“Clark!” Emma called. “Get up here. Dan’s moving, but we can see Jack.”
“Huh?” he called back, dashing to the steps as quickly as he had in the opposite direction. “Did they put him outside or something? What the hell is going on?”
Emma took a deep breath, staring glumly at Clark while Dan pushed himself to his knees and the TV screen told the story. “Look,” she said. “Jack’s outside, alright, but not here. The son of a bitch is in Havana.”
V minus 11
ELF Western Office
Havana, Cuba
Standing out in the open beneath a hovering alien spacecraft, John Cole turned around in reaction to a great deal of commotion and quickly saw what everyone else was looking at. Although human, the identity of the individual standing in the doorway of the ELF’s Western Office was almost as great a surprise as anything else could have been.
“Jack?” Cole said, disbelieving that the man who had once served as his chief Prime Ministerial advisor was here. The building was a secure site — one of the most secure Cole had ever entered — and the relationship between his foreign diplomatic consultancy business and Jack’s myriad PR firms was anything but public.
How Jack had gotten into Cuba unnoticed, let alone into the building, was one major question in Cole’s mind. The other, equally strong, was why the hell Jack was so publicly standing before him like this when their working agreement was underpinned by a binding No Public Association clause.
Cole had fallen into high-level politics more or less by chance when his single-issue campaign pushed the right social buttons in the north of England several years earlier, but even through his many faux pas and embarrassments he had developed some degree of political wherewithal. He knew enough to know that his reaction to Jack’s entirely unexpected presence would go a long way to determining how everyone else would react — including the dozens of surrounding officers with raised weapons and tense expressions. Indeed, once the initial momentary shock of seeing Jack had hit, many of their glances were now directed towards Cole to see whether he saw the controversial man’s appearance as cause for alarm.
“It’s okay,” Cole said, hand-gesturing for the police and security staff to turn away from Jack and back towards the imposing craft overhead. He didn’t know if anything about Jack’s presence really was okay — he didn’t know what it meant, or even how it had come about — but any sign of interpersonal suspicion, let alone conflict, was the last thing anyone needed when a direct interspecies interaction seemed imminent.
Jack walked slowly to Cole’s side, looking far happier than anyone could understand given the gravity of the unfolding situation. He then gazed down at his own knee and smiled even more widely as he belatedly realised that the severe injuries it suffered at Clark McCarthy’s hands — or feet, to be more precise — had been miraculously healed. As he stopped and patted Cole on the back, however, a deeper kind of knowing satisfaction crossed his face.
“What the fuck is going on?” Cole whispered. He pretended to scratch his nose in order to cover his mouth as he spoke, making use of a trick he’d learned from Jack himself.
Without answering directly, Jack issued a hand gesture of his own. His was similar to Cole’s ‘lower your weapons’ downward hand movement of moments earlier, but its target and result could hardly have been more different.
More to the point, they could hardly have been more remarkable.
For in response to Jack’s gesture, to the amazement of everyone in attendance and the billions watching around the world, the craft hovering above the ELF’s Western Office began to descend. It moved steadily until it reached the ground, at which point a long ramp emerged; not too dissimilarly to the one so familiar from a previous alien landing at the Birchwood drive-in.
This craft was slightly larger and shaped slightly differently to the one everyone remembered so well, but there were enough similarities for the assumption to stand that the aliens inside were the same kind even if not the very same ones.
Confirmation of this assumption — both parts — came mere seconds later when two humanoid extraterrestrial beings appeared at the top of the ramp. They looked for all the world just like the Messengers, with the only visual difference being that their skintight tunic-like garments were shaded in a gentle sky blue rather than the more clinical white of their counterparts.
“What is this?” Cole asked, stunned by the sight before him. No small part of him wanted to run away and the fear within him was so great that he didn’t even consider how weak he would look for doing so; the only reason he stayed frozen on the spot was his knowledge that trying to flee would be futile and might even anger the aliens.
Having ignored Cole’s earlier question, Jack brazenly replied to this one with no effort to cover his mouth or lower his volume: “Don’t worry, John,” he said, placing a scrawny hand on his former boss’s bulky shoulder. “These ones are on our side, and I’m in charge now…”
V minus 10
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
All around the McCarthys’ living room, silence circled. Tara watched through her fingers while most of the men held a hand covering their mouths in sheer shock and fear.
The aliens hadn’t just taken Jack, they had healed his injured knee and were seemingly following his orders. Of everything Dan had considered possible, nothing had come close to this. He was sitting sheepishly on the couch next to Tara, still recovering from a debilitating but fortunately brief lightning bolt of pain that had hit when the Squadron fleetingly intervened to remove Jack from the basement. Rooster lay at Dan’s feet, looking up and clearly worrying about his friend.
Emma’s words from earlier in the day echoed uncomfortably in Dan’s mind, focusing his fears: Jack Neal was a grudge-driven virus, and one which posed a grave threat whenever it was loose.
Now that Jack was not just loose but apparently in command of a hostile alien fleet, the danger he posed was almost unimaginable.
