Tag - A Technothriller

by Simon Royle

  At the top of my back swing, just as I was about to unleash, Sir Thomas coughed.

  I stopped the swing just in time, leaving the driver held high in the air behind my back. I didn’t turn around or say anything, but slowly lowered the club to the ground and addressed the ball again. I cleared my mind and swung. I crunched it as Call wanted, easily clearing the bunkers on the right, the ball disappearing over the crest of the slope.

  “So you joined the military at sixteen. Before that what was life like for you? Do you have any material from that time, letters or images?”

  “Yes, I do have some things. I will send them to you. I have had everything digitized. Life was difficult with the death of my parents when I was twelve. I am sure you know what a loss that is to a person. But for you, not so much perhaps, as you never knew your parents. But for me, I lost them when I was twelve and that was not so easy.” Sir Thomas smiled at me, and I thought I could kill him there and then. The thought shocked me, and he saw something in my eyes because he spoke again. “Well, of course, I don’t mean it was easy for you, Jonah, losing your parents – of course not. What I mean is that I knew my parents and therefore I lost what I had known and that is perhaps more painful.”

  I recovered myself and smiled at him.

  For a man of seventy-five, Sir Thomas was still fit and strong, hitting his drive further than most golfers of thirty-five do, but he still didn’t clear the hill.

  “Nice drive,” I said softly and fell in step with him as, driver in hand, he began to walk up the slightly sloping fairway.

  “The military became my family, though of course I couldn’t join straight away – I was too young. My brother, your father, well he was busy with the estate and the family businesses so most of the time I stayed with the cadets. As soon as I could, I joined up. Later of course UNPOL became my family, but when your father died and the estates and the family businesses all passed to me, that is when I thought of creating the Oliver Foundation.”

  “Why gifted children only? Why doesn’t the Oliver Foundation accept any child who has lost its parents?”

  “Well, there’s no shortage of care for orphaned children in our world. Indeed, the care given is superb. However, the opportunity for gifted children, or even just above averagely intelligent children, to thrive in that environment is extremely limited with the result that their potential is lost to the world. Over the years, Oliver children have risen to positions of great influence.”

  “Was the Oliver Foundation started because of the loss of your brother and because you were alone then?”

  “Well, I wasn’t quite alone was I? I lost a brother but gained a nephew. But yes, losing my brother was the influence that led to the Oliver Foundation.” He suddenly side-stepped towards me, and reaching out, put his arm nearly around my shoulders. He missed because he was quite a bit shorter than me, and instead squeezed my elbows awkwardly. I stiffened involuntarily at his touch and he stumbled away, withdrawing his arm and clearing his throat.

  “We must do this more often, Jonah. It is one of the hopes of my having more self-time that I’ll be able to spend more time with you.”

  “Yes, Uncle, we will. This memoir idea of yours is a great way for me to get to know and appreciate the life you have led. I don’t believe that I have ever thanked you properly for the life that I have enjoyed, and you must allow me to make that up to you somehow.” He smiled at my words and kept walking.

  “Of course I will, Jonah, but raising you has been my pleasure. As you know I had some regrets that you showed no interest in a military career but you have made me very proud with your success in the legal field.”

  We walked on in silence for a bit. I glanced behind me to see how close Call was to me.

  “Exactly where were you when I was born, Uncle?”

  “Huh, let me see. You were born on the 29th of October, 2075. I was in Australia at the time – yes, that’s right, official UNPOL business, top secret. But I returned to England the moment I heard the news of your birth.”

  Sir Thomas hit a good second shot but still had about one hundred sixty to the green. I took a six iron and played safe just short of the water, leaving me with an easy chip shot onto the rolling green.

  “Thirty-four years ago and still top secret – that must have been quite some business you were on?”

  “Yes, it was. Well without giving away too much I can say that it had to do with the assassination of Bo Vinh.”

  “Really! But Bo Vinh died the 1st of January 2075 and this was more than a nine months later, right?”

