by Ted Bell
No, in fact, to the increasing horror of everyone present, Raptor X was still streaking toward the hangar, flying barely fifty feet above the runway, traveling at six hundred miles per hour. The crowd, aghast and confused, wondered: Is this possibly part of the air show demonstration? After all, planes performed daredevil stunts like this all the time at air shows, didn’t they? Outside loops that brushed the treetops. Yes. A spectacular end to today’s show that would conclude with the plane nosing up, clearing the hangar roof by inches before circling and landing.
But now, bright yellow flashes appeared along the leading edges of the swept-back wings.
The six 30mm cannons, three on each side of the aircraft’s forward wingtips, had suddenly opened fire. People, even as they disintegrated, screamed and dove for cover. But there was no cover. Everyone on the ground was literally shredded to pieces.
No one was alive to see the Raptor X nose down sharply and then witness the robot aircraft as it slammed into the hangar at immense speed, slicing through the aluminum structure before plowing into the dormitories and research buildings that stood behind it, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
Elon Tennenbaum, returning across the tarmac from the checkpoint, witnessed the enormity of the blinding multiple explosions through the windshield of the Toyota. He thought, At least no one will be around who can blame this on me.
He realized he’d uttered this blasphemy aloud and accelerated toward the scene, urgently saying a silent prayer for the dead and asking God’s mercy for the badly wounded. He wanted to help.
But there was nothing left to do.
Thirty-one
London
Sunday mornings were a time Alex Hawke looked forward to all week long. On this particular such morning, he was especially happy. He was back home in London once more, with his son sleeping under his father’s roof, and all was well. Beyond a nearby window, Hawke could catch a glimpse of Seagrave House, home of the Royal Defense College founded by Winston Churchill. Hawke had attended there for a time. Formerly a great private home, it was still one of the loveliest buildings in London.
While Hawke had been away, his friend and butler, Pelham, to Hawke’s great delight, had taken it upon himself to have the interior decor specialists at Harrods come to the Hawke family’s stately mansion on Upper Belgrave Street.
The decorators had created and installed a complete nursery up on the fourth floor. Right down to the carousel lampshades that twirled in the dark, casting pink images of prancing ponies on the pale blue walls. Miss Spooner’s quarters were also on the fourth floor, right next door to the new nursery.
His three-year-old son seemed to be growing up before his very eyes. And he seemed quite happy in the big old family house on Belgrave Square. There was no end of nooks and crannies for Alexei to hide or discover, and he and Miss Spooner devised endless games with inscrutable rules resulting in screeches of wild delight or surprise. Happy laughter echoed about the house on this sunny Sunday morning in late summer, as it had not done since Hawke himself had been but a boy of three.
Hawke was still in his dark maroon dressing gown, propped up against the pillows in his great, canopied bed, sipping his coffee, reading. A tray with his breakfast dishes sat atop a pile of unread books on his bedside table, and the bed itself was strewn with various newspapers. He’d hurried through them and picked up the novel he’d been reading when he’d fallen asleep the night before. Entitled The Comedians, it was a tale by one of his favorite authors, Graham Greene.
It was the delightful saga of an Englishman who inherits a decrepit hilltop resort hotel in Haiti in the time of the murderous Papa Doc Duvalier and his evil voodoo minions, the Tontons Macoutes. The English chap has difficulty making ends meet as he has only a cook and a one-legged bartender for company, there being precious few tourists willing to risk their lives for a week in the barren, impoverished, and war-torn paradise.
He turned the page. The English hotelier, improbably named Brown, was just about to have a midnight go at his married German mistress in the backseat of an old Peugeot parked beneath a statue of Christopher Columbus in Port-au-Prince when there came a knock at Hawke’s bedroom door.
“Come in,” Hawke said, putting the book on his bedcovers.
