Eternity's Sunrise (A New Doc Palfrey Thriller)

by Richard Creasey

  The five scientists stepped directly from the boat into the brightly lit space.

  The quayside door closed.

  The bright light vanished.

  The Predator sped into the darkness.

  “We need to get inside that traitor’s gate.” Max shot off an encrypted file of mugshots and more to his colleagues at Z5.

  *

  Sofia shut the heavy, oak door, turned and leant against it for a moment. As Gemma and Alda charged down the stairs her brain almost fused as it struggled to grasp how she could play caring mum with so much at stake.

  She had to though. Nanny was off and Granny was poorly.

  “I’ve got to look after Granny so go and play nicely. How about Roller blades?”

  “We’ve done that.” Gemma said finally.

  “All afternoon.” Alda liked exaggerating.

  “Lets go and see what else you can do then.” Sofia slung her ski jacket over a chair and watched as it slipped to the ground.

  “Oh Mummy...” Gemma picked it up before following Alda and her Mum into the playroom. It was chock-a-block with toys.

  “How about a hula-hoop competition?” Sofia suggested.

  In unison the twins grabbed one each, yellow and red and swung into action, forcing Mummy to smile. And for the first time in eighteen hours she could feel herself relaxing. They spun at ever increasing speeds as they tried to outdo each other, their faces growing more and more serious with concentration.

  And suddenly Mummy’s face was serious too.

  Sofia charged out of the playroom, sprinted up the stairs and bolted into her study, unintentionally slamming the door.

  “Mummy?”

  “Sofia?”

  But Sofia heard neither of the twins’ call or her mother’s.

  “God Almighty.” Her thumb hit the sleek Bluetooth keyboard. Her giant wall screen sprang into life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Since being grabbed and flown over the blazing Brett Hall Clock House the three of us, Durand, thug and I, had been in the air for over twelve hours. The Sikorsky helicopter, a Bombardier Global Express Jet and then this Bell.

  And during all that time, neither Durand nor his henchman spoke a single word to me. The thug had been my travelling companion throughout. Sitting in the aisle seat, wedging me against the window.

  There was a steward on the Bombardier long distance jet, who knew in an instant that this was a flight to keep himself to himself. He didn’t utter a word to me either.

  I’ve no idea where we landed, except we were in the US — the Bell helicopter had an ‘N’ registration number on its fuselage.

  It took off again with Durand and thug in it, leaving me on the ground.

  A young woman, slightly overweight, with flowing mouse-coloured hair and a beaming face half jogged towards me across the spacious tree-clad yard. She’d appeared from a big ranch house that nestled in a small valley that backed into a spectacular mountain range.

  “No bags?” She panted.

  I shook my head. No phone, no make-up, nothing except what I was standing in. No passport and no engraved Rolex watch. And that still hurt. “Where are we?”

  “Teton Village, Wyoming miss.”

  “Just south of Yosemite National Park?” I was always good at geography.

  “Iris, I told you no chit-chat!”

  I looked towards the large, log house from where the barking voice had come. Black trouser suit, black shirt, black shoes. No smile, no warmth, no compassion.

  “Sorry, Warden. She hasn’t got a case!”

  “I know Miss Schobinger hasn’t got a case. Find some clothes for her and some food. And run a bath.”

  Iris waddled towards the lodge.

  The warden held me in her intense gaze. “This may not look like a prison, but, I assure you, it is. You will address me as Warden. You are a prisoner. Iris is cook and cleaner. You are free to do whatever you like in the house but you are forbidden to communicate with anyone outside it. I have the only phone. Under no circumstance do you communicate with the outside world. The perimeter fence is wired. No one, including Iris is allowed outside it. If you touch the fence you’ll die. So I suggest you don’t.”

  “Then I’ll go and have a bath…Warden.”

  *

  Famine, fatigue and fear sap revolt. As the container doors squealed open the trustees were so hungry, so tired and so frightened that they didn’t stir.

  Doc emulated them. Although he’d eaten well on the container ship, he too was weary. He was now in the container with Fadeyka Semyonov and the other four trustees.

  They knew only that, hours earlier, the makeshift ceiling lights had been replaced with steel. They also knew two, low-voltage neon lights had just been switched off. In pitch darkness, their balance had been tossed into horrifying vertigo as a crane swung them onto a truck.

  The truck accelerated, slid on the ice, crashed into a guardrail, skidded and eventually stopped. Metal grated on metal as the container was dragged up a ramp on its small, iron wheels.

  Only Doc was relieved as the four, six-bladed props of a C-130 Hercules transport plane roared into action.

  Eight hours max, thought Doc, give or take. All airplanes have a range limit. If they’d be going further than 2,500 miles they’d be going by jet.

  In fact, he was certain, they were going to Pevek.

  And that was exactly where the doors of the containers screeched open on their dispirited, dehumanised cargo.

