you think it’s me—I can tell—and I get it, I do—but listen. I’m innocent. You have to believe me, Hermann. You have to.”
His face was flushing.
Hermann put his hand on Newt’s forehead.
“I know,” said Hermann, quietly but clearly. “I know it isn’t you. Lie back.”
He was putting pressure on Newt’s head. Newt lay back.
“Don’t want you passing out again,” said Hermann, watching the blood leave his face.
“Or getting a nosebleed.”
“Nor that.”
Newt stared up at Hermann, whose cold hand was still resting on his face. Hermann looked down at him. Gently, he combed Newt's unruly hair back from his forehead.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Newt whispered.
In the tiny room, their voices seemed to echo on the tile. Around them the hospital was quiet, except when voices and footsteps rang out irregularly in the hall outside, always unexpectedly close. Hermann spoke hardly above a murmur: “It started on Thursday morning. After our test on Wednesday night. I went to the fifth floor to deliver my report on Orpheus—no match. There were all these people in Victor’s office... They told me they were prioritizing tracking the thief at the conference. They’d decided the thief and Orpheus were one and the same, and they wouldn’t let me decipher the messages. They said there wasn’t time before the envoys arrived on Saturday. So I was to run the names of all the conference attendees. Including you.
“But it was obvious they had already concluded that you were guilty. One of them had spotted you with Lightcap in the city. They wanted me to run your records. So I did.”
Newt looked at him. “And?”
“They matched.” Hermann gave a small nod. “Your travel pattern matched Orpheus’s perfectly. Every signal for the last two years.”
He'd been unable to reach Newt, he explained. So he went to the Blueberry to search for a key to Orpheus's code. After a few hours of processing, it found the previous instance of the code: a book code, its record archived in the Black Chamber. “Then you were found,” said Hermann. “Unconscious, in King’s Cross Station.” Because he’d had no identification besides the jacket tag, he was admitted to the hospital under Hermann's name.
“You were found in a train station, and you had both components of the device... You can imagine how it looked. Like you were trying to run.”
Newt looked up at Hermann, his mouth tight.
Hermann shook his head. “I wouldn’t—shouldn’t—have believed it. That you might be a mole, a, a traitor. I should never have considered it. But I was in a state. I was paranoid, I was... I was reliving the Wagner mission. Thinking about how I almost went over... And, well, with the way everything looked...” He shook his head again, looking down. “...and then there was the trip to Langley. Always those missing days.”
Newt closed his eyes and turned away.
“And then on top of everything, you were in hospital, unconscious... So I couldn’t ask you...” Hermann swallowed, steadying his voice. “So I broke into the Black Chamber and stole the matching code.”
“You did what?”
“Please, you have got to keep your voice down. I entered the archives, under a pretense—”
“Oh my god...”
“I found the file. The book was The Fellowship of the Ring, 1953, English edition.”
Newt fell silent again.
“I stole the contents of the file and destroyed them. Then I made copies of all of Orpheus’s messages. Then I went back to the IBM, and I altered your records so that some of the travel dates no longer matched, then I left. And I took the key to the Black Chamber's filing cabinet, for good measure. I no longer had any hope of clearing your name—just delaying the hunt.
“Then I went to your apartment. The traps were disturbed—not all of them, but someone had been inside. There were signs. I went into your workshop and found the book.”
Here, Newt frowned. “But... I think my copy of Fellowship is still at the Estate.”
Hermann nodded. “That's correct. It wasn’t your copy. I’d know the cover. But the copy in your flat was the correct edition for the book code.”
“So you—”
Hermann nodded. “I realized that it had been planted. I realized I was wrong. And paranoid. You were right. It was a frame-up.”
Newt nodded, frowning at Hermann for another moment. When Hermann said nothing, Newt looked away from him.
“I’m sorry,” said Hermann again. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, I’m so sorry. They made me doubt you, but I shouldn’t have let them. It was myself I didn’t trust.”
Newt jerked his head in a small nod, closing his eyes. Hermann put his hands on Newt’s arm and gripped him gently. “You would never live a lie like that. You’re not a defector. I thought because I could, that you could. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. Nor did you. You never would. If I hadn’t been so—so bloody—”
“Hermann, stop,” said Newt quietly. “Don’t cry.”
“Don’t call me that,” said Hermann, wiping his eyes.
“It’s okay. I get it. I'm a shady character.” Newt looked away, across the room, at nothing. He listened to Hermann sniff. “Do you want to know what happened to me at Langley?” Hearing no answer, he said: “I got a job offer.”
Hermann looked up. “From the CIA?”
Newt nodded against the pillow, looking at the opposite wall, the one with the big window. “They’re doing some crazy stuff over there. Two of the guys I was conferencing with, they were on the um, the quantum computing team. It’s years away from anything viable but... they knew the kind of work I—we—used to do.”
