The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  Justus heads off in pursuit again but can no longer achieve top speed. The killer is racing through the streets toward Kasbah. He’s heading straight into a noisy crowd, so Justus can only hope that he gets tangled up there, perhaps even apprehended.

  But then a couple of cops whisk past him, zappers in hand, and suddenly he conceives of a worse outcome.

  He runs harder, overriding the pain, and enters a retail area. There’s a great deal of commotion at the far end. People are peeling aside, pressing back against store windows. And the killer himself is spinning around, looking for a way out, fending off people with a plastic bollard.

  But the cops, with zappers pointed and strobe lights flashing, are closing in.

  “Hey!” Justus can see what’s about to happen. “No! Hey!” He pounds forward, wincing, waving people out of the way—“Hey! Hey!”—but too late.

  A jagged, lightning-like bolt sizzles out from one of the zappers and blows the kid from his feet. He lands on his back, twitching, dropping the bollard. But the cops are still closing in, giving him all they’ve got.

  Justus sees, hears, and smells it all as he limps in. Jagged electron beams flashing through plasma channels. The sizzle of high-voltage electricity. The stink of burning ozone. The killer jolting and spasming. A sickening whap as the skin bursts from his face. A glug as his skin starts dripping from his body. The killer is exploding, melting, dying. And five or six cops are standing around with their triggers squeezed and expressions that are positively orgasmic.

  By the time Justus finally arrives, gasping for breath, it’s effectively over. The cops have spent their load. The kid, his limbs opening like the petals of a flower, is a scorched and bony mass—an over-roasted chicken. There are bodily fluids running over the pavement, and foul-smelling smoke.

  Justus looks around at the Sinners—they’re watching it all with disgust and anger. He looks at the cops—they’re joking among themselves. He sees some of his own investigation team—Cosmo Battaglia and Hugo Pfeffer—holstering their zappers. And Prince Oda Universe, unfurling from a squad car. And others he only knows by sight.

  And then he hears one of the cops:

  “Forensics!”

  It’s a mocking call, made in response to his own arrival. And when the other cops notice him, they join in:

  “Forensics!”

  “Forensics!”

  “Forensics!”

  Justus doesn’t meet their eyes, but he can hear them all chuckling under their breath. So he just nods stoically, accepting that enforced deference in just a day or two has given way to open disdain.

  32

  UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN LIVING in deep-space hibernation for the past twenty years, you’ll have heard the rumor that many of the remaining masterpieces in the Louvre—including The Wedding Feast at Cana, The Raft of the Medusa, and Liberty Leading the People—are actually meticulous copies, forged using the most sophisticated modern techniques and virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. When the Mona Lisa/La Gioconda was stolen for the third time, the story goes, the Ministère de la Culture resolved to remove the rest of the priceless masterworks and store them in a secret and impregnable location. The Louvre was accordingly closed for three months, using as cover the installation of a new security system, and the original paintings were spirited away with great stealth to their new refuge. Which, the story suggests, is some temperature-controlled, vacuum-sealed chamber deep under the surface of the far side of the Moon.

  You’ll also have heard the rumor—which in this instance is far more accurate—that the theft of the Mona Lisa was carried out by an ultra-daring band of high-society thieves popularly known as the Vesuvius Six. In their first and most celebrated job, the Six raided a billionaire’s mansion near Naples as the famous volcano was venting dangerous amounts of ash and poisonous gases. While everyone else was fleeing, the Six moved in. Risking suffocation or even incineration, they blew open the billionaire’s vaults, loaded up their van with gold and jewels, and escaped unchecked through deserted, smoke-choked streets. In the years afterward they executed similarly daring heists during severe floods in Paris (the Mona Lisa job), a cyclone in the Philippines, a wildfire in California, and an earthquake in Turkey. It eventually became clear that they’d simply compiled a huge list of target properties across the world—houses, banks, galleries—and waited for the harbingers of an evacuation-level catastrophe before swinging into action. But it remains unclear whether the Six are motivated most by the lure of riches, by the proximity to death, or just by the challenge of the game. There is even a rumor, suitably implausible, that they plan to return all their prizes one day to their legal owners, like sporting fishermen who release their catches back into the sea.

