The Depths of Deception

By Ian Fraser

"Intelligent, compelling."  "Hauntingly beautiful." "An adventure tale on the order of LeCarre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold..."

America has disappeared some years ago. A neo-fascist Party has come to power in the UK. China is on the rise. A submarine hurtles through the cold dark waters of the Atlantic en route to an unknown destination. Only the ship's doctor knows its true mission, but he is not who he appears to be.

A sweeping tale moving from the violent heart of Apartheid South Africa, to the ruins of the United Kingdom, and down to the edge of the world in the frozen Antarctic landscape, The Depths of Deception is a tale of revenge, served as a shatteringly cold dish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Fraser is a South African writer and playwright, now a permanent resident in the US. His memoir, My Own Private Orchestra, was published by Penguin (South Africa) in 1993 and was nominated for the CNA Literary Awards in the Debut section. His novella, “Pigman’s Fingers” recently appeared in The Utopian magazine.

His plays have been professionally and successfully produced by theatre companies in South Africa, the US, and elsewhere. Most recently his work was staged at the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island; at the Garioch Theatre Festival in the United Kingdom; and by Playwrights Round Table in Orlando, Florida. In 2007, he won the AcidTheatre ‘Freedom of Speech’ Monologue Competition in the UK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Fraser
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781507024706

Ian Fraser

Ian Fraser is a naturalist, conservationist, author, ABC broadcaster, natural history tour guide, environmental consultant and adult educator, who has lived and worked in Canberra since 1980. He was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion in 2006 and a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2018 for services to conservation and the environment, and is the author of A Bush Capital Year and Birds in Their Habitats.

Book preview

The Depths of Deception

Atlantic Ocean, 20xx.

I woke in darkness and for a moment, my dreams of premature burial seemed real. My eyes adjusted to the dimness. I recognized the underside of the bunk above me. Beyond the closed curtain, I heard soft murmurs as crewmen made their way along the aisle. You made it. You’re on board. The bunk was soft. The thin mattress felt luxurious. Initially I’d had trouble falling asleep, knowing I was finally here. My fingers twitched becoming claws. I relaxed, shut my eyes and let my hand explore the bulkhead beside the bunk, my fingertips tracing the rivets, feeling the curve of the hull. Shouldn’t there be switches? My fingers found the semi-circular depression containing the controls. It had been a while since I was last on a submarine.

Early mariners couldn’t have imagined the intricate conveniences that I had at my fingertips. There was the data coupling for laptops, next to it was the USB port, below that was a low-power electrical outlet, and running horizontally beside them were the numerous other pushbuttons. I felt along the row. That’s the light. I prodded it and overhead, a dim florescent tube hummed into life, just bright enough to read by. The light felt sharp. I knew without looking that on the wall beside my head there’d be a piece of reflective metal: a notional mirror. Do I want to see myself again? Shall I pretend to know me?  I turned my head, opening my eyes. In the mirror, my distorted cheekbone swam into view like some asteroid in space slowly rolling, revealing flaws and features. A bloodshot eye regarded me. Every time I looked in a mirror, awkwardness descended, as if my reflection and I were former friends with nothing to say, both of us co-existing in an uneasy silence.

You’re me.

I told myself I wasn’t lying. My eye observed me and I returned the stare, searching for traces of judgment or disapproval. But the reflected eye was neutral, answering me with an impassive gaze. I watched the flesh around the eye crinkle, as if its owner was smiling. I didn’t think I was smiling. But I knew the eye had seen everything I had done, and intended to do, and, for whatever reason, it seemed content to convey nothing of substance about its opinions. I turned the light off; darkness returned; the pressure diminished. I need sleep. I shut my eyes.

*

London. 20xx.

I ran along the dark street, weaving between the garbage piles. Rats scrambled beneath the litter, making it seem as if a hard wind was blowing. Behind me, I heard the angry howls from the gang. They hadn’t learned their lesson. Uniformly grimy old brick houses jutted from the clutter, urine-stained graffiti-covered facades, topped with shattered windows like black eyes behind punched eyeglasses. There was still a mile to go before I reached the outer perimeter of armored cars and soldiers protecting Whitehall and Parliament. In the garbage, the rats billowed before me.

