Burden of Truth

By Tyler Wills

Peter Grainger, a recently retired British Bank Manager with a penchant for First Editions, finds an old battered journal amongst a purchase of books. Once belonging to the primatologist Doctor Richard Beck, the journal’s contents, and an intriguing note found inside, initiate a tragic sequence of events in an otherwise staid but comfortable existence. What becomes apparent to Grainger, apart from Dr. Beck’s past skills in communicating with primates, was the Doctor’s fortune in finding a particularly gifted Bonobo - the primate version of a Savant with the knowledge of his species oral history, which all lead to some amazing revelations.

Against his wife Annie’s better judgement, Peter Grainger becomes obsessed with the journal, and when his naïve investigations result in the mysterious death of Annie’s best friend; Jane, Grainger is forced to continue his investigations surreptitiously, in order now, to also clear the police suspicions in his and his wife’s involvement in Jane’s death. Grainger suspects a past conspiracy of denial, and the possibility that multiple murders have already been committed to conceal the Doctor’s past discoveries.

Grainger’s blind obsession and meddling into the past bring about an attempt on his life, but it is unfortunately his wife who is the victim. Although devastated by guilt, and torn apart emotionally by her loss, he embarks on the seemingly impossible task of avenging her death while at the same time attempting to reveal the truth, thus hoping to not only uncover the perpetrators, but also the real reason behind all the tragic events.

With the assistance of Harry Chalmers, the Inspector detailed to the murder investigation, the evidence initially indicates a number of possible suspects, primarily the Jesuit Order, but eventually suspicion leads to a certain Lewtech Corporation. The company is involved in the development and supply of guidance systems and other technologies linked to highly sophisticated weapons. J.B. Lewis, the founder, was once a member of SOPA – (Special Operations Projects Africa) within the CIA, tasked with monitoring the activities of the Communist infiltration in the Congo. It emerges that Lewis was involved in the clandestine sale of arms to opposing rebel factions, while ruthlessly eliminating any of his adversaries by infecting them with a deadly virus, a virus that would also herald the initial emergence of the HIV epidemic in humans. The owners of the company seem to be all out to protect their interests by acquiring and destroying the journal and anyone connected with it.

The conclusion is that the journal actually contains a far more terrifying secret from the past.

It reveals a warning to mankind.

Ignore the message, or join Dr Beck and Grainger in their quest; to accept the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyler Wills
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310593017

Book preview

CHAPTER 1. Arrival.

With no one in control, the craft continued on its spiral journey to the Earth. Pulled by the planet’s orbital sucking forces, its speed increasing ever faster, onwards and downwards. The occupants had sensed the change, the buffeting, the sudden rolling to and fro, and panic’s bitter taste began to rise. Too soon for some, too late for others. Seconds was all that would remain, but mercifully as no outward view was possible, for anyone, the time remaining did not matter. In a few moments, for half the occupants at least, time would not matter ever again.

The mists from verdant jungles rose to form a cloud base, shielding the moon and stars from all the earthly creatures. Every animal, bird and insect within a ten-mile radius halted to listen to a new sound. The screaming craft continuing on its trajectory ignited each living creature’s fear of death or capture. They ran or flew or dug deep into the soil, none knew from what, or where safety lay, they scattered, jumped or froze in place with eyes darting here and there.

The final brutal scything through the canopy brought chaos. Those within were helpless, subjected to a nightmare turmoil of screaming cries in pitch black voids, heightening perceptions of their imminent fate, and even when the craft slowed to a halt, warm blood, death smells, moans and groans and sobbing awaited the survivors. For a while no creature moved, silence saturated time. Then slowly the sounds of jungle life began, distant at first but growing nearer by the second.

The few survivors that did emerge quickly took stock of unfamiliar sounds and smells, new or different senses, from shiny, smooth warm alloys they now encountered cold, coarse woods. The fresh air was the biggest and most immediate change. Humidity was the second.

Those that could, walked or crawled away, but something within would make them stay quite near. With unspoken collective understanding, they all stopped, rested at a distance, and watched the craft’s smouldering, sparking, burning death throes. Feeling fortunate to survive, they would eventually return to seek out others in the carnage, the wounded, dying or those past helping. As the sun rose, the next challenge of survival would be the smell of death, calling out to the hungry scavengers and natural hunters of that new, unknown and cruel future.

