by Hammond, Ray
Josh’s and Abbe’s relationship had become very public and had lasted for nearly two years and, in that time, Haley had met the handsome star dozens of times. He had bought a London home to be near his girlfriend and Haley was often asked to make up a foursome with one or another of the star’s actor cronies. Felicity had repeatedly urged her sister to ‘bag a star’ for herself, but Haley had just laughed the idea off. Over the years she had come to like the funny-silly movie actor who hid behind a tough-guy image and although she was well aware that he kept a large part of himself withdrawn from most social exchanges, she felt relaxed around him and accepted that his interest in her was genuine.
After a highly publicized split between Josh and Abbe, Haley did not see her film-star friend again for almost two years. She received occasional e-mails from him and it was clear from the little messages he wrote that he didn’t want to lose touch. In the meantime, Haley had joined the business desk of one of the few serious London newspapers that had survived the public’s migration to network news. It was a publication so well written and edited that it retained a large print circulation in addition to its more recent incarnation as a global network resource of international importance.
Then her editor had checked on the office rumour that Haley was ‘a close personal friend of Josh Chandler’. She had put him straight on that, but there was the prospect of an exclusive interview, and she had agreed to take the assignment, even though she wasn’t a show-business writer
Haley had gone to Claridge’s to meet her old friend and although the interview had started out quite formally, Josh had soon dispatched his publicist on some lengthy but pointless mission and had told his assistant to take the Hollywood equivalent of a hike. Within minutes of their being alone he was his old self again and then, with the absolute agreement that they were off the record, he told her how much he missed Abbe and how the public discussion of his latest relationship and speculations about marriage – with the scion of a French fashion empire – was ‘pissing me off’. Moments later he was being silly again and making her roar with laughter at his mimicry of other members of the cast of his most recent film. Haley genuinely liked him because he seemed to sense that his fame placed him in an impossible position and, despite the fact that a large part of his life no longer belonged to him, he was determined to have a genuine, unforced giggle as often as possible.
Haley wrote an absolutely truthful piece, far closer to the bone than she knew his publicists would like but, before showing it to anyone, she had sent a printout to Josh’s hotel under a confidential seal. She wasn’t sure whether her handwritten note would be sufficient to convey the envelope directly into the star’s hands, but that was what she intended.
Her ploy worked and her VideoMate had trilled the same evening. He was laughing – ‘Am I really that silly?’ He put his publicist’s camp voice on again, and laughed; then he was his macho co-star, complete with the mangled English. His mimicry was wicked. ‘So Josh Chandler is not allowed to change any of this?’ he asked pompously.
‘Not if he’s a good sport,’ challenged Haley. She knew she had been revealing, but not unkind.
‘Fine by me, Haley,’ he had said. That simple statement was to lead to a new career.
She guided her piece through the editorial process personally – to avoid the arbitrary excisions of sub-editing – and the article ran on the front page of the weekend features section. It was illustrated with a new portrait by a junior member of the British Royal Family who was unashamed of using his title and access privileges to develop his photographic career. The story was syndicated worldwide and she won three major journalistic awards that year.
Soon afterwards she had been approached by the languid Rosemary Long, belle littératrice, doyen of London’s female literary agents: a major publishing house wondered whether Haley could get access and approval to do the first ‘fully authorized’ biography of Josh Chandler. Haley had prevaricated: she doubted it. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of biography. She recalled Carlyle’s remark: ‘A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.’ But, after giving the project some thought, she began to see the idea as a challenge. She made the call to his personal location and was surprised and delighted to be put through almost immediately.
She had told him what she wanted and she heard the groan.
‘Not another one,’ he complained. ‘There’s too many already: all rubbish.’
‘Precisely,’ said Haley. ‘That’s why there’s room. I would aim to be definitive and to treat a film actor like a person, not an icon.’
He had agreed to ask ‘his people’ and, a week later, Haley had received an e-mail invitation to a private weekend party at Cliveden, a stately home twenty miles west of London. At the bottom Josh had added: ‘This is a wrap party. I’m staying on for a week. We can get started if you like.’
Then Haley had talked to Rosemary again. The problem was going to be finding the time to do the research and write the book. She talked the issue over with her editor: he had agreed that she could take a nine-month writing sabbatical but in return had shrewdly bargained for, and obtained, first serial publication rights for his paper’s weekend supplement at a fraction of their real market worth.
And so a friendship had been cemented and a best-seller created. The book was exceptionally well written – ‘a surprisingly literary and revealing insight’ enthused one reviewer – and had been studded with unpublished portraits and family photographs, many of them taken by former girlfriends: in addition to talking to Abbe, Haley had taken the trouble to find and interview all the star’s other long(ish)-term loves. Haley Voss became a ‘name’, someone publishers were keen to listen to. Rosemary just wished her author would choose anyone but Thomas Tye as her next subject.
‘I’ve got some news that will change their minds,’ announced Haley, as Rosemary lit another cigarette. ‘I’ve made contact with someone inside the company. Someone really close to Tye.’
Rosemary raised a well-maintained eyebrow.
‘I can’t say who it is, of course, but I think it will prove very useful.’
