A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons Story

By Clya Brown

Introduction

This story explores some of the pivotal events in Captain Ochre’s early career within the World Government Police Corps that ultimately brought him to the attention of the nascent Spectrum organization. For the benefit of any readers more familiar with the feisty young Irish female Captain Ochre in the New Captain Scarlet CGI series, this story is set in the universe of the original series, in which Captain Ochre is a man. His name is Richard Fraser; his biography can be found on the Spectrum Headquarters website (a link to it is supplied at the end of the story), and it is that biography which provides the inspiration for this tale.

Along the way we’ll meet the young André Verdain, future spymaster of the European Area Intelligence Service under the guise of the Parisian fashion house that bears his name. A few of the other players in this tale are also destined to resurface during Spectrum’s conflict with the Mysterons, but that’s all in the future at the time this story is set. Let’s meet some of them:

Clockwise from the top we have Rick Fraser himself, then Commander Bojanowski, Martin Orson, Olivia Macleod, Paul Metcalfe, Juliette Pontoin, Charles Wainwright, Judy Chapman, Donald Fairfield and finally André Verdain. You will of course be wondering who the young lady in the centre is, because her face won’t be familiar from the original TV series: that’s Kismet Yazdani – and she springs from my first foray into the world of AI graphics. I supplied a description of her to one of the new generation artwork creation packages, and lo and behold, she was magicked into existence about thirty seconds later – almost exactly as I imagined her. Isn’t this technology wonderful?

As to the plot, we’ll touch on the complex relationships between the business community and the military in connection with the awarding of lucrative contracts, and we’ll see something of the pressure to deliver on the expansive promises originally made by the sales force once the contract has been signed, and the clock is ticking.

Just for context, the opening scene of this story is set on the eve of Spectrum’s attempt to make peace with the Mysterons, using the pulsator previously retrieved from the complex in Crater 101 on the Moon by Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue and Lieutenant Green. The story itself doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of this episode.

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Prologue

Captain Ochre looked out of the viewing port and gazed down at a seemingly endless patchwork of fluffy white clouds scurrying away to the west into a spectacularly beautiful red and gold sunset. For an instant – just for an instant – he could almost see the ghost of an ancient sailing ship being towed majestically through the clouds on its final journey to the flight deck far below. He frowned briefly: the ship had a name… something to do with fighting… what the hell was it? He almost had it on the tip of his tongue when the rising volume and pitch of a jet engine somewhere outside filtered through the reinforced glass, and his gaze fell instinctively back to the runway as an SPJ began its short run into the sky.

“You are dreaming your dreams again, Rick? But I think you do not need your dreams anymore, for your dreams - they all come true now, non?”

He’d not heard her approaching from behind, but for some reason he’d never understood, she’d rarely – if ever – managed to take him by surprise. He always seemed to know she was there before she spoke... how was that possible? He had no idea, but he’d never let the mystery trouble him unduly. It was enough that it was so.

“I guess…” he replied with just a hint of a sigh. “It’s just that… well… it doesn’t really make much difference how fast this carrier goes careering around the planet: just standing up here staring out one of its portholes isn’t real flying, is it? You understand that – I know you do.”

She nodded. “Yes… I do know. You and me… we are the same, yes? We are never happy until we are in the cockpit – but tomorrow, this will be so, n’est-ce pas? You, you fly our guest back here, and I shall be pleased to escort you after Capitaine Scarlet, he collects him and brings him to the airport! Then we are both happy, non?”

“Destiny… I joined this organization to help prevent the world from slipping back into the chaos that damn nearly transformed it into a large radioactive cinder orbiting the Sun a couple of decades back,” he replied archly, “I didn’t join it to chauffeur ego-inflated boffins from their offices to the airport in the backs of camouflaged personnel carriers – and if the Colonel hadn’t given me the SPJ assignment as well, I reckon I might just have told him to shove it.”

“Perhaps I understand you a little better than you understand yourself in such matters. I think you would not have told him to ‘shove it’,” she admonished quietly.

“Okay… so maybe I wouldn’t,” he muttered, “but I’d sure as hell have thought about it. I guess you know me just a little too well,” he added with a grin. Suddenly serious, he looked into her eyes. “You’re the only one who really understands. Nobody else does.”

She shrugged dismissively. “I could say the same about you, non? As I say before… you and me, we are the same. Perhaps this is fate that brings us both to work in here this place, maybe?”

“I’ve sometimes wondered about that myself,” he admitted, looking at her speculatively. “Do you believe in fate?”

She hesitated before replying. “I think I believe in fate, yes – but I do not like things I cannot control! Before fate plays the game with me, I think it is best that I deal it as few cards as I can.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me. Put your trust in Allah… but tie your camel.”

“Ai-je bien entendu? Quel est ce chameau?”

“Oh, it was just something she said to me once. Arabic proverb – she called it a ‘hadith’. Seems kind-of apt.”

She looked at him sombrely. “You have to let her go, Rick. You know you must let her go.”

He nodded sadly. Yes… Destiny was right, of course. She always was right – that was why she’d been the natural choice for leader of the Angel pack: her ability to instil in others the belief that her own assessment of the situation was the correct one was the reason so many aboard the base would – and frequently did – trust her with their lives. But more than that, she also understood how hard being right could sometimes be.

Blinking out of his reverie, he opened his mouth to offer a reply, but realized as he did so that it was superfluous – she’d left him to his thoughts and departed as quietly as she’d arrived. He smiled to himself as he contemplated the young Frenchwoman’s capacity for complete empathy with anyone she was talking to, contrasting it with her unerring instinct for taking command and initiating decisive action of the deadliest kind whenever it was called for. What was it Scarlet had once said to him? We knew immediately she was the one… there was never any doubt in our minds.

He turned away from the porthole, and had taken no more than three steps in the direction of his quarters before the heavily-filtered sound of another build-up of power from the flight deck far below had him returning to it for a further few minutes to watch the take-off.

Chapter 1

Had there ever been a time he hadn’t wanted to fly? If there was, it must have been some time before the earliest he could now remember. Just occasionally when he was alone, he’d hear in his mind the petulant stentorian voice of his own teenage self, complaining to his father about his friends’ inability to comprehend what was so obvious to him... and to him alone.

“It’s what I wanna do, Dad. It’s all I wanna do! All these dumbasses at school, they go blank when I show them the kits and all – they just don’t get it! It’s like they just power down their brains… I mean, it’s not like they’re all completely stupid, is it? How come they can’t they see how cool this is?”

His father had laughed, but young Rick could tell it wasn’t an expression of amusement.

“You want to fly, son? Then pay attention for once, and listen. One… read. Two… study. Three… learn. Hobbies are for afterwards, okay? You do it the other way around, all you end up with is the hobby – and no way of paying for it. You’ll end up with nothing – nothing – d’you hear? And while we’re on the subject, your mom wants those models off the floor in your room. She’s fed up with having to move them out the way every time she’s clearing up after you… which is just about every other goddam day…”

“It’s not a hobby, Dad! It’s my life! I’m gonna make it my life! You’ll see – I will…”

“Then get qualified, son! Listen… if you’re still serious about this when you’re old enough to take lessons, we’ll pay for them – but we’re going to want to see some commitment from you with your schoolwork! It ain’t good enough… you think I didn’t read your last end-of-term report? You think I don’t know what ‘satisfactory’ means? It’s what teachers write when they mean you were damned lucky it wasn’t unsatisfactory!”

Young Rick did his best to look appropriately chastened.

“Sure, Dad – I’ll do better next year, okay? I really will… I promise. Look… I really don’t like to have to ask, but can you just give me a bit of an advance on my allowance? I’m kinda hard-up this month…”

“You’re kinda hard-up? I’m kinda hard-up! The store’s been losing money hand over fist since that godforsaken low-cost outfit started up at the far end of the mall two months ago – it beats me how they turn a profit at those prices, but it’s hitting us where it hurts – in my bank account! See… here’s twenty bucks, son – don’t just blow it all on drinks for the guys, okay? Their own folks can pay for their nights on the town, right? Seems to me they’ve got more of it to throw around than we have right now.”

“Sure, Dad – I promise. Thanks.”

Having no intention of buying drinks even for himself, let alone anybody else, young Rick was gratified to have secured the necessary funding on this occasion at least with a clear conscience – whereupon he immediately set off in the direction of the games arcade with the airplane simulators. As to the small matter of the schoolwork, he’d forgotten that part of the conversation before he’d turned the corner at the end of the road.

His father had been as good as his word about the flying lessons though, even though the cost had put a serious dent in the family’s finances. Rick’s sixteenth birthday present had been a letter confirming the date of his very first lesson – and if he’d been presented instead with a bag of gold, he wouldn’t have been more thrilled. His parents had been gratified to see a change in his general attitude once those flying lessons had started: it kicked in the moment he realized that as well as the practical experience he had to gain while notching up the required number of flying hours, there was also a theory test he had to pass.

To his credit he’d thrown himself into that task with a vengeance… but the rest of his schoolwork continued to be fair to middling at best, and only Rick himself had been surprised when all his friends said their goodbyes to him and set off for college, leaving him behind to find himself a career armed only with a pilot’s licence and a dream. Oh, he’d seen the light eventually – and he remembered the day vividly. It was the day he’d opened his emails to discover that despite the impressive number of flying hours to his credit, his application to join the World Army Air Force had been turned down on account of his lack of academic qualifications. Yes… that had hurt. That had hurt a lot.

Finding his options now severely limited, and thoroughly dispirited at the dismissive treatment he’d received at the hands of several recruitment agencies, he’d reluctantly joined the recently created World Government Police Corps. Bidding farewell to his parents and setting off for the east coast, he set about finding himself somewhere just about affordable to live within the nascent cosmopolitan community springing up around the WGPC’s newly constructed facility in Boston, Massachusetts. The little rented pad he found for himself wasn’t much to look at, but it provided him with enough space for him to be able to appreciate his newly found freedom, much as he missed his folks back home. As to his new job, he’d accepted his lowly entry grade stoically – but once in, he’d been gratified to discover that his being in possession of a pilot’s licence at such an early age provided him with a potential entry into certain areas of operations not open to many of his academically better-qualified entry-grade rookies.

With a growing sense of being valued for the first time in a long while, he threw himself into the task of broadening the scope of his knowledge, to encompass anything and everything that could have even the remotest bearing on his ability to do his job. Classic detective fiction predominated in the early months, but serious treatises on all aspects of criminal activity eventually replaced it as he began to tire of the contrived plots – the first casualty being his teenage preconceptions of the bad guys, of whom he soon discovered that very few sported an evil-looking moustache, and of those that did, absolutely none of them twizzled it while tying comely young maidens across railway tracks.

Could he ever have been so juvenile as to think in such terms? Three years down the line, a substantially more streetwise Lieutenant Rick Fraser found himself asking that very question of himself as he was able to acknowledge – admittedly somewhat to his own surprise – that he could look back at the start of his career in the WGPC with some measure of satisfaction. The studying had paid off, and he found himself being increasingly drawn into investigations in which the line between legitimate business activity and corruption was at best blurred, and at worst virtually impossible to define.

Now effectively self-sufficient and living in an admittedly small apartment in downtown Boston that he was nevertheless able to think of as his own, he became conscious that his preoccupation with flying was proving an obstacle to the development of personal relationships with any of his female co-workers. No budding relationship seemed to last much longer than the time it took her to realize that he was more interested in talking about airplanes than he was in her – something he found incomprehensible, given that one of his colleagues – a young graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure de la Police, now halfway through the first year of a secondment to the WGPC – repeatedly managed to attract the instant attention of every woman in the room simply by saying anything at all. What Rick found particularly irksome was the guy’s casual dismissal of this supernatural ability as an irrelevance, given that he’d gladly have given half his salary to possess the gift himself.

“Tell me, André – how do you do it? The thing with the babes, I mean – they go all dewy-eyed every time you open your mouth! I can see the little birdies tweeting round their heads while you’re talking: this afternoon it was digital signature algorithms, for Christ’s sake – you had half a dozen of them hanging on your every word within fifteen seconds!”

The young Frenchman put down his cup of coffee and regarded him quizzically. “Should the young ladies not be interested in digital signature algorithms?”

“Er… well, I guess… but can you explain to me why digital signature algorithms are intrinsically more interesting to women than laminar flow aerofoils?”

“Ah, but in the words of the American comedians, it is the way I tell them! You do not talk about the laminar flow aerofoils with the accent, my friend. It is the appeal of the unknown, I think. I am a stranger in this place, so I am enigmatic… I am mysterious!”

“My takeaway from that observation,” observed Rick stoically, “is that being French automatically boosts your perceived sex appeal by getting on for a thousand percent to every woman within earshot, yeah?”

“Here in the United States at least, I think it is so,” replied André with an unselfconscious shrug. He took a sip of his coffee, swallowed it with an obvious effort, then shrugged philosophically.

“Or perhaps digital signatures really are more interesting than aerofoils… who can say? Speaking for myself, I think yes – which is why a few days ago I applied for special training in the investigation of cybercrime. And I have learned first thing this morning that I am accepted! If I had thought the response to my application would be so quickly returned, I would have brought a bottle of champagne with me this morning. Unfortunately, my local convenience store does not sell champagne…”

He shot a glance at the cup of coffee in his hand with an expression of disdain.

“… and so I celebrate with this unspeakable brew instead. I think you should apply also, Rick. It is where the future lies – I have no doubt of this.”

Rick pulled a face, then decisively shook his head.

“I’m no computer geek, André. Cybercrime’s a black box as far as I’m concerned… putting it bluntly, what little of it has come my way does my head in. I reckon it’s better all round if I just leave that sort of mystical gobbledegook to the likes of smart guys who understand that kind of thing. People like you.”

“You know more about aviation technology than I will ever understand,” retorted his friend. “We all have our strengths and our weaknesses – this is life, yes? We must exploit the strengths and work on the weaknesses if we are to succeed… you and I, we work to detect and prevent crime – it is the life we have chosen. But traditional criminal activity… it is a thing of the past, Rick! Who can assault anyone else and hope to get away with it when the locations of both people are being logged by their cell phones and triangulated by satellite every second of every day? Who can rob a jewellery store with any hope of selling the loot when the molecular signature of every precious stone in the world worth more than a few dollars is recorded in a searchable database on the internet? There are no traditional thieves any longer: the successful criminal of today has a university degree in economics, politics, international law or information technology – if not two or more! As Don Corleone said, ‘a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns’. Have you read ‘The Godfather’? Do you remember what it says in the… in the… on the page at the front of the book?”

“I only ever saw the movie,” admitted Rick. “Why? What does it say in the foreword?”

André snapped his fingers. “Ah yes, the foreword – that is it! It says, ‘Behind every great fortune there is a crime.’ These words, they were spoken by Balzac, who experienced so much hardship during his life that he knew what he was talking about, I think! There is much wisdom in that book… if you asked me to recommend a single work on professional management, I could not think of a better one.”

Rick threw him a quizzical look. “Er… are we talking about the same thing here, André?”

“Bien sûr! Organized crime – it is just big business without regard to the legal restrictions imposed on it. And why? Because the creation of a trading bloc with the reach of the Futura project means there is more money to be made now than at any time in the history of this planet – that is why! Only very bold men play for such high stakes: such people intend to win by any means possible – and they do not allow an operation like the WGPC stand in their way. We are an inconvenience to them, nothing more than that.”

“So… if that’s really how you see it, why are you here, André?”

“I am not a bold man,” admitted André with a shrug. “I try to get my own way by more subtle means – for when I die, I hope it will be of old age! And yet I cannot turn away from this wish to understand how this world in which we live works, and perhaps to make my mark upon it. I have learned enough in my role here to know that there is a lot that I do not know.”

He glanced quickly around and lowered his voice.

“There’s so much that is hidden from us, Rick! That fiction you read… it does not even scrape the surface. Just because most conspiracy theorists are geeks, that doesn’t mean there are no conspiracies; the error those weirdos make is to think they can expose them! It is obvious… any really incriminating conspiracy is going to be so well concealed that there is no way it will be discovered by some paranoid misfit! I realized that long ago – and it is one of the reasons I joined the Sûreté: if I had not tried to make sense of it all, I would have become a conspiracy theorist myself – and I value my sanity, you know! In this job I keep my finger on the pulse – and this reassures me that I am not going mad. Also… I need to believe that I’m doing something to help the world survive, instead of just dropping out and watching other people screw it all up for me. You can understand that, yes?”

“Yeah,” agreed Rick, “I get that. So what’s with this secondment to the WGPC, then? You’re a smart guy – aren’t you more use to them back in France?”

“They tell me I have a… a sixth sense about all the things going on behind closed doors – and there are a lot of things going on behind closed doors in Futura,” replied André earnestly. “They want me to learn as much as possible about international security before I return, obviously – but…”

He lowered his voice. “There is a little more, I think. I sense the European politicians do not trust the Futura administration, even though they are signatories of the treaty that created it. They want somebody in the camp of the enemy, I think.”

“And…” replied Rick thoughtfully, “does the Boz know he’s got a spy on his team?”

“I think maybe he has guessed,” replied his new friend airily, “but perhaps this is because I told him so the day after I started work! Why attempt to conceal the obvious from somebody who knows it already anyway? But you have an expression about speaking of the devil…”

Within a community with more than its fair share of ambitious youngsters with their eyes on the next career move, Commander Bojanowski was something of a rarity: a blunt man of lowly origins and exceptionally sharp wits, whose level of instinctive mistrust in anyone was directly proportional to the number of academic letters after their name. André got along with him famously, and having spent more than enough time trying to make up for his own lack of paper credentials, Rick found him a breath of fresh air.

“How you guys doin’? You briefing Rick on the latest conspiracy theories, André?”

“Just the older ones today, Commander,” replied André with a twinkle in his eye. “For example, did you realize that the ratio of the perimeter to the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza lies within less than one percent of the value of twice pi? But the ancient Egyptians did not know how to calculate pi! Now obviously this cannot be a coincidence, so…”

Bojanowski held up his hand in protest. “So the pyramid was magicked into existence out of thin air by invisible aliens from Mars, right? Keep it for another time, André… right now I need to talk to Rick.”

André tapped his nose conspiratorially.

“Ah, yes! I think maybe I can guess what that is about… we will catch up later, Rick – you will be attending the interstate tax fraud briefing at eleven hundred, yes?”

Rick looked a little confused. “Briefing at eleven… sure, André.”

His friend took his leave with a cheery wave, and their commander promptly sat down in the chair he’d just vacated.

“No need to look so worried, Rick! I need to make use of a very specific area of knowledge that you’re apparently exceptionally well versed in, that’s all. The contents of this should provide you with the background to what I’m going to need to know.”

He handed Rick a thick file. Rick took it, gave the front cover a cursory inspection, and then looked back at him uncertainly.

“Commander… this is marked ‘Strictly Confidential’, with a list of ranks authorized to read it. I don’t see mine there.”

“The regulations state that personnel of the required seniority to read it can authorize access to lower grades in exceptional circumstances,” replied Bojanowski dismissively. “These circumstances are exceptional, given that you’ll be a key member of the investigation team. It’s the Svencorp operation.”

Rick’s eyes opened wide. “Svencorp? Me? If I was on the team at all, I’d have expected to be signed up as the teaboy’s assistant’s gofer!”

“Problem?” replied Bojanowski with an amused eyebrow. “Every team needs a gofer… but that’s not the reason. You’re on the team because I specifically requested you, on the recommendation of several of your colleagues – including André.”

Rick blinked back at him. “That’s… that’s very generous of André, but…”

“Generosity be damned,” snorted Bojanowski. “We don’t do sentiment in this place, Rick – you must have realized that by now. This is about getting the resources I need: nothing more, nothing less. For your information, I didn’t want this assignment. These guys specialize in bankrolling cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields of application. Medical and agrochemical accounts for a sizable chunk of it; space exploration’s in there too, but the big money is in terrestrial aerospace. I felt it should be handled by somebody who understands that field a lot better than me, and I told them so – but they ordered me to head it up anyway. However, that means I get to choose the people I want on my team – and I sure as hell intend use that privilege to minimize my chances of screwing it up… because it’s gonna be my head on the block if the whole thing falls apart.”

He leaned forward in his chair and eyed Rick pensively.

“Just between you and me, Rick, everything I know about aeronautics could be written on the back of a ten-dollar bill – don’t you go spreading that around, you hear – but I’ve been talking about this project with André, and he tells me you’re a walking encyclopaedia on the subject. ‘Is that right?’ I say to him. ‘Yeah’, he says. Okay… so a clued-up subject matter expert is a damned sight more use to me right now than some smooth-talking college boy who knows how to ingratiate himself with the right people to progress his career. We get a lot of those around here – mostly the ones who weren’t smart enough to land themselves plum jobs in industry – and they’re no use to me, whereas you are. It’s that simple. You want out?”

“Er… no! No – of course not! That’s to say… er… when do we start?”

“That’s the attitude I like to see. You and André will be getting the lowdown from their perspective tomorrow afternoon: I’ll get the schedule and location uploaded to your diary… you got an expensive-looking suit? Good – wear it: I don’t want them getting the idea we don’t pay our lieutenants enough to live on. That aside, between now and tomorrow I want you to go through that dossier from cover to cover. Prior to that, I’ve arranged for a preliminary briefing with our top brass at 09:30 tomorrow morning for us to plan out an approach to this – and I’d like to think that I’m going to have at least one person with me who knows what he’s talking about by then. Conference Room Six, fourteenth floor: you’ll need to confirm your grade at the desk as you leave the elevator, but I’ll have left word that you’re attending.”

Rick spent the remainder of the afternoon struggling with the intricacies of the report, before taking it home with him, stopping off on the way at an up-market menswear outlet to buy the expensive suit that he’d lied earlier about already having. Having returned to his apartment, he continued reading and re-reading the document into the early hours, finally falling asleep in his chair with it in his lap.

The briefing itself occupied the entire morning, with the first hour of it being taken up by a formal presentation of the circumstances leading up to the initiation of the investigation. Rick was mildly startled to discover that the impetus had come, not from the higher echelons of the World Government, but from within the multinational corporation itself: the group’s technical director had apparently approached the WGPC with a formal request that they should be involved in the investigation at the outset.

“That is unusual, no?” asked André. “Multinational corporations do not usually like the police interfering in their affairs – they tend to have… what is the expression... skeletons in their closets?”

“True,” agreed Bojanowski, “but don’t read too much into that, André. If they knew that they themselves were about to be investigated by the World Government, they’d probably want to make it look like they’re whiter than white at the outset by volunteering first. Also, they probably reckon that if they call us in, they’re less likely to find themselves on the receiving end of a raid. This way they’ll be in a better position to be able to control where we go and what we see.”

“And were they about to be investigated by the World Government?”

“Yeah… it’s my understanding that they were,” affirmed Bojanowski after a short pause. “Whether they already knew they were about to be investigated, we don’t know – but unless we can establish to the contrary, I intend to assume they did know. They’re big enough to have friends in high places.”

He leaned over the console and selected an item from the drop-down menu that had appeared on the screen, causing an organization chart to appear on the display at the front of the room.

“This is what they emailed me following my request to be supplied with details of their senior management structure. This guy here – Charles Wainwright – is the one who initially contacted us: he’s their technical director. He works closely with Khurshid Yazdani – that’s him on the left – who’s their financial controller. Wainwright’s been at pains to assure us that Yazdani concurs absolutely with his concerns about the shenanigans they’ve uncovered, and that the question of which one initiated the contact with us was determined merely by who was available to do it: neither suspects the other of any wrongdoing. Both report to this guy at the top of the screen – John Svenson, CEO of Svencorp, and founder of the consortium which bears his name. Wainwright goes on to tell us that the board’s decision to involve us was unanimous… but I wouldn’t read too much into that. Based on the notes taken at preliminary meeting with them a few days ago, it’s pretty damn clear Svenson rules that place with an iron fist in an iron glove – so the one thing we probably can be sure about is that he wants us involved. The others will have most likely just rubber-stamped his view.”

Rick nodded. “What sort of shenanigans are we investigating here? Do we know?”

“In broad terms… yes,” replied Bojanowski. “A substantial sum of money – and I really do mean substantial – has apparently disappeared from one of their key accounts. Svenson’s said to be apoplectic – understandably – and the other board members are on the point of having nervous breakdowns trying to identify the cause. We’ve been told that Yazdani suspects a computer hack of unparalleled complexity, whereas Wainwright reckons it’s an unfortunate software glitch with unusually serious consequences. We need to establish which – if either – it is, and we need to determine what happened to the money. With a view to getting it back, obviously.”

“How much money are we talking about, Commander?” asked Rick quietly.

“We don’t have an exact figure yet,” replied Bojanowski, “because they’re still trying to assess the extent of the theft – if that’s what it is. But we’ve been informed that the total amount that’s gone missing is close on four thousand seven hundred million dollars.”

There being no pins to drop within earshot, the two lieutenants’ jaws duly obliged.

“Like I said… a substantial sum,” continued Bojanowski mildly. “The corporation itself is of course worth one hell of a lot more than the amount that’s gone missing, but their stock valuation would go through the floor if their shareholders got wind of what’s happening… so maybe that’s why they’re keen the WGPC clears it up before anything gets out. If they want to survive – and I reckon it’s reasonable to assume they do want to survive – they’ve no choice.”

He reached down to the console on the desk, picked up a remote and pressed one of its buttons. The screen behind him changed to show a schematic of activities and their interdependencies.

“We’ll be setting up remote access to their systems to enable our software experts to download and examine spreadsheets, audit trails, interrogation protocols – anything at all that could have any bearing on what appears to have happened. The guy who heads up their IT section told me in a call that that’s all straightforward enough to arrange. That said, I’m not satisfied – and the reason I’m not satisfied is that I don’t trust them to give us unrestricted access to everything we’re going to want to see. We’ve already been told that certain confidential emails can’t be made available to us without breaking our own data protection laws – and strictly speaking, that’s true – but that leaves them as sole arbiters of what constitutes a violation of the law. What I’m going to need therefore is a heads-up on whether they’re stretching the definition of illegality to include material that’s merely embarrassing from their point of view. And to make damn sure I get it, this is what we’re gonna do…”

The image on the screen behind him changed once more to show an organizational flowchart.

“André will provide the liaison between our IT specialists and their board of directors. He’ll be arranging meetings with them on a regular basis to report progress… but I also want somebody on the inside – and that, Rick, will be you. As far as they’re concerned, you’ll be there to ensure a smooth running of the operation on a day-to-day basis, to facilitate our remote team being granted access to all the material they deem pertinent to our investigation, and to iron out any misunderstandings that could hamper its progress – but of at least equal importance, I want you keeping me informed on what’s going on in there after we’ve delivered our weekly progress reports to them and left the building. They won’t trust you, so you’ll have to play just a little clueless about what’s going on around you. I know you don’t miss much, which is one of the reasons I wanted you on this team – but to them, we’re just dumb cops who don’t understand business stuff, and I don’t want them thinking otherwise.”

Rick frowned. “Given that they instigated this, aren’t they going to expect to see people who do understand business stuff working with them on this?”

Bojanowski nodded. “I daresay they will – but this is how I want it done. These are guys who are used to solving their own problems: they’ll most likely have done a few highly questionable – if not downright illegal – things of their own on the way, so they won’t like us poking our noses in unless there’s a very good reason for it. And until I’m clear on what that reason is, I want them thinking we’re a bit simple-minded when it comes to understanding the politics of all this – not least because I’ve insisted upon being given facilities within the building, with unrestricted access to the senior management team as and whenever we deem it necessary.”

“They are not going to like that,” murmured André.

“I don’t care if they like it or not,” retorted Bojanowski. “They’ve pledged us their full support for this investigation, and I intend to hold them to it to the letter. The word from Futura is that our paymasters are demanding we do a very comprehensive job of this.”

Rick leaned forward. “Oh? Didn’t you once tell us they keep their noses out of our investigations to avoid accusations of political interference? Why the interest in this one?”

“Classified,” replied Bojanowski stiffly.

“What – they’re keeping it even from the police?” asked André, visibly irritated. “Or is it only the ones with less seniority and experience like us who are not trusted?”

“I don’t know – and that’s the truth,” admitted Bojanowski with a frown, “but if it is just from officers at the bottom end of the food chain, one thing I can tell you is that the interdict on information extends at least as high as me. I understand perfectly how you feel about this, André – my own reaction when I was told was the same as yours just now – but there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can say is that we’re expected to deliver on this from people who have one hell of a lot of muscle where it matters – so don’t you guys go letting me down, okay?”

As they walked out of the briefing room, André hung back with Bojanowski for a few minutes while Rick returned to his desk to collect his car keys and deal with any emails that required his immediate attention. He was just dispatching the final one when André joined him, his face unreadable.

“Problem?”

“I do not know,” replied his friend quietly. “Something does not make sense about all this. It feels wrong… do not ask me to explain, because I cannot. I have just been trying to get him to clarify a few points that were touched on during the briefing, but everything I ask is like reaching into a fog, you know? It is not that he is being unhelpful: it is just that he himself does not know. In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories – I do not remember which one – Holmes refused to take on a case of national importance because the politician who was consulting him wanted to withhold information that was critical to the investigation. I feel that is how we are being treated now… by someone whose identity is concealed from us. The difference is that we are not independent agents who can simply walk away.”

Rick nodded with a grin. “I’ve read that one too – just for the record, it was ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’. Oh well… I guess if there is a mystery over and above the one we’re supposed to be solving, we’re just going to have to use the ‘leetle gray cells’… you know, like that fictional French detective with some kooky name I couldn’t pronounce when I was a kid… ‘parrot’ or something…”

His friend gave him a disdainful look. “I think you mean Hercule Poirot, the fictional Belgian detective… but we will not split the hairs. No doubt the brains of Belgians do not look very different from ours.”

Chapter 2

“The people in this place… they know how to spend money,” murmured André as his eyes roved around the reception area into which they’d just walked. “This area… it could not have been installed for less than a quarter of a million dollars, I think.”

“Maybe they own the company that installed it,” replied Rick thoughtfully, “but then, I guess no expense gets spared when you want to create a good first impression, yeah?  Let’s wait till we get past this façade before jumping to conclusions. I’ll bet you we find the corridors the other side of those doors haven’t any paint on the walls.”

Content to allow his friend a few more moments to admire the décor, Rick surveyed the three uniformed assistants not presently dealing with an enquiry, concluded that none of them looked particularly keen to make himself useful, duly picked one at random and walked over to the desk. The assistant looked up as he approached, his obvious irritation at having had his reverie interrupted duly replaced by a forced smile.

“Can I be of assistance, sir?”

“Lieutenants Fraser and Verdain from the WGPC,” replied Rick. “We’re here for a meeting with some of your directors in… seventeen minutes from now. Can you tell us where we’re supposed to go?”

The young man reached out and touched three different areas of the computer monitor in front of him with painstaking deliberation.

“The system’s showing a meeting due to commence on the hour which has both your names listed as attendees, sir. The primary contact for external attendees is listed as… Dr Charles Wainwright. Would that be the meeting you’re referring to, sir?”

“If that’s what it says on your screen, I’ll take your word for it.”

Another key was pressed, and two small cards shot out of a slot in the side of the monitor. Rick automatically caught them as they dropped off the front of the desk and handed one to André. The assistant looked up from the monitor and addressed himself to the mid-point between the two lieutenants, speaking with emotionless mechanical precision.

“Your appointment is on the twenty-third floor, which is accessible via executive elevator numbers three and four. Your passes will admit you to executive elevator number three. When the car arrives, please hold one of the passes against the panel by the door when you enter; the car will then transport you directly to the senior executives’ suite, where you will be met upon arrival. Enhanced security privileges will then be enabled on your passes, granting you unimpeded access to the conference room. In the unlikely event of an elevator malfunction, please use the red emergency communicator button to the left of the door to summon assistance. Have a nice day, sir.”

Rick returned a forced smile in response to the emotionless valediction with an effort, muttering ‘I’ll give it my best shot’ through clenched teeth as they walked away from the desk through the bustling ground floor lobby towards the indicated elevator. As the doors closed and the car began to accelerate upwards, he looked at André quizzically.

“Was that guy even human, André? I’ve had conversations with paper towel dispensers that had more personality than…”

André held up his hands in mock protest at the complaint.

“Hey, don’t let it get to you, mon ami! It cannot be much fun having to repeat almost the same set of instructions a hundred times every day. At least he has a job – and if the amount of money they have spent decorating that lobby down there is anything to go by, they probably pay him well enough. Maybe that is all he wants out of life – who can say?”

“Well, I guess some people are easily satisfied,” replied Rick with a shrug. “I don’t know, André – maybe I just get impatient with people who don’t struggle to better themselves.”

“You do not know he is not trying,” replied his friend with just a suggestion of reproof in his tone, “but if the idea bothers you, might that be because you’re looking into your own soul, and do not like what you see there?”

Rick opened his mouth to snap a sharp retort, promptly closed it again, and then grimaced sheepishly.

“Guess maybe. I got to where I am pretty much from a standing start – and I reckon I’ve done okay – but doing okay isn’t enough. It’s important never to stop fighting for what you want.”

“And… exactly what do you want, my friend?”

“Dunno,” replied Rick with just a hint of exasperation creeping into his voice. “I used to think it was just having a plane of my own to fly, and a clear blue sky to fly it in… but now I’ve got enough spare cash to do that most weekends – and it’s not enough. Fact is, I don’t know what I want.”

The elevator car began to decelerate rapidly, and he pulled a face as he felt his stomach rising in his chest as it slowed to a halt. “But whatever it is… I haven’t found it yet.”

The doors slid silently open, and they stepped out into a luxuriously carpeted concourse, to the side of which was situated a reception desk bedecked with exotic plants. Adjacent to it, a small alcove containing within it a vending machine and round table covered with newspapers and magazines was just visible through the foliage. Sitting behind a spacious and uncluttered desk, an elegant young woman with short dark hair and pale grey eyes was engaged in a conversation with a man who was busily attempting to connect a complex-looking piece of hardware to the computer terminal on the desk.

As they approached, Rick found himself momentarily disorientated by the unfamiliar accents in which they were arguing, only to realize a fraction of a second later that both were Brits.

“I think the installation may have to be deferred until after Olivia returns, Martin. Mr Svenson will require both of us in attendance very shortly, and after that I’ll be screening the latest batch of samples for the rest of the day.”

“Just a few more minutes should see it up and running,” protested the other indignantly. “Can’t you get this bloody meeting rescheduled, Judy? He listens to you…”

The young woman noted the approaching lieutenants, glanced at the clock on the wall opposite, and shook her head.

“Not a chance, Martin… this’ll have to wait. I’ll see you in the conference room shortly.”

The man shot her a disdainful look, then accepting the inevitable with as much grace as possible under the circumstances, raised his hand to touch an imaginary cap in mock deference.

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

He disconnected the gadget and set off down the corridor with it tucked under his arm, leaving the young woman alone to deal with the new arrivals.

“How may I help you, gentlemen?”

“Lieutenants Fraser and Verdain from the WGPC – we’re here to see Dr Charles Wainwright.”

The young woman’s inscrutable gaze fell on each of their faces for perhaps half a second each, after which she glanced down at her monitor, then looked up with a demure smile, evidently satisfied.

“Yes, that’s right – thank you, Lieutenant… your meeting is confirmed for 1500 hours in Conference Room Two. Would you give me your identity badges, please?”

She took the proffered badges, swept them over a scanner with an elegant wave of her hand, and handed them back.

“You now have clearance to move freely throughout the Keep, gentlemen; please keep the badges on your person, and visible at all times. I’ll inform Dr Wainwright of your arrival: if you’ll just take a seat over there, he’ll be with you shortly.”

Having directed the two lieutenants with an elegant movement of her head towards the alcove, she glanced at the CCTV camera covering the reception area before picking up a file from the desk and walking away down the corridor and around the corner with the poise of a model on a catwalk.

“You’d think we were the criminals,” muttered Rick, sparing the camera an irritated glance as they walked over to the little alcove and sat down. He gazed around at the opulence of the architecture surrounding them in awe for a few moments, then glanced down at his new suit, wondering if perhaps he should have spent a little more on it.

“What did she call this place – ‘the keep’… was that what she said? Strange name. I wonder who came up with that – and why? And talking about strange words, I’ve been chewing over that kooky pronunciation she used when she referred to my rank just now – you know, the ‘lefftenant’ thing. Do they spell it like that over there?”

“They are English,” replied his friend with a dismissive shrug. “Who can understand the English? No, they write it as we do in France – and since it is a French word, at least that is logical! Why the Americans say it as it should be said but the English do not, I cannot say. They are strange people, I think.”

“Understatement of the century,” muttered Rick. He stood up and walked over to one of the pictures hanging on the wall, frowned thoughtfully, and then brushed his fingertip lightly over the texture of the brushwork.

“Jeez – it is an original! How much money do these guys have, for Chrissake? They build these places like palaces: oil paintings, statues, carpets… even the receptionists look like professional models…”

His companion shook his head. “These organizations… they have more money than they know what to do with, it is true – but that woman is not a receptionist. She is more important than that, I think. She is covering for someone else.”

Rick shot him a glance. “Why – what did I miss?”

“The perfume she is wearing,” replied André. “you smelt it, yes? I recognize it… it is French – top of the range, and one of the most expensive on the market. A receptionist might perhaps buy a bottle as an indulgence or be given it by an admirer, but either way she would not wear it for work.”

“You an expert on perfumes, then?”

“You surprise me with your knowledge of aeroplanes,” retorted his friend mildly. “In return, I surprise you with my knowledge of perfumes. The chemical composition of that brand she wears, it is an industrial secret… but I could write it down for you right now if you were interested.”

The young woman returned, leading a uniformed bellboy in his late teens pushing a trolley laden with sandwiches and assorted nibbles, plus an ice bucket containing several cans of drinks.

“Just leave it over there, Jim. We’ll also be needing two large flasks of coffee: freshly percolated Brazilian arabica please – none of that novelty stuff the chef sources for the vending machines – to be served within ten minutes of the start of the meeting.”

“Right away, Ms Chapman.”

The two lieutenants exchanged surreptitious glances as the lad scurried away. A door of one of the side-offices opened a few seconds later, and a bespectacled man in his early fifties emerged from inside. Oblivious to the presence of the two lieutenants, he immediately took several steps towards Ms Chapman, sparing the trolley a cursory satisfied glance as he did so.

“Ah… well done! Thank you so much for chasing that up, Judy – you know what John’s like if he hasn’t got something to munch when people around him are trying to reason with him. Also, thanks for holding the fort out here… we can expect Olivia back tomorrow, I hope?”

The young woman’s features remained unreadable. “Yes, Dr Wainwright – I spoke to her this morning: she’s feeling much better now – and…”

As he drew breath to reply, she indicated in the direction of the two new arrivals with a nod of her head.

“… your visitors from the WGPC have arrived.”

“Oh, right… yes, of course.” Wainwright’s expression perceptibly tightened, and he turned to acknowledge the two lieutenants sitting in the corner for just long enough to offer them a raised hand by way of a greeting, before turning back to the woman once more.

“Let’s see now, Judy… the presentation’s set up and ready to roll, and we should have enough hard copies for everyone. I know John’s in his office, but I think he’s still got Donald with him, so he might be a few minutes late. Is Peter around?”

“He was in the spare office when I last saw him, Dr Wainwright, so he’s probably just trying to find Adam’s notes. I don’t imagine Adam would have had time to brief Peter before he flew out.”

“No… I don’t suppose he would,” muttered Wainwright absently. “Never mind… I daresay we’ll manage. You’d better find Khurshid too – we’re going to need him. Also, if I could make just one more imposition, let the restaurant know we might be dropping by around five for a buffet supper if the meeting overruns. I want them ready for us; no junior execs congregating in there at the end of the day before setting off for the local wine bars, okay?”

“Of course, Doctor Wainwright,” replied Judy emotionlessly. “I’ll deal with it – in the meantime if you’d like to take your guests through to the conference room, I’ll follow with the others when I’ve rounded them up.”

Having watched the whole exchange from the side-lines, Rick and André swapped glances as she set off down the corridor once more.

“Unless, of course, she works with the admirer…” murmured Rick speculatively.

André shook his head doubtfully. “Perhaps… but even though he is obviously important, that man is not in command here – and somehow I do not think that woman would accept gifts from anyone less.”

Wainwright walked over to the alcove, and the two lieutenants stood up to greet him. As they shook hands, Wainwright’s eyes flickered towards their security badges.

“Gentlemen… sorry to have kept you waiting… I’m Charles Wainwright – and you are… Lieutenants Verdain and Fraser, yes? Welcome to Svencorp Tower, gentlemen: as Judy here indicated just now, I suggest we go through to the conference room at once and make ourselves comfortable while she’s finding the others.”

He led the way down the corridor towards an open door at the far end, and the three men began to spread out in search of a chair each. As they did so, the door of the adjacent room opened and two men emerged, still engaged in a heated discussion that clearly hadn’t been resolved within the time allocated to the meeting. The older man was making little effort to control his obvious frustration, while the younger one was visibly controlling himself with an effort as the other gesticulated wildly at him.

“Platitudes – that’s what I’m hearing, Donald! ‘Yes Mr Svenson… no Mr Svenson… three bags full Mr Svenson… oh dear me we seem to have hit a little snag, Mr Svenson’ – I wasn’t born yesterday, man!”

The other man’s features were tightly set. “We will deliver on time and within budget, Mr Svenson. We merely need to be certain that the additional loans we’ve requested to help us deal with these temporary setbacks will be forthcoming to pay our subcontractors. They’ve set a deadline of the end of this month for receipt of payment: after that they’ve told me they’ll withdraw their people from my facility – and I don’t doubt they’ll be as good as their word.”

“Oh, you’ll get your money, Donald,” growled Svenson. “You just concentrate on making damn sure those engines of yours are serviceable, okay? This is small change we’re talking about here… it’s not like I need to raid my kids’ piggy banks.”

The other eyed him emotionlessly. “It may be small change to you, Mr Svenson, but it’s the difference between life and death to a company the size of Fairfield Engines. Those propulsion units don’t leave our compound until that final tranche is in our current account.”

Svenson’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you…” He stopped in mid-sentence upon spotting the gathering in the conference room, and his expression changed instantly.

“Ah, our law-enforcing friends have arrived – mustn’t keep them waiting! And refreshments as well, I see… that’s good: these meetings are such dry affairs… Charles, why don’t you give the boys in blue a sandwich each? I’ll just get Judy to see Donald out, and then we’ll join you.”

Wainwright nodded. “Of course, John. Sorry we didn’t have time to catch up, Donald – later maybe, if you’re still around?”

Fairfield had been eyeing the two lieutenants warily throughout the exchange. Upon hearing his name he visibly jumped, then shook his head.

“What? Oh, er… sorry, Charles – I’ve got a few things to attend to back at the plant, you understand. Another time, perhaps.”

“No problem, Donald… whenever you’re in town.”

Svenson propelled his visitor away in the direction of the returning Judy, transferred custody of him to the young woman with perfunctory brevity, then turned on his heel and marched back towards the conference room, into which three more men had just walked seconds ahead of him. Following them through the door, he rubbed his hands and scrutinised the sandwiches with a covetous eye before turning his attention to the little group that were now arranging themselves around the table.

“I’ll say he’s got a few things to attend to! But never mind about him now – we’ve got more important things to deal with. Let’s get the introductions over and done with… Lieutenants Fraser and Verdain from the WGPC are here at our request to investigate the matter we’ve been concerned with these last few days. Are you guys okay with first names? Makes sense if we’re going to be working closely till you’ve sorted this goddam mess out for us, so what are they?”

“I’m Rick, and this is André,” assented Rick after a fraction of a second pause.

“Great… no point getting hung up on titles, eh? This is Doctor Charles Wainwright – he’s my technical director – and that guy over there is Mr Khurshid Yazdani, who’s our financial controller. Over there is Martin Orson, our systems manager – Martin reports to Dr Wainwight, and is working on the front line to mitigate the effects of this godforsaken debacle – and on his left is my son, Peter… Ah! Judy – welcome back – you’ve seen him out the door, have you? Good… Rick and André – you’ve have already met Judy, yes? Judy Chapman is Dr Wainwright’s special advisor on petroleum derivatives: we call on her for an expert opinion whenever we start getting edgy about what our partners’ eggheads are spending our money on. They tell me that biofuels are the up-and-coming thing these days, and Judy knows one hell of a lot more on that subject than your average gal in the street – isn’t that right, Charles? Help yourselves to victuals, and we’ll get started.”

He leaned back in his chair and watched the various participants at the gathering silently as they each took it turns to assemble a small snack on their plates, before turning to address the two lieutenants directly.

“So – Rick and André – it’s our understanding you people are assembling a team of cybercrime experts to examine our audit trails remotely… which is great. We’re busy people, and we can’t afford delays to hamper our operations caused by our having to redeploy key personnel. We have a major deadline approaching fast, and we need this resolved even faster. I’ve been told your commander has deployed one of you two gentlemen to work with us on site here in a support capacity – and believe me, we do appreciate that. We’re nevertheless mindful that our systems are highly specialized, and that becoming proficient in their use takes both instruction and time – in view of which your commander needs to understand that we may be unable to divert human resources at short notice to deal with queries other than those directly related to the investigation itself.”

“We will occupy as little of your time as we can, sir, subject to it not hindering our investigation,” replied André stiffly.

Svenson regarded him intently for a second. “Yes, of course… just let us know what you need – I daresay either Charles or Khurshid here can sort you out. Lieutenant Fraser – Rick – it’s my understanding that you’ll be working with us here in this building. Can I assume you’re familiar with the sort of challenges that face large and influential corporations such as this one?”

“I’m a detective within a department of the WGPC currently specializing in the investigation of cybercrime, Mr Svenson,” replied Rick evenly. “I’m not however an expert in money matters – and I may need to request assistance from you or your colleagues if we encounter material of potential relevance to our investigation that we’re unable to understand.”

Svenson snorted. “Anything financial, just ask for Khurshid – he’s your man. Though it’s been said that you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about the realities of running a business by selling apples from a barrow in a street market for a few weeks. If you’ve ever tried doing anything of the kind, you’ll get by.”

“I mis-spent my youth in other ways,” admitted Rick wryly, “but we have several officers with expertise in business studies working remotely on this, so if Mr Yazdani’s unavailable, I’ll speak to them.”

“Sounds good. So – let’s get to the reason we’re here, shall we? Charles… you’ve got all this summarized in a presentation, I understand. Fill them in, please.”

“Yes, Mr Svenson.”

Wainwright reached forward and waved his identity badge over a screen on the panel in front of him. Instantly a small loudspeaker situated beside it crackled into life.