“Emma…” Dan said, breaking the most uncomfortable silence he had known since first learning of Richard Walker’s hoax, “it’s time to call Buenos Aires. I need to tell Godfrey everything.”
“Damn right,” Clark chimed in, his eyes glued to the remarkable scenes in Havana. “But not just that, you also—”
“I know,” Dan interrupted, gulping at the weight of the thought in his mind. “I also need to tell Slater I’m almost ready to take back my answer from a few minutes ago, because with Jack in their ears it might really be time to start thinking about a pre-emptive strike.”
V minus 9
ELF Western Office
Havana, Cuba
Jack Neal encouraged John Cole to stay by his side as he set off to meet the two familiar-looking aliens halfway between his starting position and their ramp some thirty metres away.
Cole stood on the spot until Jack tugged at his arm and made the case: “Come on, John, think of the visual! You and me, the ultimate thumbs in Godfrey and Slater’s eyes.”
Once again, the widely loathed PR man made no effort to conceal his words from the few cameras pointing his way while most of the others remained fixed on the aliens. Belatedly, Cole walked with him.
Security personnel watched the two men approach their alien counterparts and stop mere feet from their faces. The events of Contact Day had been replayed so many times that this almost felt like a rerun in a different place and with two humans set to converse with the aliens instead of one.
John Cole’s heart was in his mouth as he stared into the wide, intelligent eyes of an extraterrestrial being. It was a Messenger, or at least of the same race, its identical physical makeup told him. It extended a hand for him to shake, just as one of the Messengers had done in front of Dan McCarthy a year earlier. The alien in front of Jack outstretched its hand too, and both men reached out in unison to formally greet their visitors from afar.
“We need to talk,” Jack spoke to his alien. It looked at him blankly. “Ta
lk,” he repeated, pointing to his neck to suggest a cable of the kind the Messengers had used to communicate with Dan.
Although their expressions didn’t change, it immediately became clear that the aliens understood. One stepped behind the other and produced a cable from an unseen pouch at the back of its tunic.
“And me,” Cole said, pointing to his own neck.
Jack waved his finger in a ‘no no no’ motion he hoped would be galactically universal. He then put a hand on Cole’s chest to stop him from getting what he considered too close to the aliens.
“What the hell are you doing?” Cole asked, mindful not to appear overly aggressive given the tension of the armed officers and the red lights of the live TV cameras but furious with Jack’s desire to hog this remarkable opportunity for interspecies communication.
“Trust me on this, boss,” Jack pleaded. For the first time, he then covered his mouth to hide his words from prying eyes and lenses. “There’s a long game and you’ll see the forest for the trees soon enough. I’m going to ask them to let ELF scientists study one of them and to let some of your people on to their craft. I already know they’re on our side and not McCarthy’s, but that’s the kind of thing the world needs to see to know it for sure.”
Jack’s use of the word boss, as transparent an attempt at ingratiation as it would have been had Cole’s head been in the right place, did the trick. It did confuse Cole more than a little that Jack referred to the ‘other side’ as McCarthy’s rather than Godfrey’s or the GCC’s more generally, but that seemed like a small point in the context of the many huge points of unanswered confusion all around him.
But despite his own position as the ELF’s Western Secretary and Jack’s utter lack of any official role, Cole could see that for some reason the aliens clearly were keen to talk to Jack. His gesture had brought them to the ground, after all, and his sudden appearance remained an unexplained mystery.
Stepping aside only slightly, Cole watched on in conflicted anticipation as one alien connected the other to Jack Neal via a cable and a process familiar to everyone from the famous Birchwood footage.
John Cole’s questions were many, and he could only hope the answers were coming soon.
V minus 8
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Rather than Chairman Godfrey, Emma made a call to President Slater’s phone; before Dan could talk to Godfrey, one thing had to be absolutely certain.
“Emma,” Slater said, picking up immediately. Her words, on loudspeaker, rang through the living room. “What… the… hell?”
“We were already thinking the problem with the Messengers’ Elders might have led to a power vacuum or factional disagreements,” Emma replied, wasting no words or seconds, “and this all but confirms it. What we know for sure is that Jack has been working with the GeoSovs. He kidnapped Tara and Clark had been holding him here since dealing with that. All of that can wait, though. These new aliens… the Messengers call them the Squadron. Dan was about to tell you that when he got knocked out by the pain when they came for Jack, but now that Jack is in their ears, doing nothing is no longer an option. What I need to know is whether you’ve told Godfrey you know anything yet about Dan’s power and what he learned with it — about Jack working with Cole, or about Jack working with the GeoSovs.”
“No,” the President said. “I’m dealing with the national security side of things at the moment because the calls for action were deafening even before the craft landed. Are you going to tell him?”
“Dan is; we just had to make sure you hadn’t already, so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet. I have one idea that could get us somewhere, so please try to hold off on anything irreversible for now, okay?”
“What’s the idea?” Slater understandably asked.
In the McCarthys’ living room, everyone else wondered the same thing.
