A Fear of Dark Water (31 page)

‘God, Jan,’ said Brüggemann, ‘that’s a bit of a stretch. A business suit is a business suit.’

‘Maybe so. But I’m pretty convinced that she was a Consolidator. It’s all beginning to come together. The Network Killer murders are linked to the Pharos Project. But I can’t for the life of me work out why.’ Fabel picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.

‘Nicola, I’ll leave you to it. I need to go out.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to take a North Sea lighthouse tour.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Susanne was still at the Institute for Legal Medicine when Fabel phoned her from his car as he headed out, once more, towards the Altes Land and Stade. This time he avoided the town and headed out along a ribbon of road that ran parallel to the coast but was shielded from it by the ripple of dyke that ran along close to the water’s edge to Fabel’s right. To his left the land was divided up into long narrow fields, pale green, dark green or muted gold; each contained by the type of Knick turf wall Müller-Voigt had talked about. It really did have the look of a patchwork quilt, but one that had been ironed impeccably flat except for the ripple of the waterside dyke at its hem.

It took Fabel another hour or so to reach the Pharos. He actually pulled over to the side of the road and got out to admire it from a distance. The light was beginning to fade and the cloud cover dulled things even more, but even with that Fabel could see that Müller-Voigt had been right: the Pharos was a truly remarkable piece of architecture. There was a lighthouse, about four or five storeys high, against the flank of the new building. The lighthouse was the traditional North Sea German type: not slender but solid, squat and square-edged with a large lantern gallery criss-crossed with iron. It had clearly undergone a major renovation and looked bright, almost as if it had just been built rather than having stood there, resolutely planted in its landscape, for more than a century and a half.

But it was the main building attached to the original lighthouse that really impressed Fabel. It was made up of three sections; modules, almost. The section against whose side the lighthouse was set was a long two-storey block. Clearly the intention had been not to obscure the view of the original lighthouse from either direction. This section extended fifty metres or so towards the water’s edge; then a five-storey block, with the profile of a massive parallelogram – a rhombohedron, Fabel suddenly remembered from school mathematics – took the Pharos to the water and jutted out over it. This section was outlined by a heavy reinforced-concrete beamed frame, but the flanks of the building were all glass. The third section was really an extension of the top floor of the building and projected out over the Elbe, supported by two rows of piles driven into the river bed. From the roof of the suspended level a pale blue needle of laser light, now visible in the twilight, pierced the clouds above. The light of the Pharos.

This, thought Fabel, was more than a building. It was a statement; a dramatic statement of power and wealth. For a supposedly environmental group, it seemed to Fabel to be an aggressive statement of human dominance over Nature. And a statement not without a tone of menace.

He drove further along the narrow coastal road until he reached the end of the drive that led up to the Pharos. It was even more breathtaking close up. The lower-level module was clad in natural materials: pale wood, glass and large blocks of stone. He turned off the road and up the drive. After a short distance, Fabel came to a closed gate. There was a small blockhouse on the other side of the fence and Fabel had to give his horn a blast before anyone came out. It did not surprise Fabel to see that the young man with short cropped blond hair who emerged from the blockhouse was wearing a grey suit, white shirt and dark grey tie. He stood behind the heavy-gauge wire, regarding Fabel impassively but without making any move to open the gate.

Fabel got out of his car. He estimated that the fence that extended on either side was three metres high and heavy-duty enough to keep out any but the most determined intruder.

‘I would like to talk to Herr Wiegand.’ Fabel held up his police ID. The man at the gate remained silent and impassive. ‘Now …’ said Fabel with more emphasis.

‘No one is admitted without an appointment.’ The gatekeeper’s voice was as flat and dull as Fabel had expected. ‘We do not allow anyone access to the Pharos unless it has been arranged in advance.’

‘I don’t need an appointment. I’m the police.’ Fabel noticed that the gateman had a Bluetooth earpiece lodged in his ear.

‘Then you either need an appointment or a warrant.’

‘I don’t think you understand,’ said Fabel wearily. ‘I am here by personal invitation of Herr Wiegand. Your Director General.’

The gatekeeper continued to stare at Fabel; whatever was going through his mind certainly was not breaking the surface.

After what seemed an age, the young man broke his silence. ‘Wait here.’

He walked a few metres away and stood with his back to Fabel, who guessed the guard was communicating with the main building. After a while he came back out and opened the gate.

‘Leave your car here,’ he said. ‘We don’t allow vehicular traffic beyond this point.’

Fabel shrugged, used his remote to lock his car and stepped into the compound. The gateman led the way up to the main entrance to the Pharos where another unsmiling escort was waiting, again wearing an earpiece. Fabel examined the building from up close. It loomed. It was no accident that the Pharos Project used the symbolism and vocabulary of the world of international corporate commerce: this building was all about out-scaling everything human. Just like any multinational business’s headquarters, the Pharos had been built to embody and glorify the corporate and diminish the individual. It was the same trick that medieval cathedral architects had used, where the scale was supposed to represent God, but really was all about the power of the Church, the great multinational corporation of the Middle Ages.

Fabel was taken into a large atrium in which the lighting had been kept low. The reason, Fabel guessed, was the atrium’s centrepiece. A circle of beams, changing hue, shone upwards, illuminating what Fabel perceived as some kind of giant jellyfish, diaphanous and beautiful, with a deep red core and a skirt of transparent tentacles, suspended in mid-air. It was very well done: a holographic projection that rendered the jellyfish in three dimensions and made it pulse and change colour. But Fabel was surprised at his own reaction to the projection: for a split second it had looked so impossibly real, but Fabel had instantly, instinctively known it was an artifice.

