As MaryBeth cut the engine, Jack cast her an acerbic look. She saw in his eyes that he was taking nothing for granted any more.
“Lara was smart,” he said, although it seemed that he had finally stopped believing it.
* * * * *
Frank Warner was getting nowhere fast. If his screen said ‘ILLEGAL REQUEST - PLEASE RE-ENTER CODE’ one more time it was going out of the window. If indeed you could call it that.
Granted, Warner was had not been ‘boxed’, the term used for fresh recruits or disgraced agents who were offered a room with no window at all, but he might as well have been. Barring the cold walls of the FedEx building, he had no view to speak of. Agents like Kyle McCarthy got a view right over the Pacific because agents like Kyle McCarthy needed to be protected - they were young, enthusiastic and they adapted well to change. Three traits that Warner sadly lacked. Warner got a window because Warner had been with the Bureau for twenty-three years, not because anyone felt he had earned it. It was, in short, nothing more than a long-service window.
Windows were funny like that. In a system comprising fixed pay scales, they became the ultimate sign of worth. The better the view, the more valuable the agent, and the Bureau was a fickle master. Some weeks it seemed like they were playing musical chairs with their employees. Warner could almost feel himself being boxed for real the next time the music stopped.
It was the lack of a view that had stopped him going along the corridor to ask for Kyle McCarthy’s help in logging on to the system. That, and Kyle’s self-righteous attitude. Sure, Kyle had brought Warner in on the Clearwater case, but he had done so whilst wearing that self satisfied smile he wore so well. That ‘I know something you don’t’ smile. Now Warner had a lead on his case. One that, by rights, he should be briefing Kyle about at this very moment. But there was no way on God’s earth that he would. Kyle had a good enough view as it was and there was no way he was going to get a better one on the back of Warner’s hard work. He had almost been killed when the senator’s car had gone up. That had to be worth a window overlooking the freeway at the very least.
Kyle would know from the plaque that the senator’s death was linked to Dave Clearwater. That meant that he would also know that his death was connected to Jack Bernstein and his daughter. Which was why he was still in his office now. He was trying to look into Lara’s history; to see if she’d ever been a bad girl.
But Warner, having spoken at length to Jack, knew quite a lot about young Lara already. He almost felt as if he had known her personally, although Jack had stated that he himself doubted how much he himself had really known about his daughter. Consequently, Warner knew that Kyle would search for something dirty, but he would find nothing. The girl was not the hook.
Not that Warner knew who was, but he did know things that Kyle McCarthy did not, and that was a start. He knew about Paulo and Frederico. He knew that Lara had joined a cult and he knew that she had given birth to a child. Now he had Jack Bernstein on his side. He trusted Warner to find his grandchild and bring it home safe, something that was worth its weight in gold plaques.
The message came back for the fifth time. ‘ILLEGAL REQUEST - PLEASE RE-ENTER CODE’. He was on the verge of giving up when he heard the coffee machine grind into action a few feet outside his door. It would mean swallowing his pride, and a god-awful cup of coffee, but he had an idea.
He clicked the cancel button with his mouse and, as the message disappeared, he stepped out of his office and walked casually over to the machine. Kyle was stirring the last remnants of powdered milk into jet black sludge. He looked up and smiled a false, condescending smile.
“Get anywhere with Bernstein regarding Clearwater?” he probed.
Selecting C4, black coffee no sugar, Warner sighed and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I figure that’s your case now. Especially since the senator’s been whacked. You’re handling the murders so, as far as I’m concerned, Bernstein and IntelliSoft are all yours. Anyway, I’m working a fraud at the minute.”
The other agent frowned, just as Warner had known he would. Kyle had spent so long up the ass of Jack Wilson, the Senior Agent in Charge of the Rodondo Beach Resident Agency, that he had his nose into every case in the building. He had heard nothing of a fraud case. His face was demonstrating just how put out he felt.
“Oh, it’s just tentative,” Warner explained, before Kyle even had time to ask. “Got a lead from a guy downtown about products being transferred between three companies. One buys, another sells. Seems they might be working some loophole, something about avoiding excise. It might even turn out to be a Customs job. I’m just taking a quick look, that’s all, see if it’s something worth following up.” He pressed the ‘ENTER’ button and the machine started to hum quietly.
“Sounds interesting,” Kyle said, placing one hand on the machine, as though truly intrigued.
Warner shook his head and curled his mouth. “Nah,” he said. “Pretty lame stuff really. I just can’t find any firm links between the companies on the system, that’s all.” He shrugged. “It’s probably a bullshit lead.”
The machine whirred and stopped. No cup appeared.
“Je-sus,” Warner said. “C4’s off again.”
Kyle’s appetite was suitably whetted. “You know, I could take a quick look for you, if you like. The case I mean.”
And the fucking credit, Warner thought. “I’ve already spent two hours on the system,” he lied, “but I’m getting nowhere fast. Don’t worry yourself.”
“Hey look, I’m waiting for some newspaper reports on the Bernstein girl to download. Let me take a quick glance for you. I mean, it can’t do any harm, can it? Second opinion and all that.”