“Good morning, sir,” Miss Spooner said brightly. “So sorry to disturb, but it is a lovely morning, no rain at all, and I was thinking of taking Alexei for our weekly Sunday picnic in Hyde Park. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”
Alexei was holding Spooner’s hand but when he saw and heard his father’s voice, he ran to the bedside and raised his arms to be lifted up, crying, “Daddy! Daddy! Pick me up!” Hawke reached down with one hand and swept him up onto the bed, kissing his forehead. Having recently discovered the joys of bed-jumping, the little boy immediately began bouncing up and down on the mattress, falling on his bottom, quickly rising to have another go.
“You know, I’m tempted,” Hawke said, catching Alexei at the last second before he tumbled off the bed. “But I’m afraid Ambrose and I have a lunch on with my employer, Sir David Trulove, sorry to say. That awful tragedy with the drone fighter aircraft in Israel last week. We’ve got to find out who is behind these bloody incidents and soon. They’ve managed to put the whole world on edge, haven’t they?”
“Yes, sir. My colleagues at MI5 are certainly edgy. So far, Britain has been spared. But that’s hardly a comfort.”
“How do you stop someone with the power to use your own weapons against you?”
Neither had an immediate answer and so they stood there looking at each other in silence, neither of them willing to acknowledge the powerful attraction they had begun to feel for each other. Being under the same roof with her was no help at all, Hawke thought. But she was invaluable, had saved Alexei’s life, and—bloody hell—his child’s mother had married another man. He was free to do as he damn well pleased, wasn’t he?
“Precisely, sir,” she said finally, after his question had hung unanswered in the air for so long Hawke hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d asked her to begin with.
Hawke looked at her for a few moments and said, “Do you like Indian food at all, Miss Spooner?”
“Indian food? Well. I suppose I do, sir, very much.”
“I was thinking, there’s a little restaurant I quite like, not too far away, over in Mayfair. Taboori. Perhaps one night we might go for a curry?”
“That would be lovely, sir. I’d like that very much. Very much indeed.”
“Good . . . very good,” Hawke replied, fumbling for the rest of his sentence and finding himself simply unable to supply further dialogue. She came to his rescue.
“Indeed, sir. Well, I suppose we should be off. He goes down for his nap at two and I don’t want him to get overtired.”
“No, no. Of course not. You two run along. It’s a perfect day for a picnic in the park.”
“Come along, Alexei,” she said, holding her arms out to him. He laughed and leaped from the bed into her waiting arms after kissing his father on both cheeks.
“Bye-bye, Daddy!” he said, holding Spooner’s hand as they left the room.
Hawke put his hands behind his head and gazed up into the folds of dark blue silk canopy above.
Had he ever been happier?
Nell Spooner and her young charge entered the park through the Rutland Gate. They were headed for her favorite spot in the middle of a big meadow with a view toward the Serpentine. It was the place she went on her afternoons off, taking a blanket, some fruit, and a book to spend a few hours of quiet reading and much-needed solitude. She liked the view and so had chosen this as their weekly picnic spot as well.
Today in her canvas shoulder bag, in addition to a blanket, her own book and a couple for Alexei, she’d packed fruit, bottles of water and apple juice, animal crackers, cheese sandwiches, crisps, sliced apples, and a SIG Sauer .45 automatic pist
ol.
“Horsies!” Alexei said, as a close-knit group of riders sped by at full gallop, their mounts kicking up big clods of dark earth in their wake. There were quite a number of them and they had to wait some time for them all to pass. Finally, there was a gap. Two men on horseback, trotting at a leisurely pace, reined in their mounts and, smiling, waited so the two of them could dash across the riding trail.
“Thanks so much,” Nell shouted at the two gentlemen once they were safely across the wide riding path.
“Horsies,” Alexei said again, intently watching the parade of them pass.
“Nice horsies,” Nell said, taking his hand and striding through the rich green grass toward the Serpentine, the snake-shaped lake glittering in the strong sunlight. The area of the meadow she chose was hardly ever crowded for some unknown reason, one of the reasons she liked it so much.
