J= They Ate the Truth 10

Some of what I know about Chesterton is by way of personal
observation, most of it is rumour.

Rumours include that after his wife left him, he had her murdered, at
the same time killing four other people to make it appear like a
terrorist incident and getting a five per cent increase in his annual
budget for good measure as a Government response to this terrorist
attrocity.

Some say that he is not contactable at home, that he has no telephone
and no letter box, that his house is cut-off from all external
influence and that when he is not working, he spends all of his time
with his son.

Rumours include that he has raised his son Barthelme up to never hear a
sound, that he has never spoken to his son, that the family home is
noiseless and that his son has been raised precisely as though he were
deaf, to not even be aware of the existence of sound. Rumours include
that the thinking behind this is that his son may start to speak in the
universal language sought by King James I in a similar experiment
involving twins and a mute housekeeper. It is said that he sacked a
cleaner for dropping a spoon on the floor whilst in Bart's presence and
that his peculiarities about young Bart's upbringing were what provoked
his wife to leave him.

Personal observations include that he has a face which is almost
completely round and flat, like Button Moon, or perhaps like the yellow
smiley face badge of Eighties culture, placed as a face. He smiles
almost continuously. I have met him on five occasions and never seen
him lose his temper, though from what I hear, he certainly has one that
he loses, most dramatically. His high hairline glistens with sweat and
he dabs at himself with a white handkerchief. His eyes, as Lorrie
recalled, are constantly looking, scanning for something. He works you
over with his eyes like a boxer at the heavy-bag. He sees things that
others do not, can not.

Chesterton is very amiable, but also very patronising and has developed
a most peculiar speech pattern. He speaks in a way that I have never
heard anyone use.

For example, at our first meeting, he sits at a table with me, and
orders himself a port and a lemonade for me. He flutters the cloth over
his shining forehead and says, "We are impressed. We are pleased with
your test scores. The scores are impressive. We have observed this. We
have noted it. We feel there are things to be expected of you. "

He puts a box in front of me, covered by a sky-blue cloth, as though he
is a magician about to perform a trick. I have no idea at that point
why I was asked to fill in the questionnaire and later carry out a
test, but whoever was interested in my personality was interested to
the tune of five hundred pounds for two days work. My impression was
that I was about to be conscripted onto a New Labour focus group.

Chesterton says, "There are not many people so lacking in remorse as
you, our friend. We believe that takes a certain character. We have
been looking for these qualities and we have found them in you. We
would like you to come to Stockholm. We are prepared to pay you this
sum of money. "

He slides a cheque across the table and I am prepared to go to
Stockholm for that sum of money. The idea of being north again appeals
to me anyway and business at the time is poor. Steady but dull. Not
lucrative.

Chesterton smiles more widely and I can hear the noise of his lips
pulling away from his gums. Once I dated a blind woman and she told me
that she could hear when I smiled. After that, I spend some time
listening to people with my eyes closed and learn to recognise the
sound of a smile. True smiles sound different to false ones.
Chesterton's smiles are true, but dark; I can't see it but I can hear
it.

"We have something in the box. None of the other travellers to
Stockholm have seen what is in the box. We want to show you what is in
the box. "

This is when I see the insects for the first time. They are so
beautiful, like jewellery. They shine and glint. They all move to the
side of the box nearest to Chesterton, clamouring for him, wanting him.
He pushes the box right over towards me, and there is not a single bug
on the side of the box nearest to me.

He gives a little clap, his hands are plump. "We knew you were the
find, " he says, "These are van Gibt's little darlings and we expect
great things from you both. "

The rumours say that Chesterton watched a long torture session with an
enemy agent, one that went nowhere, the man refused to crack. The
rumours say that he ordered the room cleared and he went in to speak
with the agent. The rumours say that he whispered in his ear and left
the room and that after that, the agent couldn't talk quickly enough.
He told them everything, even things they didn't give a damn about. He
told them about deals and missions, about codes, about expenses he had
fiddled, about a girl he had forced himself on when he was seventeen.
He told the whole truth. The rumours were before van Gibt invented the
bugs and the rumours don't say what it was that Chesterton
whispered.

Personal observation says that for a big man, he moves quickly. The
rumours say that he was a wrestler in his youth and this is plausible.
He has the size, but also the grace.

It is said that he allowed himself to be captured by various
intelligence agencies early in his career, to learn interrogation and
torture techniques from the perspective of a victim, that only by
thinking as the person being asked the questions can you find out what
pressures to apply, to know at what points the subject will be anxious,
desperate, to talk.

I know that Chesterton is the head of an agency. I don't know what that
agency is or where it is based, or what it really does. I know the
guiding principle behind it, because Chesterton says it in a low voice,
in a way that sounds simultaneously childishly innocent and
serpentine.

