The Tower (16 page)

A rock hit the surface in an explosion that covered Liv with water. She turned and saw Tariq behind her, brushing dust from his empty hands. He looked at her and smiled. ‘I’d get out of the way if I were you.’

She looked beyond him and saw something that made her laugh in pure shock. All eleven of the exiles were staggering towards her, each carrying a rock. She jumped away as the first plunged into the stream in a depth-charge of water. Another joined it, then another. They were already piling up, a few rising above the surface and visibly slowing the flow. Liv dropped down into the water, scooping the red earth up from the riverbed and jamming it into the gaps between the rocks.

Tariq issued more orders in Arabic, and a curved wall began to form, extending across the stream that had run into the pool and diverting the flow to the other fork.

‘Look,’ the cry came from one of the workers. He was pointing upstream. Everyone’s eyes followed – everyone’s but Liv’s. She knew what they were looking at because she had already seen it – first on the stone and then in the hazy distance. The river was turning to blood.

‘Quickly,’ she called out, continuing to scoop mud into the wall of rocks. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

The sight of the river turning red electrified the weary group. Some rushed to collect more stones, others joined Liv in the water, frantically shovelling mud with their hands to seal the gaps.

Tariq dropped down and shovelled mud next to her then a hiss like a huge snake drew all eyes up as the red wave closed in.

‘Out of the river, everybody!’ Liv shouted.

Those in the stream leapt out as if crocodiles had suddenly appeared in it. Some scrambled down the rapidly drying riverbed to help Liv and Tariq fill gaps in the dam wall, others stood back, awed by the sight of the swollen river arriving in a surge of red.

It hit the wall with a slap and slopped over the top of the dam. Liv and Tariq dropped back, digging a reservoir in the mud of the rapidly drying riverbed to catch the overspill. She looked up. Leaks had sprung out on the upper part where the mud had already been washed away. One more breach and the whole thing could collapse. Others sensed this too and everyone joined her in the mud, bolstering the wall with armfuls of silt and whatever rocks they could still find close by.

A stone tumbled down from the top of the dam and a cascade of red water followed it. Without stopping to think, Liv splashed through the water towards it, grabbing the stone and jamming it back in place. She held it there, feeling the sickening flow of red-tinted warm water over her hand, as though it really was blood.

From her new position she could see over the top of the dam and beyond. The trickle that had been the second fork of the stream was now a solid red flow. But if the wall broke, all that water would quickly revert to its natural course and find its way down to the pool.

Liv leaned against the dam and braced it with her whole body, arms outstretched, willing it to hold. She could hear the slop of water on the other side of the wall, feel it running over her from the numerous gaps. She could almost sense the whole dam moving, feel the stones slipping out of place under the pressure of the raging river.

Then something shifted.

A stone she had tried to jam back in place moved forward, seating itself tighter into the wall, and the flow became a trickle around it. She looked over the top of the wall, her eyes wide. The water level had dropped. It was still dropping, leaving red tide marks along the lengths of the banks. The surge had ended.

They worked quickly and silently, all energy focused on filling any holes in the dam. But Liv never moved. She remained where she was, crucified on the wall and mired in red, her mind running through the symbols that had predicted all this and wondering what greater terrors might lie in the future, until Tariq laid his hand on her shoulder and told her ‘It’s OK. The dam held. You can let go now.’

Shepherd opened his eyes to a world of silence.

For a few moments he had not the slightest idea where he was, or even who he was. He could see a floor strewn with debris and a wall that disappeared in a jagged line three feet up from the ground. Beyond it was a whiteness that hurt his eyes and low grey cloud.

The cloud.

His mind hooked onto the word – and he remembered.

He felt the cold all around and sinking into him – but not from beneath. There was something warm underneath him.

He forced himself up, willing his disconnected arms to move and push him up from the floor so he could see what it was. He feared it might be blood, his blood, but it was just Franklin, unconscious and unresponsive. He felt cold, everything felt cold. He needed to get them both away from here and into the warm.

