The Zul Enigma (39 page)

‘Please,’ said Greg,
‘sit down.’

At roughly six feet, the
same height as Greg, Joseph was a couple of suit sizes smaller. However, the
cut of his jacket couldn’t disguise a breadth to his shoulders and a bulk to
his chest that was due to gym-work rather than diet. This was not a man to be
trifled with, Greg thought.

‘Sir,’ Faith said, ‘it’s
nearly midday. What shall I do about the call you’re expecting?’

‘Hm,’ Greg muttered,
remembering Barbara would be phoning any minute. ‘Offer my apologies… say
something urgent came up and tell her to call back in an hour.’

‘Can I get you any tea
or coffee?’

Greg glanced at Joseph,
who shook his head.

‘I appreciate you must
be busy,’ Joseph said, ‘and so am I,’ Greg nodded his big head. ‘So,’ Joseph
continued, ‘I’ll be brief. Over the past weeks I’ve been having discussions
with the United States Department of Defense. I had a meeting at the Pentagon
last week…’

‘… and what exactly does
this have to do with Carlos?’ Greg interrupted.

Joseph raised a hand. ‘I
got a call an hour ago, informing me a crisis group’s been formed to handle a
highly classified homeland security issue. They’ve been working day and night
since Saturday, but since they’re not getting anywhere, they need my help. They
want me back in DC. Urgently. To meet the Department of Defense and NASA’s
Dryden Flight Research Centre. They’re trying to trace, and I quote, “an
unusual communication”, which for some reason I’m not yet party to, became a
top priority problem over the weekend. Normally I wouldn’t have thought twice
about it, but my contact mentioned the order for this investigation originated
from the Director of National Intelligence in connection with a meeting the
President had with you last week. Of course, considering Anderson’s intention
to cut NASA’s budget, the Dryden boys are having a good laugh right now…’

‘I can imagine,’ Greg
said, raising both bristly eyebrows.

‘Anyhow, since I know
Carlos was at the meeting with you, I thought I’d let you know. I have no idea
what form the “unusual communication” took or where it originated, but right
now the Americans are pulling in all their top guns.’

‘I see,’ Greg said, as
he leaned back in his chair. So NASA
hadn’t
wrapped up their
investigation after all. Or perhaps new information had come to light. ‘And
that’s all you know?’

‘So far, yes.’

‘It’s news to me –
I understood they’d finalised their inquiries.’

‘Have you spoken to
Carlos today?’ Joseph asked.

‘No. Not yet. I’ll visit
him this afternoon.’

‘I’d like to see him too
before I leave. Which hospital is he in?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t
disclose that information to anyone, Dr Fisher.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,
I’ve known Carlos for over fifteen years.’

Greg smiled. ‘And I’ll
be happy to pass on your very best wishes.’

‘At least tell me how he
is.’

Greg made a snap
decision to tell Joseph a little more than he’d planned. ‘I’ll need your word
that this information stays between us,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘When Carlos collapsed,
he hit his head. His PA found him on the floor in his office with a big lump on
his forehead. The doctors don’t know if the fall knocked him unconscious or whether
he collapsed due to the mixture of amphetamines and Rohypnol they found in his
system.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Yes. We think he used
amphetamines on business trips and the Rohypnol to help him sleep. It’s likely
he carried a supply of both when he travelled.’

‘I heard through my
contacts at Dryden, the President had NI investigate him. If that’s true, they
would have found the drugs and taken them off him or substituted something
harmless. But… why would he take both at once?’

Greg shook his head.
‘I’ve been asking myself the same question. All I know is the doctor couldn’t
get any sense out of Carlos yesterday. Once his physical condition is stable,
they’ll move him into a psychiatric ward. But… well… because you’ve been a
friend of his for so long, I wondered if you could shed some light on it,
especially since you were the last person to talk to him.’

‘I don’t know. What do
you think?’ Joseph asked.