  “Yes, correct, but something came up that provided a lead in the case and I had to follow that up personally. One of my great regrets, perhaps the greatest, is not finding the coward who killed Bo Vinh. I live in hope that one day we will uncover the truth behind the firing of that anti-tank weapon at Bo Vinh’s convertible.”

  We walked in silence for a little while.

  “And this lead, was it significant?”

  “No. It turned out to be a dead end.”

  “I see. So getting back to when you were cleared in the court martial over the annihilation of Bucharest, what did you do next?”

  We reached his ball. It wasn’t in a good lie. Sir Thomas grunted and looked at the green ahead. An island green connected by a small wooden bridge with low railings and surrounded by a moat twenty yards wide. The sides of the green where they reached the water sloped sharply down hill and anything landing five feet from the edge would roll into the moat.

  Sir Thomas looked at me and grinned, “No guts, no glory eh,” and took out a seven iron. I smiled back at him, thinking how I could probe deeper.

  Sir Thomas lined up his shot and I stood waiting. He swung and hit it, the ball crisply rising up high, then sharply dipping as it passed the wooden bridge and hit the green. He’d hit the ball so cleanly it had lots of back spin on it, and Sir Thomas’s proud grin vanished as the ball spun off the green, reached the sharply sloping edge and trickled down into the moat.

  “Blast,” shouted Sir Thomas and slashed the seven iron into the dirt in front of him.

  We walked up another fifty yards to where my ball was lying. I had a short hundred yard pitch shot – again I had played this shot a hundred times. Nine times out of ten I could shoot a birdie on this hole, with exactly the shots I’d used so far.

  “Thanks, Call.” I took the sand wedge that Call had already selected from the bag before I’d asked for it, and adopting a wide stance, lined up the shot. I cleared my head getting ready for some distraction out of Sir Thomas and took my back swing. Too late to stop this time. As I swung, Sir Thomas’s Devcaddy reversed sharply, rattling the clubs in his bag. I was prepared this time and followed through, hitting the ball cleanly and dropping it past the pin by about twelve feet. It bounced once and spun back towards the hole, coming to a rest with a four foot putt for me to make.

  I held my follow through sand wedge high across, my right elbow pointed at the flag and Call’s voice rebuked Sir Thomas’s Devcaddy. “Devcaddy violation, course rule Fifteen B. One more incident and you cost your player a stroke.”

  “Dammed Devcaddy. Sorry about that, Jonah, must be something wrong with its circuit.”

  “That’s OK, Sir Thomas. No guts, no glory, eh?” and I smiled at him. His apologetic smile froze on his face and his eyes searched mine for guile, but I held his eyes with an innocent look that I’d had years to perfect. Finally he smiled, sure of my innocence, but suspecting that I might just be making a fool of him. I wanted him unbalanced, not thinking straight.

  He dropped a new ball on the ground in front of him and I waited while he chipped onto the green. He still had a long putt to make. I didn’t say anything. When he’d finished his shot we crossed over the bridge, me following him, and as we walked onto the green I said, “So after Bucharest, what did you do?” and went and marked my ball.

  “Yes, well as you know the immediate aftermath of the war was a troubled time. There was a great sh
ake up in how military forces were organized, and the UK along with most of NATO was deployed to manage the camps. Those were awful times, Jonah. People dying of secondary diseases caused by the fallout. People starving, begging for food. I was sent to the camps outside of Boston, in what was then the United States of America. At the time I must confess that I thought it ironic that a British army lieutenant would be put in charge of a camp in Boston, the birthplace of the American revolt against the British Empire. But it was a small camp, just three thousand people, and Boston was a wasteland.”

  He took his putt and missed. He was still outside my putt so I stayed where I was and let him putt again, looking at his ball all the time. He putted and missed again, rolling past the hole by about a foot.