“You are accessing classified material: please confirm your identity verbally to proceed.”

Wainwright blinked, then shot an irritated glance at Orson before leaning over the panel to supply the requested authentication, modifying his tone slightly to emphasise his job title in the process.

“I am Charles Wainwright – the Technical Director of this organization.”

A small array of lights flickered into life on the panel, then just as quickly faded and died once more.

“Your identity has been confirmed… thank you, Doctor Wainwright.”

Svenson grunted approvingly and turned to Orson.

“Good work, Martin. I’ll admit I was kind-of sceptical when you proposed these new security measures, but it looks like they do pretty much what you said they would after all. At least something works around here.”

The smug expression just starting to creep across Orson’s features evaporated, and he accepted the back-handed compliment with an appropriately deferential nod. In the meantime, the screen built into the far wall of the room had lit up, displaying an annotated timeline overlaid on an image of a mainframe installation.

Wainwright glanced at the screen, then stepped to one side of it before addressing the meeting.

“This is our principal financial clearing house, which is situated on this floor of the building, adjacent to the west face of the Keep. Ten days ago, a routine audit of our most recent backup threw up extensive differences to our financial records since the backup taken the previous day. Further investigation of these discrepancies revealed that an exceptionally large sum of money had apparently disappeared from one of our accounts. Cross-checking with the bank in question served to confirm that the money had indeed been paid out of our account – but neither the bank nor our own finance division was able to identify the payee. All records pertaining to the identity of the recipient of the payment had been either corrupted or deleted… and it was concluded that we’d been subjected to a cyberattack of unparalleled complexity. The bank refuses to accept responsibility for the transaction, claiming that its own security procedures are watertight, and that the fault lies solely with us for failing to prevent the hack.”

“You bet your ass they do!” growled Svenson darkly. “There’ll be some changes to the composition of their board of directors when I’m through with them…”

He snatched a sandwich from the plate and took an aggressive bite out of it. “Thanks for the heads-up, Charles… has anyone got any questions at this stage? No? Good – so… where are we now, Martin? Are we anywhere nearer finding a solution to all this?”

Orson licked his lips. “Well… my team believe the virus – if that’s what it is – was introduced during a scheduled overnight upgrade to the operating system. The newly-configured file structure appears to have modelled itself on one of our previous backups, and deleted all subsequent transactions, including all incoming payments throughout the interim period. We’ve yet to determine whether our clients’ accounts from which the payments originated have been likewise impacted by the virus. For obvious reasons we don’t want to alarm them – and are therefore having to tread very carefully in all our correspondence.”

Svenson swallowed the last of his sandwich and looked at him with forced patience.

“I asked if we were anywhere nearer finding a solution, Martin. Was that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

“They have made some progress, Mr Svenson.” interjected Wainwright defensively. “They believe they now have a substantially better understanding of the problem than when it was first brought to light.”

“Have they solved it?”

Wainwright shook his head. “Not yet, Mr Svenson. But this is a complex…”

“That’s what I thought.” Svenson swivelled his chair to face the two WGPC lieutenants. “Looks like we’re going to need the resources of the World Government’s bloodhounds after all, gentlemen. I want that money found… and I need an assurance that we’ll get it back before the pressure to drip-feed a few dollars into Fairfield’s bank account becomes irresistible. I’ve got a meeting with his end customer later today: they know something’s not right, and they’re promising to be an almighty sharp pain in my ass if I can’t calm them down.”

“We can begin as soon as you’re ready, Mr Svenson,” replied Rick. “I’ll be acting as your liaison with the WGPC: we recommend that we schedule progress meetings at a rate of one a week initially. Lieutenant Verdain will monitor the progress from HQ. He’ll work with your IT personnel to ensure that our remote team has unrestricted access to the areas of your systems that have been impacted by the cyberattack.  He and I will be in regular contact throughout the investigation.”

“I’d like to think we’re not going to need many of these ‘progress meetings’,” observed Svenson quietly. The tone was unemotional, but the glacial expression in his eyes betrayed his likely response should his expectations not be met.

“As do we, sir,” agreed Rick smoothly. “If you’re able to accommodate our requirements regarding facilities for me to work within this building, we can start pretty much at once.”

“Sounds good to me… and your requirements won’t be a problem,” replied Svenson. “Your commander told us what he wanted at our preliminary meeting, so we’ve set aside an office adjacent to the IT section for the use of the WGPC. I’ll leave that in your hands for obvious reasons, Khurshid.”

“Of course, Mr Svenson.” Yazdani turned to face the two lieutenants, conscious that his boss’s throw-away remark required qualification.

“Mr Svenson is referring to the fact that my daughter works as our liaison between Dr Wainwright and the IT team, Lieutenant Fraser. It’s her office that we’ve assigned for your use – so you’ll be sharing it with her for a few weeks. Mr Svenson is of the view that you’d probably find it beneficial to have immediate access to someone who was familiar with our systems.”

“I appreciate Mr Svenson’s foresight,” replied Rick formally, “but doesn’t your daughter mind having her office commandeered? Won’t this arrangement disrupt her work?”

“Not at all,” replied Yazdani. “Indeed, she suggested it herself when we were discussing where to put you. She’s complained to me on several occasions that she often doesn’t see anyone for hours at a stretch. She’ll have left for the day by the time we’re through here, but I’ll introduce you to her first thing tomorrow morning. Just ask for me at the desk when you arrive.”

“Sounds like that’s all sorted then,” grunted Svenson approvingly. He glanced down at his notes, then turned to Judy Chapman.

“Judy – at our last update you said the results of some of those assay things you do down in that lab of yours weren’t cutting it, and that you’d need to go see our friends across the water again with a view to making alternative arrangements. Has that happened yet?”

“All sorted, Mr Svenson: confirmation came through even before I’d landed at Logan. I’m expecting a delivery within 48 hours.”

“Good. Let me know at once if anything changes.”

Oblivious to the slight tightening of her jaw at the dismissive tone of his reply, Svenson leaned back in his chair and regarded the assembled group with the expression of an emperor surveying his court.

“I reckon we’re done here. There’s things I need to prepare for that meeting with Fairfield’s customer – which would have been easier with Adam on call in case the discussion gets technical, but I daresay we’ll cope. As the good citizens of Boston have been expressing it for the last few centuries, the British are coming – and I want to be damn sure we’re ready for them this time round.”

He shot a glance at the clock on the wall, grimaced, and turned to his son.

“Peter… see these guys out, would you? You might take them for a bite in the restaurant first if they’ve got time. I’d join you – but like I said, I’ve got a meeting to prepare for.”

André took the opportunity to lean sideways and whisper in Rick’s ear.

“What was all that about, Rick? What have the British got to do with this?”

“It goes back to the American Revolution, André,” replied Rick quietly with a grin. “It’s a warning that the enemy’s at the gates, and that battle is about to commence… from which I’m guessing Svenson reckons he’s in for a bumpy ride. Let’s just collect our things and get out of their hair, shall we? Oh – and just for the record…”

He shot a surreptitious glance at Judy Chapman, who had already risen from her seat and was walking through the door ahead of Svenson.

“… I guess you made the right call about her.”

André glanced up, then nodded thoughtfully. “Yes… she buys her own perfume, I think.”

The two lieutenants rose from their chairs and started packing up their laptops. By the time everything had been cleared off the table Orson had quietly slipped away, and Svenson could be seen striding off down the corridor with Yazdani, Wainwright and Judy in tow, leaving his son to see the pair of them off the premises. Peter waited until the departing executives were out of earshot, and then walked round the table to join Rick and André.

“I’m guessing that wasn’t the kind of briefing you guys are used to back at your headquarters, eh?”

“Oh, we get all sorts there,” replied Rick with a wry grin. “One thing you learn very quickly in this job is that there’s no such thing as ‘normal’.”

Peter’s features betrayed the embarrassment he was obviously feeling.

“Don’t concern yourself with Father’s manner; he’s like that with everybody, including family. I’m afraid he’s got this notion that he owns the planet and everybody on it, and we’ve had to learn to take it on the chin – well, that is… most of us have, anyway. You’re not unwelcome as far as the rest of us are concerned, believe me. It’s just that tempers around here have been getting increasingly frayed ever since the incident you’re investigating came to light. Everybody round that table knows they’ve got to present a united front when Father’s on the warpath – you noticed how Charles stepped in earlier to support Martin when he obviously needed it? Father has something of a paranoid streak, I’m afraid – he sees enemies everywhere. As to the incident itself, he’s got his own suspicions as to who’s behind it… but as far as the rest of us can tell, there’s little enough evidence on which to base them.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “Can you elaborate?”

Peter hesitated before replying. “I can… but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let on that it came from me, okay? He was here just before you arrived, so you might have seen him leave.”

André nodded. “We saw somebody accompanying Mr Svenson out of his office just before our meeting started. They appeared to be having a… what is the expression? An ‘animated discussion’, I think.”

“Yes, that’s him – his name’s Donald Fairfield. He’s the CEO of the Fairfield Engines Company – that’s the aviation engineering group whose R&D operation we’ve been bankrolling for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, I’m not that familiar with the work they’re engaged in – and the man who could tell you more about it isn’t here right now.”

“And that is…?”

“My brother, Adam. He’s a test pilot in the WAS, which makes him an invaluable sounding board on technical matters in projects of this kind. Unfortunately, he’s currently on leave – and getting hold of him is kind-of problematic right now. Look… I do know something about the financial side of things, so why don’t we just step into the spare office for a moment, and I’ll see if I can give you some background.”

He led the way into a spacious office nearby, where we waved them into a pair of luxurious leather chairs facing an enormous teak desk, before seating himself comfortably on the other side of it. Rick took a few seconds to admire the décor, comprising at least twenty exquisitely-made models of famous aircraft dotted about the room, several of them protected within cylindrical glass display cases. Peter noted the look.

“You have an interest in model aircraft yourself, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a hobby of mine,” admitted Rick. “You’re very fortunate to have somewhere like this to work, Mr Svenson… back at HQ we’re used to tripping over one another trying to grab the last free desk available each morning. Last man to arrive usually ends up standing.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “This is my idea of heaven!”

Peter Svenson acknowledged the observation with a wistful smile.

“You share that interest with Adam – hence this office. Father always expected Adam would take over from him as CEO when he retired, but Adam had a change of heart and joined the WAS instead. Father took that rather badly, I’m afraid – he’s accustomed to getting his own way in such matters – and the result is that we haven’t seen much of Adam round these parts of late. But you’re not interested in our family squabbles, so let’s get back to the matter in hand.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, collecting his thoughts.

“A couple of years back we lent Fairfield a large sum of money to enable FEC to tender for a prestigious military contract that was up for grabs. Fairfield is a friend of Charles Wainwright’s – the pair of them go way back – and Svencorp got involved on the strength of Charles’s assurance that Fairfield’s company really could do what the client was looking for. It’s the sort of game that only the big boys can play, and Fairfield wouldn’t have had a ghost of a chance without our bankrolling him to the hilt. FEC is a small-scale operation with limited experience of professional marketing, so my father sent in Svencorp’s own sales team – again, on Wainwright’s recommendation – to present Fairfield’s submission to the client on his behalf. It paid off too… rather to his surprise, they won it. Fairfield was over the moon at the time – the deal transformed his company’s image in the eyes of the industry almost overnight – but it seems they’ve now run into some technical issues in the final stages of the development process. Charles tells me it’s to do with the effect of ultra-high temperatures on some of the components within the missile delivery system, and that they need to be modified – something like that. Anyway, he’s been trying to convince Father that these are just teething problems – and for all I know he could be right, given that the technology really is cutting edge – but we’re committed big time now, and Father’s in no mood to listen to excuses. Our own financial stake in this project is already massive, and he isn’t prepared to risk any more money on top of what we’ve already lent FEC. He’s insisting that Fairfield completes the work and delivers the finished product to the customer without any more bailouts from us.”

“And… if Fairfield’s company can’t do that?”

Peter’s features hardened slightly. “Then I guess it would be the end of the line as far as Fairfield is concerned. Father reckons he could cut our losses if that happens by buying out what’s left of them and selling off their equipment, but obviously he’d prefer Fairfield to deliver the goods. There’s more money in it, and it would enhance our own reputation as an astute lender of venture capital. But that aside, Father reckons that Fairfield’s desperate enough to do pretty much anything to save his company from bankruptcy, and that he can do it if he’s got no other option.”

“Sounds to me like that would put pressure on Fairfield to compromise on quality,” observed Rick with a frown. “Wouldn’t that concern you?”

Peter shook his head slowly, obviously choosing his words carefully.

“Provided we get our investment back plus at least a modest profit, it’ll be Fairfield’s head on the block if his merchandise is substandard, not ours. Father knows he’s pushing him hard, but he also knows you don’t make it big in this business by being Mr Nice Guy. In fact, it’s my understanding from something that Adam told me a while back that he’s got a contingency plan in place to counter any attempt Fairfield might make to give us trouble over the way he’s being treated. I don’t know the details because I haven’t been involved, but I do know that Father considers the risk to be real – and Father subscribes to the maxim that forewarned is forearmed.

He glanced at his watch and winced.

“I’m afraid we’re going to be a bit late for the restaurant - the chef leaves punctually at six – but if you’re hungry, those sandwiches in the conference room won’t have been taken away yet. Shall we go back, or do you guys want to get away?”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” replied Rick. “How about you, André?”

André shook his head, and Peter looked relieved.

“I’ll show you out, then. We’ll be going past the office we’ve assigned to you, Rick, so I’ll point it out on the way.”

He ushered the two lieutenants out of the office and led them down the corridor back towards the reception area, where Judy Chapman had just finished checking in a pair of impassive men in sombre grey business suits at the desk and was leading them into the executive suite. The white-haired older one was leisurely thumbing through a set of notes as he walked, but the younger man’s cold blue eyes were flickering everywhere, obviously missing nothing. His gaze settled on the approaching threesome as the two groups converged, and Rick was struck with the fleeting sensation of having been sized up as a potential adversary, then just as quickly dismissed as harmless. Peter eyed them warily as they walked past, then stopped and turned to face his guests.

“I reckon Judy’s going to be busy with those guys for quite a while, so if you’d like to give me your passes I’ll swipe you both out. It’s important not to forget to do it, otherwise the system thinks you’re still here – and that can cause chaos.  Everybody who works within the executive suite refers to it as ‘The Keep’ because entry and egress are so closely monitored.”

“Yes, we heard that term used earlier,” replied Rick. “We wondered why at the time… so where’s this office you mentioned?”

“Ah, sorry! Of course – I almost forgot,” replied Peter apologetically. “It’s this way…”

He led them out of the restricted area, and down the corridor in the direction of the elevators. Upon reaching them, he indicated another corridor leading off at right-angles to the left, at the far end of which stood a vending machine. The right-hand wall of the corridor was composed entirely of glass panels, beyond which an open-plan working area containing multiple banks of computers were visible. Indicating the corridor with a wave of his hand, Peter pointed towards a single glass door in the wall facing the panelling, through which three more doors could be seen leading off the corridor beyond.

“This annexe houses our IT section – that’s Martin Orson’s department. That office there down the corridor on the left has been assigned to you, as we anticipate you’ll be needing regular unrestricted access to our systems manager and his staff. If you ask for Khurshid at the Keep’s reception desk tomorrow morning, he’ll come out and get you set up.”

He led the way over to the elevators and pressed the call button of the nearest one.

“Look, do you mind if I leave you here? There are a few things I need to attend to before I can call it a day.”

“No problem,” replied Rick, “and thanks for your help.”

They shook hands, and Peter turned to retrace his steps back to the maximum-security area, while Rick and André stepped into the elevator whose doors had just opened in front of them. Rick took a deep breath as they closed once more, then broke into a broad grin as the elevator started to descend.

“I reckon we escaped just in time. They didn’t look too friendly!”

“You think they were the customers that Svenson spoke about?” asked André.

“You saw Peter’s reaction to them,” replied Rick, steadying himself as the elevator rapidly gathered speed. “I’d say he’s got a problem with authoritarian types, even when one of them happens to be his own father. Those two were high-ups in the military – you don’t need to be a body language expert to be able to see that. Yeah, I reckon that was them. Peter’s more my kind of guy … okay, so he’s a tad indiscreet, which is obviously a plus as far as we’re concerned – but at least he’s trying to help. That office they’ve set aside looks practical enough to me… but something in your expression tells me you’re not happy. Wanna share it?”

“They have broken the agreement,” replied his friend, shaking his head. “It may be practical, but it is not what we told them we wanted. They are keeping you out of the way, just as the Commander anticipated. The problem is that, given your role within this team as he has defined it, it will be obvious to everybody that where they are putting you is perfectly logical. If we make a fuss about it they will say it is the best they can do, and then we will look stupid. He was right: Svenson sees the WGPC as merely a useful resource that has been requisitioned to perform a task – but he considers our presence in this building to be an inconvenience. You will just have to keep your ears and eyes open even wider, I think.”

Chapter 3

“Good morning, Lieutenant – and welcome aboard, as I believe the expression goes. I trust your journey across town wasn’t too arduous?”

Rick shook his head. “Finding this place isn’t hard: it’s easily the tallest building on the skyline… you just head towards it at every available opportunity.”

“Yes, it is rather large,” acknowledged Yazdani, “and easy to get lost in too. Thank you for buzzing me, Judy… is there still no sign of Olivia, then?”

The Englishwoman shook her head. “It would seem not, Mr Yazdani; whatever’s struck Miss Macleod down is evidently more virulent than we thought. If it goes on any longer, I’ll offer to provide her with a diagnosis myself. It might not be my specialism, but I probably know more about malignant viruses than her doctor does.”

Yazdani’s eyebrows ascended modestly. “Are there no limits to your talents, Ms Chapman?”

“I know very little about finance, Mr Yazdani,” she replied after a moment’s thought, “… but to give myself credit where it’s due, I am working on it.”

“The learning curve never levels out,” Yazdani observed philosophically. “They call me an expert on such matters, but even I go home at the end of each day having learned something I didn’t know at the start of it.”

He turned away from the desk and started leading his guest away down the corridor, but Rick hesitated.

“Peter Svenson said I’d need to get my pass authorized when I arrived this morning…”

Yazdani shook his head. “You don’t need enhanced security privileges in this area of the building unless you enter the Keep itself, Lieutenant. The rest of this floor is covered by the standard protocols – and my daughter’s office is down this corridor and then off to the left, at the far end of the Courtyard.”

Rick looked at him uncertainly. “I’m sorry?”

Yazdani blinked. “Oh!  Yes… of course, you don’t know, do you? The rest of this floor is known colloquially as ‘The Courtyard’ – one of my daughter’s little witticisms that gained sufficient traction to be awarded the status of a semi-official designation: now everybody calls it that. Even Judy refers to it by that name – and Judy isn’t exactly renowned for her sense of humour around here! She’s at her most agreeable after she’s been working on something in her lab, which is on the next floor down.”

“I take it she isn’t usually found manning the reception desk up here, then?”

“If she were,” replied Yazdani dryly, “she’d be the most expensive receptionist in this country – and quite possibly any country! No, Judy works with Charles… she’s our biofuels consultant. At present she’s advising him in our dealings with one of our partners: they need help to overcome some technical issues relating to one of their products.”

A bell chimed inside Rick’s head, and he looked up. “That wouldn’t be the ultra-high temperatures problem at the Fairfield Engines Company, would it?”

“I wasn’t aware that you knew about that, Lieutenant,” replied Yazdani, somewhat startled. “Are all our little headaches public knowledge?”

“Just something Peter Svenson mentioned yesterday,” replied Rick hurriedly with an apologetic smile. “Aircraft design is an interest of mine, so it stuck in my mind. But isn’t it rather unusual to find a biochemist working in a finance corporation?”

“Indeed,” agreed Yazdani, “but fortuitous nonetheless. Charles met her at an international conference on biofuel technology about six months ago – the scale of the Fairfield Engines problem was just becoming apparent, and we were looking for ways to provide them with any help we could. Upon learning something about her background it became obvious just how useful she could be to us, so he offered her a job on the spot. International red tape prevented her from accepting outright, but her employers agreed to let her provide us with consultancy on an ad-hoc basis. Charles informs me she’s been worth her weight in gold ever since – possibly a slight exaggeration there, but the price we pay for the retention of her services suggests not much of one. She spends maybe ninety percent of her time with us here in Boston, and flies back home for a few days every few weeks. My daughter’s office is just down here on the left…”

Yazdani led the way to a small office located within the cul-de-sac down which they had been walking and tapped lightly on the door. Having listened for a reply but hearing none, he opened the door and held it open for Rick to enter, and then followed him into the office.

At the far end of the room, a young woman was balanced precariously on a chair with her back to the door, fumbling inside the top drawer of a tall filing cabinet. Clearly mindful of the risk that she might lose her balance if startled, Yazdani waited quietly until both of her feet were firmly on the chair, then noisily closed the door. The young woman showed no reaction to the sound but continued extracting a bulky folder from the drawer.

“It’s okay, Dad – I know you’re there. Who’s with you – is it the cop?”

Yazdani’s features tightened slightly. “I think you mean the policeman, Kismet – and yes, it is. Come down and say hello, please.”

“Give me a second… I just need to...”

The file fell onto the floor with a resounding thump, and the young woman lithely jumped down off the chair after it, bent down and picked it up before turning to the new arrivals with a sparkling smile. The casual matching light-brown jersey and slacks she wore seemed strangely ill-matched to her proudly aquiline Middle-Eastern features, and just for an instant Rick found himself wondering how Scheherazade might look dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans.

“Hi! You’re joining me in my little fortress of solitude here for a few weeks, right?”

“Lieutenant Fraser, this is my daughter, Kismet. Kismet, this is Lieutenant Fraser.”

They shook hands, and Rick raised an eyebrow. “Kismet? Let me think… Turkish?”

She acknowledged the observation with a modest inclination of her head.

“My mom’s Turkish, Lieutenant. Dad always says he married her for her money, but that’s not true at all. Actually, he loves her to bits – don’t you, Dad?”

“Let us just say the families of both parties perceived it to be a mutually beneficial arrangement,” replied Yazdani, sparing his daughter an admonishing glance for the indiscretion. “It pains me to observe that she’s rather more westernised than her parents in her outlook, Lieutenant, but perhaps that’s for the best if you’re going to working together for a little while. Kismet – you will provide Lieutenant Fraser with any assistance he needs to find his way around our IT systems. If you find that you lack the necessary permissions to access anything pertinent to this investigation, forward a formal request to me and I will deal with it.”

“No problem, Dad.”

Yazdani suppressed a tight smile. “I think perhaps you mean ‘Yes, Father’, but I shan’t embarrass Lieutenant Fraser by insisting upon it on this occasion.”

“Thanks, Dad – but I think we can manage. There’s not much on this system I can’t get into if I put my mind to it.”

“Yes… you don’t need to remind me,” murmured Yazdani. “I would however prefer to do this by the book, Kismet. Mr Svenson is quick to express his dissatisfaction when rules are not adhered to, and if you play fast and loose with company property, I will be the one who must endure his wrath.”

Kismet looked suitably chastised. “Yes, Father.”

“Oh, stop play-acting, Kismet! I’ll leave you to settle in, Lieutenant. If you find that Kismet’s antics are preventing you from working, let me know and I will speak to her about it.”

He solemnly withdrew, casting one last warning glance in Kismet’s direction before closing the door behind him. Kismet stuck her tongue out at the door the second it clicked shut, and then turned back to face Rick with a wicked smile on her face.

“Don’t be fooled by the stern parent act, Lieutenant – he’s only this stuffy when other people are around. He’s lots of fun really.”

“I guess being seen to behave like an adult when you actually are one is a curse in all cultures,” replied Rick with a grin. “And please… it’s Rick. Where would you like me to set up shop?”

She shrugged. “Not more than one cable length from a power socket is usually a good idea. I usually sit in that corner over there, facing into the room, but that’s just because I don’t like having my back to the door. It’s kind-of hard playing online games at the end of the day if you know they can sneak up on you from behind.”

“Then I’ll take this one over here, if that’s okay with you?”

“Sure! We’ll be able to throw things at each other if we get bored… can I get you a cup of coffee? There’s a vending machine at the end of the corridor if you get thirsty and I’m not around. Ignore the sign that tells you how much it costs: the right-hand side opens if you flick down the brown lever near the base, and the vending counter’s right next to the rack of powder containers that feed the brewer. Just trip the counter, then close it up again, key in the code and press the ‘Brew’ button. And it’s a good idea to put a cup under the nozzle first.”

“Yee-es…. that advice works well back at HQ as well,” replied Rick with a smile, “but didn’t your father have something to say about playing fast and loose with company property a few moments ago?”

“They all do it! There’s nobody inside the Keep who doesn’t know how to get a free drink out of that machine. I’ve even seen Mr Svenson sneaking out here a couple of times – and it’s not like he’s short of a few bucks…”

Rick held up his hands in surrender. “Okay – I’ll take your word for it! But let me get it for you – I’ll have to learn how to use it sometime, and there’s no time like the present. How do you take it?”

“Oh… thanks! A nutmeg and raspberry latte macchiato, please…”

“A WHAT? I thought you wanted a cup of coffee!”

“It is a cup of coffee! Maybe it stretches the definition a little, but that’s progress for you. It’s code two-zero-six-four… and the trip switch is just below the reddy-brown plastic bottle. On second thoughts, I think I’ll have it with extra sugar this morning: that’s two-one-six-four.”

“Two-one-six-four it is… and I guess I’ll try that too. Coming right up.”

Returning to the office a few moments later with two cups brimming with thick layers of froth, one in each hand, he tried unsuccessfully to open the door with his elbow. Unfortunately, the timing of his second attempt coincided precisely with Kismet’s opening the door from the other side, resulting in a sizeable splash of foam falling on her jeans. He opened his mouth to apologise, but she’d waved it aside even before the first word came out.

“Oh, never mind about that! It always overfills them – I’ve spilt it myself dozens of times.” She turned and headed towards a light-coloured wooden door in the back wall of the office. “Put them on the desk; I’ll just go and sponge this down in the bathroom – I shan’t be a moment.”

Rick blinked at her in surprise. “This office has a bathroom?”

“Oh yes,” she replied matter-of-factly, opening the door to reveal a compact but well-furnished en-suite beyond. “Every office on this floor has a private bathroom… even the ones out here in the Courtyard. It’s one of the advantages of working in the same place as a lot of people on salaries that read like IP addresses. I keep a change of clothes in the airing cupboard through there; you could do the same if you don’t like driving to work in your suit. Back in a minute.”

His own cup was almost empty by the time she’d returned, and he was examining a workstation in the corner of the room adjacent to the desk he’d selected earlier.

“You drank that fast enough! Is WGPC coffee so bad in comparison?”

“You’d better believe it,” he replied with a grimace. “The longer you leave the swill that comes out of our machines standing around, the harder it becomes to swallow. This stuff’s at least an improvement, though I reckon I’ll stick to more conventional selections from now on. Who makes it, anyway?”

“I’ve no idea,” she replied. “I discovered the nutmeg and raspberry latte by accident on my first day here. The selection controls are so complicated, even I couldn’t figure them out: I just pressed buttons at random until something happened, and then remembered the sequence. I’ve been told Mr Orson got it installed, so I’ve been meaning to ask him for a tutorial sometime. That would be in exchange for helping him patch some of the vulnerabilities of the network’s security systems. Having said that, I don’t want to embarrass him… and anyway, he’s kind-of busy right now.”

“Then I’d do well to avail myself of your expertise in the meantime,” observed Rick with a smile. “Thing is, I’m going to have a lot of questions about finding my way around this system of yours – and there’s nobody else to answer them. Will that interrupt your work?”

She shook her head emphatically. “Not at all. I’m here to help in any way I can: that’s my job for as long as you’re here. Dad was most insistent – he said the instruction came from Mr Svenson himself. He also asked me to keep him briefed on whatever it is you’re doing, so he can anticipate any way he can be of help to you.”

Rick suppressed a grin. “Did he, now? How very thoughtful of him. Well, you can tell him how much I appreciate it if he asks… but for the time being, I’ll settle for just being able to log in. Can you show me how to do that?”

“Sure – I’ll just need to set you up an account. Strictly speaking Mr Orson is supposed to do it, but he always asks me to do that sort of thing whenever he’s busy, so nobody’s going to complain. Have you met him yet?”

“That would be Martin Orson, right? Yes, he was present at our briefing with the senior execs yesterday,” confirmed Rick. “He gave the impression of being rather harassed, as I recall.”

“That’s him,” she replied. “He’s under a lot of pressure right now, both from Mr Svenson and Dr Wainwright – though Dr Wainwright does at least recognize that he’s struggling with this current crisis, and that turning him into a nervous wreck is therefore kind-of counter-productive. I think he’s just got too much on his plate, so I try to take as much of the routine stuff off him as I can – which really isn’t as masochistic as it sounds.”

She sat down at Rick’s console, brought up a menu on the screen with her name at the bottom of it, and moved aside to let him see.

“A lot of what I do is very repetitive – so soon after I started, I wrote a suite of macros in the command language to speed everything up. You’ll find a scheduler on here that lets you run long tasks overnight when there’s almost nobody else online hogging the CPU, and there’s also a key-logging and replay mechanism I wrote for reviewing the outputs from a predefined sequence of tasks that don’t change from one week to the next – and to be honest, hardly anything does change from one week to the next. It’s saved me no end of work since I’ve been here, and it might be of some use to you too once you get up and running. I can take you through them any time.”

“Thanks – I’d like that. But how did you find the time to write them in the first place?”

“You make time. You have to – otherwise it never gets done. The trick is to force yourself to assign a lower priority to the short-term work they’re paying you to do, and to concentrate on writing the software needed to solve the longer-term problem whenever they leave you alone.”

“And how did you manage to do that?” he asked her with a chuckle. “In my experience, the guys in charge never leave you alone!”

“Oh, they will if they can’t understand what you’re doing,” she replied with a shrug, “which is one of the reasons I got into this line of work in the first place. Math seems to fascinate some people and bewilder others in roughly equal measure… and most of the ones around here fall into the second category.”

Rick blinked at her in astonishment. “In a finance corporation? You’re kidding!”

“Oh, some of the people who make the most money around here would make dreadful analysts. They haven’t got an eye for detail, which is essential – but to your earlier point about not being able to deliver fast enough, I’ll admit that I was lucky there.  Nobody complained in the early days that their work wasn’t getting done simply because they just thought I was a bit slow, but they couldn’t kick up a fuss about it because of who my father was. A few weeks later they discovered they were getting their analyses back in record time, so they forgot all about their earlier gripes and started calling me a genius.”

“I can think of worse things to be called,” replied Rick wryly. “Having said that, nobody ever called me a genius – so I wouldn’t really know, would I?”

Chapter 4

Even with Kismet’s home-made software toolkit to simplify the tasks, she could see that he was struggling with the intricacies of the accounting system over the next few days – and yet by the end of the first week it was clear that his sheer tenacity coupled with her familiarity with its internal workings was beginning to produce results. She asked him why he was prepared to put in so many hours to get to the root of the theft when the likely reward was a pat on the back for himself and a commendation for his superiors.

“I screwed up when I was a kid,” he replied simply. “Catching up took a lot of time… and a lot of work. It’s getting to be something of a habit, I guess.”

“And…” she replied hesitantly, “is it worth it? What difference does the outcome of this case make to you personally? It’s the consortium’s money, not yours – and they won’t even miss it. Trust me on that one – it’s all just numbers on computer screens to them. When they want to know whether the profit’s astronomical, gigantic or merely huge, they just count the number of noughts on the end.”

“You know, I was beginning to come to that conclusion myself,” he replied with a grin. “It’s just that if I don’t throw everything that can be thrown at this, there won’t anyone else to blame if we fail. And that won’t be acceptable to me.”

“I shan’t think you’re to blame if we fail,” she replied.

“Thanks…” he acknowledged with a smile, “but there’s no way I’ll accept having nothing to show for it at the end of all this – because I just plain don’t like losing. I’ve been there, and I intend making it a once-only experience. Have you got the complete set of invoices from those so-called subcontractors in Ankara?”

“Why ‘so-called’ subcontractors? Do you doubt that they’re who they say they are? The documentation appears to be perfectly in order.”

“It’s too damned perfectly in order,” he snorted. “Small outfits like this one hardly ever get their paperwork straight – they’re too busy trying to drum up enough business to pay last month’s bills – and according to that thing you showed me last Tuesday, there are only three of these guys. We know from your father that they’re all salesmen, and we know from our own routine checks that none of them has any close family, so they haven’t just co-opted a relative to do their bookkeeping for them. So how did they find the time to put all this stuff together for your people, eh?”

She looked at him questioningly. “You’re thinking this company might be… what was that expression they used back in the twenties… an ‘alternative fact’, is that so?”

He stretched out in his chair and looked up at her with a grin. “Yeah. I reckon it just might.”

Given that the presence of at least one member of staff with the necessary authorisations had been essential to his investigation, she matched his long working hours from day one, increasing them to incorporate weekends whenever necessary without a word of complaint. He asked her several times to offload the task of retrieving the files he required to someone else, but she wouldn’t hear of it, and doggedly carried on performing the duty herself. Mindful that she was depriving herself of a lift home with her father at the end of the day in the process, he drove her back there himself on several occasions.

By the middle of the second week, they’d concluded three days with an evening meal after work on the way, each time to the same restaurant, having discovered at the first visit that the food and the ambience was very much to both their tastes. By the third visit their selection of dishes had become something of a formality lasting no more than a few moments, and Rick barely glanced at the menu before ordering.

“Grilled salmon, please – and…” He looked at her expectantly, and she glanced the menu one last time.

“I’ll have the same… and as to a drink, my usual, please.”

He nodded and turned to the waiter. “Two grilled salmon, please – and as to the drinks, we’ll have an Agua de Jamaica and a brandy. No... make mine a double. Long day.”

The waiter having been duly dismissed, he turned his attention back to Kismet.

“You know, I’m starting to feel at home in that skyscraper of yours! At least I can put names to most of the faces on that floor of the building without embarrassing myself – so tell me something about how this whole operation works on a personal level, will you? No, forget I asked that for a moment… do you mind my asking you questions like this? Am I putting you in a difficult position?”

“You’re here at their request to solve a problem for them,” she replied. “As I see it, you can’t do that efficiently without understanding who they are and what they do. Don’t worry… I shan’t divulge any company secrets – not that I know any. I’m old enough not to be answerable to my father for my actions, but for the most part I do keep him informed on where I am and what I’m doing. If he had an objection, he’d certainly have told me.”

“You seem to have a more comfortable relationship with your parents than I had with mine before I left home,” observed Rick. But don’t you find it kind-of restrictive working in the same place as your dad? I sure as hell wouldn’t like it at all… I’d feel like I was still under his thumb…”

“Oh, it won’t be for long,” she replied. “Doctor Wainwright mentioned to my father that Mr Orson was being run off his feet, and I wanted the work experience – so they cut a deal. I’ll be applying for a place at university later this year, so that gives them plenty of time to find another intern through more conventional channels.”

“Guess you won’t be making the same mistake I made,” mused Rick with a rueful smile. “I learned the one about knowledge being power kind-of late in the day.”

He blinked himself out of his introspective mood and looked at Kismet speculatively.

“On the subject of power, can you tell me something about Mr Svenson? I’ve hardly seen him since that first meeting, but it’s my understanding that he’s the sole owner of the company, and his son Peter will one day inherit it – have I got that right?”

She shook her head. “My understanding is that it’s a little more complicated than that. Peter’s the second of Mr Svenson’s three sons, and he also has a daughter. My father tells me that it’s not clear who will inherit the company, because Peter’s older brother – that’s Adam – already has a career of his own which he loves, and which he doesn’t want to give up. This specific project interests him however, so he’s been providing informal technical advice to his father on an ad-hoc basis – but on his own terms. Mr Svenson apparently wanted him to fly back for the meeting, but that didn’t happen, so I guess Peter got co-opted instead. To be honest, I feel rather sorry for Peter. He’s not involved in the day-to-day working of this company at all, and he’s probably feeling a bit out of his league.”

“Yes – I remember Peter said something about Adam being uncontactable while on leave. I wondered at the time why they couldn’t just phone him.”

She grinned. “Oh, they could – and they probably did – but they can’t force him to answer it!  Something Peter might not have told you is that Adam is spending his leave down in Florida with Dr Wainwright’s niece – and from what I’ve seen of Adam, he won’t have taken kindly to being ordered by his father just to abandon her down there and fly back to Boston just for some boring meeting with the fraud squad. No disrespect intended.”

“None inferred… ah! I was beginning to wonder where they’d got to…”

He fell silent until the waiter had set down their drinks on the table and walked away before continuing.

“So… this Adam’s a bit of a playboy, is he?”

She shook her head. “No – it’s not that. It’s just that Mr Svenson doesn’t particularly like his son getting involved with a member of Dr Wainwright’s family. Mr Svenson and Dr Wainwright used to be business rivals before the Svensons took over their company; Dr Wainwright was made Technical Director of the combined operation as part of the deal, but Mr Svenson has always regarded him as just one more employee whose skills he acquired when he bought them out – at least, that’s what my father tells me. Adam objects to his father’s perception of Dr Wainwright very strongly – and doesn’t mind letting him know it, or so I’ve been told. Dr Wainwright likes Adam very much, I might add.”

“Do you know Adam well?”

“I’ve only met him twice – both times when he and his parents were invited to dinner,” she replied thoughtfully, “but the impression I came away with on both occasions is that he’s a nice guy at heart with a strong sense of the right thing to do – for which he’s prepared to fight if necessary. Dad told me after they’d left that he and his father aren’t really all that different when it comes down to getting their own way, and that that’s been at the heart of several disputes within the family. One big difference between them is that Adam doesn’t make you feel like you want to run and hide under the table while he’s talking to you, and that even if he doesn’t agree with you, he is at least listening. Dad reckons that Adam would make an excellent CEO, and that he thinks Mr Svenson knows it too – but he can’t make Adam do something he just doesn’t want to do.”

“What about Mr Svenson’s other children? Do they have any part to play in running the show?”

“If they do, I know nothing about it. The third son, David, is apparently making something of a name for himself on Wall Street, and the daughter is about to be married to someone in the military. I’ve never met either of them.”

She raised her glass to her lips and took a long sip. “Perfect – just the right temperature. I’ve been looking forward to that!”

Rick peered at the glass warily. “Look, I don’t mean to be nosy, but just what is that stuff you drink?”

She laughed. “What – Agua de Jamaica? Iced hibiscus tea – just the thing for hot summer evenings. It lowers cholesterol. Blood pressure too… I think you ought to try it.”

He took a large sip of his brandy and shook his head.

“Thanks, but after a few hours trying to get my head around those accounts of yours, I need something with a bit more kick! I’ve learned enough to know that we’re being comprehensively hoodwinked, but not enough yet to be able to work out how. Of the three kinds of lies, statistics are sure as hell the worst.”

“The creation and collation of statistics is merely one of the many uses to which numbers are put,” she protested. “Mark Twain did the science of statistical analysis a disservice with that anecdote of his about lies and damned lies. Math is the only discipline where you’ll find absolute truth.”

“If so, then I reckon somebody’s done a pretty damn good job of hiding it,” he snorted darkly.

“I’d expect nothing else,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “If this were an easy problem to solve, we’d have cracked it by now. No… whoever instigated this cyberattack against us is a professional, by any standards.”

“You’re satisfied that it is a cyberattack, then?”

“Oh yes… there’s no doubt about it – at least not in my mind,” she replied. “I checked it out very thoroughly after the original memo was circulated, and came to the same conclusion that Mr Orson did.”

“And… did you have any reason to think you weren’t being told the truth at the time?”

“No,” she replied thoughtfully, “but I dislike having to take someone else’s word for something when there’s even a single shred of doubt – and I never leave anything to chance if I can help it. As the Arabs say: ‘Put your trust in Allah… but tie your camel’. It’s a hadith.”

He looked blankly at her. “Sorry – what’s a ‘hadith’?”

“A hadith is what you’d call a parable… you know, a story with a meaning,” she replied. “It tells of a Bedouin leaving his camel without tethering it. When asked why, he replied that he was placing his trust in Allah, and therefore had no need to tie the camel. He was told that he should both tie the camel and place his trust in Allah. The lesson we learn from this hadith is that we should use all resources available to us to solve our problems.”

“Well, you won’t hear me arguing with that advice,” he replied with a grin. “Shall we be on our way? I’ll pay at the desk on the way out.”

She assented with a smile and a nod, and they both rose from their seats. Upon reaching the desk, he paid and called for their coats, then started fumbling for his keys.

“Oh no, you don’t!” she complained. “You’ve had two brandies – I’ll drive us back. You can leave the car there overnight and get a cab back to your apartment.”

“One brandy! It just happened to be a rather big one – and it was ages ago!” he protested, as they walked out of the restaurant into the street. “And anyway, the onboard safety features in these things make an accident a virtual impossibility – there’s absolutely no way…”

“It’s still illegal – as you’re obviously well aware – and anyway you’re a cop, so you’re supposed to be setting an example,” she retorted. “So you’re going to give them to me right now!”

She made a lunge for them, knocking them clean out of his hand and into the darkness of the night. He stifled a curse and glared at her.

“Oh, great! I can’t see a damn thing down there… have you got a torch?”

“The light in my cell phone is quite strong. Any use?”

“Let’s find out,” he replied with a shrug. “Always use all your resources to solve your problems – isn’t that what you said? Just point it down there, will you?”

They both crouched down and started feeling around underneath the car. Spotting the keys simultaneously, they both reached for them at the same time – and instead found themselves holding hands. The unanticipated physical contact lasted no more than two seconds at most, but Rick was conscious that it seemed like far longer: even as he opened his mouth to apologise, he found himself looking directly into her eyes… and completely forgot what he intended to say. As if she realized in that same moment that her expression betrayed her thoughts, she instantly looked away in embarrassment, continuing to avoid his gaze for several more seconds while he was trying to think of something to say that didn’t sound fatuous. When it came, it was short and to the point.

“I… I’m sure I can drive you home – it’s ages since the brandy now… it’ll be quite safe.”

“Yes, of course… I’m sure you’re right,” she replied awkwardly.

They climbed into the car and drove the ten or so kilometres to her family’s Belmont residence in silence, each of them scrupulously avoiding catching the other’s eye throughout the duration of the journey. When they arrived the other end, she quit the car with obvious haste, but after having taken a couple of steps towards the apartment block she stopped, and after a brief hesitation returned to the car.

“Look – Dad’s got a meeting on the other side of town first thing, so he won’t be able to drive me in. Normally I’d order a cab or just take the subway, but do you think… well… would you be able to give me a lift in tomorrow morning? Say about half past seven?”

“Of course! I mean, yes… sure! I’ll see you then.”

She walked quickly to the entrance to the block, fumbling for her keys as she did so. Only when the door had closed behind her did she turn to face him through the glass with a brief smile and a wave, before disappearing into the darkness of the interior stairwell. Having assured himself of her safety, Rick reversed the car out of the parking place – he remembered that quite clearly the following day – but of the drive back to his apartment, he couldn’t remember anything at all.

Chapter 5

Driving to work the following morning, Rick found himself anticipating the day ahead with an uncomfortable blend of optimistic apprehension and outright dread in roughly equal proportions. In the event, he discovered – rather to his surprise – that she seemed to be as much at a loss regarding how to move on from the previous evening’s disquieting experience as himself, but doing a somewhat better job of concealing it.

“Do you… reckon we need to talk?”

She shook her head. “Best not. I… get embarrassed easily – and then I say silly things. Not a good idea to say silly things.”

“Just one question… are you upset?”

“No… not at all,” she replied quietly.

Something in her eyes conveyed a sentiment that was missing from the words, and suddenly he found himself looking forward to the days and weeks ahead more keenly than he could remember for a very long time.

“Then let’s just get to work, eh?”

He grinned at her, then gave the floor a sideways kick with his feet, sending his chair spinning several times before coming to a stop with him facing the monitor once more.

“Look, I’ve been thinking… maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. We’ve been trying to compare the state of the file system now with its configuration prior to the hack – if indeed that’s what it is – on the assumption that it’s been corrupted between the two time points. And yet, all we’ve been able to find are records of file manipulations that look like corrections to restore the system to a previous state. But that’s impossible: we know what the previous state was – and it doesn’t correspond to the state now.”

She nodded. “True… but you said a moment ago that you thought maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way. What other way is there to look at it?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Rick slowly, “but I just feel that maybe we ought to try looking at the problem from a wider perspective. How about we start by having a look at one of the backups before the last one? I’ve only been granted the necessary privileges to access the one we’ve been working on, but I’m guessing you could fix that easily enough – am I right?”

“Sure! No problem at all – this won’t take long…”

After a few moments she looked up, obviously puzzled at the sight of a bright red box surrounding an incomprehensible message that had appeared on her screen. “That’s strange… access to all previous backups has had a tintack attached to them. It can’t be rescinded by anyone other than the systems manager – even I can’t countermand it. I wonder what he’s done that for?”

“A tintack?”

“T.N.T.K. Tracked need to know – it’s what Mr Orson calls them. It just means that I can’t prevent an automated email informing him that the backups have been accessed. It doesn’t stop me from supplying you with access rights: it just means that he’ll know you’ve been granted them, that’s all. Do you want me to do it anyway?”

Rick hesitated for a second, and then shrugged. “Yeah… let’s do it. It’s not as if we’re trying to do anything underhand, so I can’t believe you’d get into trouble for it. I daresay it’s just an oversight anyway – and if it isn’t, he can always just say no.”

“Okay – give me a moment….”

She slid herself into her chair and started typing. Less than fifteen seconds later she stopped typing with a flourish and spun the chair round. “There, that should do it. Try it now.”

He pulled his chair forward and started typing rapidly.

“Yes – I’ve got it… like you said, it all looks very familiar. I’ve already got all the search protocols automated with the help of that macro of yours: running them on a backup with the same file structure should only a take a couple of minutes…”

He carried on typing for a few moments longer, then looked up with a frown.

“Well, there are differences in the structure of some of the subdirectories – but nothing the macro can’t handle. There are several folders of receipt confirmations that were unpopulated in the more recent backup – I’ll just see if I can determine the dates when the changes were made…”

His voice faded away as he continued typing. The next few minutes were punctuated with an assortment of muttered exclamations that became progressively both fainter and more infrequent as his level of interest in the reams of financial statistics scrolling up the screen in front of him intensified.

“So… do you think you’re going to be finished any time soon, Rick?”

