The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk Read online

  The Discrete Charm

  of Charlie Monk

  “I dreamt I was a butterfly, and didn’t know when I awoke if I was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who new dreamt he was a man.”

  —Chuang Tzu’s dream, 500 B.C.

  Our memories are the foundation of out indentities. What we have done and what we have experienced make us what we are. But what if our memories could be altered? What if they could be implanted? What would that do to our image of ourselves?

  THE DISCRETE

  CHARM OF

  CHARLIE MONK

  Charlie Monk thinks he knows who he is—a highly trained, covert government operative; the best there is at what he does. But perhaps he is a neurologically impaired patient at a special clinic who dreams that he is a secret agent. Or perhaps something else entirely, something unthinkable…

  When a seemingly routine surveillance mission brings Charlie face-to-face with a memory from his childhood, his well-ordered life disintegrates and Charlie finds himself on the run from his former masters. As his world unravels and the line between what is real and what is virtual becomes more and more blurred, Charlie must use all of his training and unique abilities to uncover the truth. And to stay alive. The only one who can help him may well be the very person responsible for his condition: government scientist Dr. Susan Flemyng. Yet no more free than Charlie, Susan Flemyng also harbors suspicions about the people she works for. She wants to get out, and to do so, she needs Charlie’s help…

  The question is: Can Charlie trust her? More important, can he trust himself?

  A thought-provoking, fast-paced thriller, THE DISCRETE CHARM OF CHARLIE MONK combines the edge-of-your-seat action and compelling plot of The Firm with the skewed reality concepts of The Matrix. Get ready to be charmed, shaken, and stirred.

  THE DISCRETE CHARM

  OF CHARLIE MONK

  A Novel by

  David Ambrose

  Copyright © 2000

  by David Ambrose

  Dedication:

  To Dorthea and Peter Hay—

  treasured friends, critics,

  and collaborators

  I dreamed I was a butterfly, and didn’t know when I awoke if I was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who now dreamed he was a man.

  Chuang Tzu’s dream

  500 B.C.

  I had to start playing Bond from scratch—not even Ian Fleming knew much about Bond at this time. He has no mother. He has no father. He doesn’t come from anywhere and he hadn’t been anywhere when he became 007. He was born—ker-plump—33 years old.

  Sean Connery

  The Observer

  March 1, 1998

  Prologue

  The middle-aged man seated opposite Susan nodded emphatically, anxious to convince her that he was paying attention and taking in everything she said.

  “Of course I understand. Of course I understand,” he repeated. “I’m not stupid. All I’m asking is that somebody tells me what’s going on. What am I doing here?”

  Susan was careful to maintain eye contact with him as she spoke. “You’ve had a viral infection of a very rare kind. It’s all cleared up now, and physically you’re perfectly well. However, it has damaged a part of your brain, which has affected your memory.”

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. I know who I am, I know where I live, what I do…”

  “You remember everything that happened before you were attacked by the virus.”

  “But I haven’t been sick. I lead a perfectly normal life with my wife and family, and now suddenly I wake up in this place. It’s obvious what’s happened. I’ve been kidnapped!”

  He was becoming agitated, shifting on his chair, waving his hands and slapping the table to emphasize a point.

  “You haven’t been kidnapped, Brian. This is a hospital. You’re being looked after.”

  “Why am I wearing these clothes? Where did these clothes come from?” He got to his feet, disdainfully brushing the white cotton smock and trousers he had on.

  “They’re hospital issue. They’re what you always wear in here.”

  “How long have I been here? Where’s my wife?”

  “Your wife’s waiting to see you.”

  “Well, bring her in, for heaven’s sake! Where is she?”

  “If you’ll wait here, I’ll go and get her.” Susan stood up. “There’s just one thing, Brian. You’ll find she’s changed.”

  “Changed? Changed how? What do you mean?”

  “She looks older than you remember her.”

  His brow creased with a puzzled frown. “Why? Why should she look older? Is this some kind of trick? Are you playing a trick on me?”

  “It’s not a trick, Brian. It’s just that you remember her as she was a long time ago, before your illness. The last time you saw her was only three days ago, but the way you remember her is the way she looked twenty years ago.”

  He blinked rapidly several times as he stared at her, still frowning. “I don’t understand. Why are you saying all this? You’re trying to confuse me.”

  She shook her head gently. “No, just trying to prepare you, Brian. I’ll go and bring your wife in now, if you’re ready.”

  “I wish you would. I have no idea what you’re talking about, I don’t know what’s going on here. I want to see my wife, and I’d be glad if you’d get her.”

  There was panic in his voice, as well as the indignant tone of someone who feels he has been badly mistreated and to whom an apology is overdue. It was the way this conversation between them always ended. The moment she was through the door and out of sight, he wouldn’t remember a thing: not a word that had been spoken, nor even the fact that she had been there. Even if she came back after five seconds, it would be as though he had never seen her before.

