“Is he contactable?” Kane asked.
“No.”
Kane listened for sirens. The night had quietened. Even the helicopter was down. If Thomas never returned? If those responsible ganged up to stop him in some way? Anne could establish US military support, perhaps. A few men at least. They might have to override the Administrator. That was going to get lively.
Anne took her daughter to the bedroom and reemerged a moment later, closing the door quietly behind her.
“She’s in bed, and she knows she’s supposed to stay there. Thank you so much for this. I’ll be right back. Connor?” Anne called through the bathroom door. “I have to pop out. Edward’s here. Try to get some rest. Connor?”
“I heard.”
“I’ll see what I can do about the flight,” she said to Kane.
“Okay.”
Kane watched through the front window as Anne Lindgren walked deeper into the base. What was that uniform? The shower was still running. He started searching for a phone or computer he could use, but something caught his eye in Connor’s room.
The room was closest to the front door, messy with what you’d expect: clothes, comics, some sketchpads and paints. Beside the bed was a framed photograph of a man holding a certificate, a boy beside him, both squinting into sunlight. This was what Kane had seen. He walked in, picked it up. The pair were outside, in front of a windowless building with manicured lawns. To their left, white letters on a curved brick wall spelled FLIGHT RESEARCH TEST CENTER. To the right was a sculpture of a rocket.
The boy was visibly Connor, aged six or seven: grinning widely. Kane didn’t recognize the man. He had his free hand on Connor’s shoulder and was smiling, with neatly parted black hair, sideburns. He had Connor’s deep-set eyes. Kane read the certificate: The Association for Military Research Distinguished Scientific Award. It was inscribed to Dr. Jack Moretti.
“My dad,” Connor said.
Kane turned. Connor came into the room, a towel around his bare shoulders, a pair of jeans on. “My real dad,” the boy clarified, with a grimace.
“It’s a nice photo,” Kane said, processing this new information fast: recasting Thomas as a stepfather, reaching for its significance.
“Thanks.”
“Where is this?”
“California.”
Connor threw the towel onto the bed and found a T-shirt to pull on. Kane returned the picture to the bedside table.
“Where is he now?”
“He died when I was six.”
“I’m sorry.”
The boy shrugged, sat down on the bed. Kane thought back to Taylor’s message. Rory had been interested in Jack Moretti just before he died. Taylor had said Moretti hanged himself a decade ago. One of the last messages the engineer had sent included his name. What happened to Jack Moretti? Had Rory seen the photo? Why did he think it was important?
“Where in California?” Kane asked.
“Where he worked.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
Connor stared at him.
“That’s what Rory asked,” he said, finally.
“When?”
“When he was here.”
Kane watched the boy. He felt something slowly shifting in the fabric of the reality around him.
“What was he doing here?” he said.
“He’d come around sometimes. Him and Thomas were friends.”
“Really?” Kane tried to remember how Thomas had spoken about Rory. Not as a friend, that was for sure.
“He killed himself,” Connor said.
“Rory?”
“My dad.”
Kane glanced at the photo again. “He looks like a nice person.”
“He was.”
A lot of images stirred in Kane’s mind, prominent among them Anne’s uniform, the windowless Flight Research Test Center, and Thomas gazing across the Dew Pond on Green Mountain.
Kane returned to the living room, looked at other photos: in frames, on the shelves, in piles beside the books. He found Anne and Thomas’s wedding, in a garden of some kind, a young Connor in attendance not looking much older than he did in the photograph by his bed. There were photos of Anne in her twenties, Anne pregnant among the surreal peaks of Ascension, then Carina as a baby surrounded by US Air Force personnel. There was a map of Finland with the Finnish flag in the top right corner.
“How did your mum meet Thomas?”
“Some green group.”
“Can you remember its name?”
“Antelope Valley Conservation, I think. They were involved in that a lot when I was little. When we were in California.”
“Weird question: Any idea which of them joined it first?”
Connor looked at Kane, puzzled. “No.”
“Was it before your dad died?”
“Why?” he said.
“No reason. Just curious. Sorry.”
But something about this question had unsettled the boy. He wouldn’t take his eyes off Kane now.
“Forget it,” Kane said. He looked out of the living room window, at the identical cabins, artificial-looking plants, the moon almost touching the horizon. He felt the boy watching him intently.
“Thomas said there are parties on this island,” Kane said. “Secret ones. You saw one once and the Administrator’s car was there. Does that sound right?”
“Not really.”
“No?”
“Everything was pretty normal until Petra went missing.”
“No invite-only parties? Guys messing around with young girls?”
“No. Why? Did Thomas say that?”
Kane went back to the photos and searched through them again, found one of a young and strikingly confident Anne Lindgren sitting in front of a round, triple-layered window, smiling at the camera. It looked like she was on an airplane, with the moon visible through the glass. There was something odd about the image, though. When Kane looked closer he saw it wasn’t the moon—it was Planet Earth behind her. She was in space, and the earth hung in darkness over her shoulder. On the back, it said: To Thomas. Maybe one day you’ll come up here with me and we can watch the sunrise sixteen times a day.
