The Zul Enigma (38 page)

He’d even failed to take
his own life.

***

Greg took off his glasses and grabbed the phone before it could complete its
first ring.

‘Yes,’ he panted down
the receiver.

‘It’s me. I’ve got the
information you asked for.’

‘Go on.’

The waiting was over.

‘Regarding copies?
Nobody this end activated the record function during the holovideo calls you
queried. As I said earlier, they may have been recorded at the other end but if
they were it wouldn’t show in our logs.’

‘Okay.’

‘Now the log file on the
video conference reflector server, the device that receives the stream of
network packets from virtual conference initiators and broadcasts them out to
the receivers, shows that the gentleman concerned accepted a holovideo call a
week ago on Friday 16th March at 14:02. The communication lasted fifteen
minutes.’

‘And… did another one
come in afterwards?’

‘No. It was the only
holovideo call he received that day.’

Greg covered his eyes
with his free hand. ‘Right. And today?’ he asked in a monotone, already knowing
the answer.

‘The logs show a
holovideo call accepted by the woman’s ID at 15:09, which lasted two minutes.’

‘Any others?’

He had to ask.

‘No,’ Hans replied.

Greg thumped the desk
with his fist.

‘Sir? Are you okay?’

‘Yes. I’m okay. This
information… it’s… it’s most helpful.’

So there it was. The
last vestige of doubt had been erased and Carlos was guilty as charged. Zul,
the baby, the woman? They were all figments of his imagination.

He’d made up the whole
damn story.

And the Americans had
pegged it.

What a tragedy.

What an embarrassment.

PART II

APRIL 2068

‘How exactly can I help you?’ Scott asked Rachael.

‘It’s a long story,’ she
replied, ‘and I don’t know where to start.’

She followed him into
his living room where he gestured to one of an identical pair of body sculpting
chairs. She picked the dead-head off the seat and sat down. The chair
automatically adjusted to her form.

‘Do you want to use
that?’ Scott said, nodding at the narrow band she was holding.

She shook her head. ‘No.
My thoughts aren’t organised enough for brain-to-brain comms. I’d rather we do
it the old-fashioned way and talk.’

Scott took some time to
lower himself onto the other chair. ‘I’m a bit of a wreck at the moment,’ he
laughed. ‘I’m waiting to have my joints replaced. I let it go longer than I
should. I hate hospitals… and with this weather,’ they both looked out of the
window at the trees thrashing in the gale, ‘I’ve been putting it off.’

Rachael smiled. He
seemed a nice old man.

‘You say you’re a
relative of Dr Carlos Maiz?’

‘My father died six
years ago and my mother died last month.’ She swallowed. ‘When I was going
through her things, I discovered I wasn’t their daughter at all.’

Scott looked at her with
sad eyes. ‘That must have been a shock.’

‘It was.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘An old briefcase
stuffed in the back of a cupboard. Inside it there was an envelope with a
manuscript, diary entries and a handwritten letter addressed to me. From my
real mother – my birth mother.’

‘And what does all this
have to do with Dr Maiz?’ Scott asked.

Rachael swallowed and
adjusted her body to a more upright position in the chair.

‘He was…’

‘I can’t hear you,’
Scott leaned forward.

‘He was my father,’ she
said.

MONDAY 26th MARCH – THURSDAY 20th DECEMBER 2012

CHAPTER 1

Greg woke up in his room at the Bristol
Hotel in Vienna before the alarm went off. It didn’t matter how comfy a bed he
was in, he never slept well when he was away from home.

He ran through what he
needed to prepare for his meeting with the Europeans in connection with the
Russia crisis, but his thoughts kept drifting to Carlos. Now that was the
real
worry right there. In spite of Bob Anderson’s accusations, up until the day
before, Greg had not appreciated how ill Carlos was, but now, knowing he was
lying in hospital recovering from a drug overdose, well that was a shock to say
the least.

The night before
Corrinne said if his physical condition continued to improve he’d be moved to a
psychiatric ward for assessment and Greg could only pray that the Austrian
doctors would be able to help him. But, he thought, at least Carlos was back in
Vienna and under UN protection.

After eating scrambled
eggs and bacon served in his room, the eggs cooked to creamy perfection and the
bacon fat browned within a few seconds of turning into charcoal just the way he
liked it, Greg arrived at the door of the suite of offices he always used at
UNO City to be greeted by Hans Baade.

‘Morning, sir,’ he said,
shifting his weight from one foot to the other, hands clasped behind his back.

‘Hans,’ Greg said,
reaching out to shake hands. ‘You here to see me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well come on in. A cup
of tea?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

‘No thanks, sir,’ Hans
replied following. ‘I already had coffee.’

Greg walked through the
anteroom and into his office. ‘I was going to call you later,’ he said making
his way towards a massive desk by the far wall, ‘to thank you for sacrificing
your precious Sunday evening checking out those calls.’

‘That’s why I’m here,
sir.’

Greg, who had one hand
on the arm of a large office chair about to roll it out from under the desk,
glanced over at Hans who was busy polishing his spectacles with his tie.

‘Something wrong?’

Hans looked up. ‘Last
night I told you the records showed no further activity after the holovideo
calls you queried.’

‘Yes…’ Greg replied
sitting down.

‘And I gave you the
times the calls ended.’

‘Correct.’

‘Well I woke up in the
middle of the night thinking I should have checked the session ending times
too.’

‘Hans. Take a seat and
explain.’