  The gang is led by an independently wealthy Irishman called Darragh Greenan. Greenan is not quite as charismatic as the actors who’ve portrayed him on-screen. Nor are the members of his gang quite as disparate, witty, and colorfully dressed. But they are certainly shrewd. They’re exceptionally skilled. They’re cool under pressure. They’re admirably fatalistic. And they have enough pride in their achievements to resent being dismissed as glorified looters.

  In time, they agree, they will tell their stories. They will set the record straight. They will allow people to admire them or revile them as they see fit. But for the time being, they’re remarkably secretive and tight-knit. They know they cannot carry out their heists forever, and are just waiting for the right moment to cash in their chips. They have no real idea when the moment might come—they keep finding stimulating new challenges—but the general consensus is that they will know immediately when it does, without having to say a word. It will be the moment when they’ve seen it all.

  Presently five of the original gang and a new member—one of the founding members is in prison for an unrelated theft—are on Farside. They’re spread out across a radar array, two each behind three ten-meter-high dishes. The dishes ostensibly belong to the Ministerio de Ciencia (the Spanish Ministry of Science), and indeed are fully operational and capable of legitimate astronomical readings. But in truth, they’re a cover. Just as the building in the middle of the array—what seems to be a standard observatory—is also a cover. Darragh Greenan parted with a considerable amount of money to learn this. And an even larger amount to obtain the blueprints for the so-called observatory, which extends deep beneath the lunar surface and contains six separate vacuum-sealed vaults. Within these vaults are the masterpieces—the genuine masterpieces—of the Prado in Madrid, including The Garden of Earthly Delights, Las Meninas, Death of the Virgin, and Half-submerged Dog. Because it is the Prado, not the Louvre, that exhibits counterfeit masterpieces, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture, not the French one, that elected to hide its treasures in response to the Mona Lisa theft.

  If they can make off with any one of those paintings, Greenan knows, the whole hugely expensive and highly dangerous operation will have been justified. It will be, in fact, their crowning achievement.

  The Vesuvius Six have been planning this job for twenty months. They’ve been on the Moon itself, disguised as a crew from the BBC’s Natural History Unit, for six weeks. They’ve practiced their procedures in microgravity. They’ve checked and rechecked all their equipment. They’ve run through their plans again and again. They’ve traveled across Farside to reconnoiter the territory around the secret Spanish base. And they have waited patiently, as usual, for a natural catastrophe.

  And when that moment came—in this case it was a powerful solar flare—they were more than ready. They immediately sabotaged a substation and two junction boxes on Farside’s central power and communications cable, then converged on the rendezvous point at Perepelkin Crater and raced to the Spanish base. And there they waited, a kilometer to the west, just behind three separate dishes, for the passage of the day-night terminator. Because it’s during the last light of the lunar day, with all its visual and thermal anomalies, that the security cameras and infrared sensors are most vulnerable t
o misreadings and malfunctions. Without doubt, they’ve been assured, this is the best time to launch an assault.

  Presently the last patches of sunlight vanish from the eastern horizon and darkness begins to swallow the base. Greenan lowers his electro-binoculars and signals to Noémi Ritzman, former Olympic bronze medalist for the Swiss shooting team (600m military rifle). In the past she’s fired cables though the narrowest of apertures, often from hundreds of meters away. But her task now is even more challenging.

  The target is the base’s auxiliary power unit, a full thousand meters distant. Rory Moncrieffe, the group’s tech expert, is helpfully “painting” it with a laser beam. Ritzman steps out from behind one of the radar dishes and raises her G88 Line-throwing Rifle. She stops breathing, tenses all her muscles, makes sure she has the target perfectly in the sights—fully accounting for the visual distortion of her helmet visor—and squeezes the trigger. Immediately a bolt streaks out. Encountering no air resistance, the bolt, trailing a piano wire, travels like a bullet at shoulder height. Two hundred meters. Four hundred meters. Six hundred meters. It’s still going. It’s barely dropping at all. Eight hundred meters. It’s nearing the power unit. A thousand meters. One thousand two hundred meters. It’s still going. It’s missed the target. It’s flying into the darkness beyond the base, still trailing the wire.

