Tag - A Technothriller (29 page)

Chapter 25

Fact or Fiction

Jonah and Mariko’s Beach House, Sisik Beach, Malaysian Geographic

Friday 3 January 2110, 7:04am +8 UTC

Being able to watch a sunrise every day is a luxury. I waited in the dark, standing on the deck. Still hurting, but feeling good from the morning’s run. Ten kiloms of punishment, the last kilom run in the soft sand.

“Build those legs,” Mariko had shouted, jogging backwards in front me. Looking out to sea my legs still felt wobbly and my hand shook as I drank my first cup of coffee for the day.

Mariko had left for New Singapore an hour ago, carrying her newly acquired bicycle over her shoulder and walking up the beach to Abdul’s restaurant, where the dirt road joined the beach. From there she rode the fourteen kiloms to Kuantan. Once at Changi she took a Lev up to Topside and biked the remaining sixteen kiloms to UNPOL headquarters.

We had spent the first day of the year reading and discussing Gabriel’s information that I had unlocked on my Devstick while offline. When we’d returned to the beach house, the first thing she had done was to go to the kitchen on the ground floor and bring the heat pad up to the second floor. She placed it on a table, and then my folded-out Devstick on another table below it. The twin screens of the Devstick, the keypad and touchpad were all under the heat pad. Mariko explained that this way, infrared sat imaging could not be used - the movements of my hands and the Devscreen would be shielded by the heat signature from the pad.

Yesterday, after my run and after Mariko had left, I had sat down at the unfolded Devstick and started to plan. The root of any good plan is the outcome that you desire. I listed the outcomes I wanted:

- stop the Tag Law

- expose the existence of the Hawks and if possible their members

- Justice for my parents, Gabriel and me. Or failing that

- get rid of Sir Thomas

- survive!

It was a daunting list and I procrastinated in the task of forming plans, thinking instead pointless speculation about who I was. At least I had a name for myself. Mark Anthony Zumar. The problem was that I knew nothing about him. But if now wasn’t the time to spend thinking about that, it did cause me to think of something else.

Why hadn’t my DNA matched Gabriel’s? It was obvious to me that a DNA search would have been made on Gabriel, and it was obvious to me that we were related, but if we were related as closely as he said we were, then our DNA would have been matched. But it hadn’t been. I was reasonably sure that if a search was done on my DNA, it would bear a closer resemblance to Sir Thomas’s DNA than Gabriel’s. Sir Thomas had fabricated a story around me and had substantiated those first lies with evidence in the online system. My fake DNA, no doubt, was planted along with my fake birth date, thirty-four years ago on the 29th of October, 2075. Gabriel had said that I was born on the 23rd of September 2075 but Sir Thomas had changed that to the 29th of October, and there were the fake medical records showing my birth at the Glasgow Memorial Hospital.

He had planned carefully. So must I. The best plans provide an action related to an issue. The action may well be a tactic to enable the next stage of the plan, or it might be an action that was the entire plan. With the Tag Law I realized an immediate problem. If I suddenly started researching privacy laws, UNPOL or whoever was watching me would get suspicious. So either I had to find a way to do the research without causing suspicion, or I needed an accomplice. I dismissed the idea of finding someone to help immediately as too messy, with too many dynamics involved. It would be simpler to find a way to investigate the Tag Law without it being suspicious.

Exposing the Hawks and their members was a much more difficult task. To expose them meant getting in, and even then with their insular behavior, it would be possible to expose only a few. Gabriel had described them as a tree. Roots, branches and leaves. From the original twelve heads, Gabriel had put together a list. Seven identified and eighteen maybes, all people who attended that first meeting. It is from them that the Hawks had grown. Over two hundred years of growth from twelve different roots. How many people is that? Assuming that the first twelve each had two children, and assuming that each of those children had two children – with thirty years between the generations – that was over fifteen hundred people. Allowing for deaths the number of Hawks could be anywhere from one thousand to three thousand.

Gabriel had used Sir Thomas as the basis for analysis of the founding members tracing back from Francis Oliver, Sir Thomas’s father and through him to identify the first Hawks, or at least some them – the rest were conjecture based on their actions. The more I thought about this, the more impossible I realized it was to actually stop or identify them. If something is impossible don’t try do it. The next best thing to stopping them was exposure. To make people aware of their existence and how they acted. This was not easy because there are always conspiracy theories, and theorists usually end up in the ‘crackpot’ category in most people’s minds. For exposure to work, the evidence would have to be concrete and compelling.

