Atomic Swarm

by Unknown

  He dropped into a squat and started to feverishly chalk a series of figures and algorithmic arrows and boxes on the black wooden floor. A matrix of flashing markers formed in his head, a series of shimmering beacons, shining out from a sea of numbers and a coastline made of lines and angles. Next to each location he saw a single-digit number, a value, which denoted its importance: 6 for Paraguay where Lear had blown up the hospital, 7s and 8s for Rio de Janeiro and the diamond mine that branched out around it, and 9, the highest score possible, for the city of Boston where Lear had left MIT’s reactor in bits. Before long, the floor was covered in Jackson’s jottings.

  ‘That should do it,’ said Jackson, standing up and stretching his back muscles. ‘Draw a line from Boston that’s this long.’ Jackson pointed with his toe at a four-figure number scrawled on the floor in chalk. ‘2,017 kilometres in length, anywhere along an arc from northeast to north-west.’

  ‘Why do you think Lear is going north? Might he just turn round and go back where he came from?’

  ‘Not according to probability,’ Jackson replied confidently.

  Brooke used the Google Earth program to draw a line the length and direction Jackson had specified. ‘It doesn’t touch anything,’ she said. ‘Except water.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Jackson, surprised. ‘It should show a port. Somewhere on that arc there should be a port where Lear and Goulman are headed.’

  Jackson looked at the monitor and, sure enough, the line terminated in the Atlantic Ocean.

  ‘If you ask me,’ Brooke said as she walked to the kitchen, ‘there’s a strong probability that your probability theory is wrong.’

  ‘Something’s not right here,’ mumbled Jackson, his attention caught between the computer screen and the scribbles on the floor.

  ‘Yep, your numbers aren’t right,’ replied Brooke, with her head inside a kitchen cupboard. ‘It’s not all bad news, though. At least we’ve got some potato chips!’

  ‘No!’ snapped Jackson. His frustration was getting the better of him. ‘The problem is with the data you gave me! It’s obvious that all of the sightings fit within a pattern. Except these two.’

  Jackson was back in front of the fridge, pointing at the numbers next to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Wilmington, North Carolina. ‘These numbers don’t fit within the pattern; there isn’t enough distance between them. Bring their details up again,’ demanded Jackson.

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a tyrant!’ said Brooke, through a mouthful of crisps. She sat back at the desk and clicked the HISTORY tab on her browser, selecting the relevant pages.

  ‘Read them again – all of them,’ insisted Jackson. ‘This time, tell me if there’s anything in there that stands out.’

  Brooke scowled at Jackson and then flicked back to the article about the Buenos Aires sighting.

  ‘I guess this is a bit suspicious.’ She frowned, reading from the screen. ‘In a separate report, Señora Ramírez, 73, was questioned by Buenos Aires provincial police, when she claimed she had seen Elvis working in the gas station at the Puerto Madero Holiday Community. Police Detective Alandra Lopez said she had investigated the señora’s claim that the dead star was alive and well, only because the elderly lady was so convincing. During a thorough inspection of the gas station and holiday trailer park, no man fitting the king of rock and roll’s description was found.

  ‘The old doll’s a fruitcake!’ said Brooke.

  ‘Now check the other story,’ demanded Jackson.

  Brooke switched to the blog of ‘Cathy Cool’ and looked over the post entitled ‘Lear’s living in Wilmington!’ She then scanned further down the page, looking briefly through the blog posts below it. Finally, she chose one to read out. The short story contained a picture of a piece of toast with the headline ‘Holy Toast’ written above it.

  The accompanying text told how the blogger had taken out a slice of bread from her toaster that morning and, to her amazement, discovered ‘a perfect depiction of the face of my recently deceased dog, Mr Tippins, burned into the surface of the bread’. She went on to say that, over the last few years, she had seen other spirits in her toast and the bodies of aliens formed in potatoes and other vegetables.

  ‘I see dead people,’ said Brooke, her eyes as wide as a zombie’s.

  ‘Yeah, and I think I see the problem with my algorithm – it contains two false sightings!’ replied Jackson.

