by Dc Alden
DC ALDEN
Copyright © 2015 DC Alden
First published in 2015.
This paperback published 2015
The right of DC Alden to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Also by DC Alden
Invasion
The Horse at the Gates
‘It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity.’
David Rockefeller
Address to the Trilateral Commission
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Prologue
‘This is it? This is everything?’
Engle blinked behind the lenses of his horned-rimmed glasses as he appraised the government flunkey before him. The younger man was dark-haired and square-jawed, with shoulders that strained at his cheap suit. He looked more like an athlete than a bag carrier for Special Advisor Marshall, and his manner—well, to say it was abrupt was an understatement. The guy was just plain rude.
At sixty-seven years old and Director for Special Projects at the United States Geological Survey, Professor Bruce Engle was unused to being dictated to. Keyes, on the other hand, was a low level bureaucrat, yet he seemed indifferent to Engle’s status, or indeed the importance of any of the VIPs sitting around the conference table. Engle glanced at the others, his own indignation mirrored on their faces.
‘That’s all of it?’ Keyes repeated. ‘Including backups?’
Engle waved a liver-spotted hand at the piles of folders, tapes and CD-ROM discs stacked at the end of the table. ‘It’s all there, as requested. And why isn’t Marshall here? He should be here.’
‘I believe you spoke to him this morning.’
‘He called me at five a.m. I was barely conscious, for Chrissakes. I don’t appreciate these sudden changes. Of arrangements or personnel.’
‘Mister Marshall has authorised me to act on his behalf.’
‘This is unacceptable,’ the professor grumbled.
Frank Marshall was a National Security Special Assistant at the White House, and Engle’s only point of contact since the data had been confirmed. He’d ordered Engle to make a list of names of those who knew the whole picture; the security guys from the International Energy Agency, the whistle-blowers from Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil, and two of Engle’s trusted colleagues at the USGS in Virginia. Twenty-three men and women in all, the only people on the planet who knew the brutal truth, now gathered around a grimy conference table in a disused office in Manhattan. Marshall had impressed upon them the need for avoidance of leaks of any kind. Disinformation was to be positively encouraged, at least for the foreseeable future. They’d all agreed, especially Engle; lately his nightmares of crumbling cities and starving populations were keeping him awake at night.
Keyes produced a plastic tray and pushed it across the table.
‘I’ll need all your identification, please.’
‘Is this really necessary?’
‘The Secret Service will need to record your personal details.’
Engle tossed his wallet into the tray. Keyes took a moment to examine the driving licences and social security cards, the corporate IDs and passports. Then he handed the tray to someone waiting outside the room.
Two more men appeared, both young and fit like Keyes, wearing the same cheap suits and each pushing a small cart. They began clearing the table, dumping the documents and CD’s into the carts. One of them dropped a folder, the computer printout within spilling across the floor.
‘Goddamit!’ Engle clambered to his feet. With considerable effort he knelt down and retrieved the document, carefully folding the perforated edges together. ‘This is sensitive data,’ he grumbled. ‘Be careful.’
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialled Marshall’s number. No signal. He approached Keyes, who waited by the open door. He seemed oblivious to Engle’s presence, his gaze fixed on his watch, his index finger resting on the lobe of his left ear. That’s when Engle noticed the small, flesh-coloured receiver nestled inside. Odd, he thought. Perhaps he had a hearing impediment. He cleared his throat.
‘Mister Keyes?’
The government man looked up, and Engle saw there was something wrong. Keyes was sweating, his eyes darting over the professor’s shoulder, towards the men clearing the table behind him.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Me? Sure.’
Engle held his cell phone aloft. ‘I can’t raise Marshall.’
‘He’s on his way. Step aside, please.’
The men with carts squeezed past him and rumbled outside. His precious data – all their data – was now in the hands of someone else.
‘He’s coming here?’
The distant chime of an elevator seemed to startle Keyes. He reached for Engle’s hand and shook it. It was clammy, hurried.
‘Take a seat. Help yourself to coffee. Mister Marshall will be with you shortly.’ Then he was gone, the door swinging closed behind him.
Engle turned to his colleagues and shrugged.
‘That’s it, then. I guess we wait.’
‘They seemed to be in a real hurry,’ observed one of the guys from the International Energy Agency.
‘I think they call that indecent haste,’ Engle agreed.
He flopped into his chair, fatigue compounding his irritation. He understood the need for secrecy but a decrepit office was taking things too far. The furniture was dated, the walls yellowed with age, the brown carpet almost threadbare in places. This office hadn’t been used in years.
Overhead, a bank of strip lights buzzed and flickered. Engle slipped his glasses off and loosened his tie. He pinched the bridge of his nose as a painful drum began to beat behind his eyes.