‘There are two separate
log file records. One for the time the holovideo call ended and another later
record much further down the file showing the session time out. You know the
procedure, sir, once logged in with the RFId tag the session will continue
until the user logs out, until the tag is out of range, or until the session is
timed out after five minutes due to inactivity.’

‘Right,’ Greg said,
nodding his head.

‘When I checked this
morning, although the call you queried on the 16th March ended at 14:17 the
session didn’t time out till 14:26, nine minutes later. And the call to
Corrinne yesterday ended at 15:11 but her session didn’t time out until 15:41,
exactly thirty minutes later.’

‘I see what you’re
driving at. Some other activity must have been going on.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you tell from the
logs what it was?’

‘Sending and receiving
e-mails gets logged but nothing came in or went out during the times we’re
investigating. If a word processor or minor utilities programme was being used,
there’d be no log of it, although activity
could
be traced by checking
in the system directory for the creation or modification or access to files
during the time period in question. I can do that if you want, but I’ll need
administrator privilege. And we won’t be getting results any time soon. It’s a
slow process.’

Greg sighed.

‘Here are the log
printouts,’ and Hans slid some papers towards Greg. ‘I highlighted the relevant
times.’

Putting on his half moon
glasses, Greg glanced at the reports, remembering Corrinne had told him she’d
left her tag in Carlos’s office the previous afternoon. ‘This could be
significant. Thanks. And yes, go ahead and start checking the system
directory.’

‘What’s going on with Dr
Maiz, sir? I heard he was in the office yesterday.’

‘He was. But I’m not yet
at liberty to announce the latest circumstances.’ Greg stood up. ‘If you find
anything else, be sure to let me know immediately.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m going to
scour the logs again right now. It’s just possible there’s something we missed.’

***

The President was not happy being dragged out of the first sound sleep he’d had
in more weeks than he could remember. The bleeping noise that woke him,
although not especially loud, was persistent and irritating. He sat up in bed
and rubbed his face with both hands before grabbing the phone. With a tug of
the quilt, his wife spun away onto the opposite side of the bed.

‘Yeah. Okay. Put her
through,’ he said.

Barbara Lord. He
wondered what she wanted calling him so early – it was still dark. It could
only mean one thing – bad news.

‘Mr President?’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s nearly six thirty,
sir. Sorry to wake you but there’ve been some developments regarding Dr Maiz
you need to know about.’

‘What developments?’

‘He’s no longer under
our control, sir.’

‘What! How in God’s name
did that happen?’

‘He collapsed in Vienna.
At his office. Yesterday afternoon. He was taken out of UNO City without our
knowledge.’

‘Weren’t you tracking
him, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Yes, sir. But UN
security found the transmitters and planted them in his office. Our boys didn’t
know he’d left the building until the Secretary-General told them.’

‘I don’t believe this
shit!’ Bob said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He dropped his
head in his free hand and took a deep breath. ‘So where is he now?’

There was a slight
hesitation before Barbara answered. ‘We don’t know. We checked all the
hospitals and clinics, but none confirm admitting him. Of course, he could be
under a false name, or his arrival could have been covered up, or they may not
have taken him to a hospital at all.’

‘So,’ Bob said, changing
the phone to his other hand as he turned on the bedside light, ‘not only has he
escaped – again – this time you have no idea where he is.
Terrific!’

She ignored the sarcasm.
‘I tried to call Howard first thing this morning, but he was busy. His
assistant told me he wouldn’t be free to accept my call before midday Vienna
time – that’s in thirty minutes. As I knew you’d be getting up soon, I
thought it best I let you know what was going on before I spoke to him.’

‘Tell Mr Howard I want
him to get that man back to us pronto.’

‘I’m not sure it will be
that easy, sir. Plus there’s something…’

‘And how do we know he
really collapsed? Huh? It could be a load of bull they’re feeding us. They’re
out of order doing what they did and Mr Howard knows it.’

‘Yes sir, but there’s
something else…’

‘There’s nothing more to
say. You just tell him we want them to hand that man back to us immediately.’

‘Mr President, sir,
there
is
something else…’

‘I don’t wanna talk
about it further until Dr Maiz is back in our custody, do you understand?’ and
he slammed down the phone before Barbara could answer. ‘I knew I never
should’ve agreed to him going to Vienna,’ he muttered as he strode into the
bathroom, leaving his wife to bury her head even further under the covers.

***

Head down at his desk, Greg was putting the finishing touches to the opening
address he was to deliver at the meeting with the European heads of state the
following day. He’d instructed that all his calls be held and was so absorbed
that when the phone
did
ring he felt a flush of surprise followed by a
wave of irritation.

‘Greg, I know you don’t
want to be disturbed,’ it was Faith, his Executive Assistant, who had worked
for him ever since he’d accepted the post as Secretary-General and who
accompanied him on all his travels, ‘but will you accept this call from a Dr
Joseph Fisher at Israel Aerospace Industries? He says he has urgent information
for you about a friend. I tried to stall him, but he’s most insistent.’

Greg sighed. ‘Put him
through. Dr Fisher? Good morning.’

‘Good morning.’

‘You’re calling about…’

‘Our mutual friend. I
have some urgent news that I don’t want to tell you on the phone.’

‘When do you want to
meet?’

‘Can I see you now? I’m
in the lobby downstairs.’

Greg was startled seeing Joseph for the first time. The commanding manner the
man had displayed during their telephone conversations had led Greg to think
they were of a similar age, but looking at the person standing in front of him,
it was hard to believe he’d yet reached fifty. Greg extended his hand in
greeting and it disappeared in Joseph’s fist as he grasped it and gave it a
brusque shake.