Tag - A Technothriller (38 page)

“Billy. Yes, he told me about your visit. I’m sorry we couldn’t get you there earlier. I wasn’t and I am not playing you. OK? I agreed with Flederson, before I met you, that I would provide you with the reason to do your own investigation. And that I wouldn’t interfere with the collection of evidence. That was the trade off. He wanted me to come in and testify. I didn’t think I’d survive that. I was sure Sir Thomas would see me dead a long time before I got to any kind of a court. About a month before I let myself get arrested in Bangkok, Flederson contacted me and told me that you weren’t making any progress. I got the sense that he was getting impatient, so I acted. I didn’t know that Sir Thomas would react so swiftly in shutting you down. I thought you’d have time to follow the evidence and build a case but he moved too fast.”

“How is Flederson? Do you know?”

“Well, the news reports say he’s undergoing regen and still in a coma. From what I can gather he’s under twenty-four hour guard in UNPOL ICU. You can bet that the guard is made up of Sir Thomas’s people and that Flederson, if he comes out of his coma, will be in serious danger. What I haven’t been able to figure out is how Sir Thomas found out about Flederson and you.”

“He might not have found out. Cochran was passed over for the Director’s role by the Board of Governors. It was probably her.”

“But she was injured in the explosion. Two or three days in regen, and apparently only narrowly missed losing an eye.”

“Her wounds were minor. She timed it perfectly, I think, and I know she’s crazy enough to do it. Think about it. What better defense can there be than being present and wounded when the bomb went off. No one will believe that she’s insanely clever enough to walk into a bomb. She kills five people, cripples Flederson, gets rid of me – who she hates – and gets the top job in UNPOL. There was only one time when she could do that without having to go after them individually, and that was at that dinner.”

She tilted the wine glass at the letter on the screen. “What are you hoping to achieve?”

“I’m hoping it’ll get Jonah in. He’s our best and perhaps only chance at stopping this.” Gabriel sat cross-legged facing her with his arm along the back of the sofa, a wine glass in his hand and the other hand resting on his ankle. “To expose Tag now is too big a risk. We don’t have any solid evidence. We don’t even know how the toxin will be hidden, and it has to be hidden, doesn’t it?”

“We talked about it. Flederson and I, I mean. Flederson believed your story about your mother’s murder and you being a witness. But then you sent the message about the Tag being poisoned and that you thought it was going to be used to kill sixty-five percent or more of the population. You started us on the trail of Sir Thomas for killing your step-mother and father but to then claim that Tag was his plot to, well, take over the world, was a stretch for us both. You’ve got to understand that Flederson is a thorough, calm, logical policeman. He doesn’t make leaps of faith, that’s why initially I was surprised at his request. When he asked me to go undercover and find out what I could of Sir Thomas’s operation, I thought it was part of an internal audit. But then when he explained your story to me, I was surprised because I had never seen him make that kind of decision, purely based on trust, before. But after I met you in Papeete, I understood. But he wasn’t convinced of the Tag being a device to commit mass genocide.”

Gabriel looked grim at her words. “And you? What do think?”

“At first I leaned more towards his way of thinking but then, after your escape, the bombings started and I believed you. It fit. It made sense. Flederson still wasn’t convinced but he had swung sharply away from being certain and urged me to get down to Darwin and begin the investigation as fast as possible. I had to wait a reasonable time to make it look like we discovered the evidence about you through process, and I was about to file my report when Flederson and Tilling were blown up. It’s hard to believe it is a coincidence.”

“What?”

“The bombing of Flederson and Tilling. I keep trying to convince myself that it was Cochran, but it could just as easily have been Sir Thomas. Maybe I’m letting my dislike for her cloud my judgment.”

“Maybe. But whether coincidence or not, the end result is the same. We’ve lost our support in UNPOL and we’re at the top of UNPOL’s Most Wanted list.”

Marty placed her glass on the table, and taking his glass from his hand, put it beside hers. Turning to face him she crawled up onto the sofa and brought her legs under her, kneeling in between his legs. She started to unbutton his shirt.

“Right now you’re on top of my most wanted list.”