The Beginning.

I now live in another country where no one is bothered about my name. Where no one is concerned about where I came from, what I did, and what I am running from, but I need to start from the beginning. England, 1999 …

The room was bare, except for the metal table in the centre with the two recorders and the single chair I occupied. Glossy green paint stopped like a horizon halfway up the otherwise cream-coloured walls. The paint wasn’t new, it was scuffed, scratched and flaking in places, so the faint smell had to be coming from cheap disinfectant on the equally worn linoleum floor. Eventually, Harry came charging into the room in his usual style, but this time, with a big grin on his face, he dumped a large cardboard box onto the table.

Here you go, Mr Grainger, he said, patting the box, we’ve got enough tapes here to last you a few days. Both recorders are already loaded, so when you’re ready, press both start buttons at the same time, count to five and you’re ready to roll. It’s not too late to change your mind, though; we can find some other way of doing this?

There is no other way, Harry, I said, I’ve got to dictate it, get it out there and it has to get published. Not just for Annie. Yes, I admit it is mainly for her, but there are others who’ve suffered and what about the poor souls I can still help?

Well in that case, as Confucius say: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with one first step’, I’ll try and find us a decent Chinese take-away, see you in a bit.

That was Laozi, but a take-away would be great, Harry.

Hey, I didn’t write the damn thing, I read it in a Christmas cracker! Now don’t forget - count to five after you hit both starts, he said, slamming the door behind him.

I hit both buttons, and counted to five…

Decisions, decisions, those damned decisions, that’s what got me here in the first place. The note had been signed: Richard Beck 2nd February 1960. It had been stuck between the fourth and fifth pages of the journal, which having first thought to reject, I had then for some reason, thrown back into the box along with the books I had wanted to keep.

That note had intrigued me. It must have been a Saturday, about a year or so ago, I can’t remember exactly, it feels more like ten now, but it had to have been a Saturday. A sort of ritual you see, early breakfast, a proper English affair, then a walk through the park to the town-centre and it would either be the car-boot sale at the station car park or the old-books shop near the cemetery. On a good day I would do both and sometimes, but always now, on her anniversary, I would stop at the florist for some flowers for Annie, before the walk back home.

A home financed by nearly twenty years of forcing other people to decide. It was my role at the bank to point out exactly what options the customer had if the customer required further borrowing. They would have to decide on whether their house should be put on the market to pay back the loan on the home improvements, that couldn’t otherwise be completed. Decide on selling the horses rather than extending the loan yet again, to enlarge the stables. Decide on auctioning the classic-car collection or alternatively cancelling a cherished daughter’s forthcoming wedding reception, or, it would be no more lending from this Bank. Over twenty years of forcing other people to make decisions. And in a way I blame that damned note in the journal, praying I would take the right decision, that is the irony in itself. That note, spurring me, defying me to accept the truth, started it all off. But what was the truth?

I did say the journal came in a cardboard box? Then it would probably have been the old-books shop on the High Street. My pastime back then, as some form of release from the past monotony and yes, sadness at the Bank, revolved around my collection of first editions. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Maugham. I even had a superb set of Dickens. Poor Annie used to be so supportive. Our annual holiday would usually centre around some auction or other in Edinburgh, Bath or even Dublin. Old books were my passion and still are, though not to the same extent now. To improve the quality of my collection Annie had even persuaded me to take up an evening course, which included Book and Parchment Restoration. Having recently retired from the Bank, it proved to be an excellent idea. It would have been even better had I stuck to it.

Twenty-quid - the lot!

Well, I couldn’t believe my luck. A box full of red leather-bound volumes dating from 1850 to 1866, mixed with a handful of modern publications. None of them first editions by any means and at first glance; not necessarily by noted authors, but at roughly one pound per volume a bargain in anyone’s estimation and certainly at the time, in mine. I remember Annie’s hearty laughter when the delivery man came with what she said were: ‘Usband’s cyclopedias’. She should have been my main or only passion I suppose, not those ruddy books.

