“What is it you think you know?” Tess said.
“I know who started the outbreak,” Baker said. “I know who created the zombies. I know where they did it, and where they are now.” His slime-coated face cracked into a grin. “I bet that’s worth a bit of deference, right?”
“At six tonight, parliament is meeting in a televised session,” Tess said. “There’ll be a lot of speeches, but I bet they could squeeze in a quick vote to reintroduce capital punishment. Particularly if they can also announce your capture and trial. A quick trial, and a quick death. That’s your future unless you start talking right now, and don’t leave anything out.”
Baker raised a finger to his mouth, picking at a molar before screwing his face and spitting. “At least give me some soap.”
Clyde returned, the rest of the team behind.
“This is the police, is it?” Baker said. “Talk about scraping beneath the barrel. If this is the best you’ve got left, I must have been close to winning.”
“Clyde, keep him covered, while I search him,” Tess said, then paused. “Actually, no. Baker, where’s your bedroom?”
“Upstairs,” he said. “But we could both do with a shower first.”
“Clyde, Teegan, find him some clothes, and some water for washing, and some bags in which we can stick the evidence. Air-tight bags,” she added. “He said there were only two mercenaries here, but I don’t trust him further than I can kick him.”
“Charming,” Baker said.
“On it, Commish,” Clyde said, and left the room, Toppley in tow.
“Elaina, Mick, watch the door. Baker, put your hands on the snooker table,” Tess said, drawing the Taser. “You were going to tell us how the outbreak started.”
“See, you don’t even know what questions to ask. You want to know about the sisters.”
“Your sister started the outbreak?” Zach asked.
“Not my sister, the sisters,” Baker said. “In my firm, a kid like you moves his jaw without permission, I’d fly you out to the Gibson, and tell you to walk home.”
Zach took a reflexive step backward, then smiled. “Except I’m the kid with the gun, and you’re covered in your own—”
“Tell me about these sisters,” Tess cut in.
“They’re Colombian,” Baker said. “Spent some time in India. Some in Russia. I heard enough stories about them to know most of them are myths. But Colombia is where I met them. Horrid little place. Right on the Caribbean. Spitting distance of Aruba, and they kept their house next to a coal mine. You’ve heard of designer drugs?”
“Which ones?” Tess said.
“All of ’em,” Baker said. “Those synthetic amphetamines which started appearing a decade ago? They invented them. In their labs. Are you starting to get the picture?”
“Keep drawing,” Tess said.
“The story is probably a myth, but it goes that their father was one of those big cocaine bosses. The bloke had a private army, hippos, the works. He was another Cold War narco-baron who took money from the Yanks and then from the Commies, and then got murdered by a lieutenant. His daughters, the sisters, fled. Either to India or Russia, depending on whom you believe, and found a chemist who could make them something as good as cocaine but which didn’t require the farmland. Paid off the local judges, police, and coast guard, set up some international franchises, moved back to Colombia, and got their revenge. Killed thousands if you can believe it, which I didn’t, until I met them.”
“What’s this to do with the outbreak?” Tess asked.
“The labs!” Baker said. “Strewth, no wonder they nearly won, with cops like you. The chemists! Don’t you see? Their business model was to own the competition. To own the monopoly for every narcotic. They wanted an empire. But there was no way for them to be legitimate emperors— sorry, ladies, I mean empresses, under the existing framework of international judiciary. They needed a planetary reset. Hence the apocalypse.”
“The zombies,” Tess said.
“I didn’t know anything about that,” Baker said. “I’ll take a chance, any chance, but what they created was sheer insanity. All they said was there’d be a limited nuclear war. Couple of hundred nukes, taking out the military bases in the Northern Hemisphere. They had agents in the governments of all nine nuclear powers.”
“I thought there were five,” Zach said.
“Plus India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea,” Elaina said.
“You know what you want to ask next?” Baker said. “How did they get someone inside North Korea? Rumour goes they ran the pill-factories Kim used back in the day, back when he had his diplomats flogging a high to make hard cash.”
