“So in that context, what’s your interest in me?”
“You’re going to get caught in the backlash, Varsi. I understand that some of the people behind the Thames Tidal venture are trying to drum up support for a special-interest party, and so far they have failed to get you on board. To be frank, that’s what caught our attention. Now, I don’t care whether they go ahead or not, because the UPP is not going to win the next election. If the gems splinter the vote, all that means is they’ll lose by a bigger margin. I’m guessing you’ve realized that being part of that won’t be good for your political career, but I’m not sure you understand that you’ll be seen as part of the problem either way, by the UPP as well as their supporters. That’s just how it is.”
He paused for breath and took a small swallow of whiskey. “Plus this whole toxin business being labeled terrorism—not everybody buys that explanation. There’s talk about it being a cover-up. I’m not saying that’s true,” he added hastily, presumably recalling that Mikal’s wife was in charge of the case. “I’m saying it’s beside the point. The resentment you talked about? We both know who you mean. Come the election, people will not vote for a party or a candidate they think has made them less safe, or enjoyed advantages that they haven’t.”
If that last part were true, Mikal thought, you wouldn’t have a hope in hell.
“What’s your interest in me?” he repeated.
“Not everybody’s going to be happy when we win. If we’re to keep a lid on things, we need to have a full range of representation, and that includes gems. We haven’t done so well on that score, but we know it’s not going to work, us coming into power looking the way we did fifteen, twenty years ago. It wouldn’t be good for you or your people either, but believe me, if you throw in with this gillung splinter group or hook up with the UPP, that’s what will happen. If you stay independent, maybe you can hang on to your council seat—maybe. But that’s not going to get you anywhere you haven’t been for the past eight years.”
He took another slug and glanced in a not-quite-casual way around the dining room as though to remind his guest of how far his horizons were being expanded tonight. When his eyes came back to Mikal, they were hard, demanding.
“You have talent. That’s something we appreciate. You understand the practicalities of the situation, and you’re a good talker—you can explain things in a way that your people will accept. We’re going to need someone who can do that, which is why I want you to join the Traditional Democrats as a parliamentary candidate. We’ll see to it that you win. You’ll have a voice on gem policy—more than that, you’ll be the first gem elected to national office.” He drained the glass and smiled as though it hurt. “Though possibly not the last.”
Twenty years ago, during the Trads’ most recent term in office, Mikal had been indentured on the production line of a factory where his engineered hands were put to work assembling and adjusting complex components far more quickly and delicately than either machine or norm could manage. He had been the most expensive piece of equipment in the place, a major investment in maintaining the brand’s reputation for innovations in manufacturing and high-quality end products. His line boss had frequently reminded him of those facts, as though they were things of which he should be proud.
He had learned, then, how to keep his feelings off his face.
“That’s quite an offer,” he said evenly. “Is the rest of the party on board with it?”
“The ones who need to sign off have signed off. There’ll be some grumblings no doubt, but the rest will come around.”
Mikal nodded, as if to indicate that this was acceptable. “There’s something in particular you want me to help sell. What is it?”
Mitford, in the act of picking up his empty glass, stopped and eyed Mikal keenly. “You are sharp,” he said. “The Thames Tidal divestiture, for a start.”
“You expect that to happen?”
“It’ll have to happen. Quantum-energy storage is going to revolutionize every industry there is. One small group cannot be allowed to control a technology that powerful—especially when they have so little in common with ordinary folk. The risks are too great. People won’t stand for it.”
I doubt it’s too much power if the small group is one that you’re part of, but it’s obviously unthinkable if it’s anyone else. There was nothing to be gained by making such an observation out loud. He wondered how many of the senior figures in the Trads understood the degree to which Abraham Mitford, financier, party stalwart, major shareholder in Standard BioSolutions, was leveraging their brightening prospects to make himself an even greater fortune. Maybe they did know, considering how much of that fortune was spent on them. Maybe they had agreed, tacitly or otherwise, to this grand strategy; maybe they had helped cook it up.
Or maybe when he spun them a line, they believed it.
“So,” Mikal said, musingly, remembering his last conversation with Moira Charles, “you’re fairly certain this safety review that Bankside is lobbying for will go ahead?”
“I’m completely certain of it.”
“And will end up recommending major changes, which I would then help to push through? For the good of the company and its employees?”
“Thus cementing your own reputation as an honest broker who does the right thing, regardless of the consequences.”
My reputation with whom? Mikal thought acidly. Certainly not the people who think well of me now.
“The consequences in this case being that Thames Tidal will end up having to accept significant outside investment,” he said. “Amounting to a controlling interest? It’s a cooperative. How are you planning to deal with that?”
Mitford waved a hand dismissively. “The structure will have to be revised, but by the time that becomes an issue those in charge will be amenable. Following the restructuring, it’s reasonable to assume the new owners will start to develop a wide range of quantum-tech applications.”
