Free The Network by Jason Elliot

and how the whole house used to shake when a Taliban rocket landed nearby, and how rich I felt just to be alive afterwards.
    I’m haunted by the prospect of returning to Afghanistan, a country that has left its mark on me like no other. There’s a discovery waiting for me there, and the answer to a secret that I can mention to no one except the Baroness. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. The Baroness long ago taught us the power of a single thought: that in the Network we are never alone. There are always others among its members in similar or more difficult situations, suffering or struggling with the same situations, unable to reveal their true purpose to the world, and this know-ledge has often come to my aid, as it does now.
    ‘My dear boy,’ I hear her say, ‘you’re miles away.’
     
    I make the second journey after the agreed interval of a week, the following Sunday. Two hours after leaving home with Gerhardt I’m crossing the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, trying to decide whether the building looming ahead of me on the left is ugly or not. It still looks brand new, though I wonder how its clean and angular lines will eventually age.
    I park in Kennington Lane. Now that Gerhardt is at rest, I can smell the transmission fluid burning off the hot manifold. With a few minutes to spare, I take the opportunity to check the fluid level, to see how much poor Gerhardt has leaked on the way. It isn’t good. It’s dropped considerably, and the dark liquid streaks all the way from the torque converter to the rear silencer. I feel a pang of regret that I can’t afford a new transmission, then remember how old Gerhardt is. Replacing his transmission is akin to giving a heart transplant to an elderly man. Much in life, I reflect gloomily, simply isn’t solvable.
    At midday I walk through the doors of Number 85 Albert Embankment, and enter the lobby. The place has a stripped-down and anonymous look with the smooth flat colours of a modern hotel, and there is everywhere a slightly greenish hue, cast by the triple-glazed glass of the windows. I announce myself at the reception area, which is overseen by an unexpectedly cheerful pair of young women.
    ‘Plato to see Macavity,’ I say.
    One of the women picks up a handset, passes on the names and motions me, as might a hotel receptionist, to a black sofa opposite, where I wait next to an imitation Monstera deliciosa . Seethrough appears a few minutes later from behind the futuristic door system that stretches across the far side of the entrance lobby, and comes up to me. He’s dressed in a charcoal mohair suit, one of his Savile Row shirts with a swept-back collar and antique garnet cufflinks, and a grey silk tie. An identity card hangs from his neck, bearing his photograph but no name. Beside his image is what looks like a globe surrounded by yellow lightning bolts. He sees me looking at it.
    ‘Now, now,’ he says, tucking the card into his breast pocket. We shake hands and he looks me up and down approvingly.
    ‘You clean up quite well,’ he says.
    ‘Thank you. New shirt?’
    ‘Yes. Had it made in Italy. Little place off Piazza Navona,’ he replies with a knowing grin, correctly locating my tailor in Rome. I’m not sure if I’m reassured by this detail. He must have had someone search my credit card records since our meeting a week earlier. At least it means he listens to everything I say.
    ‘Shall we? I need your phone first.’ No one, he explains, is allowed a mobile phone inside the main building.
    He hands it to the security guard, who gives me a receipt like a raffle ticket.
    ‘Right. Follow me and don’t even think of wandering off,’ he says. ‘And by the way, you never run in this place. Whatever happens, you never run.’ We walk to the doors, where he passes his card through a reader and enters a number on a keypad. A door slides open, he goes through, it closes again, and he repeats the process from behind a second door on the far side, allowing me