  Susan closed the door behind her and entered an adjoining room where a male nurse sat watching a TV monitor. On it she could see the room she’d just left, with Brian Kay standing with his arms folded defiantly, gazing at the door she’d closed behind her. In a few moments, she knew, a puzzled look would come over his face—rather like someone who’d walked into some room in his house, the kitchen, perhaps, or a bedroom, and suddenly couldn’t remember what he’d wanted there. After a moment, he would give up trying and let the mystery drop, then he would go and stare out the window (which did not open and was unbreakable) until something else happened to distract his attention.

  Susan waited, and sure enough, as though he were following the scenario she’d just written in her head, he went over to the window and remained there. Susan went through another door and into a corridor.

  As she walked, she caught a glimpse of herself in a glass door, moving with that stately grace that being almost seven months pregnant brought to a woman. At least it did to her. Or, to be precise, she thought of it as a stately grace. To others it may have resembled more a ducklike waddle. She may even have thought such a thing herself in the past. But now, pregnant for the first time, and more thrilled about it than by anything she’d ever done, she decided that “stately grace” was the only possible description of her progress.

  In a small, bare side room to the right at the end of the corridor, sitting on a plain, square sofa, was a woman around fifty with graying hair and a face that must have once been very pretty, but was now lined and drawn with worry. She looked up anxiously as Susan approached her.

  “All right, Dorothy,” she said to the older woman, “if you’re ready…”

  The woman nodded and got to her feet, clutching the purse that had been resting on her lap as though it gave her some measure of confidence for these painful twice-
weekly confrontations. The two women started back up the corridor.

  “How’s it going?” the older woman asked, glancing at the bulge around Susan’s midriff.

  “You know—good days and bad, the way it’s supposed to. At least so the books say.”

  Dorothy smiled. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  “Boy.”

  “Have you picked a name?”

  “Christopher. After my husband’s father, who died last year. Then Amery, after my father. It’s an old German name— Almeric originally—used in English since the Norman conquest. Eventually it got over to France and became Amery. But we’ll call him Christopher.”

  “Nice name. I always liked Christopher.”

  They entered the room where the nurse still sat before his TV monitor. He had been joined by a colleague whom Susan knew slightly. They exchanged a nod of acknowledgment. On the screen Brian Kay could still be seen, gazing out the window, motionless.

  Susan opened the door in the far wall and stood aside to let Dorothy enter. Brian turned to see who had come in, and for some moments gazed at the woman who stood before him without so much as a flicker of recognition in his face.

  Eventually she said softly, “Brian?”

  It was usually the voice that made the connection for him. Recognition dawned, and with it came the appalling shock, the realization that something was terribly and inexplicably wrong.

  “Dorothy…?”

  His voice trembled with disbelief, his breath taken away by the completeness of his inability to grasp the moment.

  “My God, what’s happened? Are you ill? Your face…!”

  They began again the process of calming and explaining that Dorothy had to endure each time she came to see the man she loved. “This is Dr. Flemyng. She’s trying to help you, darling. You have to be patient.”

  Brian looked at Susan, as though somehow offended by her presence. “I’ve never seen this woman in my life. What do you mean she’s trying to help me? Help me how? What’s going on?”

  Susan looked back at him with a gentle smile and prepared to go through the tortuous ritual yet again. But at the back of her mind was a nagging thought that she hadn’t yet allowed herself to speak about to anyone. She barely even allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe, the idea that had been playing in her imagination these past few weeks could work.

  It would take time, and a good deal of refinement and research, but maybe she had spotted an opening that would provide a way through the cruel armor of his amnesia.

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  THE SEA WAS a slab of cold gray steel beneath a moonless sky. Only as they descended almost to its surface did it come alive, its ceaseless motion growing more visible with every foot of altitude they lost.

  A few yards above the rolling swell, a door was hauled back in the helicopter’s side and a blast of cold air hit the four occupants—two pilots, the operator of the winch, and the man in wet suit and helmet who was to be lowered to the black waters beneath.

  Charlie Monk watched as the torpedo-shaped object on which his life would depend for the next few hours descended before him and lay bobbing on the waves, attached to the hovering chopper by a single line. Then he hitched himself into a body-harness and prepared to be swung out into space.

  As he descended, he used the line to pull the floating object into position directly beneath him. He dropped onto it like a man astride a motorbike, his legs in the water up to his thighs. Before releasing his harness, he pressed a switch and started the battery-operated motor. Satisfied that it was running smoothly, he released his harness, detached the line from the dinghy, and waved all clear to the chopper. Moments later, it had disappeared into the night, the clatter of its engine replaced by the lazy, timeless sound of wind and waves.

