Aftershock Read online

  It had made him feel terrible, adding to his depression. After a catastrophic accident, he was on the mend. He would soon be back in action, but a similar medical miracle was still a long way off for young Tom. He had talked about it with Steph – it was one of the first things to occur to him when she had explained what they had achieved in surgery. Sure, they could clone new tissue for Tom and they could reroute some of his nerves, but his spinal cord had been severed in the childhood accident that had led him being wheelchair bound and which had rendered his lower body useless. Even for the techno wizards at CARPA, fixing snapped spines was still some way in the future.

  The buzzer to Pete’s quarters sounded and he heard a voice on the intercom.

  ‘Hey, Pete, my man!’ It was Tom.

  ‘Let him in please, Sybil.’

  The door slid open and Tom wheeled in, seated in his motorised wheelchair. Walking beside him was Josh Thompson, the team’s tall, dark-haired encryption expert.

  ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Fit as the proverbial fiddle,’ Pete replied, a trace of his Geordie accent just discernible in his voice. He stood up and did a little dance. ‘See.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll never dance like that again, Pete,’ Josh deadpanned.

  ‘So, you two here for a reason?’ Pete said, tilting his head slightly.

  ‘Tom wanted to show off.’

  ‘It’s not showing off. It’s passing on information,’ Tom retorted. ‘I’ve got the CyberLink to work.’

  ‘You have? That’s excellent.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Tom replied, nodding and twirling his hands in the air as though accepting applause.

  ‘What was it again?’ Pete asked.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, dude.’ Tom sighed heavily. ‘I’ve been working on it for three months. It’s pure genius.’

  ‘Is this the gizmo that allows you to hook up with any computer and get inside it as though it were a real object?’

  ‘Super-hacking, dude. It’s called super-hacking. It’s...’

  ‘Even I know more about it than that,’ Josh interrupted, frowning at Pete.

  ‘All right, all right. So, it’s worked, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, it has worked, my friend. I just had a quick stroll around the Pentagon’s mainframe. So cool.’

  ‘When you say stroll...’

  ‘Look, it’s like this. Every computer in the world has a virtual counterpart, or cyber twin, if you like. Think about it. On the web there’s every piece of information about any computer. The manufacturer has its design spec, the very components that went into making it, and their serial numbers are all online. We can find its IP address in a flash. We know who operates any given computer, where it is in the “real” world. And naturally, every piece of software running on it and every piece of hardware attached to it.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s a lot of information. Most of it irrelevant...’

  ‘No, nothing is irrelevant. Every jot of knowledge about a computer helps build the cyber twin.’

  ‘And Sybil does that?’

  ‘Of course. It would be impossible without a quantum computer.’

  ‘And a genius like you, Tom.’

  ‘Yes, well that goes without saying.’ Tom grinned.

  ‘So, you hacked into the Pentagon?’

  ‘Super-hacked, Pete. Learn the term, dude. There’s a big difference. No more machine code, no more finding passwords or breaking through firewalls. I just walked in, had a little nose around, got what I was after and left. Not a trace of a cyber footprint. No one knew I was ever there.’

  ‘Actually, that is pretty impressive,’ Pete admitted, looking at the young computer whiz with genuine admiration.

  ‘Yeah, and it would be even more impressive if it came with a little humility,’ Josh said and sat down.

  ‘I don’t believe in humility,’ Tom replied.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘What you got there?’ Pete asked noticing a rolled up magazine in Josh’s hand.

  Josh handed it to him and he opened it out.

  ‘Now that’s what I call fame,’ Tom said.

  It was a copy of Time. On the front cover was a picture of the six members of E-Force. Tom was in his chair at the front, and the others, wearing their cybersuits, stood or crouched around him, each staring at the camera with serious expressions. Over the picture it said: ‘MEET A NEW BREED OF HERO’.

  ‘Well, isn’t that something?’ Pete said and held the magazine at arm’s length.

