Tag - A Technothriller (42 page)

“Don’t apologize. I understand. And yes, it’s been rough. What about this meeting though, won’t UNPOL have picked up on my disappearance?”

Gabriel poured me a glass of wine. I took a gulp to wash away the lump in my throat. He smiled at me, like he knew what I was thinking.

Elbows on his knees, Gabriel leant forward on the sofa.

“No. Right now you’re in the Hilton on the Park with Annika and you’ll be in her room ordering room service tonight after the two of you have spent all evening talking. Then you’ll spend all of tomorrow making love, after which Annika will return to London. As for you, that will depend upon what we decide to do. Sir Thomas kidnapping Mariko, is that because he’s blackmailing you to do something?”

“No. Not exactly. The night before he kidnapped Mariko, I joined the Hawks. He asked and I accepted. But right after I accepted he said I had to prove my loyalty to him by killing someone. I asked him who. And he said just anyone - it doesn’t matter.”

Annika gasped. “This is incredible. This man is UNPOL Director! What kind of a world are we living in?” Shaking her head she got up and walked to the windows facing the ocean.

“I take it you said you would kill someone?” Gabriel asked me in a low voice.

“Sure, what choice did I have? He had two bodyguards in the living room with Mariko. If I had said no after what he’d just told me I’m pretty sure we would have been killed right then.”

Gabriel nodded. “I’m sure too. No, you did the right thing. Does he suspect anything about us?”

“I don’t think so. I think he thinks that he’s training me by doing this. Or maybe I’m just being hopeful, but I think he’s showing me how to be ruthless. It fits with ways in which he has interacted with me in the past. Anyway, I doubt that he’s harmed Mariko, that is if he still believes that I know nothing about you other than what he has told me. I am worried about Cochran doing a mind probe on Mariko or Truth Treatment.”

“Cochran’s not in New Singapore. She’s been visiting each of the bomb sites. Every city where a bomb attack has taken place is now under martial law. UNPOL Special Ops teams have been placed in force at each location. They’re getting ready to make their move and Cochran’s not due back in New Singapore until next Monday.”

I nodded, relieved. One less thing to worry about.

Gabriel went on, "When do you have to kill someone by?”

“By Valentine’s Day. Ironic isn’t it? I wonder if he didn’t choose the date deliberately.”

With a wry smile, Gabriel said, “He might have done. He’s certainly sadistic enough to take pleasure in such details.”

Which increased my worries. “So, what about the chances of Sir Thomas putting Mariko through Truth Treatment?”

“There was a chance that he might have used it straight away, but we’re sure you would have been picked up or killed if he had done. As you haven't, it's probably because loyalty, trust and honor are crucial qualities between Hawks. It's a matter of honor for him to trust you now until you prove otherwise. It would certainly risk your loyalty to him if he questioned your lover behind your back without a valid reason.”

“What about Cochran next week? I doubt she's any scruples about doing a mind probe. Though I have coached Mariko in how to avoid dangerous thoughts.”

“Now you're a Hawk, you are a rival to Cochran," Gabriel said. "I think Sir Thomas would prefer to play those cards close to his chest as yet so I doubt he'll give Cochran access to Mariko. Either way, we have a bit of time to work with."

Giving a shrug, Gabriel glanced at the other conspirators and changed tack. "All right, let’s sum up where we are. Sir Thomas doesn’t yet suspect you know the truth about me, Mark. He doesn’t know where we are or who we all are, so those are things in our favor. Against us is we still don’t know anything about how to prevent the toxin from killing people and how they’re hiding it in the tags. And it looks like we’re not going to find out until the Tag Law is passed. We don’t know where Mariko is being held, and if Mark doesn’t kill someone within eight days then Mariko will probably be killed. We also have to consider that Cochran may attempt a mind probe on Mariko within the week, and that might lead to her and Mark being killed. Would you agree with that summary of where we are now?”

Gabriel sat back on the sofa and looked around the room at each of us in turn. I exhaled heavily and Maloo put his arm around my shoulder.

“Don’t ya worry, mate. Gabe’s gotta tell it like it is but we’ll fix this fucka for ya, don’t ya worry.” He looked over at Annika and said, “Pardon my French, Ms Bardsdale.”

