He wasn’t laughing now.
‘S’up Pedro?’
‘Take your all-time worst nightmare and multiply it by the biggest number you can think of. We got a situation here, I, eh . . . Look, power up your computer, man, I’m sending something over. You’ve probably already got it, except you don’t know it yet, though that’s another story, but I’m sendin’ it anyway. We got . . .’
‘Hey Pedro Pedro Pedro,’ Larry said, switching on the PC that sat against the wall between his desk and Zabriski’s. ‘You ain’t makin’ sense. Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.’
There was a pause.
‘Okay. From the top. Conchita Nunez got a phone call a little while ago. No chance of a trace, voice just said, “There’s a bomb on the Moonstar boat – check your computer now,” then rang off. We recorded it, but he used a disguiser. Nunez looks at her screen, and there’s a bomb icon on the desktop, little black ball with a fuse like in fucking Bugs Bunny or something. She clicks on the bomb and it opens a text file and like a video window. Text says there’s a bomb on the Ugly Duckling. Turns out that’s the boat one of the movie companies is having its booze’n’ schmooze cruise on today. Eighty-eight people on board. Video window shows the bomb attached to some pipes in what looks like an engine room. That plays for ten seconds, then you get a ten-second loop of the upper decks from a vantage-point some place at the front, shots of people getting on board to prove it was recorded this morning.
‘But in case that’s not enough, beneath the video window it gives the frequencies these images were transmitted on: there’s two goddamn cameras broadcasting live from that boat, and this pendejo’slooking at ’em. I’m tuned in right now – he ain’t kidding. Text says we can have someone go to the engine room to verify that the bomb’s for real, but if anyone tries to screw with it, he’ll see, and he’ll detonate. Same goes if anyone gets off the boat. Same goes if we jam the transmission. Same goes if the boat moves out of transmission range. Same goes if the cameras fail by themselves.’
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Have you contacted the boat?’
‘Yes sir. Captain verified the position of the device then barfed. This is not a drill, man.’
Larry felt his own guts turn over.
‘So what does this asshole want? Money?’
Arguello sighed. ‘I wish. The bomb’s only half the nightmare. Oh man, this is so fucked up. I never seen shit as sick as this.’
‘Jesus, Pedro, tell me about it.’
‘He wants . . . he wants a human sacrifice.’
‘What?’
‘I ain’t shittin’ you, man. And worse than that, a suicide. He’s a fucking space-case, man, fucking loco. Says everyone on the boat’s a sinner who deserves to die, but they can be saved if one person repents and makes the ultimate . . . you know.’
‘You gotta be fucking kidding.’
‘No, man. And he don’t mean anyone person, neither. He’s made a specific nomination.’
‘Who?’
‘Maddy Witherson. That senator’s daughter who became a porno actress. Calls her the Whore of Babylon, lots of crazy shit, says she’s got until dawn tomorrow to throw a seven or the boat goes bang. Wants her to do it with a knife, on the deck of the boat where his camera can see.’
Larry closed his eyes. ‘Pedro, I’d give real money if you’d tell me this is a joke.’
‘Oh sure, Sarge. You want the punch-line? The girl ain’t on the fuckin’ boat. I spoke to the captain over the telephone. She was supposed to be on the trip, she was on the invite list, but she was a no-show. Her and about a dozen other lucky folks who overslept or whatever.’
‘So where is she?’
‘I don’t know, man, but we better find out real soon, and get to her before anyone else does. That thing appear on your screen yet?’
‘No. It’s taking its time decompressing the file.’
‘Well, here’s another joke. The text says those little bombs are already inside a ton more computers, but they’re programmed not to show up on the screens until a little bit later.’
‘Which computers? Oh shit,’ Larry said, realising. The number he’d thought of to multiply the nightmare by wasn’t nearly high enough.