  In an instant the humid, fuggy atmosphere was sucked out by a freezing blast of Siberia’s icy air.

  The tail ramp of the Hercules opened to the dull glow of a dark, windswept winter landscape.

  The trustees jumped down from their bunks and sped down the ramp to a waiting UralAZ truck with a heated bus-like cabin.

  Doc limped after them on his crutches. His left one slipped on the ice. He tumbled and the makeshift right crutch snapped in two as he fell.

  “Carry him!” commanded a guard.

  Fadeyka Semyonov, who understood the harsh, Russian instruction obeyed.

  The UralAZ truck dumped the trustees outside a rectangular, two-storey dump of a building. Fadeyka Semyonov supporting Doc, and the other trustees elbowed their way in through the double doors into an unpainted, dilapidated canteen.

  On the table lay a feast.

  *

  Benadir’s role was now to oversee the showdown with Jean-Pierre Durand from Z5’s Digby Mews HQ. If her and Doc’s assessment was right then losing wasn’t an option and winning was next to impossible.

  A classic Z5 crescendo.

  After her twelve-hour, first class flight from Tokyo Narita International to London’s Heathrow, a Virgin Limobike sped her through the morning traffic to Digby Mews.

  The huge, wall screen there portrayed a massive Google Earth map, scrolled to display the Diomede Islands - the back doors of Russia and the United States at the epicentre.

  Two Google pins pierced the blue-green world, with a patch of white highlighting the arctic ice. The first seven hundred miles to the west of the Diomedes marked Pevek, the former gulag town, where Doc and the Trustees had recently landed. Less than two thousand miles to the east of the Diomedes the second pin marked the log house where Lucille had been taken.

  “Marion’s instructed Ted to make his way from New York to Jackson Hole — that’s just twenty miles north of Lucille’s Lodge.”

  “Any news from Doc?”

  “We only know he arrived ‘safely’ at Pevek.”

  “Max?”

  “In the mines.”

  “With Joy?”

  “Yes, but I’m still not sure who’s side she’s on.”

  Benadir’s eyebrows shot up as she turned her head to Christina.

  “When push comes to shove, who will have the biggest influence? Durand? Or Max?”

  “To keep us on our toes, I’ve put Max at the bottom of our list.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Nationa
l Geographic News

  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070103-mine-quake.html

  Précis:

  That quake was triggered by changes in tectonic forces caused by 200 years of underground coal mining, according to a study by Christian D. Klose of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.

  The quake wasn’t enormous, but Australia isn’t generally considered to be seismically active and the city’s buildings weren’t designed to withstand a temblor of that magnitude, Klose said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The mini-sub nestled like a baby whale beneath her mother as the massive refurbished nuclear submarine sailed through underground lakes, rivers and canals towards the arctic sea.

  Max wondered what Joy would do once they reached the port of Pevek. He waited silently until she asked.

  They were stealing past the dreaded entry port to the Hall of Waiting when she eventually did. “What’s expected of me when we arrive?”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “Get as far away from this hellhole as I possibly can.”

  “Then that’s exactly what you should do.” Silence. It was the one answer Joy wanted and the one she didn’t.

  “Sasha will be waiting.”

  Another silence as Joy wrestled with her emotions.

  “He can arrange for you to get back to the US.”

  “Can he arrange for me to get back to the mines?”

  Max thought that through. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because I might be able to help.”

  “Well, of course, Sasha can get you anywhere you want.”

  A Rosenergoatom floating nuclear plant, which Durand had built according to Fadeyka Semyonov’s specifications and then donated to Pevek as a sop, supplied Pevek’s power. It had recently been towed to the docks. The locals relished the clean constant power.

  Max relished the open water that surrounded the floating power station’s heating outlet, which lay on the non-quayside, near the stern. It created an ideal place for his sub to surface, provided no one was looking.

  That was Sasha’s job, a local who bribed his way into the little private fishing quay in the dead of night.

  Seconds after Max and Joy had been fished out, the mini sub slipped beneath the surface.

  Hidden.

  Silent.

  Waiting.

  Above the water, the wind was driving the loose snow off the rock-hard ice that covered Pevek’s arctic streets. Joy, Max and Sasha were nearly swept off their feet as they fought their way towards the town’s Soviet-style canteen.

  “We’ll need a sled.”

  “In the Arctic Haven Hotel. That’s on the way to the town canteen. A sled and some kit have been stored there.”

  Sasha’s mobile gonged. Max shot him a questioning glance. “Durand’s just arrived.”

  Joy froze.

  “Sasha’s booked a room, you can go there.” Max leant into the buffeting wind.

  At the utilitarian box of a hotel, built to give sanctuary in the extreme arctic conditions, Joy needed temporary solace from her worst fears. She gave Max a long, desperate hug.

  “Sasha will be back soon.”

  “I’ll be in touch” Joy searched Max’s eyes.

  “I know you will.”