“They tried to poach you?”
“Yeah. If I was interested. And I was. I was interested.”
How many times had Hermann asked himself, why did this man, who'd spent his spare time at Oxford building a calculating machine to find Riemann Zeros, who owned four biographies of Charles Babbage—why did this man abandon computer science in favor of the outdated field of radio? He should have been a star engineer at IBM or the DOD, not, Hermann wasn’t ashamed to admit it, playing second fiddle to a mathematician with no technicians, funding, or future in the Cold War bargain basement that was England.
“It was kind of a horrible trip. The Div team was six people: me, Weeks, who was out-of-his-mind nervous, freaking Vice Chief Victor, who said about four words total, attack dog Preston, that putz Berkeley, and our mutual friend, Mr. Raleigh Becket.
“The Americans put us up in this fancy hotel, which was awful. Becket and Berkeley were all buddy-buddy... Berkeley was schmoozing, making all these nasty jokes just to get Becket to laugh. I just tried to stay out of his line of fire, 'cause I knew that once Berkeley ran out of American girls to heckle or humiliate, I was next. And not only that—I could tell that Becket didn’t actually like him. He's gross! But Becket liked the admiration. He ate that up.
“So finally, we got away from them, and they went to conference with the other COs or whatever. Weeks and I, we went to give our shpiel to the Langley crypto labs. Their facilities were massive. Loads of computers, new ones, with all these techs operating them—none of the pen-and-paper bullshit. The lead engineer, he was an MIT guy too, so he liked me. We went out for drinks, and he told me he wanted to introduce me to his team of specialists. Quantum computing. Like I said, it’s years away... but it sounded so... promising.
“So the next day, while Weeks was busy, the lead introduced me to the rest of his team. They showed me some of the stuff they were working on. It was fascinating. They said they knew all about me, that they loved my presentation, and that if I wanted to come back and talk... talk about moving back home... that I should.”
Newt rubbed his temples, closing his eyes.
"I stayed all day... way too late. Finally, I took a cab back to our fancy-shmancy hotel. I was so energized I could have run all the way back... I was imagining all kinds of things. A bright future. Discoveries. Computer revolution. Nobel prize. Personally ending the Cold War. I knew you’d hate the idea of moving to the States... But I didn’t think about that. I didn’t think—about you at all.” He shook his head, eyes still squeezed shut in discomfort.
He exhaled. Hermann was silent. There was a pause.
“Then…” Newt sighed disgustedly from the back of his throat. “So then. I get back to the hotel. Over-the-moon excited. I hop out of the cab, walk into the lobby... And fucking Berkeley and Becket are there, sitting at the bar after their upper-floor-conference-confabulation bullshit, having a Scotch or whatever the fuck. Berkeley waves to me and says—he says—” Newt spat it out—“‘Look who's back from the bugger basement!’”
Hermann winced. Newt continued, his face red. “Becket just sort of laughed. It was half-hearted. But it was humiliating. Absolutely humiliating. I didn't know what to say. For once. I just wanted to take Berkeley's Scotch glass and smash it into his smug fucking face. Well, I couldn't really reach it, so I—" He plunged on, turning even more red— "I kicked his fucking barstool. I should have kicked higher—fucking—knocked him off it. I wish. But he just kind of wobbled. And then he laughed again, like, 'Can you believe this little faggot?'" Hermann flinched. "Before he could retaliate, I hightailed it out of there. I went right back to my cab and told him to take me back to HQ. I never wanted to go back to Century. I never wanted to go back to England. I was going to take that Langley job, right the hell now, and go work with people who actually wanted me—not in a basement office with three other nobodies, below a bunch of guys who acted like we were the dirt under their boots.”
Out in the hospital hallway, there was a sudden commotion. Urgent voices shouted out orders, moving closer, pushing a rattling gurney with a squeaky wheel. Then the convoy turned the corner, and the sound died again.
“But as I drove back to the labs, I didn’t feel... freed,” Newt went on. “I started to panic. What if they rescinded the offer? What if I interviewed, and they decided they didn’t want me? Worst of all—what if I got hired, moved, started work there, and then I couldn’t handle it? What if I choked? What if I didn't fit with the American guys either? What if the reason I stayed in the fucking—bugger basement—was because this—” He tapped his own temple agitatedly— “was not up to this—?” He gestured with a spasm of the arm, encompassing the room and Hermann. “Everything would have to change. What if I couldn’t handle that? What if I can’t handle any of that? What if I’m not—strong enough, or sane enough? What if I'm all brains and no bite? Do you—?”
Hermann was frowning sadly at him, like he was trying to understand.
