by Stephen Moss
“We have confirmed he was a plant,” she said, not even pretending to be surprised. “His background was faked, though with an impressive level of professionalism. And it was an old cover. At least seven years old. This was a sleeper.”
“That is what I am hearing at Vauxhall,” said Nick, smiling now like she was saying some joke to him. She laughed as well, maintaining the charade. They parted the hug, but stayed close, as if they were hopeful lovers. Neither was uncomfortable with the cover, though neither mistook it for a moment as anything more than that.
“We have only four candidates,” he went on, “given the depth of the cover and the MO. And none of them are very surprising.”
Her expression was questioning as she mouthed: NK … he nodded; China … he nodded again. Her expression turned more thoughtful: Russia?
He nodded again, then, with a glance around the room as though he was looking for a friend, he said simply, “Japan,” as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
She was thoughtful at this, using the luxury of having her back to the room to allow her pensiveness to show. The Japanese. She knew that the proud country was far from happy that the bunker facilities they had kindly leant TASC had suddenly been changed in status from leased to annexed, but they had been compensated as only TASC could compensate, and she had assumed that had assuaged their ire.
No, she thought, she was still fairly confident they were on the up and up, and she made eye contact with Nick again as he stopped his seemingly innocent perusal of the room.
“My gut says they’re an unlikely culprit,” she said, and he nodded in agreement.
“We think so too. But the possibility remains,” he said, and she nodded as well, appreciative of his candor. He was taking no small risk to be here, but he had offered more. He had offered to join them outright, and probably would in the future. But she had said he could best serve them by remaining in MI6 for now, and he had seen the logic, even agreed, if with a measure of disappointment.
“So, that leaves the people’s threesome,” she said with a wry smile, and he laughed a little as she went on. “Anything you have heard that singles any of them out?”
“Our sources say that it is unlikely the Russians have the political will to move against you at this stage, though they certainly don’t lack the desire.”
She nodded appreciatively at that, then listened closely as he spoke again. His voice was raised now, so she could here him clearly, but the sound was lost as soon as it veered more than a few feet, brightly colored drops of information landing in an ocean of noise and vanishing into the greater blue in an instant.
“As far as the other two are concerned,” he said, his tone telling her they were veering well into speculation now, “we did see a spike of traffic in and out of New York through some of the known channels before and after the attempt, enough to make us note it even before you ‘informed’ our bosses about what had happened.”
Informed. It was an old trick; if you had a reliable source in an agency and you wanted to use their resources, you openly gave them the data needed to prompt an investigation, and then let that source feed you the results. And so it had been with the intertwined intelligence networks of Great Britain and the US this past day. Maybe they would surprise her and officially share some measure of their analysis with her as well, but she doubted it. Either way she would get what she wanted, and know a little more about the true nature of her relationship with two of her allies in the process.
“What is interesting is that there was a correlation of sorts in the volume and nature of the traffic going back to Beijing and, through less sophisticated channels, back to Pyongyang as well.”
“So one was watching the other, or they were working together. Either way, it sounds like they had some measure of advanced knowledge that something was brewing,” she said.
He nodded again, then said, “Of course, whether that means they masterminded the attack together, or one just caught wind of it and chose to watch and wait … well …”
She agreed with a nod. It was far from damning evidence, but it certainly required further investigation. Something to add to the ever-growing list of reasons she wanted to get more access to the People’s Republic, and any access at all to North Korea.
“Very well. This is useful, Nick. Thanks.”
He nodded, genuinely happy to help. Anyone who had seen what havoc just two of the Mobiliei’s Agents could wreak could be under no doubt of where humanity’s real priorities should now lie. But nor could a practiced spy be so naïve as to assume that meant that even the most enlightened countries would just follow Neal’s lead without complaint.
So he would watch, along with an ever more expansive network of politicians, military leaders, and intelligence operatives that were smart enough and open-minded enough to see which way the wind was blowing. Ayala knew they were making enemies, but they were making many friends as well.
She stayed and talked a short while longer.
But underlying this conversation were many layers of deceit. They were not fools. They knew that the CIA and MI6 would figure out that Nick had met with her. The strata of this level of espionage were far more complex than just one man and one woman. So Nick had told his superiors she had contacted him, and they had agreed to the meeting. They had even tried to feed him a more limited portfolio of information for him to share with her as a layer of protection against him doing what he had just done: betrayed them.
But so the game was played, and he had gathered the full truth in pieces from other members of his multinational network of fellow operatives before he came to the bar.
It was layers upon layers of double and triple crossing, and it was all too complex and contrived to follow sometimes, but not for Ayala. As she left the dive bar in the residential Upper West Side, she was even balancing the weight of her trust for Nick himself, and the other sources she knew he was working with.
But the crux of the meeting remained. China and North Korea. China: a persistently thorny bush that apparently needed even greater pruning. And North Korea: a problem not just for TASC, but for the world as a whole. One of many loose ends that stood between them and the true task at hand.