Rosemary looked up with a smile of thanks as the waiter delivered the fresh coffees. ‘Haley, you’re not hearing me. I think we have a real problem with this project.’
‘But it’s a fantastic story,’ the author objected. ‘Do you realize just how dominant Tye’s investments in biotechnology are? If you list them it becomes really scary.’
Rosemary wondered how long she should humour her client before explaining that her planned book was completely unpublishable – in any form.
Haley mistook her agent’s silence for interest and plunged on. ‘One, I think now that he’s proved it works he’s going to file for a patent on the human-ageing gene sequence. Think about it. If scientists have learned how to transfer the modified genes to a human . . .’
Haley’s voice tailed off into hoarseness. She was becoming aware that Rosemary’s attention was polite rather than enthralled.
‘He’s patented four new treatments from the bloody muscular-dystrophy sequence,’ she continued stubbornly. ‘And the active genes covering IQ development, and he’s got a new genetic therapy for curing colour blindness. He’s got a whole range of patents on the human cosmetic genes – you know, eye colour, height and so on.’ She paused, willing her agent to see the issues. ‘He runs the world’s largest human-organ farm. We can’t have one man, or one company, controlling the future of the human race.’
Rosemary shook her head. ‘But that’s just conjecture, Haley. There’s nothing illegal in what the Tye Corporation or Thomas Tye has done.’
‘So why are they trying to gag me?’ asked Haley, her voice cracking.
‘It’s because of what you imply,’ Rosemary replied gently. ‘Calling the book Why Thomas Tye Must Be Stopped is totally pejorative. You suggest the man’s going to behave irresponsibly and dangerously. We simply don’t know if that’s true.’
‘Do you want me to
find another agent?’ croaked Haley, her chin jutting.
*
As he walked beside the red carpet Jack Hendriksen appeared the same as always: confident, calm, professional and resourceful. But inside he was not the same. Something had died for him as he had digested what he had learned from the British biographer. Suddenly, he hated his work and his artificial life on this absurd, unreal island. He had made a massive mistake in joining international business: he hated the total obsession with money and power and the lengths to which the global players would go to obtain them. Now he couldn’t wait to get out. He would take up his younger brother’s offer and join him in his yacht brokerage in Florida. That operation, at least, still depended on the human qualities of personal reputation and trust.
The president’s jet was a new generation Russian-European Airbus, still subsonic but with immense range and comfort. Jack waited at the foot of the stairs for President Orlov’s head of security to descend. He hadn’t met the tall Georgian, but they had conferred by wraparound videoconference. The perennially impoverished Russian Federal government hadn’t yet installed the Tye Corporation’s new HVC systems. Ordinarily, Pierre would have handled executive security but Tom had wanted this visit to be overseen personally by Jack, as an acknowledegment of the visitor’s status.
There was a movement in the open doorway and the security chief appeared in the garish, flat-capped uniform of a full colonel of the Russian Federal Army. He tripped lightly down the stairs, gave a small bow, removed a white glove and extended his right hand. His greeting was instantly translated by Jack’s VideoMate and delivered through his radio-linked earpieces. The colonel was similarly equipped.
Jack assured the colonel that all was secure on the island and that ‘Tom’ was waiting to greet President Orlov. The Tye Corporation’s informal president was ‘Tom’ (sometimes ‘TT’) to his vast domestic and international staff, ‘Tom’ to the adoring public and everybody else, and only on the most official occasions ‘Mr Tye’.
The colonel nodded his understanding, turned and trotted back up the aircraft steps. Jack followed him and entered the aircraft. Contra-security on presidential and government aircraft was always a ticklish procedure. Every nation regarded its government’s aircraft as an extension of its sovereign territory and although Jack would have preferred to have his team sweep the plane before authorizing disembarkation – especially in view of his previous experience of Russian manners gained during a covert action against members of their industrial mafiya – he had had to settle for the agreed arrangements. For its part, the Russian delegation had agreed to leave all directed and ambient recording devices behind. Hope Island was both sovereign territory and classified space.
A quick glance to right and left convinced him that superficially everything appeared normal and he turned to incline his head in the direction of the large leather sofa occupied by the president. Then he froze. Seated beside the Russian leader was Anton Vlasik, a man the world believed to be safely behind bars.
Jack turned to the colonel. ‘Mr Vlasik isn’t on the list we approved. I am therefore unable to allow him to disembark.’ He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.
Vlasik, the most powerful, most notorious of Russian criminal chiefs, had controlled two Russian Federal banks that had mysteriously collapsed, taking with them over fourteen billion dollars of Western loans and tens of thousands of life-savings accounts of ordinary Russians. Jack had later read that he had received a twenty-year sentence for fraud. But now he was here.
The colonel shrugged. ‘Mr Tye has approved . . .’Jack waved the explanation away as Tye was already talking in his ear. He turned away from the colonel and the Russian party to listen.
‘It’s OK, Jack, I knew he was coming. He’s been pardoned and he’s financing part of this deal.’
Jesus! ‘Tom, I haven’t done any clearance or vetting for him. I haven’t arranged for anyone to escort him. Why on earth didn’t you . . .?’