No reply. She gave him a few more seconds to respond, then tapped sharply on the desk.

“Hello! Is there anyone at home?”

Rick had fallen completely silent and was fixated on the screen in front of him with the rapt attention of a cat watching the undergrowth beneath a hedgerow. He blinked out of his trace-like state at the sound of her voice, then mumbled an apology.

“Sorry… got a bit distracted there… you were asking if we’d be finished any time soon, right? Shouldn’t be long now, I think – but we’d sure be able to get out of here faster if I could just download all this and go through it in my own time. Can you do that for me?”

She shook her head. “Not allowed. I shan’t say it’s impossible – that would be an untruth – but it’s forbidden. The rule is that nothing leaves the building without the express permission of the systems manager – and I won’t admit to breaking that rule for anyone. Perhaps that’s the reason they’re so painstaking about what they give your analysts back at your headquarters access to via that remote link: they don’t want Futura’s data protection people breathing down their necks.”

Rick pulled a face, then shrugged resignedly. “Oh well – looks like we’re going to be here just a little while longer then. Will be a problem for you?”

“No, not at all… look, why don’t I get us something to eat while you’re working on this? I made a point of finding out the passcode for getting into the restaurant out of hours soon after I started here – it can be kind-of useful sometimes when you’re working late.”

Rick peered at the screen, frowned thoughtfully for a second, and then looked up with a beaming smile.

“You know, that would be great – and now that you mention it, I’m starving. Too late for dinner tonight though. Say, how long would it take for you to put together two or three rounds of sandwiches plus a few cans of drinks?”

She grinned and rose from her desk. “I’ll get right on it… can you survive another quarter of an hour?”

He grinned back. “Hungry I am, sure… but I’m not going to collapse of malnutrition! Take your time, please do – there’s no hurry. And thanks… I really appreciate it.”

He continued watching his screen as she left the room, then listened intently to the sound of her footsteps as she walked away down the corridor.

The second the swing doors closed behind her, he swung back to face his monitor, extracting his communicator from his pocket as he did so. Placing it on the desk beside the keyboard, he shut down the keyboard logging application with which he’d been recording his own keystrokes for the previous hour and a half, shortened the delay between each screen change to just three seconds, mentally estimated the time it would take to replay the entire sequence, and grimaced. About twenty minutes… but he knew from his own experience of late-night snacking that she’d probably underestimated how long it would take to put a makeshift meal together. It might be close, but it was the only chance he was going to get. Raising the device to face the screen, he set the replay running and started the laborious process of photographing the monitor after each screen change.

By the time she returned with a small tray laden with a pile of comestibles he was sprawled in his chair. The console had been powered down, and he was staring contemplatively at the ceiling.

“Found anything interesting?”

He shrugged. “Nah... not really. What did you manage to get?”

“Smoked salmon and lemon paté canapés – about twenty of them. Looks like the senior execs skipped a post-meeting wind-down last night. The chef was probably seething – canapés are his pièce de résistance – so I’ll make a point of telling him tomorrow morning that they were eaten in a good cause. That’ll cheer him up.”

“Well, if you say so – but I reckon I’m pretty much done now anyway. Tell you what… shall we take them with us and eat them on the way back to your place? At least that way we’ll each get at least a few hours of sleep before tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me!”

She disappeared into the bathroom, returning a few seconds later with a holdall, into which they gathered up all the food before leaving for the night. By the time his car turned into the parking lot in front of her apartment block there were only six canapés left, and Rick was looking more than a little bloated.

“One more?”

Rick pulled a face, shaking his head. “I can’t! If I have another one I won’t be able to get out of the car when I get back to my place! You take them – have them for breakfast or something. They’re fabulous, but I’ve eaten far too many already.”

She looked at him with concern. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine – no need to worry,” he replied with a smile. “Come on – I’ll see you to the door.”

They walked across to the entrance to the block, and he waited while she extracted her passkey from her handbag and waved it across the panel at the side of the door. Stepping through as it slid aside, she turned.

“Look… I’d love to invite you in, but it wouldn’t be fair to my parents: they’re not expecting visitors.”

“I’d have refused – albeit very reluctantly – for just that reason,” replied Rick wistfully. “I remember how my folks used to react whenever I brought somebody back home unexpectedly. Not that they’d have said anything at the time, of course – but they’d sure as hell have let me know it afterwards! One of the things you really appreciate when you’ve got your own place is the freedom that goes with it. The downside is that there’s nobody else to make it look good when you want to impress somebody – you’ve got to do it all yourself. You really wouldn’t want to see my place right now!”

“Actually,” she replied quietly, “I’d love to see your place right now.”

He rolled his eyes mischievously. “Do you have any idea how much work I’m going to have to put in before I can invite you round? But…”

He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. “But I reckon if I start tonight it might just about be presentable by next Saturday…”

“Sounds good to me!”

She flung her arms around him and gave him a big kiss, then quickly disentangled herself before he’d had time to react to the embrace and hurried through the door without looking back. Only when the door had slid shut behind her did she turn round briefly to wave him goodnight.

Still in something of a daze at the unexpected show of affection, he returned the wave, and then watched her longingly until she’d disappeared around the corner of the stairwell. Turning away reluctantly, he then took a deep breath before reaching for his communicator.

“André? Yeah, it’s me… where are you right now? Good – listen… I’m about to email you an encrypted file containing several hundred photographs – I’ll send the password to your private address as a separate message. The quality isn’t great, but they’re readable enough – and that’s all that matters right now. Look… I know it’s late, but I need you to go through them as soon as you can. See what you make of them: we can compare notes tomorrow morning. Secondly, I need a meeting with both you and the Boz back at HQ some time tomorrow – preferably in the afternoon, just to give us time to get our act together. Can you arrange that with him first thing? I’m going to call Svencorp Tower first thing to tell them I’ve had a bad night and won’t be coming in – so I don’t want them finding out about the meeting, okay?”

“No problem – I’ll ask him to keep it low-key. What have you got? And why the secrecy?”

“I’m not sure yet, André. I’m probably going to have to spend most of the night going through these photos myself – but from what little I’ve been able to unscramble, it’s clear that something huge has been going on. It all relates to the days and weeks prior to our involvement and concerns something they haven’t said a word to us about… I can’t elaborate because I’ve only just scratched the surface of it. What I’m going to need to know is that I can count on support from our top brass if Svencorp tries to prevent us from digging any deeper – because I have a feeling they just might. We’ll leave it to the Boz to decide how we proceed with this once we’ve taken him through it. One more thing – I want to know if there’s anything in our files on the following people…”

Chapter 6

Rick arrived at WGPC headquarters early the following morning, and was busily decluttering his desk of now-irrelevant paperwork accumulated over the past few days when André walked through the door, and dropped down in the chair beside him.

“Hi Rick – welcome back… can it be that you still remember how to find this place? I emailed the Commander before coming in this morning and got a reply a few moments ago. He has cancelled another meeting at fourteen hundred for us and will be bringing in anyone from the online team that can be spared – so we have about five hours if there are no interruptions.”

“Should be enough – with your help,” replied Rick. “Did you get a chance to look through them?”

André nodded. “Yes, I went through them last night. There is much that I do not understand: a lot of the cryptography is incomprehensible to me. It is almost as if some of the notation does not represent textual data at all – but if it is not encrypted text, what are we supposed to do with it?”

“What do you reckon it is, then?”

“There are several pages of multiple blocks containing extremely similar but not perfectly repeated patterns of hex strings,” replied André thoughtfully. “The context suggests that these might perhaps be audio frequencies, but they are very long – too long to be completely represented within a single set of images. Several times just one more screenshot would have helped me to understand what is happening...”

“I was working fast, André!”

“I am not blaming you, my friend! I am just saying that more data would have been nice to have… but you know, I think perhaps we have enough to crack at least some of this material in the time we have. I think we should start, yes?”

“Yeah, let’s go for it,” replied Rick with a grin. “I knew you’d be up for this – you’ve got codebreaking in your blood. You ever considered a career in intelligence?”

“I have thought about it,” acknowledged André, “but I do not see many online advertisements inviting applications from people who want to be spies.” He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Let us talk about this another time – right now we have much to do.”

They spent the next three hours alternately comparing notes and attempting to resolve some of the substantial number of differences between them – a process occasionally punctuated by bursts of frenetic activity on their respective laptops whenever one more tiny piece of the puzzle fell into place. André remained relatively upbeat throughout despite the painfully slow progress, whereas Rick’s initial optimism was rapidly waning as their lunchtime deadline loomed – and was seriously asking himself whether he’d made a bad error of judgment in escalating the matter so early by the time the final hour was almost up.

“Look, André – just one last chance… you see this block here? Now I can see how it’s been encrypted: it’s obviously the subroutine in the previous screenshot that did it, but I can’t find the public key to unlock it…”

His friend looked up from his laptop with a flash of mild exasperation.

“That is because the public key isn’t here, Rick! The time pressure is getting to you: there is no need to locate the public key within the software! That is how public key encryption works – do you not remember this from the seminar? The Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm enables two people to share secret information over an insecure channel by using modular arithmetic to…”

Rick took a deep breath, and then held up his hands apologetically.

“Sorry, André – maybe you’re right. I guess I must have dozed off during that bit – but is there no way at all we can get at the IP address of the computer system at the other end of this hack? If we could access that, we’d be home and dry – I mean, somebody out there must have noticed that right now they’re one hell of a lot poorer than they thought they were!”

André shook his head sadly.

“It cannot be done with the information we have… of that I am certain. The IP addresses – as well as all the account details – are encrypted with a code that would take more years to break than there are between now and the end of the Universe… and we have until the end of the lunch hour! We need the digital signatures of at least two of the three asymmetric keys that have been used to scramble that part of the virus. Without them, we have no chance at all.”

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it,” muttered Rick despondently. “So… what do you think? Have we really got enough to convince the Boz that I haven’t just dreamed up the crime of the century out of thin air? Be honest – because I don’t think it looks good.”

“We have enough to convince me that you have not just ‘dreamed up the crime of the century out of thin air’,” replied his friend quietly. “No… I tell you this is real. All that is missing are some of the technical details – because this is all they are – and the identity of the intended victim of this fraud. The Commander will take it seriously enough – I do not doubt that.”

He glanced at his watch. “We had best get up to the briefing room, I think… you know as well as I do what he is like if he feels his time is being wasted. We can at least make sure we do not… how do you say… get off on the wrong foot?”

They gathered up their paperwork, and made their way to the briefing room, where two of their contemporaries were just taking their places. A hand-shaking and back-slapping session ensued as they all took a few moments to catch up, socially as well as professionally.

“Tanya – great to see you here! Those payment demands from that warehouse in Khartoum that we couldn’t seem to track down a few days back – did you ever get anywhere with that?”

She shook her head. “I can’t seem to make Orson understand that it’s the invoices I need to see, not the receipts. I’ve tried rephrasing the question at least three times, but either he’s misunderstood the request or he’s being deliberately obtuse. Can you have a word with him about it, Rick? It’s holding up my cross-referencing the payments with the corresponding refunds from their subcontractors in Djibouti.”

“Sure,” replied Rick, “I’ll get onto that when I next see him. And Len’s here too, I see… How you doing, pal?”

“Still up to my neck in that paper chase from the start of the week involving all those receipts from Caracas that seem to have just vanished off their system,” snorted the other. “Sorry if I got a bit short with Orson, but like Tanya said, he can be a real pain in the ass when he can’t see why we want something – but never mind that now. What is this all about, Rick?”

“There’s been a development,” replied Rick. “One that looks like it could change everything. I’ve only been there a few days and they’re already as suspicious as hell of me, so I didn’t want to risk emailing anything from their system – so I just took a day’s leave of absence to report back in person. Are we expecting anybody else, André?”

“I do not think so… we are waiting only for Commander Boj…”

“Waiting no longer, André. Sorry, guys: conference call overran. Thought it might.”

Bojanowski dropped a pile of papers onto the table in front of him and scanned the room rapidly.

“Apologies for pulling you off your current assignments at such short notice, everyone. This meeting’s been requested by Lieutenants Fraser and Verdain in connection with the Svencorp investigation, so I’m handing it over to them to tell you what it’s all about. Rick – obviously you already know Len Schrader and Tanya Nabokova from the online team. I’ve pulled them in at no notice because André insisted that this should be given the highest possible priority. I trust André’s judgement, and I know that André trusts yours, Rick… so I’m sticking my neck out for the pair of you – just so you know, okay? We’ve got the Svencorp personnel profiles you requested – but before we do anything else, I want you to take us through the reasons you’ve called this meeting. As things stand right now, I’ve got only the vaguest notion of why we’re here… and Tanya and Len over there have no idea at all. The floor’s yours.”

Rick nodded and stood up to address the group.

“We’ve only been told half the story – of that much I’m certain. What I’m not certain about – yet – is whether a crime’s been committed at all. Or if a crime has been committed, whether that crime is really the one we’re currently investigating…”

The Commander stirred in his chair. “You’re going too fast, Rick. Just take a deep breath and start at the beginning, will you? I know you’ve been in touch with the online team almost daily by email, but we haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks now. There’ll probably be a lot of background intel you’ve assimilated, consciously or unconsciously, over that time that we don’t know about – so try to present us with as comprehensive a picture as you can in the time available, okay?”

Rick accepted the rebuke gracefully.

“Sorry, sir… guess I’ve been working too close to this for comfort. It gets so you can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes.”

He paused for a moment before continuing.

“One of the things this department specializes in is the role of computer viruses in crime… how they work, who writes them, what they use them for and so on. Now I admit I struggle with the theory – all of you are a lot better at this sort of thing than me – but I know enough to be able at least to recognize a virus when I see one. The backup we’ve been working on to date shows only a few disjointed fragments of it, and it’s those fragments we’ve been trying to analyse these last few weeks – with very limited success – and as we know the date of the hack, it was obviously pointless going back prior to that. At least, that’s what I thought before last night.”

Rick paused once more, choosing his words carefully.

“Since I’ve been working on site, I’ve been sharing an office with the daughter of their financial controller. Her name’s Kismet; she and I work together well: she’s as keen as I am to get to the root of this – which is great, as she’s been able to supply me with an insider’s view of the operation of the company that isn’t tinted by the perspectives of the senior execs…”

“One moment,” interrupted Bojanowski quietly, “I need to ask this before we go any further, Rick. Are the two of you in a relationship?”

“No, sir – I know the rules,” replied Rick stiffly. “We have become friends, however… and right now I’m trying to ensure that I don’t compromise that friendship by involving her in what we’re doing any more than can be avoided. I don’t believe she’s got anything to do with the activity we’re investigating, but her father’s role within the organization necessarily places limits on what I can discuss with her about our operation.”

“Good: make sure it stays that way. Please continue.”

“Yes, sir. Yesterday evening, she was able to grant me access to the backup that was taken immediately prior to the one we’ve been working on. From what I managed to decipher from the logs contained within the previous backup, it looks as though the virus was already on the system at the time the backup was taken. Okay, you’re thinking… so it was probably dormant – after all, they often infect a system long before they’re activated – but that’s not what I found in this instance. What I found was evidence that the virus had been constructed within Svencorp itself – presumably by its own software engineers. The configuration of the various components suggests that it had been assembled in the form of an application that could be activated on demand – though I don’t think it had been run at the time the backup was taken.

“Now I can’t just look at a computer virus and be able to tell what it does. But then, I don’t need to be able to do that. We already know what it does. It takes one hell of a lot of money out of somebody’s bank account, yeah?

“The backup I scanned shows references to the same fake transactions we’ve been investigating for the past few weeks… but this time with Svencorp’s own holding companies recorded as the instigators of the transactions. What this virus seems to have done is to record every step in the sequence of transactions, mutate itself in such a way as to switch the names of the payer and the payee at every stage in the process, and then replay itself. Rather like finding your way into the middle of a tortuously complicated maze while paying out a ball of string behind you, and then retracing your steps to get yourself out again – the result of which is that by the time it’s all over, you’re back where you started.”

He looked around.

“Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m not convinced that the money Svencorp are insisting was stolen from them was theirs in the first place. From what I managed to extract from the logs, it looks to me like it was spirited out of their account using a copy of a virus that had already been used by them to extract it from somebody else’s account – and that the victim, whoever it was, somehow managed to turn the tables on them.”

“If I’m reading this right, we’re not investigating a crime at all. On the contrary, I’ve reason to believe that we’re being made accomplices in the committing of one.”

There was silence for several seconds, as the implications sank in.

“Are you sure about all this, Rick?”

Rick shook his head. “Far from it – though after going through some of the less complex encryption algorithms this morning with André, I’m more confident than I was yesterday. I’m still not certain though – and that’s why I requested this meeting. I need help. I need our team here to go through these photographs and see if they concur… and I need them to do that without giving Svencorp wind of our suspicions. They’ve been very careful to ensure that our access to their systems is restricted, so we can’t just go charging in demanding to be given wider access. If we do that, there’s a risk they could delete the whole damn lot and deny everything. The way I see it, we’re going to have to get it some other way.”

Bojanowski regarded him emotionlessly for a full ten seconds, then nodded slowly.

“Okay… I’ll buy it. André – you’ll work with Len and Tanya to go through Rick’s photographs… with a microscope if that’s what it takes. Extract as much information as you can – obviously – and compare it with what you’ve already gleaned from your online investigation. Take however long you need to do it but give it priority over all other work – and report back to me when you’re done… at which time I’ll want to know whether you’re able to confirm or refute Rick’s conclusions. Co-opt anybody else from within the department you need, but I don’t want those photographs being circulated widely. Allow access to them only on a need-to-know basis – at least until we’ve got a better idea of where we stand. Rick – are you okay with that as an action plan, at least in the short-term?”

“Yes… and thanks for the support, Commander,” replied Rick. “There could be a complication however, in that they already know I’ve seen this. Kismet told me at the time that a warning was sent to the systems manager to tell him the back-up had been accessed, and they can almost certainly tell from their logs how long I spent reading it. I reckon they’ll think I can’t have downloaded a copy, so they’re probably hoping that the reason I spent looking at it for as long as I did was that I couldn’t understand it. And to be fair to them, they’d be right: I didn’t understand most of it. Just enough of it to realize that it was essential to get a copy of it while I could.”

“Something tells me,” interjected André, “that you suspect all this might have been taken offline by the time you turn up for work tomorrow morning. Is that so?”

“You bet!” replied Rick with a snort. “Like I said, they know I’ve seen this. What I’m hoping they don’t realize is that I set a keystroke logger running as soon as I grasped its significance. In the event, I was able to rerun the viewing sequence at high speed while Kismet was out of the room, taking photographs of all the frames as I went. They may have done a good job of preventing anyone from exporting anything they consider sensitive, but nobody’s ever developed a system that prevents users from looking at what’s on the screen in front of their eyes… and anything that’s visible can be photographed.”

“Well,” replied Bojanowski thoughtfully, “if they do know what’s happened, you’ll probably get wind of it fast enough – so keep your eyes and ears open.” He looked at Rick speculatively. “This friend of yours – the one who got you access to all this – does she…”

“She doesn’t know about the photographs,” interrupted Rick. “All she knows is that I’ve seen whatever’s in the backup – but then, that’s only as much as the systems manager knows anyway.”

Bojanowski glanced down at his notes. “The systems manager - that’s Martin Orson, isn’t it? Yes, that’s right… he’s one of the people on your list. We checked him out, as you requested: his was the only name of the four you gave us that turned up anywhere – and even that wasn’t much.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s interesting… I wasn’t expecting you to find anything on any of them, but I thought I’d best get them all checked out anyway. What have we got?”

“Not much… at least on the face of it,” replied Bojanowski, “Up until about a year ago, Orson was working on the Anglo-American XK project at Cape Canaveral. At the time he quit, he was working on a voice recognition system for deployment to the Lunarville colonization program.”

“That figures,” replied Rick thoughtfully. “Svencorp are implementing a new security system based on voice recognition… we saw it in action at our first meeting. I guess that’s on Orson’s initiative…”

He stopped speaking abruptly and glanced at André, who was already looking back at him with an expression of rapt attention on his face.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, André?”

“I am wondering,” replied his friend slowly, “if those sequences of hex strings could perhaps be encrypted speech. You too, yes? I will check it out afterwards… those similarities, they might be somebody saying almost the same thing several times, or perhaps…”

Bojanowski cleared his throat noisily. “Hey guys – we’re still here.”

“Sorry Commander,” replied Rick apologetically. “Something about the screenshots that was confusing us this morning, that’s all. It might be a red herring, but obviously we’ll fill you in at once if it does go anywhere. In the meantime, I’d like to understand why Orson’s turned up in our files. Was he involved in something illegal?”

“The file’s not very informative,” replied Bojanowski, “but it might be nothing more than that he was just plain too fond of spending money. The only reason there’s a file on him at all is that two local chain stores he owed some money to took out civil proceedings against him for the recovery of debts.”

“And did they? Get their money back, I mean.”

Bojanowski rapidly scanned his notes once more.

“It says here that the debts were eventually paid – and in full – but apparently not by him. The indications are that somebody bailed him out. It’s not clear where the money came from: the transfers were from an account we couldn’t identify. Maybe he’s got a rich uncle back home that we don’t know about; maybe just his paymasters trying to avoid a scandal – but whatever the truth of it, he left his job shortly afterwards, and then seems to have disappeared off the radar for about six months before resurfacing in his present role at Svencorp Tower.”

“Is it possible,” asked Rick slowly, “that Svencorp might have settled his debts for him in exchange for acquiring his services?”

“Maybe,” replied Bojanowski. “But in that case why did he vanish immediately afterwards – and where did he go? If they’d wanted him badly enough to sort out his money problems, they wouldn’t have paid him to take an extended vacation the minute he’s available to work. Are you aware of any issues concerning him at Svencorp Tower?”

Rick shook his head. “The impression I get is that he’s highly regarded. We know Svenson’s giving him a hard time for not having sorted this mess out sooner, but it’s clear that he’s got Wainwright backing him up. Is there nothing else on him?”

Bojanowski shook his head. “No – that’s all there is. But you also asked for anything we had on…”

He glanced down at the paperwork in front of him and flicked over one of the sheets.

“… Wainwright’s biofuels expert, Judy Chapman. After graduating with a first-class honors in organic chemistry, she stayed on to do a further two years of postgrad work on hybrid oil derivatives before leaving to take up a post at a government biochemical research establishment near Manchester, England. No surprises there, I guess; given the quality of her degree, the UK government would have tried to ensure she developed her career within their own research program.”

“In which case they clearly didn’t try hard enough,” observed Rick dryly. “Seems kind-of strange to me that they agreed to her taking on this consulting role here in the States… but maybe their signing up to the Futura Treaty makes arranging that sort of thing easier than previously.”

“What I’ve just told you came from a video call with the guy who runs the place,” replied Bojanowski. “He’s a scientist with little time for bureaucrats, and none whatsoever for politicians. His name’s Denton; he’s got enough academic letters after it to guarantee him a triple word score at Scrabble, and he also happens to be her boss. It seems that she herself requested a secondment: to ‘broaden her understanding of the commercial implications of synthetic biofuel development,’ as she put it. He told me that he warned her in advance that getting approval from the British security services for such a placement was highly unlikely, but she was most insistent – so he forwarded the request anyway. Rather to his surprise, it went through on the nod.”

“Did he say why he thought it wouldn’t be approved?”

“Because this place is a legacy of the dictatorship years, apparently. Like I told you before, this guy doesn’t have much time for politicians who interfere in his work, so he was happy to fill me in on some of the background. It seems that about twenty years ago the United States pretty much controlled what little remained of the oil market, and after the Brits found themselves being squeezed out of the Western European efforts to solve the problem, they went their own way. Some of the solutions they developed were quite promising, but they were also exceptionally dangerous – the UK population only discovered how dangerous after the regime collapsed, and the censorship surrounding the facility’s godawful safety record was lifted. After the dictatorship fell, one of the conditions of their admission to the World Government in ‘47 was that the whole place should be decommissioned – but the Brits refused to comply. I got the impression from Denton that they didn’t trust Uncle Sam to share what remained of the oil, and insisted upon retaining their own independent research facilities in case they were ever needed.”

“Yeah… I can see why he’d be surprised they let her go,” mused Rick. “But then, I guess things have changed since they joined the World Government, right? They probably need access to the World Government’s international markets as much as the World Government needs the results of their research effort. Easier to buy somebody else’s dirty laundry and repackage it in clean linen than try to duplicate it warts and all from scratch.”

“That’s pretty much what he said,” agreed Bojanowski. “Anyway, it was eventually decided after a lot of diplomatic wrangling that the research would be allowed to continue – with a catalogue of upgraded safety measures – on the express condition that a worldwide ban would be imposed on the transportation of any of its products. The Brits were okay with that – after all, it didn’t matter to them that the rest of the world didn’t want a share of their biosynthetic pie. Twenty years or so later, the place is still there – and apparently still fully operational.”

He looked around the room as if to invite any more comments, but nobody spoke.

“Okay… so if there’s nothing else that anybody wants to raise, I think we can wrap this up. Rick – let André know if you get any comeback from accessing those files… and watch your back, okay? As a rule, scruples don’t come cheap when you’re dealing with people who have principles – but there’s not much that some guys out there wouldn’t do for the sake of four thousand million bucks.”

They all gathered their paperwork together and filed out of the briefing room. Bojanowski paused to speak with the two online analysts, leaving Rick and André alone.

“So, Rick! We do not find answers in this meeting… and we now have more questions! Is this not frustrating?”

“I never expected any answers,” replied Rick with a shrug, “but at least I feel I’m getting a better sense of what it is we’re up against now. Have you ever had the feeling that up until now you’ve been looking at the world though a tiny hole in the wall, André? And now that somebody’s just kicked the wall down, you’ve realized that the world you’ve been looking at through it is one hell of a lot bigger than you originally thought? Well, that’s how I feel right now… because I can’t shake off the notion that things are about to start getting interesting.”

He rubbed his hands together with relish, and André looked at him with obvious amusement.

“You seem to have developed a… a zest for life, my friend! And yet I remember a few days ago you said that you did not know what you were looking for, but you knew you had not found it yet. Is it still true? And would it perhaps have anything to do with this relationship that you are not involved in?”

Rick pulled a face at him, and then shrugged dismissively.

“Okay, so maybe my interpretation of friendship does stretch the official definition a little, but I was technically correct when I said that Kismet and I aren’t in a relationship.”

He paused for a second, and then grinned. “But maybe one day – if I’m very lucky…”

André nodded slowly, as if having a suspicion confirmed.

“You say ‘maybe one day’… but I am hearing ‘maybe one day soon’. She means a lot to you, I think – so I say this to you: take care… both of her and of yourself. The Commander is right about the power of money. As we say in France, ‘l’argent n’a pas d’odeur’. It means that unprincipled people do not care where their money comes from, just so long as they have it.”

Chapter 7

The next day, Rick walked through the door to the shared office a few minutes past eight o’clock to find Kismet sitting at her console with a cup of coffee on the desk at her side, speculatively eyeing a briefcase that was lying on the table beside it.

“What happened to you yesterday? I was worried! Please don’t tell me it was the canapés – I’ll never forgive myself if…”

“If it was that,” replied Rick with a grin, “it would have been more the quantity than the quality – and that was my fault entirely! Don’t give it a second’s thought… so what’s with the briefcase on the table? Not yours, surely? It looks more like a man’s case…”

“No, it’s not mine,” she replied with a shake of her head, “and I don’t recognize it either. I imagine somebody’s been in here looking for one or other of us and left it by accident – it was just down there under the console when I arrived a couple of minutes ago. It can’t have been here that long before I turned up… they’d surely have missed it just as soon as they got to their office and tried to start work. If so, we’ll have a visitor within the next few minutes.”

But by nine o’clock there was still no sign of the briefcase’s owner returning to collect it, and Kismet was evidently having difficulty settling down to her morning’s work on account of the likelihood of an imminent interruption.

“You could just open it, you know,” suggested Rick mildly. “There’s bound to be something inside to tell you who it belongs to.”

“I don’t think I should,” she replied doubtfully. “My father gets really uptight about prying into… ah!” She snapped her fingers. “Of course – why didn’t I think of that before? I’ll bet Dad knows whose it is – I’ll just go and ask him…”

She grabbed the briefcase and made for the door… and collided head-on with Charles Wainwright, who fell through the door at the very instant she opened it, sending the briefcase flying out of her hand and falling open as it hit the ground between them, sending the contents all over the floor.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Dr Wainwright – I didn’t see you coming! Here, let me help you pick these up…”

Wainwright waved aside the apology with a flustered smile.

“Please, Miss Yazdani – there’s no need, I assure you: I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness… it was my carelessness… I see you found it, then? I’d have been back sooner to pick it up, but Judy cornered me the moment I arrived, and I’ve been in and out of meetings since… could you just pass me that, Lieutenant?”

Rick had picked up one of a set of folded sheets of blue paper that had fallen out of the briefcase and was studying it with keen interest. Upon hearing his name, he blinked and looked up with obvious embarrassment.

“Sorry, Dr Wainwright – I got a bit carried away for a moment… you know, this is fantastic! Is it a variant on the A44 Viper that’s already in service, or are these plans for a stealth fighter of similar capabilities that hasn’t been built yet?”

Completely thrown by the obvious breadth of understanding that the young police lieutenant had shown from an inspection at the document lasting no longer than ten seconds, Wainwright found himself reduced to a stutter as he tried to avoid answering the question without being seen to do so – and failed.

“Er… well, that is… I’m not at all sure it’s appropriate to be discussing such matters at this stage in the development cycle…”

Rick cut him short as comprehension dawned in a flash of insight.

“Of course! This must be the operation that Svencorp is financing – the one that Peter Svenson was telling us about! All I can say is wow – I had no idea it was such an innovative project! I mean, although there are obvious similarities with the Viper in terms of the heat exchangers and air intakes, there are also adaptations in the combustion chambers and afterburners – and haven’t the multi-stage compressors have been redesigned too?”

Wainwright blinked up at him with astonishment, tinged with respect. “You’re right, Lieutenant – they’ve been completely overhauled. You certainly know your military aircraft!”

“Oh, just a hobby of mine… the multi-layered cahelium shielding on the air intakes is an interesting modification on the original design, though – why was that introduced?”

“Enhanced protection against surface-to-air attrition,” replied Wainwright, squinting at the section of the schematic indicated by Rick’s finger. “The Viper’s predecessor was vulnerable to ground-based fire in those areas of the fuselage. It was recognized to be weakness at the time, but the speed with which the Caspian conflict in ‘51 escalated prevented remedial measures being put in place in time to resolve it. A lot of planes were lost during that campaign.”

“Yeah, I know,” replied Rick with a frown. “But… in that case, why are the air-to-ground missile launch tubes beneath the cockpit only protected with a single layer?”

Having finally managed to recover his composure after the initial shock of finding himself unexpectedly drawn into a discussion of the finer points of the aircraft’s design, Wainwright shook his head with an air of returning confidence.

“Not a good idea to employ multi-layered shielding there. It would have added superfluous weight to the fuselage within the nose section, impairing the plane’s manoeuvrability at Mach five and above – and in any case, our funding has facilitated the development of an ultra-low viscosity lubricant for deployment within the ammunition feed chute mechanism that considerably reduces the risk of a blowout in the event of a direct hit…”

Rick’s frown grew deeper. “Only a synthetic biofuel would have the properties required to reduce the blowout risk to an acceptably low level – and moving that stuff around the planet has been banned for the last twenty years. The pollution risk...”

“… is wildly overstated in my view,” interrupted Wainwright dismissively, “but if it were necessary to employ such technology, we have Ms Chapman’s invaluable advice regarding how best to proceed. As you observed earlier, Lieutenant, this plane is an enhanced variant of the Viper… now – fortunately for us – a wealth of fuselage attrition data was amassed during the aerial dogfights that took place between the A44’s predecessor and the Bereznian Vampires towards the end of the Caspian campaign. That data provided us with a comprehensive summary of the areas of the fuselage that were the most vulnerable. Look – I’ll show you…”

He leaned over the table and spread out the diagram in front of them.

“These areas here, here and here… were all heavily riddled with shrapnel – whereas this area beneath the cockpit sustained almost no damage at all. The design of the plane’s fuselage obviously protects the missile delivery mechanism from sustaining damage in that part of the undercarriage: Donald reckons it’s the location of the landing gear that’s responsible, whereas I believe it’s the delta-wing design that modifies the slip-steam, deflecting incoming fire just enough to protect the launch tubes.”

Rick shot him a questioning glance. “You mean you don’t know the reason? Still, I guess it hardly matters if the data is accurate. No doubt about that, I suppose?”

Wainwright shook his head emphatically.

“None at all. Every plane that returned was examined in painstaking detail, and the results of every one of those examinations was comprehensively logged. The data’s been easily accessible on the Dark Web for almost ten years now: it got leaked by a bunch of state-sponsored hackers from Katania during the final days of the campaign to embarrass the World Army Air Force high-ups. Which it did – badly – but the upside was that absolutely anyone could download and analyse it at any time. It was just good fortune that Donald and I recognized its significance – and its relevance to this project – before any of FEC’s competitors did. In fact, it was one of the factors in my bringing this business opportunity to John Svenson’s attention: if we hadn’t taken advantage of it, somebody else would…”

Kismet, who had been patiently waiting for the interchange of technobabble to subside, suddenly looked up with a frown. “Please forgive my interrupting, but did you just say ‘every plane that returned’, Dr Wainwright?”

Wainwright blinked with irritation at the breaking of his chain of thought. “I did, Miss Yazdani. Is there a problem?”

“So… what about the aircraft that didn’t return? Didn’t you say earlier that a lot of planes were lost during the Caspian campaign?”

“Well,” replied Wainwright with a hint of irritation creeping in his tone, “obviously it isn’t possible to examine a plane that never made it back to base, Miss Yazdani! Admittedly an examination of those planes might have increased our understanding of the situation to some small degree, but in view of the sheer volume of data that was recorded from the planes that did return, I really don’t see…”

“No, no – it’s not that you would merely have more data,” persisted Kismet. “The issue here is the type of data that’s available for analysis. The data that would be retrievable from a downed plane could be quite different from that retrieved from one that had not been downed – because that data might be able to give you an indication of the reason for its destruction. The problem is that, almost by definition, you can’t retrieve data from a plane that you’re unable to examine.”

“Miss Yazdani – what you’re saying smacks of trying to decide whether or not a blind man in a darkened room could catch a black cat that wasn’t there,” replied Wainwright wearily. “I can assure you that…”

“One moment please, Dr Wainwright,” interrupted Rick quietly. “I might be wrong, but I think I’m beginning to see what Kismet’s driving at here. What exactly is the point you’re making, Kismet?”

“Well,” replied Kismet hesitantly, “obviously I know nothing at all about the technical issues you’re discussing, but the point I’m trying to make is that all the data you’ve analysed came from the planes that returned. There was no data from the planes that didn’t return, because obviously they were all shot down. So… where did those planes sustain damage?”

She looked at the two men questioningly. “Might it not be that they were damaged in the areas of the fuselage where the effect of a hit was most likely to prove fatal – that is, in those areas not damaged in the returning planes?”

Wainwright turned to her with a condescending smile.

“Oh, come now, Miss Yazdani – it’s much too fanciful to suppose that this little excursion of yours into the world of abstract logical conundrums can have any bearing upon a subject as practical as aircraft design! Every step in the development process is supported by extensive and rigorous experimentation, as I imagine Lieutenant Fraser is well aware. There’s absolutely no cause for alarm, I assure you…”

Rick slowly shook his head.

“I’m not sure I agree, Dr Wainwright – in fact the more I think about it, the less I agree. As I see it, Kismet’s observation is perfectly valid. She’s right: the reason you’ve got no data to show the effect of a direct hit on the launch tubes is that all those planes were destroyed during the attack. And this is the spec for a plane that’s being built with many of the same design features as those that were destroyed during that campaign. Wouldn’t you say that was something to be concerned about?”

Wainwright shook his head with an air of increasing impatience.

“Look… I do most earnestly advise you not to concern yourselves with this. Fairfield Engines is a global leader in this field, and the size of our financial support for this venture is a measure of our faith in their ability to deliver the world-beating product that they are on the verge of completing…”

He peered at the monitor on Kismet’s desk, squinted at the clock at the bottom of it and pulled a face. “Sorry to cut this short, Lieutenant, but I’ll be late for my meeting with John if I don’t get on my way… would you hand me my briefcase, please? And I’m going to need that too…”

He picked up the spec with obvious haste, and rapidly folded it up before stuffing it into the briefcase. Having spared the monitor another quick glance, he then strode purposefully out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. Kismet watched him disappear around the corner at the end of the corridor before she spoke.

“He’s not going to do anything about it, is he?”

“Maybe not,” replied Rick thoughtfully, “but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten what you said. Maybe he just wants time to think about it for a while. He’s not late for a meeting – he just wanted to get out of here, that’s all.”

She threw him a quizzical look. “What makes you say that?”

Rick chuckled and jerked his head towards her monitor.

“Hands-on experience of how bureaucracy works – and there’s plenty of that where I come from! Almost all meetings in a large organization are scheduled using online calendars, right? The thing is, hardly anybody knows how to change their default settings – least of all the senior managers. They’re all too busy doing whatever it is they’re paid for to waste time finding out stuff like that… so inevitably all the meetings begin either on the hour or the half-hour. Wainwright left the office less than five minutes ago – and it’s now twenty to ten.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, so he’s a few minutes late for one that’s just started… so what?”

“For a meeting with Svenson?” Rick pulled an incredulous face at her. “Nobody in this place would be even one minute late for a meeting with Svenson… and this guy’s deferential to a fault! If Wainwright really had a meeting with him, he’d have been watching that clock from the moment he walked in here – and he’d have been out of that door at twenty-eight minutes past nine at the absolute latest. Am I right, or am I right?”

She grinned sheepishly back at him. “Oh, probably one or the other! But even if he did want to get out of here in a hurry, so what? Maybe he just remembered he was supposed to have done something or been somewhere he didn’t want to talk about!”

“Perhaps,” conceded Rick. “I’m just saying is that he was more shaken by what we said about the shielding than he let on, that’s all.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“You saw how fast he made himself scarce,” replied Rick with a grin. “He was so keen to get away that he forgot to tell us why he came here in the first place – but I guess he’ll be back soon enough if it was important. In the meantime, there’s something I need to be getting on with…”

He sat down at his console and logged himself on. A few seconds later, he swore under his breath.

“What’s the matter – has your password expired or something?”

He pulled a face, then leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.

“Oh, nothing… it looks like that backup I was looking at yesterday is now offline, that’s all. Oh well, never mind – there are plenty of other things I need to get moving on…. look, can you find me that…”

She gave a little start as a shadow passed over her through the window.

“Oh! Look… Mr Orson’s just walked past… we can ask him why it’s been taken down….”

“For heaven’s sake, it really doesn’t matter,” replied Rick with a flash of irritation. “There’s absolutely no need…”

“It’s no bother! And since he’s right here…”

She shot out of the door before he could argue further, returning a few moments later with a cup of coffee in her hand and the systems manager in tow, himself carrying a cup which was overflowing with foam. Pulling a face, he carefully transferred the cup to his other hand, and then licked the mess off his fingers.

“Ye gods – that dispenser needs recalibrating! Does it always put this much gunk on the top, Kismet?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr Orson,” replied Kismet sympathetically. “That’s why I sip most of the foam off the top before I try carrying it back here… just put it down on the table and wait for it to settle. It’s usually sunk back into the cup by the time you’ve found something to wipe your hands with.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” muttered Orson as he put the cup down beside hers. “Now, then – what was it you wanted to ask me about a few minutes ago? Did you say it was something to do with a backup?”

Kismet nodded vigorously. “Yes – that’s right…. Rick was reviewing one of our old backups last night just before we went home, Mr Orson. He said it was relevant to what we’ve been looking into, didn’t you, Rick? The thing is, it’s no longer available now – and he’s saying it doesn’t matter now because he doesn’t want to bother you – but I knew you wouldn’t mind. Can you tell us if there’s a reason it’s been taken offline? And can we have it back again?”

Orson frowned for a moment, then snapped his fingers.

“Oh – yes, of course – that one. Sorry, but each backup is automatically archived when the new one supersedes it – it’s a security precaution for which the order comes right from the top. To be honest, I’m surprised you were able to access it at all. Do you need it urgently? It wouldn’t be impossible to get it back for you if it was very important, but I’m kind-of busy right now…”

Rick raised his hands and shook his head emphatically.

“There’s no need at all, sir. From what little I saw of it I doubt whether there’s anything there that would be of any use to us anyway. Please don’t trouble yourself on our account.”

Orson looked at him speculatively for a long second, then broke into a disarming smile.

“You’re quite sure about that, Lieutenant? At the risk of contravening the regulations, I always try to be as accommodating as possible…”

“I’m sure, Mr Orson. But thanks for offering – it’s great to know we can call on you for help if we need it.”

“Oh, all part of the service,” replied Orson airily. “Anyway, you know where to find me… now we’ve had that machine installed for us, I’m never far away.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the vending machine, then picked up one of the cups from the table and carried it to the door. As he was closing it behind him, he turned.

“Just let me know if you change your mind, eh? Things are more than usually chaotic in my department these days with all this panic about cyberattacks going on, but nothing’s impossible if somebody wants something badly enough.”

The door clicked shut, and Rick thoughtfully watched him walk away back up the corridor in the direction of his department.

“Why didn’t you just ask him to get it back, Rick? He said he could do it!”

“He also said he’d been told not to,” muttered Rick, frowning. “But never mind about that – he’s obviously a busy guy and I didn’t want to waste his time. Look, can we just forget about it? I was going to ask you if we could make a start on the Dubrovnik file when he walked past… we’ve been putting it off long enough.”

“Sure! I’ll just get rid of this before it goes completely cold…”

She took a long sip out of her drink, then peered at the cup and frowned. “You know, I’m sure this one wasn’t full a few moments ago! I think he’s just walked off with mine.”

Rick shrugged. “Well… if this one was full when he left, he obviously hasn’t drunk any of it yet – so if you’re worried about germs, it’s his problem, yeah?”

“I guess,” she replied with a shrug, “but it’s too cold to drink now anyway – so I’m going to get another. The Dubrovnik file is the topmost folder in your in-tray – not the electronic one but that wiry metal thing down by your left foot. I ran off a hard copy for you yesterday… more difficult for you to find more important things to do yet again.”

She quit the office, and Rick reached down and lifted the file out of the wire basket. Weighing it in his hands, he pulled a face: the wretched thing couldn’t possibly be composed of fewer than a couple of hundred pages. He dropped it back into the basket, peered thoughtfully at the blank computer screen for a few seconds, then leaned forward and pulled up a spreadsheet.

By the time Kismet returned a few moments later, he’d already filled half the screen with numbers and was still typing furiously. She shot a glance at the file in the basket, opened her mouth to protest, then quietly sat down to her work and left him to whatever it was that he’d wrapped himself up in.

The rest of the afternoon passed in silence. Eventually she glanced up at the clock on the wall, quietly shut down her terminal, and then shot a quick look at Rick’s in-tray. The file was still perched precariously on the top of it.

“So… you reckon we’re going to be looking at Dubrovnik sometime tomorrow, then?”

Rick physically jumped at the sound of her voice, then gesticulated wildly in the general direction of his monitor with obvious frustration.

“I’ve set up simulations of all the possible stress patterns around the underside hatch following an explosion of greater than one point six kilotons – anything over and above that would vaporize the aircraft anyway. That allows for anything up to and including a direct hit from a Thunderbolt-class interceptor carrying a tactical nuclear warhead, yeah? I mean, there are probably fifty variations in total, but realistically there’s only about a dozen scenarios that need to be considered – and every single one of them would result in at least an eighty-five percent…”

His voice trailed away as he realized she was patiently waiting for the rant to end, and his fraught expression dissolved into an apologetic half-smile.

“Sorry… look, it’s almost six. Your father’s probably still here, so why don’t you catch him before he leaves and get a lift with him? There’s just a couple of things I want to finish up before I call it a day, but they might take a bit longer than…”

“Rick… put it down and go home. I’ll leave when you leave – not before – because something tells me that if I leave first, you’ll still be here tomorrow morning! And just in case you hadn’t noticed, Dad hasn’t been in the office since Monday… so actually, I could use a lift with you please!”

She took a deep breath, and her expression softened just a fraction.

“That is – if you’re offering, of course.”

Rick looked up from his computer screen in a flash of exasperation. Their eyes met… and somehow the spreadsheet full of stress pattern simulations miraculously faded from his consciousness. Surely there couldn’t be specks of gold in her irises? With a herculean effort he broke eye contact for an instant, and then immediately re-established it with a disarming smile.

“Sure I’m offering! There’s no way I’ll leave you to get home on your own – you want to go get your coat? And do you fancy stopping off for dinner on the way?”

“On one condition. You’ve got to promise not to start talking about tactical high-fission warheads – because if you do, I’ll walk out…”

“Not one word!” protested Rick indignantly. “Look, this final stress pattern simulation just needs about another thirty seconds to run, so why don’t you go get your coat? I’ll have shut the whole thing down by the time you get back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

She gave him a long look, then walked into the bathroom to collect her coat while he leaned over his console. Pausing for a second with his finger over the power-down button, he frowned one last time at the equations on the screen. Briefly contemplating sitting down at the console once more, he shook his head reluctantly and brought his finger down on the button with a decisive stab. Stepping back as the screen went blank, he was startled to discover that she’d already returned with the coat over her arm and was standing directly behind him.

“I’m impressed – and more than a little surprised! I was expecting to have to put this thing back on its peg again…”

Rick did his best to look hurt. “Completely unnecessary! As you can see, I’m ready to go – which is more than I can say for you! Here – allow me…”

He lifted the coat off her arm, then turned her round to face him while he slipped it over her shoulders, then started to button it up for her from the top down. He got as far as the third button before their lips inexplicably touched... and then stayed in contact for a further five full seconds before they slowly separated once more, each as obviously embarrassed as the other. Rick recovered his composure first, albeit only by a fraction of a second.

“We… er… we ought to get moving… you know… the traffic at this time of day…”

“Of course – yes, you’re right,” she agreed, edging her way to the door.

“I guess the tactical nukes can wait till tomorrow,” he added with a grin. “There’s something rather more important I need to do first.”

She stopped in the doorway and turned round with just a hint of exasperation in her expression.

“And what would that be?”

“To ask you if you’ve got specks of gold in your eyes.”

The exasperated look dissolved into an expression of incomprehension. “What? Er… well, I don’t know… but – didn’t you look when we were… that is… you know… just now?”

