by Greg Barron
Looking down, PJ sees his Alt-Berg boots flexing with each pace, trying to ignore the niggling pain in his feet, then starts to scan on either side. The fifth level is filling up quickly, staff and early customers slotting into the spaces closest to the main doors of the mall. Mostly cars, but also delivery vans and small trucks.
‘Can we get the entrances to this car park shut down?’ he growls into the GU, just starting to work harder for breath. ‘That would make this a hell of a lot easier.’
‘Roger, local cops are on the way now. They caught us pants-down with the solid rubber tyres.’
People getting out of their cars stare as he passes.
Go shopping, he wants to scream. I’m doing this so you can live a normal life.
Down another row, running, but the car park has huge concrete pillars with more spaces behind them at intervals, any of which could easily hide a truck. Each has to be investigated. Echoes of more boots, and he’s relieved to see a 22 Regiment SAS team arrive down the steps, obviously just disgorged by another of the choppers.
PJ turns and shouts, voice echoing off the concrete walls and ceiling, ‘Take Row F and G.’
They wave acknowledgement and he turns, just as Kisira, down on Level Three, screams into the mouthpiece: ‘I have visual on the truck.’
PJ can see it on the screen. ‘Take the fucking tyres out. Solid rubber or not — chew them to bits. That thing must not move again. If anyone shoots back, take them out too.’ He turns and runs for the stairs, shouting to the SAS contingent as he goes. He takes the stairs in giant moon leaps, drawing his Warlock as he hits the flat between Three and Four.
Then, finally, squeezing past an elderly man and his cane, he sprints down towards the sound of stuttering gunfire. Kisira holds her Glock in outstretched arms, firing three, four times, the sound deafening in the confined space. Someone screams nearby.
PJ reaches her then, in the cover behind a grey Suzuki minivan. The truck he can see is already down on three rims, tilted at an awkward angle. Bits of foam and rubber are scattered around the wheels.
‘You see anyone?’
‘No. Not a sign.’
‘They could be in the back.’
‘That would be rather stupid of them, wouldn’t it?’
Jay appears, holding a UMP5 machine pistol.
‘Give me that for a moment,’ PJ barks, holsters the Warlock, and takes the UMP5 from Jay’s hands. He draws back the cocking lever and empties the magazine into the back of the truck, bullets drilling holes like a woodpecker on the roll-up door, expertly taking out the locking rods on either side.
He passes the weapon back and waits until Jay has recharged it with a fresh magazine.
‘I’m going to lift that roller door. Get ready to pour lead in. I’m guessing that we won’t find anyone — that they’re long gone.’
‘If they are they might have rigged an IED.’
‘Possible, but if they got out of here they did it fast. No time for tricks.’
PJ holds the Warlock, runs forward to the truck, crouched over, stays low and pushes up the roller door. The back of the truck is bare down to the boards. Still Jay delivers ten or twelve rounds into the space while PJ runs to the front cab and opens the door, points the Warlock in, then slams it. ‘Damn them to hell. They’re gone.’
Kisira’s face is stricken. ‘Could they have run inside the centre?’
‘With five one-hundred-kilo UAVs? I know the things fold up, but that’s ridiculous.’
‘What if they transferred them to another car on the way down here?’
‘We watched them almost all the way.’
PJ opens voice comms on the GU. ‘OK, control, we’ve got the truck. It’s empty. The forensic blokes will want to crawl all over it, but we’re gonna get airborne. One or more vehicles must have driven out of this parking lot in the last ten minutes. If those guys running the Fury UAV haven’t been fast asleep, then we must have footage. And what about CCTV in here?’
Kisira points dumbly up at the nearest camera, hanging from its mount on a nearby beam. Black spray-paint covers the lens and camera body. She walks towards it and reaches up to touch it.
‘That paint’s dry. The cameras were taken care of ahead of time. They knew they were coming here.’
