Tag - A Technothriller

by Simon Royle

  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.

  We sat in darkness, the lights from the city providing enough light to see our shapes but not much else.

  He sighed a long, drawn out sigh.

  “This has been a messy business getting the Tag Law in place. What have you learned from Bardsdale?”

  “She’s planning on using the Rape laws to prevent the Tag Law. The Rape law states no person may be violated without their permission. It’s possible to argue that the injection qualifies as a violation of one’s body.”

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “Mine.”

  “And is it a solid case?”

  “Yes it is. There are actually some precedents, which I have shown Annika, that support the position.”

  “I see, and –”

  “And it’s solid, but not watertight,” I said, and smiled a low grin at him. He smiled back.

  “Go on.”

  “The precedents I chose were all individual against individual or corporation, i.e. a private entity against another private entity. And if that were the case, then they would hold up. The problem with the position is that this is not a private entity. It is the will of the people and therefore cannot constitute violation of an individual because an individual is the people.”

  Sir Thomas chuckled and took a belt of his whisky, looking at me over the rim of the glass. He glanced inside the living room of his penthouse to see if the guards and Mariko were still sitting in the same place, then he leant closer to me.

  “How are you going to disengage from her and the party?”

  “I’ll have a change of heart just before the final presentations of the differing sides of the argument. That should be on March 14. Without me, they’ll use their party arbitrator, and your lawyer can tear him to shreds.”

  He chuckled and poured us each another shot. Then he launched into a soft-voiced rambling discourse, intermittently pouring us double, then triple shots from the bottle, talking about the Tag Law and the control it would bring. From the Tag Law somehow he segued into Darwin and the natural law of selection. Leaning back in his lounge chair and saying softly, almost a whisper, “Technology has betrayed Darwin’s natural law. Nature needs help.”

  His words sent a shiver through me in the warm night air. And then he fell silent, and we sat side by the side the half-empty bottle of Macallan’s between us. I waited, alert, but feigning a sluggish drowsiness.

  His voice came out of the darkness. I had to strain to hear what he was saying.

  “It took me a long time to be sure that you were ready, but this work you’ve done for me, with Bardsdale, tells me you are. Are you ready, Jonah?”

  Clearing my throat heavily and sitting up slowly in the lounge chair I said, “Ready for what, Uncle?”

  “Are you ready for power, Jonah. Pure power. The power of life and death. The power to change people’s lives. The power to do anything you want. Are you ready for that?”

  I turned my head slowly to look at him. I smelt his excitement and I could see, in the shadow outline, a tremor in his jowls. His eyes caught a glint of the light from the living room, giving them a yellowish glow. The hatred I felt for him put an edge in my voice. I hissed a sharp, cold-voiced, urgent, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Are you sure? I have had my doubts in the past but lately you’ve shown me a side of you that I hadn’t appreciated. Perhaps because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. But now I feel you’ve become the man I wanted you to be. You’re like me in so many ways, but you are your own man and you’ll make your own destiny. This is no trivial matter. If you are ready, truly ready, and remember what I said about the power of life and death, then tell me so. But think hard before you answer because there is no turning back. If you say yes, you will be asked to take a test of loyalty to me, to us, and failure to pass that test is death. You say yes and then you are one of us for life.”

  “Who is us?”

  “Are you ready? Life and death, Jonah. Are you capable of that kind of decision? Are you sure you are ready?”

  I felt spittle hit my hand as he spoke, and used the darkness to hide wiping the back of my hand on my outer leggings. I sat silent, my brain hurtling at maniacal speed with the thought that this was it. This was the moment we’d been working towards since my trip to the Moon. He was asking me to join the Hawks.

  Using my hatred for him, I said in an even, soft voice, “Yes, I am capable of a life or death decision. I am sure I am ready. I was trained for this moment wasn’t I? You trained me. All those special schools, the exercise and mental regimes I went through. This is my destiny, is it not?”

  “It is, Jonah. It is, and it gives me great pleasure to hear your words. ‘Us’ is the Hawks, Jonah. Not everything in that runner’s letter was a lie. The Hawks are very real and I am a very senior Hawk. Now that I have told you this simple truth, you will die a Hawk. There is no going back now.”

  A quiet panic spread through me as his words sunk in. Survival was never a priority but his words squashed that hope with the finality and certainty of their tone. ‘You will die a Hawk’.

  He stood up, supporting himself on my armrest as he rose. He said, “Wait here. I have a gift for you.” And he walked around me down the length of the balcony, past the living room and stopped at the large windows of his sleeping room, tapping softly on the clearfilm windows. Someone, I guessed Charles, opened the door from within and he stepped out of sight.

  I dared not sho
w any reaction. My mind was racing. I sat up straighter then I reached down and picked up my glass of whisky, taking a long swallow.

  Sir Thomas came back out onto the balcony, his silhouette blocking the blood red light of the SingCom sign behind him. He walked over and knelt by the side of my lounge chair obscuring the view of those inside the living room. I turned to face him. I could smell the whisky on his breath. I could see a bubble of spittle on his lip.

  “Here, take this. You’re going to need it,” his voice rasped, and he slid something out of his sleeve. Holding the armrest of my chair and feeling for my arm, he slipped his hand down until he felt mine, and placed there something cold and heavy. He pushed my hand away until it was in my lap. He took out his Devstick and used the glow from its screen to show me the dagger in its scabbard.

  It was about thirty-six cents long with a silver chain hanging from the cross guard. An SS sign and an Eagle with its wings spread were inset into handle. I was shocked that I was holding something from that evil time. The shadows cast from the light of his Devstick made him look ghoulish as he reached over and, taking the dagger by its handle, slowly withdrew the blade from its scabbard. There were German words written on it. ‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue’.