‘You would only have been difficult about it, Jack,’ Tye soothed in his ear. ‘I know you’re over-sensitive about such things. Now, let’s get them out of the plane.’
The communication link snapped off. Jack turned to face the visitors, hoping his face hadn’t reddened as he fought to swallow such a public undermining of his role. Vlasik had now risen from the sofa, a broad grin on his face.
Jack nodded curtly to the Russian president and walked out of the plane, breathing deeply to re-establish self-control. The colonel emerged beside him and they took up their positions at the top of the steps. As Jack gave clearance for the welcoming party, he watched a crocodile of Tye Corporation-designed electric Volantes – vehicles that looked rather like elongated golf carts – swing away from the reception building and head towards the aircraft. His head-up display confirmed that his team, with their heavily armed back-up, were in station on the rooftop of the reception building and at strategic points around the perimeter of the floating spaceport.
As this mini-motorcade drew up at the foot of the steps, Jack felt rather than saw the small figure of President Mikhail Nikolayevich Orlov arrive beside him in the doorway. Thomas Tye swung out of the first car, followed by Pierre who, for today, was acting as his personal garde-du-corps.
With complete disregard for diplomatic protocol, Tye bounded up the steps. He stopped and extended his hand to the sixty-six-year-old leader who, the world would assume, was the head of state least likely to pay a visit to Hope Island. There had been many occasions in the past when Tom had publicly criticized the Russian Federation for its poor environmental record but, as the world was also forced to agree, Orlov’s insistence on using his nation’s fuel resources as he himself saw fit was finally beginning to make Russia a meaningful economic power again. Then the tycoon turned to Vlasik, turning his formal handshake into a warm bear-hug.
Tye was wearing his customary open-necked white shirt with button-down collar and a pair of crisp, pleated-front khaki trousers. He had pulled his hair back and for once wore neither mask nor gloves. Hope Island’s climate had bestowed a gentle tan and his well-toned muscles were discernible under his shirt. In the early-afternoon sunlight Thomas Tye looked like a young film star.
Jack shuddered inside.
*
A thousand kilometres above Auckland, New Zealand, two station-maintenance thruster valves opened for three seconds. The pressure exerted amounted to only .35 grams per square centimetre but ESQ173, one of 400 giant satellites of the Tye LaserNet network, began a slow roll on its axis. The seventy-metre-long spacecraft and its 3,400 kilograms of laser guns, capture dishes, reflectors, solar panels and cameras was rotated out of alignment and instantly became useless. The digital processing and storage systems that were housed inside its pressurized compartment became deaf and blind as they lost their links to the outside world.
A hundred kilometres away the processing systems on ESQ174, the next hub on Earth’s highest-capacity data network, went into overdrive as they automatically re-routed the vast streams of laser-borne information to other satellites in the quadrant and warned Orbit Management of the malfunction. Insomniac observers in the darkness below were treated to a rapidly changing laser light show as the aerial networks compensated and healed themselves automatically. Then the valves of ESQ174’s adjustment thrusters – the motors periodically deployed to maintain precise orbit station – also opened as the thrusters fired.
Two seconds later the same thing happened to four adjustment thrusters on a nearby Soyuz satellite of the FreePlanet network.
Standing by the lakeside in the warm, sulphurous night air, Constable Terry Nobel of the Rotarua Community Police Service scratched his head. New Zealand’s night sky had gone dark for the first time in five years. The soft brilliance of the star clouds of Carina, Canopus and Sirius shone again as the white misty glory of the Milky Way slowly regained its old dominance.
Chapter Three
President Orlov and his large delegation were getting the full tour, co
urtesy of the island state’s premier citizen. First they were driven around the sprawling, beautifully maintained university campus. Their stately progression along broad gravel drives took them past neoclassical fountains, vast lawns of dense green pearlwort grass, world-class ambient and active sculpture and acres of low-rise pyramids of steel and smoked glass that shone in the fierce afternoon sun.
In the distance, large man-made lakes glinted and beyond those they could see mature cedar trees with high umbrella canopies that had been imported from the savannah plains of East Africa. These Cedrus Libani provided a distant backdrop without obstructing the clear view out to sea. The consulting evolutionary psychologists claimed this would provide visual comfort for the humans who strolled in the grounds. Their theory was that the long views provided reassurance that predators were not close and such knowledge would awaken dim noetic echoes of ease and contentment that have filtered down from humanity’s distant evolutionary past.
Thomas Tye told the president that more than 10,000 people were permanently resident on Hope Island, a population made up of the staff and families of the Tye Corporation, associated companies and research facilities. He added that another 4,000 workers had been imported from Mexico and the Caribbean islands to provide domestic services and staff for the restaurants, leisure complexes and other public facilities. He didn’t add that even the most lowly of the imported workers were required to sign lifetime non-disclosure agreements and media gags in return for signing-on financial bonds that, should an ex-employee ever breach the agreement, would become instantly repayable in addition to any other remedies the company might seek. Neither did he add that the corporation was rapidly running out of development space on the island, a problem that had been occupying the executive board and its international lawyers for many months.