I find it’s getting harder sometimes to remember certain things. As each year passes I seem to have more difficulty recalling certain events, while others are crystal clear and haunt me. I shall never forget the day that Annie and I met for instance, in Foyles, the bookshop on Charing Cross Road, it had been pouring down all morning. It was my lunch break from a London branch I had been allocated to, at the start of my career with the Bank. Foyles had been an ideal refuge from the rain.

We literally bumped into each other in one of the aisles, with such clumsy force on my part that I actually hurt her foot. She had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, quite transfixing, I felt smitten without mercy by those eyes. As she had already been drenched from head to toe, her reaction, as I’m sure you can imagine, seemed anything but friendly at first. She worked for the Evening Star as a lowly research assistant back then, before she actually became a fully-fledged journalist in her own right. She would later move from the London tabloids to the BBC, but now I’m jumping ahead. Anyway, she was the wettest – by which I mean rain-soaked, but most wonderful person I had ever met. I do miss her terribly, a quite tangible, physical aching most days.

Where were we? Oh yes, the journal. Well, as I have said, the box arrived. Twelve leather-bound volumes, covering about ten years of mid nineteenth-century science and biology, as it was understood at that time, and of course, totally useless as scientific reference in comparison to today’s advanced knowledge, but interesting works nevertheless, even if only for their naivety and sometimes absurd conclusions and assumptions. I also found an early but badly worn copy of Darwin’s Theories, two publications circa 1940 on Geological Formations and Strata of the Sierra Nevada and Coastal Range of California, a well-thumbed but otherwise good quality 1838 edition of Milman – the Dean of St. Paul’s, in which he attacked Gibbons’ ‘The Decline and Fall’ as a product of an ecclesiastically inept unbeliever, and finally of course Dr. Beck’s journal.

I’ve no solid proof he had a doctorate, the note was simply signed Richard Beck, but as the entries in the journal and the note both shared the same style and because the entries were of such an analytical and scientific nature then one could see immediately that the author must not only have been a learned fellow, but also an American. The date formats of month, day and year and the spelling of certain words; such as ‘center’ were obvious clues. It appeared to be about monkeys, which did not really interest me in the slightest and for the first week or so I concentrated on the leather-bound volumes and completely ignored the journal.

It’s not about monkeys or baboons, Annie said, one day over breakfast.

I had already spotted the journal by the kitchen worktop, after she had rescued it from the junk box in the garage, but I hadn’t said anything.

It’s about one particular primate species, and one particular male of that species, but it is rather strange. My opinion is that it’s a very clever fraud, taken to great lengths to appear factual, she passed the journal over to me.

I scanned the early pages relating to events around the beginning of 1958. The neat handwritten entries were methodical and patiently detailed. These entries were almost too clinical to be of any interest to anyone other than another primate researcher. There were diets, temperatures and temperaments, all kinds of weights and measurements, comparisons to previous dates, behaviour patterns, mood fluctuations, a myriad of obscure data.

It’s either a big hoax, or Beck went crazy, shouted Annie from the parlour, he’s way off at the end from where he started. Would you prefer haricot or broad beans with the chicken salad tomorrow, darling?

I skipped to the last few pages of the journal and immediately understood what she meant. The content of these pages was completely different from the early ones. Gone were the mundane statistics, formulas and technical data; the pages now contained the jottings similar to that found in one’s own diary. The language appeared more personal in tone, more reflective.

I decided it would do no harm to spend the day trying to decipher and maybe understand the early entries, convinced I would uncover some fault, an inconsistency which would actually confirm the journal to be a fake. The most astonishing thing of all, and which would take me some time to fully comprehend, was the real and amazing significance and ultimate importance of those entries. I remember reading the note over and over again, trying to fathom out its meaning about the truth. I ended up spending that entire afternoon and evening going over the pages in the journal.

I remember the next day quite vividly. Annie and I had one of our rare but tempestuous rows. Totally my fault on reflection now, of course. I had simply commented at lunch that I had gone off broad beans ages ago, and that I would have expected her to know that – that was all. You have to understand Annie had Irish blood running through her veins and would normally be quite a placid creature, but if that volcano blew, God help the local inhabitants. Although as usual, in all our quarrels, we would always somehow end up on a merry note.