He tried to stand but dizziness surged through him, driving him back down again. He focused on the chewed metal edge of what had once been the outer wall, trying to fix on something long enough to stop the world from spinning.

A face appeared above the wall, shouting something his ears could not hear. He tried to raise his hand and call the man over. He tried to push himself up so the man could see Franklin. But in the end these thoughts went no further than his brain and just the effort of thinking was enough to let the darkness back in. His eyes closed. The coldness pressed down. And the whistling whine in his damaged ears faded back to silence.

When Shepherd woke again it was with a gasp that hurt his throat.

He was lying on a bed in a white room, all wipe-clean linoleum and health awareness posters. One listed the symptoms of radiation sickness, another the toxic properties of various chemicals. He had been here before. The same posters had graced the walls in his research intern days when he had come to the sick bay to be treated for a mild helium burn.

Helium.

Burn.

The words pierced the bubble surrounding his brain and it popped in sudden and painful recollection.

‘Franklin!’ He sat up in bed and the room shifted as though it was floating.

White-coated figures surged through the door. They were all talking to him, at him, he could see their mouths moving but all he heard was a
waa-waa
sound, their voices muffled and indistinct like his ears were waterlogged. He worked his jaw and they popped, his hearing returning as suddenly and painfully as his memory had.

‘Please,’ he said, closing his eyes against the headache brightness and holding his hand up against the noise. ‘Could someone tell me what happened to Agent Franklin.’

‘Nothing.’ Shepherd opened his eyes at the familiar voice and looked past the white coats who were now checking his blood pressure and other vital signs. Franklin was leaning against the doorjamb, hands deep in his pockets, the smile back in place like nothing had happened. ‘Well, I got blown up – there is that – but apart from that I’m pretty good. Better than you leastways, but then you did take more of the blast than me.’ He turned to the medical personnel. ‘Now if you gentlemen are sure he ain’t gonna die in the next few minutes, might I trouble you to leave us in private for a moment or two?’

Shepherd watched the medics leave and close the door. What was left of his coat was hanging on the back. It looked like cattle had stampeded over it. The laptop case was propped against the wall next to it, untouched because he had left it behind in the Explorer. Franklin sat down by the bed. ‘Looks like you saved my life back there. Guess I owe you a drink.’

Shepherd swallowed, his mouth still parched from the dry air he’d breathed so long in the cryo chamber. ‘I don’t drink.’ He swallowed again, missing the look of mild disapproval that flitted across Franklin’s face. ‘What about Douglas?’

Franklin shook his head. ‘Missing. If he was anywhere in the facility then he’s dead for sure, but we haven’t found anything yet. The explosion tore everything to pieces. Place looks more like some kind of modern sculpture now than a building. My feeling is he wasn’t in there.’ He leaned forward and dropped his voice low. Shepherd could hardly hear it through the whine in his ears. ‘That thing you saw on the computer before you dragged me out of there, I caught a glimpse of it myself, looked like some kind of countdown.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘I think it was primed to make the loading arm drop the helium tank once everyone was clear of the building. Was there a fire?’

‘No, just an almighty bang.’

Shepherd remembered the
crump
and the cold, solid wave sweeping over them. ‘It was a pressure bomb. Helium doesn’t burn. It’s inert. It’s one of the reasons they like using it as a coolant in facilities like this – much less dangerous. But if it’s cooled to liquid form and you heat it up quickly it expands in an explosive manner.’

He looked down at his battered body stretching away on the examination table. At least he was in one piece. They were very lucky, considering. ‘I’m guessing the Webb telescope mirrors that were in the testing chamber …’

‘Destroyed,’ Franklin nodded. ‘I doubt you could find a piece big enough to comb your hair with.’

Shepherd closed his eyes and let out a long breath. ‘They killed James Webb,’ he said out loud, as though mourning a friend.

‘What?’