Kane replaced the photo, feeling a mixture of wonder and dread. He turned slowly back to Connor.
“What does your mum do on the base exactly?” Kane asked.
“Something important. I don’t know exactly.”
“Important and secret, I guess.”
“That’s why we have to be here.”
“Right.”
Kane went and checked on Carina. She lay very still in the dark with her eyes open.
“Where’s Mom?” she said, without looking at him.
“She’ll be back soon.”
Kane took the binoculars from the living room and returned to the boy’s bedroom.
“I need to go and take a quick look at something. Are you able to keep an eye on Carina?”
There was no response. “Are you okay?” Kane said.
Connor lifted the picture of his father and studied it. He looked up at Kane as if there was a question he wanted to ask but couldn’t begin to formulate.
“I’ll be back in one minute,” Kane said.
He walked away from the cabin, deeper into the base, in the direction Anne Lindgren had walked. It was the indigo hour before dawn, the sky beginning to pale at the edges. The base was all electronically monitored, Kane saw now. He would be stopped eventually, but he could say he was lost. Some of his association with Anne Lindgren would linger. And he wanted to see as much as possible while he could.
He passed a canteen, an officers’ mess, and headquarters buildings. Then the domed observatory appeared in the distance, its shutters opening.
Kane walked toward it, watching as the dome rotated. What was it looking at? Who did it belong to? A few hundred meters before the observatory he got to a fence. Alongside the No Entry signs was a crest: UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE—WHERE SPACE SUPERIORITY BEGINS.
He lifted
the binoculars. He could see signs of rapid recent construction, including cameras and sensors securing the telescope but also several new arrays around it. The guard posts here also bore the Space Force logo. People were streaming into the surrounding buildings.
A security vehicle in the distance began to move toward him.
Kane turned, walking swiftly back toward the Lindgrens’ bungalow. As he got closer, he saw Thomas’s Buick parked outside. A second later he heard shouting, then Connor stormed out, jumped on his bike, and pedaled.
The security vehicle was behind him now. Kane looked over his shoulder. The man in the passenger seat had a submachine gun trained on him.
“Stop there, sir. Keep your hands out in front of you.”
Two men disembarked, both in black T-shirts, both with guns at the ready. They were young, but had the swaggering authority of special forces. Kane kept his hands away from his body.
“What are you doing here?” one of the men asked.
“I’m a friend of Thomas and Anne Lindgren’s. I was just going to that cabin there.”
The fact that he was a visitor alarmed them. He saw their expressions stiffen. One radioed in a check.
“Sir, please turn around.”
He did as instructed.
“We’re going to need to see some ID, sir. Don’t take it out, just tell us where it is.”
Then someone shouted, “Hey!” and they all turned to see Thomas leaving the house with Carina in his arms. “Hey,” he shouted at the guards. “Wait.” He put the girl in the car and marched over.
“What’s going on? This man just saved our son.”
“Step away, sir. This is not your business.”
“Not my business?”
“Mr. Lindgren, sir . . .”
“This is absolutely my business.”
Thomas reached into his jacket and pulled a Glock 19. That added a new element.
“Get into the car,” he said to Kane, gun on the security. The officers hesitated. Kane contemplated his fates. Arrest by US special forces was a cul-de-sac: game over. He climbed into Thomas’s SUV.
“What’s happening?” Carina said from the back seat.
“Good question, Carina. I don’t know, but I’m sure everything’s going to be okay.”
Thomas got in the driver’s seat and started the engine, still holding the gun. He accelerated away and Kane turned to see the two guards standing there, both on their radios.
“What did they want with you?” Thomas asked.
“I think they were just being cautious. I appreciate the intervention.”
“They’re not arresting you on my watch. Not after everything you’ve done.”
Thomas sped toward the front gates.
“Did you get to the tracking station?” Kane asked.
“Someone’s set it on fire. I got there but it was too late.”
“Do the police know?”
“I think so.”
“Where are you going now?”
“Georgetown.”
“What’s in Georgetown?”
“You’ll see.”
30
The ship that had drawn Ian Latham’s attention was the Yantar. It was what the Russians referred to as a research vessel and every other nation called an intelligence collection ship. It had been seen making erratic maneuvers off the coast of Brazil the previous night. According to CNN, it wasn’t using running lights or responding to communication from other vessels. The maneuvers had taken it rapidly into the South Atlantic, in the direction of Ascension Island. It looked like it was armed.
Taylor left Latham a few streets from his home and drove away fast, searching for updates, but the story had suddenly been removed from the news, which made her very worried indeed.
She tried Kudus’s line. She needed to find Gemstone. They were on Ascension, had been low-lying for years, maybe decades, with privileged access to state secrets. A situation like that was as high risk as can be and could explain the events that had happened—and suggested a lot more trouble to come.
Eventually Kudus answered.
“Did you find Ian Latham?”
“Yes. What’s the situation your end?”
“We’ve got some developments.”
“The ship.”
“Yes.”
“Know anything about it?”