I had been staying in the protected zone, in what now passed for a quality London hotel – which meant little beyond peeling walnut paneling, and piped muzak in the foyer. Given events following the general election, tourism had died overnight. The room was the usual box-like affair, barely sufficient to contain the soft bed and dead TV set. Aside from the kitsch corgi-and-floral miniatures on the wall, the only brightness came from the double-glazed windows, where the light making it through the patina of soot on the outside glass did battle with the ancient dust between the panes.

I was waiting for the Navy’s automated system to send me my orders.

Patience.

The hotel and its food reflected the precariousness of the country’s situation. I had been here for a week; the building remained empty. There was a peculiar quiet in its corridors. In the echoing dining hall, the food on offer in the buffet was minimalist: scrawny fruit on a platter; a semi-circle of salted crackers arranged around a piece of Brie cheese, sealed in Tupperware plastic. Throughout my stay, the hot food option had consisted primarily of a breadcrumb-encrusted casserole of hot potato mixed with cheese and egg. In addition to these meager offerings – and appearing irregularly during the course of the week – were by turns: a bowl of hard boiled eggs, a coleslaw salad, a watery leek soup, and once or twice, a pate of unknown origin.

I hadn’t taken the sparse menu personally. The public at large could only dream of this kind of luxury. Dairy products and vegetables had been amongst the first things to disappear when farmlands had been seized by the incoming National Party. The population beyond the perimeter fortifications was living on an ever-dwindling supply of rations. Soya protein and rice, mostly. There’d been a fleet of tankers which had been in British territorial waters when the trouble began. They’d been rapidly nationalized.

Thanks to my impeccably-forged papers, courtesy of the Chinese, I’d had little trouble with the military patrols as I played tourist within the protected zone, a five mile square area in the heart of London. Every few blocks had checkpoints. Grim-faced soldiers, slabs of concrete, barbed wire, and sandbags. The rooftops overhead bristled with army snipers. After a few days of sightseeing, I decided to explore beyond the perimeter barricades, ignoring the dire warnings. I signed a Health and Safety waiver and was allowed to slip through the defensive fortifications and hastily-built cement bunkers to the noticeably bloodstained street beyond.

A block away from the cordon sanitaire, the real London began: ragged skeletal people, litter, corpses, smashed windows, burned cars, and looted storefronts. The streets had become the province of the mad, the desperate, and the frightened, sometimes operating alone, but mostly in packs. I progressed deeper into the shambles of the city. Half-naked people sat picking through rubbish. The entrances to the Tube – the underground railway system – were reminiscent of prehistoric tribes’ defensive positions. Mobs of dirty, sharp-eyed children loitered around each dark stairwell, desultorily kicking at litter. I slipped past as a scuffle erupted. My sympathy was quickly dispelled as I saw the flash of knives.

I neared the city suburbs. The streets grew increasingly devastated, upturned blackened cars and piled torn bags of garbage scattered between ruined storefronts. Yet people were living here. Old men coughed beside makeshift fires. Gaunt women muttered inaudibly from doorways. Swaying nooses still hung from streetlights. I could see cameras on the rooftops and lamp posts, but the days when police might respond were over. The population probably provided a violent entertainment for anyone still watching. Any semblance of formal policing was reduced to the precincts of Westminster and its surrounds. Food rations were being supplied from a military encampment a few miles to the south, but it might as well have been on the other side of the world, judging from the state of those on the streets.

Gradually the road disappeared beneath layers of evenly-spread garbage, as if old trash had been systematically harvested for edibles. Underneath this was a constant audible skittering of what could only be rats’ claws. Most of the remaining storefronts were shuttered with corrugated-iron fronts or metal grilles pulled down over cracked glass. A few shops resembled cave entrances, their windows imploded inward. From these shadowy flame-lit interiors, people watched my passing. Every so often there were burned-out buildings, blackened brickwork indicating some target of the mobs. Whether they had been churches, or mosques, or synagogues was impossible to determine. The suburbs traditionally associated with Muslims, Jews, and Blacks respectively had each paid a terrible price. Here at least, there were still buildings and some semblance of streets.

I saw a rarity up ahead: an open shop. There were guards on the pavement outside, men sitting with cricket bats, crowbars, and staves of wood ready to hand. I decided to investigate and drew closer, aware of their scrutiny.

You all right, then? one of them said, reaching back to tap on the window. The eyes of the other guards remained watchful as I nodded. I knew the question didn’t require an answer, just me continuing to display no sign of being a threat. There was a loud noise as a bolt was thrown. The shop door creaked open. Military men, I thought, noticing the guards’ almost-imperceptible stiffening.

