The Zul Enigma

by J M Leitch

  Even though Rachael knew all this from her mother’s book, it was interesting to hear the story from the Americans’ perspective.

  ‘The Secretary-General persuaded Anderson to let Dr Maiz visit Vienna on his way to Spain. Barbara escorted him but after your father collapsed at his office and was smuggled out for treatment she was left with egg on her face. She told me Anderson was so furious she thought he was going to can her right there and then.

  ‘To further muddy the issue, by that time Barbara had watched a recording of a holovideo between your father and Zul that took place at the safe house in DC where she’d been holding him. NASA analysed the recording plus part of another holovideo recorded at your father’s office in Vienna and proved he wasn’t acting out the character of Zul like Anderson believed. Since there was no evidence he’d collaborated with anyone else, they dropped the investigation. Thing was no one was ever able to identify who did send the e-mails and holovideos.’

  Scott uncrossed his ankles and edged himself forward in the chair. ‘Can I offer you something else to drink?’ he asked. Rachael began to shake her head when he interrupted, ‘Not more tea. I’m tea’d out. I was thinking of something stronger. A whisky. Will you join me?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I’d love to.’

  ‘With ice and water?’

  ‘Ice?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m old-fashioned,’ he laughed. ‘I know we have coatings inside the glasses to keep drinks cold but to my mind nothing beats the sound of chinking ice in a cut-glass whisky tumbler.’

  Rachael smiled. ‘Yes to the ice then, but no water.’

  For a man of eighty-eight, Scott’s hand was very steady as he poured the drinks.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, ‘to your parents,’ and they lifted their glasses in a toast.

  He settled back in his chair.

  ‘So tell me about my father. What was he like?’

  ‘He was pretty tricky. He escaped from us not just once but twice.’ Rachael laughed. ‘It was very embarrassing. First time he made a break for it after a traffic accident in DC. I met him the next day. Barbara called me in to tell his friend he was in the clear and that’s when I met your father for the first time. Then a few hours later I had to go back to get his decision – whether he’d commit himself to hospital or not.’

  Rachael shifted forward, her hands clasped in her lap. ‘So what was he like? Do you remember?’

  ‘Sure I remember. He was about five feet ten. Had curly dark brown hair beginning to go grey at the temples. His eyes were a very dark brown too, like yours. Liquid chocolate. You have his colouring, you know,’ Scott said. ‘They said he’d lost weight when he was with us, but he still had a bit of a paunch when I met him. He must have lost that setting up the Global Consciousness initiative. When I saw him on TV later that year he’d become quite a celebrity and was looking very buff. But when our guys picked him up he was a mess. He hadn’t shaved and it looked like he’d slept in his Giorgio Armani…’

  ‘Giorgio Armani?’

  ‘One of the great Italian fashion designers of the day. Your father always wore his suits.’

  ‘I’m amazed you remember all this.’

  Scott looked sheepish. ‘I kept all my old notes. I ran through them before you got here. So… the day I met him he looked haunted. He was stooped over like an old man who was carrying the whole world’s troubles on his shoulders. He sat slouched in a chair and just stared out of the window. He was smouldering with anger. You could feel it. When they briefed me, they said he’d had some personal bust-up with his friend the night before and it was obvious he was furious with him and of course madder than hell at us. He’d come to us for help and ended up getting screwed. We were the “enemy” as far as he was concerned. We’d taken his freedom away.’

  Rachael furrowed her brow and nodded.

  ‘That first time we met he didn’t even look at me, let alone speak. And the second time? All he did was grunt.’

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Later, after Barbara told me the whole story, it was obvious he was a passionate man standing up for his principles. I never judged him for the way he behaved. In fact, I admired him for it. If he’d been guilty he’d have been pleading and trying to persuade us to change our minds, not cutting us dead.’ Scott leaned forward. ‘You know, Barbara always thought your father was innocent. It came as a big shock when the Tribunal announced they’d arrested him, even though he’d already been tried and judged guilty by the press,’ and he shook his head. ‘At NI, after Barbara dropped the case against him, she didn’t close the file. She was determined to find out who was behind Zul.

  ‘But as the weeks went by and nothing more happened she had to pull the priority. Of course the file got attention big time after Zul appeared on that satellite broadcast, but the new Director never got to the bottom of it. After she left, Barbara kept on it too, but what with setting up on her own and trying to drum up business, her resources were stretched and she couldn’t do much. She told me about the interviews though.’

  ‘Interviews? What interviews?’

  ‘With your mother. She liked her, you know. She called her the English rose,’ and Rachael smiled. ‘After the Tribunal was set up, it petitioned every scrap of evidence from NASA and from us. Every communication, every e-mail, every transcript of every meeting, every report, the holovideo copies… they impounded it all. They interviewed Barbara – she was expecting to be called in to testify – she would’ve spoken out. But…’

  Diane walked into the room. ‘You two still chatting?’

  Scott turned and smiled at his wife. ‘We’re going to be a while yet.’

  ‘Then I’m going for a lie down. Be sure to wake me before Rachael leaves. I want to say goodbye.’