  There’s no time for regret. Ritzman has already picked up a backup rifle. She’s already training it on the target. She tenses herself again, and fires. A second bolt shoots across the surface. Two hundred meters. Four hundred. Six hundred. Eight hundred. The arrowhead plunges into the side of the power unit. Bull’s-eye.

  There is no time for self-congratulation either. The gang has only a few minutes in which to operate, assuming they haven’t been detected already. So Rory Moncrieffe shifts the laser, this time training it on the outer airlock door of the base. And Ritzman fires a bolt from a third rifle. Two hundred meters. Four hundred. Six hundred. Eight hundred. Bull’s-eye again. The Vesuvius Six now have two lines running a full kilometer to the Spanish base.

  Now it’s time for the explosives team—Branislav Parizek and Blade Testro—to move in. With winches the two men tighten the wires to the tension of guitar strings. Upon these wires they hang two motorized containers, each holding four kilograms of Semtex 6. They flick switches and the containers, like miniature cable cars, start creeping along the wires just a meter and a half above the surface. At about twenty kilometers an hour.

  For the Vesuvius Six, this is an agonizing wait. As the explosives pass into the darkness the gang waits for Rory Moncrieffe, wearing long-range night-vision goggles, to give the all-clear.

  And for a long time . . . nothing. Still nothing. The rest of the team snap on their own night-vision visors. They hoist their guns. They check their concussion grenades. They ready themselves for the assault. And they wait.

  Then Moncrieffe turns. He gives the thumbs-up. The explosives are in place. The lights are green.

  It’s now time for Darragh Greenan, raising his grenade launcher, to take command. Five of the team will charge in under the last rays of the setting sun, and when they’re halfway to the base Moncrieffe will send an electrical impulse through the wires to detonate the explosives. If all goes well, the auxiliary power unit—currently the base’s principal power source—will be knocked out immediately and the outer door of the base will be blown open. The team will blast through the airlock and a third security door and move swiftly to take over the control room, seal off the guards, and punch in the security codes to the vaults below. They expect to be in and out in fifteen minutes.

  So Greenan steps out from behind the dish. He looks at his team, twirls a gloved finger in the air, and gestures to the base. Showtime.

  But even as he does—before he can swing around and lead the charge—he notices the others looking past him with expressions of disbelief, even astonishment, on their faces.

  So he pulls up short. He turns, squinting into the darkness. And this is what he sees:

  A battered VLTV, not unlike their own, is ploughing across the rock-scattered terrain. With night-vision goggles it’s possible—just—to see through the windows. And what Greenan makes out is an extremely well-groomed figure sitting in the driver’s seat. And others in the vehicle who look like rag dolls. And glass that’s smeared in places with dark liquid—perhaps blood.

  But the driver doesn’t seem to notice the Vesuvius Six—or care. He just keeps driving north. His vehicle strikes the first piano wire and snaps it. Then continues to the second wire and snaps it as well. And he keeps going. Speeding soundlessly out of sight, at top pace, into the enveloping darkness. And then he’s gone.

  And now there are warning lights flashing on the Spanish base—an intrusion alert. Guards will be mobilizing inside. Defenses will be flying up. It’s no longer safe. And Darragh Greenan, seeing two years of planning evaporate as rapidly as the sunlight, has no time to brood. He wheels around and makes the exit signal. Game over. Back to the VLTV. Time to retreat. Time to pull out. To escape.

  The others follow the orders at once, mobilizing without any sort of protest. They say nothing aloud, of course, and would not be heard even if they did—they’re not using suit-links—but they all accept it tacitly. Greenan’s expression, and the emphatic way he made the signal, are all that needs to be said.

