The Sons of Scarlatti

by John McNally

  “Angry? You have no idea…”

  “Good. You’re only really effective when you’re angry, have you noticed that?”

  “You stuck-up, upper-class bloody wizard on a stick!” Al began to hiss back when –

  “Sir! Dr Allenby!”

  They realised an assistant had been shouting at them across the gallery for some time.

  “The satphone on the yacht, sir! It’s ringing!”

  The bubble burst. “Halt all work on the accelerator!” ordered King.

  He and Al raced back to the command area, listening to the satphone ring over the audio feed.

  They retook their positions at the centre of the control gallery at 03:46 (BST) and ordered the satphone onboard the motor yacht in the Bay of Biscay be answered.

  Onboard, the lead commando received the order, and attached the handset to Stefan’s laptop. “Trois. Deux. Un,” he said, and picked up.

  * * *

  DAY THREE 03:46 (BST). Siberia

  Li Jun jumped.

  The alarm sounded shrill and hard. It was sunrise in Siberia, and for a moment she thought she was in the barracks asleep.

  She snapped out of it. She had been given fresh blood and stimulants to maintain focus and they had made her edgy. She must fight to maintain self-control at all costs. She felt her fingers twitch as she zeroed in.

  In his lair, Kaparis was tackling the championship downhill at Zermatt, his entire screen array devoted to the virtual reality experience as he shot down the piste, life-support apparatus bouncing on hydraulic rockers to mimic the sensation of movement and drag while he breathed an infusion of pine needles and powdered snow.

  “Sir, we have a 109 breach of the Atlantic,” Li Jun broke in.

  Kaparis blinked and instantly the ski scene evaporated.

  “Stefan and the yacht have been fatally compromised,” reported Li Jun.

  “Oh dear,” Kaparis said, as his regular screen array refreshed. “Do you have an indication of what might have happened?”

  “Not yet. But the response code has been poorly copied and Stefan’s chip did not register.”

  “System integrity?”

  “Secure. They will only be able to trace the last leg of the signal route.”

  The last leg of the signal route ran through various Russian companies and trusts used by Li Jun as a front and forming only the very outermost shell of her fiendishly complex cyber-security set-up.

  “There is no chance of them tracing it back to here then?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Good. I would hate our lives to depend on it.”

  “Of course, Master.”

  Kaparis flicked his gaze towards screens showing radar and traffic activity in the area of Hook Hall. Nothing seemed to be moving with any urgency, and it was nearly 4am.

  “What a pity. They’re not confining themselves to the task in hand,” he remarked to Heywood.

  His eyes went to the live feed from the house. Still Kane laboured. But Kaparis was confident he would succeed. Indeed, from the operation so far had come a rather delightful image of the boy Drake looking rather uncouth… The fight in the boy’s eyes really was something special.

  He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But…

  “Would it be amusing at some point, do you think, to drop them a little reminder?”

  * * *

  “…These apparently false directorships are in turn all allied to an organisation called Quadrock Investments, registered in Hong Kong.”

  Al paced. He was out of his depth in the world of corporate and financial subterfuge, but felt that if he kept pacing up and down like a caged tiger he could at least add a sense of purpose and momentum.

  The commandos had tried to patch the satphone call into the laptop, but it had cut immediately – some digital response error must have been detected – but seconds later technicians reported that enough signal had been exchanged during the short connection for the call to be traced back as far as the telecoms account of a ghost company in Russia.

  King got straight on to the FSB and Spetsnaz3 Command in Moscow. Now they were up and running again. Onscreen, advisors were being replaced around the world by hurriedly woken Generals and Presidents.

  All eyes were currently glued to a pair of forensic accountants, one from MI6 in the CFAC, Sonia, and one onscreen from the FSB in Moscow, Yuri. The lead from the yacht to the Russian front company had generated a blizzard of corporate intelligence and it was their job, together with some whiz-bang software, to pick a clear trail through it all as document after document flashed by onscreen. Nobody else could understand a word they were saying.

  “…Wheelie trusts then channel back through the Macau-Lisbon exchanges…” said Sonia.

  “…to Section 14 Luxemburgski clearing houses…” said Yuri, “which in turn own a third basket of legitimate companies…”

  “…that all lead back again to Russia and the Novoskodorv network?”

  “Yes, Novoskodorv, but in pool trusts.”

  “Oh dear,” said Sonia.

  “Problem?” said King.

  “Very dark forest… May take many, many days to go through,” said Yuri.

  “What is he saying?” asked the US President.

  “Basically, a system of ownership by multiple defunct companies not yet digitally re-registered. A paper-only kaleidoscope of ownership preferred by international criminal gangs, because, by the time you’ve traced each share to source, they’re long gone,” said Sonia.

  “Time frame?”

  “About a month.”

  “Great.”

  “Aha! Criminal gangs and one very, very shy investor!” said Yuri, suddenly excited, calling up a photocopy of a document with three signatures on it, then finding the same three again, and again on several more.

  “Ah!” cried Sonia.

  “The three stoogski!” said Yuri.

  “The three stooges,” explained Sonia. “Three false identities associated with one very private man – someone we all want to know a lot more about, the reclusive David Anthony Pytor Kaparis.”