They had smited the burgeoning Russian People’s Federation, and removed the cancer in China with even greater prejudice. But the discord the two Agents had looked to capitalize on remained.
She would have to go there, as she had suspected. She could leave the rest of the negotiations to Neal, Madeline, and Jim, and their security to John and Minnie. Her skills were needed elsewhere.
Chapter 10: Shockwaves – Part One
Neal visited District Two in person this time, wanting to watch the next launch with his own eyes. He was joined by Amadeu. The Portuguese neuroscientist was as excited as Neal about the new machine, if a touch more exuberant about the fact.
They were greeted by William, mobile in his exoskeleton suit and avoiding Neal’s eye contact as they made their way to a waiting concrete and reinforced-glass booth.
“Well, well!” said William as they entered the small space. It was bitterly cold, like the rest of the island, but it was well insulated, and once the doors were sealed, a small space heater, notable only for its brute simplicity in these incredible times, quickly gave warmth to the small gathering.
“Here we are!” he said as they took their seats.
“Yes indeed,” said Amadeu, trying to contain his excitement at the coming spectacle. It had taken a week just to form the gargantuan machine they were here to see, and another week before that just to load the materials into the Dome, as it had with the Skalm and the first EAHL before it. Its complexity and scale were incredible, but at the same time it was, in many ways, the simplest thing they had made to date.
It could not fly and it could not kill, well, not very efficiently anyway. As with anything the size of an apartment block that could move of its own accord, it could definitely kill if it wasn’t used with care. It was just
not designed for the job, unlike its cousin, the Skalm.
“So, I saw on the way in that all is looking good for today’s launch?” said Neal.
“It is,” replied William, as they were joined by a nervous-looking group of technicians and scientists.
There was a time when Neal had known every member of his team, but not anymore. These were strangers all, he thought, as the team of probably very capable scientists and engineers filed in, each and every one wary at the prospect of meeting the famous Neal Danielson.
Neal remembered a time when he had interviewed each new addition to their conspiracy himself, often with Barrett waiting with a gun should the interview not go as planned. He winced as he thought of his old friend. They had never found his body, and no one had ever dared raise the topic with Ayala, mostly out of a simple sense of self-preservation.
Not even Neal, the man who had embroiled them both in this whole dirty affair. The man who had recruited Laurie, and James, and Barrett, and Birgit, and countless other friends now lost, to death or the void; he wasn’t sure which was worse. He resolved to talk to Ayala. Someone had to. She was a pillar of strength even now, more so even, if that was possible, but he had known them both as only co-conspirators can know each other, and the couple’s love had been undeniable.
He shook off the thought for now, as he knew he must, as he assumed Ayala must be doing somehow as well, and focused on the task at hand.
“If you would like to join me,” said William, choosing not to comment on Neal’s obvious distraction, “we can view the final stages from inside the Dome, before the seal is cracked.”
Neal nodded, and noted Amadeu was already closing his eyes. The boy was no doubt already inside, maybe even had never left, such was his rare comfort balancing reality with the ether.
Neal closed his eyes as well, and felt Mynd reach out to him. Given that Mynd, unlike Minnie, was a child of his very own brain, he should be more comfortable with him than he was with Minnie, and in some ways he was. But Mynd was a far blunter, less refined personality than Minnie, but then, maybe, thought Neal sardonically, so was he.
Mynd:
Neal: ‘thank you, mynd. ¿how are things going in there?’
Mynd:
Their views altered and they entered the machine, seeing its contents with sonic eyes as the resonance manipulators looked through the giant embryo within, gently relinquishing their pressure to allow the new form to set, and wafting outward as it started to take its own weight.
The team leads that William had invited to the launch ceremony looked on as Neal took his seat and nervously glanced at each other. I mean, this was the man. This was Dr. Danielson. They knew of some source of knowledge that was driving all the advancements they were busy working on, they knew, on some level, that it was probably not a single person, but the line between legend and truth had started to grey, and the name Neal Danielson had started to become synonymous with wonder.
He was becoming an icon, in his way. Whether his ascendant star would remain in the firmament or plummet back to Earth, who could know, such was the way of people who became fabled in their own lifetimes. But for now there were few among the growing teams of Madeline’s Research Group or the even larger and more multifaceted Construction Group that did not regard Neal as something close to a scientific god.
He was not aware of it. Indeed those that made up his cadre of friends and confidants regarded him much as they always had: as a dedicated, maybe even courageous man who had spearheaded Earth’s resistance to the coming threat, but who was, in the end, still just a chubby balding man in his late thirties who didn’t have much outside of his work other than a paunch.
As for the young man he was with, wunderkind inventor of the famous spinal interface, he was almost as famous within the taskforce’s circles. And then if you added the bionic man they all called boss, it really was too much for the gathered group.
So they stayed in mute silence, awkward really, but happy to be here, in the presence of what they perceived as greatness.
