by Barry Klemm
“You are not one for formalities, then, Christine,” Luigi said lightly.
“The Apocalypse is eight months away. There’s no time for formality.”
“My thinking exactly.”
“And that of your masters, presumably, or else they wouldn’t have sent you,” Chrissie said jubilantly.
“The matter of which of us was likely to be able to communicate with you most effectively was the basis of their choice, I understand.”
“Well I think they made a very good choice,” Chrissie grinned.
Luigi Valerno was not so deeply engrossed in the faith that he did not recognise the fact that she had made a pass at him. “It’s very good of you to say so,” he said, but she could tell he was flustered.
Chrissie smiled jubilantly. It amazed even her to realise how good she was at this sort of thing. “Explain to me precisely the nature of your mission.”
“Liaison. Between yourself and the Holy See.”
“I’ll accept any help I can get. In case you haven’t noticed, we have an escalating situation going on. Or don’t heathen Japanese count.”
“There are many Catholics in Japan, as everywhere else, Christine,” Luigi said, beginning to relax a little. “And, in any case, let me assure you that the Vatican is not so narrow minded that it imagines it needs to serve only the faithful. We wish to offer whatever help you need, to whomsoever needs it, as best we can.”
“On what terms?” Chrissie asked slyly.
“I should imagine that you would be dictating the terms,” he said with bland generosity.
“I don’t. The circumstances do that.”
As he absorbed that, the cardinal lowered his tone. “Of course. Tell me, this matter of the Apocalypse..?”
“Yes.”
Valerno was not sure how to proceed. Plainly they were getting down to the point before he was quite ready for it. “Needless to say, His Holiness has expressed some concern...”
“As well he might.”
“I’m sure you can see the difficulty confronting His Holiness. There is a question of the basis upon which the date was chosen.”
“Oh Luigi, come on. It’s a matter of faith.”
That perplexed him. He paused twice as he searched out the appropriate reply. “As are all things. But in this case, we were wondering about the data upon which the idea is based.”
“You’ll need to talk to Professor Thyssen about that.”
Luigi Valerno plainly did not want to talk to such a pagan. “Did he verify the date?”
“He hasn’t questioned it.”
“That’s hardly the same thing...”
“It is for a man like Harley. He questions everything. He is going along with my work. If he had doubts, I’m sure he would have expressed them.”
Valerno, through this, was contemplating the sea gulls that lined the roof at this time of day. To them, he explained. “Still, surely you understand how our independent experts might wish to make their own study of the data.”
“You only have to ask.”
Now he turned to look her right in the eye. “I’m asking you.”
“You must ask the professor. It is his data.”
Luigi was stumped. His face contorted with the effort of finding the right words as he continued. “Professor Thyssen is... I understand... not an easy man to deal with.”
“Rubbish. He’ll talk to anyone willing to give him the opportunity. Even His Holiness.”
“His Holiness, on the other hand, has matters of protocol and ... other matters... to take into consideration.”
“And an audience with a renegade like Harley would not go down well with the faithful, hmm?”
Valerno flinched. “It is the matter not of what actually takes place but how it might be perceived. You must understand—the slightest suggestion of Papal approval of Professor Thyssen will create an ill-balance in the situation...”
He tailed off, unsure how the sentence ended, if it did.
“The data is there to be had. All His Holiness has to do is ask.”
Valerno took a very deep breath before going on. The whole conversation seemed to be becoming increasingly painful to him. “To do so would give a credence to the prediction that... without having had the opportunity to study the data... the Papacy would find... it could not accommodate with comfort...”
“I’m sure it can all be arranged in a manner which is comfortable for His Holiness.”
Valerno’s face lit up and he raised a declamatory finger. “Ah. Now we are to the nub of it.”
“Are we indeed?”
“Obviously, His Holiness would not, in all conscience, be able to offer whole hearted public support for Professor Thyssen.”
“Hardly.”
“But perhaps the right word in the right official ear might go a long way to restoring Professor Thyssen to his former position within the project.”
She wanted to laugh. This silly stuffy man was so polite, even when broaching Papal corruption. But he was rather sexy, for all that...
“In return for which, the Vatican gets full disclosure,” she said, only to assure him she understood and was not anywhere near as shocked as she should have been.
“Exactly.”
“You might tell his Holiness that the idea seems most satisfactory.”
“Then I will see what can be done. After all, time is short.”
“Indeed it is. Just two hundred and forty days, in fact.”
*
It was when Lieutenant Jackovitch made reference to hostages that Felicity was suddenly possessed of a profound enlightenment—a moment of clarity, as someone once said. They had flown her to San Diego as an expert witness in a preliminary hearing to determine what charges be laid in regard to the ‘unsanctioned and inappropriate use of USS Barton’ as Jackovitch termed it. Apparently, Captain Maynard had taken full responsibility for all of the actions of his crew and faced Court Martial on an array of charges but of course it wasn’t as simple as that. Every one of the crew had breached regulations in some way or other, and the trial of each individually was not an impossible outcome.