It was as remarkable a building from the inside. As he was led through halls and corridors, and taken up to the top floor in an elevator, Fabel never lost sight of the landscape around him. No matter where he was, there was always a view through glass, even in the lift. He noticed that everyone wore the same kind of grey suit, although a minority, his escort included, were dressed in a slightly darker shade. They made their way past a host of glass-walled rooms that looked to Fabel like any other offices. Despite his escort deliberately keeping the pace up, Fabel took in as much as he could. Every room had dozens of desks with computer consoles, but of a design that Fabel had never seen before: monitors that were impossibly thin; people typing on keyboards that must have had such a low profile that Fabel could not see them. Then, as he passed a smaller office with a workstation closer to the glass wall, he realised why. The fingers of the grey-suited woman sitting at it ranged over a virtual keyboard: light projected onto the tabletop.

Fabel remembered reading about how toxic the heavy metals used in electronic hardware was to the environment. For an environmental pressure group, thought Fabel, the Pharos Project loved their gadgets. The other thing that struck him as he walked through the Pharos was how much it looked like a working office, and how the men and women he saw circulating through it did not look like cult members or mystical acolytes but more like the employees of some international bank.

Peter Wiegand was waiting for Fabel in his office; although Fabel struggled to attach the word ‘office’ to a space as vast as this. Wiegand conducted his business from the last room on the projecting top floor. The office stretched the full width of the building and was longer than it was wide. All three external walls were glass and offered views in every direction. This was where the Elbe began to open out to meet the sea and water was the element that dominated the view. Fabel noticed there was even a large rectangle of glass set into the floor, through which he could see the water rippling dark below. He made a point of stepping around the panel.

‘Please, Herr Fabel,’ said Wiegand, stepping out from behind a desk that made van Heiden’s look inadequate. ‘Don’t concern yourself. That reinforced glass is stronger than concrete; it’s entirely safe to walk on.’ He shook Fabel’s hand and led him to a chair, asking him to sit.

‘That’s a very interesting …’ Fabel struggled for the best description. ‘…
piece
you have in your reception. The hologram, I mean. It’s very beautiful, but an odd choice of subject. Is it because of Dominik Korn’s sub-sea history that you’ve chosen a jellyfish?’

‘I didn’t chose it. It was Dominik Korn’s inspiration. It symbolises almost everything the Pharos Project is about.’

‘Oh?’

‘The medium is the message, Herr Fabel. Dominik chose a hologram as a medium to reflect the holographic nature of the universe, that it is made up of bits of information. And, of course, that is Dominik’s great philosophy: that almost anything can be transformed into information and transferred. Stored.’

‘I wasn’t aware the universe was holographic.’ Fabel failed to keep the sneer from his tone.

‘Then you’re not acquainted with the latest discoveries in quantum physics. I’m not spouting New Age mysticism, if that’s what you think. I’m talking about the latest developments in string theory.’

‘And that’s your
unique selling point
, isn’t it? Digital immortality?’

Wiegand did not let his smile falter. ‘Let me ask you something: do you believe in immortality?’

‘No. Everything dies. It’s a simple law of nature, of the universe. I know that you believe we can all live for ever in a computer mainframe, but that’s not life. It’s not even existence, because it wouldn’t be real and it wouldn’t be you. You would not experience it yourself. Immortality is impossible. Everything dies.’

‘Again, Herr Fabel, you’ve only succeeded in revealing your ignorance. Immortality
does
exist. It exists right here and now in your
real
world. The holographic image in the atrium is of
Turritopsis Nutricula
. It is beautiful, but the projection in the atrium is several thousand times the size of the real creature: in reality, they are only four or five millimetres in size. But do you know why
Mister
Korn chose
Turritopsis Nutricula
as a symbol?’

Fabel shrugged. ‘I have a feeling you’re going to enlighten me.’

‘It is, truly, really immortal. It is the only living creature on the planet that is immortal.’

‘How can that be?’ said Fabel, intrigued despite himself.

‘All jellyfish are born, mature and mate. Normally, immediately after mating, the jellyfish dies. The Immortal Jellyfish, as
Turritopsis Nutricula
is also known, doesn’t. It goes through a process called transdifferentiation, where it literally transforms the structure of its cells. And what it transforms those cells into is its juvenile state. It bypasses senescence and cheats death by becoming a polyp again. Then it matures, mates, transdifferentiates, becomes a polyp again. And it can do this for ever. So immortality
does
exist, Herr Fabel. And the hologram in the atrium represents the combination of digitisation and immortality. It also has an environmental message:
Turritopsis Nutricula
was once found only in the Caribbean, but it has been transported all around the world in the ballast tanks of ships. Our activities have caused a population explosion of this creature. A population explosion of a creature that breeds and multiplies but never dies.’

‘You know something, Herr Wiegand? I know that you’re the second most powerful figure in this organisation, and I’m sure the bulk of your members buy this cyberlife-eternal crap, mainly because they’re brainwashed into it. But you? Somehow I doubt very much that you believe a word of it. I think that this is all a way of controlling people and generating wealth. What else you get up to is what particularly interests me. You’re hiding something.’

Wiegand smiled his billionaire’s smile, affable but slightly condescending. ‘You’ll have seen we use glass extensively throughout our buildings,’ he said. ‘We do this for two reasons: firstly, it reduces our dependence on artificial light and heating. All of our windows use energy-capture glass and the roof is basically one giant solar panel. Secondly, it communicates to our members and to visitors such as yourself that the Pharos Project is, literally, transparent. We have nothing to hide, Herr Fabel. Nothing.’

‘Maybe that’s the view from here looking out,’ said Fabel. ‘But I’m not so sure big windows do much for those on the outside who see you as secretive and manipulative; who see you exploiting your members and intimidating anyone else who might dare to criticise you.’