“Get to the point or I’ll start looking for rope,” Tess said.
“You’re not one for small talk, are ya? The nuclear war was supposed to destroy the armies. But it wasn’t their plan. A bunch of politicos in the north cooked it up. The sisters were just taking advantage of it. Oz was supposed to be their backup, their fall-back in case something went wrong, which it obviously did, because as crazy as those sheilas were, they’d not have unleashed zombies onto the world.”
“What do you mean Australia was their backup?” Tess said.
“What, you need me to spell it out?” Baker said. “They wanted a friendly government here after the Northern Hemisphere became a radioactive swamp. They wanted a friendly leader. I said Aaron, obviously. The kid was soft, but he’d have done. They preferred Lignatiev. Had something on him. Never knew what. Vaughn was supposed to be deputy. But I reckoned I’d have got Aaron to the top spot in a year or three. He was a good kid, in his way.”
“What did the sisters have on you?” Tess asked.
“Nothing I couldn’t fight in court,” Baker said. “That’s why they took me to Colombia. They skinned my secretary alive in front of me. She didn’t travel with me. They kidnapped her. Drugged her. Smuggled her out on my own plane! Then skinned her alive in front of me. Not them personally. They had a bloke do it for them. Australian, he was.”
“On the strength of that, you planned a coup rather than went to the police?” Elaina asked.
“No. Of course not,” Baker said. “They provided other lessons. Demonstrations. They had it all planned. They gave the summary of seven court cases going on in seven different countries. Told me to pick one. So I did. They made a call, and the judge threw out the case. Bloke who beat his wife to death, right when she was making a video call to her sister. The evidence was indisputable.”
“You can’t be serious,” Elaina said.
“Just a second,” Tess said. “All of this makes a wonderful campfire yarn. None of it saves you from a firing squad.”
“The names will,” Baker said. “You’re not going to execute me until you’ve got them all. All the judges, the lawyers, in every country. It’ll be like Nuremberg again, won’t it?”
“Nope,” Tess said. “Because it’s just a story that won’t save a single other life. Especially not your own.”
“How about the address?” Baker said, this time with a hint of desperation. “The location in Colombia where they’ll be now, and where they made the virus that caused this mess. They had the front to fly me there in my own bloody jet, so I’ve got the co-ordinates. Wrote them down on the back of my daughter’s wedding photo. It’s in there.”
“I’ll get it,” Bianca said. She paused in the doorway to the panic room, took a shallow breath, and darted inside.
The photo she returned with showed a young woman in a white dress, her smile barely making it past her lips. There was no groom in the picture. Tess took the picture out of the frame. On the back of the photograph was a set of co-ordinates.
“You want someone to put on trial, that’s where you go,” Baker said. “I bet that buys me a nice safe cell.”
Clyde and Teegan returned with a crate of bottled water, and a bottle of bleach. Leaving the team to gather evidence, and Clyde to douse the prisoner, Tess stepped back out into the hallway.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mick said. “If I were creating a biological super-weapon, I wouldn’t bring a newspaper magnate to the lab. Not even one as corrupt as him. Especially not him, since he might run the story just so he could write himself up as the hero.”
“Yes, sure,” Tess said. “Except… except Dr Avalon was adamant it was created somewhere.”
“Are you saying you believe him?” Mick asked.
“I don’t disbelieve him,” Tess said. “I reckon he’ll still get the death penalty. But he’s correct. We’re not going to execute him while we still think he’s got some useful information. There’s one thing he certainly could help with: the identity of the Australian torturer. I think it’s the same killer who was in Broken Hill.”
“What about Colombia?” Mick said. “The coordinates seem about right, though I’d like to check them on a map.”
“Not my jurisdiction,” Tess said. She checked her watch. “If we get in the air now, can you radio Brisbane, tell them to send a team here? It’d make a good farmstead.”