‘The project, it’s dead. They won’t restart it again after this. The only reason it had managed to keep going so long was because of existing commitments to the manufacturers. It was already billions over budget.’ Something occurred to him and he sat up in bed, steadying himself as vertigo swam through his head. ‘We should issue warnings to all the major ground telescopes – the VLA in New Mexico, the Keck II in Hawaii; and not just here but globally. If there’s some kind of “end of days” cult at work here, targeting anything that’s staring at the sky, then it won’t be restricted to space telescopes or confined to the US.’

‘Cool your jets, rocket man, already been done. There’s a high-level alert out on all international security networks with copies of the postcards and details of the two attacks. All potential targets have been advised to beef up their security and report to us if they have received similar threats.’

Shepherd swung his legs off the bed and down to the floor. He still felt dizzy but it was getting better. ‘What about telescopes under construction? There’s a big one out in Arizona somewhere. I think the Europeans just started one somewhere in Chile. They could be targets too.’

‘The alert went out to all national and private observatories, both operational and under construction. I may not have all your fancy degrees, Shepherd, but I’m not an idiot. Oh by the way – who’s Melisa?’ Shepherd felt like he’d been punched in the gut. ‘You were talking while you were out. Kept saying that name over and over, like you were calling for her, like maybe she was lost. She got something to do with your missing two years?’

Shepherd looked at Franklin’s chest rather than his eyes.

Maybe he should just tell him. But then he knew so little about Franklin. He had no idea if he would honour his word or just feed anything he told him straight back to personnel and end his career before it even got started. His eyes lit on the ID pinned to Franklin’s jacket, his name written in full beneath a stern photo: Agent Benjamin Franklin.

‘What’s your real name?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Your name. I’m assuming that when you became an agent you got baptized just like I did.’ He looked up and finally met his gaze. ‘Or were your parents very patriotic?’

‘Only people who know my real name are my family and a handful of people I trust.’

Shepherd smiled. ‘Give and take. You say you can’t trust me, but trust is a two-way street, Agent Franklin. How can I trust a man who won’t even tell me his real name?’

The door opened behind Franklin but neither of them turned to look.

‘I got something,’ Ellery said, oblivious of the atmosphere in the room. ‘Best if I show you in my office.’ He pointed back over his shoulder.

‘Be right there,’ Franklin replied, the chair legs scraping as he stood up. ‘After you, Agent Shepherd.’

Shepherd stood and the room shifted a little but not enough to make him sit down again. He grabbed the laptop bag from the floor and his battered coat from behind the door. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You first.’

Shepherd walked into Ellery’s office and smiled to himself when he spotted what was hanging on the wall. It was a photograph of the Chief’s younger self, glossy and framed and staring out from beneath the sharp brim of his County cap at a small wooden crucifix hanging on the opposite side of the office. The only other attempt at decoration was a potted cactus on the desk that looked like it was shivering.

‘Take a seat, gentlemen.’ The man the photograph had become was two-finger pecking at a keyboard, his reading glasses forcing his head to tilt back and making him seem old. ‘After what you said about the situation at Goddard I got the guys to run some background and give me the headlines. I got them to pull up the Professor’s email correspondence for the last week, see if there was anything there that might be relevant.’ He turned the monitor round so they could see it. An email program filled the screen with an empty inbox. ‘Somebody, and I’m assuming it was the Professor, wiped everything going back months. I had them check his work files too and it’s the same story.’

‘How many months exactly?’

‘Right the way back to May.’

Eight months.

‘If you hand the hard drives over to us,’ Franklin said, ‘our own tech guys might be able to retrieve some of the lost information.’

Ellery shrugged. ‘Whatever you need: guess this thing is federal now so it’s your call.’

Shepherd felt sorry for him, this worn-down version of the proud young man in the photograph. He’d been so full of piss and vinegar when he’d met them off the plane, now he seemed powerless and defeated in his own office.

‘There’s something else.’ Ellery leaned back in his chair, swiping the reading glasses from his face and reaching for a drawer. He pulled out a thin sheaf of printed paper held together with a clip. ‘That letter you were interested in. I called up the labs, dropped your name and had them put a rush on it.’ He handed the documents to Franklin.