  Sonia hit Return and a formal picture of young, able-bodied ‘Dr D.A.P. Kaparis’ flashed up onscreen. A tall, superior, almost perfectly chiselled young man.

  Commander King felt himself draw closer to his enemy.

  Al stopped pacing and his jaw dropped. “Stop!”

  He couldn’t quite believe it. He put on his glasses to take a closer look, to try and remember.

  “I think… I think…” said Al.

  “You know him?” asked King.

  “I think my brother-in-law may have had something to do with this.”

  “Your brother-in-law?”

  Thousands of miles away, Li Jun hit Return and threw a cyber curve ball west across the great Eurasian landmass at the speed of light.

  …an attack so complex, ferocious and overwhelming that it not only blitzed the Hook Hall digital defences, but also caused a power surge that blew out the picture of the young D.A.P. Kaparis and sent sparks flying through the control gallery.

  There were shouts and minor panic.

  In Siberia, a direct AV feed blinked up on Kaparis’s array from inside the CFAC – the same one the world leaders enjoyed of Al, King and co. It wouldn’t last long. The Hook Hall defence system would soon repel such an open assault. But a few moments were enough.

  Kaparis cut through the hubbub.

  “Good morning, Dr Allenby. Good morning, Commander King.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The last Oslo to London flight, severely delayed because of the emergency, had seen Violet Allenby land at a deserted Heathrow Airport at 04:02 hours.

  She had managed to get a short flight from Trondheim to Oslo, then, knitting and chatting the whole way, the connecting flight to London. As a result, two Australians would be coming to stay in June (an architecture student and a nurse, both charming) and she had promised a young ‘science major’ (shy) from Des Moines, Iowa, an internship
at Al’s lab. She’d also completed a three-colour sweater panel and slept for two hours.

  Altogether she was relatively bright-eyed and well-rested for her homecoming and was appalled to find the airport in chaos and about to close due to an ‘Evacuation Panic’.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she’d asked a flustered customs official.

  “We have to clear out by dawn, because of the gas cloud.”

  “What ‘gas cloud’?” she’d demanded, suspicions rising.

  After explaining what had happened, staff asked if she had a way to get home, as many transport unions had refused to let their members travel anywhere near the restricted zone. When they learned she lived inside the zone, they advised her to run for her life.

  “Nonsense,” she had said, switching on her phone to harangue Al’s voicemail for the umpteenth time.

  “Just point me in the direction of whoever is in charge.”

  * * *

  DAY THREE 04:05 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey

  The command gallery fell silent as Kaparis’s weird, disembodied voice floated around the room, punctuated by the hum and hiss of the iron lung drawing air into his broken body.

  “As it seems you’ve shot my messenger, I thought it just as well I get in touch directly… I presume you are both still in post?”

  “It’s him…” said Al. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to look out for.”

  King thought, Keep him talking – the longer the line was open, the more chance there was of tracing something.

  “Good morning… Dr Kaparis?” King said.

  “How clever! However did you discover my name?” said Kaparis, pleased they’d made an effort.

  “International ways and means. You have succeeded in uniting the world,” King went on and stood over Sonia to take in the notes on her screen.

  “David Anthony Pytor Kaparis. You were born Paris 1965. Left Cambridge University following a breakdown 1990. Zurich in financial services for a decade, specialising in new and ever more complex financial products. Circa 2000 you were paralysed – possibly as the result of a drugs overdose. You then disappeared without trace, around 10 billion dollars disappearing with you. It’s rumoured you rigged the market in toxic US mortgage bonds in the noughties, cashing out at the peak and making yourself the world’s first trillionaire.”

  “I was crippled as a result of gross medical negligence. Please amend you records,” Kaparis hissed.

  “Of course. And do please tell us, Dr Kaparis, what is it exactly that you want?”

  Kaparis realised his pulse rate had climbed, so took a moment.

  “I am hoping, Commander King, to improve the human condition, for which I require certain technologies. I have tried assassination, famine, financial chaos, but have experienced only diminishing returns – and everything takes so long.”

  “And for this you have to threaten Armageddon?”

  “Me? Remember, you are the ones who created the Scarlatti, this monster; I’m just putting it to good use. It could be one of hundreds of vile organisms or nerve agents locked away in your collective vaults. You so-called Great Powers hold a gun to our heads every day.”

  “If allowed to flourish, it will kill billions. Can you really say it is safely under your control? You are forcing a nuclear response. If you do not give us the location of the nest site, the only way to ensure those nymphs don’t hatch will be to scorch the earth and leave a blight upon it for generations to come.”

  “Only Surrey,” Kaparis protested. “A few garden centres and some mock-Tudor villas.”

  “Half a million lives displaced and homes destroyed.”

  “More if you stretch the blast area as far as Bracknell.”

  King remained unamused.

  “You must know you will never be allowed to get away with this.”

  “You misunderstand. I don’t need anybody to allow anything,” Kaparis explained. “I am a higher form of being than you, just as you are a higher form of being than those who serve you. Look around you. You are better than them.”

