Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

  It was vital all the bombs went off at once. The customised CHIBs didn’t have a clock system, just a timer: this provided a two-way guarantee to ensure that neither party could double-cross the other. For a simultaneous detonation, Liskey had to set the same countdown period locally on each warhead, then St John’s signal would start them all ticking at the same time. Liskey’s guarantee was that he had control of the timers, St John’s that he held the trigger. From his place in the desert, St John could bounce the arming signal off a satellite to reach the warheads under the Pacific. Therefore, if the timers were set at zero for an instant result, there was nothing to stop St John hitting the button as soon as he knew the bombs were in position, silencing his co-conspirators and saving himself a big bill for services rendered. So they had agreed a countdown time-frame that accommodated both parties’ needs.

  Theoretically, the warheads were all supposed to be in place before St John armed them, but it didn’t matter for the sake of a few minutes. Just as long as the nukes were all where they should be, the clock was running and there was plenty of time to get clear. The positioning schedule had always been intentionally tight - the intention being St John’s, another aspect of his guarantee. After the Light of the World rendezvoused with the Stella Maris at a pre-ordained time above Wegener’s Guyot, there was to be barely a spare second: St John wanted the bombs off the ship, in place and armed within the shortest possible margin, giving the Militia men no time to improvise. He didn’t trust Liskey not to try hotwiring the warheads to bypass the remote detonator, so he could make off with them for his own purposes. But once they were armed that option was closed, and Liskey’s only consideration was minimum safe distance. Soon as he could he’d be decompressing aboard the Light, way out in the ocean, hoping St John wasn’t shitting him about seismic waves being only a few feet high on the open sea, otherwise the ship was going to be surfing into Honolulu.

  Liskey tugged at the lever to partially release the mechanical arm’s grip on the CHIB, testing whether the warhead would stay in place when he withdrew the sub. It rolled about forty degrees then settled, steady, the LED readout facing him as it blinked its count, like the kid who was ‘it’ playing hide-and-seek.

  22:48:57

  22:48:56

  22:48:55

  Five o’clock tomorrow evening, Wegener Guyot would be no more. Under the ocean, there’d be a crater where there used to be a mountain . . . and forty minutes later the rush-hour gridlock would clear in record time.

  22:48:46

  22:48:45

  22:48:44

  Ready or not, here I come.

  seventeen

  23:44:12

  The atmosphere in the CalORI suites reminded Larry of a downtown station he’d been posted in around ‘89, when five officers went down in the line of duty one ugly July evening. It had looked like an opportune weapons bust when it was radioed in. Turned out to be an ambush, revenge by the Bloods for two of their members dying in a firefight with cops from the same precinct. In the days following it had to be business as usual, but there was an emptiness about the place, a pervading hush as though the precinct-house itself was the chapel of rest.

  The receptionist was getting ready to lock up out front when Larry arrived. She let him in and offered to walk him through to where Arazon was working if he’d hang on until she shut down her computer, as the lab was on her way to the staff parking lot. He followed her slowly down the corridors, people wishing her goodnight as they passed, supportive little smiles being exchanged.

  They came to an open-plan laboratory area, where Maria Arazon and a colleague were peering in turns into the same microscope. For some reason Larry had been expecting everybody to be in white coats - too much time around hospitals and pathology labs. Arazon looked up and noticed him, touching her companion on the shoulder as she walked away from the worktop.

  ‘Sergeant Freeman, a phone call would have sufficed.’ She sounded almost apologetic for his trouble.

  ‘Yeah, I figured, but anything to keep me out of the station right now, you know?’

  ‘I can imagine. Think I saw you on TV last night, outside the hotel. A bad business. Sick business. Still, at least the girl’s all right. Were you in on that little hoax this morning?’

  He smiled. ‘That would be telling. So what were you calling for, Doctor?’

  ‘Well I didn’t mean to put you to a lot of trouble. It’s just . . . I think we’ve been burgled.’