THIRTY-NINE
LONDON
LOCAL TIME: 0730
Royal Mail vans are a British icon. Painted in red livery with a pair of bent yellow stripes, they are a common sight on every road from Dover to Inverness and all points in between. Produced in many makes and models over the years, one of the very biggest is the LDV Maxus Postbus.
This particular model was stolen the previous day from out the front of a contractor’s house in Whitechapel. The plates were exchanged for cleverly made fakes.
Now heading south on North Circular Road, Badi knows how close they are to success or failure. Every now and then a police car roars past, heading north, or a chopper races overhead, but nothing comes near them.
In his first manifestation of nervousness he lights a cigarette and smokes it down to the butt, stubbing it out in the ashtray where it continues to burn. He finds himself whispering a prayer as they finally take the roundabout past the University of East London and turn into the Gallions Point Marina. They are able to drive the van almost to the boat, and begin the unloading, each of the drones loosely wrapped to prevent prying eyes from seeing what they are. He knows that now the weather is clear there will be more drones in the sky above them, roving the city, looking for suspicious activity. This must be done quickly but without causing anyone to look twice.
Two of the men who have been waiting at the boat will now drive the van away and dump it. There are more vehicles available to them.
‘Tonight, after dark,’ Badi says, ‘you’ll be waiting at the place we discussed?’
‘Absolutely, sayyid. You can be sure of it.’
Badi nods, turns and hurries back to the Arvor, where his men are just casting off the lines. He sits impatiently in the wheelhouse while they motor gently through the channel, under the road bridge and back out into the Thames.
The tide is dropping, the great river emptying at a tremendous rate, and the Arvor is carried along with it, the helmsman having to keep the revs up just to maintain steerage, in spite of the low speed restrictions.
‘This,’ he comments to Badi, ‘will be a fast trip. These are king tides, they say that the Thames will flood badly tomorrow.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Badi replies, ‘it suits our purpose today.’
His eyes are flicking over a communication from Captain Walid received some hours earlier on the Toshiba tablet. They have had trouble from an officious customs officer and have been forced to move. Badi gives new GPS coordinates to the helmsman, but he has a heavy feeling in his gut about this. So often it is an unexpected factor that brings a plan apart — one man or woman who takes their job too seriously, who looks a little deeper than they should.
The next message is from Australia, the two men watching the Hartmann house. Wanting instructions, finding their assignment tedious. He fires back an angry response: STAY THERE, BE PATIENT. DO NOTHING UNTIL THE TIME IS RIGHT.
Almost an hour passes before he sees the Isra loom ahead, two miles off the coast of Foulness Island at the extreme northern tip of the bay.
The ship looks substantially different, there is no doubt about that. Badi silently congratulates Walid on his work. The man can be surprisingly canny.
Even so, he knows, discovery is just a matter of time. Charging the drones with their cargo will be slow work, but Badi is determined that they will manage it with all possible speed.
The transfer is performed through the bow ramp, wheeling the drones in on trolleys, on hand for that purpose. One of the sealed cargo holds will now become a workshop while the drones are prepared.
‘Hurry,’ Badi shouts, ‘they will discover the ship soon. We must be ready.’
Finally the Arvor powers away, and Faiza
n, the Magician, has all five drones mounted on stands in the hold. He and four others are suited up in full protective clothing, ready for handling the spores.
Badi enters the ‘lab’ one last time before it is sealed. ‘Here is the list of target coordinates. Each of the drones will target a different area.’
This is where Faizan will truly earn his bonus, Badi thinks to himself. The drones can be pre-programmed to travel a particular route, then perform a specific action at a certain time, even far out of the normal C-Band control range of around a hundred and fifty kilometres. They will carry this out in ‘stealth’ mode. Once programmed they will not only defend themselves autonomously, but cannot be stopped from their mission short of complete destruction.
Tens of millions of people will die in Western Europe and England. That is not the end of it either. By the time he has finished, the power of a civilisation will be broken.
Faizan’s eyes are shining as he takes the paper, as if this is the greatest game of his life.