  “That’s it!” said Al, who had been wracking his brains trying to remember the details, delighted to have got there, taking centre stage and wagging his finger up at the camera.

  “I remember now! You had some mediocre theory about a master race and went loco! Am I right?” said Al, as if recalling someone who’d come third in an egg-and-spoon race.

  Heywood saw Kaparis’s heart rate leap off the scale at the word ‘mediocre’.

  “Some master race struggle for dominance, wasn’t it?”

  “Race had nothing whatsoever to do with it!”

  “Supermen? Or super-duper people or something? And you got the statistics mixed up and were proved wrong by my brother-in-law, Ethan Drake. I was only a kid really, the details are kind of hazy,” Al said, playing to the gallery, “but didn’t you stalk him for a while and they had to call the police because you turned up on Christmas Day? Didn’t they get some kind of court order against you? Maybe you were a little bit in love with Maria too? I think that was—”

  “I’ll show you about the struggle for life!” Kaparis snapped.

  He ripped the still image of Finn from his array and cast it across cyberspace so that the image briefly appeared on every screen at the CFAC – Finn’s face as he hung on the cable in the wall. Bleached by the white light. Defiant. And seeming to aim a kick towards the camera.

  Jaws dropped.

  Al’s heart leapt, and was alarmed at the same time – Finn. Alive. Fighting?

  “And while I’d love to stay and chat…” said Kaparis, trying to keep his voice steady and fighting a losing battle with lung capacity, “…I just popped in to leave you a little reminder.”

  The CFAC feed on the Kaparis array was flickering out as the Hook Hall cyber-defence system started to reboot and fight back. At her keyboards, Li Jun fought to retain it.

  “We have the dear boy, as you can see. We have the Scarlattis too. If you want the location of either, I want the Fat Doughnut on that ship and under way at dawn, and the sequencing codes from Dr Allenby. Once I have them, you may have the location of the Scarlattis’ nest site, and the unfortunate Infinity Drake.

  “The first of the Scarlatti nymphs are reaching maturity now and, with the help of the morning sun, they should soon be ready for their final moult. They will then fly the nest and wreak havoc upon the world. Time is short, so don’t waste any more of it trying to find me – you never will. And Allenby? If you want any chance of seeing your nephew again, I will have those sequencing codes… It would be a pity to unpack such a toy and not have the correct instructions.”

  Li Jun indicated she was about to lose contact.

  “Sweet dreams, Dr Allenby.”

  The gallery was in blackout for a few moments after the link to Kaparis was cut and the cyber-attack repelled. There were shouts. Slowly, screens blinked back to life.

  Al slumped into a seat and stared. The picture of Finn remained onscreen.

  “Could it be a fake?” King asked a technician. “They must have hours of CCTV of him from here.”

  But Al read the fight in Finn’s eyes. He’d seen it before in the days after his mother had died.

  “No. That’s for real.”

  “What’s your strategy now, Allenby?” General Jackman asked Al from the US.

  Al didn’t take his eyes off Finn.

  “We cannot give that man anything. He’s mad. He’s powerful and irrational and quite mad.”

  “We have no choice. Give him the rig, then we’ll go after him,” said General Mount beside them in the gallery.

  “How’s he ever going to be able to pick it off that cargo ship? Let him have it, we’ll follow then – boom – hit him hard,” agreed General Jackman from the US.

  King could see Al was barely listening and stepped in with his own analysis.

  “Nothing Kaparis said detracted from the credibility of his threat. He’s convinced, he’s capable and he’s a
control freak. He’ll be three steps ahead of anything we anticipate. But at some point, to pull this off, he has to take a risk. Until then… we play along and buy as much time as we can.”

  “He owns time right now,” said the US President.

  “What is he going to gain from the technology? A few little teeny people?” asked the French Conseiller Scientifique.

  Al spoke up again. “Whatever he wants this technology for, it will be far, far worse than anything we can imagine. I tell you he’s mad… You open Pandora’s box – you people made me open the damn box – and this is what happens.”

  Al stood up. Action. Just keep going.

  “They’re alive. We find them before it’s too late. That’s all that matters.”

  “How, Herr Doktor?” demanded the German Chancellor. “The only way is if he gifts them to you. Nein? And to gift them to you he needs the Boldklub Doughnut and the codes.”

  Her English might lack finesse, but nothing could fault her logic. “Unless you have yet another Scarlatti hidden somewhere to smell out the others you have scattered about the place?” said the French Conseiller Scientifique sarcastically.

  “There are no more Scarlattis,” answered King, and added grimly, “yet.”

  A spark fired in Al’s mind. A tiny spark, but a spark nonetheless. He fell into a trance as he tried to work through the possibilities… smell…

  “No, not another Scarlatti,” Al started, “but quantum vibration – if that’s the basis of the sense of smell – then all we’d need was… although…”

  King looked at him quizzically. And Al realised if he carried on thinking out loud people would start to think he’d gone crazy. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought.

  Meanwhile the US President leant forward. “I want to make one thing absolutely clear. You can make whatever play you like. But if we run over that deadline and you don’t act? We can’t stand by and watch the world get wiped out. With regret, we will nuke you ourselves.”