But that was the US Navy’s problem—hers was that no one listened when she tried to explain that she actually had no qualification and no expertise to offer as a witness.
“We need you to help us understand what happened, ma’am,” Lt Jackovitch explained in his initial telephone call. Felicity wearily packed her bags and went.
“We all expected you to rush off to Japan anyway,” Wendell said, no less wearily.
“And who did you imagine would pay for it?” she asked.
“Who is paying for it?”
“The US Navy, as it happens.”
“A Supermum’s work is never done,” Gavin remarked dryly.
“Oh stop it, you lot,” she grumbled generally at her far too perfectly understanding family. “I already feel such a fake.”
She flew to San Diego, a hot ugly city although since all she saw of it was the Air Force and then Navy Bases, maybe she was judging harshly. Lieutenant Ryan Jackovitch was a handsome young man, too handsome to take seriously, too young to possibly defend any case competently. She had always thought casting actors like Tom Cruise in such roles was just Hollywood marketing—now she realised it was factual. He collected her from the plane and they rode in a chauffeur-driven Navy limousine, sitting a mile apart in the back seat as could be done only in American cars.
“I really don’t see how I can help,” Felicity insisted. “Everything I know is well documented. I’m just a Physician with no specialist field. No one will take me seriously.”
“I was assured that you are the only specialist in the field of the Shastri Effect, Ma’am.”
“I can give you the names of a number of real specialists who are all far more qualified than me.”
It turned out that Jackovitch already had the names of her former team of specialists and several of them had already agreed to give evidence. They were readily availab
le, being currently based in Hawaii because that was where the former Project Earthshaker control group were currently stationed.
“They wanted to study the crew of USS Barton in relation to the control group, in order to assure themselves that there would be no ill effects,” Jackovitch said.
“Then they must have expected the pilgrimage.”
“They did. They just didn’t expect them to hijack their own ship.”
“The Pilgrims will always make their way to the focal point by the best means of travel available.”
“There!” Jackovitch cried jubilantly. “You see? Expert knowledge. If the hospital staff and security forces had known that in advance, the ship could never have been stolen.”
Felicity groaned. “Surely one of the medical team knew that.”
“They are each experts in their own fields. It’s you who has the overall picture. That’s why we need your evidence.”
“No one will believe me. I don’t even quite believe what I know myself.”
It was true, Right then, she was wondering just exactly how she knew that the Pilgrims chose the best means of transport available. No one had ever said so. It was just... well... obvious. If so, her so-called expert knowledge was no more than a bunch of unfounded guesses. There had been no study of how the Pilgrims arranged their transportation, there was no proof that her statement was correct. She had just said it, as if it was a profound truth, but really it was all her own speculation and hearsay, based mostly on Brian Carrick’s propensity for stealing trucks. She shuddered to think what a good prosecutor might do with evidence like that.
“But everyone says you are the one who understands it best,” Jackovitch persisted.
“Everyone being my former medical team?”
“Yes ma’am. Them, and the hostages,” Jackovitch added.
For a moment, Felicity searched her memory to assure herself that no one had said anything about hostages before. They had not. There was an inexplicable cold chill running about in her bloodstream as she sat staring at him. “What hostages?”
“The hostages... I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t realise you hadn’t time to see the official report on the incident. The crew took hostages on the ship with them. Civilian hostages. In fact, the control group.”
Felicity pressed down an invisible force between them with the palms of her hands. “Go slower. You’re confusing me.”
“The former Project Earthshaker control group were in the same hospital as the crew of the Barton in Pearl, although on a different floor. They were, of course, properly quarantined. The crew took the control group as hostages, on to the ship with them. That’s the worst offence—not just hijacking the ship but worse, taking civilian hostages along for the voyage.”
“But they were all going the same way anyway.”
“The Navy doesn’t like unauthorised civilians on their warships.”
“But don’t you understand. The control group weren’t hostages. They just all went together, because they were all pilgrims.”
“That’s what we need you to explain...” Jackovitch was saying.
But he stopped when he saw the way she rocked back in the seat, as if she had been shot. A bullet was impossible since they were surrounded by bulletproof glass but nevertheless her brain seemed to explode internally but the projectile that struck her was purely one of enlightenment.
Suddenly, she was thumping on the glass at the point directly behind the driver’s head. “Stop the car! Here! Now!”
Her agitation caused Jackovitch to respond immediately on the intercom and then as the car slowed, he asked if she was ill. But she waved him off. “Stay here. I just need a moment alone,” she gasped and was out of the car before it fully stopped moving.
As she stumbled on the rough edge of the road, she barely took in the surroundings. They were certainly not worth stopping for. Rubble and possibly garbage littered the scene with flocks of screeching seagulls, and the place smelled to high heaven with rotting weed and dumped fuel. Beyond the cyclone wire fence, a huge aircraft carrier was moored out across the stretch of water along with several other warships—one of them perhaps the delinquent USS Barton.
