Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  Joaquin stood upright and looked down at Lopez.

  ‘Yes, I do. I see a lot of accusations all going in one direction: that I, or somebody in my company, is responsible for all of this. I see a more likely possibility – that this is being orchestrated by the likes of Charles Purcell in order to bring disrepute to IRIS and to my name.’

  ‘Murder,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘is an awful long way to go to achieve that. If what you’re saying were true, Purcell could simply have walked into any police station with his evidence and handed it over.’

  Joaquin shook his head.

  ‘The man is wanted for the murder of his own damned family! Does that not count for anything? You’re here questioning and accusing me, without jurisdiction, when a man suspected of a hideous crime remains free – and yet is able to submit evidence to a court and be taken seriously!’

  Ethan leaned back on the couch.

  ‘All avenues need to be explored, Joaquin,’ he replied, using the man’s first name purposely in order to annoy him. ‘Everybody who has a connection to these events is a suspect, and right now we’re running out of time to find the perpetrator or perpetrators.’

  ‘Why?’ Katherine Abell asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘It’s always after the first forty-eight hours that cases start going cold,’ he replied, and then fixed his gaze again on her husband. ‘And it’s not like we can see into the future to figure out what’s going on, is it, Joaquin?’

  Joaquin’s eyes briefly flared with surprise and Ethan saw him swallow thickly.

  ‘If only we could.’

  ‘If somebody had,’ Lopez murmured, ‘then we’d know a little more about this case than the perpetrator might think.’

  Joaquin’s studied calm withered as he stared at Lopez, attracting the attention of Katherine, who stood up.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘This is getting us nowhere. If you have no more questions, Mr. Jarvis?’

  At that moment, the two DIA soldiers appeared in the doorway to the room. One of them looked at Jarvis and shook his head.

  ‘Not a thing. The whole ship’s clean sir, no weapons aboard.’

  Jarvis stood up and extended a hand to Joaquin.

  ‘Thank you for your valuable time, Mr. Abell,’ he said, as Joaquin shook his hand. ‘I foresee that we’ll speak again – in the future.’

  Joaquin coughed and managed a weak smile in response.

  ‘I’ll arrange for the ship’s helicopter to take you back to Miami.’

  Ethan and Lopez followed Jarvis out of the room. As soon as the door was closed behind them and they were walking down the corridor, Ethan turned to Jarvis.

  ‘He knows something.’

  ‘Indeed he does,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘but what?’

  As they walked out onto the helipad Ethan looked back across the yacht, and something that he hadn’t seen before caught his eye.

  ‘There’s no evidence that he’s hiding anything out here,’ Jarvis was saying, ‘either physically or financially. Unless we can prove otherwise we’re chasing rainbows.’

  ‘Oh, he’s hiding something all right,’ Ethan replied.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Lopez asked. ‘There’s nothing aboard this ship.’

  ‘I know,’ Ethan replied and then pointed toward the yacht’s bows. ‘But maybe what we’re looking for isn’t actually aboard.’

  Jarvis and Lopez looked in the direction Ethan was indicating, to where two large yellow submersibles emblazoned with the IRIS logo sat on their launches.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Jarvis said. ‘Those things could give him access to the seabed.’

  ‘Listen, Doug,’ Ethan said. ‘Somebody, somewhere, knows what’s happening before it happens, and we can’t do anything about it unless we can get the jump on them. It might be Joaquin Abell but we’ve got nothing solid on him yet. We’ve got to find Purcell and learn everything that he knows or this is going to wind up a cold case that’ll never get opened again.’

  ‘But if the people responsible already know what we’re going to do,’ Lopez said, ‘then anything we can think of has already been pre-empted. We can’t fight what we can’t see.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ethan said. ‘The only person that we know for certain has that ability is Charles Purcell. Maybe if we can trace his steps from the point where his family were murdered, we can figure out how to get ahead of him.’

  Jarvis fished his cellphone out of his pocket.

