At the end of his speech, Cole extended a hand which Ding took very gladly, posing for the press and sending a message to the world — one city in particular — that no one had seen coming.
V minus 75
GCC Headquarters
Buenos Aires, Argentina
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” William Godfrey mused, watching a televised repeat of the impromptu ELF press conference in Tanzania with a suitably puzzled expression etched on his face.
President Slater, whose ability to survive turbulent times Godfrey had come to admire and whose viewpoint he had very recently come to seek in private meetings like this, was currently the only other person in his office. A third kind of reaction came to her mind: “How about scream?”
Godfrey involuntarily chortled. “We can deal with this, Valerie. After all, we’re dealing with amateurs. I mean to say… John Cole? The only person more inept than Cole is a person who wants Cole on their side!”
“I know what we talked about,” Slater said, “and I understand the strategic reasoning for letting this play out until the inevitable slip-up hands us the keys to the kingdom. But those speeches weren’t just the ELF sticking its thumb in the GCC’s eye, William, that was the Chinese Premier engaging in borderline sabre-rattling and holding a middle finger in the United States’ face.”
“Go on…” Godfrey encouraged, pleasantly surprised by the intensity of her anger.
Slater paused, shaking her head in disbelieving rage. “I mean come on, a new ELF office in Cuba? Fucking Cuba? That’s a calculated move and they know exactly what it represents — they know exactly what it harks back to — and even if it didn’t trouble me personally like it does, this is going to blow up at home. Because let’s break this down to what it is: a Chinese base less than a hundred miles from the coast of Florida. It simply cannot stand!”
“I fully agree,” Godfrey insisted. “Quite frankly, I didn’t expect them to be like this; not in the slightest. I thought they would cagily drip-feed information about the triangle, not double-down on its authenticity and pummel us with too many provocations to count. It seems to me that they’ve taken our silence for weakness… because yes, warning us they’re going to establish a physical presence in Cuba is a clear message, but there was a lot more than that to what they just said. Describing a large sovereign state like Tanzania as an ‘ELF heartland’ is provocative in itself, but talking about ‘the ELF’s territory’ is flat-out inflammatory. The call for defections is similarly infuriating in its own right, but the implicit call for civilian disobedience in GCC countries is a line they’re going to regret having crossed. I don’t want to use the word ‘war’, but if—”
“It’s too late for ifs on that front,” Slater interrupted. “Elements of my party are going to see this as an act of war, and the opposition is going to seize on it, too. Whatever happens with the triangle, this Cuba thing isn’t going to go away. But that’s what I’m thinking… what about the triangle? With how firmly they just came out, it really does look as though Ding at least believes that this is real. John Cole has never considered the consequences of his actions before and I don’t think he’s going to start doing so anytime soon, but Ding must know how bad this would look if it turned out to be a hoax.”
Godfrey nodded several times. “And I can’t even begin to get my head around why Cole mentioned Richard Walker, or why he went as far as pre-empting suspicions of a hoax by actually uttering the H-word. We’ve already looked into this Hassan Manula, of course, and I just got a report a few minutes before he appeared at the Tanzanian State House. Manula has no formal education or qualifications and has worked various low-paying jobs in the hotel industry throughout his adult life. But… I’ve just learned that not only does this man speak serviceable Chinese, he actually teaches Chinese guest sensitivity classes at his current workplace. This whole thing is either the biggest coincidence in history or they’re baiting us with his identity as well as their words. It’s like they’re begging for us to call this out as a hoax, which makes me see your point about Ding appearing to believe this is real, after all.”
“So where the hell does that leave us, William? And where the hell do we go next?”
“Hold your horses,” he pleaded, reacting to Slater’s raised voice and evident urgency. “There is one more possibility that makes sense if you consider what we know so far. Think about it: we don’t think this is real, but we’re starting to think that Ding does. This has been bad for us, obviously, but if and when the hoax is exposed, it’s going to be bad for the ELF, too. So the question becomes one of motive… and who do you know of that doesn’t just want to embarrass the GCC, but also the ELF?”
Slater turned her palms upwards in impatience.
“The scale of this hoaxing plot is great indeed given the sheer size of the triangle,” Godfrey went on, “and it’s certainly reckless in its level of ambition. But that’s what’s in my mind, Valerie. Because when we’re talking about recklessly ambitious plots on a grand scale, it’s difficult to avoid thinking about another recent plot that brought our enemies within a few hours of a physical attack on the President of the United States.”
“You think this was the GeoSovs?” Slater gasped, shocked that Godfrey would even consider this rather than stunned by a lightbulb-like realisation.
Godfrey held her eyes. “No, but I think it might have been…”
She shook her head, dismissing the relevance of his musings as much as their likelihood of being well-founded. “Whatever that stupid triangle is and whoever put it there, that’s just context,” she groaned, “and no amount of context is going to change the content of what they just said. Right now they’re showing us up as fools, and with Cole having come into the picture, we can expect him to fire more and more provocation at us until we’re backed so far into a corner that there’s nowhere left to turn.”