In, a voice said from the doorway.

Is this a mistake? Probably.

I stepped into the confines of the narrow shop. Behind me the door clicked shut. I caught a whiff of body odor as the shopkeeper slid past and retreated beyond the counter. He was heavyset, with shoulder length hair, and wore jacket and denim jeans over a faded t-shirt: Joe Strummer of The Clash poised mid-guitar-smash, the glory days of Punk and London Calling. The cramped space was lined with rows of luridly colored crumpled magazines, held in place with string. From the look of the covers they were mostly porn. The shopkeeper casually relocated his mug, moving it to a table behind the counter, out of my reach. I elected not to notice.

He nodded at the cup. Going to be tough when the last tea’s gone, he confided, as if we were friendly strangers at the funeral of a mutual acquaintance.

I can imagine, I said.

The shopkeeper sized me up. I was going to say ‘tourist,’ but, well you know, that’s something of a dirty word these days, isn’t it?

I smiled, aware of the Union Jack on the wall behind him. After the new Party’s election victory and the subsequent conflagration, whatever tourists left alive had long since fled. During the initial rioting, some factions had focused on foreigners. In that respect, at least, things in England had stabilized. Nonetheless, it was still a minefield. The flag marked him as a patriot, but whether this meant he was a Royalist or was loyal to the electoral process, which had delivered the fascists into power, was something best not to go into. Treading carefully, I explained that while I was certainly not a tourist, I might still be in the market for purchases. If there were any, that is.

The shopkeeper scratched his head, coming to a decision. Coin of the Realm or real money? he said.

Depends what you have on offer. Keep in mind, I’m only browsing.

No problem. To be honest, mate, most of what I’ve got is shit. The shopkeeper stepped back and nudged a panel by his foot, revealing stacked shelves. "But its good shit." I eyed the wares: tins of custard, puddings, mushy peas, beans, a pagoda-like mountain of Fray Bentos pies. I peered at the plastic-wrapped boxes of tea, seeing the usual suspects: PG Tips, a range of Twinings.’ A familiar box stood out glaringly –Rooibos, a South African export. I ignored it and squinted.

Those single-serves of Nescafe? I said, nodding at the bag of sachets.

Yeah, the shopkeeper said. I got Milo there at the back as well, if you want. He pulled a face. But it’s a big tin.

He understood; stealth-carrying was the name of the game now. The less anyone could see, the less likely I’d have to fight to keep it. 

Tobacco?

Naturally, he said, sliding the panel the other way. Name your poison, guv.

I smiled, the packet of Woodbines was like seeing an old friend. I pointed at them. After making my selection (sachets of coffee, a few of the smaller Fray Bentos pies, and of course, the cigarettes) there was a little pile on the counter. These might be the last British-manufactured goods. It was hard to believe. But here we were.

Gold? I said.

That’ll do nicely, he said, watching carefully as I reached under my shirt, unzipped one of my utility bags, and felt for coins. Gold Eagles, Pandas, Lunas or Krugers?

I had each of the denominations he’d mentioned, in one-tenth, quarters, and full ounces. The Chinese had been generous in restocking my supply.

My fingers scraped the row of tiny Canadian coins. Maples all right for you? I said. Pure gold coins were problematic. It was a soft metal, easily bent and damaged. Canadian Maple Leafs were fine currency, but they lacked the strength of coins with an added alloy – like the copper in Krugerrands. Unloading the softer coins suited me.

Maples? The shopkeeper smiled. Very nice. I knew that from his point of view, pure gold made the job of assaying much easier. He frowned at the goods on the counter. Four one-tenths? he said. How’s that sound?

Like I’m being ripped a new one, I said. Call it three and you’ve got a deal.

Oh dearie me, he sighed theatrically. All right, I’ll do you the favor.

I snorted as I picked out the required number of coins. Shame about the pound, I said.

Jesus, he growled. Don’t fucking get me started. His face brightened as I placed the coins on the counter. The Maple’s were tiny – but gold was always gold. He nibbled at one; examined the indent, and beamed. Perfick!

Those in England who’d thought government-printed paper possessed inherent value – or who believed that digitally-stored data in banks translated to wealth – were starving now. And they probably wouldn’t survive.

Need a packet? the shopkeeper said.

I shook my head, slipping items into my coat. I think I can make most of this disappear.