FORTY
YANGON, MYANMAR
LOCAL TIME: 1500
Julian Weiss could never have imagined that he would end up living in a Buddhist monastery in Myanmar’s sprawling capital, four million people wedged between the twin channels of the Yangon River with Inya Lake in the centre.
The space in which he lives is dark, even in the middle of the day. A room of bare boards and bamboo screens, down meandering staircases between other ancient buildings, and crowded by slums on either side — his for as long as he needs it in return for donations and respect for the monks. He eats the communal meals — food gathered on the monks’ daily alms-collecting walks, donated gladly by some of the poorest people on earth.
There are other lodgers here: university students, writers and hermits. No other Europeans live in the monastery, however, and the vast majority are monks, dressed in simple maroon-coloured robes, their quiet wisdom juxtaposed with petty squabbles and rivalries.
Despite Julian’s different looks — his long blond hair, tied with a thong at the back, his blue eyes and white skin — he is accepted. Treated as part of the background. He finds the order, routine and quiet life soothing.
Julian is bent over a computer, a Dell laptop that is probably the single fastest machine in the country. He purchased the base machine at the downtown markets, then upgraded it via a painfully slow postal service with parts shipped from Hong Kong and Singapore.
Just ten months ago he was secure in his job as manager of the IT team at DRFS headquarters in London. Tricked into betraying his employers, he could not prevent the murder of Leisel, his first and only girlfriend.
Awake and asleep, Julian sees her face at all times. Her face, her body. There is no one else for him. Nowhere on earth. He is certain of that. He killed her. As sure as if it was he who plunged a knife into her heart, he killed her.
Even stronger than guilt is the ache of missing her; loving her. That she can no longer be beside him every day. There was a time when he did not believe in love, but that was before she whirled into his life. She stayed for such a short while before being kidnapped and ultimately killed to make Julian continue turning over classified information that belonged to the people he worked for.
When he was exposed, and given the choice of exile, he chose to come here. Because of Leisel. One night in his London apartment she first told him about an indigenous Burmese tribe called the Zaw.
With car headlights sweeping through the windows and her hand splayed on his belly, she told him of a visiting professor from Dagon University, Myanmar, who brought some of the first details of the Zaw and their political system into the wider world. Myanmar had been closed off by a vigorous military dictatorship for half a century, and only now are the curtains of isolation being opened.
Over many centuries, the Zaw had apparently developed the world’s truest no-party democracy, and virtually eliminated violence and inequality from their society. The professor had proven to his satisfaction that these principles could be applied to the rest of the world. Finding the Zaw was a promise Julian had made to himself.
On his arrival in Myanmar, learning a few words of Burmese, he wandered the city and stalked the smaller pagodas, meeting students and monks. He moved from person to person, asking questions. Most people professed to have never heard of the Zaw. Others shook their heads, but stared at him warily.
Finally he tracked down the professor, Mu Thang Mai, who had visited London. He lived in a poor hut in North Okkalapa township in the eastern district of Yangon. Julian wandered the narrow earthen lanes between walls of bamboo, and street vendors with their pots of rice and fish curries.
‘I’m looking for the Zaw,’ Julian said.
The old man’s body was yellow and wracked by cancer. Brown eyes glared back at his. ‘Every man and woman who walks this earth is looking for the Zaw.’
‘How do I find them?’
The old man grinned, brown teeth showing. ‘You can’t find them. I will take you. I would rather die there than here.’
Armed with a Nikon D90 camera Julian accompanied Mu Thang Mai north to Mandalay, where pagoda spires reach for the sky, shining with gold in the bright sun. Mu had told him that the train was air conditioned, and that it had a buffet car. The former, it turned out, did not work, and there was no buffet car to be seen. As the train slowed on hills, bedraggled village children ran alongside, selling everything from fried grasshoppers to baked snakes’ heads through the windows.