Godfrey placed his thumb and forefinger on his cheeks, squeezing inwards in sudden thought. “We need a Cole of our own,” he announced. “We need someone who’ll say the things we want to say, but who isn’t us.”
“Hmmm. Go on…” Slater urged.
“Or even better,” Godfrey mused, “for further detachment, what about someone who’s broadly on our side but who isn’t bound by political decorum in the slightest? Someone, you might say, like Dan McCarthy?”
V minus 74
Ford Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
After filling everyone in on what he had been through and what he made of the Zanzibar triangle, Dan went next door with Emma to unpack the suitcases from their abortive pre-honeymoon. Tara followed and Emma asked Timo to come, too, so that she could grill him on exactly what he’d been told so far by his Fiore Frontiere delegates in Buenos Aires.
Within a few minutes of walking through the door, they all heard a familiar but rare chime emanating from the trend-tracker in Emma’s living room. This device, which they had all first grown accustomed to in Dan’s old basement, sat high on the wall and resembled a ticker from the stock exchange. For most of the day its elongated high-resolution screen was completely blank, only kicking in when a news story or post came in from the owner’s customised list of sources. A further customisation option could restrict the number of alerts based on a virality threshold, with only the most wave-making posts and stories getting through.
Emma’s trend-tracker functioned as a canary of sorts, only tending to cheep out its call when something was wrong. This was because her tracker was set to the maximum virality threshold, alerting her only to posts which had been shared an extraordinarily high number of times in a very short period, and nothing travelled faster than bad news.
The post which greeted their eyes as they glanced up came from an ACN-affiliated reporter in Tanzania, and could hardly have been any more surprising: “Ding has been here for ten minutes waiting for someone else. That someone else just arrived, unannounced: JOHN COLE! Something big is coming…”
Emma imme
diately grabbed the remote control from her couch and pressed a button to bring down the hidden projector which spent most of its time in a recess in her ceiling. A video feed from Tanzania filled the living room’s main wall within seconds, and John Cole was visible within a few minutes.
They watched and listened in growing shock as the press conference continued with barb after barb aimed westward to Buenos Aires.
“What the hell is Cole’s endgame here?” Timo asked, outraged by much of what he’d heard. “I can understand why Ding is using him, but what is he playing at?”
Dan and Tara, quite naturally, deferred to Emma for an insight.
“Well, Cole is different from the rest of them,” she said. “His everyman schtick is the one thing about him that’s real; he came into politics late, from the real world. So it’s not always safe to assume he’s thinking in the same way as a regular political climber would. But here, this time, I think it’s pretty clear what he’s doing. I know he’s being pretty ruthless about the Western leaders, but it looks like he’s positioning himself as a kind of compromise choice for when this GCC-ELF face-off eventually dies down and the dust settles. The dust might only settle after an explosion, if you know what I mean, but he’s trying to set himself up to lead whatever comes next.”
“Hmm,” Timo uttered. “To be honest, Emma, I think you might be giving him too much credit. Cole’s name is dirt in Britain and it’s dirt here. My take is that he wants a semblance of power and the only way he can get it is to let Ding use him as a middle finger to Godfrey and Slater. An ELF office in Cuba… that’s a message to them. But putting Cole in charge of it? That’s salt in the wounds, adding insult to injury.”
Emma shrugged. “I don’t think he’s quite as stupid as he looks — after all, he weaselled his way into Godfrey’s ministerial Cabinet a few years ago with some very calculated quid pro quo promises. In his mind, he’s going to be the frontrunner for leadership of a future unified organisation because he clearly expects that he’ll be trusted by people in China… but he also knows that even as a clear Chinese puppet he’ll still be less unpalatable to Westerners than an actual Chinese leader would be. So that’s what I think he thinks… it’s bullshit, but when you’re dealing with idiots it’s important to at least try to make sense of what they believe. If you know what someone believes, you can at least guess what their next move might be; and that’s exactly what makes the GeoSovs so hard to get a handle on, because there are so many gaps in the logic of what they want and why the hell they even exist. Those people are—”
Another chiming sound abruptly cut Emma off, but this time it came from her pocket. She lifted her phone out and reacted in visible shock to the name on the screen. “What do you want from us?” she asked, picking up immediately.
The others exchanged uneasy glances.
“I’ll ask,” Emma went on, “but we both know what he’s going to say. Dan… Focus 20/20?”
“I already told them no,” he replied. “Why are they asking again?”
Emma held her hand against the phone’s speaker. “It’s not the network this time.”
“Huh? So who is it?”
“It’s Godfrey,” Emma said.
Before her mouth had closed behind the words, Dan’s hand was outstretched to take the phone. She handed it over.
Everyone watched Dan as he gazed down at the phone, all wondering and guessing and anticipating what he might say.
He took a deep breath, shook his head, and ended the call.
