Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (40 page)

‘Only he won’t be dead . . .’ Mother said.

‘No. Calderon is one of the CIA’s best and brightest. He formulated that plan for Dragon Island nearly thirty years ago and it worked perfectly—everything went as he foresaw it, except for one variable: us. If we hadn’t been up there, all of China and most of the northern hemisphere would be in ashes right now. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marius Calderon is already back in the States, back at Langley with a new face and a new name, but probably the same office.’

A few minutes later, the President quietly tapped Schofield on the shoulder. ‘Captain, a word, please.’ He guided him out of the room.

They went downstairs to the Situation Room, where some intelligence people waited, including the directors of the DIA and CIA.

‘Captain,’ the President said, ‘I want you to hear this right from the source. Director.’

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency stepped forward, looking suitably grim. Despite himself, he looked Schofield up and down before he spoke, as if assessing the man who had ruined a long-laid CIA plan.

‘Mr President. Captain Schofield. We finally found Marius Calderon. He’s dead. Two weeks ago, his submersible was found by a Norwegian fishing trawler, drifting in the Arctic Ocean. The submersible’s oxygen supply had malfunctioned sometime after Calderon went under. He suffocated.’

Schofield looked the CIA director square in the eye.

‘Thank you, Director. I never expected to hear that.’

Schofield returned to the soiree in the Roosevelt Room.

He was met at the door by Mother and Brooke Ulacco.

‘Hey, Scarecrow, we were just talking with Sexy French Chick.’ Mother jerked her chin over at Champion. ‘Guess what? Do you know what
renard
means in English?’

‘No.’

‘
Renard
,’ Mother said slowly, ‘is French for
fox
.’

Schofield took this in. ‘Is that so?’

‘Uh-huh. I think there might be something in that,’ Mother said. ‘You know what else, she asked if you might be open to joining her for a drink after this.’

Schofield glanced over at Champion—and caught her looking at him before she turned quickly away.

He turned to Ulacco. ‘Thoughts?’

Brooke Ulacco shrugged. ‘It was always going to take a formidable woman to light a spark in you again. And that woman is pretty damn formidable. I say, go for it. A date would be good for you. Mother?’

‘I approve,’ Mother said softly as she gave Schofield a peck on the cheek. ‘And I think the old Fox would, too.’

Schofield gazed at Veronique Champion—Renard, Fox—for a long moment, thinking about it.

And then he walked over to join her.

Later that night, Schofield and Champion could be seen in an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from the White House, talking, smiling and, occasionally, laughing.

They talked long into the night.

It was late, after two a.m., when Schofield returned to his temporary barracks apartment at the Marine Corps complex in Arlington.

There was something on his bed.

On the pillow.

A pair of battered wraparound reflective glasses, with an A-in-a-circle etched into them.

His glasses, last seen in the possession of Marius Calderon.

There was nothing else with them. No note. Nothing.

Scarecrow glanced uneasily around the apartment. Then he picked up the glasses and gazed at them long and hard.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to send out my thanks to all the usual suspects who make my books possible.

To my wife, Natalie, who was, once again, the first to cast her eyes over the manuscript, and thus the first to express her horror at the rat scene.

To Cate Paterson at Pan Macmillan, thank you for all of your support over the last fourteen years. I still think it’s pretty fantastic that you discovered me by finding
Contest
in a bookstore. And to Jon Wood at Orion in the UK, who was a fan long before he became my UK publisher.

To Catherine Day, my erstwhile editor, who keeps me honest.

To Tracey Cheetham in publicity and Jane Hayes in marketing for the many phone calls they make and take on my behalf and for being the ‘back office’ that organises my books tours; and to all the sales reps for the many hours they spend on the road between bookstores: thank you for all your hard work.

To my good friends in the military both in Australia and the US, you know who you are. Thank you for all the technical advice. Any mistakes—and fictitious weapons—are mine and mine alone, and were made over their objections. I’d also like to send a special shout-out to everyone at the Australian Army’s incredible 2nd Commando Regiment. Every Australian should know that the adjective ‘elite’ does not do our elite commandos justice; trust me, when you see them in action, their cool professionalism makes you feel very, very proud.

To the good folk at Azur resort in Queenstown, New Zealand. After being stranded in Singapore by that volcanic ash cloud in 2010, Natalie and I went to Queenstown and it was there that I sat down and, in the glorious peace of one of Azur’s lovely cabins, mapped out the story of
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
. The little collection of
National Geographic
magazines in their library was a great research tool, too, with excellent issues about both the Arctic and the old Soviet Union.