  It’s over. The Vesuvius Six have been defeated. It’s time to retire and write those memoirs. Assuming they get off the Moon alive.

  33

  QT BRASS’S HOUSE LOOKS like one of those church conversions that have become so popular on Earth. In fact, Justus has seen the place from his bedroom window and thought it was a church.

  At the door he’s greeted by Leonardo Brown and ushered up some stone steps, such as one might find in a cathedral, to a room with arched windows, paneled walls, and Renaissance paintings of devotional scenes. There’s a profusion of ferns and tropical flowers as well, along with the chatter of parrots—some of them flying directly onto the balcony to feed from seed dispensers—so the whole effect is like a monastery on the edge of the jungle.

  “Lieutenant, I’m so glad you came—sit down, please—can I get you a drink or something?—what happened to your foot?—oh God, this is a nightmare now—oh God, I don’t know where to begin.”

  She’s pacing back and forth in front of the window, talking in almost overlapping sentences. But this isn’t the same overconfident operator as before. She looks drained of color now, and her eyes are swollen, as if she’s been crying. She looks so emotional, in fact, that Justus briefly wonders if this is the same woman he met previously—if maybe that was a paid impersonator as well.

  “You were a close friend of Kit Zachary’s,” he says—a statement.

  She stops pacing and looks at him. “You found out about me and Kit?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Then you can also imagine how upset I’ve been?”

  “I guess so.”

  “What did you find out about him, exactly?”

  “I know he was your builder.”

  “Of course he was my builder. He was the builder. He was responsible for erecting half of Sin. Virtually all my building projects—God, he even built this place.”

  “On your instructions?”

  “He got half his work on my instructions. But he was much more than a builder to me. And much more than a friend. He was like a—no, I wouldn’t say a father—he was like an uncle to me. A confidant, an adviser, a collaborator.”

  Justus shrugs. “He had interesting proclivities.”

  “Of course he did. Most men in this place do. And he tried to get me into bed too, of course he did. But I put a stop to that, and it was never a problem again. Look, Lieutenant, that’s just the way it is around here. Don’t think any less of Kit because he was found in a cheap brothel with some . . . lady of the night. His tastes ran that way. God—I can’t believe he’s gone!”

  “Do you know any of the ‘ladies of th
e night’ he’d previously done business with?”

  “No, I don’t know anything about his girls—what was she, the one who was killed? One of those lookalikes, the Tablet said, cut to look like some teen movie star—well, I don’t want to know about it. But they’re cunning, the prostitutes in Sin—they’re often luring people into places on false pretexts. It’s not out of the ordinary at all. You should talk to her pimp if you want more information on that angle.”

  “I did.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He was rudely interrupted.”

  QT stops again and looks at him. “Oh my God—he was silenced too, wasn’t he? They—what did they do?”

  “They killed him.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “Right in front of me.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “And I chased the killer—that’s how I twisted my ankle. It’s a wonder you didn’t see it. We put on quite a circus act.”

  “Sorry,” she says, “but when I found out about Kit it hit me hard—really hard—and things really started falling into place. I had to get out of the office and reassess.”

  “Reassess what?”

  “Everything.”

  Justus isn’t completely convinced by her show of grief, but he’s relieved there’s any grief at all. For a fleeting moment he even thinks how vulnerable she looks—less formally dressed, emotional, not in complete control. But he drives the thought from his head. “Things started falling into place?” he asks.

  “Well, yes—how can I say this? Since we last spoke there was that terrorist statement—from The People’s Hammer; it’s all over the local media—and then I heard about Kit—and things started falling into place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She runs her hand through her hair. “I don’t know what I mean.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s difficult for me to say, Lieutenant—it’s difficult for me even to contemplate—you must understand—and I’m not even sure if I’m right—I don’t want to believe it—I really don’t want to believe it—but the possibility just won’t go away. And then, the more I think about it . . .”