S.O.S (16 page)

“It's a ship...” Dev frowned. “It's got all sorts of connotations, but uhm, I'm not very good at history – maths and physics are my things.”

“But if it's missing the sails, the star... what did you say it was called...?”

“Carina.”

“Yes, Carina, the sails, then it's not the boat is it?”

Dev shook his head and smiled. “Molly,” he said, leaning in to kiss her again, “you like to challenge me and I like to meet that challenge. Come on...” He took his coat off the back of the chair. “Let's go,”

“Where?”

“To the Ancient Mythology section...”

He stood and waited for her to collect up her bag, coat, hat and scarf. “The mythology section?”

Dev smiled. “Yes, and after that we'll hit the newsprint section. We're going to find out what this all means, because in some weird way I know it's all linked.”

“Weird way is right,” Molly muttered under her breath as they left, “really weird way...”

*

Jake sat at his desk at work and thought about his wife Jenny and how good she'd looked the day before when he'd seen her. She was almost like her old self – it was as if Chris had never been gone. He drew lots of doodles on the pad in front of him but he couldn't focus on work today. He kept remembering the packet of Haribo and how it definitely hadn't been in the car the previous week.

And the more he thought about it, the more he remembered other little things that had happened in the past fortnight; the book that Sophie had left in the car – that she denied even bringing out with her, finding his hat and gloves on the dashboard when it was freezing and he couldn't find them anywhere in the house. He certainly didn't remember leaving them on the dash board. The cricket ball that had turned up in the boot of the car and that had made him feel so sad that he couldn't drive for ages. Cricket had been Chris's favourite sport. Odd things, things he couldn't explain, except by way of him losing his mind.

He put his head in his hands. Perhaps that was it; perhaps he was losing his mind. He had certainly found the past few months difficult enough and maybe this was his brain telling him that he couldn't cope. He wondered what he should do, who he should tell about this. He didn't want to mention it at work and he couldn't tell Jenny, she had enough dealing with her own loss. He drew another doodle and thought about Father Tom at church. He didn't really go to church, that had been Jenny's thing, but perhaps talking to a priest might be the right thing to do. Perhaps someone who knew about death and grief would be able to advise him on how to go forward. He would go and see Father Tom and maybe he could explain the odd happenings.

*

North Korea

Zack sat in the hotel lobby with his redundant phone in his hand. There was no internet in North Korea and there was no way of telling Molly anything should he find anything, which at the moment looked doubtful. He didn't know where to begin. The tourists at the hotel had been allowed to go around the city on special organised tours, one of which he'd joined, but he had learned nothing except the virtues of the esteemed leader Kim Jong-ll. Everywhere there were giant pictures and posters of the leaders of North Korea and everywhere else just wide empty streets and dull buildings with busy people going about their daily lives disconnected to the rest of the world. No mobile phones, no shops and certainly no MacDonald's. Zack knew what he was looking for, but he didn't have any idea of how to find it so he had resigned himself to leaving on the next tourist bus back to the airport and then to Bejing and home.

He stood to walk the long length of the lobby to see what was going on out of the long side window. The ground to the side of the hotel had a junior brigade on it marching endlessly up and down, but that bored him within minutes. As he walked back to where he had been sitting he saw a commotion up ahead. He hurried back to see what was going on.

An army truck sat outside the main entrance waiting, it seemed, for two officials who were shaking hands with a number of people lined up by the reception desk. They were both in full military regalia, with medals and braid. Zack watched them for a short while and then he had a blinding flash of inspiration. If he wanted to get anywhere out of the city this was probably going to be the route. He glanced at the truck, waited until the automatic glass doors opened to let the two men out, he slipped past them and climbed into the back of the truck. It took less than five minutes to be on his way out of Pyonyang and en route to somewhere completely unknown.

The journey lasted four hours and by the end of it Zack was amazed at what he'd seen. The further away from the city they got, the less modern the landscape was, with oxen pulling ploughs and people travelling on foot. He felt as if he had stepped back in time. The flat plains gave way to mountains and then to more arid lands and finally to a remote desert area, where the land had been flattened and vast concrete buildings covered the space. The truck pulled into a fenced and gated area and passed through security. Zack pressed his nose to the glass, but it was pitch black – there was no light pollution here; there was very little electricity.

The truck pulled up outside what looked like living quarters and the two army officials climbed out. They spoke to the driver and then made their way inside. Zack too climbed out of the truck and darted inside the building. He followed the first man into the lift and up to a fifth story apartment; one room and a bedroom. Zack took the sofa and put his feet up; it was far too dark to look around tonight. He would wait until the morning.

The assassin stepped into the pub in west London and was assaulted by the heavy beat of some pounding techno anthem that blitzed his senses. The place did nothing to impress him. It was dingy, with the smell of stale sweat hanging in the air and a scattering of people dismally drinking in the mid-morning. This was a place that was sour and tired and rank. The clientele kept their heads down, trying to avoid eye contact with each other, to avoid being singled out by the menacing trio playing pool over in the corner.

The assassin walked across to the bar and ordered a drink. He could feel the eyes that followed him across the grimy room. Instantly he knew the reason why – it was no real puzzle – he was the only smartly dressed person in the pub and he looked like he had a purpose; no-one else did. He paid no attention to the stares however; they made no difference to him. What mattered was the job at hand; getting his mark. He left his drink where it was and began to walk towards the three men at the pool table. They noticed his approach and stopped their game. They were posturing amateurs who relied on safety in numbers, he thought briefly. The leader – he looked the biggest of the three – raised his cue threateningly at the assassin and spoke;

“You don't belong here. Get!”

