‘Secondly, and more crucially, if the Purifiers are indeed planning something then we still have hope, and a few precious hours, to find out what it might be without raising their suspicions. As soon as Aguda is arrested, and assuming he is Maksoob, then the game may be up. They will almost certainly have planned for that eventuality.’
Shireen couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but Sarah hadn’t finished her train of thought. ‘Besides, we just need to keep the Project safe until Lockdown. The whole point of the Lockdown is that they would have to do something before then. After Lockdown, no one can interfere.’
Shireen had already considered this. It was what scared her more than anything else. She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. ‘But … what if they have something in place, some virus maybe, that only activates after Lockdown? And what if the Mag-8 Mind is infected or compromised, like the CERN Mind in the summer? Then there’d be nothing to stop it and we’d be helpless.’
This time Marc shook his head. ‘Even if we could stop Ignition after Lockdown,’ he said, ‘and I have no idea what would be needed to do that, short of ordering a missile strike against Mag-8, then even that wouldn’t be enough.’
Sarah turned around to face him, so the angle of her wristpad meant they were both out of vision now, seemingly having forgotten about Shireen. But she could still hear them. ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sarah.
‘I mean we would have to knock out the other sites too. Think about it – if the Purifiers are capable of sabotaging Mag-8 in some way then we must assume they’re capable of overriding any instruction to the other seven Minds to abort in the event of only Mag-8 being destroyed. Stopping just one of the eight beams is the nightmare scenario, remember. And even if we could avoid Ignition with such drastic measures then the Purifiers will still have won. The Project would be over.’ He sounded exhausted.
‘Jesus. So we lose either way.’
‘There may be another way,’ Shireen interjected. The idea had been swirling around in the back of her mind ever since she’d decided to contact Sarah and Marc. ‘What if you could get something out of Aguda? I don’t mean a full confession, just something incriminating enough to convince the world to listen to us and stop Ignition. He’s there with you in Mag-8, after all.’ They didn’t reply, so she added, ‘But you have less than six hours.’
40
Tuesday, 17 September – 09:30, Mag-8, Amman
Sarah knew that Shireen was right. They had to find a way of confronting Aguda. And even if she was wrong about him, they couldn’t afford to do nothing. It had taken her and Marc almost two hours of arguing before they settled on a plan, and Sarah could tell that he was unhappier than her by far. But they were running out of time discussing it, and she knew he could see the sense in her line of reasoning. It was the only card they had left to play.
The only way to entrap Aguda, she had argued, was if he felt safe and unthreatened. For that, she had to be the one to meet him, alone. Playing to his self-confidence, his amour-propre, might just force him to let slip something they could use. But to get him to meet in the first place was trickier. How could she do that without raising suspicion?
‘He has to think I know more than I do – that I am a threat—’
‘A threat he will want to deal with,’ Marc reminded her.
‘Marc, we’ve been through this.’
He didn’t respond. Instead, he drew her close and held her. She knew how uncomfortable he was feeling about the plan: allowing someone else he cared for to put themselves directly in danger like this. He’d just been through a major trauma in which he’d almost lost the person he loved most in the world. But Sarah wasn’t Evie. And a father’s love for his daughter was hardly the same as this ill-timed and misplaced chivalry.
Sarah knew Aguda had arrived at the Mag-8 facility an hour after them, along with Peter Hogan and an entourage of high-ranking officials. Most people were gathering in the vast viewing hall that overlooked the central chamber itself. The giant magnets loomed high above them like an alien space fleet hovering silently and menacingly; and below were the aluminium beam tubes, glistening under the bright lights that were suspended on the walls and roof of the chamber. All three tubes, each with its surrounding bending magnets, split off in sequence from the main cylinder whose sealed front end faced the north-west, ready to allow in the beam of heavy neutralinos arriving from CERN. The other ends of the three tubes pointed vertically down into the focusing chamber, where they merged again into a single cylinder, down which the beam of charginos would pass into the ground. The entire construct was an exact replica of the Mag-4 facility she’d seen before completion in Peru.