Felicity walked a little way from the car, rubbing her eyes and cheeks, her head bowed. Behind, Jackovitch remained, watching from the car, willing to allow her some dignity for he assumed she was discomforted by her rushed journey. But she wasn’t. It was all because her brain was screaming at her. Stop. Think this through. Work it out.
She was smiling when she finally returned. Jackovitch climbed out of the car to meet her. “Are you okay, ma’am,” he asked with genuine concern. Perhaps he wasn’t sure that he hadn’t offended her in some way.
“I’m sorry. It just came to me and I wanted to get it clear in my head before we said or did anything else.”
“Get what clear?”
“Something I didn’t understand,” she said and pressed her fingers on his lapels. “Now listen. I want to make sure we get this straight. The so-called hostages weren’t hostages at all. The control group took the sailors to the ship.”
“Pardon, ma’am,” Jackovitch gasped, sticking to his more formal mode until he got a better grasp of this mad woman.
“You’ve got it the wrong way around. The control group kidnapped the sailors.”
Jackovitch blanched at the thought of how this was going to go over in the court room. “You can’t be serious. How could..?”
“Shut up and listen,” Felicity snapped. Anything to stop him calling her ma’am again, but she knew she must concentrate and get it right. “When the linkage occurs for the first time, after the sleepers wake, they go into an ambulatory catatonic state. They just head off blindly in the direction of the focal point. You remember the human lemmings in the Canary Islands.”
“Yes, ma’am. We thought that was an exception case...”
“Yes I know. So did I. We white supremacists will never be entirely free of our racism. We all assumed it was a bunch of dumb native fishermen, sucked in by their voodoo or some such primitive nonsense. But it wasn’t. Lorna Simmons did exactly the same thing. She walked straight off a pier and fell in Auckland harbour.”
“She doesn’t admit that on television,” Jackovitch grinned.
“The truth is, on the occasion of their first linkage, each of them wandered off blindly, zombie-fied or whatever you want to call it. If they don’t get run over by a bus or fall off a cliff, it’s just plain lucky.”
“And you think the crew of the Barton did too?”
“I know they did. But, you see, at the second post sleeper linkage, there’s no zombie effect. The pilgrim now knows where they are going and why, and they lead the first timers.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“That’s why the Italian pilgrims all followed Christine Rice. All of them. Even the ones that weren’t Catholics. They all went with her. But the second time they all went without her.”
“Some of them still died—in the snow.”
“I know. But that was because they were caught in the blizzard. So there’s your defence, Lieutenant. The sailors didn’t hijack the Barton. The control group did.”
“Well, I’ll be god-damned… Oh, excuse me, Ma’am.”
“You call me Ma’am one more time, I’ll belt you one.”
Jackovitch needed a moment or two to recover, at all levels. He went to his most commonly used line, just to be sure he was on safe ground. “But can you prove it?”
“I think so. If there had been just one experienced pilgrim present, the Canary Island fishermen wouldn’t have gone off the cliffs. They would have followed him or her down the path to their boats instead.”
“I just don’t see how we are gonna convince the Court Martial of this.”
“That isn’t the problem. The proof will come eventually. Right now the worry is how to get enough pilgrims into Japan to stop 16,000 sleepers from walking into the sea.”
Jackovitch was leaning on the car, shakin
g his head in disbelief. “Well, ma’... um, I mean, Doctor Campbell. I don’t know whether this is gonna help our defence or not, but it sure as hell proves one thing. You do know a damned lot more about this than everyone else.”
*
The interrogations had been polite and respectful at all times, much to his surprise. Joe Solomon must have been one of the few people who could be edified by a hands-on tour of several of the world’s major correctional facilities. The worst had been in East Perth lock-up, where he had been taken initially to await the arrival of FBI agents from America. That had been a barbaric place, brutal and full of drunks and thugs but because he was in a wheelchair, no one bothered him. He made a court appearance in which the FBI asked for extradition to assist them with their inquiries and this was immediately granted because Joe instructed his QC to say that he agreed and was willing to assist in any way possible.
Within a week, they flew him to Washington. There they kept him in sparse rooms within the FBI building and rolled him out most days to one of several conference rooms where government officials questioned him, usually in an informal manner. At first he denied everything and then took the 5th Amendment and they argued for two weeks whether that was valid. It wasn’t, since Australia has no Bill of Rights attached to it’s constitution.
But the FBI was hamstrung from the start—once they went through those records he had allowed to continue to exist, they discovered he had accounted for every cent of the funding that the project had received officially, and there was no trace of the covert funds, nor of the slush funds that had evolved from money the project made itself.
“You keep very fine books, Mr. Solomon,” the judicator said at one point. “It’s a pleasure to investigate you.”
Throughout it all, bureaucrats mulled over what to admit to and possibilities and consequences and it was probably a great relief to them when Harley sent a lawyer to organise his release. There were no charges at all, in the end. To prove something stolen, first you needed to prove its existence.