  ‘Burgled?’

  ‘Yeah, or maybe just hacked. I know it’s not the crime of the century, but given . . .’

  ‘No, you were right to call. Go on.’

  ‘See, there’s nothing missing or damaged, nothing physical. It’s the computers. The data’s been wiped. Not on all of them, just the ones in Lab 2 over there - the ones Mitch Kramer’s team were using.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know. It could have been any time between, say, three days ago and, well, when the Gazes Also left on its last trip. Three days ago was the first time anybody turned those particular machines on since . . . you know. See, different projects have different teams here, and there’s not always a lot of crossover. We had to start going through Mitch’s team’s work to see what the Institute could salvage. We were all putting it off for reasons you can understand, but eventually I was the first one who could bring myself to sift through it. Figured it was the long-straw option. Some other sucker’s gonna have to take down their posters and personal shit. Seeing all that stuff there makes you think they’re all gonna walk through the door any minute. Anyway, I decided to begin with the computers for a project inventory, but there was nothing there.’

  ‘Nothing pertaining to that project?’

  ‘Nothing at all. The hard disks had been wiped completely. And there’s more. After I called you I went down to the Gazes to check the two machines on board. They’d been wiped too. My late friend Sandra Biscane’s disks were also wiped, if you remember. Do you see a recurring pattern here, Sergeant, or am I being irrational in my state of bereavement?’

  ‘More rational than you know.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I can’t tell you right now.’

  ‘It means you know they were murdered, right? You’ve found something. What is it?’

  ‘Can we talk in private?’

  ‘Sure.’ She called to the young man by the microscope. ‘Chico, can you take a walk for five?’ Chico held up his hands and walked away.

  Larry waited until he was out of sight. ‘Okay,’ he began, ‘this is strictly confidential and if you tell anyone I’ll deny it.’

  ‘I’m not much for gossip, Sergeant.’

  ‘Here’s the deal, in short. The FBI are pretty sure your friend Professor Biscane was killed by the Southland Militia, always have been.’

  Arazon rolled her eyes. ‘Those slippery bastards.’

  ‘What you gonna do. But now we got evidence that suggests it was also the Southland Militia who were on board your colleagues’ boat - firing automatic weapons. So yes, it would be more than fair to say there is a pattern. Question is: what was it about? The Feds are hung up on thinking it was the sub the Militia were interested in, but to me it’s looking more and more like a plain old hit. From what you just told me, in both cases there was something on the victims’ computers that the militia didn’t want public, so now we got a motive: silencing witnesses. But witnesses to what? How much do you know about what Kramer’s team were working on?’

  ‘I’m afraid it was nothing exactly juicy. Sub-oceanic topography, observing and recording, sampling, charting. Probably the least sensitive piece of research work this place has been contracted to carry out in a long time. Much of our work gets financed by mineral companies - you might have something to get your teeth into if some rich deposit had been found and somebody wanted it kept quiet. A thing like that happened to a contractor on the Gulf coast about twelve years back, to do with artific
ially undervaluing the exploitation rights, I think. But the only remarkable thing about what Mitch was working on was who was picking up the tab.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Reverend Luther St Asshole.’

  Larry paused a moment, fumbling in his mind for a connection that was just out of reach.

  ‘Why would St John be sponso — Tidal waves,’ he said, answering his own question.

  ‘That’s right,’ Arazon confirmed, leaning back and resting her bottom against a worktop. ‘At least sort of. At first we didn’t know why he had any interest in oceanography, but we didn’t much care either. When a billionaire comes along, expresses an enthusiasm and offers to fund your work, you cash the cheques and get started before he moves on to his next dilettante impulse. It was only when he went public with his prediction that we realised an ulterior agenda. Caused a few headaches around here, I can tell you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said on TV that he’d seen “evidence beneath the sea”, something like that. Everybody was scared he’d cite CalORI’s research, because then the team would’ve had to deny they’d found anything that supported his beliefs.’