There were six hours to go before Ignition and three hours before Lockdown. The atmosphere was tense. People huddled in groups talking in hushed tones, as though even a raised voice might jeopardize the mission. The occasional laughter she heard sounded forced. Technicians and engineers went about their business carrying out final checks while they still could before Lockdown. Marc had found Qiang and taken him outside to talk to him away from prying eyes and ears. He’d insisted that since his colleague was the only other person they could really trust he needed to be brought up to speed.
Sarah hadn’t wanted to confront Aguda in public in case he detected something in her manner that scared him off. So, they agreed she should stay out of his sight and send him a brief message instead. She found an empty meeting room to hide away in and composed the message:
Gabriel, I don’t know who else to turn to, but I need to speak to someone urgently. There’s a plot to sabotage Mag-8 that we’ve uncovered, and we have to warn people. Can we talk privately?
Waiting for Aguda’s response was almost unbearable. The minutes ticked by and she wondered whether he was deliberately ignoring the message. Did he suspect anything? Possibly. Would he be considering the possibility that they were trying to entrap him? Marc and Qiang joined her in the room.
‘Damn it, Marc, it’s been almost twenty minutes. He’s not responded. Have we just made a terrible mistake?’
Marc began pacing up and down. ‘Right, if we haven’t heard from Aguda in another ten minutes, we’ll have to go to security and insist he’s arrested. They’d be crazy to ignore us.’
And then Sarah received a message:
Meet me in the old electron booster ring building. Fifteen minutes.
Relief mixed with fear washed through her. This was it. The game was on.
The booster hall was situated within the old SESAME building – an artefact of a bygone era despite its microtron accelerator still being used to produce the electrons that were injected into the much larger storage rings of the new accelerator. But from the start of the Project several months earlier, these experimental buildings had been sitting dormant and deserted, with all the large superconducting magnets being appropriated for Mag-8’s construction.
The building was quiet when Sarah walked in, and the air smelled stale and suffocating. She could see the central area of the hall, the site of the accelerator ring, a circular tube forty metres in circumference and threaded through multiple magnets like a necklace. Hidden within high concentric shielding walls, it was accessed by following a winding corridor, like walking around the outer layers of a circular garden maze, but with two-metre-thick concrete walls instead of green hedges. Aguda obviously knew his way around the SESAME complex – the hall was certainly far from prying eyes and ears.
Despite feeling terrified, Sarah made her way to the experimental area. She rehearsed her lines. She couldn’t afford to let her guard slip and nervously checked her AR feed to make sure it was recording everything she saw and heard. She wasn’t surprised to see the network signal drop out as she walked deeper into the building. Marc and Shireen would by now have lost contact with her. Had Aguda chosen the location so that no one outside could eavesdrop? Did he suspect something? Did he even have any intention of letting her go? She knew the risk she was taking, but it had seemed the only wa
y.
She wondered if Gabriel was already there. The shielding corridor opened up into a large hall. Looking about her, the only accessible floor space was a narrow walkway squeezed between the outer wall and the accelerator ring itself, which was situated about waist high all the way around. The chamber was crowded with instrumentation: stacks of shelving overflowing with electronic equipment connected by a multi-coloured spaghetti of wires and cables. Nothing seemed to be switched on. There was none of the usual comforting hum or the colourful glow of LEDs. There were tables on which lay abandoned tools and dormant computer displays.
The only sounds Sarah could hear were her own footsteps and the blood rushing in her ears. The lighting was poor on this side of the ring and, at first, she thought she was alone. Gabriel hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Maybe he planned to imprison her here until after Lockdown. No, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to believe she was the only one who knew about the plan.
Then she saw a figure moving out from the shadows.
‘Ah, Sarah. You came.’