  With the knowledge that Lear had never stopped at Buenos Aires or Wilmington, Brooke took new measurements, which Jackson quickly absorbed into his ever-expanding floor sum. Finally, he wrote ‘4,147 km’ on the black wooden floorboards, where ‘2,017 km’ had been.

  ‘Now, within that arc, there’s a bunch of places he could make for,’ said Brooke. ‘Crossing the Atlantic wouldn’t fit within the pattern; it’s about a thousand kilometres too far away. There’s Greenland, but there ain’t nothing there for him – just a bunch of icebergs and polar bears. But if we bend the line west, into the Hudson Bay, the coast of Canada is the perfect distance away.’

  ‘Canada?’ Something sparked in Jackson’s memory. It was the book Atticus79 had shown him, featuring the locations of the world’s diamond mines. ‘That’s it! The probability fits – he’s heading to a diamond mine in Canada!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Brooke didn’t sound convinced. ‘Let me see how many diamond mines there are in Canada.’ She did a search for ‘Canadian diamond mines’ and seconds later the two of them were looking at a map showing seven mine locations.

  ‘They must be hundreds of kilometres apart!’ said Brooke. ‘How are you going to work out which one Lear is heading to?’

  Jackson leaned forward and touched the icon for one of the mines. A picture of a huge man-made hole in the ground appeared. The accompanying text said that the mine was one of the world’s biggest diamond mines and was owned and operated by the De Beers Group. Jackson clicked on the company’s name and a web page, with a big diamond logo, loaded. Brooke and Jackson scoured the page for anything that might catch their attention, before deciding to move on to the next mine.

  Jackson’s arms and legs throbbed with tiredness, and pain was radiating out from his forehead in fresh waves. Even Brooke, who was usually inexhaustible, was showing signs of wilting. They had painstakingly checked the details of five mines, and were still no closer to anything like a firm destination for Lear, when something caught Jackson’s attention.

  The page detailing mine number six, Duovik Diamond Mine, featured a small picture of a group of mineworkers standing with a Japanese businessman in an expensive-looking fur coat, suit and hard hat. The wording at the bottom of the text read: ‘Our engineers meet Duovik’s owner, Mr Yakimoto.’

  Brooke would have moved on to mine number seven if Jackson hadn’t gone so deathly quiet. He’d never seen an actual photograph of the man he now saw standing with his workers, but he recognized him instantly. It was Yakimoto – just as his mother had drawn him in her diary.

  He peered more closely at the rawboned face in the computer monitor, searching the dark-blue round spectacles for the eyes of his mother’s killer.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘So, let me get this straight!’ said Brooke, grinding the manual gears on Mr Zeal’s borrowed 1970 Mark II Mini so badly that it made Jackson cringe. ‘Lear is working with the guy who murdered your mother and father?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Jackson replied.

  ‘Wow! That’s heavy!’ said Brooke. ‘I’m sorry for trying to make you talk about it the other day.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Jackson reassured her. ‘But that’s exactly why we must go after Lear!’

  ‘No way, José!’ The Mini swerved a little as Brooke turned to scowl at Jackson. ‘Listen, I told you already, I only suggested we get Salty to pick us up so we can hide out on the island and buy us some thinkin’ time. Not so you can use his boat to go to Canada on some suicide mission. As soon as we’ve got our evidence straight, I plan on showin’ it to
the authorities – and that is that!’

  ‘Would those be the same authorities who have your dad in jail and are hoping we’ll soon be joining him? All I’m saying, Brooke, is that the only way you can be sure of us and your dad escaping jail sentences is by presenting the police with indisputable proof that Lear is alive and well. The only way I can see of doing that is with video footage of him selling reactor-irradiated diamonds to Yakimoto.’

  Brooke paused to think.

  ‘OK. Suppose we did find a way to get you to Yakimoto’s mine in Canada – which, by the way, would involve a treacherous journey by sea, followed by a punishing drive across some of the most challenging terrain on the planet – what makes you think the dude is even going to be there?’

  ‘This!’ Jackson held up his phone. An email glimmered in the centre of its glossy surface.