Warner shrugged indifferently, though he was smiling inside. He’d got him. Hook, line and goddamned sinker. If he played it cool for another half hour, he might just be able to reel him in.
“No, I suppose not,” he said, feigning reluctance. “We’ll have to go back into the system though.”
Seeing that Warner’s door was still wide open, Kyle placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “You get your coffee,” he said, “and I’ll get you on-line. Save us both some time.”
As he disappeared through the doorway, Warner turned back to the machine and smiled a broad, self-satisfied smile. Thank God he had removed the message from the screen before he had come out.
“Thanks Kyle,” he said quietly. “Good of you to help.”
as it began to dawn
Matthew 28:1
“I still don’t get it,” MaryBeth said, leaning against the Mercedes and smoking a filterless cigarette. Every time she smoked Jack warned her of the consequences and every time she shrugged indifferently. She couldn’t care less about the long-term consequences. “Four key people are dead, alongside another eight who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hate to sound morbid or tempt fate but if Andy, Dave and the others are dead, why the hell are you still breathing?”
Jack looked over to the two F.B.I. agents who were now scouring the underside of the Bronco with an extending mirror and smiled at the insinuation. He knew she had a point. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe they want me alive. Hell, maybe they need me alive.”
“But why? You’re getting closer to finding them and I know as well as anybody that you’re not going to stop until you do. If they had any sense they’d just get rid of you; take you out of the equation. Or is this some kind of James Bond style ‘spill the beans before you switch on the laser’ trick?”
Jack laughed. “Are you saying you wish I was dead?”
“Of course not,” MaryBeth chastised, “it just puzzles me.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, leaning forward and placing his hands on the wall at the edge of the parking garage. He laughed gently to himself. “It puzzles me too.”
The campus was slowly coming to life. With every passing minute more and more vehicles arrived on the staff levels above them, and more and more bodies walked briskly
across to their respective offices. The sprinkler systems had begun to feed the lawns and one by one the halogen spotlamps were switching themselves off.
Most of the early starters were the ‘moles’; those charged with preparing the main system for the launch, now only twelve days away. Outside the Technical Division the scaffolding had been erected ready to house the immense plasma screen, the same as had been used in Central Park for the Sorkasnov match. On launch day, one hundred and forty-three selected journalists and all IntelliSoft staff and their families would watch from the lakeside as Jack offered his scripted speech against the backdrop of an animated image of the virtual environment itself.
They would watch as he delivered the final countdown.
Over the following eleven and a half minutes, the screen would be adjusting itself every five seconds to show each of the competing children in turn. After that time, just long enough for the system to analyse the children’s progress, the screen would then show only the view visible by the child who was leading. They would see the virtual environment as he or she saw it. They would watch the puzzles fall one by one until the moment the final lever was pulled.
Then the party would really start.
Jack should have been more excited than he had ever felt in his life, but his subconscious would not allow it. Far from being his proudest moment, the global launch was rapidly becoming an awkward distraction, removing his attention from the devastating truths which now surrounded him. And yet he was completely helpless to delay it. When Jack Bernstein gave a date and a time, he stuck to it. Rigidly.
MaryBeth ground her spent cigarette into the floor and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m going to get off home. I want to grab a shower and a change of clothes before I face today’s onslaught. I respectfully suggest that you do the same.”
Jack did not respond. He was looking over toward the main offices. His mouth was hanging open in disbelief.
Lara’s child was to be a new Saviour. He was to be descended from the line of David, but of course he could not be presented to the world until the world truly believed that it needed a Saviour. That would not be the case until one more thing had happened. The next thing on the list he had offered to Andy:
Armageddon.
With a cold shiver running the full length of his spine he thought back to his little girl. Disillusioned and frightened; running home to get help. Running to escape. To warn her father. She never made it. That was where it had started.
Lara was the first drop in an expanding ocean of horrific events. Her death was planned almost as carefully as the cover-up that followed. People were recruited to help shield the truth. Powerful people. People like Andy. But it was no use. The response to any first drop is ultimately that ripples would start to spread. Further and further, wider and wider. Lots of them. One after the other. Dave, Paulo, Frederico, Andy.
Repercussions.
Not just designed to protect the child, but also to protect the events that would help them force its rise to power. It needed to be something big; something that would truly leave the world reeling in its wake. Something that would make the people look to God and beg for forgiveness. Who better to grant that forgiveness than a child who they could prove was descended from David. A child who was being portrayed as God’s true son. A Messiah who really would fulfil the prophecy; He would appear in the midst of an event so cataclysmic that it might even be perceived as the ultimate Day of Judgement.
“Jack....?” MaryBeth probed. “Are you alright. You look like you’ve seen a...”
Jack glanced quickly along the lot to Dan and Robert. They were climbing back into their dull grey sedan. The Bronco, apparently, had been given the all clear. Somehow he had known it would.
“They do need me alive,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You were right. Andy couldn’t stall me forever, but he never needed to. He just needed to stall me long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
Jack’s eyes did not move. They were fixed. MaryBeth carefully followed his gaze and realised almost instantaneously what he was inferring. On the side of the main offices, high above the arriving staff, the countdown was ticking, yellow letters leaping from the black of the board on which they were displayed.
