Tag - A Technothriller (30 page)

Sir Thomas stopped. We had reached his ball. Hands on hips and looking towards the hole, he said, “Three iron.” He struck the ball cleanly and it flew straight towards the hole, hitting the front edge of the green. But it had too much pace and, reaching the slope that begins in the middle of the green, rolled off into the bunker on the far side.

“Blast!” Sir Thomas exclaimed and there was a loud thunk as he smacked the club into the Devcaddy’s outstretched hand. I walked on without saying anything, thinking about the shot I had to play, and the moves I had to make with Sir Thomas to gain his trust. I was playing it by ear, probing with my questions, looking for an opening. My ball was sitting up nicely.

“How far to the pin?” I asked the Devcaddy.

“One hundred and sixty-two point three five yards to the front edge....”

I laughed and interrupted, “Hey, what’s your name? Sorry I forgot to ask.”

“Name, Jonah? No, I do not have a name. I am a Callaway Devcaddy from the UNPOL Officers’ Course.”

“All right, look. I’ll call you Call, short for Callaway, and from now on just give me the yards rounded down to the nearest five yards. OK?”

“Certainly, Jonah. One hundred and sixty yards to the front edge and the pin is one seventy-five from your current position.”

“Seven iron please, Call.” On my practice swing I saw out of the corner of my eye that Sir Thomas was standing, hands on hips, watching me. I swung and hit cleanly in the sweet spot. The ball soared high and landed just before the front edge of the green. Taking a single bounce it then rolled to a stop about six feet from the pin.

Call, my new electronic buddy, said, “Good shot, Jonah.” Sir Thomas marched off up the fairway, leaning slightly forward and swinging his arms briskly as he went.

At the green I stood to one side leaning on my putter, looking at Sir Thomas in the bunker. He swung but all that came up over the lip of the bunker was sand and, “Blast.” I didn’t say anything. Another swing and the ball came out, landing on the green and rolling about three feet away from the hole. Normally, in a friendly game of golf, I’d just call that a ‘Gimme’ and let the other player have the shot but I wanted to get Sir Thomas off-balance.

I said nothing, walked over to my ball and took a long look at the line of the putt. I dropped it.

“Nice putt,” Call said and I smiled. Call didn’t have a mouth but I am sure he would have smiled if he did. Sir Thomas sunk his three footer and with a little glare at me as he bent down to pick up his ball, walked to the next tee without saying another word.

Despite the warm air, the silence was frosty and loud. The eleventh was a short par four just two hundred and fifty yards to the hole but with a narrow fairway with water running down both sides and a green surrounded by bunkers.

“Eight iron please, Call.” I cleared my mind and swung, putting the ball about one hundred and fifty down the fairway with a good approach to the green. Sir Thomas stepped up, and using his seven iron, landed his ball close to mine. He looked over at me with a tight grin.

“Good shot, Uncle,” I said, and we turned and started walking up the fairway. “So, you were in the command bunker in … where was that actually?”

“Spain. Just outside of Barcelona in a mountain, in a place called Sant Vicen del Horts. I finally arrived after a SNAFU, at 6pm on the 14th of May. I hadn’t arranged accommodation yet as I wasn’t sure how long I’d be there, so I just headed to the command bunker and slept there. In the morning we went on full alert and into lockdown. It was a terrible time and the strain on the men, one in particular, was too much. That strain is now called Holt’s Syndrome from that time.”

“Halt’s Syndrome? How do you spell that? H-A-L-T-S? What is it?”

“No, with an O. That’s how you spell it. The extreme stress that comes with knowing that mass destruction is within your power. The man I was talking about cracked under that stress and killed everyone in the bunker except me. I was wounded but was the only other person aside from Holt - that was his name, Keith Holt - with a sidearm. I managed to shoot him before he got me. Terrible thing though. He launched the missile we were in command of. Nothing we could do of course. Flight time was only a few minutes but he wiped out Bucharest, just after the ceasefire was ordered globally.”

We reached my ball. I had played for this spot knowing that this green was bowl shaped with a funnel that would lead you off the bottom left side of it if you played the shot anywhere other than into the top right corner. One of the advantages of virtual golf is that you can take the same shot a hundred times and see exactly where you land on the green.