  The Kojima twins’ email response to Jackson’s request for help to find out about Yakimoto had arrived two days ago. Jackson’s recovery from the kidnapping, and their fleeing the scene of a dirty-bomb explosion, meant that he had only been able to check his mail and open it last night, after Brooke had gone to sleep.

  In the email, Miss Kojima said that they had given the job of inquiring after Yakimoto to their father’s head of security. He had uncovered information about Yakimoto’s business dealings, and a series of allegations that he was involved with Japan’s criminal underground.

  ‘But, most interestingly,’ Jackson told Brooke excitedly, ‘he’s about to fly to Canada. The twins’ security guy got the information from a private jet charter company – Yakimoto is scheduled to take a flight from Tokyo to Calgary in Canada, in two days’ time. From there, it’s a quick helicopter ride to his diamond mine.’

  As the Mini followed the freeway out of Boston and headed towards the coast, the fact that Brooke was no longer protesting made Jackson think his Canadian plan had a chance.

  What few windows there were in Salty’s cluttered boathouse, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, were either shrouded in cobwebs or obscured by the rotting bits of hull and rough wooden planks that lined the walls.

  It was midday. Brooke was out on the water with Salty, but Jackson had stayed, working by the flickering light of a single faulty fluorescent strip.

  What he and Brooke hadn’t managed to grab from the lab during their speedy exit yesterday, they’d borrowed from Mr Zeal’s apartment – some food, a pair of walking boots and a few items of cold weather clothing – the island and New England were fresh this time of year, but where he was going, just a few hundred kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, it would be considerably colder.

  Brooke, having finally given in to Jackson’s plan of making the trip to Canada, had even scrounged a snow chain from Salty to put round Tread; in Jackson’s opinion, it was overkill, but he had packed it anyway.

  He put the finishing touches to a battery circuit for the satellite Internet transceiver and stuffed it into a holdall. Now Brooke too would have remote access to the robots he was planning to take with him to the wilds of Canada. He stuffed several other gadgets into the waterproof bag, including extra batteries and two of Brooke’s prototype handsets in addition to the one in his shirt pocket.

  Jackson and Brooke had discussed the mission’s technical requirements in great detail. Jackson had been convinced that Tread’s gyro-stabilized high-definition cameras were ideal for the job of snooping on their targets. Brooke, however, had an even better idea.

  The hoarse chug from the old fisherman’s ancient trawler announced the return of Brooke and Salty. All Brooke had said, when she’d ordered her old friend to follow her several hours ago, was that she had something she needed to salvage.

  Jackson believed he knew what Brooke was planning and when he saw her standing on the rusty deck of the boat, with a triumphant smile across her face, his suspicions were confirmed – silhouetted against a brooding midday sky was the glistening outline of Punk, a matted mane of seaweed dangling from his spikes as he swung beneath a winch.

  As Punk was brought back to the boathouse and the three of them set to work, Brooke explained that Verne had made short work of recovering Punk.

  ‘He might be in jail,’ Salty joked, ‘but J.P. will be tickled pink to know that Verne passed his naval salvage test!’

  Luckily, Brooke had managed to bag almost all of the required hardware needed to raise Punk from the dead from the lab before they had left – the rest she salvaged from the junk Salty had lying around his workshop. Amazingly, the robot’s main motherboard and core-processing units had survived, chiefly because of the ballistic casing in which they were sealed. Several of the tiny actuators that powered Punk’s moving parts had fused, and salt water had caused the hybrid turbine that powered his rotor blades to oxidize. But, even after a week on the seabed, Punk’s plastic ducted-fan propulsion system needed little more than drying out.

  While Jackson fitted new power cells and brand-new solid-state flash drives, Salty got busy with Punk’s steel shell, hammering out several crumples where the metal had buckled under the immense pressure of the Great White’s crushing jaws, and welding the spots where razor-sharp teeth had actually penetrated the metal.

  Finally, Jackson installed Punk’s Linux-based operating system and the recently developed language engine.

  ‘I think you should do the honours,’ said Jackson.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brooke, taking her phone from her pocket and punching in Punk’s access code and a brief message.