‘TV, radio, news agencies. The works, Larry. This guy wants the eyes of the world looking in, and he’ll get ’em. Ever hear the expression “a crowd like for an execution"? We gotta find that girl soon, warn her, get her into protection, some damn thing. Forget the white Bronco chase, man. Every TV on the fucking planet’s gonna be tuned to this. And we better think seriously about how we’re gonna break it to the folks on the boat before the media do it for us. Okay, maybe they ain’t watchin’ TV out there but these are movie people, for Christ’s sake. Every fucking one of them’ll have a mobile phone, man. Plus their buddies back on-shore ain’t just gonna hear the story, they’re gonna see the action. The stations’ll be able to pick up these camera signals from the boat same as us, and the air’s gonna be thick with choppers about ten minutes after the news guys see this file.’
‘Which is gonna be when?’
‘He doesn’t say.’
‘I don’t get it. He wants a circus, so why does the hotel – and therefore the cops – get the scoop? What’s he waiting for?’
‘Who knows, man? Maybe a response from us. Who cares? What the fuck are we gonna do?’
‘All right, give me a second here.’ Larry breathed out and tried to detach himself enough for his brain to offer something constructive. ‘Okay. I want you to get on to Bannon – the response call is way over my head. I’ll transfer you right now. And I also want Nunez to call me this second on Zabriski’s line. She’ll be the fastest chance we’ve got of locating the girl.’
‘You got it, man.’
Larry transferred the call, carrying the phone to the door so he could see through the glass partition into Bannon’s office. He waved to get the Captain’s attention, gesticulating to him that it was urgent. There was a click as Bannon picked up.
‘Got Arguello at the PV. There’s a bomb on a boat. Eighty-eight people on board. This is for real.’
Larry put down the receiver to connect Bannon to Arguello, then dialled the code to pick up Zabriski’s already ringing phone on his own line.
‘Who can tell us where Maddy Witherson is, Conchita?’
‘I’ve been calling her agent since we found out she wasn’t on the boat,’ she said. ‘Line was busy until about thirty seconds ago. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything. He said she was meeting a photographer for a shoot, some movie magazine. He wasn’t totally sure, but he thinks they were hooking up right here at the hotel. You want me to put out a call?’
‘No. Absolutely not. Have someone go look for her, get her into your office and I’ll come pick her up, but don’t do anything that’s gonna attract attention to her or to the fact that she’s there – if she’s there. We don’t know when this whole thing’s gonna go public, but when it does, I don’t want anyone knowing where she is.’
‘Okay. I’ll check the security monitors first. Then I’ll . . . Wait a second. What the hell?’
‘What is it? Talk to me, Conchita.’
‘Something else just appeared on my screen. The end of the text file extended itself, like there was another part folded behind the page.’
‘What’s it say?’
‘It says “MORAL DILEMMA” in capital letters. Then: “Before anyone would be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save the lives of others, that person would have to be completely convinced of the reality of the threat. I appreciate this, and would now like to remove the element of doubt.”’
‘Then what?’
‘Then nothing. That’s all it says.’
‘So how is he planning— Oh shit shit shit. That’s what he’s waiting for. That’s why he ain’t told the media yet. Jesus, Conchita, get everybody out of the fuckin’ building, right now!’
‘I heard a loud bang.’ That was always what some stupid fucker
said on the news after the IRA had passed their latest damning comment on contemporary metropolitan architecture. Like the nation needed to be told bombs went bang.
However, this one didn’t, not to Steff. Because bombs only go bang when you’re a hundred yards away.
He remembered the pool cleaner coming through the door, carrying a bundle of tubes and brushes in both arms. She stopped to hold the door open because someone was coming up behind her. Maddy was holding on to the steel ladders at the corner of the pool, Steff kneeling down and getting ready for another shot. He looked up and saw a young woman walking urgently towards where he was crouched, a gold-metal staff badge on her blouse.
‘Excuse me, I’ve a message for Miss Witherson,’ she called out, halfway between him and the door from which she had emerged. He pulled the camera away from his face and gestured to the pool.