  The picture had been taken just before the mission to the stricken nuclear power station. The journalist had not been allowed on Tintara, but the team had convened at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, not too far from the site of their first mission together when they had rescued Senator Kyle Foreman in the bombed-out shell of the California Conference Center. Immediately after that first mission it was decided that E-Force would not behave like caped crusaders and try to hide their identities. Indeed, it was already too late for that. Their hi-tech equipment was concealed from photographers or anyone with a camcorder thanks to Camoflin, a special paint used to scramble any image taken. But the members of E-Force had all been seen by the public, their pictures taken, their identities known.

  Going public had been a major decision and it had repercussions. The original plan for the team was that they would each return to their normal lives after the initial three-month training period the year before. But they had quickly realised this would be impossible. For a start, they were needed far more often than they had originally believed. Hardly a week went by when they were not called out. And second, having their faces splashed all over the media immediately after the LA rescue mission meant that even if they had wanted to, they could hardly go back to their ‘normal’ daily lives.

  One or two of the team had secretly wondered whether this had been E-Force founder Mark Harrison’s intention all along. In the beginning, he had hand-picked the team based on their extraordinary abilities and adaptability, but he had also chosen people who were not in long-term relationships and whose lives or careers had stalled in some way. Each of them had been bitten by the E-Force bug, and none of them could have contemplated opting out.

  ‘Do you think they’ve caught my best side?’ Josh asked, pointing at the magazine.

  ‘Do you have a best side?’ The voice was Steph’s. She had just come through the door and they all turned to watch her approach. ‘Just came to remind you, Josh. We leave in ten minutes.’

  ‘Leave?’ Pete asked. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘The rolling hills of Semja Alexandry,’ Josh said.

  ‘Polar Base?’

  ‘Yep. Ten-day training course.’

  ‘Nice! Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yeah! Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Steph said, rolling her eyes.

  Tom laughed. ‘Come on! It’ll be cosy.’

  Josh looked from Tom to Steph and back again. ‘And I thought you two were my friends,’ he said.

  ‘I am,’ Steph replied. ‘But I’m not sure I will be after next week.’

  8

  Sydney, a week later

  An alarm ... fantastically loud and growing louder. It filled his head, crashing through his skull. He was wading through water, trying to reach the source of the sound, but he was being pulled back, dragged down. He was suffocating.

  Harry Flanders broke through to consciousness, but it still took him a few moments to realise the bedside phone was ringing. He scrambled to reach it, missed and knocked a glass of water to the floor. Cursing, he pulled himself up as far as his screaming headache would allow and grasped the receiver. ‘Flanders,’ he croaked.

  ‘Morning, Harry.’ There was a slight delay – long distance.

  For a second, Harry could not recognise the voice of his producer of eight years, Natasha Young, the woman who kept his BBC3 program, The Buzz, on track week after week back in London. Last night had been a doozy. He had stayed in the hotel bar until they kicked him out at 3 am. Even
after that he had emptied half the minibar in his room. The last thing he could remember was sitting at the desk and composing yet another weepy letter to Jane. Jane, his ex-wife whom he could not stop loving, even though she had walked out on him a year ago and was now pregnant with another man’s baby.

  The neurons clicked into place and Harry Flanders began to focus. He reached for his spectacles, glanced at the alarm clock and groaned into the receiver.

  ‘Is it sunny there?’ Natasha asked brightly.

  Harry felt like screaming, but he managed to keep a lid on it.

  ‘Gone nine there, right?’ Natasha went on.

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Oops.’

  ‘What do you want, Nat? Please tell me it’s big – another 9/11 or a Jacko.’

  ‘You’ve heard about the Neptune Hotel, I take it?’

  ‘What? Nat, I hardly know my own name right now.’

  She explained. He let her talk.

  ‘They’ve given us the exclusive, provided we give it a primetime slot on BBC1. So Robert Jenkins was en route,’ she said. ‘Collapsed in Jakarta. It’s touch and go.’