“I just—I freaked out.” Newt shook his head quickly. “I was so—scared—and so mad at myself for being scared...”
“So you...”
“I just ran,” said Newt, his face still flushed. “I leaned forward and told the driver to take me to the train instead. Went to New York. Wandered around for a few days. Went to my old neighborhood... Ended up staying with this kid I knew from grade school... Well, not a kid, he has a family now. Eventually, I realized I was running away from the problem and shooting myself in the foot at the same time. Called you. Probably freaked you out.”
Hermann nodded.
“Then I bought a motorcycle and came home."
Newt scratched at the loosely knit bedspread.
“I wouldn’t have left you behind,” he said to Hermann. “But I… I felt bad. For considering it. So I didn’t want to tell you.”
Hermann nodded again. “I understand.”
Newt sighed. In the hallway outside, two sets of feet passed by, walking in step.
“For a while, I was ashamed of the whole thing. I thought I had been a coward. That I was just afraid to try my mettle, or whatever, with the big dogs. But then I realized, I like my life, actually.” He shrugged. “The only thing it was actually missing from it was a sick-ass motorcycle. Really, it was just a midlife crisis, when you get down to it.”
Hermann exhaled a slight laugh. “Right.”
“Embarrassing,” muttered Newt, looking away. “I should have just explained.”
“It’s all right,” said Hermann. He felt relieved, but also sad.
“You really broke into the archives, huh?” said Newt, glancing at him. “How’d you manage that?”
“Lightcap helped me.”
“Really?”
Hermann nodded. “She coached me. When to go in, what sections to ask for. File ID code formats. Recognizing the key...”
Newt smiled, thinking of them collaborating—then he blinked, as a memory reached him, and he remembered sitting across from Caitlin in the hospital cafeteria, in his dreams. He remembered the cavernous darkness of the Black Chamber, watching the silver keys flash by in a faltering flashlight beam...
He looked over at Hermann—ashamed, exhausted, noble, foolish Hermann.
“Was it a silver key?”
“What?” said Hermann, rubbing his eyes and stretching his back. Newt remembered the ache in his hip as if it were his own. In his dreams, the pain had been dull and deep.
“So, where does all this stand?” said Newt.
“It’s over,” said Hermann. “You were framed. It worked. And whatever bridges they hadn’t already burned, I’ve set on fire. I altered your record, I destroyed the evidence in the archive. We could take our chances, turning ourselves in...”
The pronoun did not escape Newt’s notice. “‘We’?”
Hermann ignored the question like it was beneath him. “I honestly think our best option now is to go into hiding.”
Newt put up a hand to stem the flow of Hermann’s pessimism. “Wait, wait. We still have the device. And the book! Did you try decoding any of the Orpheus messages?”
“Not yet. I haven’t had the time,” said Hermann.
“We can still figure out who’s doing all this. We can stop them from getting away with it.”
“They already have, Newton.”
“I know I can figure this out... In fact, I feel like I have already.” Newt broke off, squinting at the ceiling. “Thursday is pretty fuzzy. But I think I...”
“Oh, yes—Thursday. Where were you going on the train?”
“Going...? Oh. I was getting back, actually. I went to Cambridge to talk to Thurston.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. And on the ride home, I started to get... I don’t know, it was like really bad vertigo. Physical and mental. From the transducer. I kept losing track of time. And I was trying to figure something out... Something about the conference... and I did figure it out.” Newt frowned. “But I forget.”
“Figure what out? What was it?”
“I don’t remember.” Newt made a frustrated noise. “It’s like it’s just out of reach. But I figured it out once. I know I could work it out again."
“‘Once you know how, then you know who,’” said Hermann, quoting a detective novel he was fond of.
Newt chewed at a hangnail on his thumb.
“We know that Becket and Victor were in their meeting until 9:15 PM," he said. "Becket was in the stables from 8:20 to 8:31. I got there at 8:45, and then the thief came in at 9:04. He smashed the glass, mumbled to himself, and then left, and then I left a few minutes later. 9:15, meeting ends, Victor comes in at 9:20 and sees the carnage. By then, I’m gone, and so is Orpheus.”
Hermann was listening closely. “What did Orpheus say?”
Newt shook his head. “I couldn’t hear it.”
“Is there any chance the guards had the wrong time? Did you get a look at their clock?”
“No, because I didn’t have my glasses on. But as far as I remember, I had the same time on my watch.” Newt hesitated. Something in his memory snagged. “Yeah... I checked my watch when I signed in. Theirs had the same time.”
“When did you last set it?”
“In the boarding house, before I left.”
“So your time definitely matched up with the Army’s time?”
“Yes!”
“All right, all right, I just want to check every possibility.”