Next to - expose the existence of the Hawks and if possible their members I wrote exposure - get concrete compelling evidence. I ignored the last three things on my planning list. As much as I wanted to see a positive outcome for each of them, they were of secondary importance. Six point three billion people were going to lose their lives in about eighty days. Allowing eight days for the Tags to be delivered to their homes. Stopping that delivery had to be the primary goal.

The most difficult part of my plan was to gain the trust of Sir Thomas, and use that trust to gain access to the Hawks. I had an in via his asking me to write his memoirs, but how to go beyond that I hadn’t yet worked out. I had to come up with a way to push his buttons, to get him to accept my word as trustworthy and then… And that was it, I didn’t really know what was going to happen. And Gabriel’s advice in that area was noticeably vague.

I took a sip of my coffee as the sun peeked over the horizon then I turned and went into the house. The sun cast its warmth on my back when I returned to the unfolded Devstick under the table, under the heat pads. I called up Gabriel’s file of information and pressed delete. I couldn’t keep the information on the Devstick – it was too much of a risk – and anyway I had what I needed in my head.

I folded the Devstick and pushed the clip over to lock it into its hand-held configuration and thumbed my contacts.

“Call Sir Thomas.”

The stored image of Sir Thomas, sitting behind his battleship of a desk, annoyed me, so I flicked over to the global feeds. As the news of the planet filled in, the image was cut by that of Sir Thomas.

“Hello, Uncle. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time?”

“No, Jonah, it’s all right. I was just on my way to UNPOL.” I could see the dawn sky of New Singapore bobbing around behind Sir Thomas’s head as he walked and talked. He must be walking from his Penthouse to UNPOL across Topside, I thought.

“I saw your speech the other night. I thought that you came across really well. It looked good.”

“Thank you, Jonah. And thank you for finding the right words for me as well. I think you may be on to something with this writing idea of yours,” he said, smiling into the camera. I smiled back, forcing my eyes to smile as well.

“I was wondering when you would like to get together to discuss your memoir. I obviously don’t have anything on yet and I have some time on my hands so....”

“Yes of course. Well the sooner the better really. Um, I tell you what. I was looking to get a round of golf in today at the UNPOL Officers’ Course. Would you be free about, say 4:30pm for nine holes?”

“I haven’t been on a golf course in years, Uncle. I’m afraid I won’t give you much of a game.”

“Nonsense, man, it’s like riding a bike and fucking. Once you know how, you never forget!” Sir Thomas laughed loudly in the screen of my Devstick. I couldn’t laugh, but somehow I managed a broader grin. My cheeks hurt.

“Right, well, OK then. I’ll see you at 4:30pm then. Please book a set of rental clubs for me could you? I sold mine before I came out here.”

Sir Thomas nodded and then the screen reverted back to the Global News feeds. No more bombs yet. That was the good news.

“Find me shops selling golf shoes in New Singapore,” I said into the Devstick.

***

I strolled down the narrow white-walled corridor to the entrance of the UNPOL Officers’ Golf Course, near to UNPOL Headquarters on Topside. It was 4:25pm. Reaching the end of corridor I entered the lobby of the Clubhouse and walked up to the reception.

“Hi my name’s Jonah Oliver. Do you have some golf shoes behind there for me?” I said, smiling at the Indian-looking old man behind the counter. He grunted and reached under the counter, pulling out a cloth bag containing what I guessed were the new Nike golf shoes I’d credded that morning.

“Thanks, oh and, ah, where can I pick up rental clubs?”

He looked to his right. I followed his look. A large sign with white letters carved into dark brown wood said, ‘Rental Clubs’ and had a long white arrow pointing past the reception counter. I gave him another smile. He picked his teeth with a toothpick and continued looking straight ahead to somewhere over my left shoulder.

I followed the direction the sign suggested and came out to a small paved area about a hundred meters away from the first tee. Ten golf bags on three-wheeled Dev caddies were standing around.

