Extinction (10 page)

‘Yes,’ Liz answered. ‘Who is this?’

‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Alyssa Durham. We met a couple of times at parties a few years ago. I was a friend of Karl’s.’

The tears started again, but Liz managed to control them. ‘Yes . . . Yes, I remember you.’

‘I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am to hear about your brother. We were good friends.’

‘Yes, I remember . . . How did you hear?’

‘I’m a reporter,’ Alyssa replied. ‘I saw the name over one of the wires, and just wanted to get in touch, offer my condolences. Do you know what happened?’ she probed, wary of being too interrogative but at the same time needing some quick answers.

‘Yes . . . The local police, well, local to where Karl was living, called to say that he’d been involved in an accident. An avalanche while he was driving. . .’ The voice started to crack again, and Alyssa let her cry, just waited until she was capable of going on. ‘They say they can’t find the body . . . They might never find it. Oh!’ And the tears began once more, and Alyssa felt her heart go out to the woman.

Karl had always been close to his sister, Alyssa knew; he had looked after her in the way typical of an older brother, and she had looked up to him in turn. Alyssa was no stranger to loss, and knew exactly what she must be going through.

Eventually, Liz managed to carry on. ‘And there was someone else too, a lady I think Karl was seeing, Leanne . . . somebody. I don’t know . . . Karl and I hadn’t seen each other since he moved away. I don’t think he was allowed to get away much.’

Alyssa made a note to check out the name. An avalanche was clever, she thought. In that part of the world it could well hide a body indefinitely. And who was going to investigate that far north anyway?

‘Has HIRP been in touch with you at all?’ Alyssa asked next, fishing for information.

‘You . . . know he worked there?’ Liz asked, her surprise evident.

‘A guess,’ Alyssa replied evenly. ‘It was about the only place up there he could be working.’

Liz seemed to be thinking on the other end of the line. ‘Yes,’ she answered finally. ‘With Mom and Dad gone, and Karl unmarried, I’m the next of kin. They rang a few hours ago, to express their sympathies, ask if I wanted to go up there, collect his personal effects, you know.’

Alyssa’s heart leaped, her unvoiced hopes confirmed, but she managed to contain her sudden excitement. ‘So will you be going?’

‘I really want to,’ Liz replied, ‘but I can’t afford to go up there. And with two kids at school and my own work, I just don’t have the time anyway. I asked them to pack up his things and send them down to me.’ She paused. ‘Even though they’ve not found the body, we’re going to have a memorial service for Karl at our church. I need to speak to the priest but I think it will be early next week. It would be nice if you could be there.’

Alyssa forced back her own tears, the reality of Karl’s death coming violently back to her. ‘I will.’ She sniffed. ‘Thank you, Liz.’

Over three thousand miles away, Professor Niall Breisner waited in the secure communications room for the call to be patched through. He was sweating, and it wasn’t from the heat generated by the large banks of electrical equipment that filled the room. This wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to having.

Moments later, the image of General David Tomkin appeared on the screen in front of him, the large high-definition picture making it appear that the man was in the room with him, an impression that did nothing to calm his nerves.

‘Professor,’ Tomkin said in greeting.

‘Good evening, General. How are you?’ Breisner winced at the banality of his words even as they left his mouth.

‘Not happy, so let’s skip the pleasantries,’ Tomkin said plainly. ‘What the hell is going on up there?’

‘We always knew there would be indicators,’ Breisner offered. In fact he remembered quite clearly that he had briefed Tomkin in precise detail as to how these sorts of things were more than likely to happen.

‘Indicators are one thing,’ Tomkin said impatiently. ‘The events we’ve just seen are like a big flashing neon sign. It’s unacceptable, Professor.’

Breisner nodded. ‘You’re right. It is unfortunate. But I’m afraid such exposure is very much part of the deal. We cannot test the device without ramifications of some kind. You must surely realize that.’ Breisner wondered if he’d overstepped the mark by addressing the general in this way, but the man merely paused, head bowed.