  Charlie stretched out on his stomach and fixed his feet into the cavity provided. Then, lying flat along the craft, he began traveling over the water at a little over five knots. The electric motor was virtually silent, and the only proof of its surprising power was the hard slap of water as the tiny craft skimmed and bounced its way across the choppy sea. When he really opened up the throttle it would do far more—up to fifty knots in the right conditions, though out here the ocean was too rough for top speed: The craft would merely bounce and capsize. But if he dipped the nose and plowed beneath the waves, it would become a supercharged submersible, fast enough to catch, invisibly and silently, just about anything at sea.

  A control panel set into the smooth surface of the machine gave him its speed and exact position according to satellite. He calculated that in ten minutes at most, the lights of the luxury private yacht with which he was to rendezvous should become visible.

  He opened up the throttle a fraction. The little craft bucked and slapped the water harder than before. It was an uncomfortable ride, even painful after a while. The trick of enduring it was more than simply to ignore it; what Charlie had been trained to do was empty his mind of everything except the task ahead. His reflexes would take care of the rest. One of his instructors had called it a state of active meditation. Charlie had never been sure what that meant; all he cared was that it worked, helping him curb his impatience despite the adrenaline that was pulsing through his veins.

  Another glance at the panel under his chin told him that the boat he was looking for should be in sight by now. He lifted his gaze to the horizon, but could see nothing. He slipped his night goggles over his eyes—and immediately saw a cluster of lights in the distance, no more than pinpricks in the darkness. The Lady Alexandra was exactly where she was supposed to be. He set course to intercept.

  The standard maneuver was to submerge and approach from behind. On a night like this he could stay on the surface until he was almost level with the vessel; there was little chance of being seen. However, he could save time by diving now and opening up the throttle underwater. He reached down to the side of the craft and pressed a catch to open a panel. From the cavity behind it he pulled out an air line with a mask, which he attached to his face.

  Moments later his world was transformed into a silent, inky blackness that he sped through with exhilarating speed. The computer kept him on course and would slow him automatically when he drew close to the yacht. It would also negotiate any invisible obstacles picked up by his sensors: Sleeping whales, for example, were best avoided.

  But tonight his trajectory was swift and direct. When he felt himself decelerate, he looked up through his goggles and saw the hull just ahead, its twin screws, each powered by a thirteen thousand horsepower diesel engine, churning through the water. He knew the vessel had set sail from the Canaries and was heading for New York, planning to make landfall at the Ambrose Lighthouse. Although she would be capable of twenty-eight or thirty knots full speed, she could only cover such a distance by keeping her speed to something between twelve and fifteen knots. As he tracked her, he found she was doing thirteen.

  Staying beneath the waterline, he brought himself alongside toward the stern. As he closed in, he pressed another switch to inflate an air bag that would cushion his contact with the aluminum hull. From the nose of his craft he extended a steel arm with a suction cup on the end that would hold it in place alongside the yacht until he needed it again. Only then did he kill the motor.

  His head broke the surface of the water and peered up cautiously. He saw that only a handful of cabin windows were lit; it was 3:00 A.M. and some of the eight-strong crew would most likely be asleep. The yacht’s owner, he knew, had a reputation for working and making phone calls late into the night, so he expected to find him awake, along with anyone he might consider necessary to his comfort and convenience.

  So far as he could see, there was no sign of any movement on deck. The yacht’s engines had taken on a different note now that he listened to them from above the waterline: a distant, muted hum had replaced the throbbing growl of sheer brute power.

  Using two suction pads like the one he had fixed underwat
er to hold his torpedo scooter in place, he began to haul himself up the hull. Each pad was fixed and released by the operation of a tiny valve; the rest was muscle power, each arm and shoulder in turn taking the full weight of his whole body.

  When he reached the rail he paused to check again that there was nobody in sight, then left the pads where they were and swung himself over and onto the deck. He had been briefed on the precise layout of the vessel, even studying copies of the builder’s plans. He had committed every detail to memory, so that he knew precisely where he was and what to look out for.

  He moved swiftly, the blackness of his clothing making him all but invisible. Only the wet footprints he left behind showed that anyone had been there, and in a moment they would disappear. When he reached the double doors that he was looking for, he dropped one hand to his hip and slipped the silenced automatic from its holster. His other hand pushed one of the doors silently open, and he slipped through, scanning the space inside for signs of movement. There were none.

  A staircase appeared ahead of him, reaching a landing ten steps down, which then forked into two more flights that doubled back beneath the first one. He took the right fork, then headed down a corridor toward the prow. The concealed lighting provided a soft, luxurious glow. Ahead was a corner, and he could see that the light beyond it was brighter. This meant that there was probably a bodyguard, maybe two, outside the stateroom of the man he was looking for.

  He stopped, pressing his back to the wall, listening. The distant vibration of the engines traveled through every surface in the ship—almost imperceptibly, but enough to mask the faint sounds of movement or even breathing that he was straining to catch.