Twelve days; two hours; thirteen minutes.
“Long enough for them to use my launch.”
horse for horse
1 Kings 20:25
It was the oldest F.B.I. trick in the book; pretend you know everything when in reality its closer to nothing. When you approached a person who held information that you wanted, you used the little you did know as a weapon against them. A check on a hospital register suddenly became ‘Joe told me he’d been in hospital’. A freshly torn photograph found in the trash similarly became ‘Joe tells me he’s had a row with his wife’. Then, when the person you were speaking to thought you knew some of the story, they often assumed that you knew all of it. As they confirmed it for you, they told you things you did not previously know. It was just a case of using what little knowledge you had. A little knowledge could be a very dangerous thing in well-seasoned hands.
Which is why Warner had chosen to use the same trick on Kyle McCarthy.
The man who was now, without even realising it, giving Warner the best computer training session he’d ever had. All he had to do was nod and smile when necessary, look bored when necessary and keep saying things like ‘it’s under the FILE menu’ when the few things he did know crossed paths with the things Kyle was doing. It was so easy, especially when dealing with a man who had not yet perfected the manipulation of human nature. A man who still thought you could get more on a suspect from a computer than you could by speaking to the guy who sold him his weekly groceries.
Warner had told Kyle nothing of the smaller companies, or the compounds they had purchased, there was no need. Jack Bernstein had already done the legwork on that one and narrowed the field of view down to the three larger corporations. Linking those three was the thing he had said he needed to do, and that was all that Kyle needed to know. For now.
The first set of details appeared on screen, listed in a nondescript typeface beneath a digitised representation of Pegasus Holdings’ corporate logo; an archer’s bow passing through a gold crown with the inscription ‘conquering and to conquer’ engraved into its face.
“Pegasus Holdings,” Kyle said with a self-satisfied smile. He pushed his small round spectacles further up his nose. “1024 Fulham Road, London, England. Founded 1878. Acts purely as an investor/overseer for smaller companies which it purchases and develops. Has no manufacturing or production capabilities of its own. At present its portfolio lists... Whew...” Even Kyle was staggered by what he saw. “...276 companies in eighteen distinct business sectors. They’re mainly concerned with banking, finance, insurance and service industries such as tourism.” He looked at Warner open-mouthed. “Wow, these guys are big.”
Warner raised his eyebrows. He knew damn well that if Kyle McCarthy had not been such a devout Christian he would have undoubtedly just taken his Lord’s name quite severely in vain.
“If we can link them to the other two,” he said, “they might just get even bigger.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Kyle turned back to the screen and scoured the list. Some of the companies he recognised, others he did not. Each company name was followed by the address of its registered office. There was a high proliferation, probably seventy-percent in total, divided between the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the former Soviet Union. The remainder were scattered almost randomly across the globe. Underneath each company was a list of their major trading history including major clients and suppliers and approximate annual turnovers in U.S. dollars.
“Unusually,” he continued, “there are no details on file regarding ownership or shareholding of Pegasus itself. They’ve certainly never been investigated by us or that would have been top priority. My suggestion would be;
speak with Companies House in London. They hold details on all mainland U.K. businesses.”
Warner was quietly annoyed. He did not need to be spoon-fed the obvious, especially not when he had over twenty year’s more experience up his sleeve than the kid. Still, Kyle was actually helping far more than he had hoped. It would seem fairly productive, for now at least, to bite his tongue and humour him.
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Anyway, I’ll print you a hard copy,” Kyle said.
“It’s under the ‘FILE’ menu,” Warner offered.
Kyle cast him a strange look. He, too, did not need to be spoon-fed. He selected ‘PRINT’ from the relevant submenu and clicked ‘OK’. A few seconds later numerous sheets of paper began to appear from the laser printer which rested on a brown manila box full of files at the side of Warner’s desk. It would have been on the desk had he ever managed to tidy the paperwork which currently littered it, as he had promised himself he would.
It took five minutes for the printer to complete the task, thirty-eight sheets in total.
“Right, next one up: R.K.I.,” Kyle said, keying the relevant name into the search engine. After a brief pause, R.K.I.’s logo appeared on screen; a sword pointing blade-down, encircled by a ring of barbed wire. They were listed under ‘ARMAMENTS - MANUFACTURE AND SUPPLY’. Underneath the logo was the company’s full title; Red Knight Industries and the tagline ‘take peace from the earth’. Warner smiled.
It was a subtle double-entendre, undoubtedly designed to be read either way.
“Red Knight Industries, 504 Rue Grande, Alexandria, Egypt,” Kyle said. “Founded 1937, just in time for the war no doubt. It seems they also have subsidiaries.” Warner curled his lip. He could see that for himself. “Not as many this time, though. Twelve in total. All worldwide.”
“They all seem pretty legitimate,” Warner said, almost to himself as he scoured the trade details listed below each subsidiary.
“Sure do,” Kyle agreed, “but an armaments company based in Egypt; gateway between Africa and Europe, I’ll bet you my last dollar they’re dirty.”
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