‘OK. What’s done is done, we can’t change that now. Just tell me that it was worth it. Is the device operational?’

Breisner shook his head very slightly. ‘Effective, yes. Obviously. But not yet fully operational. There are some details that need to be ironed out. Questions of control and direction. Obviously, the device needs to be fully accurate, and I cannot guarantee that at the moment. But we are close,’ he said with pride. ‘We are very close.’

Tomkin grunted. ‘Close doesn’t cut it with me, Professor. I want results; that’s what you’re paid for.’

‘We are on schedule,’ Breisner countered.

Tomkin stared at him through the computer screen, his blue eyes piercing. ‘Good,’ he said firmly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall behind.’

Breisner nodded. He knew what would happen to him if he let the general down.

Moments after the connection was severed, Breisner’s head snapped round as his landline desk telephone started to ring. He picked it up instantly. ‘Yes?’

‘Is that Professor Breisner?’ the voice on the other end asked; a tearful female voice, and Breisner knew instantly who it was.

‘Yes. Is that Liz?’ he asked, his voice sympathetic. He knew what Anderson had done, and that Janklow’s sister had been given the party line about the ‘accident’. He thought it had all been dealt with, and wondered what she wanted.

‘Yes,’ the voice came back. ‘I’m sorry to call so late, but I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Oh? Changed your mind about what?’

‘About collecting Karl’s personal effects. I’ve decided to come. I . . . I need closure, I think. I hope it’s still OK.’

OK? Damn, it sure as hell
wasn’t
OK, but Breisner knew he had to keep up the pretence of normalcy; he mustn’t arouse the woman’s suspicions. They would just have to escort her in, show her Janklow’s workstation; maybe he’d even have a word with her himself, offer his condolences personally; and then she would be escorted off again, and the whole sorry incident could be forgotten.

‘Of course it’s still OK,’ he answered. ‘When do you want to come?’

Alyssa smiled as she cradled the telephone next to her ear. She checked her watch; it was still before midnight up at the base. ‘There’s a flight that will get me there by tomorrow evening.’

‘H
AVE WE IDENTIFIED
the woman yet?’ Anderson asked as the private jet carried him back towards the frozen wastelands which sheltered the HIRP base.

‘Negative,’ the answer came back over the satellite phone. Anderson had left some agents behind to investigate the scene – physically check CCTV footage, interview witnesses, and so on; he had also been in contact with the experts back at the base, ordering them to make an immediate electronic search for the woman. The computing power at HIRP was enormous, and Anderson had instructed the CCTV footage of the mystery woman to be plugged into the system for a facial match to be run. The woman may have been in disguise, but the dimensions and contours of the face would be unchanged.

He had also ordered a thorough background check on Janklow, including finding all the interviews done during his security vetting checks when he had applied for the post at HIRP. The woman was probably known to Janklow, and looking back at his past might well provide them with the answer.

The woman obviously wasn’t Janklow’s girlfriend; Leanne Harnas was already dead. Unless he had another? Anderson thought this unlikely, but you never knew. The man’s mother was dead, and his only living female relative was his sister, Elizabeth Gatsby. His agents had already established that she was at work teaching grade school over five hundred miles away when Janklow had met the woman at the park.

It was possible, of course, that the woman was genuinely unknown to Janklow; perhaps he had been approached by someone, forced to work for them.

The intelligence analyst back at the base went on, ‘We have, however, highlighted evidence of a detailed web search about HIRP performed very recently.’

Anderson considered the matter. It could be nothing; HIRP was always the target of conspiracy theorists, and so web searches were nothing to get excited about. However, the timing seemed just a little too coincidental. ‘Where did the search originate?’

‘We’re still working on that, sir,’ the man answered. ‘But it might take some time – the search was initiated by a secure system, on a protected network.’

This started alarm bells ringing for Anderson; the crazies didn’t normally have access to such technology. It indicated that the investigator was professional, and Anderson again considered the possibilities – another government department, a foreign intelligence agency, or the press. Any of them spelt trouble.