“You’re not looking to collect evidence?”
“Oh, I am. But it’d take a week just to box this place up. We’ll have to leave that to Brisbane, because we should get Baker back to Canberra so O.O. can announce his arrest. That should stop any vote of no-confidence.”
“You’re a supporter of his now?” Mick asked.
“No, but I’m a supporter of Anna’s. If Owen goes, so does she.”
Chapter 3 - A New Parliament
Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
It was an uneventful, if noisome, flight back. Until more permanent accommodation could be arranged, Baker was installed in the detention cells at Canberra’s airport.
“Zach, find a car. We better inform Mr Owen we caught our suspect,” Tess said. “Clyde, you stay on guard here until an official replacement can be found.”
“Commissioner, can I have a word?” Toppley asked. “Bianca filled me in on what Baker said about the sisters while Clyde and I were impersonating personal shoppers. I didn’t want to say anything while Baker was listening.”
“That door’s soundproof,” Tess said. “But let’s move down the corridor. Bianca, take notes.”
Toppley looked at the socialite, but shrugged. “What purpose do secrets ever have?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Tess said. “You know about these sisters?”
“I know they had a base in Colombia,” Toppley said. “They’re real, and a presence to be avoided. If they were active in a region, you backed away, and stayed away.”
“Did you back away?” Tess asked.
“As grotty as it might seem, I was just in facilitation,” Toppley said. “Some people had guns. Some people had raw materials. Some people had the kind of tourist-facing businesses where gems could become jewellery, and so be a catalyst to create cash. High-end tourists, high-end jewellery, but still the kind of business where you stay under the radar.”
“How does this connect to these sisters?” Tess asked.
“They bought weapons in bulk, and sold them to those who’d swear fealty. Their competitors were armed with regionally produced old-model Kalashnikovs, but the sisters provided hardware from the U.S. and Britain. Hardware which came with export certificates signed and stamped to prove they weren’t being shipped to the very places where they ended up.”
“They had connections with customs officials?” Tess said. “That’s not unheard of.”
“Consistent connections lasting many years,” Toppley said. “They owned more than just customs officers. If you operated on their territory, you got a warning. Second time, they made an example. Warnings were polite. The examples were brutal. I really was just a facilitator. Though I was a participant in enough midnight escapes to make for a profitable biography, most of my work was in daylight, in towns, and over a drink or a meal. A few years ago, I had an assistant who went his own way. He wanted to take a few more risks in exchange for a life-changing payday. He took a shipment of MDMA as payment instead of cash, and sailed it into the Philippines. He was found in a cemetery, burned alive.”
“So they live up to their reputation,” Tess said. “What else? Specifically.”
“They were from Colombia. They are, probably, sisters. Must be at least sixty by now. That’s all I know, but I heard that one of them is a chemist. Russia offered them sanctuary for a while when they were younger, but they were thrown out. You must know how the North Korean government was involved in the drug trade as a way of generating hard currency? The sisters were the facilitators. In turn, that gave them a source for weaponry. That’s how they began.”
“Other than they’re about sixty years old, it sounds like more rumours,” Bianca said.
“They were said to have a small house on the Caribbean Sea. Not a palace,” Toppley said.
“Which matches what Baker told us,” Tess said. “Okay, so that’s confirmation he wasn’t lying about everything.”
“I have a name, too, for whatever that’s worth,” Toppley said. “Herrera.”
“The Herrera sisters?” Tess said. “It might be worth powering up a few databases, see what we can dig up.”
“How about visiting a bookshop, or a library?” Bianca said. “If their father was a powerful narco-baron, won’t the name appear in some of the more lurid crime-histories?”
“They could have assumed that name,” Toppley said. “But if they didn’t, would it—”
But she was interrupted by a shout.
“Commish! Ms Qwong!” Zach called as he sprinted down the corridor.
“What is it?” Tess asked.
