“Saved your life! What happened?” Fenella asked very shocked. Fionnuala told her what had happened.
“Who would dare do such a thing?” Fenella then said in astonishment. “There has been peace between the Varns and us for many years.”
“It wasn’t the Varns,” Fionnuala replied.
“The helicopter was of human design,” Joshua dared to speak. Both Fionnuala and Fenella turned to look at him in surprise.
“Are you sure, Joshua?” Fionnuala questioned him. Joshua nodded.
“I saw a helicopter like it on a TV news programme when the Soviets were fighting the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan,” he told them. Fionnuala turned to look at Fenella.
“Then we need to find out what human would have the audacity to attack me Fenella and why. First however we need to find out all we can about this world we now live in.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Abbot’s House, Trentbury, England,
Late August 2005
The Veetol slowly descended, for as John had learned on accessing his database, it was a vertical take-off and landing type of aircraft. Built by the VarTech Corporation Aerospace Division, the Veetol was very popular for civilian executive use. As it came to a halt, a door in its side opened and a ramp came down. Moments later, a middle-aged woman who John guessed was Kate’s mother ran down the ramp followed by two younger men and a much older man. Kate ran to meet them and reaching her mother hugged her as the three men gathered around them both. It was several minutes before they all finished greeting one another and walked across to where John and the others were standing.
“John, Morann, Padraig, this is my mum,” Kate introduced the middle-aged woman. “My father,” the older man stepped forward and starting with John shook their hands, “and my brothers, Dave,” the older of the two younger men, “and Steve.” The two men shook hands with John, Morann and Padraig.
“I can’t thank you all enough for looking after my daughter and keeping her safe,” David Penrose told them. His wife nodded, too overcome to speak and John noticed that her eyes were full of tears.
“We thought we’d lost our Kate,” she eventually managed to say, her voice choked with emotion. “Especially when she disappeared in 1985.”
Kate was now talking with her brothers, John noticed.
“I was so worried about you Dave, I heard you’d been badly injured,” Kate was telling him.
“I was Kate. My shoulder and pelvis were crushed, and my kidneys were damaged,” Dave replied smiling at his sister. “I got trampled on by a police horse.”
“But you look so well,” Kate replied. Dave didn’t even seem to have the slightest limp or any other signs of the terrible injuries that he’d sustained. Nor did he look twenty years older to her, five perhaps at the most. Her mum looked younger than she should’ve looked too.
“I am well, Kate,” Dave told her. “I received the best possible care at the hospital at Colwyn Bay. They used the new medical nanobots to repair the damage and I have still have them to maintain my health. Mum was diagnosed with cancer but received the new medical treatments and she’s fine too now. Things were bad after the Miner’s Strike was crushed,” Dave went on to explain. “Dad, Steve and I had to go on the run. A mobile police unit came to our house and took mum into custody. Oisin reckoned that they were going to use her as a hostage to get us to give ourselves up, but he and Conn managed to rescue her.”
“Oisin? We’ve heard a lot about him, but have never met him.”
“Oh, you will,” Dave told her, and Kate knew her brother well enough to know that he knew something, but couldn’t tell her what it was. She looked over to where her brother Steve was laughing and joking with John and Padraig.
“I hear Steve’s now Vice President in the VarTech Corporation with responsibility for the New Technologies and Energy Sources Division.” Kate said.
“He went to Penrose College after the overthrow of Brown,” Dave told her. “Then after he’d got his degree, he started on the management training scheme at the VarTech Corporation and worked his way up. He was always clever like you Kate, you were both always cleverer than me.”
“I hear that you’re the Minister for Health and Welfare Services in the United British and Irish Federation Government,” Kate answered, “so don’t disparage yourself.”
“Yes, I am. I didn’t want to go back to mining after the civil war,” Dave told her. “Besides, it’s all automated now, robots and whatnot. We’ve gone green too and so not much coal is mined these days and what is goes to the new clean coal, carbon capture and processing power stations.”