Do you realise, I said, as a way of bridging the silence between us, while picking broad beans off the kitchen floor, that by week fifty-four, that is to say, we are talking about sometime in the middle of January 1958 and assuming the journal is genuine, that damned monkey already had a vocabulary of over five-hundred words! That’s three-hundred more than some of the customers I had to deal with at the Bank on a daily basis!

Annie turned her still-cold glare towards me, I always wondered who had originated those press releases from the Liberal Party at the last General Election.

We both ended up laughing at each other, amongst the beans on the floor, after that.

There’s something odd with the numbers, though… Annie said at tea time, you said you had got up to week fifty-four in January, which means the entries are not following the annual fifty-two week system.

Exactly, I said, by my reckoning, this journal, not the project itself, was started in 1957. There’s a clear entry in week thirty-two of someone called K.T. expected to be arriving in the last week of August. It’s quite possible, and logical, that another journal may have existed for the pre-research phase, but the analytical records start from the beginning of August 1957 and all the entries from then on are indeed numbered consecutively, not annually.

Well I think it’s another Piltdown-Man type hoax, Annie said, what is the point in analysing a journal that’s over forty years old anyway, it’s bound to be old hat by now scientifically, even if it is genuine, why not just dump it and move on to something more constructive, like building the extension we’ve talked about so much?

Of course on reflection, Annie was right. Had I followed her advice and discarded the journal there and then, our lives would have carried on as normal. I suppose that at the time, I saw it as a harmless challenge. After all, what was there to lose?

I began recognising certain patterns in the entries and once I had arrived at week eighty or thereabouts, I could distinguish the mundane data relating to the physical characteristics of the project and therefore concentrate more on the odd comments and items, which I expected would reap more interesting results. Some references seemed to be either codes and cyphers or acronyms which occurred regularly: BASANKUSU, CHINI 2, N.KASAI, ARLA and PANPAN.

Some of these words would appear more often than others and would be interspersed among all the technical jargon, but one would sometimes also come upon fairly clear comments such as Bad night, highly agitated behaviour. or Predictions – again! one I remember in particular because it had been heavily underlined: WHY? FORTRAN request denied. others were; John not happy – must speak to Father Iggy. and Able and Miss Baker well! Others were: Spoke to Harrison – convinced Iggy is SOPA. Chini 2 agitated – earth shakes, earth shakes. Harrison is to monitor BBC for confirmation.

I think our Dr. Beck was under some kind of stress at this point, which would explain why at week one-hundred-and-four he notes a handover of all the physical research to K.T. As that week related to 29th December 1958, by my calculations, it would have made sense at the time to begin a new year with a fresh and possibly more fruitful strategy. This changeover would have given Dr. Beck the opportunity of concentrating on the more psychological aspects and main driving forces for the research. In fact, it was here I began to really understand the significance of it all. What I needed, though, was an explanation of what those codes, cyphers and acronyms related to. It would be the only way of fully comprehending what the journal, and more importantly I thought, the note, was all about. I realised that without this key information, I could very easily go down a completely incorrect path and eventually understand nothing.

Peter, what in heaven’s name are you doing, it’s three-thirty in the morning? I looked up to see Annie with a glass of milk held towards me.

You look absolutely dreadful, come to bed, you need to sleep, she added.

Annie, this stuff is definitely not a hoax. If my hunch is correct, forty-years old or not, what we have here is immensely significant, we can’t possibly ignore this, it will change everyone’s understanding of how and possibly why we are all here. It could turn out to be terrifically explosive material, I will explain things in the morning.

It is the morning, darling, good night, she said.

How tragically prophetic my words would turn out to be. If only I had listened to her advice.

CHAPTER 2. Codes and Cyphers

If you are reading this, it could mean the struggle has been worthwhile

and that the whole world will now discover the truth.

On the other hand it could also mean that I have failed,

that you are part of their system and living and working for them.

The decision may still be yours to make.

Whatever faith you have, even if it is for your own skin - pray.

Pray that you accept the truth, and make the right decision.

I woke up late that next morning and decided to have a break from the journal. Annie appeared to have gone out somewhere, so I pottered around the garden with my coffee. As I studied the house from a distance, I realised we would need to move the apple-tree to make room for the conservatory we had planned to build. I went back inside, washed and tidied up the breakfast mess and then I left a note for Annie, explaining that I would be walking to