She stopped dead in her tracks. At first, she was confused. Confusion that was quickly followed by a dreadful dawning realization. She felt a strange, prickly tingling as though electrodes had been attached to every part of her body.
It was Hogan. Senator Peter Hogan. And he was smiling his broadest smile.
He was wearing a stylish cream suit and was studying what looked to be a small display pad.
‘I hope you’re not too disappointed to see me instead of Gabriel. He felt this was just too important for him to deal with, and so he asked me.’ He winked at her conspiratorially. Every nerve in her body yelled at her to run, but she knew she had to hear him out.
Resting the display gently on the table, Hogan walked slowly towards her. ‘OK, Sarah, here we are, just the two of us.’ He held his hands out to either side of him. ‘So, I think we can be frank with each other, yes?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Now then, you believe there’s been some sort of security breach here at Mag-8 and that the Project is in jeopardy? This, just a few hours before the most portentous moment in human history. Don’t you think you’re leaving it rather late in the day to be worrying about monsters under the bed?’
To her relief, he stopped a couple of metres from her.
She managed to find her voice and to her surprise it sounded steadier than she could have hoped. ‘Please don’t be facetious, Senator. I needed to speak to Gabriel urgently because—’
‘—because he’s the person you go to when you dig up secrets, right? Just like you did with those files about the satellite data?’
He smiled again, flashing his shark’s teeth. ‘Well, I don’t think Gabriel is in any position to help you right now. Poor Gabriel, a man always aiming higher than his limited intellect would allow. A man without the imagination to be anything other than a foot soldier.’
At first, Sarah wasn’t quite sure what he’d meant. Then it hit her like a juggernaut. She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew – as sure as she had been of anything in her life. Oh, shit. Aguda isn’t our man. He never was. I’m looking at Maksoob right now.
She didn’t need to rationalize how or why a successful American politician was also the leader of a terrorist organization intent on wiping humankind off the face of the earth. A fresh rush of adrenalin coursed through her body. And it gave her courage. I have to hold it together. Otherwise we’ll have nothing. Somehow, she managed to compose herself. She refocused her eyes to check her retinal feed was still recording. OK, let’s see what you’ve got, you bastard.
‘Then maybe you can help instead, Senator. After all, you’re clearly the one with the real influence. A man people will listen to.’
When he didn’t answer, she carried on. ‘Of course, we don’t want to trigger an unnecessary postponement of Ignition, because that would mean weeks of delay before we could try again, and I saw what happened in Rio. We can’t risk waiting around for a catastrophic event like that to happen again.’
‘Ah, of course, you were in Rio during the March Event. How awful for you. All that tragic loss of life you weren’t able to stop …’
You bastard. White-hot anger rose up in her and she had to use all her resolve to keep it from bubbling over.
He smiled again. ‘And tell me, Sarah. How, may I ask, has this information come to your attention? Given that the entire world’s cybersecurity effort is at this very moment focused on ensuring today goes smoothly.’
She breathed deeply. ‘I have reason to believe the Purifiers are here at Mag-8 and are planning some sort of act of sabotage.’
‘Oh? And this is something you have discovered? That neither the Sentinels nor the rest of humanity seem to have picked up?’
Did she detect a slight rise in the level of his voice, as though he were becoming excited by this game? Good. And he hadn’t yet asked her what the nature of her suspicions were. Was this an acknowledgement that there really was a plan in place?
‘It would appear so, yes,’ she prodded. ‘Although Marc Bruckner believes the Purifiers know they’ve failed and that it’s too late to stop Ignition now.’
‘And what do you think, Sarah?’ His eyes glittered.
Right, this is it. It doesn’t matter that it’s Hogan, not Aguda. This was what she had rehearsed. She needed to get under his skin. ‘I’m not so sure,’ she replied as calmly as she could. ‘Personally, I just don’t think we can take that chance. They’ve shown themselves to be very … resourceful. But then their failure so far also suggests they don’t have the knowhow, intellect or imagination to strike the killer blow. Their acts seem too clumsy and random, too uncoordinated.’