  ‘I feared that it would come to this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something that I need to show you, and it might help us catch up with Charles Purcell. But this is above-Top-Secret, Cosmic clearance. You’ll have to sign non-disclosure agreements before we leave.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Back to Cape Canaveral. But not a part of it you’ll have seen before.’

  32

  June 28, 13:48

  ‘I want to know exactly what’s going on.’

  Katherine Abell stood in the center of the room, blocking Joaquin’s access to the corridor outside. Despite her transparent fury, in the light flaring through the windows she was a vision of loveliness, he thought, her long hair falling down across her shoulders and glowing like a halo in the sunlight, as her green eyes stared into his.

  ‘Nothing’s going on,’ Joaquin promised her. ‘I’m glad you’re here now. Let’s sit down and—’

  ‘Don’t patronize me,’ she shot back. ‘What the hell have you been doing with the company’s funds, and what were you talking to the governor about this morning at the hotel?’

  Joaquin raised his hands.

  ‘I wanted to speak to him about our plans for the conservation area, and my concerns for the livelihood of people living on the edge of Costa Rica’s fault lines.’

  Katherine seemed to rear up even taller, much as a cobra might when provoked.

  ‘For that, Joaquin, a telephone call would have sufficed.’ She paced toward him and her eyes blazed into his like laser beams. ‘Do you really think that I’m simply going to believe that everything that’s happened over the last twenty-four hours is some kind of bizarre accident?’

  Joaquin stood rooted to the spot, suddenly unable to breathe.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Katherine was now inches from him.

  ‘The case against IRIS collapses,’ she said rhetorically. ‘A man named Charles Purcell, who once worked for you, is now on the run after his family are murdered. He provided evidence against IRIS that is conveniently destroyed in the same accident that killed the lead prosecutor. IRIS employees disappear in an aircraft accident out in the Bermuda Triangle, and then the wreckage mysteriously vanishes. And then there are the claims of millions of dollars of government-provided IRIS money disappearing into thin air.’

  Joaquin swallowed, his throat tight.

  ‘Our accounts were independently audited by—’

  ‘Stop lying to me!’

  Katherine’s fury, incarcerated for hours, suddenly burst free from its cell. Her hand whipped across Joaquin’s cheek with a sharp crack. He flinched away and toppled back down onto the couch, clutching his face in shock.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what’s gotten into you?’ he uttered.

  Katherine glowered down at him for a long moment before speaking.

  ‘How long have we been married?’ she asked.

  ‘Fourteen years.’

  Most people assumed that she and Joaquin were about the same age, yet she was almost ten years his senior. The genes she had inherited from her mother, combined with careful living, ensured that she looked almost supernaturally young. Her years as a lawyer and her maturity meant that, to her, Joaquin Abell often appeared a selfish little child prone to delusions of grandeur that would make a Saudi prince blush.

  ‘Fourteen years,’ she echoed. ‘And in all that time don’t you think that I might have learned to spot the signs that you’re lying to me, dear husband?’

&
nbsp; The stinging in Joaquin’s face subsided enough for him to lower his hand as he looked at her.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘You’re lying to me, and it’s not just about your meeting with the governor, is it?’

  Joaquin chose his words carefully. I’m not lying to you.’

  Katherine folded her arms as she stared down at him, and for the first time in fourteen years Joaquin realized that his wife’s relentless and calculating mind was more than capable of penetrating the veil of secrecy he had erected around IRIS’s activities.

  ‘I have spent many hours representing your company in courts across the United States. My reputation has been built on defending clients the way they were supposed to be defended: honorably, in accordance with the law. I’ve prided myself on only taking cases where I knew for sure that my client was innocent.’ She leaned forward slightly at the waist and her hair fell across one side of her face. ‘In the last two hours I’ve learned that IRIS has been involved in fraud, and I demand to know everything.’

  Joaquin shook his head.