“Something I would need to make okay with the wider gillung and gem communities. Got it.” Mikal had been ignoring his glass. He picked it up and swirled the remaining liquor while looking Mitford in the face. “I take it I can expect to get more out of this than an office in Whitehall and a parliamentarian’s salary.”
“You can expect a lot more—including shares in the successor firm.” He tapped another order into the tablet, looking grimly pleased with himself. “This has been a more straightforward conversation than I anticipated, Varsi. I’m glad you understand how these things work.”
“Oh, I do,” said Mikal. “Believe me, I do.”
By the time Mikal got home, his children had been asleep for hours. He stood in their bedroom, in the dim glow of the starfish-shaped nightlight Lapsa had given them, looking down at the two little bodies in their little beds and listening to them breathe. Misha was a sprawler, arms and legs flung at all angles. He already looked too big for his bed; in another year his feet would be sticking off one end and his hands mashed against the wall at the other. Sural was curled up on his side like a plump, happy caterpillar, knees and elbows tucked tidily away under a neat little rumple of blankets. He might roll from left to right several times throughout the night, but the pose would never change.
Mikal might have stood there until morning, barely aware of the miserly tears leaking one by one down his face, had Sharon not come up quietly behind and put her arms around his waist. “Don’t wake them,” she whispered.
“I won’t.”
Something in his voice made her twist around so she could look up at his face. He could feel the muscles in her arms tense at what she saw, and she tugged at him to come away. He did not want to leave that room with its gentle light and the peacefully sleeping children but he let her pull him into the living room, where he sank onto the sofa, dropped his face into his hands and rubbed as though he might rub it into oblivion. Sharon sat beside him, arm as far around his shoulders as she could reach, and stroked his head and kissed his neck, and after a while he
pulled himself together and told her about his evening with Abraham Mitford.
“And here I was thinking I’d had the bad day today.”
“Bal said he knew who I was,” Mikal told her dully. “After you left. He said it was okay, the way things had gone with Gabriel. He said he knew.”
“He does know you. So do I.”
“Do you, Shar? I’m glad, because I’m not sure I do right now.”
“You did the right thing, honey.”
“I can remember when the right thing didn’t leave me feeling like I needed to take a shower. For the rest of my life.” He sat back wearily. “There are so very many ways for this to go wrong.”
“My mother used to say that things only go wrong if you do wrong.”
“Is this the mother who hasn’t spoken to you since you started going out with me?”
“She was wrong about that.” Sharon tucked herself into the curve of Mikal’s arm. “But not about everything.”
18
The next day brought the first of the breakthroughs Sharon and Achebe had been hoping for, although, as Sharon grumpily observed, every answer seemed to lead to more questions. The cyclist questioned by Achebe had gone on to describe the experience in a nearby pub where there had been much annoyed talk about the continuing police presence in their sleepy, soggy neck of the woods. Over what sounded to Achebe like more than a few pints, the cyclist had heard tell of a disused hydroponics facility recently taken over by a pair of bright young engineers aiming to relaunch the business. They’d brought in lab equipment and started on refurbishing the tanks before bothering with the rest of the place, but they had big plans to turn it around, put the district on the map.
How, demanded the locals, were they supposed to attract more of that sort—people with plans and ambition, people who would generate jobs and industry—if the police were giving the impression that they were a haven for terrorists? Didn’t they understand the damage that could do? Were they trying to drive out new businesses, as well as undermine the old ones?
The cyclist, no doubt mindful of the opportunity for further tales to drink out on, had then contacted Achebe: he’d been told the researchers were decent, upstanding people—he certainly wasn’t suggesting otherwise—but the detective inspector had said he was interested in any new activity in the area. He probably knew all about them already. But just in case . . .
The DI did not know all about them and was very interested indeed, since the property the engineers were allegedly occupying had been mothballed a decade earlier by the owners, a large agricultural concern. A police drive-by confirmed that it looked just as padlocked as it should have been, and just as deserted . . . save for a familiar treadmark impressed in the soft earth by the gate. Leaving stakeouts in place for the agents provocateurs of Kaboom, Achebe descended on the place, warrant in hand, and with a team of officers and technicians at his back.
As soon as they got inside it was obvious that the facility had only recently been abandoned: the lab had been stripped and the tanks drained, but the electricity and running water were still connected. And in the sump of one tank and the spillage tray beneath another, in the water-filled treads where a heavy vehicle had backed in and loaded up, there were traces of the toxin-producing algae, dead now, and decomposing.
“We found it,” Achebe told Sharon, earset to earset on a secure channel, “but they’ve disappeared. Looks like they’ve been gone at least a week—probably cleared out once the payload was delivered. No fingerprints, no security system to interrogate, and the cleanup’s so good I doubt we’ll find anything we can pull DNA from. Our only hard evidence is the algae, and if we’d arrived a few days later I don’t think we’d have gotten that.”
Sharon ground her teeth in frustration, but an hour later Achebe had another lead. Neighbors along the potholed road were scarce, but the police found a farmer guiding a massive motor-plow over fields half a mile away.