“Call, give me the sand wedge, please.” Call handed me the sand wedge and I shook it a little to get the feel of the weight. I took a full swing and follow through, trying for as much back spin as I could get on the ball. I didn’t need to see it land to know that it was perfect, and turned to Sir Thomas without looking at the green. He was still watching my shot.

“Wouldn’t such an incident cause a blemish on your career?”

“Well of course there was a court martial but the evidence against Holt was strong. He had emailed his sister with crazy talk about how he could rule the world from where he was, God of the universe, that sort of thing, and I was completely exonerated.” He looked up at me and smiled as he stood over his ball, “Gave me the DSO at the end of the court martial.” Sir Thomas swung and I saw that the line he had taken was wrong. It was a good shot but he’d be left with at least a fifteen foot putt.

“Good shot, Sir Thomas. What does DSO stand for?” I asked, and he beamed at me.

“Yes not bad, eh? Well, let’s go take a look shall we? DSO stands for Distinguished Service Order.” And he turned to walk up the fairway. I joined him.

“And you were what twenty-one, twenty-two at this time?”

“Twenty-one. I’d been in the army since one month after my sixteenth birthday, the absolute earliest age that one can join.”

We reached the top of the slope at the edge of the green and I saw that my ball was about four feet from the hole. Sir Thomas’s ball was way off to the left of the green with at least a twenty footer. He grunted and I walked down to mark my ball. I walked to the rear of the green and watched as Sir Thomas made his putt. His ball rolled by the hole by a good five feet and I waited while he walked up, my arms across my chest, stroking my jaw and looking at the line of my putt. Sir Thomas putted. His ball rolled to within an inch of the cup and then stopped dead. He stayed bent over at the waist shoving his putter at the hole as if willing the ball to go in, but to no effect. He looked at me, still bent over. I pretended not to notice, stroking my jaw. He straightened up with a glare at me and, stiff-legged, strode to the hole.

“Oh that’s OK. That’s a gimme,” I said, pretending to notice just before he was about to tap in. He bent down to pick up his ball, giving me an appraising look. I ignored his look and stepped over to my ball, kneeling down to line it up. Sir Thomas walked off the green and on to the small wooden bridge that went down to the twelfth. I sunk the putt. As I crossed the green I had an idea.

“Call, can you record the game for me?”

Call’s oval shaped head with his camera lens eye turned to face me as I replaced the putter in the bag, taking out the driver at the same time.

“Oh yes of course, Jonah. That is part of our better golf program. For twenty creds I can also provide you with an analysis of your swing.”

“That sounds good, but if you could record everything that would be great. I mean us walking and talking – I’d like a memento of this game with my uncle. Is that possible, and can you upload the record to my Devstick?”

“Yes, I can do that. Shall I use the impression you gave me earlier at the clubhouse for the twenty cred?”

“Yes, use the earlier impression. Now the twelfth is five hundred and sixty yards right?”

“Yes, Jonah, bunkers at two fifty on the right, water all the way down the left, and the first part of fairway slopes up to the bunkers. If you can crunch a drive then you’ll catch the back slope and roll down, leaving a safe six iron short of the water before the green.” Call said all this with the clubs clattering on his back as he rolled across the wooden bridge. We joined Sir Thomas on the twelfth tee. I walked straight up to the tee and crossed to the right side. Sir Thomas was directly behind me, standing by our Devcaddies. I put my ball on its tee, took two practice swipes and lined up to let one rip.

At the top of my back swing, just as I was about to unleash, Sir Thomas coughed.

I stopped the swing just in time, leaving the driver held high in the air behind my back. I didn’t turn around or say anything, but slowly lowered the club to the ground and addressed the ball again. I cleared my mind and swung. I crunched it as Call wanted, easily clearing the bunkers on the right, the ball disappearing over the crest of the slope.

“So you joined the military at sixteen. Before that what was life like for you? Do you have any material from that time, letters or images?”