“Er… yes – yes, I did,” admitted Rick awkwardly, after a second’s silence. “I just couldn’t tell, that’s all.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “Why not?”

“Because you had your eyes closed.”

Several seconds of silence followed as she assimilated the new information, after which she very slowly and deliberately walked back to face him once more.

“And… now?”

“Actually, I think you do,” murmured Rick with just a hint of wonder in his voice as he gently took her in his arms and drew her lips to his own once more. “I think you really do…”

Chapter 8

“To distant lands… takes both my hands… never a frown… with golden brown…”

Having arrived almost an hour earlier than usual, Rick had found it impossible to concentrate on the problem at hand. Having instead spent almost the entire time daydreaming, he abruptly stopped humming to himself as the door opened… and found himself staring with unselfconscious admiration at the object of his daydream as she walked into the room. Startled into finding an appropriate greeting – and very much to his own surprise – he simply said the first thing that came into his head.

“Wow! You’re looking on top of the world this morning!”

Obviously startled for a moment by the directness of the compliment, she instinctively lowered her eyes to avoid his gaze, although he could tell that the unprompted reaction to her arrival wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Any thoughts of qualifying it were however dashed immediately by her next words, which comprised an equally direct appraisal of his appearance.

“Well, you don’t! You look dreadful… didn’t you go to bed at all last night?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but instantly – and thankfully – recognizing that he’d just been offered an escape route from an exchange that might be difficult to develop, he took refuge in an apologetic expression coupled with the mock surrender implied by a pair of raised hands.

“Okay – I admit it. It’s the tactical nukes… I went over the calculations again last night. Came up with the same results as before – not that that’s surprising, but the more I think about it, the less likely it seems to me that Wainwright could simply dismiss the implications as glibly as he did. The guy might be kind-of stuffy in his attitude, but he’s no fool – he must have seen it! Thing is, extra shielding negatively impacts manoeuvring capability – so going down that route makes taking a hit more likely, not less. The obvious alternative would be to mitigate against the effect of taking a hit by re-engineering the lubricants to prevent a chain reaction building up in the missile delivery system. The trouble with that solution is that biosynthetic lubricant technology is off-limits: the stuff’s too dangerous to manufacture in industrial quantities, and the transportation of it across World Government member state boundaries is banned. I’ve been awake half the night with the whole thing running round and round in my head like a… a cage full of hamsters in a wheel…”

He stopped and frowned to himself, then looked at her enquiringly.

“Come to think of it, what is a collection of hamsters called? I nearly said a pack just then, but that just sounds weird. How about a flock? No… I’m sure that’s not right either…”

She looked at him mischievously for a moment, glanced at the cup of coffee in his hand, then seemed to come to a decision.

“Do you really want to know? I think you might want to put that cup down first.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Er… why?”

“Just put it down… that’s right. Now then… it’s a horde of hamsters. Honest.”

He blinked in astonishment, then grinned incredulously. “A horde of hamsters? No way – I don’t believe it… you cannot be serious!” The grin gave way to a bewildered frown. “Jeez… now I’m seeing a mighty invincible army of hamsters swarming across the Steppes of Central Asia bringing death and destruction to every city in their path…”

She laughed unselfconsciously. “Stop it, will you! You’ll make me choke on this!” Carefully putting her cup down on the table with an effort, she took a deep breath and continued.

“The only reason I happen to know that is we used to have one at home when I was a little girl, and I read up on them shortly after we bought it. I’ve no idea who gave them that name, but it’s probably the invention of some ivory-towered academic who’d never seen one. They’re very solitary creatures… probably unsurprising, given that their ancestors had the entire Syrian desert to live in. Each one most likely never saw another for weeks on end… for all I know, maybe months.”

“They must have met up at some time in their lives – or there wouldn’t be any hamsters around at all,” observed Rick dryly.

She pulled a face and rolled her eyes.

“Only a man could find a way to bring sex into a conversation about the lifestyles of hamsters! Perhaps the females only put up with the males for long enough to sort out their nests for them and make sure they set off for work in the morning down at the sand dune with a large pile of sesame seeds and a well-brushed coat of fur. How about that for a working hypothesis?”

She tossed her hair and regarded him steadily with her deep brown eyes. Rick suddenly and inexplicably felt himself drowning in them…

“Rick? Hello there… is anybody home?”

Suddenly conscious that she’d asked him a question and was awaiting a reply, he blinked himself out of his trance with an effort and tried to play back her last few words in his head, but it was no good: he’d lost the thread completely.

“Sorry… what was it you were just saying about sand dunes?”

“Rick, you’re worse than my father! I’ve lost track of the number of times that Mom’s explained things to him in painstaking detail, only to discover that he’s been so completely wrapped up in his work problems that he hasn’t heard a single word! He’d be completely lost without her looking after him. What you need is a woman to look after you.”

He opened his mouth with the obvious response already on his lips, hesitated as he weighed up the consequences of what he was about to say, then mentally kicked himself for not instantly seizing the opening he’d been offered. The entire chain of thought had gone through his head within the space of less than one second… but it was one second too long. It would only have been the right thing to say if it had been perfectly spontaneous – of that he was quite certain – but in that instant he realized not only that she was right, but that she was the only woman he’d ever want to take the job on. He smiled ruefully to himself… there’d be no hesitation next time.

“Yeah, well… guess you’re right.”

He picked up the file he’d abandoned last thing the previous day, settled himself back in his chair and started to read. A few moments later he threw it back down onto the desk and took a long deep breath. Kismet looked at him quizzically, and he pulled a face by way of a reply.

“It’s no good – I’m not taking this in. I’m going to take a little stroll… helps me think.”

He spun his chair round, lurched forward out of it and walked down the corridor to the coffee machine, where he stopped and peered stupidly at the panel. What the hell did he want to drink? He had absolutely no idea. Frowning, he’d started to read down the list of options when a faint sound behind him made him jump. Startled, he turned round to find himself face to face with Charles Wainwright standing behind him, patiently waiting for him to key in a selection from the panel.

“Sorry, Doctor Wainwright! Didn’t hear you arrive – must’ve been miles away. Want to get yours first?”

“No rush,” replied Wainwright vaguely. “I come out here at least as much for the walk as the drink these days… the Keep can get a bit claustrophobic sometimes. Are you trying to decide which recipe to try out next, Lieutenant? You can make it deliver just about anything if you know what you’re doing. Martin Orson ensured that we get this specific model installed for just that reason.”

“All the same to me as long as it’s warm and wet,” replied Rick, shaking his head. “Which I guess is just as well: an iron stomach is a prerequisite for anyone brave enough to sample the muck that comes out of our machines back at HQ. Is everyone in Mr Orson’s department a coffee connoisseur, then?”

Wainwright shrugged. “I guess it does no harm to keep them all happy, given that we’re seriously dependent on their goodwill when it comes to working long hours right now… but no, Martin’s the only one who makes any noise about that kind of thing.”

“Has he got an allergy, then?”

“If he has, he’s never mentioned it to me,” replied Wainwright dismissively. “No, Martin’s just a…”

He checked himself abruptly, obviously with a view to substituting an appropriately polite euphemism for whatever was going through his mind.

“… well, he… he likes to have everything just so, you know?” He shrugged philosophically. “Oh well, I guess all of us have our little foibles. Notwithstanding the range of flavor combinations that this miracle of modern culinary science can deliver, there’s pretty much only one that he likes – and that one’s just about as obscure as they come. I never came across anybody else who liked it, and speaking for myself I reckon it’s kind-of foul – but you want to give it a try…”

He reached down towards the panel, but Rick pulled a face and held up his hands in protest.

“Another time maybe. As it happens, I’m glad I ran into you: do you have a few moments to talk? Something’s bugging me.”

Wainwright peered at him closely for a second. “Sure, Lieutenant… what’s on your mind? Whatever it is, I’m sure I can help out.”

Something in the tone gave Rick the distinct impression that the guy already knew what he was about to ask, and that he had the answer ready. Something’s happened since yesterday, he thought.

“Look… I’ve been chewing over that question of the vulnerability of the launch tubes to incoming fire. The quality of shielding needed to protect the pilot from toxic levels of radiation emanating from a critically damaged ammunition feed chute…”

“… didn’t exist at the time of the Caspian campaign – yes, you’re right.” Wainwright abruptly finished the sentence for him, then visibly relaxed.

“But that was ten years ago, Lieutenant – and a lot has happened in those ten years, believe me.  Apart from anything else, hypertensile cahelium has happened in the last ten years – and that’s a game-changer! Svencorp’s funding has put FEC right up with the leaders in the metallurgy field… no need to worry about that kind of issue.”

Nice try, thought Rick. He frowned, shaking his head. “Sure, the radiation shielding capability of cahelium is second to none… but its pliability index is a full three points short of that of tempered steel. You’d need to augment the molecular structure with a flexible binding agent to raise the pliability to a level capable of both absorbing and dissipating the force of a Vampire missile strike – which of course would negatively impact the effectiveness of the shielding. It was that point I wanted to talk to you about.”

Wainwright’s smug expression evaporated.

“Well, of course it’s not completely impossible that you might have a point… at least in theory… but it’s certainly not an area of concern, I assure you. Fairfield’s been aware of the issue ever since it was raised – he and Judy were working round the clock…”

His voice trailed away, and Rick could almost see the thoughts going through Wainwright’s head as he belatedly realized he’d talked himself into a corner. Nothing short of proof positive that the problem had indeed been solved would now satisfy him: Wainwright knew it… and he could see that Rick knew that he knew.

“That’s to say, of course… he and Judy spared no effort to resolve the matter – but since this still appears to be troubling you – albeit quite unnecessarily, I have to say – why don’t you come over to my office some time? If I take you through the calculations, I’m sure it’ll ease your mind.”

“That would be a privilege,” replied Rick hastily. “I’d be very interested to see them… and as it happens, I’ve got an hour or so before Orson’s team can download of a file of delivery schedules from Singapore that I’ve requested… so would now be convenient?”

Rick’s enthusiasm was unfeigned, but the pushiness was calculated. Given that Wainwright had already demonstrated his inability to think fast under pressure, he might just try to backtrack later if given the chance.

“Well… er, I suppose… that is yes, of course – the paperwork’s in my office…”

So… not only did he already know about the issue before we raised it with him yesterday, but he now claims to have documentation which proves it’s not a problem. Interesting…

“Great! Let’s go!”

Wainwright blinked in surprise, inexplicably startled by the realisation that Rick’s understanding of the word ‘now’ differed radically in terms of its sense of immediacy from his own.

“What? Oh yes – yes, of course… this way… but then of course you know that… look, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to leave it until after… no, I don’t suppose you would…”

Sparing a wistful glance at the coffee machine, he set off after Rick, who had already reached the door at the end of the corridor and was holding it open for him. Rick fell smartly into step with him as he passed through, and Wainwright winced: the whole exchange had served to remind him once again that although the young police lieutenant was amiable enough for the most part, he wasn’t subject to the rules of deference to seniority that would be instinctively respected by a subordinate company employee.

The two men walked out of the IT section and up the corridor into the Keep, where a young woman with an unfamiliar face was seated behind the reception desk. She smiled and raised her hand by way of a greeting as the two men approached, having obviously recognized Wainwright. Rick lagged a couple of steps behind while Wainwright acknowledged the wave with a nod and walked over to the desk.

“Olivia! It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? All sorted now, yes? I do hope so – we’ve really been feeling the effects of being short-staffed these last few days… we even had to draft Miss Chap…”

Olivia looked suitably apologetic. “Oooh yes, she said when she came to see me! Said she didn’t mind doing it at all – really nice about it, she was – even offered to take a blood sample away to analyse it, but I said no because I don’t like needles and all that…”

Wainwright looked at her closely. “So… she wasn’t able to suggest a possible cause, then?”

Olivia shook her head emphatically.

“It was a stomach bug – a really nasty one! I mean, it had me laid up in bed for three days solid… except for all the coughing and being sick and all. The only time I got out of bed was to run to the bathroom and throw up: it was awful! None of my friends have gone down with it – at least not yet…”

Wainwright cleared his throat and held up his hand.

“Er… I don’t imagine Lieutenant Fraser here wants to hear all the medical details, Olivia! It’s enough that you’re back with us in the land of the living – er… you’re quite sure you’re free of it now, I take it? The last thing we need is a virus – a biological one, that is – going through the office right now. There’s been quite a serious incident unfolding here while you’ve been away, and it’s not over yet.”

Olivia threw a surreptitious sideways glance at Rick upon hearing him being referred to by his rank, but she knew her place. No doubt Dr Wainwright would tell her who he was in his own good time – and as he was right here…

“Oooh – I know! Mr Orson was telling me about it when I met him coming in this morning – which reminds me: he said he wanted to see you about the overtime payments for his section. He says they’re working round the clock, and he needs to know he’s got another one hundred fifty thousand dollars authorized before he can sign the sheets. It wouldn’t do if any of them got it, would it? It gets you ever so quickly: one minute you’re feeling just great, and the next…

“Yes, thank you Olivia… we’re going to need enhanced security privileges for Lieutenant Fraser: he’s a police officer in the WGPC who’s working on site with us for a few weeks. We’ve moved him in with Kismet out in the Courtyard, but there’s something in my office he needs to see. Would you upgrade his pass, please? You can tell Mr Orson I’ll get his expenses authorized in time for their next payslips.”

“He did say it was really urgent, Doctor Wainwright.”

“I daresay he did,” snapped Wainwright with a grimace. “Tell him he’ll get it done when I’ve got time to deal with it.”

The abrupt change of tone silenced Olivia, who meekly took Rick’s pass from him, scanned it and handed it back to him without another word. Rick silently mouthed ‘thank you’ to her, and she smiled coyly back.

“Oh! Doctor Wainwright… Ms Chapman was looking for you earlier. It was about the projected attrition rates or something like that…”

“It’s all right, Olivia,” interjected Wainwright hurriedly, “I know what that’ll be all about – just tell her I’ll come down to see her as soon as I’m free, would you?”

“But Doctor Wainwright…”

Wainwright silenced her once more with a scowl of irritation and called after Rick who, having felt it polite to detach himself from the increasingly tetchy conversation, was now walking away from the reception desk towards the offices. Wainwright called after him as he turned the corner.

“Mine’s the second one on your right, Lieutenant. I’ll catch you up… just go straight in – the enhanced privileges now enabled on your pass should open it.”

Rick duly held the pass up to the scanner, half-expecting it merely to buzz obstinately back at him, but the door duly swung open, and he stepped inside. Each office was evidently individually styled, he realized: whereas the empty office originally set aside for Adam Svenson’s use had reminded him of a display room in a model exhibition, Wainwright’s had something of the feel of an up-market hotel room. Whatever would make the occupant feel at home, no doubt. He was wondering how John Svenson’s office might be laid out when the sound of clicking keys from the direction of the right-hand wall made him start. The chair of the computer console was facing away from him, and he suddenly realized that the room already had an occupant – who then stopped typing and immediately spoke without turning round:

“It’s not looking good, Charles – at these concentrations they’ll almost certainly have to upgrade the entire port wing assembly…”

Wainwright followed Rick into the office at the same moment, instantly taking in the scene and realising the error the speaker had made in assuming he’d entered the room alone.

“Judy! That is… Ms Chapman… er… I’ve got Lieutenant Fraser with me right now: he’s been asking me about the anti-radiation shielding on the…”

The chair swivelled round, and Judy Chapman rose out of it to face the two men. If she was conscious of having spoken out of turn, she showed no sign of it.

“Lieutenant Fraser… it’s not often we see you in the Keep! Forgive me for taking the liberty of using your direct line to their pilot plant, Dr Wainwright; you weren’t in your office and the matter was somewhat urgent. I believe I’ve put their minds at rest now, but if they do call back then just transfer the call to me down in the lab and I’ll sort them out.”

“Of course, Judy – thanks for picking it up… but then of course, most of these calls end up being rerouted to you anyway, don’t they?”

He gestured towards Rick, obviously mindful that his presence needed to be explained.

“I was just talking to Lieutenant Fraser here at the coffee machine a few moments ago, Judy… he has an interest in the cahelium adaptations that FEC implemented on the A44 project. He was wondering how Fairfield’s people were able to neutralize the attrition issue… you were given a copy of their documentation on it at the time, I believe?”

If the request surprised Judy, she showed no sign of it. “Why yes, Doctor Wainwright – in fact, I believe I have it right here…”

She reached down, rapidly flicked through the pile of paperwork on the desk in front of her and extracted a weighty report, which she then turned round to enable Rick to read the title page.

“As you can see, Lieutenant, this was drawn up by the head of FEC’s metallurgy team last November. You’ll appreciate of course that this document can’t be allowed to leave the office: it’s probably the most closely-guarded secret in the aviation industry right now, and Donald Fairfield would never permit it – I’m sure you understand – but I’ll be happy to take you through its key findings. Are you familiar with the macroscopic behaviour of super-stressed polythermal isotopes during the transmission of shockwaves through petroleum derivatives?”

Rick looked up from the title page of the document and spread his hands apologetically.

“Ms Chapman… I’m just a humble cop with an interest in military aircraft. I’ll follow you as best I can, but you might need to dumb it down just a tad.”

She and Wainwright exchanged glances, and her expression relaxed just a fraction.

“No problem at all, Lieutenant. You’ll see here in the concluding remarks at the end of Chapter Six that…”

The videophone on Wainwright’s desk suddenly flickered into life, and Olivia’s face appeared on the screen.

“Doctor Wainwright – I have a courier at the desk with a high priority delivery for you, to be forwarded to Mr Orson. Should I escort him directly through to the IT department?”

Wainwright rolled his eyes and raised his voice to answer. “One moment, Olivia… just give me a minute or two to get back to my desk, would you?”

He turned to his guest apologetically. “Sorry for the interruption, Lieutenant. It’s my fault, not Olivia’s: the buzzer on that thing’s so quiet I sometimes don’t hear it. I leave it in automatic activation mode most days…”

He turned away and strode across the room to answer the call, providing Rick with a welcome opportunity to inspect the document more closely while he was occupied. One glance at the final paragraph of the chapter indicated by Judy was sufficient to tell him that he wasn’t going to understand a word of it, so he slowly thumbed his way backwards through the report, stopping briefly at the start of each section to skim through the first couple of paragraphs. It was hopeless. Even in paragraphs where most of the words were recognisably English, the sentences into which they’d been arranged meant nothing to him.

Conscious that Judy was watching him closely, he impassively closed the report, then opened it once more and turned to the introduction – but even there, the only parts that conveyed any useful information were the first two sentences of the abstract, the date of publication and the page number. In the meantime, Wainwright had seated himself at his desk and was squinting at the bulky package that Olivia was holding up to the camera.

“Ask him what it is and where it’s come from, Olivia.”

Olivia’s face disappeared abruptly, and a barely audible rapid verbal exchange could be heard off-camera. Wainwright leaned over the device and muted it before turning apologetically to Rick.

“I assure you that this won’t take long, Lieutenant. One of the curses of being a senior manager, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t mind me,” replied Rick disarmingly as he glanced up briefly from the report. “Please take your time, sir. I’m in no hurry to get away, I assure you.”

Wainwright peered at him uncertainly for a second, then turned to the videophone and unmuted it once more just as Olivia started to speak.

“The courier says it arrived on the 0840 cargo express from London, England, Doctor Wainwright. The documentation just says perishable culinary ingredients, so I can’t tell what’s in it without opening it – but it’s labelled air freight with certified customs clearance…”

“No need to bother him,” grunted Wainwright, shooting a sideways glance at Judy. “I can guess what that is… just bring it through to my office and I’ll sign for it.”

“Yes, Doctor Wainwright.”

A few moments later there was a sharp tap on the door, and Olivia stepped in carrying a medium-sized container festooned with an array of official-looking stickers, which she duly placed on Wainwright’s desk. Wainwright spared the package a cursory glance before taking the tablet that Olivia handed him, pressed his thumb to the scanner and then handed it back.

“Thank you, Doctor Wainwright. Should I take it over to him at once?”

Judy reached for the package, picked it up and rocked it gently from side to side, then turned to the receptionist and shook her head.

“Don’t worry about it, Olivia… I’ll be seeing him shortly so I can give it to him myself. You just make sure that courier finds his way back to main reception, would you? The last one who delivered a boxful of Martin’s little indulgencies got so spectacularly lost that we eventually had to send out a search party.”

Having duly dismissed the receptionist, she set the package down on the desk, then stepped over to the computer and logged herself out, then turned towards the door.

“I’d better be on my way too, Dr Wainwright. I should be able to give you a preliminary rundown of the latest batch of antigen tests by mid-afternoon, so I suggest we tentatively schedule a conference call with Donald for some time the day after tomorrow. We can always move it back if the tests take longer than expected, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”

“I’ll tell Olivia to set it up,” assented Wainwright. “Thanks, Judy.”

“No problem. You can help Lieutenant Fraser find his way around that review document without me, I’m sure – but you know where to find me if anything that needs clarifying.”

She opened the door to leave, then abruptly turned on her heel and returned to the desk to pick up the parcel before finally quitting the office. Wainwright waited until the door closed behind her before visibly relaxing just a fraction. Rick noted his reaction and suppressed a smile: he had no difficulty believing that working with the likes of Judy Chapman for any length of time might put a strain on the guy’s nerves.

“For someone who’s only been here a few months, she appears to be exceptionally confident in her role,” he observed conversationally.

“Oh, she’s efficiency personified… no question about that,” replied Wainwright in a tone that lacked the enthusiasm normally accompanying such a remark. Then visibly brightening, he waved expansively at the copious array of scientific literature lining the shelves behind his desk.

“The trouble with a multinational conglomerate like this is that we need to have experts in almost anything on call twenty-four seven. Judy’s perhaps the most obvious example of a niche specialist working in this building, but there are several others. Martin Orson is one of them – he was working at Cape Canaveral before this as an expert in voice recognition. We had a corresponding gap in our skillsets that needed filling urgently, so we poached him. It wasn’t exactly…”

He checked himself abruptly with an apologetic smile. “I was just about to add that our solution to the problem wasn’t rocket science, but under the circumstances a different euphemism might be more appropriate.”

“I guess,” acknowledged Rick with a grin. “So why are these voice recognition systems so important to this organization, then?”

“One very big customer wants them – and as the expression goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune,” replied Wainwright with a shrug. “There are far too many ways systems that were previously considered to be hacker-proof that can be broken into these days. It happens all the time: as soon as somebody comes up with a novel means of safeguarding it, somebody else finds a new way to crack it. It’s an arms race, with everybody trying to keep one step ahead of everybody else.”

“No change there, then,” muttered Rick sympathetically.

“Indeed,” acknowledged Wainwright. “Anyway, it seems there have been some very recent developments in voice recognition technology that have now made faking someone’s voice almost impossible. I’ve heard Martin talking about ultrasonic resonances… that is, audio harmonics outside the frequency response range of the human ear, which for some reason are far more difficult to replicate in software. It’s got something to do with the lack of training data for AI-based learning systems to work with, because modern digital recordings only contain audible frequencies: I’m not familiar with the details, but Martin says it’s cutting-edge. That’s why we head-hunted him – we wanted to make sure we kept ahead of the field.”

“Yes… I can see why you might want to keep him sweet,” mused Rick.

“That’s for sure,” muttered Wainwright, half to himself. He looked at Rick speculatively for a second, then waved his hand at the corner of his desk from which Judy had removed the package a few moments previously.

“Thing is, he’s not unaware of the extent of our dependence on him – so he doesn’t have too many scruples about having us indulge his little foibles every now and again. That package flown in from London this morning contains packets of speciality coffees in powder form… although some of the flavour combinations stretch the definition of the word almost to breaking point.”

Rick looked at him incredulously. “What’s wrong with the home-grown varieties?”

“No idea,” replied Wainwright with a shrug, “but whatever the truth of it, Martin told me he can’t get the ones he wants here in the States, so he gets our procurement guys to source them from the UK. And if that wasn’t bad enough, our vending machines aren’t equipped to dispense the wretched stuff – so we had to get a machine from over there too: that’s the one at the end of your corridor, of course. Oh well… at least it keeps him happy. Well, relatively happy anyway...”

His voice trailed away, and he turned his attention once more to the weighty document in Rick’s hands, which was still open at the introduction.

“So – there you have it, Lieutenant! Would you like me to walk you through it, or were you able to assimilate the key sections while I was busy with Olivia just now? I believe Judy said something about Chapter Six being the most relevant to your concerns…”

“I… er… you know… I guess, well… maybe I underestimated the level of specialist knowledge needed to understand technical reports like this,” interrupted Rick awkwardly. “You’ve obviously got the whole thing well in hand – that’s obvious. Look, I’ve taken a lot of your valuable time already, and I don’t want to waste any more of it than necessary, so why don’t we just…”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all, Lieutenant!” Suddenly and unexpectedly finding himself let off the hook, Wainwright’s mood perceptively lightened. “If you change your mind, just call me, eh? Judy and I will be very happy to help you in any way we can, I assure you. Anything at all to help you guys with the investigation, eh?”

“Thanks – I won’t forget,” replied Rick sincerely. “Once again, thanks for your time: I really appreciate it.”

They shook hands warmly, and Rick walked to the door. Just as it was about to close behind him, Wainwright glanced up.

“Oh… and please don’t forget to stop by Olivia’s desk on the way back to your office, as she’ll need to log your exit.”

“Sure… no problem,” replied Rick. “Peter Svenson explained how the system works first day we were on site.”

Wainwright waited until Rick had closed the door behind him, then sat down at his desk and flicked a switch on his videophone. The screen blinked into life with Olivia’s face looking back at him.

“Yes, Doctor Wainwright?”

“Olivia… my meeting with Lieutenant Fraser has just ended, and he’s on his way back to Kismet’s office in the IT section. Please ensure that his access privileges to the Keep are revoked before he returns to the Courtyard – then after you’ve dealt with that, see if there’s a free slot of at least fifteen minutes in John’s diary before the end of the day. If there is, book it for me: I want to speak to him urgently. I’d do it myself, but I need to talk to the head of FEC’s pilot plant before he gets stuck into anything else.”

Outside the office, Rick finished tying his shoelace before setting off down the corridor. The door had been solid enough to prevent him from hearing every word, but he’d caught enough of the conversation to give him a few more things to ponder as he walked away.

Chapter 9

Having suffered a largely sleepless night trying to analyse all the newly acquired intelligence from the previous day in his mind, Rick made a conscious effort next morning to put it all to one side. Turning his attention instead to a long list of emailed requests from André that had appeared in his in-tray overnight, he had no difficulty satisfying himself that he’d succeeded in his object, but deceiving Kismet was another matter entirely. She asked him what was troubling him within ten minutes of his walking through the door, then repeated the question – suitably rephrased to avoid laying herself open to the charge of nagging – three more times in as many hours. At the third attempt he looked up in irritation, opened his mouth to snap an expletive, saw the look in her eyes and promptly shut it again. She slowly raised an eyebrow, and he chuckled.

“I guess you know me too well! Okay… I’ll talk if it makes you happier – but I can tell you up front that you’ll be none the wiser for it.”

“Perhaps not,” she replied gently, “but at least I’ll be better informed – so out with it… what’s up?”

He gestured vaguely. “I don’t know… and that’s the problem! I’m here to carry out an investigation – but it’s an investigation unlike anything I’ve had to tackle before. Every which way I turn, it gets murkier. I mean, you go into this career with the dumb notion that it’s all about the good guys defeating the bad guys. That doesn’t last long, believe me – but even so, you still need to believe you’re doing something right! There are things going on around this place that don’t jell with my notions of right and wrong – and to put it bluntly...”

He broke off in a flash of irritation as his communicator beeped, then snatched it out of his pocket to read the incoming message. The look evaporated as he did so, and after having read the message a second time he slowly put the device down on the desk, frowning at Kismet thoughtfully.

“Problem?”

“Dunno. It seems that the Boz… sorry, that’s Commander Bojanowski – he’s my superior officer – is here in the building. The message says he’s just come out of a meeting, and that he’s going to be heading over this way just as soon as somebody’s been co-opted to act as his guide. I’ve been told to cancel any other commitments I might have for the rest of the day.”

“Didn’t you know he was coming?”

Rick shook his head thoughtfully. “No, I didn’t – and he tries to avoid springing surprises.  Looks like something’s happened that he hasn’t had time to brief me on – and very recently. Or maybe…”

He frowned again, and then shrugged. “Oh well, I guess I’ll find out what it’s all about soon enough.”

He looked at Kismet with an apologetic smile. “It’s like you’ve been parachuted into the middle of a battlefield between two opposing armies, and you don’t know who the good guys are. I need more information before I know which side I’m supposed to be fighting for… and that information seems to be pretty damned hard to come by right now.”

“Perhaps you overthink these things,” she suggested. “Every conflict has two points of view, in which both sides are equally convinced that justice is on their side.”

“Doesn’t mean that it is!” he retorted. “If I thought that way, I’d just have likely joined the Mob as the WGPC. One side has to be right, goddammit!”

“Not necessarily,” she replied dryly. “Wars are won by the stronger combatants, not the more virtuous ones – and dirty tricks aren’t the sole prerogative of the baddies. Only one thing matters in a war, which is to win it: anyone with even a smattering of military training will tell you that. Any justification for whatever actions were taken to achieve that goal come afterwards, when they’re dismissed as unfortunately necessary evils enacted in a just and noble cause.”

“Isn’t that rather a cynical take on it?”

“A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist,” she retorted. “As I see it, you’re expressing rather too much idealism for your own good, given your choice of career. You’re employed to uphold the law, not to question the moral righteousness of the society that wrote that law. But having said that… it is one of your more endearing characteristics.”

Without giving him time to react, she stood up and walked to the door. “Look, I think I ought to disappear for a while. Your boss is probably on his way over here right now, and if I’m still around when he arrives, I’ll need to invent some painfully transparent excuse for leaving you alone together… so it’s easier if I’ve already vanished, right?”

He opened his mouth, shut it again, then grinned.

“Well, I guess. Look, it’s gone midday, so why don’t you go find yourself an early lunch? I’m going to miss not going with you, but that’s obviously impossible now. I’ll catch up with you after he’s gone – assuming I’m still here, that is.”

Her expression clouded with alarm. “You think you might not be?”

Rick shrugged. “Meeting called with the Boz at no notice… I’m not told about it until after it’s taken place… I’m ordered to cancel all appointments… what do you think? Doesn’t exactly sound like he’s gonna tell me what a great job I’m doing, does it?”

“You don’t know it’s a reprimand,” she replied slowly. “Try not to worry about it… it might be something else entirely.”

“I’m not worried about it – and that’s the truth,” retorted Rick. “In many ways I’d be glad to be extracted from this corporate quagmire and put onto something else that’s easier for me to get my teeth into! But I would very much regret being reassigned… and for just one very important reason. Do you need me to spell it out?”

“It’s okay,” she murmured quietly. “There’s no need…. Look, I think I can hear them coming down the corridor – see you later, right?”

“Come hell or high water,” he replied with a grin as she quit the office. He barely had time to resume his seat before Wainwright smartly tapped on the door and entered the office, holding the door open just long enough for Commander Bojanowski to enter the room.

“… and this is where I take my leave of you, Commander: I guess you and Rick have got plenty to discuss, so I’d best make my way back to the Keep… unless there’s anything else you need from me… No? Well, in that case I’ll be on my way…”

His voice trailed away, and he set off back down the corridor. Bojanowski waited until the door had closed behind him before breaking into a hearty chuckle.

“Strange guy, that! He’s just given me the sort of guided tour of this place I might get if I was the Prince of Persia! ‘On your right is the linguistics training facility, which is open 24/7 to all employees on request, regardless of seniority; on your left we have the human resources hub and the financial executives’ offices… each office meticulously crafted so as to infer no suggestion of managerial rank on account of size or situation, yet leaving sufficient scope for the expression of personal preferences in décor…’”

He broke off and regarded Rick intently. “As if I cared about that kind of corporate bullshit… tell me, Rick – are all Svenson’s sidekicks like him?”

“He’s a company man at the cellular level,” acknowledged Rick. “Svenson values loyalty above everything – I’ve picked that up at least during my time here – and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more loyal than Wainwright. There’s not much he wouldn’t do in the name of the company, I reckon.”

Bojanowski assimilated the assessment thoughtfully, then jerked his head towards the door.

“And the young lady I just passed in the corridor with the eyes and the long black hair… is she the one you told us about?”

“That’s her,” assented Rick.

“I’ve got a daughter just a few years younger than she is,” mused Bojanowski. “I still haven’t gotten used to the idea that they don’t stay all ribbons and curls for ever – but never mind about that. As I’m sure you’ve already realized, I dropped by for a reason… and I guess your girlfriend will be back before too long, so I’d better get to the point. There’s been a development, and I want to be sure I understand the situation on the ground before I do anything about it.”

“It’s almost lunchtime – and the meals in this place need to be sampled to be believed,” replied Rick. “The WGPC could double their intake if they took some catering lessons from…”

“Not here,” replied Bojanowski, shaking his head decisively. “They invited me to take lunch after this morning’s meeting, but I told them I needed to see you, after which I’d have to get back. Let’s go take a walk.”

Without waiting for a reply, he stepped over to the door and held it open.

“A few seconds… I just need to check a date before I forget…”

Rick hurriedly keyed a short query into the computer, noted the response with evident satisfaction, and then locked the terminal. Lifting his jacket off the back of his chair and throwing it over his shoulders, he silently followed his boss out of the office and down the corridor in the direction of the elevators. Neither spoke until they were out of the building and halfway to the visitors’ parking lot, at which point Bojanowski stopped and turned to look up at the towering edifice behind them.

“What do they all do in there, Rick? It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me – they buy and sell things so they can buy and sell more things… but how many people do you need just to move money around?”

“A very large amount of money,” observed Rick dryly.

Bojanowski gave him a look. “That’s as maybe, but it’s not like they carry suitcases stuffed full of thousand-dollar bills all over the globe. Or maybe they do – I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. What I do know is that one hell of lot of money equals one hell of a lot of power… and these guys are playing with a damned sight more of the stuff than a lot of people would consider healthy. It gives them delusions of godhood.”

He glanced up at the skyscraper once more with a fleeting expression of distaste before continuing.

“This morning’s meeting was Svenson’s excuse to have a rant about our abysmal failure either to find out what the hell happened to his megabucks or to get it back for him – and he’s making the most of it. He’s drawn up a list of all the things he wants changed about the way we’re conducting this investigation – and right at the top of his list he’s demanding that he wants you taken off this assignment with immediate effect. Now… before we go any further, I want you to give me your reaction to that piece of intel. Does this surprise you?”

Rick assimilated the information without visible emotion, then shook his head thoughtfully.

“He’s moved faster than I expected – but actually no… that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Commander, I think it might be related to something I haven’t told you about yet. Do you mind if I ask how you responded?”

“I spent the best part of an hour,” replied Bojanowski grimly, “explaining to him – as politely as possible under the circumstances – that he doesn’t get any say in how I carry out my investigations. So long as I can demonstrate to our own high-ups that we’re moving forward – which I can, thanks to your downloads and André’s progress in deciphering them – then he’ll get no place by trying to get things done his way by pulling strings in Futura. I think he eventually got the message. He’s obviously not used to it – and he sure as hell doesn’t like it – but for just once in his life he’s going to have to suck it up.”

“And has André managed to decipher enough to clarify what this is really all about?”

“He’s finding it hard going,” admitted Bojanowski, “but he’s now starting to piece together the history of all this – and with it, some insight into where it’s leading. It isn’t just cash that’s gone missing, Rick. By far the greater part of the loss was borrowed in the form of loans – and you don’t need a degree in accountancy to know that loans need to be repaid. The interest payments alone could cripple Svencorp if the company found itself unable to pay them by the agreed dates. It’s clear from the files that André has been able to decrypt that they’ve been borrowing very heavily over the last six months – and showing almost nothing by way of increased revenue to pay back the loans they’ve taken out. His best guess is that Svenson’s gambling everything on taking receipt of one massive payment some time over the next few days – but he can’t find anything that tells us where that payment might be coming from.”

He glanced briefly at Rick for any reaction before continuing, but Rick’s face was impassive.

“André’s been going through the dates those loans are scheduled to be called in – and he tells me they’re now only a matter of days away. Some of them seem to have been arranged through Svenson’s third son’s operation on Wall Street – and he’s guessing that those can probably be quietly rescheduled without too many questions being asked if necessary – but there one hell of a lot more that have been taken out through channels over which Svenson has little or no control, and those will have to be paid back on the specified dates. And André can’t see how he’s going to do it.”

“Maybe there’s something in those sections that we thought might be encrypted speech,” replied Rick slowly. “André never claimed to have extracted everything from the material I was able to give him.”

“True,” agreed Bojanowski, “and he’s stressed that very same point himself every time we’ve spoken about it. But since we’ve all been working together on this case, I’ve learned that André underestimates his talent for hitting the nail on the head. Several times his tentative opinion has turned out to be more trustworthy than everyone else’s stated facts – and if he is right about this, it means Svencorp is just days away from bankruptcy. That is, unless Svenson is one hundred percent certain that their deal – and the payoff that goes with it – will come through in time.”

“Sounds like everything’s building up to a head,” mused Rick, and Bojanowski nodded in agreement before continuing.

“I sent a preliminary report on André’s findings to the WGPC top brass a few days back. I’d have delayed doing so to give us more time if I could, but I had no choice. They noted my reallocation of staff after your briefing and insisted upon being informed as to the reason for it… and that’s why I’m telling you this, Rick. Like I said earlier, Svenson has powerful friends in Futura. It’s a damn near certainty that one of them has tipped him off – and if so, his first reaction would be to try and stop any more information about this mess from getting out. So… he wants you gone. That’s my reading of what’s happening here.”

“You’re telling me to be careful, right?”

“I’m telling you to be careful, Rick. I don’t know how this is going to play out – and I don’t want anything happening to one of my best officers, okay?”

Rick suppressed a grin. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t, Commander! But let me tell you about the incident I mentioned earlier, because it could have a bearing on all this. I’ve reason to believe there’s something going on right now that’s being kept from us, and which impacts directly on this investigation.”

“I’m listening.”

“Wainwright and Judy Chapman are doing their absolute damnedest to get me to lose interest in a design flaw in the jet fighter that Fairfield is building,” replied Rick slowly. “Kismet drew Wainwright’s attention to it some days back, when he denied that there was any problem at all. He changed his tune when I spoke to him about it yesterday, and invited me back to his office to look at some paperwork which he claimed proved that, although there might have been a problem several months ago, it’s now all been sorted.”

“So? Maybe it has been sorted. What makes you think otherwise?”

“Just that the document they showed me was a fake. They made a mistake when they compiled it… and it was a careless one too. I reckon Wainwright didn’t mention the document when Kismet and I first raised the issue quite simply because it didn’t exist at the time. No… he and Chapman just assembled an official-looking title page shortly afterwards and stuck it on top of some highly technical report of Chapman’s that they knew I wouldn’t understand, and then waited for me to raise the subject again. She was about to take me through it – obviously placing her own interpretation on its contents – when we were interrupted by a timely incoming call from the receptionist, giving me a couple of minutes to thumb through it. When I realized it was phony, I thought it best to allow them to think they’d gotten away with it – so I just played dumb and let the matter drop.”

“I seem to remember suggesting at the start of all this that making a point of not understanding things too quicky might be a good idea,” observed Bojanowski dryly. “What was wrong with it?”

“They dated the title page to indicate that the report was written about six months ago,” replied Rick with a hearty chuckle, “but they forgot to change the one printed at the bottom of the report’s introduction, about three pages in. That date shows that the report itself was assembled over two years ago – which would most likely make it before this project was even on the drawing board. Like I said, it was just plain careless of them. They were so intent on finding something incomprehensible to show me that they overlooked the only part of it that I could understand.”

“Interesting though this little display of incompetence might be,” mused Bojanowski, “all it really does is to tell us they don’t want us sticking our noses into their business affairs. We anticipated that beforehand… and we’ve had confirmed for us right from day one, when they stuck you in that office with your lady friend.”

“I guess,” agreed Rick. “But there’s something else that I haven’t mentioned yet – something that has more serious consequences, as I see it.”

“And that is… what?”

“Something Chapman let slip when she didn’t realize I was within earshot. She was working in Wainwright’s office, and called out to him as he and I both walked in. He shut her up immediately and the pair of them carried on as if nothing had happened – most likely she just assumed I wouldn’t understand the significance of what was said, though Wainwright might be sweating just a tad. He knows I don’t miss much when it comes to military aircraft.”

“So what was said?”

“She’d just come off a call to FEC, and she remarked to Wainwright as we entered that the entire port wing assembly would need to be upgraded. Now, that can only be a reference to the fighter that FEC are building – which suggests to me that not only that Wainwright has taken Kismet’s warning seriously, but that the two of them are now urgently working with FEC to determine the impact of it on the aircraft’s development schedule.”

“I got a feeling you’re about to tell me this isn’t a quick fix,” replied Bojanowski quietly.

“Commander… if I’m right about the complexity of the design of that plane they’re developing, doing something like that could take FEC months to fix, and would probably cost them millions – if not tens of millions. Thanks to André’s efforts back at HQ we now know Svenson wouldn’t be able to provide any more funding even if he wanted to, because his organization is on the verge of bankruptcy. So where does that leave Fairfield? His only option – short of going bankrupt himself – would be to deliver an aircraft whose design is fundamentally flawed… in which case the first pilot to take it into combat would be lucky to come out alive. FEC’s customer needs to be warned.”

Bojanowski shot him an incredulous look.

“And you reckon Svenson will hand over their contact details if we ask him nicely? Get real, Rick – in the extremely unlikely event that he doesn’t just tell us to mind our own goddam business, he’ll sure as hell ask why we want them – in which case what are we going to tell him? That we’re going to warn Fairfield not to try flying his new plane because it’ll blow up?”

“What, then? We can’t just do nothing, Commander! At the very least we’ve got to find out who the end user is!”

“I can’t see how to do that without jeopardizing the wider investigation, Rick – because right now it’s about as much as I can do to keep it open at all. Svenson has pull in political circles, the effects of which are filtering through to our top brass. I can resist pressure from Svenson to change the make-up of the team that have been assigned to this case, but if the people I report to side with him, I’d find myself outgunned – and if that happens, any chance of getting to the bottom of what’s really going on here will evaporate.”

Bojanowski took a long deep breath, contemplated the skyscraper in silence for a few seconds, and then turned to face Rick once more.

“Okay, Rick – here’s the plan. When I get back to HQ later this afternoon, I’ll set about organising a meeting of the whole investigation team to go through what we’ve learned to date. I’m going to want you to address that meeting and recount everything you’ve told me, plus anything else you believe to be relevant. I want everybody present to understand the situation as clearly as possible – because I’m going to want to have an action plan going forward in place by the conclusion of the briefing. Got that?”

“Got it,” replied Rick with a grim smile.

“Good,” muttered Bojanowski, looking at his watch. “Okay…. we’ve both got things to keep us busy, so I guess I’d better get moving.”

Rick’s expression abruptly changed into a thoughtful frown, and he snapped his fingers.

“There’s just one more thing, Commander. Can you get onto the catering department at the Kennedy Space Center before the meeting, and find out if they’ve had any issues regarding the sourcing of speciality coffees any time during the time that Martin Orson was working there?”

Bojanowski looked at him in astonishment. “I’m not absolutely sure I heard you right, Rick – but working on the assumption for a moment that I did… are you serious?”

“Oh yes,” replied Rick.

Chapter 10

“Looks like Svenson’s driving them hard,” remarked Rick to Kismet as he re-entered the office a few moments after the end of the lunch hour. “It’s like a hornets’ nest out there right now… do you know what’s going on?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea. My father didn’t give me any indication that today would be anything out of the ordinary when we drove in this morning. Maybe that meeting with your boss… what did you say his name was?... this morning stirred something up. Talking of which – and given that this conversation is unquestionably taking place – I infer that it didn’t go as badly as you thought it might. Is my logic sound?”

He dropped into his chair and grinned, then gave the floor a decisive kick sideways with both feet, sending both himself and the chair into a spin lasting several seconds.

“Impeccable, as always! Also, you could be right about something having been stirred up. Okay, so Svenson wants me out of here – I guess I was right about that – but the Boz isn’t playing ball. The effect is that Svenson’s stuck with me until this whole sordid business is wrapped up to the Commander’s satisfaction… which is seriously good news, because it means I’ve got the pleasure of your company for at least a little while longer.”

“And I yours,” she replied with twinkling eyes. “How shall we celebrate… drinks all round?”

“Sure! Your usual?”

“Please.”

“I’ll be right back… pass me that tray, would you?”

Rick walked down the corridor to the vending machine, where he found himself waiting in line behind Peter Svenson and Khurshid Yazdani talking to one another in hushed tones as they waited for Orson to finish.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant… you here for the same reason as the rest of us?”

Rick shook his head in confusion. “Er… no… that is, I don’t think so… is there something I don’t know? There seems to be a lot of activity around here right now, but I haven’t been told the reason for it. Can you fill me in?”

Peter Svenson grinned apologetically. “Forgive me, Lieutenant… I guess I was hoping you might be able to fill us in! Father’s been in conference with Charles and Judy for the last hour: all we know is what we’ve been able to get out of Olivia, which is that he had a meeting with your commander earlier today, and that he now wants to see each of us sometime during the afternoon. He hasn’t specified when or in what order – so we’re just standing around waiting for…”

He glanced at Orson, who had put his tray down on the floor and was now peering inside an open panel on the side of the machine with obvious irritation.

“What are you doing in there, Martin? Don’t tell me you can’t afford one!”

Orson hurriedly extracted his hand from the innards of the machine and straightened up.

“Sorry – just trying to work out why this godforsaken thing’s playing up. Looks like one of the dispensers was slightly unscrewed, but it ought to be okay now. Who’d like to test it?”

Rick looked questioningly at Peter, but he shook his head. “You do yours, Lieutenant. Looks like maybe we’ve got more time in our hands than you right now.”

Rick stepped forward and rapidly punched in Kismet’s special sequence, conscious that Orson was watching him closely as he did so. He then keyed in his own combination, took a quick sip out of the resulting brew when it had finished pouring, and wobbled his hand in a so-so gesture. Yazdani chuckled and turned to Orson.

“Perhaps you’re in the wrong career, Martin. Putting aside the cost of having imported this thing for your department in the first place, you wouldn’t believe how much we pay to have it maintained.”

If the light-hearted jibe struck home, Orson’s features didn’t change to acknowledge it as such.