  ‘Shit!’ Harry said, suddenly awake. ‘I like Rob. What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Not sure, looks like a heart attack.’

  ‘Shit!’ Harry repeated, pulling himself up and resting his back on the headboard. Robert Jenkins was the presenter of a high-profile BBC program, The World at Large.

  ‘Yeah, so the Controller, no less, has passed the slot on to us.’

  ‘But what about the election story?’ Harry went to take a gulp of water and realised the glass had gone. He cursed again.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look, Harry. The Neptune story has to take priority.’

  Harry winced. He had been in Sydney for a week covering the federal election. He was a political journalist, not an editor-at-large, and between marathon sessions in one Sydney bar or another, he had put a lot of work into the story. It was a snap election, a close-run race between two party leaders who hated each other’s guts.

  ‘But I’ve done the research for a 20 minute segment, Natasha. Tom and Andy arrived last night to start filming.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re the only one I can rely on. And Harry, this is a major story. Did you hear what I said just now ... an exclusive. Forget the damn election.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No buts, Harry. Christ. I wish I was there, it sounds fantastic. It’s done nothing but rain here – British summer, right!’

  Harry wasn’t listening, just staring into space, barely taking in his surroundings. The room stank of booze and unwashed socks. Then he saw a glass on the other side of the bed. It contained a finger of brown liquid. Gripping the phone in his left hand he stretched over and pulled the glass to his mouth, downing the liquor in one.

  ‘Harry?’ The tinny sound of Natasha Young’s voice came from the receiver. Harry stared at it and sighed. He could feel the wonderful burning sensation of whisky in the back of his throat, and remembered there was still a shelf of miniatures left in the little fridge under the TV.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Terry will meet you at 10 am. He mentioned a café, The Beach. Know it?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘Oh, and Harry? You can swim, can’t you?’

  9

  Sydney, the same day

  Harry sat at a waterfront table in the Beach Café at Circular Quay in the heart of Sydney. He was early for his meeting and was already onto his second black coffee, trying to blunt his hangover. From where he sat he could see the Opera House directly ahead, and to his left stretched the black expanse of the Harbour Bridge. It was a warm winter day, the air still. He could let his mind wander as he watched the crowds pass by, their backdrop a perfect blue. Growing bored, he flicked on his phone to get the latest from the BBC website.

  The only story was the building tension between China and the US. In fact, it was all anyone seemed interested in right now; even here, in Sydney, a week before a general election. It was a scenario everyone had dreaded for decades, prompted by the spectre of Taiwan. The Chinese had perceived the American president as a soft touch and upped the ante by deploying a dozen warships anchored just outside Taiwanese waters. But the leader of the western world had shocked the old men in Beijing by ordering the Third Fleet into position for a short ballistic missile flight from mainland China. The Chinese had then started flying planes into Taiwanese airspace, trying to push them into launching a Patriot missile. When one was launched, and shot down a Chinese fighter, the world had held its collective breath. That had been 24 hours ago. Since then, there had been nothing but an ominous silence hanging over Beijing, Washington and Taipei.

  Harry had just finished reading the latest report when his producer Terry Mitcham arrived, a folder under his arm.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ Harry asked, taking off his reading glasses and pulling on his shades as Terry tucked in his chair and placed the folder on the table.

  ‘Here’s everything I’ve managed to unearth,’ he replied. Harry pulled the folder towards him, opened it and extracted a dozen sheets of A4.