Chesterton is a master at interrogation. He has a particular style,
which he encourages his best agents to use. I had a little training in
this, in Stockholm. I was told I was good at it in the demonstrations,
but I wasn't interested in this. I wanted to be with the insects, to
find truths. The style is based on confusing and unsettling the target,
to bombard the target with questions at odd angles, questions that had
pointless answers or no answers at all, to the point where the subject
was so grateful to be asked the real question that they would become
compliant. This was the same approach Alastair had used with me.

In the demonstrations, Chesterton quotes poetry at the subject, demands
to know what the next line should be, sets chess problems "I have K at
my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is
your move. What do you play?", asks the subject to compose a sonnet on
the Forth Bridge.

Afterwards, I say to him, "Those are all from the Turing test, aren't
they?" and he slaps me fatly across the back, beaming munificently at
me.

The Turing test was devised by Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of
computerisation, and incidentally a serious presence in cracking the
German Enigma machine code during World War II. The test is one for
Artificial Intelligence, to establish the tipping point at which
machines get consciousness. Turing said that if a person fired
questions of this sort at a computer and was unable from the answers to
ascertain whether they were a computer or human, then the machine had
consciousness.

Sad story, as Turing was homosexual at a time the British government
had a downer on it and were treating it as a curable disease with heavy
doses of hormone therapy. This was during the early Fifties, and the
treatment led to many unpleasant side-effects, such as the growth of
breasts. Unable to cope with the secrets he carried and the pressure to
become something he was not, Turing killed himself, according to most
reports with an apple dipped in cyanide, which has a neat circularity,
since you can distill cyanide from apple pips.

(Problem with a panmnesiac memory, nothing gets left behind.)

Chesterton has an interest in artificial intelligence, and, it turns
out in poisons, so we spend a little time talking of both. "Rhubarb! "
he says to me triumphantly, speaking of the oxalic acid that can be
distilled from its leaves.

"Nutmeg, " I say back, meaning when it is injected intravenously.

It is far too easy to extinguish, if you set to work at it. Someone who
ought to know told me once that it was more trouble to fit a plug than
to kill a man.

I hear the guiding principle of the agency for the first time when
Chesterton offers me the chance to work for his organisation. I
decline, but I am keen, following the training in Stockholm to work
with the insects. I want to own them, I want to play with them, I want
to command them.

When I train with the bugs in Stockholm, excelling at the exercises and
outstripping the others, I feel like Glendower proclaiming that he can
call spirits from the vasty deep.

There is more to it than simple having a clean mind, not being guilty
about anything, there is a relationship between the insects and I. An
understanding that the other trainers seemed to lack. During the time
in Stockholm I work always with the same group of insects, my boys. We
develop an understanding and are able to work a room and retrieve its
secrets, or destroy them, with a dizzying speed.

To get the Licence, I have to agree to do some jobs for Chesterton from
time to time. I sign the papers in a haze of excitement, the glass
boxes are nearby as I sign and all I can think of is what the insects
and I will be able to do, together. Chesterton lets it be known that he
is disappointed that I did not want to join his agency, but that he
will send me work from time to time, nothing that should trouble my
conscience. He needs my hands to stay clean, so that the insects will
not be troubled by me.

I don't realise at the time, but I know now, that the Stockholm
exercise served a dual purpose. It pulled out the people who were
clean, who could work with the bugs, but the people I thought were
being rejected were being channelled into the organisation run by
Chesterton. The bugs were finding dirty people too. People who would
lie and cheat, who were all sharpness and angles. People who could be
used, who could be useful.

This is what Chesterton collects. He collects them by sight, by deed.
He applies the pressure to people in just the right way. There is talk
of blackmail, of honey traps, of surgical technique being brought to
bear on the job of revealing what was concealed. A man who works with
Chesterton closely quits the agency, telling a friend that he hears the
sound of scraping bones at night when he tries to sleep. He is found
dead a few days later, suffocated with an orange in his mouth, the
press treat it as an auto-erotic asyphxiation and not only is he dead,
no questions asked, but his very memory becomes an embarrassment.

Someone who didn't resign following that incident tells someone else
that they saw Chesterton take a Black and Decker and drill right into a
suspect's left kneecap, a grinding sharp noise that made everyone
vomit, including Chesterton, who simply stopped drilling, leaving the
drill bit inside the suspect's bone, wiped his face clean with a
lemon-scented towel and then continued.

I hear that he is fiercely loyal but will forget someone in an instant,
if they disappoint. Agents talk in low tones of men in his service who
were captured being disavowed, even murdered before they could
talk.

Chesterton says, "We have many secrets. We desire all secrets. We do
not have your secrets and that is what we are after, your secrets.
"

This is the guiding principle of the agency.

Rumour says that Chesterton took this from a short-story writer. Rumour
says that the short-story writer took it from him.

He is without a doubt the most dangerous man I've ever known, someone
who would have a person killed and never need to answer a question
about it. Someone who regards human life as being valuable only where
it is useful to him.

And at the moment, the only person I can think of who might help me and
Lorrie.