Steff felt like he was suddenly surrounded by loudness, a white noise, screaming, creaking, bending, tearing, crunching, cracking, all at once, and all amid a massive sense of force and movement. It was so total, so engulfing that he could not tell what parts he was hearing and what parts he was feeling, sounds in his ears and vibrations through his body indistinguishable. He was knocked on to his back by the jolt as the ground seemed to rear up at him, then the entire floor began to tip in the direction of the stairwell door. Except there was no stairwell door, and no stairwell either. That entire corner had disappeared, and with it gone, the rest of the rooftop terrace was now sloping into the gap. The pool cleaner, who had been assembling equipment in that area, was gone. Clouded by the dust Steff could just make out the messenger, prostrate and bloody, at the far end of the pool. Maddy had been knocked back into the middle of the water and was spluttering and wheezing as she struggled, having gone under and swallowed when the blast hit.
Then there was another shriek of surrendering metal and the floor felt like it had fallen away from beneath Steff. Another support had given at the north-east corner, and the terrace suddenly tipped sharply further towards it. The water in the pool rushed that way too, whipping Maddy along like she was on a rope, and spilling over the side in a voluminous wave. Maddy was flung hard against the wall but remained in the pool as the water cascaded towards the crevice, where it hit the messenger like a bulldozer, scattering her over the edge along with the sunbeds and trestle tables.
Steff lay on his back, digging his heels into the plastic turf to stop himself rolling. Shock, disbelief, terror, pain, all the things that were supposed to occupy his mind failed to register. Or rather, he was aware of them, but it was as though they were going through the mind of someone else, like a TV show on a different channel in the room through the wall. He knew the show was being videotaped, and he’d be forced to view it later, at least once a night for the rest of his life, but right now he couldn’t afford to watch.
Maddy was still floating, languidly flapping an arm. The water had levelled out at an absurd angle across the pool, lapping against the bottom of the shallow end like it was a glass shore. She wasn’t going to be able to climb out of there herself.
Steff climbed up on to his knees and began to manoeuvre carefully around towards where the water was spilling over the edge, as that would be the easiest place to pull her out. There was another slight jolt, but this time the force seemed to be pushing straight downwards rather than towards the corner again. Then he heard another breaking sound.
‘Aw, in the name of fuck, this is not happening.’
There was a crack visible in the glass under the water, snaking across all the way from one side to the other and even up the walls. The entire pool was ready to split in half, and when it did, the end Steff was moving towards was going to collapse into the crevice. The contents, of course, were going to fall out like the inside of a neatly cracked egg.
Steff scrambled back around the edge of the pool and unhooked from around his waist the bum-bag he kept his used films in, pressing a button on the buckle and playing out the strap’s slack as far as it would go. He descended the metal ladder at the shallow end into where the water should have been, then edged down the slope. Through the glass he could see that water was pouring out of the crack on the left-hand side, spraying down into the lobby. He caught a glimpse of the scene below and closed his eyes, then looked straight ahead when he reopened them. He couldn’t afford to look down there, couldn’t afford to let what he had seen register.
He inched nearer the edge of the water then let his feet slip out from under him. He landed with a thump and slid into the first few inches of the chlorinated liquid.
‘Maddy,’ he shouted. ‘Grab this.’
Steff got to his feet again, waded further in and threw the bag out towards her, keeping tight hold of the strap. He was glad to have bought a bum-bag with a Pavarotti setting, but it still seemed an agonising distance Maddy needed to cover to reach it, striking out as she did in a dazed and feeble splashing. She got hold of the bag with one hand and pulled herself near enough to grip it with both. Then Steff began to back up, dragging her to where she could put a foot down and get enough of her body out of the water for her own weight and her wet clothes not to drag her back in. He got his hands under her armpits and pulled her backwards up the incline towards the ladder. Her eyes were half closed, unfocused, her mouth trying to form words but just dribbling pool water and emitting moans and coughs. He helped her to her feet and she grabbed the silver tubes of the ladder with either hand. Steff lifted her so that she could get a foot on the lowest rung, then got his shoulder under her bottom and nudged her upwards until she spilled her torso over the side. He lifted her legs level with the sloping floor, then she crawled clear of the edge and rolled on to her back.