Hogan’s pale blue eyes drilled into hers. He seemed to be enjoying this. She had to keep going. She had just switched tack from claiming to have uncovered a plot, to arguing that the Purifiers weren’t capable of carrying it out. And she didn’t think Hogan had noticed.
‘Personally, I wonder whether their supposed leader, Maksoob, really exists. He sounds more like a concept, invented by a group of desperate individuals. Of course, if he does exist and is planning something, then I would expect him to want to reveal himself at the end, to bathe in the glory of achieving his ultimate aim.’
For the first time in their conversation, Hogan didn’t respond immediately. He appeared to be mulling over what she’d said. Aware of his own hesitation, he suddenly straightened himself and took a casual step closer. She called upon every ounce of determination not to back away from him and somehow managed to keep her feet rooted to the spot.
‘This is getting boring, Sarah, and frankly I don’t have the time for it. So, please stop playing the tiresome amateur psychologist.’
This was her chance.
‘Oh, I’m not playing. I’m deadly serious. Strange that you haven’t yet asked me what it is I know – what I may have uncovered – Senator Hogan. Or perhaps you would prefer to be addressed as “Maksoob”?’
It was as if a switch had been flipped. His smile evaporated to be replaced by a look of pure malevolence.
‘Oh, Sarah,’ he snarled, ‘how very clever of you. And yet you were expecting to meet Gabriel. Did you find his message to the Purifiers? It’s a little insulting that you fell for it so quickly – to think that Gabriel Aguda could control the destiny of the entire planet. Although of course I’m rather pleased you realize your mistake now.’ His expression suddenly softened, and he turned his gaze upwards as though recalling a fond memory. ‘Poor Gabriel, he’s been useful in so many ways – always eager to play with the big boys, and oh so desperate to make his mark on the world.’
She had to think fast. If Hogan sent the message out from Aguda’s account to deflect attention, why do it at all? Why risk exposure at the last minute? Wait. Maybe it’s obvious. Maybe he had to reach out to his followers – a last rallying cry from their prophet. His ego was too big not to.
Then the cold psychopathic stare was back. She felt his eyes bore into her. ‘So
, tell me, Sarah, what’s your plan? Is your knight in shining armour going to dash in and rescue you from my evil clutches?’ He shook his head again as though reprimanding an errant child. ‘I should inform you that I took the liberty of locking the door remotely as soon as I heard you enter. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone disturbing our friendly chat. So, I’m afraid no one will be able to come in or out. It’s just you and me until after Ignition.’
Despite her terror, she found the strength from somewhere to blurt out, ‘Why? What is it you plan to do?’
He laughed. It was a blood-curdling laugh, devoid of human emotion. ‘Oh, Sarah, is this where the good guy convinces the bad guy to reveal his master plan now that he thinks he’s got away with it? How sweet. But that wouldn’t be so much fun.’
Somehow, he was now just an arm’s length away and she took an involuntary step back, feeling the cold metal of the accelerator ring against her back. She was trapped. And like a wolf moving in for the kill, Hogan sensed her panic. ‘Sweet, innocent Dr Sarah Maitlin. You are so out of your depth right now. Did you really think that you could stop the inevitable?’
She needed to stall for time. She needed to find out what the inevitable was. She could worry about escape later. She couldn’t give up now.
41
Tuesday, 17 September – 03:30, Washington, DC
When Shireen lost contact with Sarah, she first assumed it was just the net being taken down for added security, but Sarah’s retinal feed had dropped out as soon as she had entered the booster hall, so it had to be because of some sort of shielding inside the building. Had Aguda chosen to meet her there because he knew any transmissions to and from the outside world would be blocked? Marc didn’t sound surprised when he contacted her a few seconds later. ‘Shireen, I have no signal from Sarah – I assume you don’t either.’
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