From the Golden City northwards they had two hot, full days driving in a hired taxi down roads bordered by endless rice paddies before finally reaching the foothills of the mountains. Always the jungle closed in, denser and darker. There were fewer villages, and the people became poorer, aeons distant from the Londoners Julian was used to. Women with full facial tattoos, spitting red streams of betel nut. Inscrutable old men, sitting cross-legged on dusty roadsides.
Each village had its own nat sin — a shrine to the guardian nat, or spirit. Julian learned that there are thirty-seven great nats, most of whom had human form until they met some kind of violent death. There are also lesser spirit nats that can take the form of personal protectors, often inherited from parents, and forest nats that prevent the taking of particular trees or stands of trees. In addition, Julian discovered that each house featured a headdress-wearing coconut hanging from a post, an offering intended to placate the household nat.
Five days of walking later, they were deep in Kachin province, a place where civilisation seemed irrelevant, and the strivings of modern humankind both petulant and ineffectual. Nat worship pre-dates, but in Myanmar proceeds hand in hand with, Buddhism. Temples, pagodas and statues of Buddha, some of enormous size, graced otherwise seemingly poverty-stricken villages, filled with worshippers and pilgrims resting in the shade from the heat of the day.
The forests of Myanmar’s mountainous north, creeping up to meet the foothills of the Himalayas, proved to be immensely interesting to Julian, an environmentalist. This, he learned, was one of the world’s last great wilderness areas, insulated from the outside world by decades of rebellion and war, where the Kachin Independence Army was engaged in a bitter struggle with the military government.
In the north Julian saw spiders that glowed fluorescent purple in the night. Stick insects the length of his forearm, snakes that coiled and writhed in fat bunches around the trunks of stinging trees. It was the sheer fecundity of the place, the incredible rate of growth, that took his breath away.
Julian felt a strange sense of homecoming in this place, where rhesus monkeys rarely ceased their skylarking, and parakeets and pigeons flitted through the canopy formed by giant pyinkado, banyan and cotton trees. Where tree trunks towered eighty or ninety metres high, the branches tangled with creepers — tropaeolum, honeysuckle and nyoun-bin. Acacia trees and palms made up the lower storey, and the earth was a springy, soft pad of organic matter that smells of life and death — of the endless cycle of rainforest years.
&
nbsp; Julian knows that he will remember the tastes and fragrances of Mu’s cooking all his life: most notably a sweet he called kyak kyau, made from jelly powder and coconut milk, or khao swe — noodles — and every meal flavoured with nga pi, a fish paste made by burying hard-packed sea creatures underground for some days. Tea is strong-flavoured and mixed with a generous portion of tinned condensed milk.
Finally, they arrived at a place of lights, glowing like fireflies. Huts seemingly built into the giant forest trees as if using them as a kind of vertical foundation. All were thatched with palms and walled with bamboo. There was an underlying murmur of families talking, eating and living, in the same way as might be encountered walking down the back streets of Ealing.
‘The Zaw … at last,’ Julian whispered, his voice filled with wonder.
‘The Zaw can trace their roots all the way back to one of the lost tribes of Israel,’ Mu told him. ‘They were originally banished from the Holy Land to Assyria, driving their goats and sheep, carrying their precious Torah. They had their own priests, customs and holy days. They reached China in about 200 BCE but were subject to a campaign of intimidation and persecution by local warlords. Again they wandered, this time through Thailand to Myanmar, where the Zaw splintered away from other groups.
‘By then they spoke a mix of Burmese and Chinese, but with a sprinkling of Hebrew and Aramaic words. “Zaw” means “outstanding”. They were so called because of philosophical differences with the others. They came here and set about building their vision of utopia. Over a thousand years they have perfected it. There are no prisons, no police. No crime to speak of, at all.’
‘How far away is the Zaw city?’
‘There isn’t one. Centralisation is one of the world’s big mistakes. Cities are rats’ nests that soak up resources and give nothing back. The Zaw live in networks of villages, but there is a central administration area, with a market along with political and cultural facilities.’