  Terry studied his colleague. Harry Flanders was wearing his perennial outfit – a shabby cream linen suit, white shirt with the top button undone, brightly-coloured tie loosely knotted, scuffed brown Doc Martin shoes, and three pens in his breast pocket. At his side was a well-worn brown leather satchel with one clasp broken. This morning he was unshaven, his receding hair dishevelled. Even in shades, he appeared washed out. ‘You look terrible, by the way,’ Terry added and signalled to the waitress.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Terry ordered a large latte. ‘The whole thing beggars belief,’ he said as Harry read. ‘Two brothers – the ambitious and hyper-intelligent Michael, now in his late forties, and his clearly dimmer, slightly younger sibling, Johnny Xavier. They shared a childhood fantasy of creating a hotel on the ocean floor. As kids, they grow up in an ordinary lower-middle-class family home in Hampshire, share a room and plaster the walls with pictures of submarines, sci-fi designs for underwater bases, and presumably they watch every episode of Stringray ever made. Michael becomes an incredibly successful businessman, the head of a global media corporation which he started as a student at Cambridge selling advertising time on his own radio station. He carries young Johnny along with him, and by the time he’s 35, Michael is a billionaire and decides to start living out the fantasy.’

  ‘Reminds me of Richard Branson and his bloody space hotels.’

  Mitcham laughed as the waitress placed his coffee on the table. Harry looked up and ordered a third black for himself.

  ‘So, anyway. Ten years ago, Michael and Johnny form a company, bring in a raft of investors ranging from futurist nuts to some heavy players,’ Terry went on. ‘Branson included, I believe,’ he added wryly. ‘They decide to locate the hotel off Fiji and call in the best marine engineers, architects, designers and materials experts to help them draw up a feasibility plan. It takes even a Michael Xavier five years to get the financial backing, the permissions from the Fijian government, clearance from environmental agencies, the UN, you name it.’

  ‘You have to admire the chap for his perseverance.’

  ‘Too right. But then, the crazy bugger actually goes and builds the thing!’

  Harry flicked through the contents of the folder. ‘Not a lot here, is there, Terry?’ he said.

  ‘That’s all I could get from Google and everything that’s on file in London. Natasha faxed it over. The Xaviers have been as secretive as they could be. Understandable really. Part of the appeal is the wow factor when it’s done.’

  Harry nodded and scanned the pages. The first contained an artist’s impression of the Neptune, labelled ‘The World’s First Ocean Floor Hotel’. It looked like three anthills placed in a line and connected by tubular passageways. The next page showed a schematic of the building along with a set of fl
oor plans, all copied from originals in the offices of the International Forum for Oceanic Development (IFOD), a sub-subgroup of a UN department to which all parties interested in commercial exploitation of the world’s oceans must apply. These plans had been lodged almost eight years ago. Under them were a few grainy clandestine photographs taken during construction of the hotel. The next three pages were a set of legal documents outlining the structure of the companies involved in the project and how they interacted. The last couple of pages contained potted biographies of the key players involved in the scheme. Harry sped through the biogs and flicked through half a dozen short articles about the brothers from popular magazines including GQ, Harpers and Newsweek.

  ‘So there’s no hint of anything dodgy about the project?’ Harry asked.

  ‘None at all, by the look of it. Sorry!’

  Harry smirked. ‘So, we have to fall back on the sheer wonder of the project and the engineering miracle of it all?’

  ‘Spoken like a true political journalist.’

  Harry sighed. ‘Must say, it’s really not my cup of tea.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘To be honest, the whole thing pisses me off. I’m supposed to be here for the election. I’ve done a whole shitload of work on it. As have you,’ he added quickly, seeing Terry’s expression. ‘But no, I’m sent to some fucking fantasy hotel on the ocean bed. I’m a political journalist, for Christ’s sake. If London doesn’t consider the Australian election worthy of its time, I should at least be given a crack at Beijing right now. That’s where the real action is.’

  Terry gave him a sympathetic glance and took a sip of coffee. ‘Maybe you should think yourself lucky, old boy. A night in a luxury hotel, a night that may turn into a media sensation.’

  Harry shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Oh come on, Harry. Where’s your sense of adventure?’

  Harry gazed around the sun-dappled harbour, squinting behind his sunglasses. ‘That, my friend, was lost a long time ago in a bottle of bourbon. Which reminds me...’

  10

  Nadi Airport, Fiji, the next day