‘Concentrate on that,’ Anderson ordered. ‘By the time I get there, I want to know where that search originated.’

Alyssa was glad to be able to go home at last, for one night at least. Get some proper sleep, in her own bed. The next few days promised to be busy.

She had reported in to Rushton, who had been amazed by her gall. He had at first refused to countenance the idea of her getting on to the base by pretending to be Elizabeth Gatsby, but she had finally won him round and he was now in the process of lining up some false identification papers for her. He could sense a big story and although he acknowledged the danger to Alyssa, the reward might just be worth the risk.

The task of impersonating Liz should not be too difficult, Alyssa reasoned. By her own admission, Karl’s sister had never visited him at the base, and nobody there was ever likely to have met her in person. She realized that the security personnel might have pictures of Liz, but she knew she would be able to make herself look sufficiently like the woman to pass muster. Their body proportions were very similar, they were the same age, and Liz wore glasses – a great accessory to mask the face. The only major change would be hair colour – Alyssa’s was dark brown, whilst Liz was a redhead.

She was going to have to get some hair dye, several bottles of the best, and so she headed across town for the minimart just a few blocks from her apartment building. It was the middle of the night but the store was open twenty-four hours a day.

She would get the things she needed, sort her hair out back at her apartment, get some much-needed sleep and then meet up with Jamie Price at the office in the morning. She could then get the rest of her things ready before catching the 2 p.m. flight up north. She hoped Rushton’s sources would have the ID ready in time.

She decided to avoid the subway due to the late hour and keep to the streets. She would have caught a taxi but the roads were gridlocked –
at this time?
she wondered – and she knew it would be quicker walking. And anyway, she lived less than a mile away.

It wasn’t long before she was questioning her decision, however; even though it was way past the time people were normally out – except for the regular die-hard party fans, of course – the streets were still clustered with people. She realized that it was possible that some of the apartment blocks had still not been cleared after the earthquake.

But it soon became apparent that it was something more than that. People were actually taking to the streets in protest, visibly shaken by the week’s events. The various religious sects and cults were still plying their trade on the street corners, and seemed to be attracting huge followings. She checked as she walked and, sure enough, soon came across a preacher dressed in a white robe and wearing a gold headband. A few dozen people had gathered round him, listening intently, and he was urging them, in the name of the Order of Planetary Renewal, to prepare for the cleansing of the world.

The next street she chose was obstructed by a group of angry people – all ages, men and women, some wearing suits, others in rougher clothing – demanding to know what the government was doing to ‘save’ their country. Armed police were already starting to arrive on the scene, and Alyssa turned off, following a side road down to an intersection.

Things were quieter here, but only because the craziness had already been and gone. Storefront windows were shattered down the length of the street, the shops looted, empty. Cars lining the streets had evidently been set on fire at some stage; many were still smouldering, although most were gutted wrecks. A group of six men wearing greatcoats and carrying three-foot lengths of wood started marching down the street from the far end but were soon intercepted by a group of policemen. Alyssa turned down another street before she became embroiled in the confrontation; the sound of shouting and then heavy impacts, followed by two gunshots, made her quicken her pace.

It was one thing to hear about riots on the television, another thing altogether to see them up close. Alyssa had seen worse during her career but she wasn’t used to witnessing it so close to home. It scared her.

She arrived at the minimart ten minutes later, her route mercifully unopposed by any more rioters or protestors. But instead of the minimart’s normal night-time trade of a few dozen people at any one time, there were now several hundred crammed into it. People were buying all they could, just in case. In case of what? Alyssa thought about trying somewhere else, but soon decided against it. Another store might be even busier than this, and who knew what she might have to walk past to get there.

Pushing through the door, she entered the melee.

The store was busy but calm, people nervous but controlled as they moved along the aisles filling their baskets and trolleys with things they would probably never need. Alyssa tried to get what she wanted as fast as she could, but the sheer numbers were against her; it took her twenty minutes before she joined the long check-out queue. By then the mood was starting to change. The close crush of people and the interminable waiting was wearing down whatever patience people still had.