  ‘And he’d kill the funding.’

  ‘Exactly. But it didn’t happen. He told Mitch he never intended to cite the research, apparently. Said he needed CalORI to gather the data, but came out with some bullshit about science not being able to see what he could see in the team’s findings. You know, there’s a saying about gift horses and mouths. It rings even truer when it comes to mad billionaires dispensing funds. CalORI was getting a lot more out of the deal than St John. We were at least interested in the reality of what this research was uncovering. What it had to do with the Reverend and his fairy stories, I don’t know.’

  ‘And I guess we never will, now that it’s all been erased.’

  ‘Ah, but it hasn’t,’ Arazon said with a smile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was backed up. All of it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you—’

  ‘I didn’t know this when I called you, but us having back-ups doesn’t change the fact that someone tried to eradicate the information.’

  ‘No, it sure doesn’t. So where were these back-ups that whoever wiped the machines didn’t find them? Or was the stuff backed up to a file server someplace else?’

  ‘In the ice-box.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Chico, who I just chased out - he’s our lab technician, computer manager and all-round technological trouble-shooter. When I told him the machines had been tampered with he went for the fridge. Said Mitch always backed data up to CDs and stuck them in the freezer compartment. Don’t look at me like that - I thought he was joking too. Chico said Mitch’s philosophy was that if this place got turned over, the insurance would replace the computers, but it couldn’t replace what was on them. Wasn’t enough just to back the stuff up, you had to put the disks or CDs where a thief wouldn’t be looking anyway.’

  ‘Tough break if the burglars decide they want a soda.’

  ‘This fridge is in the basement store-room, surrounded by conspicuously unvaluable rock samples and drill-cores. Mitch knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Sounds like it. So he was a cover-all-the-bases kind of guy?’

  Arazon laughed a little. ‘Mitch? He was a disaster area. You should see his office. I thought his idea of burglary insurance was making the place look like it had already been screwed. This wasn’t his normal style at all.’

  ‘Have you had time to look at what’s on the CDs? . . . Dr Arazon?’

  Arazon stared at the worktop beside her, seemingly oblivious.

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant. I was just wondering whether Mitch might have got the back-up idea from the same person who taught him to use seismological modelling programs.’

  Larry remembered hearing about this before: 3-D animation software, developed by . . .

  ‘Professor Biscane,’ he said.

  Arazon nodded.

  ‘Sandra was the kind of woman who’d back up her grocery list. Very obsessive. She had that SyQuest drive, but there were no cartridges, remember? Until now I’d assumed she backed up her work to the SyQuest and the killer had taken the carts. But what if she hid them someplace in her apartment?’

  21:19:06

  Larry drove Arazon to Biscane’s sister’s place to pick up the keys to the apartment. It had been on the market since a couple of months after the professor’s death, but there had been no takers so far. The story that the previous occupant had been stabbed to death on the premises after disturbing a burglar had proven something of a sticking point. Another apartment for sale in the same building was similarly suffering by association. Folks could get so antsy about security issues.

  ‘I find places real spooky when they’ve been cleared out like this,’ Larry observed, looking at the bare shelves and dust shadows where pictures had hung. ‘Sometimes worse than the murder scene itself. It’s more than they’re empty - it’s like they’re bereft, you know what I mean? Divested of life.’

  ‘You’re obviously more of an empath than me, Sergeant. I just feel sick. The last time I was in here I was having coffee in the kitchen and Sandra was sitting across from me in a green T-shirt. Shit, I’ve lost five friends and I don’t even know what the fuck this is about.’

  ‘You okay to be here, Dr Arazon?’

  She nodded, biting her lip. ‘Sure. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Good. So where was the prof’s hidey-hole?’

  ‘You try the fridge yet?’ she said with a brave attempt at a smile. ‘Just kidding. Beth would have cleared that out way back. In fact she’d have cleared out most things, so if the carts are here they’d need to be someplace not even Beth would have gone into, never mind a burglar.’