“Here’s our spot, Alexei,” she said, putting down her shoulder bag and flinging the blanket open. She spread it out, got herself situated, and then began unpacking her bag. She realized Alexei must be quite thirsty after the long walk from Belgrave Square and pulled out the apple juice first. Unscrewing the top, she said, “Here you go, tiger, I must say you are very . . .”
She looked around. The boy was nowhere in sight. She’d only taken her eyes off him for a minute or two and he’d wandered off. She jumped to her feet, calling his name. Hearing no reply, and beginning to get a bit nervous, she ran around a large hedgerow beyond which was a pathway that led to the Peter Pan sculpture. He loved the story of the flying boy and they’d visited the statue many times. Perhaps that’s where the child had wandered—
Yes. There he was. Toddling as fast as his little legs could carry him down the path toward Peter Pan, oblivious to the parade of puppies on leashes, prams, and other toddlers heading his way.
“Alexei, stop!”
He turned around, saw her, and started running faster. Everything was a game. She quickly caught up, snatched him up into her arms, and gave him a good talking to on the way back to the blanket. She was sure it did no good at all, but she was angry with herself for letting him out of her sight and the lecture was as much for her benefit as his.
“Now, finish your cheese sandwich and I’ll read you the rest of Peter Pan. There’s a good boy. So Wendy and Michael Darling had just settled into their wee beds when they saw a strange glow flit through the opened window. ‘Oh! Wendy said, that’s—’ ”
“Captain Hook!” Alexei interrupted. “Where is Captain Hook? And the alligator with the clock in his tummy?”
“That comes later, remember? Now, where was I?”
She was flipping through the pages of the big picture book when she saw something exceedingly odd. Two men on horseback riding across the meadow. It was strictly forbidden, of course; one had to stay on the path at all times, otherwise you’d have people—
The two mounted riders were heading directly toward where she and Alexei were sitting. And they weren’t trotting now, no, not at all, they were riding at a full gallop, gaining ground very quickly. She could see their faces now; it was clearly the two men who’d let them pass, and it was suddenly abundantly clear to her what they intended.
They must have been stalking her for weeks. They clearly knew her Sunday schedule and they’d been waiting this morning for Alexei and her to arrive through the Rutland Gate.
Now, they intended to trample them both to death.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the .45 automatic, at the same time pushing Alexei out the way.
“Run!” she cried. “Run, Alexei! Go to Peter Pan! Go to Peter now! It’s a race! I’ll catch you!”
The riders were upon them and Alexei hadn’t moved. He was transfixed by the sight of the approaching horses, thundering directly toward him.
“Stop!” she cried out. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
She raised the gun and took dead aim at the man who was in the lead. His path was unswerving. He meant to crush them, you could see it in his eyes. And he had a gun, too, she now saw, fitted with a silencer. The killer leaned forward in his saddle, the reins in his left hand, the gun in his right.
She squeezed the trigger three times, two rounds in the chest, the third to the head. He toppled from the saddle, but one foot was hung up in the stirrup. The horse reared up in panic. The second horse swerved to avoid it. It was headed directly toward Alexei and she had only seconds to act.
She dove for the boy, giving him a violent shove that sent him flying into the hedges.
She was suddenly aware of excruciating pain below her waist, her legs being trampled by the pounding hooves. But she was still alive. She used her arms to roll herself over, pulling the gun free of her body, and getting it up just in time to get off a single shot at the fleeing second horseman.
She’d only winged him, she saw, caught him in the right shoulder. He almost came off the horse, the power of the .45-caliber round like a sledgehammer at such close range, but he managed to keep his seat and galloped away.
She heard Alexei somewhere behind her, screaming her name, “Spooner! Spooner . . . bad horsies . . . bad . . .”
He staggered toward her, bloodied and bruised.
Spooner opened her arms to him.
And then . . . all was black.
