The Zul Enigma (63 page)

She went to the bathroom
to clean her face and teeth and then curled up on the bed again. She was tired
but her mind was like a monkey playground and she didn’t think she’d ever be
able to sleep. But she did drift off and when she woke hours later she felt
refreshed.

She began leafing
through her mother’s diary entries again but her stomach growled and she
couldn’t concentrate, so she ate breakfast and opened a large pack of liquid
coffee. That’s when she gasped. Rachael loved coffee – Rachael was
addicted to coffee – and tears pricked her eyes as she realised she’d
inherited that trait from her father.

After eating, she
collected up the sheets of paper scattered round her bedroom, took them into
the living room, sat down on the sofa and read everything again.

It was unnerving to know she was the daughter of the main player in the lead up
to the global massacre of 2012. Of course, as a child she’d been taught about
the holocaust at school but now, after absorbing her mother’s account, it had
taken on a personal dimension she’d never identified with before.

Everything she’d learned
came flooding back. How Dr Maiz had been taken into protective custody, how the
UN Security Council set up the International Criminal Tribunal and how they’d
arrested him three months later, accusing him of creating Zul and the theory of
evolution as a cover for his despicable plan.

And how he had never
been found guilty since the trial never took place because Dr Maiz, her father,
was shot dead the day after the Tribunal announced his arrest, killed by a
sniper with a bullet to the head as he hugged his girlfriend on being
transferred from protective custody to the arresting officer. The girlfriend,
Rebecca Marshall, her mother, was also shot. She died of her wounds as she was
rushed to hospital.

A man was caught and
tried for the murders. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. Was it
Johnson? No… Johnston. That’s right… an Englishman… William Johnston. She put
on her dead-head and scoured the Internet searching for articles and court
reports that she copied to virtual memory.

She read them off the
holographic screen incorporated in her sitting-room wall. One article quoted
Johnston as saying he couldn’t wait for the judicial process to run its course
and seeing that he and countless others
knew
that bastard Maiz was
guilty of murdering six billion people, he’d taken it upon himself to execute
the bigoted arsehole and his whore of a girlfriend. Ex-SAS, Johnston had got
himself an emergency permit and driven from his home in the South of France
arriving in Vienna on the 28th December with the intention of killing Maiz
there and then, but on reaching the flat and discovering Maiz had already gone
into hiding, he’d had to wait.

Buried in a couple of
other reports, Rachael discovered it was never satisfactorily established how
Johnston discovered the exact place on the outskirts of Brno where the meeting
was to take place. Johnston said he chose the spot to set up his long-range
rifle with telescopic site after hearing two men talking about the rendezvous
in a bar in Vienna, but this evidence was never corroborated and neither the
men nor the weapon were ever produced.

Because Johnston
confessed to the crimes, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to prison
for life. However, Rachael came across another report dated two years later of
an appeal, where he claimed he’d been suffering with mental trauma resulting
from the effects of the global massacre when he’d admitted to the murders. An
expert witness, some famous psychiatrist at the time, confirmed this was
feasible and their testimony, substantiated by a watertight alibi that
magically appeared, led to his immediate release, although Rachael could find
no mention of it in the media.

She wanted to smash
something. Two years for committing a double murder, for killing two innocent
people. Only two years for executing her father and mother. She scraped back
her chair to search for more tissues.

She used the dead-head
to trawl for articles about Carlos. She found a handful written immediately
after he died, claiming his innocence and insinuating his arrest and murder
were part of a conspiracy, but they were later swamped by the hundreds implying
his guilt.

The final word on the
subject was a press release dated a week after the murders and issued by the
Tribunal announcing it had based its arrest on compelling evidence. In addition
to the Klystron, it also claimed to have uncovered a link between Carlos and a
vitamin manufacturing laboratory in Switzerland.

The Tribunal accused him
of taking advantage of the “shock doctrine”, a phrase coined in the early
2000s. It referred to the phenomenon when policy makers deliberately
orchestrate events such as wars and economic upheaval or cash in on natural
disasters to distract citizens, so policies or reforms that would never
normally be passed can be hustled through with the minimum of attention,
normally for economic gain.

She shook her dark
curls. These people hadn’t known him. They hadn’t known him at all.

She shivered. Even
though the heating was turned up full, somehow she couldn’t avoid the icy reach
of the blizzard howling outside. She opened another pack of coffee and mulled
over her situation.

She was the daughter of
the most despised person ever born. Her father and mother had been assassinated
when she was a baby. The woman who she’d always thought was her mother and who
had died five days before was in fact her aunt. She’d lost one mother and
gained another, but neither was alive to give her the hugs she needed right
then.

But Rachael was strong
and self-pity wasn’t a quality she admired or could tolerate for long,
especially in herself. She began to realise that what she’d discovered gave her
a sense of place she’d never had before and feeling a little better she
finished the coffee and caught a grip on herself. She gathered up all her
mother’s papers and sat down on the rug in the living room tucking her legs
underneath her. She needed to reassess her life in the light of what she now
knew.

Rachael applied for leave from her job when her mum… or rather her aunt… first
became sick and it was clear she had little hope of recovery. While Rachael
nursed her during the weeks leading up to her death, she debated whether she
should go back to work or embark on something completely different, something
she’d always wanted to return to, a writing career.

Now she found herself
sitting in the middle, literally in the middle she thought, as she gazed at the
manuscript on the coffee table and the loose leaves of her mother’s diary
entries scattered over the floor, of the most detailed account of the lead-up
to and events following the global massacre ever written… the biggest mystery
in the history of mankind… the Zul enigma.