“What possibility are you checking? Clock confabulation? Get your mind out of the Agatha Christie novel, please, this is the real world.” Even as he said it, the needle of Newt’s memory caught the groove it had been seeking. “—My watch,” he said. “No. My watch was off. I didn’t notice until the next day, in your apartment. I was 15 minutes slow.”
“Really?” said Hermann.
“Yeah. Yeah—” Newt opened his mouth—his mind was speeding ahead too fast for speech, and instead of speaking, he started hitting Hermann’s arm with his fist.
Hermann sat forward in his chair. “What? What is it?”
“The—yes. My watch! The time! It was ahead! How? Why? If the boarding house—and the stable—somebody must have messed—and nobody noticed—”
For once, Hermann didn't tell him off for speaking nonsense. Hermann’s mind raced along with his, doing the same math: “My God. If that’s true, and the Army sign-in sheet is wrong, then all of the alibis from that meeting are worthless. They had 15 extra minutes, completely unaccounted for.”
Newt was still babbling, sitting up and hitting Hermann’s arm even faster. Hermann grabbed his wrist to stop him.
“How? How could Orpheus have changed the clocks without anyone noticing?”
“How do they set the clocks on the Estate?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“The clock that you set your watch by in the boarding house, what did it look like? Was it a 12-hour wall clock, or a radio clock?”
Newt was talking over him, not answering his question: “When I worked there, they just set the clocks by the wireless, just according to the time on the BBC—”
“But when you—”
“No! It was a radio clock! You’re right!”
His trapped hand suddenly seized a handful of Hermann’s shirt, as Hermann simultaneously reached the same conclusion:
“The jammer!” Newt practically shouted.
Hermann clamped Newt’s hand and forced it down onto the bedspread. “Shh!”
“My radio delay jammer!” hissed Newt. “That’s it! That’s what I was trying to remember. That’s how he did it! Hermann, you’re a genius.”
“I won’t dispute that,” he hissed, glancing back at the door. “But for God’s sake, keep it down.”
“Come on.” Newt pushed off the covers and sat up, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Orpheus installed a radio delay jammer. I bet it’s still there. They can’t have made the trade yet, 'cause we still have the transducer. So we have to get up there before the confab tomorrow and find that jammer. We can find the proof, show the feds, and clear our names.”
“I don’t share your optimism about getting ‘cleared,’” said Hermann, “but if that’s what you want... I’ll go with you.”
Opening his eyes, Newt smiled at him. “Of course you will. Help me get up.”
He swung his legs down off the bed, then perched for a moment. Hermann stood stiffly, and helped him to his feet.
“Are you still dizzy?”
“Actually, no,” said Newt.
He touched his ear.
“...They took it out.”
He looked at Hermann. Hermann nodded.
“I told the doctors. It’s here.”
He produced a small plastic bag and handed it to Newt. Newt held it up, and squinted at it, the tiny little device that had caused him so much trouble. It had traveled from outer space to Germany, slipped between the fingers of the Soviets and the Division, once and then twice, and ended up, of all places, with them. There was a little smudge of blood on the inside of the bag.
“Your condition wasn’t improving. So I told them it was in there. I said it was shrapnel from an explosion.”
“And they believed you...?”
“Not once they’d taken it out,” said Hermann darkly. “What should we do with it?”
“I got it,” said Newt, and disengaged himself gently from Hermann’s grasp. He walked slowly but steadily to the toilet, pulling his IV pole along with him. Hermann frowned, watching him go. He heard a clink, then a flush. Newton reemerged.
“What did you do?”
“Flushed it down the toilet. Where are my clothes? We’ve gotta get going.”
Hermann only raised his eyebrows. “They’re here,” Hermann said. Newt shuffled over to the chair where they were neatly folded. “And I’ll take my jacket back, thank you.”
“Hey, you took mine first,” said Newt, trying to shrug out of his hospital shirt without dislodging the IV line. “Get the nurse, would you?”
When Hermann returned, Newt was dressed except for one sleeve. His arm hung awkwardly out of his half-buttoned flannel shirt.
“I hate this shirt you bought me, Hermann,” Newt said. “It’s too soft.”
“Stop calling me that,” said Hermann, glancing at the door. “The nurse is on her way.” He craned his neck to look out the window.
“What is it?” said Newt. He craned his neck. “Is someone there?”
“No.” Hermann stepped over to Newt and kissed him.
He pulled back in what felt like no time, but left his hand on Newt’s arm—which Newt was grateful for, because he was a little dizzy.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Hermann said in a low voice.
“Me too,” said Newt, with a dopey smile. “Thanks for saving me.”
“I should have thanked you for that a long time ago,” Hermann said. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Hermann let go.