  Rachael smiled as Diane shut the door, then looked back at Scott. ‘Over the last couple of weeks,’ she said, ‘I’ve scoured the Internet for information about my parents. Right after the massacre, some people claimed my father had been set up as a scapegoat. Did you think that?’

  ‘Barbara and I often discussed it and yeah, that’s what we thought. I promised I’d help her investigate, but… well…’

  ‘What?’

  He sighed. ‘Given the resources required to develop the virus, the people responsible obviously operated at a very high level. We’d have had to dig very, very deep to find anything. Plus it was unlikely they’d left any clues. Then I was up to my neck in it at NI. For months we waded through a barrage of data, cross-checking people registered at Survivor On Line against existing records and the Internet Virtual Archives. For years Barbara’s bread and butter business was tracing missing persons… you wouldn’t believe how many people used the angst and confusion of the time as cover to disappear. She wanted me to put in more time on your father’s case – but I was flat out. Then, after Global Governance was ratified, all the nation state intelligence agencies were disbanded.’

  ‘Did you ever consider it was Zul? That some alien being tampered with the vaccine?’

  ‘Sure, we talked that through… many times. And we always ended up at the same point. We couldn’t rule it out one hundred per cent… but it was extremely unlikely.’

  The recurring conundrum, Rachael thought. ‘What did you do after NI was disbanded?’

  ‘I signed on with Global Intelligence, a division of the Global Assistance Unit. There were guys from all over – CIA and FBI, Brits from the Secret Intelligence Service, there were Israelis, Europeans, Russians, South Americans, Canadians, Australians. All sorts. It was a busy time setting up something that worked with such a fusion of cultures. Plus I’d just met Diane. Even Barbara gave up eventually.’

  He shook his head. ‘Like your mother, we thought the Tribunal’s decision was rigged. Of course, in the months leading up to Dr Maiz’s arrest, the press had taken a lot of pleasure publicising his views on the dangers of an overpopulated planet. He’d always been very outspoken on that score, so there was no shortage of material
for them to use. But as for having any hard evidence? I don’t believe they had anything on him at all. Then when he and his girlfriend,’ he looked at Rachael, ‘your mother, may they rest in peace, were taken out like that,’ he shook his head, ‘then we knew. Whoever was behind it wanted them both out of the way before the trial could even get started. They wanted to block any further debate and silence any opposition.’

  ‘But how could you accept it?’ Rachael shrugged, the hurt she felt causing her voice to falter.

  ‘Because nobody wanted it to drag on. See, all the time we focused on that we were reminded of the single most hideous event that had ever happened. We knew it was wrong, but all we wanted was to block it out of our minds… forever. People were desperate for swift closure so they could make a fresh start. I know it’s hard for you to hear, let alone accept, but the Tribunal drew the line under the massacre when it announced your father was responsible. And that event marked the world’s new start, regardless that some people still suspected he was innocent.’

  ‘But…’

  Scott held up his hand. ‘I’m not saying it was right or fair. I’m just saying we survivors needed some resolution of that nightmare event to allow us to get on with building a new future. And don’t forget, Rachael, we were all still shell-shocked back then. No one was thinking clearly. Most of us were barely getting by from one day to the next.’

  Scott shook his head at the memory of those terrible times.

  ‘Up until just after the massacre, my father was convinced Zul was real. After researching and writing the book, my mother believed it too. Of course, afterwards she knew he’d been framed. And that’s what I believe – not just because he’s my father.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine how devastated they must have been. Especially Dr Maiz. After everything he’d been through, everything he’d done.’

  ‘It was horrendous for my mother too. She’d given out free vaccine in Europe. Her diary? It’s excruciating to read.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ Scott said in a low voice, ‘and I can understand you wanting to clear your father’s name.’

  ‘I know over fifty years have gone by, but now I’ve found out who I am… who my birth parents are… I’m going to do my damnedest to finish what my mother started. For the sake of every single person who died, and for my parents, I want to expose the culprits. And I tell you, if any one of them is still alive today, I want to make them pay.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Breaking only to eat and sleep, Rachael had worn her dead-head sixteen hours a day for nearly three weeks solid searching for information in the Virtual Archives, set up in 2012. The VA, as it was known, allowed corporations and individuals to store data split between two discrete domains: a protected one for confidential information and a public one for general access. The Internet, which had hardly changed since then, proved to be the most useful tool used in the global reorganisation process.

  The way industry worked, on the other hand, had changed beyond recognition. Technological progress came to a halt for years, as the planet pooled its experts and resources and directed all their energies into consolidating, re-evaluating and redesigning the global economy to function the best way possible with such a vastly reduced population. By the 2020s, however, when conditions were more stable, companies were once again able to look ahead and focus on research and development.

  The electronics industry in particular had made great advances and fifteen years before came up with the dead-head, a revolutionary device allowing direct brain-to-brain exchange and storage, as well as brain-to-VA exchange and storage, providing instant access and downloading capability to vast quantities of data not only lodged on the Internet but also archived in the public access areas located in people’s memories.

