Origin - Season Two

by James, Nathaniel Dean

Chapter 55

  The Pandora

  Sunday 17 June 2007

  1100 EEST

  Francis’s second ride out to the Pandora was a considerable improvement on the first, a testament to both the merits of bed rest and the power of pharmaceutical intervention. Several times he caught Richelle stealing glances at him, all of which he politely pretended not to notice.

  She had visited him in his room three times in the last two days, each meeting predicated on what seemed to Francis like trivial matters in light of all that was going on. Had it been anyone else, he might have read something into the visits beyond concern for his general well-being, but Richelle—and this seemed to be common knowledge—was not a woman inclined to sentiment.

  “So is Jasper stateside yet?” Francis asked.

  “Should be,” Richelle said.

  “You do know you’ll have to bring him here, right?”

  “Actually I’ve decided to have him shot.”

  Francis laughed, something he could now do without instantly regretting it. “Seems like a bit of a waste.”

  “Of what, an idiot?”

  “Jasper’s not such a bad guy,” Francis said. “A little naïve, maybe. And not too bright for a wunderkind.”

  “I like the secrecy part of things to end when people get here,” Richelle replied. “If anyone finds out he’s a wanted man, people will get nervous. So that means I have to lie, and that I don’t like.”

  “To be fair to him, he didn’t exactly know who we are. Besides, by that reasoning you’d have to shoot me too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, I intend to,” Richelle said. “Just as soon as we get this little mess cleared up. In fact, with robots on the way, and Caroline complaining about expenses, I might just cut back on humans around here altogether.”

  They both laughed at this. For just a moment their eyes met, and something passed between them in that gaze, nothing earth-shattering, or self-explanatory, but enough to silence them for a moment.

  “Don’t worry,” Richelle said. “I’m sending Titov to DC in the morning to pick him up and bring him here. I don’t like it. But as you say, we don’t exactly have a choice.”

  Everyone was waiting for them on the bridge of RP One. As soon as Francis sat down Mitch brought the two of them up to speed on what he had discovered.

  “So the Chinese are buying the North Koreans mining equipment,” Richelle said. “I’m not really seeing a problem here. They’re neighbors, aren’t they? And they’ve got more in common than most countries in the region.”

  “I think the more important question is why are they going about it in such a convoluted way?” Francis put in. “If they just wanted to help the North Koreans along, they could easily do it out in the open. If, like Mitch says, it’s all mining equipment, the Chinese build plenty of their own, and no one would bat an eyelid if they shipped it across the border in broad daylight.”

  “So they don’t want anyone to know they’re doing it,” Mitch said.

  “Sure,” Francis agreed. “But why? And more importantly, what did they need Jasper for? Again, they must have plenty of qualified people of their own.”

  The picture Mitch had left on the laptop screen was of a truck entering the fenced compound at Nampo. He now turned their attention to the real-time image on the viewport and brought up the entire cluster of warehouses and buildings inside the perimeter.

  “I’ve been tracking movement in and out of this building.” Mitch pointed at the apartment block at one end of the row. “Most of the people coming and going are clearly Korean, or at least Oriental, but I’ve also seen a Caucasian man. He’s not being escorted by guards or anything, but then there isn’t exactly anywhere to go, is there? At the moment only the four warehouses at this end seem to be in use. I haven’t seen anyone going into the others.”

  Francis looked at the picture for a long time. When he finally turned to Mitch he said, “Where’s the ship now?”

  Mitch changed the view again. “There. Probably on its way to Dubai.”

  “To pick up the next shipment,” Francis said. It wasn’t a question. “You say all of this is being invoiced to a Chinese company tied to the navy?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Mitch said.

  “Is there any way to dig a little deeper?” Francis said. “Find out where the money is originating?”

  “I could try,” Mitch said. “Although Caroline’s people are in a much better position to go snooping around than I am.”

  Francis looked at Richelle.

  “I’ll call her,” Richelle said. “What exactly do we want to know?”

  Francis considered this. “I think our best bet—other than keeping an eye on this place—is to find out where the money is coming from and where else it’s going. I have to admit, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me at the moment. That said, if they’ve decided they need to steal a geologist to help them, I’m inclined to be a bit worried, aren’t you?”

  “You think they’re digging holes for nefarious purposes?” Mitch said.

  “I think it’s a possibility, yes,” Francis said. “Their nuclear ambitions aren’t exactly a secret. Nor is the fact that they lack the expertise to do much about them.”

  Chapter 56

  Zurich, Switzerland

  Sunday 17 June 2007

  1030 CEST

  Caroline had barely stepped off the plane when her phone rang. The call was from her personal assistant.

  “I’ll be at the office in half an hour,” Caroline said, still a little groggy from the nap she had taken on the flight.

  “You may want to make it quicker,” the woman said.

  Twenty minutes later Caroline stepped out of the elevator to find her assistant waiting for her, phone in hand. “It’s Richelle.”

  Caroline took the phone, stepped into her office and closed the door.

  “Caroline?”