Although personally it
was a tragedy, on another level it was thrilling.

And Rachael knew exactly
what she would do. Forget the massacre happened fifty-five years before and the
trail was cold, she would find out the truth behind Zul.

Just as her mother had
wanted, she would track down the perpetrators and exonerate her father’s name.
Then she would finish writing Rebecca’s book.

CHAPTER 2

‘Tell me more about the letter,’ Scott said. ‘What else does your mother say?’

‘That my father went
into protective custody because of death threats. That she visited him twice
before she left Vienna. And that she didn’t know when she’d see me again.’

Scott furrowed his
wrinkly brow.

‘I know… it’s so sad. In
her diary she says the Tribunal was compromised. And that the day before she
went to meet my father she’d discovered something she thought might help him.
But she was too scared to tell anyone or even write it down.’

Scott pursed his lips.
‘I see.’

‘She said she couldn’t
risk anything happening to me, which is why she left me with her parents. They
were in hiding.’

‘When did your aunt and
uncle adopt you?’

‘I don’t know. I thought
they
were my parents. Why didn’t they tell me?’

‘They were protecting
you. I’m sure they meant to tell you one day. But Rachael, you can’t imagine
what the world was like back then. The majority of people were shocked
senseless and speechless… others were filled with such intense rage… well… they
needed to keep you hidden for your own safety. Over time, I guess, it got
harder to bring the subject up. Your poor grandparents. Do you remember them at
all?’

She nodded. ‘They died
when I was twelve. But…’

‘What is it?’

‘How did Mum and Dad, I
mean my aunt and uncle, get their names on my birth certificate?’

‘You have to remember
that when you were born the whole world was in chaos. Hospitals were badly
affected, as was anywhere that had traditionally employed a large percentage of
low-income staff. Then the Registries of Births, Marriages and Deaths all over
the world – well – they didn’t know what had hit them. Everyone was
told to register with Survivor On Line and later the new records were
cross-checked against the old ones. But for a while it was mayhem. Total
mayhem. See, all your aunt and uncle had to do was say your on-line
registration was done wrong. Or perhaps, since your mother was scared for your
safety, she decided not to register you straight away.’

‘Obviously she was
paranoid the wrong person would find the manuscript. In her diary she said that
before she left England to meet my father she wiped her computer clean and
passed the only paper copy on to Mum. And in her letter she said one day she
wanted to set history straight, tell the world the truth and vindicate my
father’s name. But, if for any reason she wasn’t able to, then I should do it.’

‘And I guess that’s why
you’re here,’ Scott said, not exactly frowning but then not exactly smiling
either.

‘You used to work for
National Intelligence… I’m hoping you can help me.’

‘Tea’s ready,’ Scott’s wife announced, as she opened the door.

After they’d finished,
Rachael helped Diane take the dishes into the kitchen.

‘I’ll help you load,’
Rachael said, walking towards the dishcleaner that vapourised food remains
whilst simultaneously disinfecting the plates.

‘No, dear. I can do it.
I have my own way. You go back and talk to Scott,’ and she shooed Rachael into
the living room where Scott had already settled in his body sculpting chair. He
motioned Rachael towards the other one.

‘Sit down,’ he said.
‘Are you warm enough? I can turn up the heating.’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied.

‘You know ever since you
called I’ve been racking my brains to see what I can remember about your
father. I met him twice, but only very briefly both times. I’m afraid I’m not
going to be much help.’

‘Anything you can tell
me is better than nothing. Just being here now, knowing you actually met him, I
can’t tell you what it means to me.’ If only she had known it, the way she
looked up at Scott from under her lashes was exactly the way her mother would
have done.

‘To put what I know
about your father in context, let me give you a bit of history. Some of it
you’ll already know from your mother’s book I guess, even so, I’d like to tell
it from my side.’

He leaned back in his
chair and, with the air of a man about to relate a bedtime story, he began.

‘Back in early 2012, the
then US President ordered our agency to investigate Dr Maiz, insisting Barbara
Lord, the Director, handle it personally. It was so hush-hush she used contract
employees for much of the data gathering. I was pretty low down on the totem
pole back in those days – just a messenger boy really trying to learn the
ropes – but after Zul appeared on the UN satellite TV broadcast later
that year and Barbara got fired, she took me into her confidence.

‘Despite my junior
position, she’d always taken an interest in me and after Anderson canned her
and she set up her own business she got back in touch. She was a very smart
woman was Barbara, and I was flattered when she approached me. See, it was
useful for her to have an ear listening out at the old firm and we’d get together
now and then to chew the fat. Sometimes we traded information… but there was
never any conflict of interest you understand,’ Scott said, shaking his head,
delivering the words in such a way Rachael would have felt guilty doubting him.

‘Over the years we
developed a solid friendship. I liked Barbara. I trusted her. She had
integrity. Unlike her successor.’

He shifted his position
in the chair, adjusted the cushion at his back and crossed his legs at the
ankles.

‘I apologise. I
digress,’ he said, ‘that’s what happens when you get older. You get
sidetracked. But Rachael guessed he’d kept very much on point. He wanted to
make sure she understood the back story.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘for
NI, it all began when your father and the then Secretary-General of the UN met
the President, Bob Anderson his name was, to tell him Dr Maiz had received
e-mails from Zul. Anderson was convinced it was a plot to discredit him and
that your father was behind it. See, he hated Dr Maiz for regulating US
interests in space so closely and believed the feeling was mutual. Based on
circumstantial evidence, he manoeuvred your father into committing himself to a
psychiatric hospital in Madrid. It was a convenient way to gag him until NASA
completed its investigation.’