Aniika flashed a grin at Maloo. “I don’t think that was French, Maloo, and I agree. We will fix this fucker.”

Maloo burst out with a bark of a laugh and I had to grin too.

“I’m serious,” Annika said, smiling. “I know some pretty high-level people and they would be horrified to find out this is going on. They’d move fast to stop it too.”

I looked at her and said, “I’m pretty sure that Sir Thomas has got Secretary General Deng, either with him or being manipulated by him. That’s high-level. Without evidence, rock-solid evidence, anyone going up against Sir Thomas at this point would just be putting themselves on a list for execution.”

Gabriel leant forward and picked up his wine glass. He said, “We’ll have to use every resource we’ve got in an orchestrated plan if we’re going to succeed. I think the big question we have to ask ourselves is: do we have enough to stop the Tag being voted in?”

“I don’t think that we do. Even if we exposed Sir Thomas and all of the conjecture that we have about Tag, even if Sir Thomas was out of action, Tag would still go ahead. Once the cull is completed, they’d just release Sir Thomas. The question isn’t about whether we can legally stop Tag, because let’s assume we can’t. The real question is how do we stop the cull happening and at the same time make sure it can’t ever happen? Once we’ve done that we can then work on getting rid of Sir Thomas. Or maybe if we’re lucky, we can kill two birds with one stone.” Gabriel raised his eyebrows and shrugged at me. Maloo rolled his eyes.

“OK, OK, enough with the bad puns.” Gabriel's moment of levity passed, and he shook his head. "Seriously, this guy is dangerous and clever but he’s not infallible – no one is. Enough things start going wrong and he’ll make a mistake. We just have to be there when it happens. He’ll be at his weakest when the Tag has been distributed. Once released, we can get a hold of it and set Maloo to work on it.”

I looked at Maloo. Gabriel said, “Maloo’s got a PhD in bio-engineering from Sydney uni.”

I tried to mask the surprise I felt but Maloo saw right through me. With a big grin, he said, “Had ya fooled, didn’t I, mate?”

Gabriel laughed but then his look turned somber again. “The problem with this approach is that it means we have to wait until the Tag is distributed. Which means that you and Mariko are exposed. Essentially, you have to choose whether you want Mariko or someone else to die. Unless, of course, we can locate and extract her before the 14th, which will be our primary focus.”

“I can’t put Mariko’s nor my life in front of six billion deaths. She wouldn’t want me to. I detest the thought of having to kill an innocent human to save her. I know I can do that. I’m sad to admit it, but I do. That’s just love, but what worries me is that in doing it, she will hate me forever.”

“What if the person you killed wasn’t innocent?”

The question from Marty turned the room to silence. I looked at her. She held my look and sat calmly next to Gabriel. Her legs together, leaning forward with her arms on her thighs, she stared at me under her blonde fringe. Her eyes bored into mine.

“I mean a really nasty person. Unfit to call themselves a human. That kind of non-innocent. Could you kill such a person?”

“It doesn’t matter whether the person is a bad or a good person. Under the law I believe in, they are both due the same rights as humans under the Nation’s Law. If we have failed to stop this person from committing illegal or just plain evil acts, then that is a failure of the Law and its processes, not the individual. Any other understanding leads to anarchy or vigilante mob justice.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. I’m not talking about theories, I’m talking about right now. A particular person and whether you want to save Mariko or not.”

Gabriel put a hand on her arm. “Maybe we’ll come back to that question later. I have an idea which I’d like to run by you. Something I’ve been toying with for a while now and I’d like to get your opinion on it. OK, here goes. What if we delete all identity records? Everyone’s PUI. Gone in an instant?”

Marty shook her head and said, “Shrouded in the heaviest of security and even if you get through that, there are backups in several different places.”

“Yes, I know, but suppose we could do it. What do you think of the effect?” Gabriel sat back in the chair.

Annika walked to the table and held her glass out for Gabriel to refill. Once filled, she emptied half of it in a huge swallow. “You’d destroy personal wealth, contribution would cease to have a reason, and the world would sink into anarchy overnight. But apart from that I don’t see a problem with it,” she said, smacking her lips. Hand on hip she raised her glass, giving us her profile. We all burst out laughing.