  “I’m here. What’s going on?”

  Richelle gave her a considerably abbreviated version of what Mitch had found out.

  “And you want to know where the money is coming from?” Caroline asked.

  “That too,” Richelle said, “But more importantly we need to know where else it’s going and how it’s getting there.”

  “I’ll get Magda and Rex on it right away.”

  Caroline left her office and headed to the elevator. When it stopped, the doors opened onto a small reception area flanked by two doors. On the wall above the unoccupied counter was a chrome logo that read: KG Partners.

  The firm was a subsidiary of the Karl Gustav Foundation and had no other clients. It consisted of a conference room, a small office housing the company’s operations, and the much larger computer room, where a farm of high speed servers toiled endlessly in near sub-zero temperatures. Both of the company’s staff came out to meet her.

  Rex, an ex-employee of Deutsche Bank, was a young engineer whose grasp on the technicalities of the modern computer-driven banking system was both firm and steady. He had received his job offer from KG Partners on the steps of the German Federal Fiscal Court in Munich, where he had been testifying as an expert witness in a big tax avoidance case. His testimony—he had spent four hours and twenty-two minutes on the stand—had come very close to sending both the judge and the prosecuting attorney to sleep on more than one occasion.

  His boss, Magda, was a slim woman of Swiss origin in her early forties. Magda’s father had been acquitted during one of the lesser-known trials at Nuremberg for his alleged role in securing loans for the Third Reich when it was discovered that most of the banks putting up the money were in New York. At the age of twenty-three Magda had inherited the trading firm her father had built up after the war when he died unexpectedly of a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

  Instead of selling the firm for the modest sum it was worth, she had devoted herself to learning the art of finance. As a testament to her success she had lost only a dozen of her father’s hundred or so clients, and most of these had wal
ked away as a result of prejudice, not losses. In the mid-1990s the firm, still named after her father, had been derided in several major newspapers as a benefactor of Nazi slave-labor. The fact that the story was later proven to be entirely false had been small consolation to Magda, whose investors had fled en masse in the wake of the media storm. When Caroline had first met her, Magda had been bankrupt, unemployed, blacklisted and flirting with the idea of making a quick and painless exit into the great beyond. Rightly suspecting that Caroline had hired her at least partly out of sympathy, Magda had set herself to proving that she had no need for charity. Within a year, backed by only a modest investment by the foundation, she had built a portfolio worth over six million dollars, and won both the respect and friendship of her patron.

  At the turn of the new millennium Magda had approached Caroline with a radical suggestion. She was adamant that the fifty million-plus dollars in shares the foundation owned in the rapidly growing tech sector was a house of cards waiting to collapse. Reluctantly, Caroline had agreed to let her shed 50 percent of the stock. A few months later the dot-com bubble exploded and the market went into free-fall. When asked later what had made her so sure, Magda had answered with only two words: Federal Reserve. She explained that the US central bank, far from being a source of stability, was fueling speculative excess by refusing to allow the market to dictate the cost of credit. This in turn was funneling huge sums of cheap debt into the stock market, creating a surge in prices that bore no rational resemblance to the actual value of underlying assets.

  Six months ago Magda had hired Rex and directed him to replace the firm’s aging computers with a state-of-the-art trading platform capable of both monitoring and keeping up with the activities of the world’s premier banking institutions. The move had been a wise one. Not long after the system was up and running, Magda and Rex had submitted a detailed report on the state of both the American and Irish real estate markets that ominously warned of a coming collapse that would have long-reaching ramifications. According to Magda’s analysis, the housing bubble in the United States was actually a pyramid scheme fueling a vast and hugely complicated securitization machine that might just take many of the world’s major financial institutions down with it and result in a serious sovereign debt crisis in both Europe and the United States. So far all her predictions were bearing out.

  “We need to talk,” Caroline said.

  Magda made no reply, only opened the door to the conference room and nodded for Rex to go in. When they were all seated around the table Caroline wrote two words on the legal pad in front of her: Panjin Partners.

  “What is it?” Magda asked.

  “It’s a state-owned company based in Beijing. Officially it’s a procurement arm of the People’s Navy.”

  “But you think it’s something else?” Rex said.

  “Possibly.”

  “And what do you want us to do?” Magda said.

  Caroline hesitated for a moment and said, “It’s more what I’d like you to do if you can.”

  Rex looked at Magda who nodded and said, “We’ll look into it.”

  “You understand you’ll be breaking the law,” Caroline said. “I’m not insisting, just—”

  “You don’t need to explain,” Magda said. “We’ve got you, right?”

  Rex nodded.

  “I appreciate it,” Caroline said. “And I’m guessing I don’t need to tell you to keep this to yourselves.”

  Magda shook her head, “No, you don’t. I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got something.”

  Caroline stood and walked to the door.

  “Boss?” Magda said.

  “Yes.”

  “This is serious, isn’t it?”

  Caroline nodded. “Yes.”

  When Caroline was gone Rex took the notepad and looked at the name for a moment.

  “Got any tricks up your sleeve I don’t know about?” Magda said.