“Good call,” Tara said. She moved towards Dan and placed a supportive hand on his back. “Going on Focus 20/20 is the opposite of keeping your head down, and Godfrey is just trying to use you the way Ding is using Cole. Even I can see that.”
Neither Timo nor Emma looked quite so pleased, but Dan didn’t see them.
“I’m going to give him a quick call,” Timo announced. “I want to know where his head is on what Ding and Cole just did, and it could be a while before he convenes the delegates again.”
No one argued, so Timo walked towards the kitchen and ultimately stepped outside. In the living room, Dan sat down.
“Why do they even want me to do it?” he groaned a few minutes later, the weight of the world suddenly back on his shoulders all over again. “This isn’t even my fight.”
“No,” Emma said, “but by doing this you wouldn’t be fighting for yourself. Dan… I love you, and I don’t want to put you in a difficult spot. But you need to do this, and I’ll be here to help you every step of the way. Ding and Cole just turned this thing up to eleven. Putting Cole in charge of an ELF base in Cuba? Talking about ELF territory? If Godfrey doesn’t respond to this, Slater’s going to have to.”
Dan closed his eyes, hating Emma’s words less than the feeling building within him that she was right.
“And we’re thinking about all of this with a level of detachment,” she went on, “because we know the Messengers warned you about the hostage plot and we know they told you something about the triangle. Everyone else just knows there’s an alien triangle that only some countries are being granted scientific access to. Ding just turned that on the GCC and called for civil disobedience and national defections, and Cole was smiling like a Cheshire cat the whole time. This is going to get messy if nothing else happens; but if another triangle shows up soon or there’s any serious disorder because of what they just said, those words are going to get people killed. This has to be defused, Dan, and no one else can do it.”
“Emma, you know I’m out of the spotlight. That doesn’t work if I do this. I can’t dip in and out; I bowed out of the public arena and the only reason we have any kind of normal life is because everyone knows I’m never going to say anything so they’ve stopped even trying to ask. If I did this…”
She looked deeply into his eyes. “All of that is true, but this isn’t like before. This isn’t like when we were trying to get the truth out while keeping certain things back for everyone else’s benefit. This is for everyone else’s benefit, but it’s not about abstract truths or conspiracies or coverups… not anymore. Dan, this is about people’s lives. This is about the safety of good, innocent people, and the danger they’re in because of all this tension that’s being caused by people like John Cole and those goddamn GeoSovs. This is about challenging them so that—”
“I know,” Dan interrupted. “Emma, I know. But why am I the best person to challenge them? Crabbe, Billy, even Godfrey or Slater themselves… they’re all much better speakers than me.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re the best speakers in the world, Dan; they’re not you. There’s not another person alive who can challenge them like you can — no one. Not Godfrey or Slater, not Timo or Billy or Crabbe… not even me. I know you didn’t ask for your life to bring you here — trust me, I know that better than anyone — but this is where you are and this is what you have to do. It’s via satellite so you can read from notes, and most of the panel will be firmly on your side and very firmly against Cole and the GeoSov guy. I hear what you’re saying about what this is going to do to the normal life we’ve been trying to live together, but this is bigger than us. If this keeps escalating, there’s no limit to how serious it could get. Wars have started over a lot less, Dan… and if they really do open a Chinese-funded base in Cuba this week, Slater is going to have a lot of military voices in her ear. If she does nothing, the accusations of appeasement will be the end of her and a hardliner will fill her shoes in no time. And if you do nothing, that’s what’s at stake.”
Dan balled his fist and pressed it upwards against his chin in thought. “And you’ll be right beside me?”
“Just like always. Well, except that one time when I was in the hospital and you kinda single-handedly saved the world by summoning the Messengers to stop the comet…”
“Man, I wish I could summon them like that again today,” Dan sighed ruefully. “Things would be so much easier if they would just come back and explain this triangle themselves.”
Timo re-entered the living room moments later, holding his own phone in his palm. “He makes a good case, Dan, but neither he nor I can go on the show to challenge Cole on this; the GCC’s founding articles don’t allow for independent comment on contact-related issues without majority approval, and there’s not enough time for the delegates to convene before the show. Would you hear him out for one minute?”
Dan, already having been all but convinced of his unwanted responsibility to try to cool things down, took the phone without complaint.
Emma intercepted Dan’s hand. “Pretend you still need to be convinced,” she whispered. “Let him think you’re doing him a favour.”
Dan couldn’t hide his confusion, but after this long he knew better than to question Emma’s strategic and occasionally machiavellian instincts. With more than a hint of reluctance, he swallowed away his doubts and took hold of the phone.
V minus 73
ELF Headquarters
Beijing, China
Maria Janzyck, ACN’s senior reporter, stood outside the ELF’s global headquarters for the second time in as many days.
Having arrived in Beijing to cover Contact Day from a location often ignored by mainstream US networks, the previous day’s lack of activity was already out of her mind.
The Final Call Page 11