“No. Just that every department’s been chased for relevant insight. And there’s some kind of communications blackout on Ascension. The technical team are in. It seems serious.”
“What kind of communications blackout?”
“I don’t know. Maybe electronic jamming of some kind. Started around the time the boat began to approach.”
“That was around the time Lauren Carter went missing. What’s she got to do with a Russian ship?”
“I’ve asked to be kept in the loop. Where are you? I heard there are police at your place.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m driving. Any update on Elliot?”
“He’s not in custody anymore. The impression I get is that he escaped.”
“Oh, shit. Where is he?”
“According to what we’ve picked up from the island, he’s on the US base with a family: people called Thomas and Anne Lindgren. It’s not clear what role they have on the base, but the Ascension police don’t have jurisdiction, so they’re waiting for him to either leave or for some authority to grant them access.”
“See who Thomas and Anne Lindgren are, and if we can establish any kind of contact with them. I also want to know if there’s a procedure in place for evacuating the island and how it’s initiated—the Overseas Territories Department would be able to tell you. We need to think about involving Special Operations as well. There’s an SAS unit on the Falklands. I think we’d have grounds to drop them in, but C would need to authorize. Get Special Ops informed of the state of play.” This was reserved for the most extreme of circumstances, but Taylor figured that was where they’d arrived.
“What did Ian Latham say?” Kudus asked.
“We’ve got the strong possibility of a Russian agent on the island, living deep cover, possibly within a space defense program. So we need staff lists, previous security vetting files, everyone who’s traveled on and off the island in the last few years. That includes as many working on the US base as possible. Try to access private contractor databases as well. Get security clearance lists for the bases, with dates and roles: Air Force, NASA, CIA. You wanted to risk your career, now’s your chance.”
She checked the map, dialed the contact number for Markus Fischer.
“I have something for you, but I need help.”
“Know about the current situation in the Atlantic?”
“I have some ideas.”
“Can you get to West London?”
“I can get to the river. I want to stay where the roads are clear and I can see what’s going on. Meet me at the south side of Wandsworth Bridge in an hour. Park by the Alma Hotel. If you think you’ve been tailed, drive by. I’ll see you. We’ll rethink.”
“Okay.”
“I need somewhere I can use a secure phone line and get internet access.”
“I can get you that.”
Taylor put the radio on news as she drove. Nothing on the BBC yet. The prime minister had had to pull out of an appearance at a new hospital. That meant an emergency meeting was under way. Things were moving quickly.
Fischer was already in place when she arrived, waiting in a BMW with tinted windows. He had an earpiece in. Taylor climbed into the passenger seat, saw another car pull out behind them as they began to drive. Fischer registered her concern.
“It’s ours. We get an escort. You’re a VIP now.”
“You think we might get jumped?”
“I think it’s possible.” They swerved between traffic.
“What’s the current situation in the South Atlantic?” Taylor said.
“Tense. Your people are going a bit crazy
about this ship. Meanwhile something’s very screwy on Ascension Island itself. You heard about that?”
“Some kind of signals disruption.”
“Right. Is it connected to the ship?”
“Possibly. If I can establish contact with my colleague in Vauxhall, I may be able to get you more.”
Fischer made a call in rapid German, then pulled a U-turn and tore toward the city. He didn’t speak again until they got to Bishopsgate, where he stopped suddenly, double parked, climbed out. She scrambled to follow.
“We’re here,” he said, handing the car keys to a man on the sidewalk, who climbed in and had the BMW moving again before Taylor knew what was happening. “Follow me.” Fischer led her into the marble foyer of what a glossy sign announced as MARWITZ-LEYEN PRIVATBANKIERS. They took an unmarked door off the foyer into a long corridor with oil paintings to a second door with a suited man in front of it. Taylor glimpsed a holster as he touched his thumb to the keypad at the side, then entered a pin. The door slid open. Fischer led her down a more austere corridor to a windowless boardroom, where a man and a woman sat before an array of communication devices: an older man in suspenders, a woman with a blond bob. As the door clicked closed behind her, Taylor saw it was a secure communications facility with radio frequency shielding on the walls. The intelligence officers looked at Taylor, but none seemed surprised by her presence. The man nodded.
On the screens were connections with the federal intelligence service HQ in central Berlin and the German embassy in Belgravia.
“The Foreign Office scheduled a six p.m. call with the White House,” the woman said. “They will discuss whether to strike.”
Fischer glanced at Taylor, looking uncharacteristically tense. He checked the monitors, then gestured for Taylor to sit down. Then he brought up aerial footage of the ship.
“The Yantar, usually found in the port of Severomorsk, attached to Russia’s Northern Fleet. But we’ve seen it before in the Caribbean, usually near Cuba or Trinidad and Tobago, just outside of sovereign waters. Recently it’s been sailing off the coast of Brazil. The size and the extensive array of sensors suggests it’s purpose-built for signals intelligence gathering. But it’s also armed with what look like two close-in weapon systems and what may be a surface-to-air missile launcher. Six hours ago it changed course, headed directly for Ascension Island.”
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