To those wonderful people who, in exchange for making the winning bids at charity auctions in aid of some of my favourite causes, got characters in this book named after them. They include: Peter and Lenore Grzonkowski who, a few years ago, generously paid to have the names of three teenagers, Emma Dawson, Brooke Ulacco and Bryce Ulacco in this book (sorry about the wait!); Marianne and Mike Retter (they got a fun character for their donation); Linda Duncombe who bought the name William Thompson (the Kid); and Don and Margaret Harris: their donation allowed Don to become the National Security Advisor. Don, your character may have survived this book, but mark my words, if you return in another one, you will most assuredly die a gruesome death! I promise! Let me also mention the fine charitable work of my good friend Gary ‘Smokey’ Dawson OAM, at whose Bullant Charity Challenge Gala Dinner most of the above character names were auctioned. Gary is a fine Australian who has raised millions of dollars for charity. If you want a character named after you, get a ticket to that gala, which is usually held in November.

To my Wednesday golfing buddies, the WAGS, for keeping me sociable. They have been calling me ‘Murderer’ ever since I killed one of them on page 1 of
The Six Sacred Stones
.

Lastly and most importantly, my sincere thanks to all of my fans out there: to those who enjoy my books on international flights or in their homes, or who come to my book signings and speeches just to say ‘Hi, I enjoy your books.’ (Sometimes people hurry past the signing table and call that out from a distance!)

I make no bones about the fact that I write to entertain. That is exactly what I do. And I firmly believe that reading for enjoyment has value in our world. So thank you just for enjoying my stuff.

Matthew Reilly
Sydney, Australia
October 2011

AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY

WRITING
SCARECROW AND THE ARMY OF THIEVES

SPOILER WARNING!

[WARNING—This interview contains SPOILERS from
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
. Be careful if you are reading it before you read the book!]

Matthew, your last three novels have featured Jack West Jr. What made you return to Shane Schofield, a.k.a. Scarecrow, whom—apart from his special mission in
Hell Island—
we haven’t seen since 2003’s
Scarecrow
?

When I was on tour with
The Five Greatest Warriors
, fans would always ask me, ‘When are we going to see a new Scarecrow novel?’ As I said to them back then, I have always wanted to return to Schofield, but I wanted to wait for two things: first, for the world to change, and second, I wanted to wait until I was ready to write about him again.

Let me backtrack a little. I really enjoyed writing
Scarecrow
. Really enjoyed it. With that book, I wanted to take the concept of the thriller novel to the ultimate extreme: to extremes of pace, action, thrills and sheer emotional rawness.
Scarecrow
was supposed to be an ultra-intense thriller. It was intense to read (yes, I received hate mail for the guillotine scene) and it was intense to write.

It was partly because of that intensity that I wrote the Jack West series,
Seven Ancient Wonders
,
The Six Sacred Stones
and
The Five Greatest Warriors
. They are not as severe as the Scarecrow novels (Schofield’s world is both harder and meaner than the one Jack West inhabits) and thus are very different to write. I like to think the Jack West books are more ‘adventure’ than ‘thriller’, and I will often recommend them to a parent looking for reading material for a younger teenager.

The other reason is that after September 11, 2001, the world changed, with America getting embroiled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I didn’t want to set a Schofield novel in either of those two countries (although he did visit Afghanistan briefly in
Scarecrow
). The Jack West books, however, are about the small countries of the world standing up to the big ones, and post-9/11, this kind of story reflected how I perceived the world from 2001 to 2008. (The Jack West books also allow me to write about the mysteries of history, a topic that I love but which doesn’t quite fit in with Scarecrow’s world.)

But then came the extraordinary rise of China, exemplified by the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and China’s continued economic rise in the years since. This was the change I was waiting for. As you now know, having read the book, the rise of China is the basis for Calderon’s decades-long plan in
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
. So, I waited for the world to change and finally it did, providing me with a story I could put Shane Schofield in.

And so, after writing three Jack West books, I found myself thinking about Scarecrow again. And the main thing I thought was,
How on Earth would he pull himself back together after the horrific death of Libby Gant in
Scarecrow
?
This would be one of the key plotlines in
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
.