  “Pick it up, Uncle,” I said, and walked over to place my ball on its mark. I cleared my mind. Just as I started my back swing I heard the sound of Sir Thomas taking off his golf glove, the Velcro ripping loud as he pulled it off. I held the stroke steady and swung through the ball following it with my putter as it rolled forward and dropped into the center of the cup.

  “That’s three in a row, Uncle. Would you like to go double or quits on the next hole?”

  “Double or quits? Yes, all right. Why not? Your luck can’t hold forever.”

  I laughed and we walked up to the thirteenth, a short one hundred and thirty yard par three again with an island green.

  Call held out the pitching wedge for me as I dropped my ball on the green and nudged it forward with my toe to find a slightly better lie.

  I took a nice steady slow back swing and swung through the ball hitting it crisply. The ball arced up and landed on the middle of the green, bouncing twice and stopping right next to the flag. I looked over and smiled at Sir Thomas.

  “Just lucky I guess.”

  He made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt and walked on to the tee. I waited until he’d finished setting up and then just when he was about to take his back swing I said, “What do you know about the death of my parents?”

  He stood still with the club face at the ball and not moving said, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I know that they died in a car accident a month after I was born but I mean how did they die? What happened? I’d like to know the details.”

  His shoulders dropped a little and he said, “It was a long time ago, Jonah. Those details are just useless bits of information now. Let it go. Your parents loved you. That’s what matters. Hold on to that.”

  As he took his back swing I let out a long breath loud enough for him to hear. He thinned the shot, sending the ball flying straight off the tee and landing in the water. I set off along the path beside the lake; the same lake that I’d walked past the first day I met Gabriel.

  “I think the drop area is on the other side, Uncle.” He didn’t say anything but I heard the thunk as he slammed the club into his Devcaddy’s hand.

  As we walked along the path, Sir Thomas behind me, I said, “So how long were you in Boston?”

  He didn’t say anything. When I glanced behind I saw that he was red-faced and muttering to himself.

  We reached the thirteenth green and Sir Thomas dropped another ball onto the ground. He looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before, and I thought I knew all of his moods.

  “I was there for eighteen months,” he said, and chipped his ball onto the green. I walked over to my ball, waiting for him to say that I could pick it up, but he didn’t. I walked past my ball and using one hand tapped the putter’s face to the ball. It dropped in the cup.

  Before the fourteenth was a drinks stop. A cylindrical cement block with a counter set into it, and a couple of refrigerators behind the woman serving. She smiled as I approached. On the counter were hard-boiled eggs, bananas, and fried chicken legs.

  “Chicken leg and a Tiger beer please.” I turned back to see my uncle coming up the path behind me and entering the seating area of the drinks stop. I said, “Uncle, would you like anything?”

  “Just a beer, Jonah,” he replied and I held up two fingers as the woman collected the beers from the refrigerator. Sir Thomas took off his peak cap and laid it on the table in front of him, putting his glove and golf ball inside it. The Devcaddies took the path around the back of the drinks stop and trundled over to wait by the fourteenth tee, stopping under the branches of a large flame tree. I looked over at them and could see that Call’s lens eye was still turned in the direction of Sir Thomas and me.

  I collected the two beers and the chicken leg wrapped in a paper napkin and went to sit at the table where Sir Thomas was mopping his brow. The evening had turned muggy, and looking at the dark clouds gathered to the north somewhere around Changi, I thought we might be in for a thunderstorm later.

  “Have you had any success in tracing the terrorists, Uncle? If it’s confidential and you can’t tell me, I understand....”

  Sir Thomas sighed and laid the handkerchief balled up in his fist on the white iron trellis table. “Well yes, it’s confidential but I know I can trust you. You’re practically one of us after all. And the answer is that we have some leads but nothing solid yet.”

  I took a bite of chicken and washed it down with the ice cold Tiger beer.

  “Have you investigated the Ents who supply the Tags?”

  Sir Thomas looked at me sharply and said, “What makes you ask that?”