He was perplexed by their interest in the place. “I don’t get why you’re bothering them,” he declared angrily. “They’re already tight with your lot—not police, the other ones. Those Environmental Management knobheads. Don’t you people talk to each other?”
Fayole quickly identified the EM field officer who had visited the site and found among her pending items the only apparent record of the operation: a standard impact appraisal, signed off but not yet filed. The officer was by turns defensive and contrite.
“I didn’t want to get them in trouble,” she said. “They didn’t know they were supposed to file an application before they started work. It happens. They were very apologetic. I was just holding off a bit so they could get it in. They didn’t want it to look like they were doing anything out of order.”
“I questioned you three days ago,” Achebe pointed out. “I asked specifically if anything unusual had happened recently, or if you were aware of any new activity in the area.”
“I didn’t . . . You were talking about the reserve; this is ten miles away . . .”
“But still in your area, correct?”
“Well, yes . . .”
“Did they mention the reserve at all?”
“They wondered whether it was safe to visit. If we patroled it or anything like that.”
“What else did they ask you?”
“Just about the river, tidal flows and things. They said maybe they’d go kayaking when they weren’t so busy . . .”
“There are times,” Achebe said in his next conversation with Sharon, “when I wish we could lock up people for stupidity.”
“You don’t think she knew what was going on?”
“She didn’t try to cover her tracks, and I suppose their questions wouldn’t have sounded suspicious at the time. On the other hand, we’ve just turned up a couple of transfers from the same gray account that was used to pay the utility bills. It looks like she took a payoff to delay the filing, which she naturally didn’t want to draw attention to when I interviewed her. But by then she must have realized that her nice new patrons fit the profile.”
“Collusion and obstruction. Arrest her,” said Sharon. “I’ll set up another press briefing. We’ll say we’ve found the terrorists’ operational base and have detained a suspect. If all that does is get a rise out of Kaboom, it’ll be worth it. Who opened the water and electricity accounts?”
“The same fake company that’s on the EM documentation that was never filed. The individuals named on the documents were the two who ran the site, but their identities are also false and we have no visuals. Our suspect is on her way into town in the back of a transport. I was planning to have her work up some images with one of our artists.”
“Good. Do that first, then arrest her. We’ll include the images in the briefing. Are the property’s owners still claiming to know nothing about any of this?”
“So they say, but there’s no sign of forced entry—if our terrorists broke in, they’d’ve had to change the locks, but the ones we found on the gates and buildings don’t look new at all. They look the age they should look.”
“So they were given access. Someone on the inside.”
“Given, or stolen—it might have been one of them on the inside. We’re getting the owners’ employment records, and the facilities manager is on his way here now with a full set of keys and combinations to help us determine precisely which areas have been compromised.” Achebe said it straight, but Sharon could hear the grin in his voice.
“Achebe, you are turning into a properly sneaky copper. Let me know what he says when you point out they must have had keys to his locks.”
“Thank you, boss. I only take lessons from the best.”
“So who does this guy work for? You said the place is owned by an agribusiness?”
“Pure Fuel Farmers.”
“Sounds cozy. Are they private?”
“I don’t think so.” There was a pause while Achebe checked. “Oh! Oh my.”
“What?”
“They’re owned by Souther
n Warmth, which is a biofuel aggregator which is in turn owned by . . . Bankside BioMass.”
They were both silent for a long while.
“Well,” said Sharon finally. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“Bankside was behind that petition, wasn’t it?”
“It was. It funds the Estuary Preservation Society, which fronted it.”
“This operation had to have been in place for a fair old time,” Achebe pointed out. “They were here for a couple of months, and engineering the algae would have started earlier than that.”
“Bankside was working against Thames Tidal from long before the petition gambit—ever since they weren’t allowed to buy in.”
“Would they be doing all of that officially, trying to get shares and everything, while also running an operation like this?” Achebe wondered. “I mean, big public companies don’t generally go in for terrorism.”
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the company belongs to Bankside. It’s three tiers of possession, and goodness knows how many layers of management away. Maybe the terrorists chose it because they knew the connection might throw us if we managed to track them this far.” But Sharon was thinking that Bankside was a subsidiary of Standard BioSolutions, and that Standard was elbow-deep in political maneuvering to take over Thames Tidal, and that there was a limit to how many coincidences she could bring herself to believe in. “We still need to look into it.”
“I’m with you, boss, but my money’s on these guys having a local connection.”
“My worry,” said Sharon, “is that this whole business’ll end up having a lot of connections.”
The bulletin from Detective Superintendent Varsi was succinct, and she declined to take questions from the press. “You’ll appreciate that this remains an active investigation,” she said tersely. “There are things we cannot discuss for operational reasons. If anyone recognizes either of the men in these images, please contact the police immediately. Neither man should be approached. If any member of the public has information that might be relevant, they should get in touch with us right away. Thank you.”
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