A pleasure doing business with you, he said, walking me to the door. In town for long? I glanced at him. There were a lot of things neither of us were talking about. He quickly added. "Not that it’s any of my business, mind. In fact – he scratched his head – silly me to have even mentioned it. Sorry. We halted in the open doorway. The guards remained watchful. Cheers then, the shopkeeper said. I looked down, his hand was extended. I reached for it. We shook hands. He let go, looked at his men. All right then?" he said, a local way of letting them know everything was fine.

I left, moving swiftly and keeping to the middle of the street. I didn’t look back until I’d turned the nearest corner. Like the three wise men of the Bible who went home ‘by another way,’ I did the same, choosing another route back, keeping watch for anyone trying to follow. I had miles to go before reaching the so-called safety zone, the outer perimeter of bunkers, gun-emplacements, and barriers protecting what remained of the British government. Things fall apart at the center, I thought, wondering whether I was referencing Yeats or Chinua Achebe. Perhaps it was both.

It was a paradox that while things fell apart at the center, the converse was also true: the center was often the last to fall. In this case, the few square miles of London incorporating the traditional sites historically associated with power. Those buildings were encircled by the security forces, as if the culminated heritage of the former United Kingdom was held within them.

The uneasy standoff between the armed forces and the elected new Party was continuing. After Buckingham Palace was stormed and the old woman with the expensive hat was killed by the mobs, the army had moved in to restore some semblance of order. For now, most of the new Party’s followers had retreated from the city. But there was little doubt they’d be returning in full force to seize power. The situation had been simmering for almost a month. Word had it that the ravens in the Tower of London were gone – fulfilling the ancient prophecy about their absence signaling the end of England and monarchy. It had probably been done by one of the roaming militia groups, keen to eliminate a still-potent Royalist symbol.

I picked my way along the rubble-strewn street. Above the rooftops in the distance, two spires were slowly becoming visible: the shattered remains of the London Eye, the once-lauded Ferris-wheel viewing platform. Now it resembled a wreath, a steel garland of immense proportions, as if some giant striding up the Thames had seen the dying city and placed a token in its midst before moving on.

I walked softly. The area was too quiet. On either side of me, the bullet-riddled terraced houses retained their secrets. Some appeared undamaged; others had furniture backed up against shattered windows. At the end of the next block there was movement, a small group of teenagers were loitering. I heard the faint noise of their skateboards. There was a cross street coming up, I decided to take it and avoid the youngsters. I speeded up to reach the corner undetected. I wasn’t scared – civilians were no match for me – but given the times, the odds were good that ghetto rules applied and any excess noises on the street would quickly attract an expanding belligerent crowd.

A pale face turned in my direction; turned away, then rapidly back again. More faces swung my way. Uh-oh. From the looks of them, most were teenagers, some appeared younger. It didn’t make them any less deadly. As Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange had seen coming, England bred thugs young. The case of Jamie Bulger – a toddler killed by ten year olds – was once considered horrifying. In recent years, the British suburbs known as estates had spawned vast armies of such sociopaths.

I’d intended to wait till the gang was out of sight before I sprinted, knowing the movement would attract them. But there was an abrupt surge toward me as I reached the cross street corner, and I ran. I had to smile, even though there were twelve thugs coming after me and I was weighed down with the shopping in my pockets.

You kids are about to learn some valuable lessons.

I wouldn’t bother trying to talk to them. The average civilian believed they could ‘communicate’ their way out of hostilities. Humans thought reason could be used on the unreasonable. It couldn’t. The only effective reaction to the threat of violence was to respond with a higher level of brutality. Might was right; it always had been. This truism wasn’t popular amongst those who prided themselves as being liberal or enlightened, but it explained why there were so few progressive nations or leaders. Quod erat Demonstrandum.

The yelling intensified behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. The gang had spilled around the corner and seen I was some distance ahead. In the usual knee-jerk fashion of mobs, they’d taken this fact personally. Before the first of my pursuers there was a gap of about fifty feet. I kept up the pace; there were still a few miles to the safety of the protected zone. Keep the noise down. It would be irksome to get waylaid from an unexpected quarter because of the gang’s shouts.

I was approaching the next intersection, I’d need to take a left to steer me back on course toward the city. It took a second to check I wasn’t turning into a dead end: the road was clear. I veered sharply, losing some ground in the turn but increasing my speed, letting them know I wasn’t the regular pushover.