  ‘No, it’s not like that, it’s—’

  ‘From the beginning, Joaquin,’ she interrupted. ‘Don’t you dare hold even the tiniest detail back. I’m a fucking lawyer and I’ll know you’re lying five seconds before you’ve opened your pathetic, spoilt little mouth.’

  Joaquin gaped at her, uncertain whether he should speak, and where to start if he did.

  ‘It’s—’ he began, then fumbled. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘So is law,’ Katherine hissed. ‘Give me some goddamned credit and assume I can navigate my way to understanding your juvenile little scam. According to Macy Lieberman’s evidence, more than seventy million dollars of taxpayers’ money has disappeared from IRIS bank accounts over the last eight to ten years. You’re going to tell me where that money is right now and what’s being done with it.’

  Joaquin shook his head.

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘It is that simple,’ Katherine assured him and turned to her handbag, producing her cellphone. ‘One call, and whatever you’re up to will be over. All I have to do is call the courts and tell them that I suspect that you are complicit in the murder of Macy Lieberman, and before you’ve had time to think you’ll be on your ass in a maximum-security prison awaiting a trial that, if you’re lucky, won’t see you spending the next two decades on Death Row.’

  Joaquin’s jaw dropped. ‘You wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t betray our family like that.’

  Katherine leaned in close.

  ‘Family? Family? How dare you bring our children or me into your dirty little scam? I’m your wife and you’ve been betraying me with this for years. I’ll turn you in because I’m a lawyer and to protect our children, because there is nothing that I would not do for them. By God, if you don’t start talking in the next thirty seconds I’ll lead the fucking prosecution myself.’

  Joaquin stared at his wife in shock.

  ‘This is insane.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ she agreed, ‘and just the kind of moronic, self-centered scheming I’ve come to suspect that you’re capable of. Perhaps you need some help in deciding where to start your story? Tell me, why was that thug Olaf in the public gallery during the trial hearing?’

  ‘I sent him to keep an eye on you and—’

  Katherine’s hand slapped across his face again.

  ‘He killed Macy!’

  Katherine saw in her husband’s collapsing expression the depth of Olaf’s mistakes. Katherine waved her phone in the air between them.

  ‘Talk, Joaquin, or I swear that by sundown you’ll be history.’

  Joaquin hesitated for a moment longer and then the words began tumbling from his lips as though they had been waiting there all along. The long years of finding men who understood his father’s work, then his hiring of Charles Purcell; the purchase and expansion of the underwater complex and the difficulties in keeping such a major construction secret enough that only a few dozen people knew of its existence. The final, unavoidable task of causing an accident that would take the lives of those same people, so that only Joaquin and a select few remained. The sad, tragic task of preventing Charles Purcell from destroying everything that Joaquin had sacrificed so much to achieve – his altar to his father’s memory. And then Purcell’s escape and betrayal, taking with him one of the cameras from the Deep Blue chamber, evidence of Joaquin’s laboratory.

  Katherine stood in silence for the first half of the story, and then paced silently up and down for the rest, much as he had seen her do when preparing case notes for a trial. Joaquin finally finished speaking and immediately hated the silence that followed. He realized, belatedly, that it was Katherine’s wrath that he feared the most, as though, if he were to simply keep on speaking, he could somehow avoid it. Despite having little else to say, he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘I felt that it was the right thing to do,’ he murmured. ‘That the opportunity was just too great to pass up. Imagine, Katherine – governments forced to bend to our will, to help those in need instead of profiting from their suffering? There would be nothing that we could not do.’ Katherine did not respond, pacing up and down, her eyes glazed over, lost deep in thought. Joaquin sighed. ‘But I didn’t think that things would happen like this. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’

  Katherine stopped pacing and hurled her cellphone at him. Joaquin flinched as the phone hit the side of his face, followed by Katherine’s bunched fists that pummeled his head as she leapt at him.

  ‘You meant for all of it to happen!’ she screamed, and then suddenly scrambled away as though appalled to be in physical contact with him.

  Joaquin uncovered his face and saw her glaring down at him.

