“Uh… any reason for that?” Phil asked, unsure it was a good idea to take anything away.
Clark shrugged. “We can always lose it. But if we don’t take it now, we might wish we had.”
At the doorway, by Phil’s supportive side, Tara stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, turning to Clark. “They said Jack wanted Dan and Emma, so they targeted me because I’m weak. And I fell for it — for him — because I’m so fucking broken.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for and it wasn’t like that,” Clark replied. “Tara, this wasn’t a setup. Jayson fell for you, too, but Jack saw an opportunity. He’s been working with Jayson to repair his image; and when he found out he could use Jayson to bring you somewhere isolated, he made him do it. This was Jack’s work, and he’s going to pay for it. Will you be okay hanging out in Phil’s car somewhere quiet, maybe at the drive-in, until I come to get you in twenty minutes? One of us will pick your car up later, wherever you left it, but Emma’s going to be home tomorrow and I really don’t want anyone to know about any of this until then, so I don’t want Mr Byrd seeing Phil bringing you home. Anyone includes Emma so we won’t call her tonight, but I’ll be back at the drive-in in no time and I’ll stay with you at home all night. And Phil: when I say I don’t want anyone to know… that’s including and especially my old man, okay? I’ll call you when I’m coming and you can let me know where you’re waiting.”
Phil nodded.
But in place of what would have been understandable anger, Tara’s expression displayed nothing but confusion.
Ignoring everything else Clark had said, she glanced at the folded flag in his hand, which she evidently hadn’t been able to see on the wall from her bound position. “Jack Neal… is with them?”
V minus 23
ELF Headquarters
Beijing, China
From the eerily deserted public square in front of the ELF’s global headquarters, a lone spokesman stood at a podium before a lone camera.
His walk to the podium was brisk and unceremonious, indicative of what was to come.
With the spokesman’s ELF-branded attire very much at odds with the more common security officers’ uniform, many would soon express their views that the military regalia look it conjured up in their minds was no accident.
Speaking in Chinese, with the words being translated live as they were beamed into homes around the world, the man got right into the meat of a very short statement. No words were wasted, with the succinct announcement confirming that the third triangle had indeed been discovered in Chinese territory.
Even more significantly came the news that it would be displayed before the world in a matter of hours, directly in front of the podium from which that news was currently being delivered.
Although issues surrounding the triangles’ discoveries had been at the centre of feverish conjecture in recent days, the lack of clear images and details regarding the physical objects themselves had led to certain elements being given less attention than they perhaps merited.
Much discussion had understandably revolved around the major questions of whether they were real and where the second and then third might turn up. What had gone largely undiscussed so far was a question that would occupy the world until the moment of truth came: what, if anything, would happen when the three pieces of the complete object were reunited? The indentations on the Zanzibar triangle had made it fairly obvious that two more triangles would fit within it, and leaked reports from scientists who had seen the Vanuatu triangle suggested that its physical properties added even more weight to this assumption.
Citizens of the world were excited to see the triangles in reasonable detail for the first time, but many were even more excited to see them reunited as one. Speculation was rampant as to whether the triangles possessed powerful extraterrestrial properties that no one could even imagine; and as the hour drew nearer, this speculation would only grow.
One way or another, there wasn’t long to wait until the world would find out.
V minus 22
Moore Residence
Archway, Colorado
With Jack Neal still restrained on the floor in the back of Jayson’s car, Clark stepped out of the passenger side to bring his own car right alongside it. He bundled Jack from one vehicle to the other after scanning the quiet neighbourhood to make sure no one happened to be watching. As soon as this cargo transfer was complete, he locked his car and returned to Jayson.
“I’m sorry,” the shamed actor sighed, shaking his head at the ground.
“You’re lucky they didn’t hurt her,” Clark replied. “Now what you’re going to do is go home, keep your mouth shut, and trust that this is over. Jack’s done, and his goons are out of here. There wouldn’t have been any problem without you, but there wouldn’t have been a solution if you hadn’t convinced Jack to come out to the woods. And that’s what I need from you again now, understood? I need you to lie when you need to lie. When someone asks what happened, or if anyone ever says something that makes you think they might know something, you need to stick to the lie that you don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Are we clear?”
Jayson gulped and nodded several times. “Thanks.”
This reply angered Clark — what the hell was there to be thankful for? — but everything about Jayson screamed vulnerability and snapping at him again would achieve nothing. He was weak and had already paid a colossal emotional price for making the initial mistake of trusting his career regeneration to a maniacal PR guru who was quite possibly the worst person in the world.
“This is over, but Emma might want to talk to you when she gets home,” Clark said. “If she does, I’ll be there… because I was here, and I know what that scumbag had over you. Like I told you already: Jack is done. Your family is safe. That video thing you mentioned, I can’t help you with that; but if it ever gets out, just say it’s fake. Who cares, man? With the day you’ve just had, who gives a shit? You’re alive and so is Tara. This could have gone a different way.”