  Minutes later Max and Sasha edged their way in through the double-doors of the town’s canteen; the same doors the trustees and Doc had entered an hour earlier.

  The atmosphere in the private upstairs room was a combustible mix of unrestrained relief and palpable fear. The feast had been devoured, three vodka bottles drained. Doc had been dumped at the end of the table, near the door — why carry him further? Max spotted him and cleared the table dishes; a waiter’s presence was seldom questioned.

  Their eyes met, emboldening them both.

  Suddenly the staccato sound of Durand’s hard-heeled footsteps brought absolute silence to the room. His henchmen stood guard just inside the door.

  He strode down the full length of the table and turned to address the trustees.

  Max backed out of the door to the grubby dark green staircase landing. Sasha stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up. Contact established.

  Through the door Max heard Durand’s voice, slow and threatening as it pierced the silence he’d created.

  “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the Earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the Earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

  And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the Earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the Earth.”

  Durand paused as his reading from Genesis Chapter 6 sank in.

  “God was right. There are no bounds to the wickedness of man. Yet the flood was a failure. Man is still here. Continuing to rule and contaminate Earth. Just look around this room. Look at yourselves. All billionaire tax dodgers, fraudsters, two paymasters of murderers.” Durand paused as he stared around the room. “But don’t despair. You’re not alone in your sin. Man has been a despicable destroyer since the moment we appeared on this Earth. Millennia of poverty, war and now global warming merge into statistics that highlight the violence of man. It’s time to bring it to an end. In exactly twenty-four hours, gentlemen, you will have the opportunity to see how your money achieves just that. It’s paid for the energy that will give this planet a fresh start. Man will be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  “You are about to become the world’s most successful suicide bombers. And because you have paid for it, you will have the privilege of watching the detonations from a front row seat here in Siberia.”

  “You’re crazy.” Fadeyka Semyonov scraped back his chair, rose and faced Durand.

  But Durand gestured to a guard who knocked Fadeyka Semyonov off balance, then hauled him back to his chair. Durand waited until he had everyone’s attention again, before continuing. “It’s your own fault Semyonov. Until you became so belligerent on your yacht I had planned for you all to go to Teton Village and watch the destruction, but as I am sure you will be the first to appreciate, things don’t always work out as planned.” A sardonic smile swept Durand’s face.

  “Teton Village?” Victor Pereira’s face, as were his fellows’, was disbelieving.

  “On the edge of Yellowstone — one of the world’s supervolcanoes.”

  “You’re going to ignite Yellowstone?” Fadeyka Semyonov’s voice was incredulous.

  “We are going to ignite the Pacific’s entire Volcanic Ring of Fire.”

  At that moment Max signalled Sasha, who cut the electricity to the canteen building.

  Pitch black.

  Durand, his guards and the trustees were taken by complete surprise.

  Doc was taken by Max.

  The guards took just a couple of seconds to leap into action, slamming shut the private room’s door, successfully blocking the escape of the trustees.

  While aiding Max and Doc’s getaway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Wikipedia

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

  A supervolcano or super volcanic eruption is substantially larger than any in historic times (generally accepted to be greater than 200 cubic kilometres). This kind of eruption is typically sufficient to cause a long-lasting change to weather (such as the triggering of an ice age) sufficient to threaten the extinction of species, and cover huge areas with lava and ash.

  USGS — science for a change world

  http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1067/

  Précis:

  This is a collection of videos of un
scripted interviews with Jake Lowenstern, who is the Scientist in Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO). YVO was created as a partnership among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region.

  Jake Lowenstern, answers the following questions to explain volcanic features at Yellowstone: "How do we know Yellowstone is a volcano?", "What is a Supervolcano?", "What is a Caldera?","Why are there geysers at Yellowstone?", and "What are the other geologic hazards in Yellowstone?"

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Sofia was totally at home in CERN, ‘Conseil Européan pour la Recherche Nucléaire’. She was sitting in front of Delaney Atwater’s executive desk, a sandblasted crystal glass top on elegant, aluminium legs.

  Delaney Atwater — dark suit, bright sunshine tie, white shirt ennobling his handsome, grey-bearded face — sat with his back to a floor-to-ceiling clear glass window. His own face sheet-white with foreboding, he was looking at three faces on Sofia’s iPad screen.

  “It isn’t possible. Mateo Martin was one of my top scientists.”

  “That’s right, was. Until you refused to promote her and she stormed out.”

  “Mateo Martin is taking a sabbatical at MIT, we’re paying for it.”

  “This photograph was taken in Siberia.”

  “But she didn’t storm out, exactly...”

  “Right now, I don’t care if you held a going away party for her and baked her a cake. I just need to know how good she is.”

  “She’s quite brilliant.”

  “So it’s possible that she could have overseen the design of a large hadron collider, double, treble the size of this one at CERN.”

  “I suppose, but she couldn’t do it by herself.”

  Sofia displayed the photographs of four more scientists. “Recognise them?”