Ahead, two men loitered on the remains of the pavement beside a gate. I kept to the center of the road. The men had metal pipes and I guessed they were on guard. I’d see soon enough if they intended to interfere. They looked like father and son: both wore Doc Marten boots, khaki pants and vests. They eyed me but stayed in place. I nodded in passing. They stared. I kept moving. Looking back along the road, I saw the bulk of the gang was still lagging behind, but a lanky youth with dreadlocks had pulled significantly ahead. This lead was sufficient enough for me to waste the second or two it would take to hurt him, purely as an exploratory move.

Killing an enemy outright was rarely useful. The trick was to deplete enemy ranks by creating wounded they had to take care of. Dead soldiers can be ignored; but the wounded require personnel and transport to retrieve them from the battlefield, staff to tend to them, operate on them, and nurse them back to health. Overloading an enemy’s infrastructure and using up their resources was the simplest way to win a war.

I took a breath, stopped, spun around, and ran towards the youth. He was still trying to slow down. His mouth was open. He looked startled. I was barely ten feet from him by the time he’d managed to stop his forward momentum. I launched into a flying kick and chose my target mid-leap. He’d straightened his leg, bracing it to slow down. I connected; the sole of my foot moved through his kneecap like a hammer. The crunch of his breaking bones was audible. I landed, turned fluidly, and continued sprinting in the same direction as before. A howl of agony rose in the street behind me, the hubbub from the gang growing louder as they saw what I’d done.

Now it would get interesting. Separating the wheat from the chaff always was. Who would keep running? Who were the cowards buoyed up by the safety of the mob? I squinted. Beyond the pursuers, three of the gang had halted by the crippled one – reducing their overall numbers to eight. One more display would weed out those already wishing they’d stayed on the corner and let me pass; many would keep running for fear of being called cowards, but they’d happily take the opportunity to justifiably stop and tend to their subsequent wounded member.

The sun was setting. In the darkening street, the way forward was becoming more treacherous. I wove around burned-out cars, trying not to slip on the garbage. I was at the center of undulating waves of movement, as rats ran for cover beneath the trash. I listened to the echoing noise behind me, the gang baying for my blood.

I laughed.

The closeness of death felt like a blanket drawing over me. I could almost picture my family. It had been a long time since I held my wife and kids in my arms. I could feel their presence, even though there was so much to do before this was finally over.

Soon, my darlings, soon.

I knew if I allowed it, I would see my family as they were that morning: laid out on the ground in a row, their individual body parts – which I’d put as close to the proper places as I could – making them appear like truncated reflections in the spreading ripples of a pond. What had been imbued with life, thought, time, and my love, was now meat that would stink soon.

*

Antarctica. 20xx.

It was bitterly cold. The reality of the Antarctic temperatures was rocking me like slaps across the face. I stamped my feet, keeping the blood moving. I glimpsed dark mountain peaks through the intermittent snowfall. I guessed it was Berkner Island.

Cold.

When I’d initially emerged out on the ice shelf, the sweat on my face and eyelashes had frozen almost immediately. It took cautious rubbing to separate my eyelids. I pulled the hood of my parka over my head and tugged the cords, giving my neck additional protection. In the frigid air, my eyes struggled to focus; I had to blink repeatedly to stop them from freezing. I squinted at the sun. While I was clawing along the ice fissure, scrabbling toward the surface, I’d idly wondered what it might be like being trapped underground when the winter darkness came. But I was able to look directly at the sun. There was no physical warmth to be gained from it. The small gold dot seemed to conclude matters, as if I were a sentence on a page, and my life had been a stream of unconnected words, each set beside the other, always too close for perspective; and now, having journeyed through forests of commas, semi-colons, and hyphens, and stumbling for a time, lost amongst parenthesis, I was being dazzled by the symbol denoting a full stop, the definitive end of my sentence.

The cold was intense. I shook free from my reveries and automatically began carving out bricks for an igloo – asking myself why I was bothering.

I wonder sometimes about the tenacity of the human spirit.

The circular wall of ice bricks grew rapidly. I stepped inside to continue adding subsequent rows, relieved at being out of the direct force of the wind. The completed igloo was hardly Nanook of the North quality, but it would suffice. I dropped to hands and knees and scraped at the floor with the ice axe, making the interior deeper. Finally it was low enough for me to sit in without brushing my head on the