  Rex smiled. “More than you could possibly imagine.”

  Chapter 57

  Washington DC

  Sunday 17 June 2007

  0600 EDT

  Titov’s flight arrived at Dulles International at six in the morning. With only his carry-on for luggage, he managed to beat the queue to immigration and pick up his rental car in a little over half an hour. By seven he was pulling into the International House of Pancakes across the street from the Arlington Hilton.

  Titov had done plenty of pick-ups for Aurora before and knew the drill well. With the exception of Mitch Rainey, who had been transferred directly out of Skyline’s clearance facility in Houston using the forged emergency authorization arranged by the late “Chief”, Brendan Fisher, most recruits from the United States began their journey from the safe-house on Willoughby Spit in Virginia. From there they boarded one of several designated ships bound for either the Swedish port of Oskarhamn or Karlskrona, from where they would be transferred to the Karl Gustav, and if all went well, never seen or heard from again.

  Titov spotted Wentworth’s car and parked beside it. Wentworth himself appeared a minute later holding two cups of coffee and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Titov it’s good to see you again, my friend,” Wentworth said, handing Titov a cup. “How have you been?”

  “All things considered, not too bad,” Titov said. “Although I could have done without this.”

  “I’m afraid it was me who insisted. This whole situation is a potential time bomb. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we need Klein out of here as soon as possible.”

  “I just hope I fare better than the last time I babysat him,” Titov said, smiling.

  “What happened, happened,” Wentworth said. “I don’t mean to sound cold, but our man in India killing himself was a stroke of luck. If he’d talked we would have a far bigger problem on our hands right now.”

  “What makes you think he didn’t?” Titov said.

  “They would have made the connection by now. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep if I didn’t believe that.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Titov said. “I really do.”

  Wentworth handed him an envelope. “Passport, driver’s license and social security. The address is also in there. Ask for a Mr. Adrian Pierce at reception, room one-six-five. I’ll let Paulette know you’re on your way.”

  “Then I guess it’s farewell again,” Titov said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Wentworth said. “Perhaps one of these days we’ll get a chance to catch up properly.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Titov waited until Wentworth was gone before opening the envelope. When he saw the address he smiled to himself. Wentworth was nothing if not practical. It was the Arlington Hilton.

  Chapter 58

  Aurora

  Sunday 17 June 2007

  1700 EEST

  Erik studied the people sitting around him at the conference table in Richelle’s office as if convinced they were all playing some elaborate joke on him. When no one seemed prepared to admit that this was indeed the case, he looked back down at the map on the table. It was an aerial view of the Isle of Dragons. On the eastern tip someone had drawn a large crude X in red marker.

  “So?” Richelle said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m tempted to believe you’ve all gone mad,” Erik said. “You’re saying this thing is just going to drop out of the sky?”

  Heinz nodded. “Not drop exactly, just fall. It uses parachutes to slow down. A bit like the lunar module. Although this thing is obviously going to be a lot heavier.”

  “How much heavier?”

  “A hundred and twenty tons, give or take.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  “Roughly,” Heinz said. “That’s based on the relative weight of RP One, assuming it’s made of the same alloy.”

  Erik turned to Richelle. “You do realize we’d have no way of moving something that heavy, right?”

  Richelle nodded. “Heinz thinks we can hide it.”

 
“Hide it?”

  “I don’t see any alternative,” Heinz said. “With something temporary at first, until we can build a more permanent structure around it.”

  “Like?” Erik said.

  “A disguise,” Heinz said. “I was thinking perhaps an irregular fiberglass structure of some kind that will blend into the surroundings. Something made to resemble stone.”

  “Well I’m glad you’ve figured it all out,” Erik laughed. “How long have we got?”

  “Ten days,” Heinz said.

  “Ten days?” Erik said. “I’d need twice that just to come up with a design for this harebrained scheme. As for the materials, you’re looking at a month to get everything together and shipped out.”

  “I know we’re cutting it a bit close,” Richelle said, “if I was talking to anyone else I’d agree it could never work.”

  “Well, I’m flattered,” Erik said. “But this isn’t a question of determination, it’s a matter of logistics. You know as well as I do we can’t just move stuff directly here from source. It’s too much of a security risk.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Erik,” Richelle said. “We’re committed now. If we call off the drop we may not get a chance again.”

  Erik considered this for a moment and said, “How big is this thing?”

  Heinz jotted down three figures in the notebook in front of him, tore out the page and handed it over.

  “For the record,” Erik said, “I think I should have been consulted on this before the decision was made. If nothing else, this is going to pose one hell of a security threat.”

  When no one replied, Erik stood, glared at Heinz and tucked the sheet of paper into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. “Well, I guess I’d better get to work.”

  Chapter 59

  Qingdao, China

  Sunday 17 June 2007

  2300 CST

  Commander Duan shifted his weight in the uncomfortable passenger seat of the army jeep and turned to look back through the rear window for what might well have been the hundredth time. “Slow down. You’re getting too far ahead.”