Steff had just taken hold of the ladder himself when the egg cracked. There was a high-pitched, prolonged shattering sound, then the water was sucked down and out as the far side of the pool and what was left of the terrace swung backwards and away like a trapdoor. The resultant shudder swung Steff around on the ladder and twisted his wrists out of their grip. He spilled to the tilted and slippery floor, at the end of which there was now only a jagged edge and a sheer drop into the carnage of the lobby. He dug his heels against the slick tiles, Doc Marten Airware his only ally in a fight to the death with gravity. In the underpant-saving moment of relief when he became sure that he was no longer sliding nearer to the precipice, he noticed that what was left of the glass bottom was starting to dislocate from the remains of the pool’s walls.
Steff lifted one heel closer to his body and dug down with it, pushing himself back up the slope and repeating the move with the other as quickly and steadily as his panicking mind could manage, given the screeching aural accompaniment of cracking glass. Turning on to his front, he slung the bum-bag over the first rung of the ladder and grabbed it, pouch in left hand, strap in right, one frantic breath before the bottom of the pool fell away from the two side walls as if hinged at the near end. He felt the weight go from his feet and transfer to his hands in a sickening drop, his shoulders wrenched painfully by the sudden jerk. Steff’s body was swung inwards against the torn seam where the pool’s floor had detached from the walls, a glass wedge finding its way easily into his right arm and breaking off.
The giant glass slab, formerly the bottom of the swimming pool, had swung slowly backwards until it was almost plumb with the only wall it remained attached to. Then it dropped off completely. There was a reverberating crash from below as it hit the concourse. Short of another bomb, it was about the only sound loud enough to drown the screaming.
Steff could handle the agony in his upper arm as long as he didn’t look at it, but he could feel his grip weakening, and stoicism wouldn’t be able to compensate for that. He braced himself for the pain then took hold of both ends of his lifeline with his right hand for the moment required to stretch upwards and sling his left arm over the plastic rung. He gripped his left wrist with his right hand until he was steady, then freed up his right hand again to loop the bum-bag over the next rung
and fasten it like a harness.
Suspended there, catching his breath, he could finally see the extent of the damage. In those first confused moments, given his location his initial thoughts had been of an earthquake, but if he needed any confirmation of what had really happened, it was horrifyingly apparent. The hotel’s landmark canopy was crippled around the north-east corner, its vast panes disintegrated and its steel spokes buckled and broken. The remains of the other part of the swimming pool and terrace still dangled on the far side of the hole, folded over like the lid of a cardboard box pushed in on itself.
While below . . .
Blood ran off Steff’s elbow and splashed on to his shoes as they hung in the air above the carnage. Drops in the ocean. He was a hundred feet above but he could still make out the red. Not even the deluge from the shattered pool could wash away that much blood.
Explosives, glass and gravity. A crowded concourse.
‘There is a God,’ he muttered, some deeply sick synaptic sub-station in his brain throwing in some sarcasm, like the situation wasn’t quite bad enough. Or maybe it was trying to cheer him up.
There is a God. Fucking stupid expression. People always said it when their wishes were granted, when all went well, an egotistical notion that their overseeing deity had recognised their desires and smiled specifically upon them. Funny, nobody ever said it when something went wrong, nobody ever took the corresponding view that their overseeing deity had recognised what a prick they were and reached, smiling, for the thunderbolts. Nobody ever looked at the cinders of their razed house, or stood over the grave of their dead relative, and said: ‘There is a God. I’ve been a selfish wanker recently, and I thoroughly deserved that.’
Nobody ever dangled precariously by one hand, fuck knew how high, over a blood-drenched scene of carnage and destruction, racked with pain, fear and shock, and said: ‘There is a God.’ Not until today, anyway, and that didn’t count because the bloke concerned didn’t mean it.
Not the End of the World Page 23