“Yes, I do have some things. I will send them to you. I have had everything digitized. Life was difficult with the death of my parents when I was twelve. I am sure you know what a loss that is to a person. But for you, not so much perhaps, as you never knew your parents. But for me, I lost them when I was twelve and that was not so easy.” Sir Thomas smiled at me, and I thought I could kill him there and then. The thought shocked me, and he saw something in my eyes because he spoke again. “Well, of course, I don’t mean it was easy for you, Jonah, losing your parents – of course not. What I mean is that I knew my parents and therefore I lost what I had known and that is perhaps more painful.”

I recovered myself and smiled at him.

For a man of seventy-five, Sir Thomas was still fit and strong, hitting his drive further than most golfers of thirty-five do, but he still didn’t clear the hill.

“Nice drive,” I said softly and fell in step with him as, driver in hand, he began to walk up the slightly sloping fairway.

“The military became my family, though of course I couldn’t join straight away – I was too young. My brother, your father, well he was busy with the estate and the family businesses so most of the time I stayed with the cadets. As soon as I could, I joined up. Later of course UNPOL became my family, but when your father died and the estates and the family businesses all passed to me, that is when I thought of creating the Oliver Foundation.”

“Why gifted children only? Why doesn’t the Oliver Foundation accept any child who has lost its parents?”

“Well, there’s no shortage of care for orphaned children in our world. Indeed, the care given is superb. However, the opportunity for gifted children, or even just above averagely intelligent children, to thrive in that environment is extremely limited with the result that their potential is lost to the world. Over the years, Oliver children have risen to positions of great influence.”

“Was the Oliver Foundation started because of the loss of your brother and because you were alone then?”

“Well, I wasn’t quite alone was I? I lost a brother but gained a nephew. But yes, losing my brother was the influence that led to the Oliver Foundation.” He suddenly side-stepped towards me, and reaching out, put his arm nearly around my shoulders. He missed because he was quite a bit shorter than me, and instead squeezed my elbows awkwardly. I stiffened involuntarily at his touch and he stumbled away, withdrawing his arm and clearing his throat.

“We must do this more often, Jonah. It is one of the hopes of my having more self-time that I’ll be able to spend more time with you.”

“Yes, Uncle, we will. This memoir idea of yours is a great way for me to get to know and appreciate the life you have led. I don’t believe that I have ever thanked you properly for the life that I have enjoyed, and you must allow me to make that up to you somehow.” He smiled at my words and kept walking.

“Of course I will, Jonah, but raising you has been my pleasure. As you know I had some regrets that you showed no interest in a military career but you have made me very proud with your success in the legal field.”

We walked on in silence for a bit. I glanced behind me to see how close Call was to me.

“Exactly where were you when I was born, Uncle?”

“Huh, let me see. You were born on the 29th of October, 2075. I was in Australia at the time – yes, that’s right, official UNPOL business, top secret. But I returned to England the moment I heard the news of your birth.”

Sir Thomas hit a good second shot but still had about one hundred sixty to the green. I took a six iron and played safe just short of the water, leaving me with an easy chip shot onto the rolling green.

“Thirty-four years ago and still top secret – that must have been quite some business you were on?”

“Yes, it was. Well without giving away too much I can say that it had to do with the assassination of Bo Vinh.”

“Really! But Bo Vinh died the 1st of January 2075 and this was more than a nine months later, right?”

“Yes, correct, but something came up that provided a lead in the case and I had to follow that up personally. One of my great regrets, perhaps the greatest, is not finding the coward who killed Bo Vinh. I live in hope that one day we will uncover the truth behind the firing of that anti-tank weapon at Bo Vinh’s convertible.”

We walked in silence for a little while.

“And this lead, was it significant?”

“No. It turned out to be a dead end.”

“I see. So getting back to when you were cleared in the court martial over the annihilation of Bucharest, what did you do next?”

We reached his ball. It wasn’t in a good lie. Sir Thomas grunted and looked at the green ahead. An island green connected by a small wooden bridge with low railings and surrounded by a moat twenty yards wide. The sides of the green where they reached the water sloped sharply down hill and anything landing five feet from the edge would roll into the moat.

Sir Thomas looked at me and grinned, “No guts, no glory eh,” and took out a seven iron. I smiled back at him, thinking how I could probe deeper.