  For a while nobody spoke, then a dim blue light pulsed behind Punk’s dark plastic screen, the first sign of life.

  Brooke felt her handset warm slightly. She glanced at its surface. There was an SMS waiting. The message from Punk read: ‘WAZUP?’

  That evening Salty had said that the tide would be right for his and Jackson’s journey northwards at around 2 a.m. the next day, so Brooke had suggested she and Jackson take a walk along the beach to fill the time.

  A brisk breeze was steadily rolling in off the calm dark-grey sea, as the two of them walked the half-mile crescent of sand and pebbles.

  ‘Turnin’ into a hobby of ours, chasin’ Lear!’ Brooke quipped. ‘Last few days, things have been moving pretty darn quick. I know it seems like we’re committed to this plan to catch Lear and Yakimoto red-handed, but we can still give ourselves up, you know. We tell the Feds what we know and let them chase down the bad guys.’

  ‘Brooke, everyone but us thinks that Lear is dead,’ said Jackson. ‘It’s our robots on the reactor CCTV footage and us in Tin Lizzie leaving the scene of the explosion. What are they going to believe – that the ghost of a dead man attacked the reactor? Or a mad scientist with a grudge, who they can already connect to video evidence?’

  ‘But that’s not why you’re dead set on going to Canada – is it, Jackson?’

  Jackson gave a sad smile. His friend knew him better than nearly anybody. Brooke was right. It wasn’t just the moral victory of showing the world that Lear was still alive and seeing him locked away for good. Or even getting J.P. out of custody – although Jackson desperately wanted that for Brooke. Canada felt like the place he might finally sort out the mystery that was his mother’s life – and therefore his.

  Jackson realized that they had reached the end of the beach and had started up a steep path that pointed towards a grassy headland.

  ‘This is the way to the reservation – the whole peninsula from this point is owned by American Indians,’ said Brooke. ‘We can pay them a visit if you like.’

  ‘Have we got time?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘There’s time,’ Brooke smiled.

  They picked their way up the sandy path, Brooke leading the way to a short stretch of road, which terminated in what looked to Jackson like a plain old trailer park.

  ‘Are you sure we’ve got the right place?’ Jackson inquired.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Dunno. I guess I was expecting tepees and totem poles!’

  Brooke laughed as she ma
rched up to a long silver trailer and banged at the door.

  The door swung open immediately, and a very large man wearing a cowboy hat and red plaid shirt stood in the doorway. ‘Brooke!’ he shouted when he caught sight of her.

  ‘Hi, Chief!’ said Brooke as the enormous man scooped her up in a bear hug.

  ‘Are ya here with the prof?’

  ‘Er, no… Dad’s busy…’ said Brooke, throwing a glance in Jackson’s direction.

  Salty obviously hadn’t passed this news from the mainland on to his island neighbour. Jackson noticed there was no TV or radio either.

  ‘We hiked up here. Jackson, this is John Appleseed, otherwise known as Eagle Chief!’

  ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ said the man, beckoning them inside.

  If Jackson had been disappointed by the lack of anything he considered obviously Indian outside, the trailer’s interior was another matter – memorabilia and artefacts were everywhere, a huge black-and-white feather headdress fanned out across the wall and, below it, a collection of sepia photographs featuring American Indian families and proud old warriors with dark, leathery faces. The other wall held a cluster of hand-knapped flint knives and tomahawks with wound-leather handles and, beyond that, more photographs lined the corridor.

  ‘John is the third descendant of the original Eagle Chief of the Wampanoag Indians,’ Brooke told Jackson.

  ‘This is him,’ the chief said, pointing at a black-and-white photograph in the centre of the wall, which featured an elderly man with long, thick braids of black hair beneath an elaborate war headdress. Jackson looked at the photograph of the old man. His chin was slightly raised and he was staring intently out of the picture frame with a serious expression. Jackson thought he looked every bit the warrior chief.

  ‘So, Jackson,’ the chief said, taking his cowboy hat off and running his fingers through a thick head of long jet-black hair, ‘what brings an Englishman to New England?’

  ‘I’m studying at the university, on a scholarship with J.P.,’ replied Jackson.