“OK, to be a little less extreme," Gabriel said. "The Tag has to be controlled with a command that would be uploaded to it. This would release the toxin. To do that selectively, you have to match serial numbers of Tags distributed with names of people distributed to. Makes sense right?” He wasn’t expecting an answer. “Right. So we need to find those two lists and once the product has been released, destroy the lists of serial numbers or randomize it. Because if we can’t do that then our last recourse is to delete everyone’s identity. And Annika, I agree with your evaluation of what would happen, but that’s still better than six billion dead. Right?”

“Yes, you’re right,” I responded. “How much time do you think we have after the Tag Law has been passed?”

“I’d estimate no more than two weeks. By that time I reckon they’ll come up with something to force the issue. It looks to me like the Hawks have achieved enough insiders in the UN and in the Security Council to manipulate a crisis and get people to inject the Tag quickly. So yes, about ten to fourteen days tops.”

“So no later than the end of month?”

“No. I reckon he’ll order the cull once he gets seventy to seventy-five percent adoption. If what we know about the toxin is correct, and we think it is, then it takes about a week before it kills. Which means that he can kill the ones who haven’t injected before the ones who have start to die.”

“So the key is the list of Tag serial numbers and to get it I have to kill someone. There’s no getting around that is there?”

“No. Unfortunately not.” Gabriel looked straight at me and spread his hands.

Leaning forward in her seat, Marty spoke softly. “I know who you can kill.”

I looked at her, struggling to match the beautiful woman with the words. She continued in the same soft tone. “His name is Jonathan Wigley. We called him ‘Wriggly Wigley’ because we couldn’t get any evidence on him even though he practically boasted about his crimes in a few online forums. He lives in Bangkok and on the surface is a –”

“I know him. He was lead counsel for Bauer.”

“Yes. That’s why he’s perfect, because you do know him. And you had some serious arguments with him too, right? We got that tracing some of his communications with his people back in Bangkok.”

“Yes, that’s right. During the settlement negotiations he was obstructive without being constructive. He was just wasting time, I suspected, so that he could charge more for his contribution. Finally I accused him directly in a meeting and the Bauer team replaced him with David Chalmers. After that we reached settlement quickly.”

Marty nodded. “Mr Wigley spends his cred and self-time getting young boys and girls from all around Asia and having sex with them. They’re always under ten years of age. We haven’t been able to get a witness or evidence to point the finger at him but we know he’s doing it. It is only a matter of time before he slips up and we get him, but who knows how many more young lives will be corrupted by his touch before then.”

Gabriel leaned close to me. “I can do this if you want. We’ll rig it to make it look like you did but I’ll actually take care of it.”

“No. I will take care of it. As much as I hate the thought, it’s possible that the deception would be found out and then all this would be for nothing. I’ll kill him unless we can figure out a way to get that list before the 14th.”

“So you want to leave it until the final day?”

“I know it’s risky, but yes.”

“All right. I think you should stay with me until then. What do you think?”

“Won’t that raise all kinds of alarm bells?”

“We’ll come up with a good reason for your absence. I think it will also unsettle him and Cochran.”

“Cochran?”

“Sure Cochran. She’s in deep with this thing.”

“I should go back the day after tomorrow when Annika leaves. Being here is nice and I feel safe. A part of me, a big part, wants to stay here, but I’ve got to get back into it.”

Gabriel nodded and smiled at me. “I’ve got to provide you with some protection against any mind probes or truth treatments. We can’t take the chance of those being successful, for all our sakes, and we need at least twelve hours to do that. It isn’t a pleasant process either and at the end of it you’ll be too messed up to trav. So I think that you will need to stay until Sunday morning.”

“Annika?”

“Yes, Gabriel.”

“I need you to continue your affair with Jonah through till Sunday morning. Can you do that?”

“I think it’ll probably make my popularity ratings increase,” Annika said with a smile and blew a kiss at me.

Chapter 33

A Change of Pace

UNPOL Headquarters, Directors Office, 244th floor

Sunday 9 Feburary 2110, 2:00am +8 UTC