“Oh… I’m more than just a pretty face, Mr Yazdani. On which subject, perhaps our wait is at an end…”

Instinctively turning to follow the direction of Orson’s gaze, Rick found himself face to face with Olivia, who deftly stepped to one side to avoid a collision with the cups he was carrying and addressed herself to the others in the group.

“Mr Svenson and Doctor Wainwright have asked me to let you know they’re ready to start now, gentlemen – so if you’re ready?”

Three of the four senior execs immediately moved to join her as she turned to retrace her steps, leaving Orson standing by the machine.

“Er… have I just… got time to get…?”

One glance at the expressions on the others’ faces was sufficient to answer the unfinished question, and accepting the inevitable with obvious reluctance, he stepped away from the machine and joined them.

“I’m guessing you don’t need me in this meeting, right?” asked Rick.

Olivia shook her head with a convincingly open smile, but Rick didn’t miss the hint of embarrassment in her eyes, confirming his suspicions regarding the first item on the agenda.

“This one’s just internal, Lieutenant… but I know Mr Svenson appreciates all offers of help from the WGPC. If he needs any input, he’ll be sure let you know.”

“You bet,” thought Rick wryly to himself. He watched the little group dutifully marching behind the receptionist back down the corridor in the direction of the Keep, then returned to the office and put the cups down on Kismet’s desk with an apologetic grin.

“Apologies for the delay – got waylaid. Hope it’s not too cold.”

She looked at the two cups. “So… which one’s mine?”

“Ah….” Rick frowned, peering at them in thought. Er… can’t you tell from the color?”

“Not with that much gunk on the top!” she replied, shaking her head. “Actually, not even with the gunk gone. Assuming the flavoring is synthesized, I don’t think they bothered to add any red or pink to match. I guess making it taste like something different is one thing, but making it look like something different is a step too far. It’s an interesting application of applied psychology... but then, I suppose you could apply that description to just about any marketing exercise.”

“I’ll take your word for it… and I reckon this one’s yours. Or maybe it’s that one. No… it is this one. Definitely.”

“Final answer?”

“Final ans… no! No – I think it’s the one on the right – but just in case I’m wrong…”

He picked up the left-hand cup, sniffed at it suspiciously, took a gulp and promptly pulled a face.

“Oops – sorry about that! It was this one after all.”

She rolled her eyes with a grin and took a long sip from the cup he handed to her, passing him the other in return. He carried it over to his console and sat down, then leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.

“Talking about marketing exercises, I’ve been thinking. Having a job like Wainwright’s must be sheer hell… because he’s juggling several priorities, some of which are in direct conflict. He’s got to do everything in his power to help Fairfield make that fighter live up to the hype used to secure the contract in the first place – but he’s got to do it within a set of constraints defined in advance by Svenson, whose overriding priority is how much money he’s going to make on the deal. That conflict came about because Svenson’s sales team had yet a third priority, which was to secure the contract at whatever price they thought they could get – which they did when the plane didn’t even exist. Is it all that surprising they’re all in this godawful mess?”

He shook his head and looked at her questioningly. “Isn’t there a better way of making something of our lives than wasting them doing things like this?”

“If there is,” she replied slowly, “then as a species, we’ve probably been trying to find it at least since the very first builder negotiated an hourly rate for working on the very first stone hut. I fear it must be a curse of mankind alone. How many other species can you think of who have ever built a stone hut?”

“Maybe one day,” mused Rick with a sigh, “we’ll meet a race of aliens whose first thoughts aren’t ‘How much cash can we make out of these human suckers?’… but until that happens, I guess we’d better…”

He frowned to himself, as a drop of sweat trickled down his nose and dripped onto the keyboard in front of him. Leaning forward to wipe it off the keys, he was startled at the amount of effort it seemingly required to move his fingers to the correct letter. Attempting to take a deep breath before trying a second time, he found himself struggling to inhale. He shook his head in confusion and peered blearily at the screen in front of him: the characters began to melt and dissolve into one another as he tried with increasing desperation to focus on them.

“Kismet – is there something wrong with the heating in here? It seems to be incredib… Kismet? Kismet!”

Kismet had stopped typing and was swaying precariously in her chair. Even as he watched, the coffee cup in her hand slipped from her numb fingers and fell to the floor, sending what little remained of the drink trickling away under her desk. Rick instantly launched himself out of his chair across the room in a desperate attempt to prevent her from falling, but his legs refused to work. The ceiling spun around impossibly in front of his eyes, and he felt a searing pain lancing through his limbs as his body crashed to the ground. The last thing he could remember with any sense of clarity was the feel of Kismet’s body collapsing on top of him… and then reality sank into an oozing whirlpool of darkness, where it finally drowned.

Chapter 11

Rick tried to open his eyes to identify the source of the discordant thundering sounds that assailed his ears, but failed. Making a herculean effort to breathe, he tried once more, this time with limited success, and was just about able to make out two blurred faces peering down at him.

“What… what the… where the hell am I?”

“You’re in the Intensive Care Unit at BIDMC, Rick,” replied Commander Bojanowski quietly, “and you only came out of surgery thirty minutes ago, so stop trying to struggle, for God’s sake! You’re not even supposed to be awake yet: the anaesthetic they gave you should have knocked you out for at least another two hours…”

Rick tried to shake his head, but having only succeeded in increasing the volume of the pounding in his brain to an intolerable pitch, settled for gasping for another breath of air before collapsing back onto the pillow.

“Why am I here? No… no… wait a minute… the drink… it must have been the drink! There must have been something in the drink…”

“That is what the doctors believe,” affirmed André quietly.

Rick’s hand reached out and weakly touched his friend’s arm.

“André… the coffee machine – the one halfway down the corridor that leads to the office that Kismet and I share – you’ve got to secure it immediately… immediately, do you hear? Don’t let anybody touch it! Seal off the corridor, get Forensics in there at once and tell them to examine the powder… the raspberry and nutmeg additive… jeez, my stomach! I feel like I’m burning up down there… what the hell was… must’ve been… Kismet… Oh God… how’s… Kismet? Please tell me…”

The expression on his friend’s face told him everything, and his body sank back onto the bed, the last remnants of his strength having finally deserted him.

“I’m sorry, Rick,” said Bojanowski quietly. “She’d lapsed into a coma by the time the ambulance arrived, and died on the way to hospital. You were lucky… a lot less of it had gotten into your bloodstream.”

“Who found us?” Rick’s voice was barely audible, but the tone demanded an answer.

“It was her father, Rick. It seems he’d come to see her soon after the meeting had finished. He immediately raised the alarm and called for the ambulance: it was on the scene within ten minutes of the call, but they estimated you’d both been unconscious for anything up to half an hour before that. Why are you so sure about the crazy-sounding additive?”

“We were both drinking coffee just before it happened,” replied Rick wearily. “I’d gone to get it from the machine, but the two cups had gotten mixed up: she’d asked for her usual selection, whereas I had one of the normal brews. I took a gulp out of hers by mistake before we swapped them over.”

“So why couldn’t it have been any of the other ingredients? The difference in the metabolism rates could be explained away by the speed you drank the stuff.”

Rick shook his head with an obvious effort. “That machine dispenses free cups of coffee to anyone who knows how to trip the mechanism. It’s used by anyone and everyone both inside and outside the high security area every time they want to save themselves a couple of bucks. If it had been in one of the more common ingredients, half the floor would have been poisoned. It had to be something hardly anyone ever drinks.”

Bojanowski regarded him speculatively. “Who knew what you normally drink, Rick?”

Rick considered for a moment before replying. “Orson knew… or rather, he knew what I drank that one time – I remember he was watching me when I selected it. I can’t think of anyone else who could possibly have known… other than Kismet herself, that is.” He frowned back at Bojanowski. “Why? You reckon it was an attempt to kill me?”

“What else, Rick?” His boss seemed taken aback at his need to ask. “I warned you that matters were coming to a head. Svenson demanded that you be taken off the case within hours of learning that you were getting a little too damned nosy about Fairfield’s jinxed fighter plane, and I told him to go take a hike. André’s got enough of a handle on the state of their finances to satisfy me that short of a miracle they’re not going to hold out for more than a few days. Who knows what these guys are prepared to do when their backs are against the wall? You just said you reckoned Orson knew what you were about to drink.”

“Maybe… I can’t…” Rick screwed his eyes up, trying to play back the scene in his head, but succeeded only in making himself feel so sick that he almost passed out. Forcing himself to take a slow deep breath, he allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow before staring silently at the ceiling for several seconds before speaking again.

“No… that doesn’t make sense. Whatever that stuff was, it must have already been in the dispenser when I went to get the drinks.”

“Okay… was Kismet the only other person who took her coffee with that weird additive combination you mentioned?”

“I don’t know… I don’t think so,” admitted Rick, “But if you’re wondering if she was the intended victim, that would mean somebody would have known what she drank. But she once told me she only discovered that additive by accident. If she ever told anyone else, she didn’t mention it to me. And why would anybody want to kill her anyway?”

“You told me a while back,” replied Bojanowski slowly, “that her computing skills were at least on a par with Orson’s. Could she have hacked into his files and discovered something so incriminating that he might conclude that she’d become a risk to him?”

“If she had, I think she’d have told me,” replied Rick quietly. “But I don’t for one second believe she’d ever have done so, even if she was capable of it – which I’d hazard a guess she probably was. She always spoke about Orson in the same way as she spoke about everybody else: with respect and deference to his authority, even when she knew he was talking bullshit. No, I’m the one with suspicions about Orson – but it’s got less to do with Svencorp’s finances than with his own.”

Bojanowski raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Is this connected with the bailout at Cape Canaveral that we turned up in the files?”

Rick shook his head. “No… this is more recent – but it was the story about the bailout that got me putting two and two together.”

He twisted his body with an effort, then took a deep breath before continuing.

“I’d gone to see Wainwright about the shielding on the jet fighter that FEC are building. While my pass to get into the executive suite was being sorted out, the receptionist mentioned that Orson had asked Wainwright to authorize a very substantial bonus to be paid to his staff for overtime work. Wainwright was obviously irritated with Orson’s insistence that it needed to be done as a matter of urgency. Now it might be nothing, but I found myself wondering what his people might be doing to necessitate all those extracontractual payments. After all, they’re not the ones trying to make sense out of their scrambled files… that’s why they called us in – and from what Len and Tanya told us the other day, Orson’s people don’t exactly fall over themselves whenever we ask for their help. So what do they do, over and above all the routine stuff they’re paid for? Does Orson really believe their work justifies the bonuses he’s telling Wainwright they need to be paid? Or is there something else going on here?”

Bojanowski looked at him closely. “What are you suggesting, Rick?”

Rick paused briefly, gathering his thoughts. “Okay… it’s like this. A couple of days back, Orson walked past our office to the coffee machine like he often does. Kismet and I had just been talking about the backup that had just disappeared, and Kismet asked him into the office to find out if we could have it put back online. She was just trying to be helpful – and although I wish she hadn’t raised the matter with him at all, I couldn’t prevent it. The damage was done, and all I could do was to try to limit it.”

“And?”

“I learned two things from the conversation with Orson that followed. The first was that the instruction to take the backup offline came from Svenson himself. The second was that Orson was prepared to disregard that instruction if I wanted it badly enough – and I thought that was kind-of strange at the time, because everybody else around the place bends over backwards to keep Svenson happy. And there’s one other thing that’s been bothering me about that conversation – but it’s more of an impression than anything else.”

“And that is…?”

“Well, it might be nothing,” replied Rick hesitantly, “but I couldn’t shake off a feeling at the time that Orson didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t interested in getting the backup file retrieved. It was almost as if he wanted me to ask him to retrieve it. And I’ve been asking myself why ever since.”

“Maybe he was trying to find out how much you want it,” replied Bojanowski after a moment’s pause. “Maybe he was hinting that his cooperation can be bought.”

“I’ve given him no reason to think we’d pay him a single dime for anything, Commander.”

“I guess he’d have nothing to lose by dipping his toe in the water,” replied Bojanowski, “and now I see what you were getting at earlier. You’re wondering if those extracontractual payments for his team were received by the people he was claiming them for, right?”

“Right,” agreed Rick.

“Perhaps,” conceded Bojanowski thoughtfully, “but as I see it, this is a sideshow as far as we’re concerned. Even if the guy is lining his own pockets, he’s their problem – and for all I care they’re welcome to it. Our priority is to determine the sequence of events that resulted in Kismet’s death and your incapacitation… so let’s not get sidetracked, okay? So… which aspects of this investigation do we need to prioritize?”

“Kismet was killed by something highly toxic in her drink,” replied Rick. “Judy Chapman is an expert in the manufacture and use of highly toxic substances – substances that are so goddam dangerous that they’re the subject of an international transportation ban. She must be implicated… IS implicated...”

Bojanowski shook his head. “We don’t know that, Rick. Most likely Svenson will insist that it was an industrial accident which should – at least in the first instance – be investigated by one of their own health and safety teams.”

Rick peered at him incredulously. “Even when there’s been a suspicious death?”

“Where’s the evidence of foul play, Rick? You said yourself that nobody could have known what drink you were going to select from that machine, and that there’s no reason to think anybody would want to kill Kismet. Whatever the truth of the matter, they’ll treat it as an accident – and they’ll almost certainly want to play it down. If we’re going to prove that it’s something more sinister, we’ll need hard evidence – and I can’t see how to get that evidence without more to go on than we have right now.”

“There could be a way,” replied Rick wearily. His face contorted with pain once more, and he turned away from them to hide the tears trickling down his face.

“Give me a while to think, guys. Please… just give me a while to think…”

Chapter 12

Commander Bojanowski cast his eyes around the table as he stood to address the meeting, instinctively noting the tightly controlled features of everyone present. Khurshid Yazdani’s eyes betrayed the anguish he was clearly feeling, but in every other respect his features mirrored those of Peter Svenson, Martin Orson, Charles Wainwright and Judy Chapman, all of whom were giving nothing away whatsoever by their facial expressions. Only John Svenson’s features differed subtly from those of the others, his being somehow suggestive of a cobra waiting to strike.

Bojanowski had seen the same scene played out at countless internal WGPC briefings at which everyone was instinctively taking their cues from the most senior officer present, and he understood why. Nobody wanted to be the first to break ranks with an even remotely inappropriate expression or sentiment – which reflected the perceived gravity of the situation. Good, he thought. No need to rub their noses in it, then.

“Thank you, everybody… for making yourselves available at such short notice at this difficult time. I have asked you here to enable me to update you all on recent events; also to outline to you in broad terms the avenues of enquiry that we intend to pursue regarding the identification of the cause of the death of Miss Kismet Yazdani, and of the incapacitation of Lieutenant Fraser.”

“A terrible misfortune indeed… it goes without saying that we extend our full cooperation to ensure that such a tragic accident never occurs again,” intoned Svenson gravely, to a general muttering of assent from the others present. “It’s my understanding, Commander, that your forensics team have tentatively concluded that a contamination of one of the products contained within one of the vending machines on this floor is responsible… is that right?”

“That is so,” confirmed Bojanowski.

“Then it’s obvious!” barked Svenson indignantly. “The manufacturer of the offending product must be identified immediately, and made to answer for committing such a flagrant breach of…”

“The manufacturer,” interrupted Bojanowski, “is the British supplier of the speciality coffees imported at the request of Mr Orson on the authorization of Dr Wainwright...”

Orson appearing to retreat slightly into his chair upon hearing his name, while Wainwright snapped the pencil he’d been surreptitiously twisting between his fingers, sending its two halves clattering onto the floor. Mumbling an apology, he hurriedly bent down to retrieve them before resuming his seat.

“The supplier,” continued Bojanowski, “has already been contacted by the WGPC and are currently investigating as a matter of extreme urgency. They have not found any evidence of contamination in any of their products.”

“Then they better damn well check again!” exploded Svenson. “These goddam foreign hicks, they think they can…”

“Among Lieutenant Fraser’s routine reports sent to me within the last few days,” interrupted Bojanowski once more, “is a reference to a conversation between himself and Dr Wainwright concerning synthetic biofuels. This is a subject on which it’s my understanding that Ms Chapman here is an acknowledged expert… is that the case?”

Everyone around the table turned to look at Judy Chapman, who merely inclined her head slightly, her emotionless expression unchanged.

“Thank you, Ms Chapman. One of the reasons I requested your presence at this meeting is that one of the tentative preliminary findings of my forensics team is that samples taken from one of the vending machine’s dispensers contain...”

Bojanowski squinted down at his notes for a second before once again raising his head to speak.

“… contain ‘traces of ethyl derivatives similar to those created as by-products of the production of synthetic petroleum…’”. He looked up. “Do you recognize that description, Ms Chapman?”

“Of course, Commander: I’m perfectly familiar with the process. The description, though somewhat oversimplistic, is essentially accurate.”

“And are these waste products harmful to humans?”

“In their purest form, they can be lethal.”

“Can you think of any way that such a substance could have been introduced – accidentally or otherwise – into one of the dispensers inside the vending machine?”

“No. That’s impossible.”

“Why do you say that, Ms Chapman?”

“Because the small number of experimental samples in this building are all stored in conditions of maximum security, two floors down from this suite. No samples are ever permitted to leave it.”

“There has been a fatality,” persisted Bojanowski, “… and another near-fatality, producing symptoms which my forensics team inform me are consistent with poisoning by such a substance, Ms Chapman. In view of this, I respectfully suggest that you might want to reconsider your statement that a cross-contamination is impossible.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she replied coldly. “You’ve merely to consult the computer logs relating to the access and transport of samples within the lab. These will confirm that no samples have left the laboratory since it was installed under my directions several months ago. Is that not so, Mr Orson?”

“Yes indeed, Ms Chapman. It couldn’t be done without our knowledge.”

“In which case,” continued Bojanowski, “how do these samples get into your lab in the first place?”

“The compounds in question are deemed sufficiently dangerous that transportation of them is expressly forbidden by international law, Commander. All samples are therefore synthesised within the laboratory and are safely destroyed – again within it – when they are no longer required. Nothing of a toxic nature ever enters or leaves the facility.”

“I take it, then, that you have no objection to our officers conducting an in-depth review of your security systems to enable us to verify this assertion?”

Her expression didn’t waver for an instant. “If it’s deemed necessary then of course not, Commander. It goes without saying that both Mr Orson and I will do everything in our power to assist in your investigation. That said, given the nature of the compounds in question, there are certain formalities that need to be observed…”

Their faces impassive, Bojanowski and André exchanged surreptitious glances, each recognising that Rick had anticipated the stalling tactics with unerring accuracy. Whatever the nature of the ‘formalities’, they’d almost certainly hold up the investigation for several days – during which time any incriminating evidence would doubtless have inexplicably disappeared. No – the course of action Rick had proposed from his hospital bed was probably going to be required...

“… and as soon as authorisation from the International Hazardous Substances Investigations Unit has been duly approved by the Senate, we’ll be happy to comply,” she concluded. “This process shouldn’t take more than two weeks at the outset; in the meantime, Commander, may we enquire as to how Lieutenant Fraser’s recovery is progressing? I trust it won’t be long before he’s able to return to duty?”

“Lieutenant Fraser’s condition is no longer life-threatening,” replied Bojanowski evenly, “but he remains in intensive care. The hospital’s informed us that he is expected to live, but that it’ll certainly be at least a week before he’s in any state to be able to receive visitors. We were however able to conduct a brief interview with him before he lost consciousness. During that interview, he made certain references to the backup files of his investigation.”

“Yes… yes, we have them… of course we do,” replied Orson quickly, almost gabbling in his haste to get the words out. “Everything’s updated on an hourly basis… and that would certainly include all of Lieutenant Fraser’s activity on the system in the hours prior to this appalling accident… this terrible accident…”

He stopped briefly to compose himself, then quickly glanced around the table before continuing.

“Retrieving them is a relatively straightforward process; decrypting them will take me a little time, of course...”

“Thank you, Mr Orson – your assistance in this matter is of course greatly appreciated,” interrupted Bojanowski, “but that wasn’t the backup I was referring to. It’s Kismet Yazdani’s personal backup that I wish to secure.”

The effect upon everyone assembled around the table was closely observed by both André and himself as the words were spoken: the slight tightening of Svenson’s lips; the instantly sharpened attentiveness of both Wainwright and Yazdani; the faint blanching of Orson’s cheeks. Only Judy Chapman’s usual unreadable expression remained unaltered as her eyes flickered emotionlessly around the table, coming at last to rest on Bojanowski himself – who, sensing that his statement might need to be qualified, accordingly obliged.

“Lieutenant Fraser made a passing reference to it when I first saw him shortly after he regained consciousness after surgery. I’ve asked him to provide further details as soon as he’s recovered sufficiently to do so, but in the meantime, can any of you tell me where we can find it, please?”

“Our systems are designed specifically to ensure that the taking of personal copies is impossible,” replied Svenson slowly, his eyes turning glacially toward Orson. “Isn’t that right, Martin?”

Having at least partially recovered from his initial state of shock, Orson was quick to assent with a vigorous nod. “That’s right, Mr Svenson! Nobody – nobody – outside of my department can do anything of the kind… and even within it, any access is automatically reported to me… personally! There has been no such access… none… definitely none…”

He shook his head as if to clear it before turning once more to face Bojanowski. “Are you sure that’s what Lieutenant Fraser said, Inspector?”

“I am,” confirmed Bojanowski, “and as Lieutenant Fraser was working closely with Miss Yazdani for several weeks prior to this tragedy, it’s reasonable to assume he’s correct in stating that such a backup exists.”

He turned to Yazdani, who had been watching the exchange intently. “Can you help us, Mr Yazdani?”

“I know nothing of this, Commander,” replied Yazdani apologetically. “In common with many parents, I understand very little of the nature of my daughter’s work – for which reason she rarely spoke of it to me. If Mr Orson says it is impossible, I must concur with my colleagues in concluding that Lieutenant Fraser is mistaken.”

John Svenson stirred in his chair. “There you have it, Commander… there’s no doubt in my mind at least that you’re chasing a red herring based on the incoherent ramblings of a seriously sick man – who of course we all sincerely hope will make a full recovery. Martin will make his department’s backups available to your people as soon as is practical...”

“Absolutely! Er… I can set it up so that Lieutenant Verdain’s team will be able to access it via the same online link we’ve been using since the start of this project,” affirmed Orson hurriedly.

“Good,” acknowledged Bojanowski, seemingly satisfied. “Lieutenant Verdain will return within the next forty-eight hours to coordinate the activities of both teams – and he will also oversee our efforts to determine exactly how the toxic substance that killed Miss Yazdani found its way into the drinks dispenser.”

“The efforts of your officers is of course greatly appreciated, Commander,” began Svenson, “but as this would appear to be essentially a health and safety issue that we’re attempting to resolve here, I’m sure there’s no need…”

“This investigation, sir,” interrupted Bojanowski emotionlessly, “will proceed as I see fit. The assistance of everyone assembled here in determining the sequence of events leading to the death of one of your employees and the incapacitation of one of my officers is of course greatly appreciated… and indeed, I believe the plan we’ve just agreed upon represents the most productive course of action in the immediate short term. However… if at any stage I deem it necessary, this entire facility will be shut down – in which case all equipment potentially relevant to this investigation will be impounded by my officers. It is of course my fervent hope that such measures will not prove necessary.”

The ensuing silence was broken by a rasping chuckle emanating from John Svenson’s throat, and he gestured expansively around the room. “Your devotion to duty does you great credit, Commander – and is an example to us all. You’ve merely to tell us what you need us to do, and it goes without saying that we’ll do everything in our power to help.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir… it’s greatly appreciated,” replied Bojanowski evenly, as a general murmuring of assent echoed around the table.

“In which case, if there’s nothing else related to this tragic affair that we can help you with at this time…?”

“If and when there is, you’ll be informed, sir.”

“I’m just glad we’ve been able to avoid wasting resources pursuing an obviously fruitless line of enquiry, Commander,” continued Svenson in the same magnanimous tone. “Khurshid… show these gentlemen out, would you?”

“Of course, Mr Svenson.”

Svenson stood up to leave. “In view of the proximity of both the malfunctioning drinks dispenser and the IT department to the office until recently occupied by Miss Yazdani and Lieutenant Fraser, can I suggest that this would be the most productive place for you to be?”

“That will be acceptable, sir,” replied André stiffly. “I shall also need Mr Orson’s assistance in accessing the files I require.”

All eyes turned on Orson, who visibly wilted slightly under their scrutiny before replying with a forced enthusiasm that he clearly didn’t feel.

“Of course, Lieutenant… all part of the job, you know... Everything will have been set up ready for when you come back in the morning… no question…”

He regarded André with an unreadable expression for a further second before setting off down the corridor at a brisk pace, leaving Yazdani, Bojanowski and André to take the more leisurely walk to the reception desk. Bojanowski waited until he was out of earshot before turning to Yazdani.

“Forgive my pressing the point, Mr Yazdani… but are you actually as certain that your daughter couldn’t have taken a personal backup as the consensus indicated during the meeting? It’s impossible for me not to be aware that Mr Svenson speaks for the directors of this organization as a whole – and as you obviously knew her better than anyone, I need to hear your personal view.”

“If anyone could do it, Kismet could,” replied Yazdani, frowning. “It’s true that she never talked to me about her work, but I’ve heard Martin extolling her abilities on many occasions. Having said that, she certainly never mentioned taking a personal backup to me – so if she did manage it somehow, I’ve no idea where she might have kept it. I’m afraid it looks as if you’re going to have to ask Lieutenant Fraser for any further details he can supply, Commander.”

“So it would seem,” agreed Bojanowski, “Having said that, we’ll have the official backup to work from, and our team starts work on that first thing tomorrow morning. Thank you, Mr Yazdani: I appreciate your frankness at what is obviously an extremely distressing time for you and your family.”

Yazdani turned to face Bojanowski, his features rigidly under control, with only the hint of something in his eyes betraying the pain he was clearly feeling.

“Tell me, please… did she suffer greatly?”

Bojanowski slowly shook his head. “No, sir. If what poisoned her is what we have reason to believe it was, she would have lost consciousness within seconds.”

Yazdani’s expression did not change. “Thank you… knowing that will make our grief a little easier to bear. As to Lieutenant Fraser, I shall pray for his recovery.”

He lapsed into contemplative silence for a few seconds before continuing.

“Would you please keep me informed as to his progress? I would very much like to see him as soon as he’s well enough to receive visitors – as indeed I know will my colleagues. Dr Wainwright in particular will be most anxious to see him recover: I can see that this whole terrible business has very seriously shaken him… perhaps almost as badly as it has shaken me. We have all come to know Lieutenant Fraser very well during these last few weeks, and all our thoughts are with him.”

“Of course, Mr Yazdani – we’ll brief you as soon as there is any change in his condition, either for better or for worse. Please be aware however that we’ll also want to speak with him ourselves as soon as possible, and that our own requirements will necessarily take precedence over other visits, however well-intentioned.”

Yazdani nodded understandingly. “Oh, certainly – there’s no need to explain. I will let my colleagues know, to ensure they don’t pester you. Excuse me for a moment…”

The three men had reached the reception desk, and Yazdani stepped forward to sort out André’s pass for the following day, giving the two policemen an opportunity to exchange a few quiet words as they waited.

“He seems like a decent guy,” mused Bojanowski. “I hate having to put him through this, but I’d say he’s confirmed our suspicions. There’s no way they’re going to take Orson’s word for it, given his track record for preventing hacks! I reckon Rick’s right in thinking they’ve got no idea whether what we’ve told them is possible or not… and if so, Orson’s probably shitting his pants right now. Watch them all like a hawk from the minute you take over the operation at this end, André. All of them, d’you hear? Assuming of course that nothing happens before then…”

Chapter 13

“How you feeling, Rick?”

“Probably better than I look,” muttered Rick as he gingerly pushed the tiny earpiece further into his ear. “Are we good to go?”

André nodded. “As good as we can be, I think. We presented it to them at the meeting yesterday as agreed… but I hope you are right about how you are feeling, Rick – because you need to be ready for anything if this does not work. It was pure luck that saved you last time.”

“Luck that didn’t extend to Kismet,” growled Rick. “No, there’s no other way. They’ll stall us at every turn for as long as it takes for them to make damned sure there’s nothing left for us to find.”

“I do think it would be safer if we got you transferred to another room, Rick. We can bring somebody in to take your place…”

“Look, I appreciate the concern,” interrupted Rick impatiently, “but we’ve already been through this. They know exactly where I am; they think I’m in possession of a piece of information that could finish them, and they also think I’m already three-quarters dead. We still need to establish whether I was the intended victim last time, but that can wait. We’ve backed them into a corner and offered them just one possible escape route. They’ve got to try to take me out.”

He went silent for a second while he uncomfortably adjusted his position slightly, taking care in the process not to dislodge the saline drip inserted into his upper arm.

“It’s a great shame we don’t know if Kismet kept personal copies of what she was working on or not – none of this would have been necessary if she had – but when I raised it with her, she was kind-of evasive on the subject. Okay, so we’ve rattled them with what could well be an empty threat, but this’ll probably be our last chance to get to the bottom of whatever the hell’s going on there. Let’s not blow it, eh?”

André nodded reluctantly. “Some precautions have been unavoidable, but we have made as few as possible. Two plain-clothes officers are patrolling this wing: one of them will be in this room within seconds at the first sign of trouble. All the medical staff have been briefed to stay out of this room unless they have essential duties to perform…”

He glanced at the young nurse who was busily adjusting the settings on one of the banks of equipment connected to Rick’s bed, and instinctively lowered his voice.

“Both entrances to this wing are covered by hidden cameras with real-time facial recognition feeds: they should ensure that everyone who enters the ICU will have been identified before they can reach this room – so if anyone who has not got a good reason to be here shows up, you will already have been alerted through that earpiece…”

Rick glanced at the nurse to ensure she was looking the other way, raised the corner of his pillow a fraction to allow his friend to see the machine pistol underneath it, then quicky covered it again.

“… in which case one second after they walk in, they’ll find themselves staring down the barrel of that. Yeah, I reckon we’ve got all the bases covered.”

“Provided that you are in a fit state to use it,” pointed out André. “There is nothing for you to do here but wait – perhaps for many hours – so make sure you do not fall asleep, eh?”

“No chance of that with all the attention I’m getting in here,” muttered Rick darkly. He jerked his head in the direction of the nurse, who was just leaving the room. “They’re in here every few minutes or so to change some damn setting or other.  Just when I feel I’m dozing off for a few seconds, yet another one ruins it by walking in with a tray full of scary-looking operating instruments. It’s not as if they haven’t got the technology to do this sort of thing remotely, so why the hell don’t they use it?”

“Under the circumstances it is perhaps as well that they cannot,” admonished his friend, “and in any case, it is still better for a human nurse to care for a hospitalized patient than for a machine to do it. All the studies show this.”

“Bullshit. I’d trust a machine over a human any day of the week. People make mistakes…”

“No – it is true! When you are sick, the ‘bedside manner’ is very important! A machine can administer medicine to you, yes… it can even operate on you – these days at least as well as a human surgeon – but a machine cannot tell you that you are going to get well again and make you believe it.”

Rick peered at him sceptically. “And… you’re saying that matters?”

“Oh, yes! The importance of belief is critical to recovery – and for all the faith we place in technology, we are still not as comfortable with it than with a human we have learned to trust. Perhaps one day when humans and androids are indistinguishable, but not yet… and the doctors and nurses, they all know it.”

“The amount of kit they wear makes them almost indistinguishable now,” retorted Rick, jerking his head at the nurse who had just entered, bedecked in an operating gown with the lower half of her face covered by a surgical mask. “If they want me to feel happier about what they’re about to do to me next, maybe they should tell me before they put all that kind-of stuff on. Those outfits give me the creeps.”

“At least you know she is not an android!” replied André wryly. “After all, why would a machine need a surgical mask?”

“Oh, I dunno,” muttered Rick, “Maybe just to fool me into thinking she’s human.” He watched warily for a few moments while the nurse arranged a set of medical instruments on the table at his bedside, and then sighed.

“You’d better get moving, André – they start complaining if there are visitors cluttering up the place while they’re busy opening me up to replace one unholy brew of chemicals with another one.”

“Okay Rick – I can tell when I am not wanted! Look after yourself, my friend.”

“Will do.” He weakly raised the arm that wasn’t constrained by the saline drip, and managed to waggle his fingers by way of a valediction as André quit the room. He took a deep breath and allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow, then turned his attention to the nurse, who was peering down at him through a large pair of spectacles.

“So – what is it this time, for God’s sake? Don’t tell me you’re about to replace the contents of my stomach yet again…”

The nurse shook her head and gestured towards the saline drip hanging above him.

“You want to unplug me from this thing? Thank God for that… my arm feels like all the blood drained out of it at least half an hour ago… give me a moment to rearrange myself, will you? It’s not easy with only one usable arm…”

He tried to turn his body round in the bed using his other arm, but only succeeded in collapsing awkwardly, almost pulling the transparent bag on top of him in the process. The nurse reached over him to try to prevent the apparatus securing it from collapsing, and he took a deep breath in anticipation of the inevitable crash…

Instantly Rick’s hand flashed out and caught the nurse’s wrist, simultaneously launching a kick at her stomach horizontally from the gurney to push her away from its instrument panel. Taken completely by surprise, she tumbled helplessly backwards into the middle of the room, where she tripped over one of the power cables and crashed headlong to the floor, with glass bottles smashing noisily all around her.

The sound of running footsteps down the corridor a few seconds later gave Rick the assurance he needed that the attempt on his life was over, as André burst through the door closely followed by two paramedics. “Rick! What has happ…”

“Later, pal!” Gasping for breath, he painfully hauled himself into a sitting position, then pointing urgently at the motionless woman, he turned to the two medics.

“You! Get her away from that liquid on the floor… it’s most likely toxic, so make sure you don’t even breathe it in, let alone touch it! Then when you’ve done that, get that mask off her face so I can make sure I’m not wrong! André – help me get out of this godforsaken contraption, will you…”

By the time his friend had extricated him from the tangle of tubes and wires that were constraining him, the medics had managed to lift the prone woman onto an empty gurney in the corner of the room, and were about to wheel her away when an urgent gesture from Rick stopped them.

“No! Wait – André… the mask! Take off the mask!”

André stepped over to the unconscious woman and deftly pulled the surgical mask away from her nose and mouth, while Rick watched intently… and then looked up and nodded slowly. “I am guessing that you were not wrong, my friend.”

“Damn right I’m not,” acknowledged Rick grimly, as they both peered down at Judy Chapman’s face, just as enigmatic when she was senseless than when wide awake. Rick frowned, then turned once more to the medic.

“Which means I’m probably right about that mess on the floor being toxic – so we need to clear this room at once. And given that she’s been lying in it, get her checked out immediately, yeah? That mask might have protected her, but we can’t be sure… so make her your number one priority. Lieutenant Verdain and I will follow you out and remain in the corridor until the room can be secured, so don’t concern yourself with us. Just make damn sure she doesn’t die, okay?”

He watched as the woman’s still-unconscious body was wheeled away the corridor, then turned to face his friend.

“Maybe I should have told him to make sure she doesn’t die yet’ – because I’m sure as hell not going to care what happens to her after she’s been questioned for as long as it takes to get to the bottom of this.”

He lapsed into contemplative silence for a few seconds before speaking again.

“Tell you one thing, André… as far as bloody-minded resourcefulness is concerned, she’s gone up in my estimation. She was most likely going to add whatever’s in that hypodermic to the saline bottle – in which case the contents would have been dripped into my bloodstream over the next hour or so. There’s probably a strong sedative in it as well… I’d have just fallen asleep and never woken up. By the time they came to change the bottle again, she’d have been long gone. Same as me, come to think of it…”

André threw him a glance. “You seem to be taking this very calmly for somebody who just came within a millimetre of being murdered, Rick! All I can say is thank God you recognized her in time – because I did not. That mask and the spectacles changed what little you could see of her features completely.”

Rick eased himself painfully back into his bed, and carefully positioned his head in the centre of the pillow before replying.

“Sure… they changed what she looked like, but they didn’t change her perfume. The scent was lot weaker this time – she probably didn’t apply it this morning – but it was the one she was wearing that day we had our first meeting with Svenson’s board of directors. You told me at the time that it’s one of the most expensive on the market – so if Svencorp receptionists can’t afford it, hospital nurses certainly can’t… and a real nurse wouldn’t have been wearing it anyway. She’d have been told to wash it off.”

He paused briefly to collect his thoughts. “Oh well…at least we’re on the home strait now. We need to know whether she’s acted on her own initiative, or whether she’s in league with one or more of the rest of them. If it’s only her then we might just be home and dry, but I reckon a conspiracy is more likely. If that’s the case then we’ll need to move fast… because when they find out she’s failed, they’ll panic.”

André looked at him speculatively. “Did you know it would be her that would make the attempt?”

“No… I didn’t,” admitted Rick. “I thought it was more likely they’d hire a professional hitman to do their dirty work, but with hindsight I guess we didn’t give them enough time for them to organize something like that. I did think she was probably the most likely one if they decided to keep it in the family, so to speak – I’ll do myself that credit. But that’s all water under the bridge: if there are others involved, they’re in big trouble now – because the second she starts talking…”

“It could be some time before that happens,” replied André doubtfully. “She will most likely be moved to intensive care, after which we will have to wait…”

“We can’t wait,” snapped Rick tartly. “News of this foul-up is going to travel very fast – so we’re going to have to move even faster. Call the Boz right now, André: he’s now got all the evidence of foul play he needs to organize a raid at the earliest opportunity – within the hour if he can arrange it. We take all of them into custody, making damn sure they don’t get an opportunity to say one word to one another from the second it becomes obvious what we’re doing. We hold them all in separate cells, and we interview them individually. Let’s get that process moving before we do anything else, okay?”

André nodded and extracted his communicator from his pocket, then stepped a few paces down the corridor, his thumb flicking over its display as he did so. A moment later he began talking in hushed tones, one of his hands cupped over his ear to shut out the noise of the medical staff converging on the intensive care unit to treat the new patient. Rick waited patiently for him to finish, snatching a few welcome moments lying quietly on his bed with his eyes closed to regain his strength. He’d almost managed to doze off once more when a gentle tap on the shoulder startled him back into wakefulness.

“It is being done as we speak, Rick. They will be there within three hours: the Commander says it cannot be organized in less time than that.”

Rick let out a sigh of exasperation, then unexpectedly added a good-natured snort. “Okay… I guess I’m being completely unreasonable. Just ignore me, André: this whole exercise couldn’t realistically have gone much better than it has. We’ll get there: I’ve got a good feeling about this now. Developments should start coming thick and fast – speaking of which…”

He twisted his head to face the same medic who had earlier wheeled away the unconscious Judy Chapman, and who was now approaching the two police officers with a voluminous report clutched in his hand. Mindful that to ask ‘Any news, doctor?’ sounded fatuous even to his own ears, Rick merely raised a modest eyebrow and waited for him to speak – which he did, albeit in his own time and at his own pace.

“The head of the ICU has asked me to let you know that the patient is responding well to treatment, sir. He has asked me to inform you that she has regained consciousness, and that she insists that despite feeling badly shaken, she is uninjured.”

“Oh, is she now! Well, I’m just so relieved about that…” Rick stopped himself abruptly with an apologetic wince and switched to an upbeat businesslike tone. “In which case we can start questioning her right now…”

His expression unchanged, the medic shook his head decisively.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible yet, sir: she’s still being examined for concussion and other trauma-related ailments. Perhaps when the examination is completed, those treating her will permit a short interview.”

Rick glared at him for a long second, then accepting defeat with a fatalistic shrug, he closed his eyes. “Okay, okay… I understand. Got any idea how long that’s likely to take? Sorry to be a pain, but this really is important.”

“That depends entirely on what caused the patient to collapse, sir. It’s my understanding that she herself drew attention to the potential difficulties inherent in identifying the substance in question…”

“The hell she did!” muttered Rick, startled. “She knows exactly what’s in that godforsaken stuff, dammit! What’s she playing at?”

“… and was able to recommend a highly effective solvent to neutralize it,” continued the medic. “Her contacts appear to be extremely well informed in such matters: the results were…”

Rick stared at him uncertainly. “Contacts? What contacts?”

The medic blinked with irritation at being interrupted. “Er… the ones she called so she could double-check the…”

“You mean, nobody told you not to let her get her hands on a phone? Jesus Christ! André… get down there at once and find out who she spoke to! Fast as you…”

His friend was already halfway down the corridor before the sentence was finished, and Rick contented himself by drumming his fingers on the bedside table while the medic stood by fidgeting awkwardly. A few moments later André returned, obviously flustered.

“We are too late, Rick – she borrowed a phone from the person who was attending her and placed a call while he was calibrating some equipment. The call lasted only a few seconds, but he was occupied with his task and cannot tell me what was said. Chapman refused to say anything when I asked her, so I just took the phone from her and called the last number – which was answered by someone in Charles Wainwright’s office. The senior executive floor at Svencorp Tower is in chaos… I am having difficulty getting a clear picture of exactly what has happened, but everyone seems to agree on one thing – which is that Wainwright is dead.”

“Wainwright?” Rick stared at him wide-eyed in bewilderment, and André realized that whatever his friend might have expected to happen in the aftermath of the attempt on his life, this clearly wasn’t it.

“Do we know how?”

André nodded. “The first indications are that it was poison. John Svenson was in the boardroom with Peter at the time: they both heard what they described as a violent commotion coming from Wainwright’s office, so they walked over to it and knocked on the door to see what was the matter, but it was locked. After having summoned the receptionist to get her to open it with a master key, they found Wainwright was lying on the floor choking. John Svenson ran back to his office to get him a glass of water while Peter tried to make him cough up whatever he had swallowed. At the time they did not know what had happened, of course – but Khurshid Yazdani joined them a few moments later, and he says the symptoms looked like those he saw when he found you and Kismet. No doubt we will find out for sure when the results of the autopsy come in, but…”

“…but obviously you reckon this is another case of poisoning… almost certainly with the same godforsaken stuff that got us,” finished Rick. “Thick and fast – wasn’t that what I said half an hour ago? Suddenly everything’s moving too damned thick and fast…”

He shook his head furiously, then deliberately closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Okay André… here’s what we do. First, have Chapman formally arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide – of me, that is – the minute the medics here have finished with her. Second, get her moved to a secure cell at headquarters as soon as possible – and for God’s sake don’t let her out of your sight until that’s been done. Svenson should find it considerably more difficult to prevent us sending our team in once we’ve got her under lock and key. Third, keep me updated with developments at Svencorp Tower when the Boz sends in the cavalry – which is in… what… three hours?”

“That is what he said,” affirmed André slowly, “if I understand what you…”

“Yeah, you did, buddy,” replied Rick wearily, lowering his head slowly back onto his pillow once again. “And that being the case, I reckon maybe – just maybe – I can catch up on some sleep.”

Chapter 14

The sound of an insistent buzzer awoke Rick, followed instantly by a wave of nausea that engulfed him as soon as he tried to extend his hand with a view to silencing it. Peering groggily at the videophone, he growled a curse at it for waking him the instant he’d just managed to doze off, only to discover as the clock slowly came into focus that over four hours had passed. Frowning in confusion, he made a wild stab at the activation control, and blinked in abject astonishment as the device came to life before his eyes.

“Yes, Commander?”

“Sure you’re firing on all cylinders, Rick? You look like a…”

“I’m fine, Commander. What’s been going on while I’ve been taking forty winks?”

“The operation was given the go-ahead three hours and twenty minutes after André’s last call, Rick. It arrived at Svencorp Tower to be met by a squad of armed troops who had taken up positions around the perimeter of the site, with a helijet hovering above the tower and a caterpillar-tracked combat vehicle the size of a tank blocking the entrance to the site. We told them we were investigating a suspicious death on the premises and requested access to the building. They refused to let us pass.”

Rick’s eyes bulged, and he stared back at his boss’s image on the screen in disbelief.

“They can’t do that! The military doesn’t have the authority to interfere in something like this, dammit! This is a WGPC operation enacted under Section 16 of the Global Security Cooperation Charter…”

“They didn’t see it that way,” growled Bojanowski. “We were invited – very politely but firmly – to make a formal submission requesting access to the facility, stating our reasons for believing that a crime had been committed on the premises, providing a description of the nature of the crime in question plus comprehensive documentation to support the aforementioned assertions… after which a representation, duly countersigned by the commissioner and deputy commissioner within whose jurisdiction the scene of the alleged crime falls, will be forwarded to…”

Rick rolled his eyes and made a forget-it gesture with his hands.

“Okay, okay… I guess we underestimated Svenson too. For someone who was falling over himself to get us involved at the start of all this to recover a pile of his cash, he sure as hell doesn’t want us sticking our noses into anything else going on there – up to and including a suspected homicide… what, Commander?”

Bojanowski stopped vigorously shaking his head. “Svenson says it’s got nothing to do with him, Rick. He says he’s as shocked about this latest development as us.”

“Bullshit! Of course it’s him… who else has got the muscle to pull a stunt like this? Call him back and tell him to stop lying to us – unless he wants to be arrested for wilfully obstructing the WGPC in the performance of their…”

“Calm down, Rick! I’ve just come off a call to the management suite conference room, at which Svenson and his son, his financial controller and his receptionist were present. They were frantically composing a memo to all the department heads within the building, telling them that the whole thing’s an unfortunate misunderstanding, and that as soon as it’s all sorted out everybody will be able to leave and go home. I think the confusion’s genuine, Rick – I really do.”

Rick gave a non-committal grunt, then took a deep breath before continuing.

“So… what can we do while this bureaucratic farce is being played out? If Svenson’s so insistent that it’s got nothing to do with him, would he like to be cooperative enough to tell us what happened regarding Wainwright?”

“Svenson was too busy dealing with his senior managers to elaborate…”

“Yeah, sure he was…”

“… but I was able to get a coherent picture of the sequence of events leading up to Wainwright’s death from Olivia, who I understand is the management suite’s receptionist. It seems that there were two meetings going on within the suite at the time. The one we already know about was taking place in the boardroom, which involved just Svenson himself and his son Peter. A second meeting was taking place at the same time in Khurshid Yazdani’s office, in which Yazdani and Martin Orson were going through a set of projections for IT expenditure over the coming months. There was nobody else in the suite while these meetings were in progress except Wainwright, who – to our knowledge – was working alone in his office.”

“One moment… are we absolutely certain that nobody else was in the suite?”

“Positive,” replied Bojanowski. “Olivia interrogated the entry/egress monitoring system at my request literally while I was talking to her. Nobody else entered the suite for several hours before Wainwright’s death… although one person – Orson – left the suite shortly before the Svensons broke into Wainwright’s office. Olivia remembers that Orson looked flustered and disorientated; he’d also apparently lost his security pass, so she had to check him out of the suite from her console. The last she saw him he was running out of the suite in the direction of the IT section.”