“That sounds complicated Dave.”
“It is, and I don’t understand half the technology behind it all, but it works, Steve says.”
“Dinner is apparently ready,” Conn suddenly announced. “I suggest that we all go back to the house.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nemhain’s Base, Amazon Rain Forest, Late August 2005
“This world has changed greatly since we were imprisoned,” Fionnuala said after she and Fenella had searched all the databases that they could locate, including the ones at the Sol 6 Base, which they’d hacked into.
Joshua had learned that after Fionnuala had been imprisoned, Fenella had searched everywhere in the galaxy to try and find out where the Nemhain was being held. It had been hazardous, as the Aos Si Confederation forces had been hunting Fenella, but fortunately she had managed to evade capture by them. Her search for the Nemhain had been unsuccessful however and so as she’d been ordered to by the Nemhain, Fenella had then gone to the secret Amazon base that they were now on and had gone into stasis, not knowing that the Nemhain was imprisoned on the same planet.
“If I’d only known Nemhain, I would have disobeyed your order and searched for you until I’d found you,” Fenella had told her.
“I know, Fenella and your loyalty to me is to be commended,” Fionnuala told her and then said in exasperation. “If we could only find out where that helicopter had come from, I might find out who has dared to attack me and punish them accordingly.”
“If this world had still been under our control, Nemhain, then we would have been able to access the records of our surveillance drones and satellites,” Fenella answered equally exasperated.
“Spy satellites do exist on Earth,” Joshua then said, “and both the USA and the Soviets also had them in 1985.”
“Are you sure, Joshua?” Fionnuala asked turning to him.
“Yes, there was an article about them in ‘Janes Defence Weekly’, it was also reported on, in some of the newspapers,” Joshua told her.
It took less than an hour for Fenella to locate all the old spy satellite reconnaissance reports and get the information they needed. Then they had been able to track the helicopter back to the airbase in Libya it had taken off from. They had found out that it hadn’t been a Libyan Air Force helicopter as Joshua had assumed, but had belonged to a company called Black Shadow Operations. Among its various nefarious activities, Black Shadow Operations supplied bands of mercenaries to fight in all the little wars in the world, that no one really knew or cared about.
“So, who owns this company and who ordered the attack to be carried out?” Fionnuala demanded to know.
“Black Shadow Operations is apparently owned by a shell company in the Seychelles,” Fenella told her, bringing up the information. “Digging further into the shell company records it seems that the shell company is in turn owned by the Aossi Corporation. Its sole shareholder is Mona McBeolain who is now the President of the USA. I can’t however find out who actually ordered the attack on you, Nemhain, other than that the bill for the mission and compensation to the families of the Black Shadow Operations operatives who were killed, was paid for by the Aossi Corporation.”
“So, Joshua, you and I will go and pay this Mona McBeolain a visit. She is after all the owner of the Aossi Corporation and will know who ordered the attack and if she doesn’t, then she should have.”
&nbs
p; “Fionnuala,” Joshua said, their relationship having reached the stage where he could call her by her given name. “You can’t just go and see the President of the USA like that. You’d need to make an appointment at least and it’s extremely unlikely that you’d get one.”
“Very well, if I can’t meet with this Mona McBeolain, then we will have to use stealth and cunning, Joshua, but first we must do some reconnaissance,” Fionnuala answered. Then she turned to Fenella. “Prepare for this mission and you Joshua,” she turned back to him, “will accompany me. You have knowledge of these times, which neither I, or Fenella have.” That news not surprisingly greatly alarmed him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oval Office, The White House, Washington DC, Late August 2005
Mona McBeolain settled back in the comfortable chair that she’d had installed in the Oval Office, when she’d become the President of the USA. She was glad that she’d got rid of the uncomfortable leather chair that the previous occupants had used. Mona would also have loved to have got rid of the awful, carved, wooden desk, so beloved by her male predecessors. Her advisors however had cautioned against it, saying that it would be a step too far. Still at least she had some decent paintings on the walls now and had red curtains and a nice red rug, very similar to the one that John F. Kennedy had had when he was President. No insipid colours for Mona she thought, stretching languorously and thinking back to how she had become the President of the USA in the first place.