  These were the primary sources of data Rachael trawled through, as she searched for information about people connected with the Zul mystery.

  Not surprisingly, the results were disappointing.

  The first name she searched for was William Johnston – the man who had killed her parents – but she discovered he had long since died.

  OOSA had been restructured and renamed Global Outer Space Affairs, and she discovered that Corrinne, her father’s Administration Assistant, had continued working there until she retired, but had died of a stroke in 2025. Hans Baade, the Network Security Manager in her father’s time, left soon after the global massacre. His movements were more difficult to trace, but Rachael was pretty sure it was his death announcement that had been published in a couple of Austrian virtual publications the previous year.

  On the other side of the Atlantic, she read that Anita Goodwin, Secretary of State in President Anderson’s administration, left politics after he committed suicide and died in 2053 at the grand old age of ninety. Rachael could find no information on Anderson’s secretary, Amanda, but General James Schwabe retired as a five star General and died in 2031 at age seventy-six. She also discovered that after Barbara Lord was fired by Anderson, she set up her own private security firm and sold it for several million Global Dollars when she retired at age sixty-five. She died two years later, having never married.

  Rachael’s father’s friend, Drew Roberts, made a quantum leap in his career when he started working on the Space Elevator project. In early 2014 he, Erika Stone and her two sons moved to Bremerton in Washington State on the west coast, where the LiftPort Group had their headquarters. They were married the following year and Erika became a full-time mother. LiftPort relocated to San Diego, California in 2022 and that same year Drew was hired to head the Space Station Settlement Programme, an organisation created to coordinate projects utilising the Space Elevator, which came under the auspices of the Global Space Agency. He continued working for SSSP until he retired at seventy years of age, the year the first Space Elevator made its inauguration lift in 2028. He continued working with them as a consultant for many years and saw four elevators successfully tethered.

  Having got the impression from her mother’s book that until Drew unexpectedly came into his aunt’s inheritance and the NASA redundancy package back in 2012, he’d always been the poor relation in comparison with her father’s high profile career, she was pleased to see how successful he’d become. He had died in 2043 when he was eighty-three and Erika, thirteen years his junior, outlived him by nineteen years.

  When she researched Greg Howard she confirmed what her mother said, that he resigned from the UN in March 2013 after the Criminal Tribunal discovered how the virus had been distributed to the poor. Rachael wished she could have met him. She could tell from the way her mother described him what a good man he was and what a good friend he’d been to both her parents. She read that just after they were shot dead he packed up his home in New York and went back to the family farm outside Brisbane in Australia, withdrawing from public life altogether. Rachael spotted an obituary that reported his death in 2036 at the age of eighty. His wife, Tracy, had preceded him two years before.

  Out of all the people Rebecca mentioned in her book, Rachael discovered only Joseph Fisher – Drew and Carlos’s old friend, and Scott Fuller – who used to report to Barbara Lord back in 2012, were still alive. Although she could find no record of what Scott Fuller did after the NI was disbanded, his name popped up in a report about Barbara’s funeral, and from that link Rachael learned he’d moved to Miami where, as far as she could make out, at eighty-eight years old, he still lived with his wife. Joseph Fisher, however, sixteen years older, had been far easier to trace. He’d retired from his consulting position with IAI at ninety-five and having reached the grand old age of 104 had been resident for the past five years at the nursing home wing of a Jewish hospital located near Miami Beach. Well, Rachael thought, that made life easy. She checked availability of flights from Málaga where she now lived and booked herself a seat.

  Miami, she thought, here I come.

  Rachael was forced back in her seat as the plane hurtled down the runway and she felt a thrill of anticipation expl
ode in her stomach as it took off and banked over the sea. She took her mother’s manuscript out of the bag she’d stowed in the compartment underneath the window. Her neighbour, a young man in his early thirties, stared fascinated as she leafed through real paper, but she didn’t care. She loved the smell of the yellowed pages, and more than that, loved knowing her mother’s hands had touched every sheet.

  She found the chapter describing the flight Greg Howard had made with Carlos to Washington DC at the end of March 2012. Although it wasn’t Domaine Laurent-Perrier Brut, sitting and drinking wine on a plane as her father had once done somehow made her feel extra close to him.

  Air travel had progressed since his day, although not as quickly as it would have had there been no global massacre. The latest commercial jets could achieve speeds of over Mach 2, much like the old Concord, which halved the typical flying times of 2012.

  During the flight Rachael tried to keep a reign on her excitement, reminding herself that both Scott and Joseph were old men and for all she knew their mental faculties might be shot. It was very possible neither of them would even remember Carlos Maiz, let alone any details that might help her. They may not even agree to meet her at all.

  After boarding the Miami Airport auto shuttle and being transported through hail and sleet to her hotel, before even trying to contact Scott, Rachael made a holovideo call to the nursing home where Joseph was resident. Finding out he'd been transferred to the hospital wing for some routine annual tests earlier in the day, she explained that she was the daughter of one of his old friends, left her name, and asked that he return her call when he could.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘So how long did it take you to track me down?’ Scott asked, rubbing his knee as he flexed his leg.