“There’s been another bomb!” Zach said. “In Bass Strait. You know all those politicians who were supposed to be coming back from Hobart? Their planes were blown up. They’re all dead.”
The sound of someone clearing their throat woke Tess from her uncomfortable chair-based doze in a meeting room in Parliament House. She opened her eyes and saw Dr Leo Smilovitz.
The Canadian scientist held out a cup. “Coffee?” he said.
“You’re a lifesaver. What time is it?” she asked, taking a sip.
“Half nine,” Leo said, pulling out the chair next to her. “Parliament’s over. Ms Dodson and Mr Owen are just speaking with the state reps who made it here.”
“Did I miss any fireworks?” she asked.
“Thankfully, no,” Leo said. “After Mr Owen began his speech by announcing the death of the old politicians, the state reps responded with a unanimous vote of support for the new government. You’ve got ten new senators, and twenty MPs. There’s a new U.N., too, formed of the ambassadors who were stuck in Canberra. They endorsed Ms Dodson.”
“And O.O.?”
“And him,” Leo said. “He gave a good speech. Promised new elections as soon as possible. He said our focus, now we’ve lost all the planet’s shipping, should be to rebuild Australia, rebuild the fleets, and rescue those nearby.”
“Which is what people within range of the radio broadcast would need to hear,” Tess said. “Any more information from Tasmania?”
“A little,” Leo said.
The swing doors opened. Dan Blaze pushed Anna Dodson’s wheelchair through. Bruce Hawker, of the RSAS, followed behind. He’d found a dress-uniform somewhere, but not a pair of dress-shoes to replace his dusty battle-boots.
“G’day, Tess,” Anna said, “and what a day. Thank you, Dan. Can you wait outside?”
“A soldier with a guitar, another with a gun,” Leo said. “That makes for an interesting escort.”
“Both of whom were in shot for the press photographs,” Anna said. “I don’t know when anyone will see them, or how many will have seen the television broadcast. But, yes, imagery is important if for no other reason than gossip. But we must discuss Tasmania. Are there any more updates, Leo?”
“A nuclear warhead detonated either just before, or just as it was leaving, the silo aboard a Jin-class Chinese submarine,” Leo said. “The plane
s were affected by the EMP. Total losses are four 777s and three fighter-aircraft escorts.”
“And, of course, the politicians and their staff and families who were aboard,” Anna said. “How do you know any of this?”
“The shielding aboard one fighter jet functioned correctly,” Leo said. “They were able to land. That’s who brought us the initial report. A follow-up has been gathered from the surviving shipping. We lost twelve fishing boats, a freighter, and the HMAS…” He paused to check his notes. “The HMAS Brisbane.”
“She’s a Hobart-class destroyer,” Hawker said. “Brand-new. Barely out of the box.”
“It was caught in the detonation,” Leo said. “It picked up the sub, and it’s from them we know the type. But it also picked up a U.S. submarine which was also destroyed in the blast, and which we had no idea was down there. Just before the warhead was detonated, the U.S. sub launched a torpedo and sent a warning. Said they were the Guam, but before anything else they said could be relayed from the Brisbane to anyone out of range, the warhead was detonated. The Guam is, or was, a Virginia-class attack sub.”
“What damage was done on shore?” Anna asked.
“Minimal, according to the initial reports,” Leo said. “The wreckage, and the radiation, will impact fishing for six to nine months, minimum.”
“A U.S. boat was chasing a Chinese sub?” Tess asked. “But the bomb detonated at the surface? Was this a suicide mission?”
Leo shrugged. “I’m just reading a collated version of the radio reports,” he said. “I set up the listening post, but I’m not running it. Naval warfare was never my area. My knowledge is tangential, while these reports are still incomplete. As only one warhead detonated, the most statistically probable explanation is that the warhead malfunctioned. Less likely, but still plausible, is that it was their sole warhead left. They had no torpedoes, and they were determined to sink that U.S. submarine. Those suggestions were given by Admiral Shikubu.”
Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 5