It had all been part of JT’s great plan for Earth, a planet that he intended to ruthlessly exploit. Mona had been very happy to be his pawn, as she had an agenda of her own and one that JT had no idea of. Mona had known that there were age and residency requirements to be met if she was to run for the office of President but had been sure that she’d be able to meet them. She had after all a birth certificate which gave her year of birth as 1960, totally untrue of course, but it showed that she was over 35 years of age and could therefore stand on age grounds. Her passport also showed that she had been born in the USA, again, totally untrue, but it meant that she met the residency criteria too.
Mona had thought about starting up her own political party, but JT had cautioned against this and suggested that Mona join the Republican Party instead. She had done this in 1996 and in a matter of less than 5 years she had secured the Republican nomination for the presidency. That of course had involved a considerable amount of skulduggery, but hey-ho, as far as Mona was concerned all was fair in war and politics and Mona had great skills in skulduggery.
The campaign that she had run against the Democrats had been a very dirty one to say the least and, in its viciousness, unparalleled in USA political history. With the intelligence network that Mona had at her disposal, she had been well able to dig up more dirt on the Democrat candidate, than could be dug up on her. In fact, there was no dirt that the Democrats could dig up on Mona, she had made very sure of that. So, it was that in January 2001, Mona had become the 43rd President of the United States of America and its first ever female one.
Mona’s mind now went back in time to 1985 and a failed operation that she had then run in Egypt. The mercenaries that Mona had sent to the pyramid to deal with the Nemhain and the excavation team had failed in their main objective. True they had killed some of the Egyptian diggers, but one, Omar had escaped. By some miracle he had survived the journey across the desert from the pyramid and although suffering from severe dehydration, was still alive when he had reached the Dakhla Oasis.
Arriving there he had told the authorities some wild tale about a Jinn who’d escaped from an underground pyramid in the Western Desert and some black cloud, that the Jinn, had conjured up. When Mona and JT had later discussed the story which had been told, JT had thought that a Time Quake had probably occurred.
More importantly however and extremely worrying for Mona, Omar had told the authorities that the Jinn had taken Guthrie’s research assistant, Joshua Freeman and Ahmed another of the Egyptian diggers into the black cloud, which had then vanished. None of the authorities had however known about Guthrie’s excavation, as he’d not obtained the necessary permits, wanting to keep the location of his dig secret. Therefore, not having this information, Omar’s story was dismissed at the time as the ramblings of someone who had spent too much time in the relentless desert sun and had become delusional.
Then when a few weeks later, Ahmed’s family had reported that he had gone missing, the authority’s opinion of what had happened had changed. Ahmed’s brother had also told them that Ahmed and Omar had been known to have violent arguments at times. It was therefore then suspected that Omar had killed Ahmed and was trying to cover it up with a wild tale. Omar was arrested and held in custody whilst a police investigation was carried out.
Unfortunately, a day later Omar was dead, struck down by what appeared to be a mysterious illness. Of course, the authorities weren’t to know that it had been an assassination that Mona had arranged. Morag the Siabhra that Mona employed for these matters, had used a specially manufactured toxin, tailored to Omar’s specific genetic code. He had died within hours of it being administered to him via his food.
Mona had then thought that the matter was now closed and that all the loose ends had been tied up. She was not to know that each year Joshua religiously had dinner with his Uncle Henry on Henry’s birthday. When Joshua had not turned up for this occasion, which he had never missed before, Henry had naturally wondered what had happened. When he had then tried to contact his nephew and failed, Henry had become very worried. Contacting Harvard University, Henry had learned that Joshua had gone on the expedition to Egypt with Frank Guthrie. Henry had previously read in the London Times of the suspicious circumstances of Guthrie’s death. Naturally he was now very anxious to learn of what had happened to Joshua and so Henry had contacted a friend at the Foreign Office in the UK.