“Sounds like that guy’s got some serious explaining to do,” snapped Rick. “Did he offer any kind of explanation to Olivia on the way out to justify the panic?”

“Olivia said he mumbled something about being late for another meeting,” replied Bojanowski. “Which clearly wasn’t true, because it seems that as soon as he arrived back in his department – after having had to bang on the window to get into the place because he’d lost his pass – he locked himself in his office. His staff could see him through the window, typing furiously at his terminal. After about an hour he shut the thing down and came out, apparently somewhat calmer than he was when he arrived. He then got one of his people to let him out of the department again, after which he set off down the corridor in the direction of the elevators. And it seems that nobody’s seen him since. Oh… and there’s one other thing: pretty much every file on the Svencorp network was discovered to have become unreadable since he vanished – including everything André was going to work on first thing this morning – and the backups are all fried. The IT section is in chaos… with the impact on just about every other department in the place being pretty much what you’d expect.”

“Without a pass,” growled Rick, “he wouldn’t have been able to call an elevator – and even if he just stood around waiting for one to arrive, he wouldn’t have been able to select a destination when it did… unless he just happened to be going the same way as somebody already in the elevator car. That same person would have seen him if he did that – so… he didn’t take an elevator.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk rapidly, then looked up.

“What do you find near elevator shafts? Fire escapes… you find fire escapes near elevator shafts, yeah? They run all the way from the top to the bottom of the building, and they must have unrestricted access. Okay… let’s suppose he takes the fire escape. Where does he go next? He wants to get out, so ground level. Sure, it’s a long way to go – but at least it’s downhill all the way… no – wait a minute – there’s a problem there. You’ve got to go through the lobby on ground level to get either in or out – and although you won’t be stopped when you leave, there’s no way you can avoid being recorded by the security cameras… and obviously they’ll have already been checked. So… most likely he didn’t go down. Which leaves…”

He frowned to himself, then looked at Bojanowski speculatively.

“Commander… what did you say a few moments ago about a helijet hovering above the tower?”

Their eyes met, and Bojanowski gave a low whistle.

“You’re thinking maybe Svenson wasn’t lying when he denied any knowledge of that operation? But that would mean…”

“… it would mean,” interrupted Rick, “that there’s something about this entire sequence of events that we’ve misunderstood big time! It would mean that Orson was able to arrange his escape from the building with military assistance… and that he was able to summon that assistance within the space of an hour.  What the hell is going on here?”

He shook his head in bewilderment, then took a deep breath.

“Okay… we’ve got to find out what Orson was doing during that hour he was locked away in his office. We need to find out who he was talking to – because he was sure as hell talking to somebody – and we need to know what was said.”

He regarded Bojanowski speculatively. “Can we set up a conference call with André immediately – as in, right now? I need to talk to him urgently.”

“No problem, Rick. Stay on the line…”

Rick’s videoscreen faded for a few seconds, then blinked back into focus with the screen split down the middle with Bojanowski’s face filling one panel and André’s filling the other.

“André! Is our remote link to Svencorp’s system still active?”

His friend blinked. “I think so, but with everything on their system either inaccessible or encrypted, what would be…”

“Never mind the buts, pal! Can you log into it? I mean, can you log into it now?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Bojanowski.

“Commander… with Orson out of the frame for the first time since the start of this investigation, maybe we can dig a bit deeper into his goddam system than we could when he was sitting at the other end of the line personally vetting all our requests. Okay, so we don’t know he was being deliberately obstructive – and there’s an even chance we’ll find that nothing works any more now that he’s gone – but either way, this could be our one and only opportunity to find out. It’ll take time for his deputy to get up to speed, but I daresay he’ll manage it soon enough. When that happens, we could find we’re shut out of everything – so the time to try this is now!”

André’s face abruptly disappeared, and was replaced by a basic login screen which rapidly started filling up as if by magic to the sound of his keystrokes. After a few seconds the screen changed once more, and Rick heard a faint grunt of satisfaction.

“It is still working, Rick! I guess Orson was too busy scrambling his files to find time to disable the link…”

“Sounds good, buddy… now – download anything and everything you can find that looks like we haven’t already seen it! Go back as far as possible but prioritize recent communications in or out of the IT department if you can. I don’t care if anything you find is unreadable – we’ll worry about that later. Just get it, okay?”

The clicking of keystrokes recommenced with increased ferocity, and Rick watched in rapt fascination as a tapestry of screens flashed into and out of existence before his eyes, in most cases faster than he could read even the first line of each one. Within a few minutes he gave up trying to follow the sequence of commands with which his friend was interrogating the system, and was just starting to doze off when the clicks abruptly stopped, and an incomprehensible message printed within a bright red box appeared in the middle of his screen, accompanied by a muttered expletive in French.

“Tintack. Shit!” snapped Rick.

“Quoi? What is it that you say? I have not seen this before – what is it, please?”

“T-N-T-K… tracked need-to-know, André. It’s something Kismet once showed me when she was trying to access Orson’s backups. It means that somewhere, somebody’s going to be alerted to what we’re doing if we continue – and there’s no way we’re going to stop now.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay… so let’s assume somebody’ll be on to us very shortly – and let’s also assume they’re the same people who arranged Orson’s getaway. If that’s right, it obviously won’t be Orson who’s interrogating the system – so they’re going to be asking themselves who the hell we are! And if I’m right about that… then it would be a very good idea to work as fast as we can.”

He peered at the array of hieroglyphics with which his friend was once more rapidly filling the screen. “Any chance you can speed it up a tad, pal?”

“I cannot work any faster than this, Rick! If I try, I will make the mistakes… and if I make the mistakes, we may lose the ability to recover any files at all! This will take as much time as it takes!”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Absolument! Get off the line and stop bothering me!”

Chapter 15

Rick accepted the box of chocolates from his two visitors with an appropriately upbeat display of enthusiasm that he really didn’t feel. “Thanks, André… but you mind if I don’t right now? I’m feeling one hell of a lot better than you guys last saw me in the flesh, but my innards still don’t feel like they can handle solid food just yet.”

“No problem,” replied Bojanowski, “we’ll leave them by the bed for when you’re feeling up to it. André here tells me they come from some place I’ve never heard of near France, and that they wipe the floor with anything cooked up Stateside. God knows where he gets these crazy notions: he’s probably never even tried our homemade candies.”

“I certainly have tried your ‘homemade candies’!” muttered André indignantly. “The experiment took ten seconds, and I did not repeat it!”

“Yeah well… I guess it’s just a cultural thing,” said Rick soothingly. “So… what’s happened since yesterday that brings both you guys over here in person? How did you get on with the download?”

“Better than I expected,” replied his friend cautiously, “but… perhaps not as well as I would have liked. We both have new information to share with you – but for a reason that I will come to in just a moment, we felt it might be better if we did not use an internet-based video link this time.”

A modest ascension of one eyebrow was Rick’s only reaction, and André pulled his chair a little closer to the bed before continuing – an instinctive gesture that supplied Rick with a clue regarding what was about to come.

“I was able to interrogate the Svencorp system for just under thirty minutes before the connection was cut,” continued André, “which was longer than I expected them to take to realize what we were doing – and before you ask, Rick, no – I do not know who ‘they’ are. I do know that we were not shut out by Svencorp themselves. Orson’s deputy was having lunch at the time: he clearly did not know what I was doing until I called him to ask for the connection to be restored – which he could not do, presumably on account of Orson’s sabotage.”

“Guess we made that play just in time,” grunted Rick. “Well done, pal. So… what did you get?”

“I was able to locate and download all of Orson’s correspondence for the three days leading up to the final hour before he disappeared,” replied André. “Incoming and outgoing messages were stored in separate locations; they were also encrypted using completely different coding algorithms. I have made a little progress deciphering the one that Orson used – and I can tell you a little about the conversation from his point of view. I have made no progress at all breaking the one that was used for the incoming messages.”

“Hey, that’s not bad for half an hour’s work!” observed Rick encouragingly. “One side of a conversation is one hell of a lot better than nothing: we can infer most of the other half of it, surely?”

“I was hoping for more,” replied André sullenly, reaching into his pocket and extracting a scratchpad, which he duly activated and handed over to his friend.

“Here is a transcript of the parts of Orson’s messages that I believe are accurately decrypted, but there is very little concrete information of use to us. One thing is clear however – and that is that at the time the final messages were being exchanged, Orson was terrified.”

“No shit,” grunted Rick. “The guy can’t be so dumb he didn’t realize he was the prime suspect: it would have been only a matter of time before we… what, Commander?”

Bojanowski stopped shaking his head and regarded Rick sombrely.

“That’s not right, Rick. From what André’s been able to piece together so far, it looks like Orson was terrified for his life. The outgoing messages include repeated demands that he had to be removed from Svencorp immediately and taken as quickly as possible to a place of safety where nobody – but nobody – could get at him. Those demands are backed up with threats to make public everything he knew about the FEC deal and its backers, together with claims that he could – and would – bring down the World Government if his conditions weren’t met. The guy was almost hysterical in places: some of his ranting would be laughable if the situation wasn’t so damned serious.”

“Okaaay…,” mused Rick, “I’m starting to see why you might not want to have this discussion over a potentially hackable video link. So… maybe – just maybe – we’ve got it wrong someplace. Anything more on him?”

“We’ve now got confirmation of most of Olivia’s description of the sequence of events leading up to his disappearance,” affirmed Bojanowski. “Also, I’ve got an answer to something you asked about last time we spoke. I contacted the director of Judy Chapman’s research facility in England again and showed him Orson’s photograph, just like you said. He recognized Orson immediately – it seems that the guy worked in their IT department for several months.”

“The time he went missing just after leaving Cape Canaveral,” muttered Rick.

Bojanowski glanced back down at the report in his hand. “It also seems they think he’s Chapman’s fiancé.”

“Really?” Rick gingerly pushed himself into a sitting position and frowned to himself.

“Interesting… I’ve never seen anything in their behaviour to suggest that they were a couple – or had ever been one. We sure about this?”

“I’m just repeating what Denton told me, Rick. He said that Chapman introduced Orson as a candidate for a senior IT post there, mentioning in passing that he was in the running for a prestigious post in the States – and indicating that she’d probably go with him if he were to leave the country. Realising that he could potentially lose one of his best biologists, he was keen to find an excuse to employ the guy. Orson’s qualifications apparently impressed them enough to land him the job on the spot.”

“Did he know anything about Orson’s previous job at Cape Canaveral?”

Bojanowski shook his head. “No… that piece of intel took him by surprise. He told me he wouldn’t have been allowed to employ him without involving the security services if he had known – and I can see what you’re thinking. You reckon it was all set up just to get Orson into the place, right?”

“Right,” replied Rick, “and if so, it worked like a dream.”

“Evidently,” agreed Bojanowski, “but there’s one aspect of this that makes no sense – which is that when I asked him if there’d been any unexplained material imbalances in the place, Denton insisted there haven’t. He says that everything’s ticking along very smoothly in Chapman’s absence, and he was very much looking forward to her returning to work there when her sabbatical comes to an end. He also says that Orson’s security system works just great, and that if he and Chapman are still a couple when she gets back, he’ll probably offer the guy a full-time…”

“Did he happen to say anything about how the facility’s auditing system works, Commander?” interrupted Rick. “Security protocols, access privileges… that kind of thing?”

“I spent a good fifteen minutes quizzing him on that very point, Rick. Every container is electronically tagged; every opening or closing of any container is automatically logged, and every movement of any container from one department to another is tracked by sensors in the doors. But even if you somehow managed to circumvent the tracking system, any containers that couldn’t be accounted for would almost certainly show up at the next audit. Any that didn’t show up at the next audit would be thoroughly investigated – but there haven’t been any such incidents in years. He was clear on that.”

“Okay…” replied Rick thoughtfully, “but suppose an error was discovered in the audit. Somebody writes the wrong name on a bottle of chemicals or records a weight in the wrong units – you know the kind of thing. Automated systems don’t make dumb mistakes like that, but humans sometimes do. It gets logged onto the system and into the database. Who had the authority to correct it?”

“From what he told me, making changes to the official records once they’ve been signed off is a damn near impossibility, Rick. Only the director of the facility – that’s Denton himself – has the authority to do anything of the kind… and he told me while we were talking that even he has to answer to his paymasters in the British government if amendments have to be made. But he insists that he hasn’t…”

“One moment. If it was necessary, how would he amend it? Do we know?”

“Actually, we do,” replied Bojanowski slowly. “Denton was so pleased with the new setup, he gave me a quick rundown. He said that until recently, any changes would have been approved at a top-level meeting between himself and the head of IT. Since the introduction of the voice-recognition system however, Denton’s been able to make any necessary alterations himself without the need to involve the IT guys at all. But like I said…”

“So…” interrupted Rick again, “an auditing system that until very recently at least two senior personnel has now been replaced by a new system that cuts one of them out of the loop, right?”

“You’re thinking that Denton is complicit in whatever’s going on there?”

“Not necessarily,” replied Rick with a shake of his head. “I’m just pointing out that the technical support crew are no longer involved in this process – so they wouldn’t pick up an attempt to hack it. The whole shebang now goes through Denton only – and he applies his authority courtesy of Orson’s new system…”

He looked speculatively at Bojanowski, who returned a look of dawning realization. “So… Denton’s most likely only got Orson’s word for it that the system only recognizes his voice. Is that what you’re thinking, Rick?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” affirmed Rick. “We know Chapman’s been back there several times since the start of all this. She’s as familiar as anybody with what’s in the place and where to find it. Suppose her voice is registered in Orson’s setup as someone with the necessary authority to edit the database? She takes whatever she needs, deletes all references to it from the official records, then just drives out the front gate with it. She’s known to the security guards, and she’s got the necessary ID-related documentation to get in and out – so she wouldn’t be searched.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk thoughtfully before continuing.

“There’d probably still be a record of the files having been edited. Maybe Orson could fix that too… but even if he couldn’t, the logs would show that Denton did the editing. The IT guys wouldn’t query that, given that Denton runs the place… and - even if he knew how to check something like that, he most likely wouldn’t. After all, why should he? He knows nothing’s gone missing!”

“Okay… so let’s assume she managed to walk out of the place with anything she needs,” continued Bojanowski. “She’s still got to get it across the Atlantic and into the States. How’s she going to do that with airport security being as tight as it is? Those guys won’t let you take a tube of toothpaste on board these days without subjecting it to every test under the sun to make sure it’s what it’s supposed to be! A package of biological samples wouldn’t stand a chance…”

“She didn’t take it with her,” replied Rick. “She mailed it here before she flew back. It arrived a few days later on a cargo transport with all the documentation needed to satisfy baggage control that it was a case of speciality drinks. She used Orson’s name instead of her own to make sure she wasn’t connected with it in case anything went wrong. I was standing in Wainwright’s office when the last one arrived.”

Bojanowski looked at him closely. “You knew all this at the time, Rick?”

“I didn’t know what it was,” admitted Rick, “but I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t what they said it was.”

He reached out and picked up the unopened box of chocolates at his bedside, then handed it back to André.

“André… I’m giving you this birthday present, okay? It’s not till tomorrow, so you can’t open it yet, but obviously you want to know what’s inside. What can you do that might give you a clue?”

André looked at him quizzically for a moment, then gave the box a quick shake. The sound of the contents tumbling around inside the box was clearly audible, and he threw Rick a questioning look – to which Rick responded with a nod.

“Great… but now we’ll change the conditions. Suppose you were expecting to be given something to drink that should be treated with care and respect – like… oh, I dunno… let’s say a dozen miniature bottles of top-of-the-range French brandy…”

“Cognac,” amended André helpfully. “The finest cognac in all of France is the Louis XIII… the vineyards from which the grapes are harvested are naturally suited to the ambience of the…”

“Er… yeah, thanks André – and just like before, you want to find out if that could be what’s in the box. Same question… what you gonna do?”

André looked at him thoughtfully, then gently rocked the box from side to side. Rick nodded, evidently satisfied the point had been made.

“Q.E.D. When the package arrived in Wainwright’s office, Chapman gently rocked it from side to side – like you did just now. They said it contained powder – but when did anybody ever rock a parcel containing packets of powder from side to side to verify its contents? No: she knew it contained vials of liquid – because she’d packed them herself – and she was just instinctively checking they were still there. Consider those labels specifying that the package needs to be fast-tracked through customs, then think about her handling of it when it arrived, and the explanation’s staring you in the face. That’s how the stuff was smuggled into the States.”

“Sounds credible,” acknowledged Bojanowski. “But even if you’ve hit on how it was done, we still need the why. Why would somebody want to steal some exceptionally dangerous chemicals from an employer who has already approved their supplying consultancy to a company that has an obvious interest in reproducing their work?”

“Desperation, I guess,” replied Rick. “I’m almost certain Wainwright lied to us about the likely effects of incoming fire. He’d already recognized the need for extra shielding before Kismet and I spoke to him, but he’d have realized it would negatively impact the aircraft’s maneuverability. The alternative was to eliminate the risk of a chain reaction building up in the event of the unit taking a direct hit – and the only way to do that would be to incorporate synthetic biofuels into the transmission system. But those compounds are as dangerous as hell: it’s damned near impossible to research them because transporting them is banned by international treaty. There’s only one place under World Government auspices where research on them is still permitted… and that just happens to be on the other side of the Atlantic, where Judy Chapman used to work. With me so far?”

“You saying it gets even more complicated, Rick?”

“Just a tad, Commander,” acknowledged Rick wryly. “Wainwright would have known quite early on that they were in deep shit, and that he needed help… which is where Judy Chapman makes her entrance. Thing is, I reckon she didn’t realize just how deep the shit really was until she started work there. When she saw how much still needed to be done, she decided to take a short-cut by stealing the samples she needed – but that required an accomplice on the inside to jinx the security system. I guess she specified the sort of person she needed, after which somebody found the right guy for the job and made him available, so to speak.”

His voice tailed away, and he lapsed into silence for a few moments before continuing.

“In which case, I wonder who the ‘somebody’ was? I mean, pulling an artificial languages expert off the lunar colonization program to facilitate a theft from a government research lab halfway across the world isn’t something just anybody can arrange, is it? Come to think of it, they’d need to be able to exert the same sort of pull where it matters to arrange for the guy to disappear again just when he’s just about to be arrested for first-degree murder…”

He looked at his colleagues quizzically.

“Why can’t I shake off the feeling there’s this massive elephant in the room that I just can’t see?”

Chapter 16

“One of the very few benefits,” mused Rick as he gently lifted another chocolate from the box, “of being laid up in this godawful place for almost a week is that you get one hell of a lot of time for thinking – and I haven’t been short of things to think about the last few days. But let’s get any new facts on the table before we start theorizing. André – last time we spoke, you were still trying to decrypt all those incoming files you downloaded from Svencorp immediately after Orson’s vanishing act. Did you get anywhere with that?”

“I think I have made a little progress,” affirmed his friend cautiously. “It is not much… but I believe I have discovered what happened to Orson.”

“Oh?”

“Do you remember saying that you thought there might be a link between Orson’s disappearance and the helijet overflying Svencorp Tower at the time?”

“Sure… was I right?”

“I think you ‘hit the nail on the head’, Rick – that is the expression? I have examined the official log of the flight plans for every helijet in the air over Boston that day and compared them with the coordinated visual records of the weather satellite network. One of the traces did not match any of the flight plans – which is of course the one that we saw.”

“No surprises there,” muttered Rick. “If there ever was a flight plan, they’d have deleted it from any public records as soon as the operation was over.”

“Of course,” agreed his friend, “But the output from the satellite network is syndicated in real time to several hundred networks, so there is no opportunity for anybody to tamper with it before it enters the public domain. The result of comparing the two data sources is that I know where the helijet came from, and I know where it went.”

“You’re a marvel, buddy!” chuckled Rick appreciatively. “And…?”

“It took off from a small private airfield just south of the Blue Hills Reservation,” replied André. “I have tried to identify the owner of it, of course, but I cannot.”

“Why not? Isn’t all land registry documentation downloadable from state records?”

His friend pulled a face. “Sure… but the hyperlinks, they do not work!”

“In which case I’ll guess there’s more to that than simple incompetence,” growled Rick. “Never mind… we can follow it up later. Where did the helijet go after it picked up Orson?”

“I had to hack into the Atlantic Seaboard Tornado Monitoring System to determine its destination,” admitted his friend sheepishly, “but that was not hard! Except for one stop near the coast in North Carolina – probably to refuel – it flew straight to Cape Canaveral.”

Rick gave a low whistle. “Did it now? Looks like Orson’s career has gone full circle…” He stopped, struck by a sudden thought. “André – I don’t suppose you just happened to find out…”

“… when the next XK launch is scheduled to take place? Of course I did! An XK blasted off from Cape Canaveral for the Moon just five hours and twenty minutes after the helijet with Orson on board landed there. There is an information blackout on the composition of the crew, but…”

“… but you reckon Orson’s on board that rocket, right? Yeah, so do I – which means we aren’t going to be interviewing him any time soon! Looks like somebody was very determined to get him away from the likes of us… and with the muscle to make any further discussion about it futile.”

Rick sighed despondently and turned to Bojanowski.

“Guess it’s all down to what we can get out of Judy Chapman now. Like I said, Commander… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while I’ve been stuck in here, but first I need to get up to speed on anything we’ve learned from Chapman since I’ve been out of the frame. Has she said anything useful?”

Bojanowski pulled a face and shook his head.

“I’d have told you already if she had, Rick. No: almost as soon as we’d finished reading her the usual Miranda warnings she demanded a private meeting with the British consul – as is her right under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention. She turned down the opportunity to call an attorney, then rather curtly told the officer who offered to assign an attorney provided by the state not to insult her by implying that she couldn’t afford one. Since then, she’s refused to talk to us at all, citing the Fifth Amendment. We gave up when she made it clear she knows her constitutional rights here at least as well as we do. Do you mind if I…?”

He reached over, extracted a particularly exotic-looking chocolate from the box and examined it closely before continuing.

“We’ll get her for the attempt on your life, Rick – at least that’s a damn near certainty – but if we’re going to pin the poisoning of the drinks dispenser on her as well, we’re going to have to prove it. And I reckon she knows we can’t.”

“I’ve a feeling that might just be,” replied Rick quietly, “because I don’t think she did. Poison the drinks dispenser, that is.”

Bojanowski blinked at him. “What? Are you serious, Rick? Two attempts on your life… with the same poison? Come on… that sounds kinda far-fetched…”

“I don’t think the dispenser incident was an attempt on my life,” continued Rick, “any more than it was an attempt to kill Kismet. I reckon we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Bojanowski looked at him narrowly for several seconds before speaking.

“You’ve worked it out, haven’t you?”

“Dunno… maybe,” replied Rick cautiously. “It just seems to me it all boils down to the dispenser to which the poison had been added. Who drank the flavour combination that required powder from that dispenser – and who knew that they drank it? I know that Kismet never drank anything else – but I’ve not seen any evidence to suggest that anybody else knew that. Okay… so if we assume that it wasn’t an attempt to kill Kismet, somebody else must have been expected to drink it. If so, we’re looking for that somebody… would you agree?”

“Er… yeah, okay so far…”

“Now we get to the benefits of having a day or two to think. I’ve been going over everything I’ve seen and heard again and again… or at least as much of it as I can remember. One thing I do recall is that when we asked Orson about the backup having been taken offline, he accidentally walked off with the wrong cup. Kismet realized what he’d done because she’d already drunk some of hers, whereas his cup was still full. The significance of that didn’t strike me at the time – I guess that’s not surprising, as this was before the anything had happened – but the answer’s right there.”

“Sorry, Rick: you’ve lost me. What’s the point you’re making?”

“My point is that if Orson had selected a different drink to hers, she’d have realized it the instant she took the first sip. But she didn’t. She only realized the cups had been switched when she remembered a couple of seconds later that she’d already drunk some of hers. Conclusion? He must have selected the same drink she did.”

“Doesn’t prove she was the only other person who drank it,” observed Bojanowski, frowning.

“True,” acknowledged Rick, “but there’s something else. Do you remember I told you about the time Wainwright took me back to his office to show me what he claimed was proof that my concerns about FEC’s fighter were unfounded? I’d run into him at the drinks machine, and we’d somehow gotten onto the subject of Orson and his fussy habits. He thought I might like to sample Orson’s favourite drink – and he was reaching towards the selection panel when I told him not to bother. Obviously he knew what it was – which I guess isn’t surprising, given that Orson reports to him and they most likely work together quite a lot – but Wainwright also mentioned that he didn’t know of anybody else who liked that flavour combination. Now… put all those observations together, and what have you got? You’ve got a chain of coincidences linking Wainwright to Kismet via Orson – that’s what you’ve got.”

“Are you suggesting,” replied Bojanowski slowly, “that this was really an attempt by Wainwright to kill Orson… by poisoning his drink?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

“Why?”

“Before we get to that,” replied Rick, “let’s go back a bit – to the origins of this godforsaken vending machine. After Kismet discovered the nutmeg and raspberry combination, she never drank anything else. But the machine was installed before Kismet started work there – so why did it have such a weird combination of ingredients? Because somebody else had specifically asked for it, that’s why. And we know that the machine was installed on Wainwright’s orders at Orson’s request. So why would Wainwright have ordered such a specific machine?  Because Orson wanted him to – and Wainwright goes out of his way to give Orson pretty much anything he wants. What’s the reason for that? Is it really that he considers the guy to be so indispensable that he’s got to be kept happy at all costs? Or is it something more than that?”

“Sounds to me like you’re thinking Orson had some kind of hold over Wainwright,” replied Bojanowski quietly. “Do you have any evidence?”

“I reckon we’ve had evidence of that ever since I took those screenshots from the historical backups, Commander. Orson’s no accountant – he’s probably a lot less savvy when it comes to financial skulduggery than even I am – but he sure as hell would have known that the senior managers were up to something… and he must have realized that whatever it is, it’s off the scale in terms of the amount of money involved! He reports to Wainwright… who will have told him to make damn sure that nobody gets access to anything incriminating – and as we discovered ourselves, those historical backups are a dead giveaway.

“So… let’s suppose Orson makes it clear to Wainwright that if he’s going to keep his mouth shut he expects to be well paid. Wainwright agrees – and Orson duly sets up a trap on the previous backup to make sure he’s informed if anyone tries to access it. But that almost certainly isn’t what Wainwright told him to do. Wainwright will probably have told him to destroy the backups – or at the very least to take them offline. But for some reason Orson doesn’t do it. Maybe he reckoned I wasn’t smart enough to access them – and he’d have been right about that if it hadn’t been for Kismet’s help – but whatever the reason, he strikes gold when he discovers not only that I spent a good hour or so reading through it, but that I found it ‘extremely interesting’.

“What does Orson do next?  Realising his bargaining power has just increased very considerably, he goes back to Wainwright and tells him the price of keeping the cops out of their little scheme has just gone up. Wainwright belatedly realizes that Orson has flagrantly disobeyed his instructions – and that he can’t be trusted to do as he’s told even after he’s been well paid. In short, Orson has now become a liability…”

Bojanowski stirred in his chair, regarding Rick thoughtfully for a full five seconds before speaking.

“You reckon this was an attempt by Wainwright to silence Orson permanently, Rick? An attempt that went wrong?”

“That’s pretty much how I see it,” confirmed Rick. “I think Orson underestimated Wainwright’s capacity for lashing out when he’s backed into a corner. I suspect his patience ran out when he spotted what he thought would be an opportunity to kill Orson in a way that would look like a tragic industrial accident – which incidentally he probably realized he’d have been able to blame on some carelessness on Judy Chapman’s part if the poison was identified. He was the only other person who knew about the samples she was smuggling into the States: the packages were addressed to him, and he could have easily pocketed one or two vials before handing them over. Maybe he didn’t realize how dangerous the stuff was at first. Right at the start of this investigation, Olivia was sick with a severe stomach bug. Maybe she accidentally touched a sample he’d opened or something, but however it happened, he’d have made the connection and seen the potential for using it to deal with Orson. What he didn’t anticipate was that somebody else might take a liking to that weird combination of ingredients that he knew Orson drank – with the result that he killed the wrong person.”

“Well then,” replied Bojanowski pensively, “If you’ve nailed it… and I’ll say it again – that’s one hell of a big ‘if’… then Chapman most likely wouldn’t have known anything about the circumstances leading up to Kismet’s death anyway. Still leaves the attempt on your life in the hospital, though – and there’s no way she’s going to squirm her way out of that! One hell of a coincidence that she had the same idea as Wainwright, though.”

“If it was a coincidence,” muttered Rick.

“You think it wasn’t a coincidence? On what grounds… do you reckon they’re in cahoots?”

Rick shrugged. “Maybe. But even if she had nothing to do with the vending machine incident, she couldn’t have failed to recognize it for what it was – and she also couldn’t have failed to realize that Wainwright was behind it. But Wainwright was a bundle of nerves after Kismet’s death – you told me so yourself, Commander. Chapman would have seen that too… and she’d have realized he couldn’t be relied upon to do what had to be done – which was to eliminate me.”

“In which case – moving on to Wainwright’s death – would it be reasonable to assume that he took his own life because he couldn’t live with the guilt of what he’d accidentally done?”

“Perhaps,” replied Rick thoughtfully. “Except there’s a serious flaw in that interpretation of events.”

“And that is…?”

“The noise coming out of his office, Commander. Shortly after Chapman made her call to Wainwright’s office, André called the same number – and learned from Olivia about Wainwright’s death, which had occurred a few moments earlier. She told us she’d been called to bring a pass key from the reception desk to allow Peter Svenson and his father to get into Wainwright’s office after they’d both heard what sounded like a violent commotion coming from inside it. By the time they’d got in, they found him lying alone on the floor, choking. But what sort of violent commotion could there be in an office with only one person in it? I know what the effect of ingesting that stuff is: you’re feeling fine one minute, and then you just collapse. You sure as hell don’t have the strength to start smashing things.”

He looked at them questioningly.

“No… there must have been at least two people in that office when the Svensons heard the noise. The only people in the executive suite at the time were the two Svensons together in one meeting in the boardroom, Orson with Yazdani in the other meeting in Yazdani’s office, and Olivia on the reception desk. I can tell you from personal experience that Olivia wouldn’t have been able to see what was going on within the suite, which is unfortunate. You walk down a short corridor and round a corner to get to the reception desk, so most likely she won’t be able to help us with the question of exactly who was where and when.”

“Having said that,” replied Bojanowski, “Olivia has been able to supply us with one or two additional details, including one very suggestive fact.”

“Oh? What’s that, then?”

“She’s remembered that Wainwright called her from his office and asked her to make a couple of cups of coffee, which he came out to collect a few moments later. She says this happened a few minutes before Orson quit the executive suite in a hurry – at which time he told her he had to return to his department urgently, and asked her to check him out because he’d mislaid his security pass – which she did. That was the last time she saw him.”

“Interesting,” mused Rick thoughtfully. “I wonder why Wainwright did that?”

“What… ask Olivia to make some coffee for him? He was thirsty, and the vending machine was out of commission for obvious reasons. You wouldn’t expect a company director to make his own drink when he’s got a receptionist to do it for him, would you?”

“That’s not what I meant,” replied Rick, shaking his head. “I was asking myself why he went out to collect it himself, instead of just asking her to bring it in. But putting that aside for now, didn’t you say a moment ago that he asked Olivia for two cups? Who was the other one for?”

“We’re not certain,” replied Bojanowski, “but the evidence strongly suggests it was for Orson.”

“Sorry… what was he doing in Wainwright’s office? Didn’t you say he was in a meeting with Yazdani?”

“We asked Yazdani about that. He told us the two of them were going through some expensive upcoming purchases for which Wainwright’s authorisation was required, and Yazdani wanted it confirmed that Wainwright had given them the green light. Since Wainwright’s office was just across the passageway, he asked Orson to go and verify it with him in person.”

“Fair enough – I guess at least that much hangs together,” replied Rick thoughtfully. “Okay… so let’s speculate. Orson goes into Wainwright’s office to get his paperwork approved. While he’s in there talking to Wainwright, Judy Chapman’s call comes through on Wainwright’s videophone. Chapman would have known when she called from the hospital that she’d only be able to talk for a few seconds – so maybe she forgot to ask Wainwright if he was alone before telling him the attempt to eliminate me had failed. Wainwright once told me that he sometimes missed incoming calls because the buzzer on his videophone was too quiet, so he routinely left it in automatic activation mode… so anyone in the office at the time would have heard what was said.”

“In which case, Orson would have realized at the very least that whatever Judy Chapman had just been caught doing in the hospital, Wainwright was in it,” murmured Bojanowski.

“Damn right he would,” agreed Rick. “He’d have connected the means Chapman used to make the attempt on my life to the circumstances of Kismet’s death. How would he react? He’d most likely be confused at first… he’d have realized he’d just stumbled on something he wasn’t supposed to know. Perhaps he’d wonder if he could turn it to his advantage. Wainwright was already funding his lifestyle to the tune of big money, so he might have considered trying to squeeze him for more – probably a lot more. Suppose he starts talking to Wainwright in terms that suggest his silence can be bought. Wainwright appears to take the implied threat calmly enough, and suggests they discuss it over a drink. He calls reception and asks Olivia to brew up a couple of coffees, as there’s no longer a vending machine. A few moments later he leaves the office to collect them, leaving Orson alone.”

“I guess that would fit the facts as we know them,” mused Bojanowski thoughtfully. “You’re floating more supposition than I’m comfortable with, but I’ll hear it through. Go on.”

“Okay, so…” continued Rick, “with Wainwright out of the room, Orson has a few minutes to mull over what’s happened. He remembers that he was standing at the machine when I collected the coffees that Kismet and I drank that day. He remembers the disconnected powder dispenser that he himself fixed. He was watching when I punched in the code for Kismet’s drink: it’s sufficiently obscure that he’d certainly have recognized it as the one he drinks. And he remembers that less than an hour later, the place was in uproar. Yazdani had discovered us unconscious in our office, and Kismet was dying. I’ll guess Orson will have been badly shaken by that: accidents like this shouldn’t be possible, for Chrissake! But at the time he was probably just extremely glad that it wasn’t him!

“But all that changes when Chapman’s call comes through while he’s in Wainwright’s office. Orson belatedly realizes that the events of a couple of days previously might not have been an accident. It might have been something far more sinister… and that he was most likely the intended victim! Suddenly he understands the significance of Wainwright leaving the office to collect the coffees from Olivia personally – and Orson realizes that he’s a hair from death.”

“Because Wainwright has just given himself the opportunity he needs to poison Orson’s drink while he is carrying it back to his office,” murmured André.

“That’s the way I see it,” agreed Rick, nodding. “Does Orson say anything to Wainwright when he returns? No way! He’s treated Wainwright as a soft touch in the past, but he’s now seeing the guy with new eyes – and he’s scared. He obviously doesn’t touch the cup that Wainwright has just brought him. He abandons whatever blackmail plans he might have had and concentrates solely on getting away from the guy as fast as possible. He concludes the meeting as quickly as he can, gathers up his paperwork and returns to Yazdani’s office. By now he’s in shock with the realization of just how close he’s come to being murdered for a second time. Yazdani notices the change in his appearance. He asks Orson what’s wrong – and Orson tells him…”

“I can see where you’re going with this,” interrupted Bojanowski quietly. “If you’re right – and like I said, there’s one hell of a lot of unsubstantiated suppositions here – Yazdani wouldn’t have been in any mood to listen to Orson’s blathering for any longer than it took for him to understand the implications of what was being said. I’ve no difficulty imagining what I would have done in his place.”

“You and me both, Commander,” agreed Rick grimly, “in which case the noise coming from Wainwright’s office – which was evidently loud enough to make Svenson leave his meeting with his son and come out to see what the hell was going on – would have been the sounds of Yazdani shaking the truth out of Wainwright in the moments before his death.”

“That cannot be right,” objected André, frowning. “Yazdani was not there when Olivia unlocked the door! Even if he had returned to his own office before the Svensons came to see what the noise was about, he could not have locked Wainwright’s door behind him… and if he left after Olivia and the Svensons arrived, would he not have been seen?”

“Let’s try to imagine the sequence of events immediately after the door was opened,” said Rick thoughtfully. “Their first thought is that Wainwright’s choking on something. Olivia told us that John Svenson ran back to his office to try to find a glass of water while she and Peter tried to keep him alive by turning him over and thumping him on his back.”

“So… what?”

“All the executive offices have private bathrooms,” replied Rick. “So why did Svenson run back to his own office to fetch a glass of water? Sure, it’s possible he just plain didn’t think – but Svenson doesn’t come over to me as someone who panics in a crisis. Isn’t it more likely that he couldn’t get a glass of water from the bathroom in Wainwright’s office? But if so, why would that be? Because the door to Wainwright’s bathroom was locked from the inside when he tried the handle: that’s why not.

“And that’s where Yazdani was when the door to Wainwright’s office was opened. He’d have simply waited inside until everybody was frantically trying to resuscitate Wainwright. Then he’d have just slipped out and joined them. Not surprising that in all the confusion nobody noticed where he came from.”

André frowned. “Wait a minute, Rick – surely Svenson must have realized there was somebody in Wainwright’s bathroom when he discovered he could not open the door?”

“Yes… I think he did,” replied Rick quietly. “I think Svenson knows exactly what happened. And I think he’s decided not to say anything about it to anyone. Yazdani’s a loyal company man who’s also now heavily in his debt. What’s to be gained by accusing him of anything?”

“But if what you’re alleging is true, Yazdani has just got away with murder!”

“We don’t know that – and unless Yazdani chooses to confess to it, we probably never will. As you’ve already said several times, Commander… it’s all supposition. We’ve no proof that Yazdani was ever in Wainwright’s office in the first place. He could have been sitting in his own office the whole time, oblivious to what was going on outside simply because he was wrapped up in his work. Even if it all did play out the way I’ve suggested, did Yazdani force Wainwright to take that poison? I’ve no idea. For all we know, Yazdani might even have tried to prevent Wainwright from taking the easy way out. Whatever the truth of it, I don’t think it really matters now. If Yazdani did kill him… well, he’s going to have to live the rest of his life trying to come to terms with the consequences of Wainwright’s actions – which are that he’s lost his daughter. I’d say that’s punishment enough, wouldn’t you?”

Commander Bojanowski looked at him closely. “We don’t get to make that call, Rick – and you know it. Can you put your finger on any concrete evidence to support what you’re suggesting? Any at all?”

Rick shook his head slowly. “None. But at least we’ve now got a few ideas to throw around when we try to get Judy Chapman to open up… first and foremost of which is that she and Wainwright cooked the whole thing up between them. If she’s smart – and I’ve no doubt at all that she is smart – she’ll realize her only hope of getting her sentence reduced will be to accuse Wainwright of having initiated it. She’ll insist she was coerced into making the attempt on my life because he was threatening her with physical violence and that she was a helpless victim of his psychopathic tendencies, or some such bullshit. It most likely won’t wash, but she’ll realize it’s the only hope she’s got – and once she starts down that road, we’ll get the rest of it out of her eventually.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall and grunted with satisfaction.

“Less than twenty-four hours to go, and then I’m out of here. There’s a couple of things I’ll have to do back at my pad immediately after I’m discharged, but they won’t take long. Commander… with your permission, I’d like to return to duty as soon as possible – which, if nothing happens to screw up the schedule, will be the day after tomorrow.”

“I was about to order you to take recuperative leave of at least a month, Rick…”

“Please don’t, Commander. If you do, I’ll make a far bigger nuisance of myself continually calling in to ask about progress than I ever could by just being there in person.”

Bojanowski glared at him, then sighed resignedly.

“Whatever you say, Rick. Whatever you say…”

Chapter 17

Peering suspiciously at the two large piles of paperwork on his desk that had mysteriously appeared on it since his last period of occupation, Rick flopped down into the chair. One second and a muffled curse later he was on his feet once more, glaring at it angrily as André entered the room carrying a pair of laptops, one under each arm.

“Who the hell’s changed the height of this thing? The seat’s been altered too – I almost slid forwards off it onto the floor!”

“It was not me – I promise!” replied his friend hurriedly as he started connecting the laptops to the two external monitors on his desk. “Perhaps the desk is now… un poste de travail partagé… what is that crazy name you call it… a ‘hot desk’, yes? If it is this, I sympathise. I do not like the hot desks. Ever since I am working here at headquarters on this project, I empty my locker and leave everything on my desk at the end of each day. Then nobody tries to steal it the next morning.”

“Smart… very smart,” grunted Rick approvingly.

“Perhaps,” replied André with a shrug. “But I am nearly always the first person to arrive in the morning, so before I can start I have to put it all back in the locker again… but at least I know where I can sit. I think it is worth the trouble, but you might not.”

Having just wiped the tip of his finger slowly across the top of the desk, Rick inspected it closely with an expression of disdain.

“Jeez… I could plant potatoes in this! Could be I’d be better off just commandeering somebody else’s desk anyway. But never mind about that…”

He finished adjusting the settings on his chair and gingerly sat down on it, then swung it round to face André, who had now powered up both machines and was busily entering commands into their respective keyboards alternately.

“Any updates on the Svencorp situation that I need to know about? And where’s the Boz this morning? I know he’s a busy guy, but I want to see him sometime if possible.”

“He has been called into a meeting with the commissioner and three other people who arrived just after me,” replied André without turning round. “I spoke to him briefly before the meeting started: he told me that he expects it to last most of the day, and that the subject of it is Judy Chapman – who still will not allow herself to be interviewed. The people with him were members of the British establishment: even I had no difficulty placing their accents! They might be diplomats… but there was something about them that suggested high-ranking military.”

Rick replied with a non-committal grunt. “Oh well, I guess we’ll find out what’s going on soon enough. Frankly, I’m starting not to care what happens to the godforsaken woman: it’s not as if it’s going to make any difference to anything, is it?”

He frowned to himself, then turned to his friend.

“André…last time we talked about this, you said you’d been working on the decryption of everything you downloaded from Svencorp just after Orson vanished. Did you get anywhere with that? Anywhere at all?”

His friend gestured helplessly at the two monitors in front of him, both of which were rapidly scrolling symbolic code that conveyed nothing to Rick.

“I have made some progress – I know I have… but it is not enough to read the messages! I think there are voiceprints extracted from audio recordings embedded in the decryption keys – but without a sample of the speaker’s voice, I cannot apply them with any hope of success. There is one file – just one file – that does not appear to be encrypted. This is the file you can see on the second monitor right here: Orson downloaded it from the internet a few moments before he started sending his emails after returning to his office – but it is a meaningless jumble of phrases spoken by several hundred people! I do not know its purpose, and I can make no sense of it. It is not secret: anybody could have downloaded it, so it cannot be secret…”

“He needed it,” muttered Rick, rapidly drumming his fingers on the desk. “Why did he need it? He wants to send an encrypted message to somebody very quickly… and he’d have to be able to understand the reply, which would also have been encrypted. He downloads a file full of apparent gibberish that’s freely available to anyone with an internet connection…”

“Bien sûr… c’est ca!” André thumped his fist on the desk so hard that both keyboards jumped.

“The unencrypted file that Orson downloaded – it is a public key! But it is the public key for an information exchange system involving many people… a multi-user system for encrypted pairwise communications, perhaps? Orson uses it to encrypt his message, then transmits it to the person who will arrange his escape. That person encrypts their reply using the same file and their private key – and Orson decodes it. Except that Orson’s private key…”

“… is his voiceprint,” finished Rick, picking up the thought. “In which case, Orson’s correspondent is probably using their voiceprint to decode it – so if we could identify that other person…”

“… we would know who Orson was talking to, yes – but this is impossible! Even if they have at any time uploaded something they have said to the internet, the population of the world is very large!”

“And we’ve got some very powerful computing systems at our disposal in this place – so I say we start putting them to good use,” retorted Rick grimly. He looked at his friend speculatively.

“André… could you set up an automated process for combining any voiceprint with that of any of the people contributing to Orson’s file – and then scan the internet for every human speech file you can find? Extract a voiceprint from each one, then combine it with every individual voiceprint in Orson’s downloaded file. If you find anything that results in an understandable message…”

His friend nodded slowly, and his expression dissolved into a broad grin. “Then of course we would have found whoever he was talking to! Yes, I could do it… but I need time to set it up, and I do not know how long it will take to run. It could easily take many hours – perhaps days! – but it should work. Of course, I can make no guarantee that…”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it – that’s all understood,” interrupted Rick. “Just get onto it, buddy… with our last solid lead conspiring with those embassy officials or whoever they are down in the cells right now, it’s not as if we’ve got anything else to do, is it?”

Chapter 18

André leaned back in his chair and gazed with obvious satisfaction at the leftmost of the two computer displays in front of him for a few seconds, then waved his arm in the air to call Rick over from the other side of the room.

“Okay… so, how’s it going? What have you got to show me?”

André reached forward and tapped on the screen. “I have just completed a set of manual tests to make sure it will work as I want it to… so I have now set it up to scan at a rate of eight thousand terabytes a second, and to alert us to anything found to be interpretable in real time. Every time we get a hit, the source is added to the list of participants that we are trying to identify… which should improve the chances of finding more hits as the number of pairwise interactions increases.”

He swivelled his chair round to face Rick and folded his arms with obvious self-satisfaction.

“I am now convinced it is a network of individuals that we are trying to identify, Rick. Any member of the network can communicate with any other by means of a unique cipher automatically created from their combined voiceprints… but nobody else can decrypt either side of that communication, even if they are members of the overall network themselves! Nobody outside the network has any chance at all. It is an ingenious and exceptionally secure system: whoever devised it is very clever.”

“And yet you cracked it six ways from Sunday in just under two hours,” observed Rick dryly. “I guess they’ll need to beef up their security protocols just a tad once we’ve used their own system to drop them a line.”

“We were lucky,” admitted his friend with a shrug. “Orson should have deleted his copy of the public key and all his personal messages before making his escape. If he had not been so careless we could not have done it – but that is ‘water under the bridge’, yes? Everything is ready to go – so shall we see what we can find out about these people?”

“Can’t be too soon for me, buddy. Let’s do it.”

André languidly reached out and clicked his mouse, then settled himself back into his chair once more and thoughtfully took a sip out of his drink as he watched a seemingly endless stream of characters flying from the bottom of the screen to the top at breakneck speed.

“This is likely to be very boring, my friend.”