Greg sighed. ‘I suppose
it’s possible he took some amphetamines to rev himself up and then got confused
and…’ he shrugged.

‘… and then decided he
was tired and wanted to have a sleep?’ Joseph said, finishing the sentence for
him.

‘You’re right,’ Greg
stared at the desk in front of him, ‘that makes no sense at all. So he must
have wanted to end it all. He was in a shocking state yesterday – you
spoke to him – you know. But could it be possible he was confused and
didn’t realise what he was…’

‘Or perhaps he wasn’t as
confused as you think,’ Joseph interrupted.

‘What do you mean?’

He leaned forward.
‘There could be another reason he took the drugs. One that makes a lot more
sense.’

‘Which is?’

‘That he took them to
make his collapse look realistic. Now that wouldn’t be the act of a crazy man,
would it?’

Greg pondered Joseph’s words. Perhaps he was right and Carlos was more with it
than Greg had given him credit.

Earlier that morning the
doctor had called asking Greg to check Carlos’s office for signs of the drugs
he’d taken, but the cleaners said they’d found nothing.

Since learning about
them, Greg had assumed Carlos was carrying them with him but of course, Joseph
was right, and had they been in his luggage, the Americans would have
confiscated them or substituted them. Therefore Carlos must have got the drugs
from somewhere else.

***

‘Mr Secretary-General! Come in, sir,’ Corrinne said, surprised.

‘Corrinne, I think the
drugs Carlos took yesterday came from a supply he keeps here. Do you know
anything about it?’ Greg walked past Corrinne’s room and straight into Carlos’s
office.

‘He keeps a set of clean
clothes and a toilet bag in his cupboard. In case he’s called away at short
notice.’

She bustled after Greg
and opened a cupboard door. Sure enough a travel wash bag was tucked at the
back. She took it out and unzipped it. In one section there was toothpaste, a
toothbrush, a razor, deodorant, a miniature can of shaving foam and a small
bottle of cologne. In the other there was an unused strip of Panadol, a small
unlabelled dark glass bottle and two strips of bubble-pack, one of which had
four tablets missing and both of which were printed with the word “Rohypnol”.

Greg opened the bottle
and poured half a dozen brown capsules into his hand. ‘Bingo!’, he said, and
was flooded with a sense of relief knowing that had Carlos intended committing
suicide there would be nothing left, other than the bottle and two empty strips
of foil.

They heard the phone
ring in Corrinne’s office and she ran out to answer it.

‘For you, sir,’ she
called to Greg, who had pocketed the drugs.

It was Faith telling him
Barbara was on the line again.

‘Okay. I’m on my way up
now. Tell her I’ll call her back in ten minutes.’

***

Greg banged the phone down. The nerve of the woman! How dare she demand that he
hand Carlos back? The arrogance of the Americans sometimes made him want to
scream out loud and although he’d controlled his emotions on the phone and not
let a hint of his annoyance show, the effort had made his heart pound.

Still, he’d learned one
thing from the conversation. They had no idea where Carlos was.

‘Come on in,’ Greg said to Hans as Faith showed him into the office for the
second time that morning.

‘I’ve found something,’
he said, beating the air with his glasses.

‘Sit down. Tell me.’

Hans adjusted the wire
arms of his multifocals over his ears and gripped the armrests of the chair. ‘I
was rechecking the logs when one of my guys told me he was using a sniffer on
the network yesterday…’

‘What in God’s name’s
that?’ Greg asked.

‘It’s a device we use to
gather bandwidth usage statistics and capture specific types of traffic like
video calls to help us diagnose faults or problems with network performance or
its components like hubs, routers, repeaters, switches, gateways…’

‘I don’t need to know
chapter and verse, Hans.’

‘Sorry. Anyhow, on
Saturday the night shift identified we were having trouble with the router and
yesterday Erik set up a sniffer laptop for a couple of hours to isolate the
problem. It was “sniffing” network packets streaming in from the sender, which
are broadcast out from the receiver…’

‘and…’

‘… Erik disconnected it
just after 15:15. When I found out it was running at the time of one of those
calls I looked at it, and guess what? It had captured part of a holovideo
session. One that doesn’t show in the logs.’