He laughed out loud and reached for the knot that held the sarong in place. A single tug and the knot unraveled, the sarong slipping down her body. He leaned forward and took one of her nipples in his mouth, his hand squeezing her perky uplifted breast softly. She moaned from deep in her throat. Easing her back down on the sofa, he pulled the sarong down her long toned legs, then ran both hands up the inside of her legs from her calves until her came to her inner thighs. He licked at her opening and ran his tongue through the wetness that had pooled there. A taste better and rarer than any wine filled his mouth and he flicked his tongue up and around her clit. Her hands clawed in his hair pulling him closer. He shifted his nose to one side so that he could still breathe and –

“Hey Gabe, I... Oh sorry.” Gabriel looked up from between Marty’s legs at Maloo who smiled, and with a raise of his eyebrows and a thumbs-up, backed out of the room. Gabriel looked at Marty over her smooth shaven pussy to see her reaction. She was smiling. He started chuckling and she joined in.

“I’m sorry. I forgot to lock the door.”

“Don’t be. It isn’t me with my arse stuck up in the air and my face covered in juice.”

His head went back and he laughed out loud, crawling up the sofa to stretch out beside her his face level with hers. She kissed him and smacked her lips. “Hmm, yummy,” she said, and smiled.

***

We lay on the bed, Mariko’s left hand playing with my spent cock, her head resting on my stomach. I was twirling a strand of her hair around my finger.

“I had a chance to have sex with Annika Bardsdale while I was in London.”

She lifted her head from my stomach and looked at me with a frown. “And?”

I grinned at her proud of what I was about to say. “And nothing. I turned her down because of our promise to each other.”

She smiled. “You’re crazy. You had a chance to have sex with perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world and you turned her down because of me? You didn’t even call to check if I’d mind?”

“It was midnight. I didn’t think you’d appreciate it if I woke you up and asked if I could sleep with another woman on the first night that we were parted.”

“If it had been evening, would you have called?” She still had a smile on her lips but I felt like I was walking on ice - very thin ice. I thought honesty was the best way to go.

“No.”

“So how did this happen?”

“She asked me to strip so that she could see I wasn’t wearing any kind of recording device and then, well one thing lead to another.”

“You’re crazy. I’d have called,” she said with a broad grin on her face.

“Really? You mean if you were with say, Anthony Gibson, you’d have called at midnight and asked me if you could have sex with him?” She laid her head back down.

“I’m not sure. I might have called.” Our Devsticks started buzzing and vibrating at the same time. ‘There’s been another bomb,’ went through my mind. I reached over behind me and picked up the two Devsticks from the side-table and handed Mariko hers. I looked at the time, 7:30am. My message inbox showed thirty-four messages. Since leaving my contribution, I usually got about four or five a day. I’d just received thirty-four in five minutes and they were still coming in. The small screen of the folded Devstick didn’t give me enough information. I quickly unsnapped the Devstick and folded it out to its full configuration of keyboard, screen and touchpad. Scanning the inbox list it seemed that everyone who knew me was messaging me. And then my heart stopped and I looked at the name. Gabriel Zumar. I sat back from the Devstick, pulling my hands off the keyboard, my pulse racing.

Mariko, sitting cross-legged on the sleeper, spun her Devstick to face me. Her inbox was the same, even more messages and there, one from Gabriel Zumar. She opened the message and read aloud. ‘Subject: A Letter from a fellow human.’ When she finished reading, she looked at me, her lips pursed together. She shook her head slowly from side to side and put a finger to her lips.

‘Let’s have a shower and go for a walk along the beach,’ she said softy, slightly nodding her head. Rising, she held out her hand. The number of messages in her inbox was now over one hundred and twenty, and mine over fifty-five.

Chapter 31 A Hawk For Life

The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence

Friday 31 January 2110, 11:00pm +8 UTC

On the table between us sat a crystal bottle of one hundred and fifty-five year old Macallan Lalique Scotch whisky. It was half empty. The remainder was in our stomachs. We sat side by side looking out over the Topside of New Singapore. The evening was warm and humid. Dark clouds moved level with our view as we sat. Each of us silent with our own thoughts. I picked up the whisky and took another sip. I was not really a whisky drinker but Sir Thomas was an aficionado and had told me the rare whisky cost one hundred and twenty thousand cred. I calculated that I had thirty thousand creds’ worth rolling around in my stomach. But I focused, fighting not to let the whisky take control of my senses. I had to stay sharp.