He checked his watch and cursed; 08:32. Where the hell was Marshall? He reached for his cell again. No Service.
‘Does anyone have a signal?’
Heads shook around the table. Engle got to his feet, swatting the ever-present dust from the seat of his pants. He snatched at a nearby wall phone and jiggled the switch. Dead. He slammed the phone down and marched toward the door.
The Head of Operations from Saudi Aramco got to his feet. ‘Bruce, where are you going?’
‘To find someone,’ Engle growled. He grab
bed the door handle and twisted. It didn’t move. He frowned, tried again. He turned to the Aramco executive.
‘Ahmed, help me please.’
Engle stepped back as the younger Saudi grappled with the brass knob. The door shook but didn’t open.
‘It’s locked,’ Ahmed said.
Several of the other men got to their feet. Engle moved aside, anger boiling in his veins. What in hell’s name was going on here? He saw the others yanking the handle, working their fingers into the gap above the door, important people, all experts in their fields, now sweating with effort, forced to vandalise the fixtures and fittings. Disgraceful. Suddenly the lock gave way with a loud crack, sending two of them tumbling across the carpet. Engle hurried over and helped them to their feet. He buttoned the front of his sports jacket and marched towards the open door.
‘Stay here. I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.’
Outside the floor was open plan, dark, empty. Engle hurried towards the main doors. The lobby beyond was busy with office workers moving back and forth between the elevators and some kind of brokerage firm.
There was no sign of Marshall.
He passed a stairwell. He heard urgent voices inside, then the sound of rapid footsteps quickly fading to nothing. The door had been wedged open. Engle peered around it. Footprints stamped dusty trails on the concrete steps. A door slammed somewhere above, echoing down the vastness of the chamber.
He grabbed the handrail and began a slow climb to the floor above. Puffing hard on the landing, he yanked open the door and stepped inside.
‘Hello?’
His voice echoed across the empty space. There were no offices up here, no desks or chairs, no bathrooms, no light fittings, no wall partitioning, not even carpet. It was just an empty space, silent, devoid of life, stripped back to its basic skeleton. Like a construction site. So where were all the workers?
Curiosity got the better of him. There was an air of recent industry about the place. The dust was much thicker here, but not from neglect. The toe of his shoe caught something and he looked down. A heavy black cable snaked across the concrete floor, one of several dozen that trailed away towards the building’s massive central supporting columns. He wandered over towards them. The columns were huge, lancing from floor to ceiling like giant redwoods, partially boxed in by large sheets of timber. There were more building materials here, saws and benches, with sandbags piled high against the fresh lumber, the cables disappearing somewhere inside. He saw chalk marks on the wood, seemingly random numbers and roughly drawn crosses and arrows. Nearby, powerful-looking drills and jackhammers lay discarded in an untidy heap on the floor, as if their operators had abandoned them in a hurry. Engle shook his head in disgust. Not even nine a.m. and already on a break. Goddam unions.
A sudden wave of dread gripped him. Maybe they’d been duped. Maybe Keyes wasn’t who he said he was, the meeting a ruse to steal their precious data. The Russians, perhaps? Or the Chinese? Both were masters at commercial espionage. Maybe that was why the man was so nervous. Why they’d been locked in.
He had to speak to Marshall.
He fumbled inside his jacket for his cell phone; still no goddam signal. He swore and strode across the room to the window. Finally the signal bar crept upwards. He punched Marshall’s number and waited, relieved to hear a crackling ring tone. He thrust a hand into his trouser pocket and rocked on his heels as he waited for Marshall to pick up. He glanced out of the window and, just for a moment, forgot about the call.
For all his later years spent behind a desk, Engle never missed an opportunity to marvel at the sheer beauty of the world around him, the wondrous legacy of its violent creation, the land masses formed over millennia that had fused together to form a life-sustaining environment that most people barely appreciated. This was one of those moments.
Beyond the thick glass the sky was a glorious blue, the view breath-taking, the horizon, endless. In all his visits to New York, he’d never once been inside the World Trade Centre and here, near the top of the North Tower, he could see all the way out to—
The morning sun caught a reflection, light bouncing off metal.
Then he saw it, growing larger by the second as it hurtled across the Manhattan skyline, the rising, screaming whine of jet engines that rattled the windows and shook the floor beneath his feet. For a moment, Engle’s higher brain functions refused to process the scene he was witnessing.
The silver airliner filled the window.
His eyes widened in horror, the scream trapped in his throat.
The phone slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
The cell in his pocket stopped ringing.
From his vantage point in Jersey City, Frank Marshall swallowed hard as he watched a huge ball of flame engulf the top of the North Tower. Moments later a muffled boom rippled across the Hudson River. All around him people gathered along the boardwalk. He registered the gasps of horror, the frantic phone calls, the shock and fear. Then he made a call of his own using an encrypted satellite phone.