The Egyptian authorities had been contacted by Henry’s friend and an investigation was set in motion. Omar would have been able to tell them the rough position of the excavation site, but of course by now Mona had had him assassinated. Digging around however, the Egyptian detective leading the investigation had learned of a hitherto unknown pyramid, which an American archaeologist had discovered. He further learned that a secret excavation was supposed to be taking place there. Being as the site was said to be near to the Libyan border; an army reconnaissance unit had been despatched to search for it.
By chance they had found the excavation site and discovered a scene of carnage there, including the wreck of a Hind helicopter. They could find no trace of Joshua or Ahmed however and the conclusions were that they’d either been captured by whoever had attacked the dig site, or had escaped into the desert and perished there. Of the pyramid itself however, there was no sign whatsoever. Mona had had the pyramid destroyed with an explosive that left no traces behind that it had ever existed. Uncle Henry grieving for his nephew’s demise had died a few years later and the affair had been forgotten. Now however, things had changed dramatically.
Ahmed, the Egyptian digger who had disappeared with Joshua, had staggered into the Dakhla Oasis two days before in a worse state than the one that Omar had been in, twenty years previously. Ahmed wasn’t expected to live but had made a rapid recovery. Unbeknown to Ahmed or the medical team treating him, Ahmed had been exposed to medical nanobots, which had been released into the atmosphere, when the Nemhain’s stasis chamber had been opened in the pyramid. Everyone had thought that he was delirious too when, having been treated, he had started to babble about a Jinn who’d escaped from an underground pyramid in the Western Desert, but when he’d mentioned Frank Guthrie and Joshua Freeman’s name, the local police had been called.
Suggestions had first been made that Ahmed was a terrorist from one of the camps in Libya. Then, however, his family and friends, who’d heard of Ahmed’s seeming return from the dead, had come forward and vouched that he was who he said he was. This now left everyone with a dilemma however, for no-one knew where Ahmed had b
een for the past twenty years. To add to the mystery, Ahmed’s wife, family and his friends, all swore that he looked just the same as he had, when they’d last seen him in 1985. Of course, the medical team knew this was impossible. When photographs of Ahmed taken in 1985 were shown to them however, they saw that he hadn’t apparently aged, but couldn’t give a rational explanation as to why not. A local newspaper picked up the story and in turn Mona’s intelligence gatherers had come across the story on the web.
So, Mona was now thinking, as Ahmed had shown up in 2005 and had survived the Time Quake, had the Nemhain and Joshua Freeman also survived and if so, what would now happen. Mona realised straight away however, that she already knew the answer to that. The Nemhain would seek revenge for being attacked and it would be Mona who would feel he Nemhain’s full wrath, when she found out who was responsible.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Abbot’s House, Trentbury, Late August 2005
John looked across at Kate and saw how happy she was having been reunited with her family. They had all sat for a good two hours or more talking, after they’d eaten dinner. Like Kate, John had been pleased to hear that his grandmother was alive and well and still living at Lost Valley Manor.
“Catherine’s 92 years old,” Kate’s mum had said, “but only looks to be in her early fifties. The effect of the medical nanobots I suppose.”
Just then Conn came in.
“John could I have a word with you please,” he said.
“Yes, certainly, Conn,” John replied getting up from his chair.
“It’s best if we go to the communications room where I can show you what I’ve found,” Conn told him as John followed him out of the room and down a corridor. Eventually they came to a door which had a panel on the wall beside it.
“Put your right hand on the hand shaped indentation on it, please, John.” John did as he was asked and heard a loud click. The door opened, revealing a staircase going downwards.
The Sol 3 Agenda Page 19