“OK, that looks very promising, indeed,” said Neal, rubbing his hands together as he reemerged from his link into the machine.
“Oh yeah, Neal,” replied Amadeu, clearly still linked in, his eyes closed. “It really does, doesn’t it.” The boy beamed. “This is going to be so very, very cool.”
And it really was.
Without much in the way of warning, the process came to a close and the ground rumbled slightly as the seal on the great Dome above and in front of them was cracked. It was a long, slow process as they went to open the segmented top half of the Dome, but unlike previous openings, they would not then have to wait for the massive gantry cranes that lined the ground around the Dome to unload its contents.
For where the Skalm and EAHL had needed to be lifted clear of the Dome’s fragile and exorbitantly expensive golden inner-surface before igniting their engines, today’s child of the Dome would require no such assistance.
“If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I must commune with Moira to help with the engine start and unloading.” said William, to nods from both Amadeu and Neal.
As William virtually departed the space once more, the two other men, different in both age, background, purpose, and personality, but identical in the childlike expectation that filled their faces, stood and walked to the thick windows of the room to gaze up at the rim of the Dome’s bottom half.
It was showing like the brim of a giant goblet now, viewed from beneath, like it was about to spill its contents across the wide flat peninsula it dominated.
The world seemed to hold its breath, or at least it did for Neal and Amadeu, as they looked upwards.
They waited.
Then they saw it; a great, three-pronged foot, rising up and over the edge of the dome.
It was on the end of a leg, a long, thin leg, more an outline than a solid form, a framework of nanotube spars, strung with great cables that were its spiderweb tendons. It kept coming. The foot alone must have been ten meters across, indeed they knew it was, at some level, but for now they stared at it with a joy untempered by fact. They looked at it with the eyes of the children they had once been, children who had played with Lego and Transformers. That had dreamed of the very machines they were now building.
But this was no flight of fancy, and it was not so esoteric or scary as the Skalm. This was just, plain, awesome …
The leg continued coming, reaching up and over the brim, and they saw what they thought was the knee, then realized it was just an ankle, as the main bulk of the huge limb filled the sky above their suddenly diminutive shed.
As the huge foot came to ground, they watched as its three toes and giant ankle flexed, absorbing the impact as the ground shook with the massive footfall. But no sooner was the foot firmly planted than another was rising up and over the Dome’s rim to join the first.
And as this second huge leg came up and over, the main body of the machine started to heave into view as well. Soon the full scale of the Ground Based Heavy Lifter became clear, a reality to match the drawings they had all seen and tried to picture.
It was, at its core, a crane on four legs, or rather a crane with four legs, for the legs were both its means of mobility and the way by which it would lift whatever it needed to lift.
Like its flying cousin the EAHL, it could have comfortably walked right into the bay, latched onto one of the cargo ships that lay there with the spindly but powerful grapples that lined the underbelly of its body, and lifted it clear out of the water.
But unlike the EAHL, whose acronym had so easily become its moniker, the acronym GBHL gave little fuel for the imagination. So it had been dubbed, simply, Big Foot. Neal, with his astronomer’s penchant for Greek mythology, had pushed for naming it after the first of the Titans to add to his growing pan
theon, but the team of military and civilian engineers that had worked on it had found it uninspiring, and he was, in truth, just fine with their final choice.
“jesus … h … christ,” he whispered to no one in particular as the beast clambered out of the Dome that had birthed it. Amadeu chuckled.
“My thoughts exactly,” Amadeu said, and they glanced at each other and grinned before staring back at the massive hulk once more.
It was not waiting around. It was already treading toward the water in great, powerful steps of its four huge legs, as though about to do just that theoretical thing Neal had used so many times in discussions of its planned use. But it was not going to pick up one of the ships there. That would have been both pointless, dangerous, and a strain on even its herculean strength.
It was going to do in a matter of days what it had taken the standard gantry cranes and loading bays two weeks to do.
They watched, grinning, as it stepped into the frigid waters, immune to their bitter cold, and moved over to one of the big ships. It straddled the ship it as though it was a kraken of legend, and Neal tried to imagine what it must feel like to be on the ship in question.
But it was not there to attack the hulking freighter, it was there to lighten its load, and as it moved over the ship, it aligned its body over the cargo containers that covered its decks. The stocky body, home to the fusion engines that pumped power to its four huge limbs, dipped down, the mandible limbs on its underbelly reaching out, and grasped up a stacked block of twenty containers, each laden with countless tons of raw materials.
They watched as it lifted the stack easily into the air, making light work of what it would have taken ten ordinary cranes an hour to do, and began to lumber back into the relatively shallow waters to shore.
“That is,” said Amadeu, “without doubt, the coolest thing I have ever seen!”
Amadeu turned to Neal, who nodded in agreement, then he smiled back at the arrayed engineers standing behind them, who were wondering, perhaps, what they were doing there. But they nodded their agreement with the young boy’s sentiment, adding their own sycophantic enthusiasm.