“Jonah Oliver,” I said, and a Devcaddy with a black bag of newish looking clubs turned, came towards me and stopped. Its camera rose until it was about the same height.

“Good afternoon, Jonah, I have your clubs ready here in the bag. I understand you’re playing the back nine today. Would you like a quick rundown on the tenth and the weather conditions before we get there?”

“Sure, go ahead,” I said, and sat down on a white stone bench to put on my new golf shoes.

“Wind conditions are good. A slight eight to nine kilo breeze out of the north-east, humidity at a nice sixty-five percent and the stimpmeter is at seven point five. The tenth is a par four, four hundred and twenty yards long, with two bunkers on the right at about two hundred and fifty yards, and a single small bunker on the left at two hundred yards. Best angle of approach is down the right side of the fairway to catch the slope.”

It made me smile to listen to the word ‘yards’. You hardly ever heard it anymore, only on a golf course, where golfers stubbornly refused to adopt the global metric system. I stood up and bounced on the soles of my feet to test the shoes. They felt good, a perfect fit, and walked out of the rental area towards the tenth tee, with the Devcaddy trundling along behind me.

Sir Thomas was standing on the green with a driver tucked behind his back and locked inside his elbows as he twisted back and forth. He was wearing a peaked cloth cap, white polo shirt, khaki long outers and white golf shoes. His eyes frowned slightly as he realized that the guy walking on to the tenth tee wearing green baggy surfer shorts and an orange batik shirt with fluorescent green golf shoes was me. I smiled and waved.

“Hello, Uncle. I’ll be right there.”

Sir Thomas, nodded and smiled weakly back. “Good afternoon, Jonah. Taking this beach thing a bit seriously? Did you lose your clothes in the move?”

“No, not all. I just thought I’d bring a little sunshine into the grim, dark world of UNPOL.”

“Hah, grim dark world indeed.” And saying this Sir Thomas flipped his tee into the air, spinning it. It landed point first towards him. Somehow I knew it would.

“What do you say, Jonah? Fifty creds a hole, and two hundred on the score? I’ll give you two shots on the handicap.”

I nodded and smiled, standing up on the tee. Looking down the fairway, I said, “Yes, that sounds all right. Are you still playing off twelve?”

“Yes, yes. Last time I checked.” A small grin from my uncle made me think that he might not be telling me the truth but I let it slide. It wasn’t quite true that I hadn’t played golf for a long time either. I played a lot of golf on the Dev, just not on a golf course. The world-famous UNPOL Officers’ Course was one that I had played a lot. I knew every hole, bunker and green on the thirty-six hole course having played it hundreds of time on my Dev in Woodlands. Virtual golf is not the same as real golf but it comes very close. I was looking forward to this.

Sir Thomas teed off with a respectable drive that faded right and put him on the fairway about two hundred and twenty yards from us. I selected the two wood and took a couple of practice swings, letting the muscle memory come back into my swing. I addressed the ball and swung, driving the ball low and out towards the right of the fairway, landing about ten yards beyond Sir Thomas’s ball and rolling to stop twenty yards farther on.

“Good shot,” Sir Thomas said, and started walking off up the fairway. Handing my club to the mechanical hand of the Devcaddy I followed and caught up to him as we passed the ladies’ tee.

“So have you had any further thoughts on how you would like this memoir to be constructed? I’m quite excited about the project. Your life has covered a very interesting time in our history and perhaps I may have the chance to learn more about my parents too.”

Sir Thomas glanced across at me and nodded. “Well, yes, uhm, I think I have told you everything I know about your parents but, certainly there have been many changes in the world of ours this past seventy-five odd years. I think tying it into the big moments and movements that we’ve seen these past decades since the Great War of 2056 would be an excellent idea.”

“You were in Europe during the Great War. Is that correct? I seem to remember you telling me that, or have I just picked that up along the way.”

“Yes, I was in Europe. I was very lucky in a way because I was supposed to be in London, and if I had been where I was supposed to be, I would have been incinerated in the two bombs that hit London. Bit of overkill there, one bomb was more than enough. Anyway, I was supposed to join my regiment in London for the regimental dinner but I got a call from battalion ordering me to replace a lieutenant who had been wounded in a firing range accident the day before. Of course I departed right away and joined the nuclear response command bunker the next day. At noon that day the war started.”