‘Go ahead,’ ordered a distant voice after a single ring.
‘I’m in Jersey. Are you watching this?’
‘It just made CNN. Where’s our party?’
‘Inside.’ Marshall watched a young Latina staring open-mouthed at the smoking tower across the water. Tears rolled down her cheeks, her hands cupped around her face, as she swayed in denim shorts and roller blades.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Remote camera showed them still sitting there at eight forty-three. Engle moved out of shot just before. Probably went snooping.’
‘Any possibility he took the elevator back down?’
‘Doubtful.’
‘And you have the data?’
Marshall glanced over his shoulder towards a dark blue Chevy Suburban parked a short distance away. Inside, Keyes and the two ‘Secret Service’ agents were watching the drama unfold. He circled a finger to indicate that they should start the vehicle. ‘We got everything, even a detailed index. It’s all there.’
‘Good work.’
‘What now?’
He was eager to get going, before the next plane reached Manhattan. He didn’t want to see that.
‘The jet’s at Teterboro. Our guy at NORAD can’t keep this thing shut down for much longer. Pretty soon the FAA will initiate a ground stop, so get a shake on. We’ll see you in DC.’
‘Roger that.’
Marshall climbed inside the back seat of the Chevy next to Keyes. ‘Let’s go.’
‘What about the other plane?’ asked the driver. He was crouched over the steering wheel, searching the sky through the windshield. ‘D’you wanna wait?’
Marshall glared at the back of his head. ‘Sure, good idea. Go grab some hotdogs and a six-pack. We’ll make a day of it, you sick fuck.’
The driver took the hint and shifted the SUV into gear.
Marshall stared out of the window as the Chevy circled the lot and headed for the exit. Hundreds of people were now descending on the Jersey shoreline; office workers, construction guys, cops, cooks in chef whites, mothers pushing strollers. They gathered along the boardwalk, their expressions a mixture of horror and disbelief. Some were openly crying, just like the Latina. There’d be many more tears by day’s end.
As they headed west on Second he forced himself to take one final look. He’d always believed the operation was necessary but now it was underway he wasn’t so sure. For the first time in his professional life, doubt troubled him. If what they’d done turned out to be a mistake they’d all burn in hell for eternity. Marshall’s skin suddenly tingled, the hairs on the back of his neck rising: hell? He hadn’t thought about that concept since he was a boy.
He turned away and focused on the road ahead, folding his arms to stop the sudden, inexplicable shaking of his hands.
Behind him, across the river, a thick plume of black smoke belched from the shattered summit of the North Tower, an ugly stain across the sky on
what was an otherwise beautiful September morning in New York City.
Chapter One
The nightmare was always the same.
He was a boy again, lost in a cornfield. He heard his brother laughing, glimpsed a flash of colour, Jimmy’s orange T-shirt bright amongst the towering stalks. Roy surged after him, thrashing through the corn, thick rubbery leaves whipping his face.
‘Jimmy!’
Only the wind answered, a low hiss that stirred the corn around him. Dark clouds blotted out the sun. He heard his dead parents calling, their voices laced with a shrill note of warning. The corn towered above him in silent, menacing ranks, pressing in on him, seeking to trap him.
Devour him.
Roy charged onwards, his sandals slapping the dirt as he ran, the cornfield morphing into a dark, ancient wood. He heard a telephone ringing, its urgent trilling echoing through the gnarled and twisted trees. He crept deeper into the woods where the shadows were darkest, where the air was still, drawn by the insistent ringing.
The clearing lay ahead, the phone box at its heart, its red paintwork cracked and peeling. Weeds sprouted around its base, its watery luminance dappling the clearing. Roy inched forward and reached for the door handle. He tugged, and the naked figure floating inside jerked wildly.
‘Jimmy, it’s me. Please come out.’
Jimmy cocked his head, no longer a boy but a man, the gold St Christopher pendant and chain around his neck glinting inside the cloudy waters of the phone box. Roy banged on the glass and his brother’s bloodless body twisted like an eel to face him.
His eyes snapped open. He screamed soundlessly in an explosion of bubbles.
Roy screamed too…
He jerked awake, heart thumping like a hammer in his chest. Bloody dream, he cursed, fingering the sleep from his eyes. Spooked him every time.
He stared at the ceiling, the back of his skull thumping steadily. He was hung-over, yet he struggled to remember the events of the previous evening. He’d been drinking, possibly in The Duke, but he couldn’t be sure. He recalled flashing lights and heavy music, a half-naked girl, a couple of tattooed strangers crowding him in a dark booth. His head pounded and his mouth tasted awful. He didn’t even remember getting home.