  “Well they have motive. The Tag contract must be worth billions and what better way of ensuring that the law gets through the Popvote than creating a little terror. That’s of course if it survives its final passage through the Supreme Court – which I doubt it will.”

  “You don’t think the Tag Law will make it through the National Supreme Court?”

  “I doubt it. There’s a ton of precedent case law around privacy, and the whole area of privacy and human rights is strewn with laws that have been formulated but never passed or passed and then immediately repealed. Since Bo Vinh’s time the Supreme Court has always voted on the side of the individual. I am pretty sure for instance that Annika Bardsdale will bring a case before the court within the month. Normal strategy is to wait until the last moment before filing, that way you leave the competition with little time to prepare a counter defense, and that would mean delay of the Tag Law, at the least.”

  Sir Thomas took a long swallow of his beer, looking at me around the bottle, draining it he put the bottle softly on the table.

  “Who’s Annika Bardsdale?”

  “Oh, Annika’s the leader of the Social Responsibility Party. I was listening to her talk about Tag just the other day.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Not really, just acquaintances, you know, connections of connections, third degree of separation and all that.”

  “I see. And how do you feel about the Tag Law? Where do you sit?” he asked me, one arm leaning on the table, sitting back in his chair. His face was expressionless.

  “Well if I was asked at a party I’d say I wanted it. But honestly, because you’re my uncle, I’m a hypocrite on the issue. I don’t want it for myself, but for the rest of the great unwashed I want it.”

  “Hah!” he exclaimed, and taking his hand off the table slapped his knee with it. “Great unwashed, hah! You know, Jonah… um excuse me one moment, I must take this,” he said, smiling his tight smile at me. Sir Thomas reached into his bottom khaki outers pocket and pulled out his Devstick which was making a soft buzzing sound.

  “Yes, Oliver here. What is it? I said I was playing golf.”

  His eyebrows raised and he smiled that quick little smile of his, the corners of his lips flicking up once. Then his jaw clenched. “I see. When?” My one-sided hearing of the conversation led me to think that another bomb had gone off. A chill went through me as I thought about Mariko. I listened carefully to Sir Thomas. “No, no, that’s quite all right. You were correct to notify me. All right then, yes.”

  He looked right at me, the Devstick held to his ear, his lips compressed. “A
ll right, I’m on my way.” Sir Thomas snapped his Devstick shut and smiled at me.

  “We will have to finish this game another day, I’m afraid. Duty calls and all that.”

  I smiled back.

  “We’ll have to finish this up soon, heh. What, I’m four holes down? Well, I have to push off. I do think that this idea of yours, tying my memoirs to the great events of our time, is a good one. Sort of puts things in perspective.”

  “Yes exactly. Your life as seen through the great events of our time. When do you think you will be able to find some more time for us to continue?”

  “Soon, Jonah, soon.”

  Sir Thomas sat back in his chair and looked at me for a moment, then he licked his lips and stood. With a tight smile he walked to his Devcaddy and, placing his feet on the pads next to the wheels, said, “Take me to the clubhouse.”

  I pulled out my Devstick waving it at the Dev on the counter to pay for our drinks. I walked over to where Call was waiting.

  “Looks like our game was cancelled, Call.”

  “Yes. Would you like to finish the round anyway?”

  “No thanks. I think we’ll call it a day. You can finish recording now – please upload to my Devstick.”

  “Yes, Jonah. And congratulations on a great round.”

  Chapter 26

  A Hot Summer’s Night Walkabout

  Lobby of Travelodge Mirambeena Vacenv, Darwin, Australia Geographic

  FRIDAY 3 JANUARY 2110, 7:45PM +9.3 UTC

  Marty was pissed off. She was pissed off with the heat. She was pissed off with the flies. And most all she was pissed off with waiting in this lobby. It had been her idea to come to the Australia Geographic. Cochran had quickly agreed which had surprised Marty and so she had gone on the trail of Mariah. It was a trail that was thirty-four years cold, but it was still a trail.