  Larry thought of all the places he’d found drugs or weapons stashed, and even of a time he’d taped a handgun to the lid of a cistern in the house of a friend who was in a lot more danger than he appreciated. That option was out because moisture and SyQuest cartridges didn’t go well together. He ruled out a few others on the grounds of inconvenience: backing up was a regular business, so you wouldn’t put the carts anywhere that was a pain in the ass to access.

  ‘How tall was she?’

  ‘About five-one, five-two.’

  Good. That ruled out a few more. Larry went to the front door and followed the line of the walls clockwise through the apartment, checking every spot Biscane could have reached.

  He found two cartridges behind the hot-water reservoir in a cupboard in the utility room.

  18:56:23

  They pulled into the CalORI building’s parking lot, where Arazon’s Ford was the only vehicle left.

  ‘You look pretty beat, Sergeant. You up all last night with the Witherson thing?’

  ‘Yeah. Tried to sleep today but it wasn’t happening.’

  ‘Well, you get some quality shut-eye and I’ll give you a call tomorrow afternoon some time when I’ve had a chance to see what’s on these cartridges.’

  That sounded good to Larry. Very good indeed. Sophie would be getting in from her school parents’ night about now. Maybe phone out for some Thai, couple of beers and then that mattress moment. He scribbled his mobile number on the back of a card and handed it to Arazon, then pulled away.

  He was two blocks from home when the phone rang. He felt tired enough to ignore it, but sometimes curiosity could be stronger than caffeine. Fate pivots on such impulses.

  It was Arazon. After wondering so long why her friend was murdered, there’d been no way she could wait until morning to find out what was on those SyQuests, so she’d gone in and booted straight up

  ‘Sergeant, I really think you should get back over here, and I mean right now. I just found out something else Biscane and Kramer had in common.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Their sugar-daddy.’

  18:14:47

  ‘It was a time of earthquakes,’ the scrolls had begun. ‘The old ones called it that, in such
a way as I could not; for they had known a time without. I grew up with earthquakes.’

  You and me both, amigo, Maria thought. You and me both. This was California, for Christ’s sake.

  California, like Kaftor, located in a region of fervent seismological activity.

  California, like Kaftor, where the frequent tremors were no acts of God, just facts of life.

  California, like Kaftor, where a terrible earthquake had once brought devastation to a great city, but after which men had learned ‘to build towns and cities that could resist Poteidan’s anger’.

  California, like Kaftor, where people were also, in certain eyes, ‘vain fools, fussing over shining trivia’.

  ‘This country that was once so great, once held all God’s promise, but now spurns Him. This country that God intended to be our land of milk and honey, but which has been turned instead into Sodom and Gomorrah . . .’

  Decadent in our self-indulgence. Distracted by beauty and pleasure, wasting our potential. Giving no glory to Poteidan, who surely did not share our love of these shallow things.

  ‘The law may allow you to fornicate like a mangy dog, it may allow you to sodomise, it may allow you to blaspheme, it may allow you to peddle pornography, and it may allow you to murder a child in the womb ... but GOD DOES NOT! We have become so arrogant as to supersede God’s laws with ones we’ve dreamed up for our own convenience . . .’

  Poteidan is angry, Damanthys tells us, and by coincidence Poteidan is angry about the self-same things of which he disapproves. What, then, can save us? Surely only to live our lives as Damanthys would prescribe . . .

  Same shit, different millennium.

  From Damanthys to St John, through wandering charlatans and Wild West medicine-hawkers, the story had never changed. You could make it sound as grand as you liked, but in essence it was just a stick-up: Do as I say and you won’t get hurt.

  ‘I have seen His work beneath the ocean . . . He is preparing to strike, preparing a mighty wave to demonstrate His wrath, literally to wash away the sinners . . .’