‘How can that be?’

‘We have no idea. But it
proves that holovideo call you queried came in. It was initiated at 15:11…’

‘…the exact time Joseph
Fisher’s call ended.’

Hans nodded.

‘Well now,’ Greg said,
drumming his fingers on the desk, ‘this
is
a turn up for the books. Well
done, Hans. But how’s it possible… I mean… that there’s no other record?’

‘As I said before, we
have no idea.’

Greg shook his head.
‘Who was the call from?’

‘A stunning looking
woman in a long green dress. She was talking to Carlos.’

Greg cocked his head
remembering what Corrinne had told him the night before. So Carlos wasn’t
delirious after all. And if a hologram of a woman could come in without trace,
then why not one of a baby? And one of Zul too?

CHAPTER 2

‘You’re late getting back to me,’ Bob bellowed down the line. It was almost
eight thirty DC time and he’d just finished breakfast.

Barbara sighed to
herself. ‘We just spoke.’ At nearly half past one in the afternoon in Vienna,
she was calling from the safe house where they’d taken Carlos the previous day.

‘But first there’s
something I must tell you. And you’re not going to like it.’

‘They moved him out of
Vienna?’

‘No.’ It’s far, far
worse, she thought. ‘On Saturday afternoon I got a call from the safe house in
DC where we were keeping Maiz. One and a half hours before he was scheduled to
leave, he got a holovideo call from his PA in Vienna. Seconds after it finished
“Zul” appeared.’

‘You’re kidding me!’

‘No. He spoke to Maiz
for over an hour.’

‘Why’s this the first
I’m hearing about it?’

‘You were at Camp David
and I didn’t want to bother you until we knew more. I tried to tell you earlier
this morning, but…’

‘And what
have
you
found out?’

‘Very little. Of course,
the whole conversation was recorded and our experts examined everything. They
magnified every frame but found no clue where it originated. The sound
technicians tried to analyse background noise but there was none. No other
voices, no drone of equipment, no bird song… nothing. It’s completely sterile.
As with the videos, the voice analysts think the man playing “Zul” may at some
time have lived in the States, but although they don’t believe he’s a native
American they can’t pinpoint his origin.’

‘Shit! Where did the
call came from?’

‘That’s another problem,
sir. There’s no record in the logs of the call coming in. Nothing. If we hadn’t
been monitoring all Maiz’s communications, we would never have known anything
about it.’

‘But that’s impossible.’

‘I know, sir. NASA sent
a copy of the holovideo to Dryden and they’re checking it out, but so far they
have nothing. They’re flying in another expert today.’

‘I don’t buy this. I
don’t buy it at all. There must be something – some way to find out who’s
behind it.’

‘After I left Maiz at
the house on Saturday I was on my way to Baltimore when the guys called and
told me about the hologram. At first I couldn’t believe our luck. I thought if
a communication was coming in while we were watching, we’d be able to trace it
more easily. I raced back to the house but “Zul” terminated the call just as I
got there. I had a quick talk to the techie boys and decided the best thing I
could do was stay close to Maiz. I didn’t want to delay getting him out of DC,
so I flew with him to Vienna.’

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Barbara heard Bob blow
out a long breath at the other end of the line.

‘When did you see the
recording?’

‘The boys relayed it
over the encrypted WiFi link to the jet.’

‘And what did they talk
about, this “Zul” and Dr Maiz?’

Barbara paused before
answering. ‘”Zul” explains how Maiz must help as many humans on the planet as
possible raise their level of vibration through meditation to prepare ourselves
for the next, what he calls, evolutionary leap. He says the Galactic Federation
will make sure all the people vibrating at a sufficiently high rate will evolve
to the fourth density on 21st December.’