“To tell Cole that Jack’s working with the GeoSovs,” Emma said. “I don’t think he knows, and Jack seems to trust him. Trusting Cole isn’t my idea of an ideal play, but if he’s the only tool at our disposal right now then we might just have to use him. We could ask him to keep Jack from doing anything too crazy — at least until we know exactly what’s going on with these aliens. The Messengers spoke to Dan when the mothership arrived but haven’t said anything since, so we’re hoping every second that they might give us more. The key thing is that Cole is going to feel betrayed, because he and everyone at the ELF hates those damn GeoSovs just as much as we do, so as much as he hates us he could still be receptive.”
Clark nodded approvingly at this idea, as did a few others. Dan understood the logic, but the inherent risk of telling Cole too much certainly wasn’t lost on him.
“I like it,” Slater said, “but how about this: you two start trying to get in touch with Cole right now and I’ll deal with Godfrey. I’ll tell him everything and I’ll present it as though I just found it all out… I’ll say you called me because you trust me more than you trust him, which isn’t even a lie. For everyone’s interests, Emma, I feel as though it’s better for him to bear some resentment towards you right now than for him to bear it towards me. But the main reason I think I should tell him is so you can try to reach Cole immediately, because that’s the most important thing and it might not be easy.”
Emma turned to Dan, looking for his approval. She got it in the form of a curt nod. “Agreed,” she said to Slater. “You get to Godfrey, I’ll get to Cole.”
The sound of Emma’s deep exhalation was the loudest in the room as the call ended.
“Why does it always have to get so damn complicated?” Tara lamented from the couch. “If no one lied, there would be none of this crap about keeping track of who knows what.”
Dan in particular pondered these words, having thought similar things on countless occasions of late but having never been able to put it so succinctly. He didn’t reply, instead sitting up straight in amazement as the TV relayed footage of a Cuban police officer and an ELF security officer stepping inside the alien craft along with one member of the Squadron.
Jack, now disconnected from the other, stood gleefully at its side and explained to the watching cameras that the aliens were granting open access to their technologies and had even agreed to be physically tested by local medical experts. This would both infuriate and terrify the GCC hierarchy, and the smug grin on Jack’s face suggested that not only did he know this, it was the whole point.
Emma, while watching Cole’s equally confused expression on live TV, wasted no time in trying to call him. She did so from Jack’s phone, still in Clark’s possession, having unlocked it using the passcode he’d given to Clark under more than a hint of duress.
She needed access to Jack’s phone to get Cole’s number — this was naturally better than going through a low-level ELF contact and hoping they could reach Cole — but she chose to call from it rather than use the number on another phone for two reasons. First was that she imagined a man in Cole’s position doubtless used a similar digital assistant to herself, delivering only calls from the most important contacts and sending everyone else straight to voicemail. The second and supporting reason was that even if Cole didn’t have any restrictions on incoming calls, seeing one from Jack’s number would surprise the hell out of him since Jack was right there in Havana and clearly not using his phone.
With these considerations in mind, Emma made the call. She did so more in hope than expectation that he would answer, so wasn’t too surprised to reach his voicemail after several rings. He probably couldn’t hear it or feel the vibration among all the commotion, she reasoned.
Emma moved straight on to Plan B and sent a multi-line text message laying out the main points, delicately balancing the competing needs for brevity and clarity. She hoped Cole would at least see this the next time he looked at his phone… and could likewise only hope that his next look wouldn’t be too far away. She would engage Plan C in the meantime, reaching out to low-level ELF contac
ts via the intermediary of ACN’s Maria Janzyck and trying to talk someone into delivering an urgent message to Cole.
“These visitors come in peace and they come in need,” Jack suddenly announced, facing the cameras again and this time talking in a far more self-important tone as though he himself was one of humanity’s official points of contact with extraterrestrial races. “Where they have come is no coincidence, as I’m sure you can all understand, and more will become clear in the coming hours. The message I want to deliver to a likely suspicious Western world is that this is a positive development, and the ordinary citizens of GCC countries have nothing to fear from our alien friends.”
John Cole, although particularly intrigued by the line about the aliens coming in need, was growing slightly irritated by Jack’s showmanship and pomposity.
Wondering how much longer this show would go on before Jack pulled him aside to explain what the hell was happening instead of leaving him standing there like a fool before a media horde with whom he was equally in the dark, Cole instinctively glanced at the time on his smart watch. It was at this point that he saw an exclamation mark in the screen’s notification bar, alerting him to a missed call and recently received text message from a top-priority contact.
Naturally, given the tremendously limited number of people who fell into this category, he checked it out. It then took no small effort for him to control his expression and broader reaction as the text message’s words sank in:
“This is Emma Ford in Birchwood. I’m watching this live and we have Jack’s phone because he’s been working with Poppy Bradshaw and other GeoSovs for months — he helped them kidnap Tara and those aliens just took him from Clark’s custody. The Messengers just told Dan these aliens are hostile, so keep that in mind. Don’t trust a single word that shit-stain says, but DO NOT LET ON that you know any of this. Call either me or Slater as soon as you can, and in the meantime please try to stop him from doing anything irreversible… WITHOUT LETTING ON that you know anything. I don’t know what he has in mind but it’s not going to be good. Remember: he’s not on your side, he’s with the fucking GeoSovs.”
The Final Call Page 31