Jayson forced out a grunt of understanding.
“I just want to talk to your folks for a quick second before I go,” Clark said, “just so they don’t ask any questions.” He was knocking on the door before Jayson had a chance to reply, and Mr Moore was there within seconds.
“We were wondering where you’d gotten to,” the man said. He focused on Clark. “How did the lineup go? Okay? And him… is he okay?”
“He’s been associating with some questionable types,” Clark said, putting on a reluctant tone. “But I think he got a little bit of a fright today at the precinct, so that should straighten him up. Right, kid?”
Jayson raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I’ve made mistakes, but I’m getting better.”
“Come on, come in here for something to eat,” his mother insisted from an unseen position. “Clark, you too!”
“Thanks, Mrs Moore, I would love to,” Clark called in. “And any other time I would, but there’s something else I have to take care of right now.”
Mr Moore extended his hand towards Clark. “Thanks for keeping his problem today, you know, hushed. It hasn’t been easy these last few years, and if the media had gotten hold of this…”
“He won’t make a mistake like this again,” Clark said, firmly shaking Mr Moore’s hand before leaving their doorstep for the last time.
As Clark reached his car, Mr Moore called after him: “Oh, and Clark… crazy news about the triangle, huh?”
“Uh, yeah, hell of a crazy thing,” Clark said. Once back in the car he immediately turned on the radio and proceeded to sit in rapt attention as the newsreader recounted the remarkable events that had been playing out in China while Clark was dealing with a more immediate problem much closer to home.
Even Jack perked up as he heard the news that not only had the third triangle just been discovered, but Ding Ziyang had already announced that his ELF scientists were going to publicly unite it with the other two in a m
atter of hours.
Clark didn’t speak during the short drive home, until he arrived and breathed a deep sigh of relief that Henry’s car wasn’t there. This meant he could covertly get Jack into the house and down into the basement without anyone seeing or hearing a thing. “Time to move, asshole,” he called into the back seat.
Jack mumbled something, repeatedly and annoyingly enough to prompt Clark to remove the tape for a few seconds.
Clark expected to hear something about the triangles, probably a bullshit lie Jack had been dreaming up during the drive to mess with his head. Instead, a simple question came: “Are you going to kill me?”
Clark placed the highly adhesive tape back across Jack’s mouth. “I need you to be alive when Emma gets home,” he said. “After that? I get the feeling it’s going to be out of my hands…”
V minus 21
GCC Headquarters
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Seconds after stepping into Timo’s private jet for their flight back to Colorado, Dan and Emma were surprised to see footage of William Godfrey standing before a large gathering in his GCC building’s media room.
A text message arrived on Emma’s phone, from none other than President Slater: “I haven’t spoken to him. He didn’t tell me he was doing this.”
Emma’s sigh said it all, but she tilted her phone’s screen towards Dan so he could see for himself.
“I am shocked and appalled by recent events in Beijing,” Chairman Godfrey began. “What should be a momentous discovery has been turned into a point-scoring exercise by a communist dictator with no regard for anything but political gain. The analysis of these triangles should have been conducted by a comprehensive international team, but what we have seen is the very opposite. The underpinning issue here is one of arrogance and exceptionalism of a kind the United States is so often accused of, but if you cast your mind back to the IDA leak you’ll remember that President Slater humbly threw her weight behind the international effort. Ding Ziyang, on the other hand, has been exclusionary and triumphalist from the moment the first triangle was discovered in Zanzibar.
“Returning to the IDA leak, one particular element of the hoaxed confession of Hans Kloster sadly comes to my mind. We now know none of it was true, of course, but we all remember Kloster’s claim that the Nazi hierarchy believed the four alien spheres he spoke of had been bestowed upon the party rather than upon humanity as a whole. None had been dropped in ‘hostile communist lands’, as the letter put it, just as none of these triangles have been found outside of ELF territory. The parallels are stark, and Ding Ziyang’s dangerous exceptionalism knows no bounds.
“I don’t mean to suggest that these triangles, like the spheres, are not truly extraterrestrial. But right now, whether they are taunting us with a fabricated hoax or whether they are about to complete a three-piece alien puzzle without allowing the rest of the world to analyse the triangles and the potential effects of their physical reunion, this flagrant move by the ELF is an act of international aggression which I will not take lightly.
“Along with the leaders of our member states, I am already appalled by the treatment of Western media personnel in Beijing. This room, right now, contains reporters from both sides of the Chinese-built divide between ELF and GCC states, and I would have it no other way! Our world, after all, is one world. No one wants to see any further escalation, and the door to cooperation is not locked on our side.
“But with that said, the message I wish to send to its citizens is a simple one: if tomorrow’s event goes ahead, Ding Ziyang and Ding Ziyang alone will be wholly to blame for whatever happens next.”
Dozens of questions were fired at Godfrey from all angles of his media room, but he ignored every last one and walked away with the calmest expression he could muster.