We had dined together at the now refurbished UNPOL Executive Club. Sir Thomas had eaten there every night since it had been blown up. In defiance of the terrorists, the newsfeeds reported. I had spent a lot of time with Sir Thomas these last few weeks. I’d defended his name, as he had mine, against the crazy, libelous, terrorist. Annika Bardsdale had come out in support of me and announced my decision to work with her and the Social Responsibility Party in stopping the Tag Law. Sir Thomas had used my appointment as Annika’s arbitrator as further proof of his tolerance for difference of opinion and opposition to his view.

Over dinner, in public, we had discussed his memoir. I had fleshed it out since that first draft outline and it now had some meat on its bones. Another fifteen thousand words or so and it’d be ready for sending to Harpers.

Sir Thomas had agreed to go with Harpers as publishers and we’d signed a deal with them for a single book to be released on the 15 March 2010, the day of the Tag Law Popvote.

It was hard writing the memoir because my heart wasn’t in it. I struggled to get a flow. I had sent the first few chapters to Harper’s editor and it came back covered in red changes. They obviously didn’t think much of my writing and if it had been anything less than Sir Thomas’s memoirs, I doubt that they’d have kept me on as the ghostwriter. I told Sir Thomas that the writing was my gift to him, that the memoir would be published under his name.

Initially he had protested. “Nonsense boy. You have to take the credit.” But after just a little persuasion, he accepted.

Gabriel’s letter was dismissed as the desperate ramblings of a wanted man. Slurring two of society’s finest individuals, Gabriel had found little sympathy with his fellow humans. Sir Thomas pointed to the evidence of how he tried to help Gabriel’s mother before she committed suicide and that this had deranged the boy who became an insane driven man. It had also drawn us closer together, in Sir Thomas's eyes.

I was surprised at some of the vitriol that came forth as a result of the newsfeeds’ interest in me, digging up people I could hardly remember from my student days. These old classmates delivered stinging character slurs. More news portraits were drawn by opponents in court cases, especially from my early days, painting me as arrogant and ruthless. I realized this was Gabriel at work. Supporting me with Sir Thomas, making it appear as if I were ‘a chip off the old block’ as he often said lately.

I had gotten into a routine. Up at 4:30am. Fifteen minutes for dressing, stretching and warming up. Then the ten kilom run on the beach. Mariko running beside me. She’d been assigned as my bodyguard, after I asked Sir Thomas if he could arrange it. We ran to Kampung Bugis and back. We had the run down to forty-nine minutes, which on the sand was a fast time. After the cool down, we’d have a swim and sometimes a chat in the cave to catch up on our plans. Then I’d have a coffee and by 6:30am, get to work writing. I wrote solidly until noon. A light lunch of fish and vegetables and I’d go back and edit what I’d written, taking as my examples the chapters heavily revised by Harper’s Editor. By 4pm I’d be done editing and we’d go to a spot we had worn clear in the jungle and spar. Gloves and headgear on, I was still no match for Mariko as we shadow-fought. Getting as close as we could to hitting one another without actually making contact. It taught control, timing and focus.

An hour of sparring and we’d return. Shower and have dinner. Then at 6:30pm I would sit down and turn to the legal case, sometimes writing until midnight. Most nights I stopped before 11pm and got some sleep. I broke the routine, three days in seven, going down to New Singapore with Mariko discreetly armed and by my side. She would leave me alone with Sir Thomas while he recounted his past to me. How much was fiction and how much was truth I had no idea and no way to know. It didn’t matter. The point was to make him trust me. To bond.

The dinner tonight had been his idea. When we’d finished he had taken my elbow in his bony hand and steered me away from the Lev port and back across Topside to his penthouse. His bodyguards in front and Mariko trailing us, we came up to his penthouse to, ‘have a drink and a chat’. Charles had let us in.

The bodyguards and Mariko stayed in the living room while Sir Thomas grabbed the whisky and two heavy lead crystal glasses and led me out onto the balcony.