Ambrose Congreve forked the last of the perfectly prepared shad roe into his mouth, sat back, swallowed, and pronounced it “Extraordinary.” The food at Black’s, Hawke’s private club on St. James, was one of the many reasons he and Hawke often made it their meeting place of choice—especially when invited to lunch by Sir David Trulove. C was not a member but, knowing that Hawke had a personal budget roughly as large as that of MI6, never declined Hawke’s invitation to dine there.
They always chose a corner table in the lounge. It was extremely private, for one thing, and the tall windows provided exquisite lighting, rain or shine. Today the sun lay like golden bars across the ancient Persian carpets. The room’s dark walnut paneling rose magnificently to a white vaulted ceiling, the walls hung with portraits of distinguished members long dead, including the club’s first reigning arbiter elegantiarum, Beau Brummell (who claimed to take five hours to dress and polished his boots with champagne), Horatio Walpole, Edward VII, Randolph Churchill, and the brilliant novelist Evelyn Waugh.
The table was cleared of the luncheon china and as soon as the waitstaff had disappeared into the shadows, Congreve fired up his pipe, expelled a blue plume, and set his eyes on Sir David. It was a rule at Black’s that one did not discuss business, but Congreve still subscribed to historian Sir Michael Howard’s pronouncement in 1985 that “So far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services do not exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks.”
That being the case, the famous criminalist blithely returned to the matter at hand.
“Sir David,” he said, “please continue. You were saying that the CIA has come up with something that warrants attention. Something that has to do with the recent spate of attacks by some nameless, faceless enemy and apparently with the power to seize control of our own most sophisticated weapons systems and use them against us. As we saw in Israel just last week in the Negev Desert.”
“Indeed, it’s a bloody nightmare and it appears to be spreading,” C said, crossing his legs and adjusting the crease of his chalk-striped navy suit. “Director Kelly and I had a long chat last evening. I think he may have something of interest. The first break we’ve had. I know you’re both aware of the American Nobel laureate who recently committed suicide?”
“Yes,” Hawke said, “Dr. Waldo Cohen, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. Did top-secret work for the American Defense Department looking for ways to utilize AI and quantum computing to leapfrog ahead in twenty-first-century cyberwarfare, to create weapons with the help of some kin
d of machine with superhuman intelligence.”
Congreve coughed discreetly and said, “Seems to me it’s our frog that’s been leaped.”
“It certainly does,” C said, “and I’m looking to the two of you to find out who the hell that bloody frog-leaper is. We can’t sit back and let the bastards continue these attacks unabated. We’ve got to get to the source. Find out who’s behind this and exactly what kind of technology they’ve developed. That’s your assignment. Understood?”
“Certainly, sir,” Hawke said. “You said Director Kelly mentioned a break in the case?”
“Yes. He attended Dr. Cohen’s funeral in California along with President McCloskey and the secretary of defense. After the service, he had a long and interesting discussion with Cohen’s widow. She’s convinced it wasn’t a suicide. She told Kelly her husband had been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Congreve said. “I read in the Times that he’d shot himself and his dog.”
C continued, “She believes he was acting in some kind of trance. Induced over the telephone, electronically. A call he received just after dinner.”
“You mean, sir, there’s a possibility someone took control of his mind and . . . used it against him,” Hawke said. “Just like the other attacks.”
“Precisely, Alex.”
“Good Lord,” Congreve said. “Mind control, too.”
Hawke looked at him and said, “Congreve and I will leave for the States immediately, sir. We’ll want to speak with the widow at length. I agree with Brick Kelly’s assessment. This could be a real break.”
“One more thing, Alex. She said she found a note. Not a suicide note, just something he’d scrawled on a pad beside the phone in his laboratory. On it was a single word scrawled in Cohen’s hand: Darius. And beneath that name, an equation. Something to do with the speed of light.”
At that moment a liveried steward appeared at their table, visibly trembling, his face as white as a sheet.
“My lord Hawke. Frightfully sorry to have disturbed you. We’ve just received a call from St. Thomas’s Hospital. I regret to inform you there’s been an accident. In Hyde Park, sir, and—”