With the speech over, Dan sighed and reclined in his seat.
“Do you think we should tell him what we know about Jack?” he asked, waiting for the plane to take off. “I don’t know how it would help, but I feel like maybe we should. And especially about the triangles being real… because he’s still talking about it maybe being a hoax; but we know that neither Cole or Poppy is in on it, so it can’t be.”
Emma breathed deeply. “He’s said it now, so we can’t undo that. I told Slater so that she would have the option of telling him if she really thought it was necessary, like if he was going to do something else dangerous that he wouldn’t have done if he knew this. We haven’t kept this to ourselves, Dan, we’ve just been careful who we’ve told. Slater knows, so it’s on her, too.”
“But what are we going to do about Jack?”
“Find a way to get him to sit down with you, like I said to Slater,” Emma replied. “Speaking of that stuff, does your head feel okay now? Do you want to try it on me?”
Dan shook his head. “It hurt even when I was only listening to Poppy’s thoughts. I guess the one good thing about this triangle turning up when it did is that no one is talking about that sudden spasm and yelp I let out, huh?”
“I guess,” Emma said, chuckling slightly before her serious expression returned. “But if Ding really is going to join the triangles tomorrow morning, and if they really are as real as we think… I think whatever does or doesn’t happen could totally change our next move. So even if Jack is still in Colorado, I don’t think we should try to make contact until tomorrow afternoon.”
Dan gazed out of the window as the plane began to taxi, his mind suddenly focused in far deeper thought than before.
“What’s on your mind?” Emma asked, noticing the sudden change in his demeanour.
“The Messengers,” he replied without a heartbeat’s hesitation. “You’re talking about making contact… I’m wondering where the hell they are. They said they could talk to me from afar if they had to, even without their Elders letting them fly here. If they’re watching, they must see the storm that’s building, right? So why aren’t they talking to me?”
Emma upturned her palms, openly out of answers. “Maybe they’ll talk to you tonight, when you’re dreaming,” she said. The words were mainly spoken in the hope of calming Dan’s mind rather than in expectation of being correct, and it looked for all the world like Dan’s expectations were just as low.
“Yeah,” he said, forcing the words out in a passably optimistic tone but saving the second part of the thought for himself: fat chance.
THURSDAY
V minus 20
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan had a feeling something was wrong when Mr Byrd was the one to greet him and Emma from their plane in Denver, but his neighbour’s repeated insistence that Clark was simply too tired to handle the drive seemed to come from a place of truth.
It did and it didn’t, in reality, since Mr Byrd was repeating a lie he believed to be true. Such were the stakes and so high was the tension, Dan didn’t feel at all conflicted in testing the veracity of Mr Byrd’s words with a quick application of his esoteric ability, but he killed the connection as soon as he had this confirmation.
The full truth, which would come in time, was that Clark couldn’t leave Birchwood while Jack Neal was locked in the McCarthys’ basement. No one else knew of Jack’s presence; not even Henry, who slept in the same house overnight, and initially not even Tara, who was still reeling from a horrifying ordeal perpetrated by Jack himself.
Clark had spent the night stewing over what he’d found in the warehouse and wondering what the presence of a GeoSov flag at Jack’s crime scene meant in relation to the triangles and everything else. Phil Norris had so far kept everything as close to his chest as Clark had requested, not telling a soul about anything he’d seen the previous day. Jayson Moore, too, had wisely and understandably stayed quiet.
While Dan and Emma made their way back to Birchwood with Mr Byrd, Clark talked extensively to Tara about what was going to happen next. This involved telling her that Jack was in the basement in the house next door to the one in which she�
�d slept restlessly with Clark for company in the living room.
Emotionally shattered, she didn’t react as Clark had thought she might: by running next door and descending into the basement to give him a warm slice of exactly what he deserved. Instead, she nodded slowly and said she was glad that Dan would have a chance to get inside his head.
“I think maybe when we’ve dealt with this and Jack is taken care of one way or another, you should talk to someone about what happened,” Clark said. “Someone better at listening and talking back than me, you know? A professional, maybe?”
“Emma’s almost home,” Tara said. Something about the way she said this viscerally reminded Clark of the way Dan used to talk and think about him when they were growing up; like he could come in and solve any problem. But while Emma was as competent as they came and Tara was dealing with a traumatic experience far better than anyone could have expected, Clark couldn’t shake the feeling that the emotions were bound to explode at some point.
With very little time remaining until the point at which Ding Ziyang had promised the world that the triangles would be revealed and joined together in full public view, Dan and Emma finally arrived home after a traffic-hit drive from the airport in Mr Byrd’s car. He joined them inside the McCarthys’ home, where he saw Phil and Henry sitting on the couch as a countdown on the TV told them there were only nine more minutes until a much-anticipated live broadcast was due to hit the airwaves from Beijing. Only Timo was missing from Dan’s inner circle, with Clark having decided this was something he didn’t have to be burdened with for now.
The Final Call Page 28