On that topic, did you spend more time thinking about his state of mind for this book?

I really did. In fact, I went even further than that. I thought,
Who would be the worst possible villain he could face, given that he is probably still traumatised in some way?
My answer: a villain who is an expert in psychological warfare and torture. A key event in
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
was always going to be the torture scene, where I hope readers will really worry that Marius Calderon has broken Scarecrow’s mind.

The notion of how Scarecrow fortified his mind—the idea of a
loci of memory
—was integral to this. I asked myself,
How do you defeat an expert in the art of breaking people’s minds?
My answer: you create a virtual vault in your mind. The flow-on question was even more interesting: by creating such a vault with a purging option, is it possible that you might
forget
loved ones?

I thought these were all good character issues that fans of Shane Schofield would really like to see explored. If I could weave them into a full-tilt, rampaging, action-packed plot, then I just might have something.

Speaking of the plot, how did you come up with the idea of the atmospheric weapon at the heart of the story?

Given the kind of novel that I write, I am always, well, looking for new ways to destroy the world. (If the CIA is tracking my Google searches, I am in so much trouble!)

I read a lot of non-fiction and, over the years, I have read a bit about the inventor Nikola Tesla. He was an absolutely brilliant man. (For a brief look at Tesla, check out the movie
The Prestige
, in which David Bowie plays him very well; it’s not a bad movie either). When I first came across the quote from Tesla in which he fears that he might ignite the atmosphere with his experiments—yes, it’s a real quote—my storytelling brain started ticking:
Hmmm, ignite the atmosphere, you say
. . .

I had actually intended to use the atmospheric device as an ancient weapon in a Jack West novel, but then in 2010 I got stranded in Singapore thanks to that volcanic ash cloud from Iceland that swept across Europe. Looking at the satellite images of the ash cloud, I thought of Tesla and asked myself,
What if that ash cloud were flammable?
And,
Who would build a weapon that could ignite the northern hemisphere using such a cloud?

Of course, the answer was obvious. The Soviet Union would! And the good thing about the Soviets is that when they did something, they did it big. The story quickly followed: what if there were a long-abandoned Soviet base up in the Arctic that housed this terrible weapon and a band of terrorists decided to seize the base and set it off?

Tell us about the origin of the Army of Thieves?

Quite simply, I didn’t want my bad guys to be just a standard group of terrorists. I don’t like that kind of story. It’s also been done many times before.

I want twists, I want intrigue, I want deeper conspiracies. I thought the story would be a lot more interesting if this horribly violent yet very capable terrorist group might actually be part of a complex plan that originated nearly three decades ago.

I should also add that I wanted the Army of Thieves to be really, really
nasty
.

Good villains are hard to find. And when I decided to bring Scarecrow back in a new novel,
*
I wanted him to go up against totally impossible odds: a large, brutal and ruthless terrorist army. Even more, I wanted him to go up against this army with a group of civilians and not his usual band of battle-hardened Marines. Worse still, Scarecrow himself would be on an emotional razor’s edge when it all happened. All this is why
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
is rather visceral and, at times, quite violent; indeed, it is perhaps the most visceral and violent of all my books. I thought
Scarecrow
was pretty tough, but I think
Thieves
is tougher—it does, after all, have the torture scene, including the very gruesome rat torture.

But in the end, villains must be feared. Death must be feared. And death at the hands of these villains, this Army of Thieves, was always going to be really, really scary.

(
*
A quick note: I don’t consider
Hell Island
to be a full novel, and I think my fans think the same way. For the record, in my mind
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
follows on directly from
Scarecrow
. As far as
Hell Island
is concerned, even though it is a very cool and action-packed Scarecrow story, it was written as part of a special government-sponsored project in Australia, and did not get a release in the rest of the world. So, to me,
Hell Island
exists as a nice side adventure for Scarecrow and Mother, and a great short book for new readers who might wish to try my work. That said, just for the fans, I did mention the plot of
Hell Island
in passing in
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
. And for the eagle-eyed among you,
Hell Island
does provide the only crossover character between the Scarecrow and Jack West universes: the Marine named Astro.)

Technology seems to be developing so quickly—although everyone will be glad to see the return of the Maghook! Do you enjoy keeping up with the developing weaponry available to your characters?

I love discovering new high-tech weapons. Indeed, this was exactly why I put Schofield up in the Arctic with a equipment-testing team in this book! It gave me a chance to put the latest weapons and technology in his hands.