  ‘You’re sick,’ she spat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Joaquin muttered, a feeble noise even to his own ears. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Katherine uttered.

  Joaquin fell silent as she paced for another moment or two before speaking.

  ‘We’re finished,’ she said finally. ‘You can’t hide what you’ve done and you’ll end up taking me down with you. Nobody will believe that I had nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to get involved and—’

  ‘I said shut up!’ Katherine screamed at him. She closed her eyes, massaging her temples with one hand and calming her breathing by force of will. ‘This device of yours, it sees the future?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joaquin replied. ‘Via news networks. Any major stories can be pre-empted by up to twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Why the time limit?’ Katherine asked.

  ‘It’s to do with ‘something that Charles Purcell called the Schwarzschild Radius.’

  ‘Where is Dennis?’ she demanded. ‘Is he in on this?’

  Joaquin looked up at his wife and came to a rapid decision. ‘Dennis has been involved from the very start,’ he lied.

  Katherine almost gagged as she realized the depth of Joaquin’s betrayal and of Dennis Aubrey’s involvement. She overcame her horror and took a deep breath.

  ‘You need to use Dennis’s skills to find Charles Purcell,’ she said. ‘If Purcell takes what he knows to the courts this will all be over.’

  ‘You’re coming in on this?’ he uttered as he got to his feet.

  ‘I don’t have a choice!’ she raged. ‘You’ve doomed us both because of your greed. You had everything, the admiration of an entire country, maybe even all of humanity, and you’ve wasted it because you’re like all men: enough is never enough!’

  Joaquin sat back down, unable to find anything else to say.

  Katherine grabbed her cellphone and shoved it back into her handbag.

  ‘Find Purcell. Then you’ll use this device of yours to make sure that nobody finds out anything about what has happened here.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Joaquin asked.

  Katherine shouldered her bag and looked at him in disgust.
/>   ‘I’m going to the IRIS medical camp in the Dominican Republic,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to do what IRIS is supposed to be doing, and help people. Going there will help rebuild what’s left of my reputation, too. I don’t want anything more to do with you until this is all over, understand? If you call me or come near me, I swear I’ll kill you myself.’

  ‘But you should be here with me,’ Joaquin pleaded. ‘We can work this out and—’

  ‘You’re finished!’ Katherine shouted. ‘We’re finished! How can you possibly imagine that any decent human being would even consider being in the same room as somebody like you?’

  Joaquin stared at his wife for a long moment. ‘So you’re leaving me, then? You’re leaving our kids? You want a divorce?’

  Katherine’s features were racked with repulsion and her jaw trembled as she spoke.

  ‘There is nothing I won’t do for my children,’ she repeated, ‘even if it means remaining married to a monster like you.’

  ‘Then you will keep silent about all that’s happened?’

  A tear traced a line down Katherine’s perfectly sculpted cheek. She turned her back on him as she headed for the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ Joaquin whispered.

  Katherine whirled and stormed back to him, leaned down and grabbed his collar in her fist as she shoved her face in front of his.

  ‘You’ll do nothing without my say-so, and you’ll answer to me from this moment on or I’ll scream every single word of what you’ve done to the Supreme Court and blow what’s left of your despicable life right out of the water!’

  33

  CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

  June 28, 14:12

  The giant rotor blades of the V-22 Osprey rotated as the aircraft descended toward a landing platform at the space complex, avoiding the huge runway. Ethan Warner looked down at a scattering of unmarked cars forming a defensive phalanx around an Air Force transport. Soldiers with guns surrounded the cavalcade, some of them accompanied by guard dogs.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked Jarvis.

  The old man shook his head at Ethan. Don’t ask, don’t tell, he guessed. Ethan unbuckled himself as the Osprey touched down and a crewman hurried up and guided them aft. The rear ramp of the Osprey had lowered, allowing them to jog down onto the asphalt landing pad amid clouds of dust and sand whipped up by the giant twin rotors.