In reply the assassin swiftly tore the cue out of his hands, spun it round and jammed the sharp end underneath the man's chin, the point pressing painfully into the man's thick neck. The movement was so incisive and sudden that the other two men were stunned by it. People moved back; the other two pool players stood motionless for a moment, ready to pounce but there was something about this man in the suit, something powerful and menacing. They stayed where they were. The assassin enjoyed the moment of power, letting the silence build before he chose to speak.

“You will now do exactly what I say if you value your lives.” His voice had hardly a trace of accent – just the faint twang of North American on the ends of his words. “Is that clear?” he said, pressing the point of the cue harder against the man's throat. The leader seemed paralysed with fear, unable to move his head. The other two men nodded. The assassin gave nothing away.

“Good, there are things that you are going to tell me, but not here.” With that he released the cue from the man's fleshy neck, and his mark gasped in relief. He went for the gun in his pocket, pulled it out but it was struck out of his hands before he had registered the feel of it. He was too slow. All three of them watched as it skittered across the floor.

“Don't be stupid,” the assassin said. He put his hand over his jacket and pulled it back slightly. All three men looked then at the weapons strapped across his body under his suit.

“We're going out the back,” he said. “Lead the way.”

*

The knock on the front door interrupted Father Tom's mid-morning coffee – a ritual that gave him at least half an hour of peace in his busy day. Not this morning. He left his coffee and biscuits where they were and went to the door.

“Hello?”

“Father Tom, you may not remember me but I'm...”

“Jenny's husband,” Tom said. He smiled. “I always remember faces, but not names.”

“Jake, I'm Jake.”

“Of course! Jake. Come in. What can I do for you?”

Father Tom led the way into the kitchen where he'd been drinking his coffee. He turned.

“Sorry, am I interrupting your break?”

“Not at all. Sit down and I'll make you a coffee.” Father Tom looked at Jake. Dishevelled and grey, he looked worse than Jenny – more lost, more confused. The death of a child, Father Tom thought, was as unnatural as life could get. He brought the coffee over to the table where Jake had pulled out a seat.

“You look worried Jake,” Father Tom said, taking a seat opposite him. “What can I do to help?”

Jake took a breath. “I got a call from my daughter a day or so ago. She told me that her mum, Jenny was upstairs talking to Chris. I was worried, it sounded like Jenny was losing her mind so I went to ask her about it, but she was fine – she seems to have recovered and now I... I feel that it's me who's losing it.”

He paused then and rubbed the palms of his hands nervously together, and Father Tom sensed that there was something more to come.

“I think I can see him Father,” he went on hesitantly; the pain etched clear in his face. “Every time I think of him I see his face, his blue eyes, his smile and now, now I keep imagining that he is here, leaving me things, trying to talk to me. It's mad, completely mad.” Jake dropped his head in his hands.

“He was so full of life. There was nothing he didn't try; he loved school, sport, the Cubs he did after school...”

Jake looked up. “I can remember when he did his Cub Scout badge for science - we built a rocket and tested it in the garden together. It went so high...” He trailed off at this, his thoughts carried with that huge rocket, his emotions soaring through the blue sky of that perfect day. He hung his head and he felt a consoling hand on his wrist from the quiet priest.

*

Dev, forever restless, paced with a frustrated energy that he was not used to. He had never found a problem that he couldn't solve, yet this one was eluding him determinedly. He swept his hair back in irritation for the tenth time this past hour, yet the answer didn't appear as it so often did, in a flash of brilliance.

Sitting and watching him was Molly who was far more at ease than he was. She was even struggling not to laugh at the expression of anguish on his face; she had never seen someone so desperate to work something out. Wisely she didn't let her amusement show – it might just push him into meltdown. Dev let out a cry in frustration – the same words that he had been muttering under his breath ceaselessly for a while.

“There has to be a link, there just has to be!” He turned to Molly, his tired eyes seeking confirmation and consolation. Molly however, wasn't convinced.

“I'm not sure,” she said, not at all hesitant to contradict him. “It could just be a coincidence.”

Exasperated, Dev looked at her and shook his head virulently.

“I don't believe in coincidences,” he said and resumed his pacing, muttering through all the possibilities of what the link could be. As was becoming increasingly familiar he drew a blank. Molly just shrugged and continued to think in her own way. She wasn't at all stressed, which was more than could be said for Dev, who looked as if he could crack any minute with desperation. Suddenly he stopped, and she resigned herself for the familiar chant. What he said instead caused her to sit up with surprise.

“Molly, do you think it could be aliens?”

Oh God, she thought as she looked at him, trying to find a twinkle of his dry humour in his eyes and finding none, he's cracked.

“Duh, no? What makes you say that?” she said, struggling not to laugh at this latest attempt to understand.

Dev himself wasn't quite sure. He'd been thinking about the strange shapes and the actual structure of them, the Argo Navis, the ship, which didn't seem to yield any inspiration despite all the research they'd just done and now he was drawing a parallel with the crop circles that were sometimes discovered by farmers as evidence of alien invasion. He shrugged, not really sure what to say.

“I was thinking that the symbols could be the stars – the planets that the aliens come from – you know, like they're leaving a calling card and that's what the light is? A light from their space ships?” He stopped and looked at Molly – before he registered her expression, he knew that he was talking nonsense.

“Dev, think about it.” Molly began, “If you think that getting anyone to believe your calculations was hard, you should try this theory! It's a bit barmy to say the least! Did anyone spot any lights in the sky? No. Has anyone else given even the slightest hint of something weird? No.” She shrugged. “I really think the alien idea hasn't got legs!”

She smiled at him. “Besides, I don't believe in aliens.”

Dev frowned; he was okay with admitting that his idea was stupid but not because aliens didn't exist.

“It is almost certain that aliens exist!” he said indignantly, “The Drake Equation predicts it.”

Molly looked baffled, as if he had just said something in Arabic.