I am constantly on the lookout for new weapons and tech. Often I find out about new stuff just by reading the newspaper (this was how I found out about the explosive-resistant goo made by DSS; go online and check out the ‘before and after’ photos of a building that had the goo painted on one half of it; very cool).

Mind you, this also worked for Schofield’s character and this was very important to me. After the trauma he suffered in
Scarecrow
, I figured that the natural question a reader would ask is,
Where would the Marine Corps put a Marine who might have become unstable?
The answer: you send him to the Arctic to test some new weapons and devices.

It also allowed me to create Bertie. Bertie is loosely based on existing battlefield robots like the Talon, the Packbot, the SWORDS and one anti-explosives robot I saw at a military base, but as I often do, his capabilities have been augmented. Those other bots are not—so far as I know—capable of totally independent action, whereas Bertie is, and that’s what makes him a lot of fun to have around. I love the idea of this determined little robot that just never gives up.

As for the Maghook, I am its biggest fan. But I am also aware that I could easily overuse it, so I try to use it only for major moments in the story. That said, when I started writing
Thieves
, I found myself thinking that perhaps
other
armed forces might have developed their own, better, Maghooks by now, and thus we get to see the French version of it,
Le Magneteux
.

Your books keep getting bigger and faster, not to mention even more gruesome with your torture scenes! How do you keep defying expectations?

I only have one goal with each new book that I write: it must be better than the one that came before it. It must be faster or cleverer or more intense. It must, in some way, take the kind of story that I like telling to a new, never-before-seen level.

When I wrote
Scarecrow
, I set out to make it faster than anything I had read before. The Jack West books were more epic in their scale than anything I had done till then. With
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
, I was after a new level of pace and
intensity
—my motto was: ‘Leaner, meaner, faster!’

I like to think that one of my strengths as a novelist is that I have read lots of thrillers and seen nearly every action movie known to man. This means that I know what has been done before. If I ever find myself writing a scene and saying to myself ‘Oh, this was like that scene in . . .’ I immediately stop and re-conceive the scene. On the other hand, I love it when I am writing and saying to myself, ‘In all the many movies and books I have seen or read, I have never seen
this
before.’

That said, I do like to make references to some of my favourite 1980s action movies, and in
Thieves
I even mention one of my favourites,
Predator
. And my long-suffering wife, Natalie, will tell you that, like Mother, I think that music peaked in the 80s!

It was fantastic to see Mother again, but you also introduced us to a new character who is the male equivalent of her: Baba. Are we likely to meet with him again?

Ah, yes, Baba! I’m so pleased with how he turned out.

Part of the fun of writing a sequel is that you get to play with the characters you have a history with. Mother has been an awesome character to write about and she’s fun because she breaks all the rules of conventional society. She is a favourite among the fans (readers have said they will hunt me down if I ever kill her off), and her character is well known and much loved. As I thought about the story of
Thieves
, I decided that I wanted to test Mother by making her meet her male equivalent. And thus Baba was born. I also wanted Scarecrow to have a new, but edgier, female interest. To get that edge, I decided to make Veronique Champion and Baba assassins working for Scarecrow’s old enemy, the French, and to also make Veronique a relative of one of the French scientists killed in
Ice Station
, so that when she meets Schofield, all she has is hatred of him. If she is eventually going to like him, he is going to have his work cut out for him in winning her over.

You want to know a secret? After I delivered the manuscript for
Thieves
, Baba was the subject of some serious discussions with my editors in Australia, the UK and the US. My editors thought he perhaps should die, given that he had been shot so thoroughly on the megatrain, and that it might be a better story if he died heroically (and with the taste of Mother’s lips on his). I gave this serious thought but, in the end, I decided that he was too much fun to have around, and so I looked up blood-clotting agents and had Mother save him. So, yes, Baba will return, still chewing the scenery, drinking like a Viking and making love like a silverback gorilla!

And the rat torture. Can you take us through why and how you wrote that scene?

As I said earlier, I wanted
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
to be very visceral and graphic. The rat scene exemplifies this.

In the end, however, that scene was all about Mother’s and Baba’s characters: it’s about the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to avoid a horrible death. That turns out to be biting the heads off live rats. Unfortunately, that did require me to
demonstrate
to the reader just how horrible that kind of death was, and Jeff Hartigan was the unfortunate one to suffer for it.