“I guess,” muttered Rick vaguely, as he squinted at the display in a half-hearted attempt to interpret it. “Oh well… if this is the main feature, at least I’m glad I missed the ‘B’ movie. Should I go out and get us a large bag of popcorn? Or do you want to go for an early lunch and just come back later to see how it’s getting on?”

“I would like to see it find at least one hit before I leave it,” replied André, shaking his head. “I do not want to come back after several hours and then find I made a simple mistake that prevented it from ever working at all.”

Rick grinned at him incredulously. “Make a simple mistake? You? No way, buddy!”

André peered at him reproachfully. “Rick, I assure you I have made more mistakes when doing this sort of thing than you could possibly… hah!”

He swung round to face the monitor once more, and pointed at a box of text that now filled the centre of the screen.

“There is a match! It comes from…”

He swivelled his chair to face the second console, and rapidly typed in several commands before continuing.

“… it comes from a home movie uploaded to a family website about twelve years ago. The matching voice belongs to a male, about fourteen years old at the time, name… Seymour Griffiths – born January 2041… place of residence… Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.”

He keyed in an additional query, read the response, and then swung round.

“The Griffiths family website contains enough personal information to enable me to find this man on our system, Rick. I have set up a sequence of queries that will automatically extract details of his street address, education history, property ownership, civil records, professional licences, marriage and divorce records, traffic violations, financial filings and employment history from WGPC databases wherever possible. Do you want me to print these off individually, or should we let the search run to completion first?”

“Looks like everything’s working, so I guess there’s no immediate hurry,” replied Rick after a moment’s pause. “I say we let the search run a while, then check out all the hits together and see if we can identify any common threads. You hungry, buddy? I am.”

By the time the two lieutenants had returned from the cafeteria just over an hour later, the number of hits had grown to just over ninety. Rubbing his hands with obvious satisfaction, André dropped into his seat at the right-hand console and pulled up a summary of the results on the screen, which he scrolled through rapidly for a few seconds before quitting the seat once more and gesturing with his hand for Rick to take his place. André gave him a moment to replicate his own cursory inspection of the list before speaking once more.

“Can you see it, my friend?”

“Yeah,” replied Rick after a few seconds, “I see it. You wouldn’t notice if you were looking at any one of them on its own… but when you’ve got several pages of them displayed together it’s impossible to miss. These employment histories have all been doctored, haven’t they?”

André nodded. “Almost all the most recent records describe credible positions of employment within locally-situated high-tech commercial organizations – but the descriptions of those positions are far too alike to be a coincidence. Whoever assembled them did not have enough imagination to vary them sufficiently to stand up to a direct comparison.”

“Or maybe they just never reckoned anybody would make such a comparison,” added Rick. “Either way, we’ve turned up yet another chink in their…”

He stopped in mid-sentence and frowned.

“There’s something else too. There’s an address here I recognize – and it comes up at least twice: it’s FEC’s pilot plant, dammit! Some of the people on this list must be working on Wainwright’s plane… we’ve done it, pal! Okay, okay… let’s think – we’re gonna need to get a complete…”

The door suddenly flew open, and Commander Bojanowski walked smartly in.

“Rick, André… your attention, please.”

Rick frowned to himself with mild irritation, then turned to face him. “Can you give us a couple more minutes, Commander? We’re onto something here: this latest lead is really going to deliver the goods…”

Commander Bojanowski shook his head decisively.

“No deal, Rick. Whatever it is you and André are engaged in, you need to stop it right now. I’ve just been informed that the FEC contract has been fulfilled, and Fairfield has agreed to release the planes to Svenson’s customer upon receipt of a bond which guarantees payment in full to cover all outstanding debts. One condition of that agreement is that the investigation will cease with immediate effect. Another condition is that Judy Chapman is to be extradited to the United Kingdom at once – the order came through from Futura literally while we were in the final stages of agreeing a compromise regarding her legal status here… and despite clear evidence of her having committed a crime on American soil, we’ve been overruled regarding the pressing of charges here in the States. Don’t ask me for any further details: I don’t have them. I just know that the case is closed – as of this minute. No further work is to be done on any aspect of it whatsoever – is that understood?”

He turned to Rick, who had risen to his feet and was looking back at him, open-mouthed.

“Rick, your permission to enter Svencorp Tower has been rescinded – André’s too – and all WGPC links to their computer systems are being severed as we speak. Our own files, including all backups, are to be deleted at once: that instruction comes from our own top brass. Any attempt to retain copies will render those responsible liable for disciplinary action – so don’t even think about it.”

Rick took a deep breath, obviously controlling himself with an effort.

“Commander… with the greatest respect to you and to everybody else involved in this investigation – including these extremely reclusive people who are about to take delivery of FEC’s new wonder plane – André and I are currently engaged in an exercise to prevent lives from being lost. Within the last hour we’ve been able to identify almost a hundred members of the organization that’s most likely buying Fairfield’s fighters… which for the first time gives us the means to warn them not to send any of them into combat! One direct hit on the fuel injector subsystem could see the pilot killed instantly and the aircraft disintegrate – to say nothing of the full-scale biohazard decontamination exercise that’ll have to be initiated wherever the wreckage falls to earth! Those planes will be flying booby-traps unless…”

“You’re off the case, Rick. You too, André – log out of both those terminals and shut them down immediately, please.”

“But Commander…”

“No buts, Rick! You’re no longer working on it, and that’s final.”

“Dammit!” Rick shook his head in uncomprehending frustration. “Doesn’t the person who’s giving the orders here understand how close we are to unravelling this godforsaken mystery? How can anybody be so dumb as to not get that?”

“Rick – I don’t know who gave the order… but I do know that it came right from the top. It’s over – as of this moment! Any further attempts on your part to involve yourself in this matter will get you suspended – do you understand?”

“Damn you! Damn this place! What the hell’s the point in doing this job? You tell me that! What’s it all for?”

“Lieutenant Fraser – you’re here to obey orders… not to thumb your nose at your…”

“I don’t care!”

He stood up abruptly, visibly quivering with anger, and without another word strode out of the room. André leaned forward and turned in his seat with the obvious intention of going after him, but Commander Bojanowski quietly put his hand on his shoulder to prevent him rising from the chair, shaking his head.

“Let him go, André. It wouldn’t do any good – it’s personal now. He’s lost someone who meant a lot to him along the way because of all this. He wants to give her death some meaning, and now he can’t. He’s going to need time to come to terms with the injustice of that.”

“But Rick is right, Commander! Fairfield’s customer does need to be warned!”

“I know, André… I know.  But you can’t warn somebody who refuses to listen to anything you have to say to them. I just hope to God that Rick’s mistaken about all this… because if he isn’t, then whoever they are, it looks like they’re going to learn the hard way.”

“We can warn them using the information we now have, Commander! I know we can do it – all we need is a few more minutes…”

Bojanowski shook his head decisively.

“No, André – it’s out of our hands now. This interdict on any further activity doesn’t just apply to Rick: it extends to everyone on the team, including me. The order came into force just over fifteen minutes ago, immediately before I called this meeting. If you try to access any files on our system that are even remotely related to this investigation, you’ll find you’ve been locked out. I’m sorry.”

André regarded him speculatively for a moment before speaking.

“There is something you need to know, Commander. I believe the security systems of the WGPC computing network have been compromised. I believe Fairfield’s customer has been monitoring our identification of their personnel in real time for at least the last two hours… and I believe they took this action as an extreme measure to prevent us from continuing to do so.”

Bojanowski’s features were expressionless. “Can you prove this?”

“Not without examining the database files that I can no longer access, sir.”

“Then please submit a report to me, stating your reasons for believing that a security breach has taken place, and recommending actions to mitigate against the effects of it should your suspicions be well-founded. I will submit that report to our superiors and will ensure that appropriate action is taken. I’m sorry, André. There’s nothing more I can do.”

André opened his mouth to speak, then thinking better of it, he formally nodded his acceptance of the inevitable and turned away to look out of the window. Squinting down at the pavement far below, he could just make out the tiny figure of Rick with his hands in his pockets, walking away from the building in the direction of the city. He turned silently away from the window once more, and slowly walked back to his desk.

Once out of sight of WGPC headquarters, Rick wandered aimlessly around the shops for over an hour before his feet carried him to the little restaurant where he’d taken Kismet the evening their fingertips had first touched. Sitting down at their favourite table, he ordered a single glass of Agua de Jamaica, which he then sipped slowly until it had all gone. Then, having deposited on the table a small pile of coins to pay for the drink he’d just finished, he quietly got up and left.

Chapter 19

The recently promoted Captain Richard Fraser hadn’t much cared for the options presented to him. The offer of what he perceived to be a deskbound job, albeit with a substantially increased salary plus assorted other benefits, jarred sharply with the memory of the time he’d spent with Kismet, and he accepted the promotion only because he had no wish to offend his friends and colleagues whom he recognized had pushed for it on his behalf. At the same time, he knew from the start that it wasn’t going to work.

Uncertain of how to proceed, he’d put out tentative feelers to several recruitment agencies with reputations for finding positions for restless young men of action with itchy feet but had been disappointed by the response. Notwithstanding his proven track record within the WGPC over the previous few years, the problem of the lack of academic qualifications returned to haunt him once more. His skill set was of little relevance to the head-hunters; their stated basic requirements didn’t feature within his list of achievements. That might not have mattered if he’d been able to secure some interviews, but he soon realized that most of his applications were being filtered out automatically at the pre-processing stage without anybody having even read them. Dispirited, he found himself spending an increasing amount of his spare time alone in his apartment, just staring at the ceiling. Making a conscious effort to pull himself together, he forced himself to spend at least a one or two evenings each week on the town with his fellow officers – but he invariably found it hard work, as sometimes did they.

“What do you think I should do, André?”

His friend topped up his beer, looked at him steadily, then took a few seconds before replying.

“You need a vacation, Rick. You cannot see it, but the rest of us can! You are stressed and you are worn out. I say it again – you need a break.”

“What would I do with a break? I’d just get bored, for Christ’s sake.”

“You have a hobby – no, it’s more than that – you have a passion! Go and indulge it! You will never get a better chance until the day you retire. I have known several people who spent their entire working life looking forward to their retirement, only to discover that they were prevented from enjoying it by bad health. One friend of my father’s did not even live that long. The time to do it is now!”

“Even I can’t spend endless hours in the air, flying around with nowhere to go,” retorted Rick with a shrug.”

“Then find somewhere to go, my friend!” replied André, “Better still, I have found it for you already… for I know it very well. You shall go to France!”

Rick regarded him uncertainly. “What… spend a few weeks eating gourmet cooking, sunning myself on the Riviera and walking around vineyards? Not my kind of thing…”

“Like many Americans, Rick,” interrupted his friend gently, “you have at the back of your mind this foolish notion that the technology of powered flight is only to be found in the United States – and it is not true! The birthplace of aviation was France! François Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes flew the very first hot air balloon over Paris in 1783, when your country was just seven years old! Jean-Pierre Blanchard, Louis Blériot, Aérospatiale, the Concorde, Airbus… we got there first! Eh bien, I invite you to experience a little technological history in my homeland, Rick. And if there is so much for you to see that you collapse at the end of each day… the wine and the cuisine, they are pretty good too, you know?”

“I can’t remember more than half a dozen French words from high school…” began Rick, but André impatiently waived the objection aside.

“They will speak English if you are nice to them. Even better – look like an American tourist, then they will take pity on you. You will not have any language problems, this I promise. Look here – I will find you enough places to visit to keep you busy for at least a month…”

Still trying to work out whether his friend’s observation was a compliment or an insult, Rick leaned over his friend’s shoulder as he rapidly pulled up a screenful of links to tourist attractions.

“Would you like to fly a holographic Boeing 797 – perfect in every detail? Or pilot a prototype Zero-X simulator through the asteroid belt using only the navigation aids that were used to fly Apollo XI to the Moon? And look there! At this complex just a few kilometres outside Toulouse they have a reproduction of Blériot’s original plane – you can take it for a flight to the coast and back if you want! You Americans, you worry too much about the health and safety these days… everybody is so worried about being sued for millions of dollars if there is an accident that you all forget how to live!”

“Well, even if there’s no way it’s actually going to happen,” murmured Rick, “I guess just daydreaming a tad won’t do any harm.”

Chapter 20

Three weeks later, Rick stepped out into the arrivals hall at the Aéroport d’Orly with a suitcase in each hand and a voluminous rucksack on his back. Momentarily assailed with mild panic at the realization that for the first time since he’d left his home country he was entirely on his own, he rapidly scanned the room looking for anything even remotely familiar to his eyes… and was both comforted and slightly irritated to find an American bureau de change, an American souvenir shop with several brightly glowing models of the Eiffel Tower prominently displayed in the window, and three American fast-food outlets, all within twenty paces of the exit gate.

Satisfied at least that he wasn’t going to starve in the immediate short-term, he walked over to the nearest of the three and inspected the array of self-service computer screens. Having psyched himself up to translate the instructions into English before he could place an order, he once again found himself mildly put out to discover that the instructions were in English. He smiled to himself at that… could it be that as far as the French were concerned, only English-speaking travellers needed instructions?

He ordered a burger and fries, then sat down at a nearby table to await its arrival, taking the opportunity to rummage through his rucksack and find André’s list of places to visit. After several fruitless forays, the list eventually fell out onto the table, accompanied by an electric toothbrush, half a packet of mints and a couple of dollars in loose change which clattered noisily onto the table before rolling away onto the floor in all directions. He raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation and took a deep breath, mindful not only that he couldn’t even spend the wretched things until he got back home again, but that he couldn’t even remember putting them in his rucksack in the first place.

By the time he’d scrambled down onto his knees and recovered them all his burger had arrived, so he stuffed the coins into his back pocket, took a large bite out of the burger and leaned back leisurely in his chair, mentally arranging the items on the list into an approximate order of interest. Then, having cross-referenced their positions around the city with the location of his hotel, he scrunched up the empty wrapper into a ball before lobbing it with pinpoint accuracy into the disposal chute built into the far wall. He then set off in the direction of the monorail terminal, humming quietly to himself.

Having dispensed with the formalities of checking into his hotel, he spent his first afternoon and evening in Paris doing nothing other than wandering around the streets with his hands in his pockets, simply soaking in the atmosphere. The sensation of not having to do anything by any specific time was something he hadn’t experienced for many years, and which – as he sat on a park bench at twilight, watching a dozen carefree youngsters laughing and shouting as they navigated an obstacle course on their skateboards in the gathering gloom – he realized he’d all but forgotten. Experiencing a sudden desperate longing for a time that had now slipped beyond his grasp, he realized that if at that very moment he’d had a skateboard of his own, he’d most likely have joined them. But no… he smiled wistfully to himself. That life was over – it was time to put away those childish things. Pulling André’s list out of his pocket once more, he squinted at it for just long enough to remind himself of the three things he’d identified earlier as his top priority. Then he got up from the bench and set off at a brisk pace back to his hotel, to ensure he’d get a good night’s sleep before tackling the first item on the list.

Two days into his vacation, and gazing down at the Parisian boulevards far below from the top of the Eiffel Tower, he’d been startled by the sudden and unexpected realisation of just how much he was enjoying himself. Far from being an unwanted imposition on his free time, the agenda that André had assembled for him was proving to be a godsend. He’d crammed more sightseeing into just forty-eight hours than he would have ever imagined possible – and in the process, broadened his range of interests to include the postmodern photographic exhibits at the Jeu de Paume, the classical sculptures at the Louvre, and the magnificent restoration of Notre Dame following the devastating fire that had engulfed it some forty years earlier.

It was on the third day after his arrival that he’d met Juliette. She was walking around the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace at Le Bourget just after it had opened for the day when he first saw her, and they’d struck up a conversation shortly thereafter: the subject matter had been something to do with the design of helijet combustion chambers, though he’d have been equally attentive if she’d been reciting a list of stock prices: the ever-so-faintly lilting breathlessness of her accent was music to his ears.

Over an espresso and croissants in the cafeteria an hour later, he’d learned that she was the senior partner in a small company of flying contractors with facilities bordering the airport, and that with business currently flourishing in the capable hands of two recently-recruited aides, she’d decided to leave them to it and treat herself to a fortnight’s break, discreetly keeping herself within easy reach should the need for a speedy return to work arise. He’d wondered how she’d managed to find herself such a prestigious role when still so young, but she’d been rather vague.

“Oh, one or two of my friends – they lend me a little money to get started. They are very kind to me, non?”

Rick had no illusions about the cost of establishing an operation like the one she’d described, but he’d not shown any visible reaction to her comment other than the modest ascension of one eyebrow. He merely agreed that her friends had indeed been very kind, and had casually expressed an interest in meeting them some time. She’d nodded enthusiastically.

“Mais oui, bien sûr! I try to find time to meet up with them before I must go back to work – you and me… we stay in touch? Perhaps if you like, I take you to see Paris – it is many years since I go to see les attractions touristiques.”

“Yeah, great! I’d really like that – there’s nothing like being with somebody who knows where to find things – but how come you haven’t already done them all to death when you live here?”

She pulled a face of disdain. “They are all full of tourists!”

Dazzled by her long platinum-blonde hair and finding himself lost in her mysterious deep brown eyes every time he looked at her, he’d been more than a little surprised to find her seemingly unattached. She was palpably both vivacious and highly intelligent, and he surprised himself by recognising that if his own recent past hadn’t brought him so close to asking the only girl he’d ever truly loved to marry him, he’d have been contemplating a far more intimate relationship with the enchanting young Frenchwoman than he actually was.

Was he being unrealistically loyal to the memory of a dead lover by not doing so? He asked himself the question countless times during those first few days after meeting Juliette, and concluded that he probably was – but it made no difference. The memory of Kismet, and the promise of the life with her that had been so cruelly torn from him was still too raw.

He found Juliette to be a remarkably perceptive companion as they toured the museums and art galleries together. Never once did she attempt to get him to reveal any more information about his recent past than he wanted to share, but she could clearly sense that he needed to talk, and it hadn’t been long before she was familiar with the circumstances leading up to – and the details of – Kismet’s death. Waking up the following morning in his hotel room, he realized with a sense of mild astonishment that having finally got it off his chest, a weight he’d been carrying around with him ever since her death had been at least partially lifted. Juliette hadn’t embarrassed him by showing any outward sign of sympathy, nor had she attempted to offer him any advice. She’d just listened – and that had been all he’d needed.

Chapter 21

He’d met several of Juliette’s friends and acquaintances over the next few days, and had found himself astonished at the breadth and diversity of the personality types with whom she was acquainted. Within the space of a week, he’d been introduced in a rapid succession to a shady-looking young Irish-American ex-pat with thickly-set eyebrows and an encyclopaedic knowledge of greyhound-racing, a Japanese hair-stylist of indeterminate gender, a pair of Scandinavian bikers who were about to set off on a tour of South America, an earnest-looking fair-haired Russian in his late twenties with a keen interest in picowave-based stratospheric resonance detection systems, and a young Korean woman carrying an exotic multi-stringed instrument she called a gayageum, with which she could play almost any requested piece of music from memory. When he asked Juliette how she’d come to meet them all, she’d just shrugged.

“They are interesting people. Interesting people come to Paris from all over the world, because they know they will meet other interesting people! This is why I love Paris so much.”

It was at the beginning of the second week of their acquaintance that he came to understand that prior to his arrival on the scene she’d been maintaining an on-and-off relationship with a young British army officer by the name of Paul, who was tied up in some project that was keeping him occupied for weeks at a time. Out of curiosity he’d asked her what the project was all about, but she seemed to know very little about it herself. The conversation had moved on to other matters, and he’d all but forgotten about it until a couple of days later she mentioned that her soldier was going to be in town at the weekend, and she wondered whether he’d be interested in meeting him to find out a little more about his work.

Wishing to avoid being drawn into talking shop after having managed so successfully to forget about such things for a few days, he’d almost decided to decline the invitation. However, Juliette had made it clear that the engagement in question would comprise a small gathering of some of her more bohemian friends in a little café on the banks of the Seine, and that she’d welcome his being there because Paul would otherwise be the only person there whose French was less than fluent. Somewhat reluctantly, he’d agreed to go.

The boyfriend turned out to have disconcertingly penetrating blue eyes that somehow gave Rick the impression the guy could see into his brain whenever he was looking at him, and with it an inexplicable feeling of déjà vu at the instant they were introduced. Paul’s first words dispelled the impression at once however: his clipped accent was sufficiently idiosyncratic to Rick’s ears as to satisfy him that he’d never heard it before. As to his personality, he turned out to be a little stand-offish but affable enough – and given Juliette’s manifestly obvious attractiveness to the opposite sex, Rick concluded that the guy was probably just wary of an obvious rival for her attention.

It was only after things started to warm up a little, with Juliette being repeatedly pulled into animated conversations with her many other friends, that he’d realized that neither of them would be getting much of her attention that evening. Having decided that he might as well at least try to be sociable to the guy, he was relieved to discover that the self-imposed task was easier than he’d expected, given that the stiff upper-lipped Brit appeared to loosen up slightly after having been served a glass of vintage cognac.

Starting with an animated comparison of the British and American interpretations of the game of football, their conversation had morphed into a critique of the art of successful team-building, and then broadened to encompass some of the finer points of game theory, then battlefield strategy, artificial intelligence in automated warfare, drone aerodynamics, real-time prediction of freak atmospheric turbulence, and – several more vintage cognacs apiece later – the role of intra-cranial quantum-computers in determining the navigational capabilities of homing pigeons.

“You see, it’s like this… your average homing pigeon would be incapable of navigating the planet with anything under a five-degree precision unless its senses were augmented with quantum-spin coherence-enhanced cryptochrome proteins. It’s obvious.”

Rick peered at him through bleary eyes. “It’s not obvious to me, Paul.”

“That’s just because you’re not familiar with the basics,” replied his new friend dismissively. “As usual, every time we think we’ve developed some astounding new technology, we discover that good old Mother Nature got there first. Give it another ten years, it’ll be incorporated into every guidance system on the planet. You’ll see.”

“Paul… wait a minute… look, are you actually serious about all this?”

His drinking partner peered back at him indignantly. “It’s an established fact. Well… established insofar as it’s possible to establish anything when you’re talking quantum physics.”

Mindful of the quantity of drink already consumed by the pair of them, Rick found himself struggling to decide whether the Brit was pulling his leg. If so, he was doing it with a perfectly deadpan face – but pondering the point, Rick realized that the guy hadn’t smiled even once in all the time they’d been talking. Dammit, where had he seen him before? He racked his memory but couldn’t place it. Blinking himself out of his reverie, he tried to concentrate once more on what Paul was telling him, but realized he was losing the plot fast.

“So how do you know it’s an established fact, then?”

“There’s a book that says so… I got it from Juliette. Want to borrow it?”

Rick frowned at him uncertainly, then shook his head as carefully as his increasingly blurred vision would allow.

“As one of you Brits put it, ‘Thanks for the offer – I shall waste no time reading it.’ Oscar Wilde, wasn’t it?”

“Wilde was Irish,” observed the Brit pedantically, “and although it probably ought to have been one of his, in this instance it wasn’t. It was Moses Hadas – and he was one of your guys.” He shrugged. “Your loss, though. The mathematics is very persuasive… are very persuasive… one or the other…”

Rick put down his glass and regarded him stonily.

“Paul… I’ve just spent longer than I care to remember trying – and failing – to squeeze the truth out of more gigabytes of data than there are feathers in one of your goddam flocks of homing pigeons. It’s hard work – especially when most of it has obviously been fabricated. Like Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics!”

Paul shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

“What do you mean, ‘Uh-uh’?”

“Mark Twain only popularised it. It was originally attributed to Benjamin Disraeli.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I’m afraid so,” replied Paul. “Mind you, there’s nothing in Disraeli’s writings to indicate that he coined the term himself. Like most good quotes, plenty of people like to claim it for their own and adapt it accordingly – but never mind about that. I interrupted you… what were you saying about those fabricated gigabytes of yours?”

By the end of the evening, despite Rick having peppered his side of the conversation with numerous references to both his career in the WGPC and his fascination with aviation in all its forms, he realized with a flash of irritation that he’d still gleaned almost no concrete information regarding the nature of his drinking partner’s work. The conversation had somehow drifted into other channels each time he’d tentatively alluded to it, and with some of the guests now starting to leave, he opted to address it directly. Paul had been equally direct in his response.

“Well, I could tell you something about it… but to be honest, I don’t think it would be such a good idea.”

Rick looked at him quizzically. “And the reason for that is…?”

Paul downed the last few millilitres of his final glass of cognac.

“Well, it’s just that if I did tell you any more about it than I already have, I’d most likely have to kill you afterwards. And after one of the most interesting and wide-ranging discussions I’ve had with anybody for months, I really wouldn’t want to have to do that. Honest.”

The coin finally dropped with a resounding clang, and Rick nodded understandingly, both embarrassed and annoyed with himself for not having connected the dots earlier.

“Ah. Yeah, of course. What you have said sounds kind-of intriguing, though – I might even be interested in applying if I knew just a little more about it. I don’t suppose you could just tell me where you find the guys who run it?”

“You don’t find them,” replied Paul with a shake of his head. “If you’re of interest to them, they find you.”

“They’re sure as hell not going to find anyone they’ve never heard of,” Rick observed. “It’s kind-of difficult to get recruited into an organization if neither of you knows about the other one.”

“Well, I daresay that’s true enough,” agreed Paul, “though you’d probably be surprised if you knew how well-connected they are.”

“I guess anybody who’s lived in the real world long enough knows that having the right connections is everything,” acknowledged Rick, “and whatever your line of work is, you must have plenty. How about we swap email addresses?”

Paul shook his head. “Sorry – I’m not allowed to hand it out. But why not leave yours with Juliette? She knows plenty of people in the aviation business – she might hear of something interesting. I’m flying out first thing tomorrow morning, but she and I meet up whenever we can. If I do hear of anything that might be relevant to what you’re looking for I’ll pass it onto her, and she can let you know.”

Rick was sufficiently familiar with the ways of the world to know when somebody was being politely unhelpful. “Sounds like a good idea,” he replied. “I’ll do that.”

Paul had indeed vanished by the time he’d called on Juliette the following morning – and with the vacation now coming to an end, she’d apologised for having to return to work, and they’d parted company with an embrace and a chaste kiss. He’d exchanged a few brief emails with her upon returning, but as the demands of his new position began to take an ever-increasing toll on his time, the communications had soon petered out. She began to become something of a wistful but fading memory, and he’d vaguely assumed that she and her soldier had probably got married and maybe started a family.

Stoically accepting that his dreams simply weren’t meant to be, but more determined than ever to make his mark on the world, he’d thrown himself into his new job with a vengeance… but every now and again he’d collapse into his favourite chair at the end of the day, and find himself reflecting of what might have been if only fate hadn’t intervened so catastrophically when it did.

Chapter 22

“It’s not enough, André. It just isn’t – there’s something missing. I’m damned if I know what it is, but it’s bugging the hell out of me. It’s like an itch that I can’t scratch, you know what I mean?”

“We have had this conversation before,” observed his friend. “It was many months ago, at the start of the Svencorp investigation, you said to me that life had no meaning… that everything was pointless. And yet – not long afterwards – for a time, you did not feel this way. Is it not reasonable to suppose your perspective will change again? It is said that time heals. Perhaps you have not given it enough time.”

“All the time in the world isn’t going to bring her back, André. Everything we did – all we went through – to uncover the reasons for what happened back then…”

Rick shook his head furiously, then stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before continuing.

“Where did it get us? I’ll tell you where it got us. Apart from getting her killed – and incidentally getting me almost killed – it got us precisely nowhere. I need answers, dammit!”

His friend looked at him contemplatively for a few moments, then seemed to come to a decision.

“I cannot promise to find any answers, Rick… but maybe – just maybe – I can suggest one final avenue of enquiry for us to explore before I leave.”

Rick looked at him uncertainly. “Sorry… you’ve lost me, André. What do you mean, ‘before I leave’? What are you talking about?”

“I am moving on, my friend,” replied André with a wistful smile. “It has been great working here in the WGPC – I would not have missed it for anything. I have made many friends, and I shall miss them all terribly – but now I must return home. I shall hand in my resignation at the end of the week.”

“But why, André?”

“Because of the personal reasons! I am homesick… can you believe that? I want to go back to France – to the country I love! I miss my family, and they miss me. But there is also another reason… a very practical one. My father – he is not as young as he was, and he is no longer in the best of health. He must retire soon – my mother has been trying to persuade him to do so for some time – and I am their only son. But my father, he cannot retire until he has someone to take over the family business! It was always understood between us that he would sell it, but now he cannot find a buyer he is prepared to sell it to – and the matter cannot wait. It will be a very different career from the one I chose for myself in the service of the World Government, I think.”

“So just what is your family business?”

His friend grinned. “You will laugh when I tell you, so perhaps it is better that I do not.”

“No I won’t – I promise! Tell me.”

André took a deep breath. “My family owns a fashion house – the House of Verdain – you have heard of it, yes? I must now forget all about codebreaking, and instead learn how to sell insanely expensive dresses to vain young ladies with enough money to… stop laughing, Rick! You will spill your drink all over your trousers!”

Rick deliberately held his breath for just long enough to place his cup back down onto the table before resuming his choking fit – which took a further ten seconds to subside. André waited patiently for his composure to be restored before silently admonishing with an ‘I told you so’ look, and Rick looked sheepishly back at him.

“Sorry, André – I just don’t see you as a fashion guru, that’s all! Oh well… I guess all I can say is good luck with it – but I have to say the force will be losing a damn good man. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I am not sure it is what I want to do, no – but it is what I must do. A few days ago, I had an interview with the top brass to discuss the choice I have to make, and they have asked me to speak with some people who will come from Futura to see me before I make my final decision. They say these people have a proposition to put to me, so I have agreed to hear what they have to say – but between you and me, my mind is made up.”

“So… who are these guys, André? Do you know?”

Suddenly serious, his friend nodded slowly. “Yes, I know who they are… and I know why they want to speak to me. And yes, I will speak with them… because there is something I want them to hear before I go. You remember the day the Svencorp investigation was closed, yes? And you remember that the Commander told us that we will be subject to the action disciplinaire if we keep personal copies of the files? Well…”

André reached into his pocket and extracted a small voice recorder, which he placed on the table between them.

“Nobody can discipline me if I have already resigned, I think! Even if the WGPC refuses to listen to what I have to say, perhaps there are others within the World Government who will. This is my last chance to find out.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“I had copies of some of the files that I thought should be the most straightforward to decipher still on my personal organizer when we were shut out of the system. I said nothing to anybody else because the organizer would obviously have been immediately impounded! I said nothing to you at the time because I believed it would be impossible to break the encryption without access to the resources of the WGPC, and I did not want to give you false hope. But…”

A ghost of a self-satisfied smile flickered across his lips.

“… I was mistaken! It took me three weeks of intense work, much of it using only public domain software, a notepad and a lot of luck, but I did it! And this is what I managed to extract…”

He flicked the switch, and a filtered voice immediately emanated from the device’s loudspeaker.

“Authorization code snow-zero-one-alpha, digital seal verified by Lieutenant Green on behalf of the Futura General Assembly…”

“That’s the World President speaking,” muttered Rick. “I’d recognize his voice anywhere.”

“I think so too,” agreed André. “Now listen to this…”

He adjusted the settings of the little device, then pressed the button again. This time a deeper voice emanated from the speaker, repeating the same words Rick had heard a few seconds previously.

“Authorization code snow-zero-one-alpha, digital seal verified by Lieutenant Green on behalf of the Futura General Assembly…”

“That’s Orson! Isn’t it?”

Rick looked uncertainly at André, then frowned as he replayed the short phrase in his head.

“No, wait a minute – something’s not…”

His voice tailed away as he tried to identify whatever it was about the words that hadn’t quite rung true, and he lapsed into silence.

“Every comparison I can run,” continued André, “tells me that these two sentences were spoken by two different people. The first is the World President – several different analyses agree that this is so. The second is Orson: the vocal signature precisely matches the recordings we have of him. Every test confirms that both recordings are authentic! But one of them cannot be authentic… and for a very simple reason.”

“Which is…?”

André grinned smugly. “After adjusting the speeds and frequencies of the recording by Orson to compensate for the World President’s verbal idiosyncrasies, the timing of every syllable of every word in the two recordings is identical down to the nearest microsecond. The probability of that happening by chance is almost impossible to calculate.”

Rick threw his friend a sarcastic look. “And… you just happened to notice that remarkable coincidence, right?”

“I was looking for it!” retorted André indignantly. “Why would Orson want to say something that the World President had once said? And even more unlikely – why would the World President want to say something that Orson had once said? No… one of them had to be a copy of the other, doctored to change the identity of the speaker. The experts, they tell me this is impossible – but we know better, I think.”

He switched off the device and looked at Rick intently.

“What was Orson very good at, Rick? He was very good at writing and implementing voice recognition systems. Is it too much to suppose he might be able to write a system for converting something that is said by one person into something that is said by somebody else? We know that since he started to work at Svencorp Tower, voice authentication had been made an integral component of their financial control systems. Why? Because it adds a level of security that is considered very difficult to break. How does it work? The voiceprint of everybody involved in each transaction is compared to a database of authenticated voiceprints held by the system. Eh bien, what better way to reverse the direction of that transaction than to switch the dialogs of the people required to initiate and authenticate it?”

“I think maybe you’ve got it, André…”

“I know I have got it,” replied André matter-of-factly, “but even I was surprised by the very simple mistake that puts the matter beyond any doubt. I think perhaps you noticed it too when I played you the second recording, yes?”

“There was something that didn’t quite ring true,” agreed Rick slowly, “but I’m damned if I can think what it might have been. It was Orson speaking… I know it was! You gonna tell me?”

“As I said before,” replied André, “every word was identical – including the word ‘lieutenant’. I do not know who this ‘Lieutenant Green’ might be – but that does not matter. What matters is how the word is pronounced. The first day we went to Svencorp Tower, Judy Chapman called you ‘leff-tenant’, which I remember saying is how the English say this word. The World President grew up in the United States, so he says ‘loo-tenant’. Orson is English… he would not normally say the word like that – but to synthesise the voice of the World President, he must say it the American way.”

André’s expression deepened slightly as he recalled the events of the recent past.

“When I came to understand what had been done, I did not know what to do next – because of course now there is a new aspect to this investigation that raises the stakes even higher than before.”

“The involvement of the World President,” agreed Rick slowly. “Whatever Orson was doing, it necessitated faking his voiceprint… which in turn suggests that perhaps the World President himself is involved in this affair.”

“This is the way I see it also,” replied André. “Whatever we are investigating reaches to the highest level of the World Government. So… what are we going to do, my friend? If it is the World President himself who is ordering us not to continue with the investigation, there is nobody higher for us to appeal to!  And yet my conscience will not allow me to leave it like this. I believe it is my duty to tell them everything I know – and my decision to resign from the WGPC and return to France only strengthens my intention to do so. But this could have consequences for you, my friend… and so I cannot do it if you do not agree.”

Rick contemplated the ceiling in silence for a few moments, then shrugged fatalistically.

“I’m with you, André. We still don’t know if the W.P. is the instigator of possibly the biggest scam in history, or an unwitting victim of it. If he’s the instigator, we may never know… but if he’s the victim, then – as I see it – not reporting what we’ve discovered would betray every goddam thing we ever signed up for.”

He uttered a sharp staccato laugh before continuing. “But leaving all the ethical bullshit out of this, I’ve got a personal motivation. Someone very precious to me has been killed as a direct consequence of this investigation. Someone I thought I could protect with my life… and now she’s dead. I guess maybe that’s shaken up my perspective, because looking after myself doesn’t seem to be quite as important to me these days. So yeah… as far as I’m concerned, if they’ve got anything unpleasant in mind for you then they can have two scalps for the price of one. I say go for it.”

“Then I shall tell them what I know,” replied André.

Chapter 23

A few days later, Rick had been startled to discover what amounted to a summons in his in-tray to attend – alone – a meeting of an unspecified nature, to which he would be transported by its organizers. Only the date, time and place of departure were unambiguous, the location being merely a map reference with no further details.

On the point of forwarding it to the IT department with a stiffly-worded complaint about its laxity in allowing such an obvious piece of spam to get through the filters, he’d hesitated when reading the names and ranks of the senior personnel supposedly copied in the circulation list, and decided to go and show it to the only one he knew personally.

“Any ideas, André? If this thing’s legit, I mean… my first reaction was that it’s a scam, but now I’m not so sure. I mean, there’s no damn way anybody’s gonna fall for something like this without checking it out from top to bottom first, right? It could be anything from an invite to share in a million dollars buried in the desert – after you’ve mailed them a handling fee of fifty bucks, of course – to a hit organized by the mob! Do they think I’m completely stupid?”

“Making scams look as if they have been put together by stupid people is all part of the game,” replied his friend with a shrug. “They do not want to waste time trying to scam you if you are not stupid… so they make it look as if they are stupid! That way, they can concentrate on people most likely to be deceived. But there is a very big clue here that tells me this is not written by a scammer. Do you remember that I was able to identify where the helijet that lifted Orson from the roof of Svencorp Tower took off from? I told you it was a small private airfield, yes? I recognize the map reference they have given you – it is the location of that airfield.”

Rick blinked and stared at him, galvanized. “You mean…?”

“Yes – it is possible they are the people we have been trying to talk to all along! They might be the good guys… or they might be the bad guys, yes? But either way – and for the first time – perhaps we have an opportunity to find out. The message says you are to go alone… and obviously that is dangerous. I cannot advise on this because I am not being put at risk. The decision must be yours, Rick.”

“Yeah, I guess,” replied Rick with a shrug. Noting the apprehensive look on his friend’s face, he broke into a broad grin and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy – I won’t do anything rash.”

He returned to his office, and immediately placed a request for information regarding the registered owner of the airfield, only to be informed half an hour later that the online documentation led to a company that existed on paper only, and that the entire estate was in reality owned by a department within the World Government whose designation was a short alphanumeric abbreviation, and whose function was not a matter of public record. Upon submitting a follow-up request for details of the department in question, he’d received a video call – sound only – shortly afterwards from an official in the Futura administration, who told him curtly that the requested information was classified, and that no further submissions would receive a response. Attempting to replay the conversation a few moments later from the WGPC’s auto-logging system, he’d discovered not only no recording of the conversation itself, but no record even of an incoming call having been received.

Increasingly irritated at the way he was clearly being played, he’d been at least satisfied that the email had indeed originated from within the upper echelons of the World Government. Nevertheless, he had a machine pistol within easy reach when he drove to the location in question on the appointed day, at the appointed time. Sure enough, an executive jet bearing an unfamiliar multi-coloured insignia was slowly taxiing across the tarmac in his direction, while a solitary young man wearing a black and cream-coloured uniform standing stiffly on the verge at the side of the runway indicated with a gesture where he was evidently required to stop the car.

The pistol within easy reach of the hand that was hidden from the man’s view by his body, Rick opened his window and leaned out. “You’re here to meet me, right?”

The young man gave him a perfunctory salute, then raised a portable device of an unfamiliar design, incorporating both a plate that was immediately recognisable as a subatomic scanner, and a small lens.

“Captain Richard Fraser? May I see your WGPC ID card, sir?”

Rick handed it over, and the young man duly swiped it over the plate.

“Thank you, sir. Now please look directly towards the camera to allow me to verify your retina scan.”

“How the hell did you guys manage to…” began Rick, but he didn’t bother to finish the question, as one glance at the man’s stolid expression told him it wasn’t going to be answered. Accepting the situation with a shrug, he duly peered into the lens without further complaint. The jet had in the meantime drawn to a standstill a short distance away, and with the formalities of identification evidently completed to the young man’s satisfaction, he gestured towards the plane.

“Would you board the aircraft immediately, sir? The journey will take approximately twenty minutes, but to keep the rendezvous without having to deviate from the flight plan, the pilot wants be airborne within the next five.”

Rick raised an eyebrow in surprise. “So short a journey? That’s just a hop – hardly enough to get us clear of this state’s airspace! Where are we going, for God’s sake?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir. Please take your seat and strap yourself in; you’ll find light refreshments in the locker beneath the window. Would you give me your car keys, please?”

“Why – what do you want them for? Aren’t you coming with me?”

“No, sir: I’ve been ordered to return your car to WGPC headquarters. The pilot will attend to anything you need during the journey: there’s a buzzer at the side of your seat if you need to call her. One more thing: on the assumption that you’re armed, I recommend you leave your weapon in the car. If you’re carrying it when you board the jet, it’ll set off the detector at the plane’s entrance, and I’ll then be obliged to relieve you of it.”

Rick hesitated for a second, then stepped out of the car and gestured towards the open door.

“It’s in the side pocket, and it’s fully charged – so don’t go messing with it, okay? The trigger’s keyed to my fingerprints, so I’m going to want it back: the waiting list for models equipped with the kind of security measures that actually work stretches twice round the block – even for the cops.”

The young man glanced in the direction indicated, but made no move to secure the weapon.

“Thank you, sir; we’ll take good care of it. Have a pleasant flight.”

Rick walked across the tarmac to the plane and climbed aboard. The door immediately slid shut behind him, and he had barely had time to pull the seatbelt around him before the whine of the jets began to build up, and the aircraft started its take-off run. Within less than fifteen seconds the plane was in the air, and he gripped the sides of the seat as it banked sharply to the left, climbing steadily and rapidly away from the airfield as it did so.

He leaned over to examine the locker, and discovered that it contained some bottles of non-alcoholic beverages plus several packs of assorted snacks, all of which would have featured on the shopping list for any gathering he might have himself organized. He found himself wondering at that, given that his own tastes were decidedly eclectic. Was their selection merely a remarkable coincidence? Prior to the conversation with the guy on the ground some fifteen minutes earlier he’d probably have concluded that it was. Now he wasn’t so sure.

While he was opening one of the packets his ears popped unexpectedly, and he realized with a start that the aircraft was still climbing rapidly. Glancing out of the window, he peered down at the networks of roads now far beneath the plane, and frowned: twenty minutes, the man had said – so why so high? Perhaps a word with the pilot would be in order… He located the buzzer, but hesitated.

The memory of one of the earliest James Bond movies that he’d once watched as a young boy suddenly sprang unbidden into his head, in which the eponymous hero had woken up on board such a plane alone with an impossibly exotic female pilot with some ridiculously contrived name with sexual connotations that he hadn’t understood until some years later. He frowned to himself as he tried unsuccessfully to recall the name, and then suddenly realized exactly what it was about his current situation that had triggered the all-but-forgotten memory. It had been the parting words of the young man on the ground a few moments previously… ‘there’s a buzzer at the side of your seat if you need to call her’.

“Buzzer be damned,” he muttered to himself. “Time I introduced myself, I think.”

He disengaged his seat belt, swivelled his legs sideways into the aisle and rose out of his seat. Stepping over to the panel separating the passenger cabin from the flight deck, he spared the entry control a cursory glance before tapping sharply on the door. A few seconds later he heard a click from the other side, and moved forward to enter the cockpit as the door began to slide sideways. Just as he did so, a violent upward gust of wind struck the jet’s tail, and the plane lurched forward.

Caught off-guard by the movement, he was pitched headlong into the cockpit, landing in an undignified heap on the floor at the pilot’s feet. An exclamation met his ears, and a second later, an elegantly manicured hand at the end of a long creamy-white sleeve trimmed with a gold braid cuff reached down to help him up. Mumbling an apology, he found himself looking bemusedly at – in rapid succession – a pair of white boots and cream-coloured trousers, then a well-fitting similarly-styled tunic, a neck encased within a metallic collar in the same style as the cuff, and finally…

“Allo, Rick – you make me jump when you fall! Are you hurt? I hope you are not hurt!”

He stared at her in open-mouthed disbelief for a full two seconds before replying.

“Juliette! Is it really you? My God, it is really you! Hey, I don’t believe this… what an amazing coincidence! What are you doing flying this thing? And where are we going, anyway? The invite was kind-of short on detail – I was half expecting to be left standing back there on the tarmac with a red face come sundown!”

She tossed her long platinum hair with a radiant smile.

“I am your pilot for the day, Rick – and it is good to see you again too! I am here to take you to your briefing – something tells me that I do not think you will be able to guess where it is! What am I doing here? The same as you, I think.”

He’d looked at her uncertainly. “What do you mean… the same as me?”

“Oh, you will find that out when we get there. How is the expression… my lips are sealed, as you say!”

He shrugged. “Classified, huh? Well, I guess that’s no surprise… okay Juliette, you’re the one calling the shots – I promise to be a good boy and not ask any embarrassing questions. Even if it turns out to be the most elaborate hoax ever perpetrated, you’ll still have made my day.”

She smiled back at him in recognition of the compliment, then took a sharp intake of breath.

“Oh! Of course… I have something to tell you! My name… I am not Juliette these days. They give me a new name! It is ‘Destiny’… what do you think – do you like my nom de code?”

He blinked at her uncertainly. “Destiny?”

“Destiny, yes! I am Destiny Angel now – and I think I like it very much!”

He peered at her in astonishment. “Destiny Angel? You’re kidding me! You are kidding me, aren’t you? Jeez - you’re not kidding me, are you! What do you need a codename for, for God’s sake? What’s wrong with your real one?”

She shrugged with just a hint of a quintessentially Gallic pout.

“My colonel – he tells me that what I do now is dangerous maybe. He tells me that he does not want my family to know what I do, or they will worry. He tells me I must tell them… qu’est-ce que c’est en Anglais les contes de fées… fairy tales! How can I do this if all the world knows who I am? No – I think he is right maybe… it is better this way.”

“Well, okay, if you say so,” he replied with a shrug. “Today seems to be the day for insanely outlandish glamorous codenames… Hah! Got it!” He snapped his fingers. “Pussy Galore!”

She blinked at him quizzically. “Pardon? Il n’y a pas de chat à bord de cet avion…”

“Oh, nothing – forget it. So you’re working for the military these days, is that right?” A thought struck him. “Ah, I get it! That boyfriend of yours talked you into applying, didn’t he… you know… the Brit with the blue eyes you introduced me to back in Paris – did he put you up to it? Say, did you two split up? You know, I always thought he wasn’t right for…”

Juliette’s eyes opened wide. “Oh! But of course… you do not know!”

“I seem to be on the receiving end of rather a lot of surprises today,” Rick observed with just a hint of exasperation creeping into his tone. “What don’t I know, for Christ’s sake?”

One of the visual displays in front of her suddenly lit up with a page of illuminated hieroglyphics that meant nothing to him, and she studied it intently for a couple of seconds before twisting round in her seat to talk to him over her shoulder.

“We talk about it later… you will go back to your seat and strap yourself in once more, please? We will be landing in a few minutes.”

He glanced at the altimeter and frowned.

“We can’t be! There’s no way… we’re still well over thirty-eight thousand…”

His voice died away as a dark shadow began to creep across the cockpit from somewhere above them. His frown grew deeper, and fearful of the presence of another aircraft in the immediate proximity, he began squinting upwards into the sky in an urgent attempt to identify its source.

“Where the hell is it, for God’s sake? It must be showing up on your instruments, surely…”

She leaned to one side and began keying a sequence of commands into a piece of equipment whose function was unclear to him, sparing him a cursory glance as she did so.

“They are directly above us… I need to manoeuvre the SPJ seven hundred metres starboard before we proceed, so as I tell you before, please return to your seat!”

He opened his mouth to argue, but noting her look of concentration as she manipulated the controls, thought better of it and meekly did as he was told, continuing to stare out of the window in rapt fascination as he did so. A few moments later, the origin of the shadow he’d seen through the cockpit window earlier became apparent as the jet continued to rise – and he caught his breath in amazement.

Chapter 24

The object was not only gigantic, being at least fifty times the size of the jet, but also terrifyingly close. Rick bit his lip as the jet rose slowly but surely above just the level of its flight deck – for there was no doubt in his mind as to what it was, even allowing for the obvious impossibility of such an insanely massive construction being apparently suspended in mid-air – and then glided smoothly down onto the runway beneath it, decelerating rapidly as it did so. The actual moment of touchdown itself was so gentle that he was barely aware of it.

A few seconds later, the floor of the cabin suddenly juddered slightly beneath his feet, and he had just enough time to work out that the plane had just been secured with some form of locking mechanism before he became aware that the runway that was visible from the window had started to rise.

Momentarily disorientated, it took him a further couple of seconds to work out that the section of the runway upon which the jet had come to a standstill was actually a hydraulic platform, and that this platform was now being lowered into a large rectangular pit beneath the runway. That he’d been completely unaware of the vertical movement of the jet until the effects of it became visible through the window was a testament to the engineering underpinning it, and he found himself staring out of the window with undisguised admiration of the technology as the jet descended into the installation’s interior.

The whine of the jets had barely died away before the door to the cockpit opened, and Juliette had emerged, shaking her hair loose from the recent confines of her flying helmet, which in turn was lying discarded on the recently-vacated seat.

“We are arrived – you are coming?”

He blinked in confusion. “Yeah… yeah, sure! Whatever you say, Juliette – whatever you say.”

He had barely quit the jet and walked off the metallic floor of the platform when a sudden noise behind him had made him turn. Incredibly within the few seconds that had elapsed since he’d stepped away from its door, the jet had already been shunted silently backwards off the platform, which in turn had just begun its ascent back up to the runway above them.

“Look, Juliette – if it’s not a stupid question… well, even if it is a stupid question… what the hell is this place?”

She glanced over his shoulder before replying. “Paul can explain – he explains better than me, I think. You were asking about Paul, yes?”

Rick blinked himself out of his state of bewilderment and peered at her.

“Paul? What’s he got to do with… oh, yeah – wait a minute… we were talking about him a few moments ago, weren’t we… okay, so whatever did become of…”

“Good to see you again, Rick. Glad you could make it.”

Rick jumped at the unfamiliar sound of his name pronounced in a clipped English accent, and swung round to identify the source of it – to find himself in the infuriating position of instantly recognising the face, but seeing it so out of context as to throw him completely for a second.

His erstwhile drinking partner was now dressed in a uniform not unlike that of the man who’d met him at the airfield, but with one very obvious difference: the tunic, boots and cap of this one were all bright red. The same multicoloured insignia that he’d seen on the side of the jet adorned the cap and was also emblazoned on both sleeves: the overall effect was a little overwhelming, but having encountered plenty of officials from some of the world’s more authoritarian regimes sporting overtly bombastic uniforms at international policing conferences, Rick had seen worse.

“Paul? My God – yes, it is you! Hey – how about this! What was it Sherlock Holmes said once – journeys end in lovers’ meetings? Well, you know what I mean… no, forget that… so, how you doing? Nah… don’t bother telling me – it looks like you’re doing okay! But… what are you doing here?”

Paul patiently waited for him to finish. “This is where I work, Rick. Destiny likewise: I thought you’d have realized that by now. And for your information, ‘journeys end in lovers meeting’ was Shakespeare.”

“It was Holmes! The Adventure of the Empty House – to Inspector Lestrade, just after the assassination attempt by Colonel Sebastian Moran!”

Paul shook his head. “Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Holmes misquoted him… and he was talking to Colonel Moran himself, not Lestrade.”

Rick gave a hearty chuckle. “Well, you sure haven’t changed, anyway! But why do I get the impression whenever you’re around that I’m pinned to a microscope slide, and you’re the guy looking down the eyepiece? Look, is all this some kind of test? Because if it is…”

Paul shook his head dismissively. “Oh no – I just lost a bet, that’s all: the others reckoned you’d react very much along the lines you just have.”

“Others? What others?”

One of Paul’s eyebrows raised the merest fraction as he allowed his gaze to wander round the hangar. “You don’t think I built this place all by myself, do you?”

One by one, the pieces began to come together, and Rick looked at him speculatively.

“That… thing… that project or whatever it was – the one you didn’t want to talk about when we first met a while back – is this it?”

“Yes – at least part of it,” affirmed Paul. “Obviously there’s a lot more to it than just this facility, but it’ll serve to give you a flavour of the scale of this operation. We have both ground-based and naval operations, and a range of orbital installations are being developed for activation a few months from now.”

“And… what you just referred to as ‘this place’ is called… what?”

“Well,” replied Paul slowly, “its official designation is the S14 Aerial Tactical Command and Mobile Ordnance Rapid Deployment Platform, but its name going forward is currently under review. The committee will be publishing its recommendation within the next 48 hours.”

The expression on his face suggested to Rick that Paul had already been informed of the committee’s recommendation ahead of its publication and had mixed feelings about it – an inference borne out by his next words.

“Speaking personally, I find the current designation both concise and informative – however for referencing it within everyday communications I’m persuaded, albeit reluctantly, that we’re going to need something a little… snappier. I’m happy to let them sort it out among themselves, however: there’s plenty of real work still to be done around here before we’re up and running properly.”

“What – you’re saying it’s not operational yet? It looks pretty damned operational to me!”

“Well, it’s been partially operational for several months now,” conceded Paul, “but the deployment of several of the monitoring and tracking systems is behind schedule – and without them, we’re as blind as the proverbial bat. Which reminds me – I need to have a word with Captain Black about some emissions that are registering on our scanners as having originated in deep space. Since they’re obviously ground-based communications, the antennae must be misaligned.”

“And… this Captain Black of yours is in charge of the extra-terrestrial operations, is that right?”

“Correct,” confirmed Paul. “And Conrad’s one of our best men – he hardly ever makes a mistake – which is the reason this latest setback concerns me. Those antennae are made of an exceptionally high-quality alloy that was manufactured to his personal specifications to ensure that this sort of error doesn’t occur. It might be that our suppliers are cutting corners again, in which case I’m going to have to pay them yet another visit. Sorting out manufacturers who think they can short-change us just because it’s a World Government contract wastes far more time than all the other technical issues we have to resolve combined – and just dealing with those is a full-time job right now.”

“Yes,” replied Rick slowly, “I’m beginning to see why you weren’t getting too much leave when we first met… so – that’s what you do around here…”

He looked at Paul quizzically. “So, just when are you going to tell me what I’m doing here? And for that matter, if you didn’t want to talk to me about it when we last met, how come you’re so happy talking about it now?”

Paul seemed a little surprised at the question. “Isn’t that obvious? I seem to remember you said it yourself – it’s a little difficult to get recruited into an organization if neither of you knows the other exists.”

There were a few seconds of silence as the implications sank in.

“You’re… inviting me to apply? Is that it?”

“In a manner of speaking. You’re an exceptionally good fit for the role we have in mind.”

“What makes you say that? You hardly know anything about me!”

“On the contrary,” replied Paul matter-of-factly. “We know everything about you.”

“The hell you do! You don’t even know if I want to apply – because I don’t know if I want to apply! How could I? You haven’t even told me what you do yet, let alone what you’re proposing to offer me to do it! On which point… are you sure it’s such a good idea to tell candidates how well suited to the role you think they are? Don’t you find it gives them ideas when the conversation turns to remuneration for being uprooted from a comparatively well-paid job in the WGPC?”

“In my experience,” Paul replied stiffly, “telling candidates how well you believe they’re going to perform serves merely to spell out your expectations in advance – just so everyone’s clear on them at the outset. And the sort of people we want aren’t motivated by money. We think you’ll find the salary acceptable.”

“Okay… stop right there – and let me get this straight,” said Rick, holding up his hand. “You’re expecting me to accept an assignment with you guys without being told anything about who I’d be reporting to, what I’d be doing for them, or where I’d be doing it. Have I got that right?”

“Almost… but not quite,” replied Paul equably after a second’s pause. “You’ll be doing quite a lot of it right here, so I’ve arranged for you to be taken around. It’s easy to get lost aboard this base – also it’s potentially unhealthy if you walk through the wrong door and find yourself in free fall several kilometres above the ground without a parachute. We like to avoid such incidents for obvious reasons; also, you’ll need to know where your quarters are.”

“My quarters? Rick peered at the Brit in astonishment. “You’re talking as you’ve already made me an offer which I’ve accepted!”

Paul spared him a laser-like glance. “You will.”

“Oh, I will, will I? Isn’t there even going to be an interview?”

“That was some time ago,” replied Paul dismissively. “We can catch up on old times later, but prior to that, there are several people I need to introduce you to, first of whom is our C-in-C, Colonel White.”

Rick gave a snort. “A director of space operations called Captain Black, and a commander-in-chief called Colonel White? Now there’s an unfortunate coincidence!”

Paul’s lips twitched slightly. “Well, it’s not entirely coincidental… but never mind about that right now. We’re seeing the Colonel at fourteen hundred hours, and I usually leave explanations to him. He’s been looking forward to meeting you ever since he read a report by our head of stratospheric resonance research on the subject of picowave-based detection systems: the one that was compiled with your invaluable assistance.”

Rick peered at him in confusion. “Er – I think I’d have remembered if…”

“Destiny tells me that you and he spent the best part of an afternoon discussing the practicalities of assembling such a system in her apartment while she was trying to enjoy a gayageum recital. The Colonel now wants to explore options with you for deploying a prototype we’ve been developing in the light of that discussion.”

“Ahh,” grunted Rick. “And is this… this Colonel White of yours going to tell me what it is that you people want to do with it? Come to that, is he going to tell me what you people do up here all day every day on board this flying whatever-the-hell-it-is, period?”

“That’s the purpose of the briefing.” Paul turned to look him directly in the eye. “The Colonel will be able to give you a more comprehensive summary of this organization’s remit than I can, but in a single word, it’s security. You have a better-than-average understanding of how the world got into the mess that almost resulted in its obliteration earlier this century – the books on the shelf above the videophone in your office at WGPC headquarters make that plain enough – so I don’t need to explain…”

“I shan’t even bother to ask how you know what books I’ve got in my office,” interrupted Rick acidly, “but what makes you think I’ve read them all?”

“Given your self-evident familiarity with their contents, we’ve reason to believe you have read them all,” replied Paul evenly, “but obviously you’re welcome to correct us if we’re at fault. Anyway, this organization was created for the explicit purpose of ensuring that brush with self-annihilation never occurs again – and to that end, we have access to whatever resources we deem necessary to make quite certain it doesn’t.”

“And what does the International Public Accounts Committee in Futura have to say about that?”

Paul gave him a look. “The International Public Accounts Committee in Futura doesn’t have anything to say about it.”

Rick looked at him uncertainly. “They don’t know about all this?”

“They’re bean-counters,” replied Paul with an expression of distaste. “We have enough highly-skilled engineers within our ranks to know how many beans make five – and we know that establishing an operation like this isn’t possible with only four. It costs what it costs – not what a bunch of slick-talking civilian accountants think we can be fobbed off with.”

“Excuse me – we’re not talking about beans here! This is obviously one hell of a lot of public money you’re spending – doesn’t the public have a right to know what’s being done with it?”

“No.” Paul looked at him thoughtfully. “Given the choice, which would you prefer? To be an uninformed citizen within a thriving and growing international community, working hard to raise a family with a loving partner – or to be a fully-informed corpse?”

“And… do they get a choice?”

“Of course not. The trouble with the general public is that they think they have the right to know everything – and they don’t. Notwithstanding that, if they’re allowed to believe they’re empowered to run the world, it makes life far easier for the people who do.”

“And that would be… you?”

“I didn’t say so,” replied Paul evenly, “although it certainly would be fair to say we’re a lot closer to the seats of real power than the police. On a personal level, you’ll get the opportunity to give Kismet’s death a meaning far more effectively with us than you ever could have done in the WGPC.”

Rick stopped in his tracks and glared at him angrily. “What the hell do you know about Kismet?”

“As I indicated earlier,” replied Paul patiently, “we know everything.”

Rick’s eyes narrowed. “In that case – while we’re on the subject – I’d be interested to know what happened to the frosty little bitch who tried to kill me. It was your people who arranged to get her away from us, wasn’t it? Just like it was your people who spirited away Svencorp’s IT manager out from under our noses and packed him off on a one-way trip to the Moon. Are they on your payroll? Because if they are, there’s no damned way I’m going to…”

“Our intelligence section handles the identification and acquisition of resources – including human resources – deemed critical to the success of the project,” interrupted Paul. “Once those people have been inducted, their handlers will have taken any action necessary to enable them to fulfil their obligations. Their services were required… and part of the deal is that they’ll be protected when that requirement ends.”

Rick gave him a look. “Even when one’s a blackmailer and the other is a psychopath?”

“Sometimes having to deal with unpleasant people goes with the territory,” replied Paul stoically.  “Our intelligence section is meticulously tight-lipped about the identities of any personnel it has dealings with during its operations, so you’ll know more about the people involved than I do. I understand there was the smuggling operation we weren’t aware of at the time, so that part must have been cooked up within Svencorp’s own ranks – but even if we had known about it, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. The reality is that we’re judged by results, not by good intentions.”

“Seems to me you guys have a disturbingly nonchalant attitude towards the law, Paul.”

“If that’s true,” replied Paul evenly, “then what better course of action than to recruit at a senior level an honest cop of the highest calibre – who incidentally was also prepared to break the rules occasionally when he felt it was justified – to help us ensure we don’t get above ourselves? We’re not infallible, after all.”

He’d turned to resume their walk, then had stopped and turned again as if struck by a thought.

“On which point – what I said a moment ago about knowing everything was a slight exaggeration. We know almost everything: there’s just one detail we need to finalise. Normally we wouldn’t need to ask, but in your case there’s nothing in our files to indicate that you’ve ever voiced an opinion on the subject… and world-class as our psychometric profiling systems are, even they can’t deliver accurate projections in the absence of any pertinent data. I’m therefore obliged to resort to a more conventional method of filling in this singular gap in our knowledge. What’s your favourite colour?”

“Why!?”

“It’s… rather important around here. If you’re not too sure about the answer – and you’d be surprised how many people aren’t – you might want to give it some thought.”

He led the way across the floor of the hangar towards the exit at the far end, and Rick dropped back a few steps to enable him to mutter a few words to Juliette, who was following them.

“What is all this, Juliette? Why the fixation with colours, for God’s sake?”

“Colonel White will explain later,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “But before he does, you tell me… what do you think of Paul’s uniform? Do you like it?”

Rick blinked at her, startled at the sudden change in the subject. “Paul’s uniform?”

“Yes – Paul’s uniform. It would be helpful to know what you think of it.”

“It’s not a dress uniform, right? No, I thought not: it looks rather too functional - but I’d have thought something less easy to shoot at might be a good idea, given that he’s not indestructible. Is that what everybody wears around here?”

“Mais non! Only the senior male officers wear uniforms like that – though that is because so far there are only senior male officers!” She indicated her own elegant flying uniform with a wave of her hand. “The Angels wear white – and I am an Angel!”

“Yeah, you mentioned that before…” He stopped in mid-sentence and peered at her uncertainly.

“Wait a minute – you’re saying there are more… like you?”

“Mais oui, bien sûr! There are five of us!”

He frowned. “And… er… are they all as… I mean, that’s to say… they’re all women?”

“All the Angels are women, yes! It is not a… quel est le mot… la condition préalable – a ‘prerequisite’! We are just all of us better than men at what we do – that is all!”

“Uh huh… and… are they all as… er, that’s to say… they’re all pilots, right?”

“They are fighter pilots!”

“Military base… fighter pilots… yeah, makes sense… so… are they any good?”

Juliette’s eyes flashed. “Elles sont absolument les meilleures! I train them myself!”

Paul had stopped at the exit to the hangar waiting for them to catch up, and being close enough to catch her last statement, acknowledged it with a nod and a tight grin.

“Destiny has many talents, although modesty isn’t perhaps the first that springs to mind! But then, those psychometric profiling systems I mentioned a few moments ago insist that modesty and first-class leadership qualities don’t comprise a synergistic...”

He broke off in mid-sentence as the epaulettes on his uniform suddenly started flashing. Rick watched, bemused, as what was evidently a microphone flicked down from the visor on his cap, and he turned away to speak into it. A few seconds later he turned back again, the communication evidently having ended, then spoke quietly to Destiny, who promptly swore in French.

“Sainte Vierge! Je l’ai laissé dans le SPJ… you go on – I catch you up!”

She turned and set off back in the direction of the passenger jet, while Paul responded to Rick’s questioning eyebrow with an explanation delivered with just the merest hint of embarrassment.

“Sorry about that. You’ve just seen our comms system in action: global coverage from any location on the planet, including from several hundred metres underwater. Unfortunately, it looks as though we might have identified a bug. As you just saw, my mike is an integral component of the cap I’m wearing – but Destiny’s is built into her helmet… which it seems she left in the SPJ when you both disembarked. Obviously, it can’t be assumed that everyone will be wearing headgear at all times, so secondary units are built into the tunics – but it seems that Destiny’s has just repeatedly failed to respond to an incoming communication, most likely because the helmet’s still active. The Colonel has been trying to get through to her for the last ten minutes: he called me just now to ask where the devil she was.”

His features hardened, and he resumed his former slightly chilly air.

“I’ll guess that when the systems were being developed, the manufacturers didn’t try putting enough distance between the headgear and the tunics to prevent them automatically establishing a local carrier powerful enough to relay the signal. How something as obvious as that got overlooked is extremely worrying. It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where one of the Angels gets separated from her headgear following a crash-landing in hostile terrain – in which case she’d be unable to summon assistance precisely when its needed most.”

His frown grew a shade deeper as he considered the implications. “We’d better also get global trackers sewn into all the tunics as a backup. They’re miniscule metallic discs; the wearers won’t even be aware of them.”

Rick looked up sharply, and he regarded Paul speculatively.

“Er… just how small is ‘miniscule’, then?”

Paul held up a hand with his thumb and forefinger not quite touching. “About so big. They’re roughly the size and shape of coins. Come to think of it, stamp an appropriate design on both sides and they’d be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.”

“In which case… you could lose one in a handful of dimes, right?”

“Easily,” replied Paul. “Why do you ask?”

“Just idle curiosity,” muttered Rick with a shrug. A momentary introspective smile flickered across his features before he turned to Paul once more.

“So… am I going to meet these so-called ‘Angels’, then?”

“Funnily enough,” replied Paul conversationally, “absolutely everybody asks that – and yes, Destiny will introduce you to the rest of them later. But before we get around to that, let me to show you a sample of the hardware that we’re about to entrust to their tender care. Given your background, I think it’ll interest you…”

He ushered Rick through the doors into the adjacent hangar, similarly spacious but unlit, within which a massive shape could just be discerned in the darkness at the far end.

“This silo contains both servicing and refuelling facilities to all fighters within the Angel strike force, in addition to any of our aerial personnel carriers like the one that flew you here. Any plane can be lowered into this bay, scanned for combat damage if and when relevant, refuelled and raised once more to the flight deck ready for immediate relaunch within 90 seconds of returning from a mission. At least, that’s the theory we’re about to put to the test…”

He stepped smartly over to a panel on the wall beside the doors through which they’d just entered and flicked a switch. A generator somewhere in the darkness began to emit a barely-audible whine which rose inexorably in pitch as an array of spotlights slowly responded to the power build-up, flooding the hangar – and its contents – with light. Paul took a second to savour the sight of the newly-illuminated object himself before resuming his impromptu commentary.

“This aircraft, which was flown in just a few hours ago, will be the first Angel interceptor to see active service. A further four will join it within the next 72 hours, but we need to check out some of the critical systems in advance of their arrival. Those tests are scheduled to commence within the hour, and this area will be off-limits to all but essential maintenance personnel for the duration – but we still have a few minutes before we’ll be required to leave, so…”

“Paul… I’ve seen that aircraft before.”

Paul frowned, then shook his head dismissively. “Highly improbable. Save for two prototypes – and they’ve been under maximum security guard 24 hours a day at our training facility in the Australian Outback – the first five were only rolled off the production line within the last few days. No photographs have ever been made public for obvious reasons, and absolutely nobody except the manufacturing team…”

“No, I have seen it before… I know I have!” He frowned uncertainly for a moment, then shook his head. “No – that’s not right… I can’t have done – I’d never have forgotten it for one second if I had. But…”

The confused expression evaporated abruptly, to be replaced by one of dawning comprehension.

“… but I have seen a schematic of it before. That plane over there is the enhanced A44 Stealth Viper depicted in the technical specs Kismet and I found in Wainwright’s briefcase. That is the fighter that Svenson didn’t want to talk to us about… the one that brought both them and Fairfield Engines to the brink of bankruptcy. I’m right, aren’t I?”

The merest twitch of an embarrassed smile flickered across Paul’s lips.

“My apologies… hardly anything escapes you, does it? Care to take a close-up look at the finished product? Silly question…”

He strode smartly after Rick, who had already cleared half the distance between the hangar doors and the plane before Paul caught him up – by which time Rick had forgotten him completely and was staring up at it in rapt admiration.

“So… what do you think? Does it live up to whatever expectations you might have formed from the specs?”

“God, yes… it’s magnificent,” muttered Rick under his breath. He turned to Paul with an expression of something akin to veneration on his face.

“I mean… if this really is a faithful realization of the spec that Wainwright showed us back in Boston, it ought to be more than a match for anything anywhere on the planet! Even if you put aside the thruster coordination matrix – and that’s a world-beater on its own – if the forward stabilizers perform at even ninety-five percent efficiency, the missile delivery system should enable this baby to take out a gnat at…”

He suddenly caught his breath, his eyes widening in obvious alarm.

“Paul… has this aircraft seen action yet? Specifically… has it engaged in any exercises in which live rounds have been directed at the undercarriage? I’m hoping to God that it hasn’t – because there’s something you need to be aware of…”

Paul held up his hand to silence him.

“Before you say any more, Rick… we know. We know about the design flaw that would have left the port wing propulsion unit vulnerable to incoming fire – and it’s been rectified. Our engineers have just spent the last two months working round the clock with Fairfield’s design team to install the modifications needed to protect the pilot from the effects of a direct hit on the interceptor tubes, coupled with a synthetic additive to the fuel enabling the plane to attain even greater velocities than those predicted in the original spec. The funding was provided by us in the form of a rescue package that frees Fairfield from his dependence on Svenson, who was effectively cut out of the deal when the contract was signed. Fairfield’s company is important to us going forward, whereas Svencorp have given us nothing but trouble from day one.”

The reassurance had clearly had the desired effect on Rick, but he was now clearly puzzled.

“But… how did you find out? We wanted to warn you – we tried to warn you, for God’s sake – but you’d done such an infernally comprehensive job of concealing who you were from us that we couldn’t work out how to do it! We were within an ace of cracking the codes that would have led us to you, but we then found ourselves locked out of absolutely everything and ordered not to involve ourselves with the matter in any way! Why the hell did you make it so damned hard to contact you, for Christ’s sake? One of your pilots could have been killed!”

“Actually, it was pure good luck that one of them wasn’t,” replied Paul sombrely, “and yes, you’re right about the exceptionally high level of secrecy surrounding this organization. As I explained earlier however, there’s a sound reason for it. The World Government only exists at all because it’s perceived as an essentially benevolent administration whose workings are completely transparent to its member states. But that’s a physical impossibility: the workings of any administration whatsoever require a measure of secrecy to function efficiently. If everybody can question absolutely everything, nothing ever gets done… and certainly nothing that requires the spending of a large amount of money. Creating this organization has probably cost more than any other single venture in history – and the level of secrecy surrounding the entire enterprise is commensurate with that cost. Very few people know the whole story: even I’m not privy to all of it.”

“Having said which,” said Rick slowly, “I’ve a feeling that you could probably fill in one hell of a lot of the gaps in my understanding of this operation in fairly short order if you had a mind to.”

“I daresay quite a few,” agreed Paul equably. “Where would you like me to start?”

Rick’s eyes returned to the sleek jet fighter standing behind them, roving over its fuselage for a few seconds before he replied.

“With that plane. What else?”

“The plane, then,” agreed Paul. “The brief for this aircraft’s construction – with a clause included in it demanding absolute secrecy concerning the capabilities we were demanding – was first put out to tender to half a dozen of the world’s top manufacturers about four years ago. Three of those manufacturers returned feasible designs, but in terms of technical excellence the Fairfield Engines submission, sponsored and bankrolled by Svencorp, was in a class of its own. We were impressed… but after having evaluated the tender in detail, we questioned whether they could build it at the price we were being quoted. They insisted that they could. Our engineers remained unconvinced, so we demanded the inclusion of a clause in the contract imposing exceptionally severe penalties if they failed to deliver both within budget and on time. They agreed to those conditions, and the contract was duly signed.”

“And?”

“And two years down the line, it became apparent that our experts had been right all along. They couldn’t do it: Svencorp’s sales team had oversold it – maybe because they hadn’t understood it properly, or maybe because they’d just been too eager to shut out the opposition at an early stage. We concluded upon reflection that they’d just told us what we wanted to hear at the time, and then embellished it just enough to make us salivate a little.”

“So what happened next?”

“Oh, pretty much what you’d expect. Our dealings with Svencorp started to get unpleasant. There were threats and counter-threats; the stakes began to rise significantly. We discovered through our contacts in the WGPC that they’d approached legal experts with form for playing dirty as an obvious precursor to reneging on the contract. We threatened to break them if they tried. They in turn threatened us.”

Paul’s lips tightened slightly as he recalled the incident.

“Unfortunately, the secrecy that surrounds this organization occasionally works against us. It was clear at the time that Svencorp didn’t fully appreciate who they were up against – and by the time they did begin to realize the weakness of their position, their options were draining away fast. Fairfield Engines had to deliver, and Svencorp had to ensure that they did deliver – neither of them had any choice. But to do it, Svencorp had to lay their hands on a very considerable amount of money to get Fairfield access to the technology they’d been unable to create themselves within the agreed timeframe. As you’ve obviously realized by now, relevant expertise in both synthetic biofuel technology and voice-controlled security systems was co-opted by us where necessary, while our sources within the World Government kept us informed as to the state of Svencorp’s finances. We were aware they’d be hard-pressed to pay the interest charges on the amount they’d need to borrow – but it was their problem, and we were content to leave it to them to solve it. And to their credit, they did solve it… but the way they solved it took even us by surprise.”

Rick raised an inquisitorial eyebrow. “Why – what did they do?”

“They hacked into our account at the Second World Bank in New York,” replied Paul evenly, “and extracted approximately four thousand six hundred and seventy million dollars from it. The plan was obviously to transfer the money into their creditors’ accounts to pay for the equipment they needed to complete the project before we realized what was happening. With the money having been distributed into maybe twenty accounts dotted all over the planet – many of them tax havens that the Futura administration is still trying to shut down to this day – sorting out the mess would have taken longer than the time they needed to complete the project and deliver on the contract. They would have then claimed that the whole thing was a most regrettable accounting error that had resulted in an unauthorized prepayment – albeit a rather large one – being debited from our account, and that since we’d obviously already paid for the merchandise we’d commissioned, they would of course most humbly offer their sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

“But… that’s crazy! There’s no way they could have got away with that! Is there?”

“Oh, it was very well done,” replied Paul with a tone of genuine admiration in his voice. “We were enormously impressed with the modus operandi: it was a masterpiece of technological chicanery involving the creation in cyberspace of a network of non-existent subcontractors all over the planet, followed by the wholesale fabrication of invoices, receipts, final demands, legal exchanges, delivery schedules… you name it. The technical specs of the fictitious components that were being shuttled around the globe were convincing enough to stand up to even the closest scrutiny.”

“And Svenson devised this? I wouldn’t have rated him as smart enough! I mean sure, the guy’s got a megalomaniacal streak, but…”

“Actually, we don’t think it was Svenson. The order to put it into operation must have come right from the top, so he must have ultimately approved it – but he’s first and foremost a financier: he wouldn’t have been able to assemble the aviation-related technical material. That said, he’s got plenty of expertise in other fields on call, including some within his own family. We’ve a suspicion as to who might have hatched it… but we’ve no proof.”

”Indeed? Perhaps I can help… I probably know them better than you.”

“Maybe,” replied Paul thoughtfully. “One of them is someone you never actually met, I believe. Svenson’s eldest son Adam is an expert on military aviation in his own right – you’d get on with him rather well, I think – and our enquiries lead us to believe that he’s exceptionally proficient in several fields of cyberspace cryptography. That would mean he had the necessary technical skills – and our information on him indicates that he’s almost as headstrong as his father when it comes to initiating direct action in support a cause he believes in.”

“Adam and his father were barely on speaking terms when all this was going on,” replied Rick doubtfully. “Everything I learned about the son indicated that he’s fundamentally a straight guy with a strong sense of right and wrong. I can’t see him agreeing to participate in something as downright criminal as this.”

“Yes, we’re familiar with the situation between him and his father,” agreed Paul, “however that could potentially be resolved one day – and if it were, Adam Svenson would be in line to become the CEO of one of the largest and most powerful financial institutions on the planet. If the whole plan really was his, he’d become of very considerable interest to us pretty much overnight… so regardless of any potentially criminal tendencies, getting an insight into his psyche is an ongoing priority.”

The two men walked on together in silence for a few minutes, which was eventually broken when Rick stopped in his tracks.

“You’ve reminded me of something Peter Svenson once told me, way back at the start of all this. It concerned a contingency plan in place to thwart an anticipated cyberattack by Donald Fairfield’s company to recover money owed them by Svencorp. Peter said it was something Adam had mentioned to him, and that he himself didn’t know the details – but maybe we can guess.

“John Svenson tells Adam that such an attack is a real possibility, and he asks Adam to devise a plan to counter such an attack. Adam realizes that preventing such an attack is a damn near impossibility without knowing more about FEC’s capabilities in that line – but suppose he comes up with an alternative strategy… one that would enable Svencorp to snatch it back again if such an attack were ever launched. His father approves the plan and asks Adam to work with his IT people to make it actionable just in case it’s ever needed. Adam does so, satisfied that he’s merely preparing a defence against an attack that might or might not be launched against his father’s company.

“Adam never in his wildest dreams imagines that a variant of the plan would be put into action as an offensive measure against someone else – and when he finds out what’s been done, he cuts all ties with his father in disgust. He’d never go public with it – loyalty to the other members of his family and all that – but he’d have had no qualms about washing his hands of the entire business; indeed, from what Kismet told me about his character, it sounds like very much the sort of thing he would do.”

He looked at Paul speculatively. “What do you think? Could it have happened that way?”

“I’d say,” replied the other slowly, “that given what we’ve managed to glean from another source – one that I haven’t told you about yet – it’s not impossible. No… better than that – I’d say that what you’ve just hypothesised would make a great deal of sense.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “And this other source… what is it? Or should that be, who is it?”

“One of the personnel on this very base, funnily enough,” replied Paul, after a slight pause. “A member of Destiny’s team, no less – her codename’s Symphony Angel, but her real name is Karen Wainwright.”

Rick looked up, startled.

“Wainwright?” The expression faded, to be replaced with a look of dawning realisation.

“Okay… don’t tell me… let me guess. She wouldn’t just happen to be Charles Wainwright’s niece, would she?”

“Actually, yes – she would,” affirmed Paul. “She was the young woman who was on vacation with Adam Svenson down in Florida around the time your investigation started. We’ve been careful not to be seen to pry into her private life, but she’s spoken freely about those weeks in the sun with her new friends and colleagues aboard this base since that time, and some of the comments she’s made appear to bear out our suspicions. The picture we’re getting is that of a man who’s beyond furious with his father for deceiving him into carrying out some task on behalf of his company, and then seeing the fruits of that labour flagrantly abused. The task in question was never described, but it does seem to have been something that would be classified as potentially criminal if the details were ever disclosed. It’s not difficult to join the dots, I think. That said, we might just get confirmation one way or the other within the next few days.”

“Oh?”

“I told you earlier that it was pure good luck one of our pilots wasn’t killed in consequence of that design flaw. About three months ago, we were conducting a series of exercises in collaboration with Fairfield Engines to test the plane’s capacity for mitigating the effects of sustained incoming fire on the guidance systems. Just thirty minutes before the exercise was scheduled to commence, we received an anonymous communication from someone demanding that the test be aborted. The sender of the message included a comprehensive explanation of the design flaw, plus a graphic description of the probable consequences of a direct hit on the port wing missile assembly.”

“Not your average crank, then,” muttered Rick thoughtfully.

“No indeed,” agreed Paul. “Under different circumstances we might have dismissed the call as a hoax, but the level of detail satisfied us that it was genuine. It could only have come from someone with intimate knowledge of both the plane and Fairfield’s role in building it… and with the technical nous to hack into our communications systems. The test was duly cancelled – with the result that we now have one more pilot on the team than we might otherwise have had.”

“Did the caller identify himself?”

“No… he terminated the call the moment we agreed to cancel the test. It goes without saying that we tried to trace it immediately afterwards, but he’d covered his tracks meticulously. The call was routed through both the Frost Line Defence Network and Lunarville Three, the latter having recorded its point of origin as a small wadi somewhere in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Having said that, if it was who we suspect it was, he probably saved his girlfriend’s life. The pilot of the prototype aircraft undergoing the test would have been Symphony Angel.”

“It seems to me,” observed Rick, “that someone with that kind of skill set could make himself useful around a place like this.”

“The same thought occurred to us,” agreed Paul equably, “which is why we’ve asked Symphony to facilitate an introduction. We’ve requested a confidential meeting with him early next week – ostensibly to review some of the less satisfactory aspects of our relationship with his father’s organization, but we think there might be other topics of mutual interest to discuss.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Rick. “And I daresay you’ll start off by asking him how he managed to pull off the biggest bank heist in history, right?”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” replied Paul dismissively. “We know how it was done – we’d just prefer to keep the necessary expertise in-house, that’s all.”

“Oh? So… what makes you so sure you know how it was done, then?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” asked Paul. “It’s what we did immediately after Svenson’s IT personnel hacked into our account at the Second World Bank.”

“You…”

“We did it,” affirmed Paul. “It’s our understanding that to this day, John Svenson has no idea what happened – although he certainly came very close to finding out. The WGPC officer working on site at Svencorp Tower was doing a first-class job of unravelling the threads that would ultimately have led to us… and would almost certainly have got there eventually had the investigation not been terminated prematurely at our insistence.”

“I don’t doubt it,” muttered Rick under his breath. Just for an instant he was back once more in the office at Svencorp Tower with Kismet, railing against the seemingly impenetrable morass of computerised receipts, schedules and invoices that were driving him insane, increasingly conscious that his best efforts might not be up to the task…

And then – at that moment – the final pieces of the jigsaw dropped into place. The guy in the corridor with the piercing blue eyes, his own inexplicable feeling of déjà vu upon meeting Paul for the first time in Paris, Svenson’s cryptic remark about the British at that very first briefing…

Paul turned and looked at him quizzically. “Sorry – what was that about the British?”

Rick blinked, belatedly realising he’d voiced his thoughts out loud, then he shrugged dismissively and made a forget-it gesture with his hands.

“Oh, nothing… I guess I’ve just been a tad slow, that’s all. It was something Svenson once said. He said ‘The British are coming’: those were his very words. At the time I thought he was just quoting Paul Revere, but as far as he was concerned it was more than just an expression. He meant it quite literally… because the British really were coming to see him that day. You’re British – and you said earlier that kicking the asses of troublesome subcontractors is one of the responsibilities that goes with your job. He was referring to you, wasn’t he?”

“It’s possible,” agreed Paul thoughtfully. “I do recall that Colonel White and I both went to see John Svenson somewhere around that time. The first of the Angel interceptor prototypes we’d commissioned was way overdue for delivery, and we needed to know urgently the reason for the delay. We weren’t exactly in a forgiving mood by then – and we didn’t bother to hide our irritation from Svenson. To people like him, it’s an exercise in extracting as much money as possible from people who have a lot of it to spend. To us, it’s quite literally a matter of life and death – with the latter being by far the more likely outcome if any of our equipment is ever even remotely substandard.”

“Sounds to me like working in this organization of yours might be dangerous,” observed Rick.

“Yes – it is,” affirmed Paul. “And we’ve reason to believe it’ll get a lot more dangerous as we expand our field of operations. The world isn’t anything as like unified as its politicians would like everybody to believe – but then, you know that. What you might not know is that there are plenty of special interest groups within the World Government who would very much like to see it collapse. Part of our remit is to prevent that from happening – and that’s one of the reasons for the exceptionally high level of secrecy at present. Nothing can be permitted to prevent us from becoming fully operational in the shortest possible time – so the fewer people who know anything about us at this stage, the better. When we’re at full strength we’ll be equipped to tackle anything on the planet… or beyond it, if necessary. We’re into everything: terrestrial, seaborne, submarine, orbital… but aerial most of all. And incidentally – just in case you didn’t notice when you arrived – even the comparatively simple act of getting either on or off this base necessitates being able to fly rather well.”

“I daresay I could master it,” replied Rick tartly. “I know quite a lot about planes.”

“Yes – we know. However, there’s also a lot you don’t know about them… at least, the ones we fly. Far more than you realize.”

“I learn fast, too.”

“Again, we know,” retorted Paul, “Nobody gets into this organization unless they’re prepared to undergo a very thorough training in the operation of just about every piece of cutting-edge technological wizardry in existence. Training is both arduous and intense, so the more you can do up-front, the easier you’ll find it.”

“I don’t mind putting in hard work in a good cause,” replied Rick with a shrug, “but….” He looked at Paul intently. “But… why me? There must be plenty of guys who are better qualified than me.”

“I daresay that’s true,” conceded Paul, “although perhaps not as many as you might think. And of those that there are, quite a few of them are already on board – quite literally – and others are being recruited as we speak. But to your point, yes – there’s always an element of being in the right place at the right time. It’s unavoidable.” He shrugged. “Think of it as fate.”

“Seems to me that one hell of a lot of fate conspired to bring me here,” muttered Rick. “If it hadn’t been for Kismet, none of this would have happened – and of course, ‘kismet’ just means ‘fate’, or...”

He stopped in mid-sentence, frowning to himself briefly before finishing it.

“… or ‘destiny’. Yet another crazy coincidence, yeah?”

Paul hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “It’s probably best if you keep this to yourself – because it’ll embarrass her if she finds out I told you – but actually it’s not a coincidence at all.”

Rick looked at him, mystified. “Er… sure – I promise – but what else could it be?”

“Well,” replied Paul after a second’s pause, “you won’t have been aware of this, but we recruited her to train and command the Angels pack shortly before you met her – which obviously placed severe restrictions on what she was able to tell you about us at the time.”

“In which case it was amazingly fortuitous that we just happened to get talking in the museum that day,” observed Rick wryly, vaguely wondering whether the fake dime was still in his pocket.

“Fortuitous indeed,” agreed Paul, seemingly oblivious to the tone. “Anyway, we’d obviously been watching her for some time prior to that, and we knew immediately she was the one. There was never any doubt in our minds, and when we approached her, she was every bit as receptive to the idea as we anticipated. However, when during the final stages of the Angels’ training we asked them all to choose codenames from a list we’d assembled, she told us about a conversation she’d had with you shortly before you and I first met in that café on the banks of the Seine. That conversation between you must have left quite an impression… because she asked us – quite forcibly, I might add – to permit her to adopt a name that would let her honour the memory of your girl. After due consideration Colonel White agreed to her request, and allowed her to break with the musical theme we’d applied to the team as a whole… and so ‘Destiny Angel’ she became.”

Momentarily lost for words, Rick had turned away. By the time he’d turned back again, the enchanting young Frenchwoman had become even less comprehensible to him than she was already, and his slightly chilly erstwhile drinking partner had become just a little more human. Noting Juliette’s imminent return, the misplaced helmet tucked under her arm as she walked towards the two men, he lowered his voice.

“I shan’t say a word, but thanks for letting me know. It means a lot. It means a lot to me.”

Paul grinned. “No worries, as the base’s new resident medic puts it. So… have you come to any conclusion about your favourite colour yet?”

Rick opened his mouth to demand to know why once more, then closed it again as Juliette silently put her finger to her lips. “You just need to know that it is very important,” she said quietly.

“Okay Juli… that is… okay Destiny – I’ll take your word for it,” he replied with an air of resignation. He waved his hands around vaguely for a few seconds, then turned back to the Angel once more in exasperation.

“I’ve never been able to get my head round this goddam psycho-profiling stuff! How long have we known each another, Juliette? Take out the break in the middle and it’s really just a few days, isn’t it… but somehow I can’t shake off this feeling that you know me better than anyone else alive. You tell me… how do I answer this crazy question?”

“You must search into your soul,” she replied. “The psychological profiling software that we rely on, it is almost human in its assessments of us… it tells us things about ourselves that even we do not know! But it is not human… because it has no soul! The answer must come from your soul. Take the most cherished memories from your past; make of them a promise to your future… and you will have the answer.”

“Golden brown,” murmured Rick.

“No good… brown’s already taken,” Paul muttered half to himself with a frown, and Rick rounded on him in a flash of irritation.

“Look, Paul, I’m not trying to be rude… well, not much anyway… but does nobody ever talk sense around here? What do you mean – ‘brown’s already taken’?”

“Oh, nothing – and just for your information, it’s Captain Scarlet when I’m on duty.” He raised his hand in obvious anticipation of Rick’s incredulous reaction. “Yes, I know this recurring preoccupation with colours around here sounds strange, but you’ll find you get used to it remarkably quickly.”

Paul’s frown faded, to be replaced by a look of confident optimism. “Look, don’t worry about the brown thing for now. I daresay we’ll think of something.”

THE END

Notes & Acknowledgments

Devotees of the original Captain Scarlet television series will no doubt have spotted that the company commissioned to build the Angel interceptors in this story – the Fairfield Engines Company – is the one from which three newly-commissioned fighters were hijacked by the Mysterons with a view to assassinating Destiny Angel in the episode “Seek and Destroy”. They will remember Orson’s role in the attempt to prevent Spectrum’s discovery of the Mysteron complex in the episode “Crater 101,” and may also recall that justice finally caught up with Judy Chapman when she was killed by Captain Black immediately prior to the Mysterons’ attempt to poison the Los Angeles water supply in the episode “Place of Angels”.

Several of the incidents in this story have real-life precedents. Paul’s remark to Rick in the Parisian café about being obliged to kill him if he were to reveal any more about the nature of his work was based on a conversation of mine some years ago with a guy who in a previous life had worked at one of the nuclear submarine bases in Scotland. Juliette’s friend from the Far East with the exotic musical instrument (who might perhaps have been Chan Kwan prior to her enlistment in Spectrum as Harmony Angel) was inspired by an exceptionally talented young South Korean artiste called Luna Lee, whom I discovered recently on YouTube. Just search for “Luna Gayageum” and you’ll find her channel: her renditions of “Sultans of Swing”, “Apache” and “Paint it Black” amongst many others are a treat for the ear.

The situation in which the senior management of Svencorp found themselves upon discovering that their obligations to their clients couldn’t be met within the timescale to which they were committed was inspired by a showdown between a company I used to work for with a customer who’d just been sold a pipedream by our sales force. The salesmen had no understanding whatsoever of how – or even if – the package they were selling actually worked… and I was on the implementation team that had to make it work once the contract had been signed. The first we knew of the shitstorm into which we’d all just been dropped was the day we turned up on site to start work. The reader will have to forgive me for having developed a somewhat cynical attitude to the ethics of marketing during my career.

The process of assembling and maintaining a world-class military capability that’s worthy of the name effectively precludes any public scrutiny regarding its cost, as friends of mine in the Civil Service can readily attest – and Paul’s observation about the general public mistakenly thinking they have a right to know everything is a direct quote from that quarter. Speaking personally, I’m not unduly surprised that the public believes it ought to have an input when large amounts of its taxes are being spent by its government, given that it is constantly being told by its politicians how free and open the society in which it lives is. Oh well – at least it’s unlikely that anybody’s going to come knocking on my door at 3am to take me away for writing this, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too loudly.

Kismet’s deduction about the most vulnerable sections of a returning plane’s fuselage being the ones least damaged in combat is based on a true story. During World War II, a statistician called Abraham Wald was charged with the task of identifying the areas of an aircraft’s fuselage most in need of reinforcement. Just as Kismet did in this tale, Wald realized that the most vulnerable parts of the fuselage were the ones found to have sustained the least damage, because a hit in those areas would have resulted in the plane failing to make it back to base.

My interpretation of the young André Verdain was inspired by a colleague with whom I had the privilege of working many years ago. He was one of the most insightful people I’ve ever met, and he was as technologically-savvy as they come – and a quick Google search for his name tells me that he’s now a university professor in the south of France. The character of Kismet Yazdani was inspired by not one but two friends of mine originally from the Middle East: one of them knows pretty much everything about IT systems there is to know, and the other is an expert in the detection of online fraud. They’re both women who can light up a room just by walking into it – and neither is aware that I’ve borrowed assorted aspects of their respective personalities for the heroine of this story.

Finally, my sincere thanks go – as always – to Jan Rose for spending countless hours acting as my sounding-board when thrashing out details of the plot; to Hazel Kohler for beta-reading the story, and to Chris Bishop for (a) reviewing my French and correcting it where necessary, (b) uploading the final draft to the Spectrum Headquarters website and (c) adding it to the shelves of the fan fiction archive for anyone to peruse and perchance to read, should the fancy take them. Many thanks, everyone - and I hope you enjoyed it.

Clya

References

• Captain Ochre - Biography
• Public Key Cryptography - An Introduction
• Abraham Wald and Survivorship Bias