Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ Tom says.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘According to the Aussie laboratory at work on the spores, Biothrax is not effective against this strain. So in other words, our armed forces are not protected, you and I are not protected, the effing King is not protected …’

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘So sorry, but one spends years believing that in the case of a bio-terror attack, at least the mechanics of law and order would hang together. If they don’t …’

  ‘Let’s find this damn ship, Tom.’

  Charles Houghton, standing at the bridge of HMC Valiant, cleaving her way across the choppy waters of the Thames Estuary, is red in the face, his lips pressed hard together so they turn colourless. The Isra’s master has failed to submit any of the revised forms as promised.

  Every crewman on Valiant, from first mate to assistant cook, knows that Captain Houghton dislikes any variation from protocol, but even worse, dishonesty and deception. Rowdy behaviour or an overly casual attitude will also deliver any errant midshipman into decidedly hot water.

  Giving the acerbic captain a chance to resubmit the forms had gone against the grain for Charles, and now he regrets that decision bitterly. The fact that it had happened because he was called away to inspect a cargo of what turned out to be dried herbs, not Indian hemp, only multiplied his anger.

  This man Issac Walid is a fool, a liar, and now he is going to regret his slovenliness!

  Consulting the chartplotter he calls a direction change to the helmsman. Charles thinks grimly of what he is going to do when he reaches the Isra. Impound the ship, certainly. Charge that oaf of a captain with at least two offences under the UK Border Protection Act.

  Worry starts to show in Charles’s narrowed eyes. The Isra should be in view by now. It’s not a particularly tall ship, yet, located just a mile away from his present position, it should at least be showing up on the radar. He can see other vessels, but not the Isra.

  ‘The damn rapscallion,’ he mutters under his breath. That cad of a master, he decides, has either moved or put to sea without filing the requisite permissions. Charles Houghton’s face positively burns now.

  ‘Sir, urgent private communication from base.’

  Charles moves back to the telephone handset that is provided for the captain’s-ears-only messages. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You have urgent new orders to locate a Cypriot-registered freighter by the name of Isra.’

  Charles, already pent-up, almost bursts with excitement. ‘My God, sir, I’m looking for her now. They were here, I was on her last night — but she’s moved.’

  ‘Well done, give me her last known location.’

  Charles does so. ‘We’re there right now. We’ll start looking. If she’s still in British territorial waters we’re going to find her.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 1500

  The abandoned church fills quickly. People, mostly men, walk up from the tube station at Leytonstone or nearby car parks. They come from all over London — the tough suburbs of West Ham and Aldersbrook. Some are white-collar types from out west and even the inner-city. Some are veterans of the English Defence League and the National Front. There is no one particular type here, Eddie sees with approval. This is a movement of the people, transcending class and occupation.

  Truck drivers, labourers, tradesmen, even teachers and accountants, arms folded across chests, black T-shirts with cuffs stretched over biceps. White faces, goatees, buzz cuts, moustaches. These are not mere foot-soldiers of the cause, but district leaders, organisers, minor officials of the Crusader organisation — the elite of a new wave that will save Britain.

  This old building is perfect. Five-hundred-year-old stone walls, cracked and leaning. The stained-glass windows faded, walls blackened where rainwater has crept through the leaking vault. Yet there is a grandeur here that cannot be denied. A massive banner of St George’s Cross, symbol of the Crusaders for a thousand years, red on white, hangs from each wall of the church. The largest is behind the makeshift stage. Eddie wears the same emblem on each sleeve of his dark-blue work shirt, and in the centre of his cap.

  The borough and suburb leaders all wear a similar uniform. This is the Waffen-SS of a new century, inspired by hatred and anger and frustration at their own inadequacy.

  They raise their arms and shout. ‘To purity. To purity. To purity.’ Stamping their feet in time with the rhythm, they chant about jobs, and colour, and one language for one people. English.

  Tradition, Eddie thinks to himself. Our country means tradition. Now is the moment when a legacy comes to bear. The legacy of Anders Breivik shooting seventy-seven people dead on the island of Utoya in Norway; of the anti-immigrant riots in Paris and Oslo. The railway bombing at Bologna, Italy, that killed eighty-four. Timothy McVeigh’s attack in Oklahoma that killed one hundred and sixty-three and was the worst act of terrorism on American soil until an al-Qa’ida cell started flying planes into buildings.

  The far right are rising. All over the world.

  When Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh was killed by an al-Qa’ida affiliate, thousands of protesters took to the streets, venting their fury. In England, David Copeland, one of Eddie’s heroes, began a campaign of bombings intended to start a race war. One of his bombs sent a four-inch nail into the brain of a two-year-old child.

  The brutal hacking up of a British soldier in Woolwich, London by two North African Muslims was another turning point. English Defence League loyalists, led by stalwarts such as Tommy Robinson, rallied thousands using Twitter, Facebook, and the Blackberry cell phone network, after the killers announced their intention to ‘start a war in London’.

  That was the beginning, really, Eddie decides as he struts across the room. That was when the general public started to get politicised. Started to care.

  Eddie enjoys the moment, shaking the hands of men he respects. Good, hard men. There are women here too, not many, but enough to show that this is not just a male thug thing like the press makes out, but real people.

  He walks to the stage of timber planks spread over forty-four-gallon drums. Beside it stands the inner circle. Five men, all but one of them over fifty. As a relatively young man, Eddie’s ascent to the top has been fast. But this is his project. Terry Caldwell came to him, and now all the men will listen when he speaks. He has gone from a leader to a hero, overnight.

  After another round of handshakes and greetings Eddie climbs onto the stage and waits for silence, using both hands in a damping-down motion. Finally, the last murmur dies away, and he is the centre of attention.

  ‘Welcome, brothers and sisters. I have news for you, big news. Let me read to you the exact words of an operational update from the DRFS directorate of MI6 — our very own Secret Intelligence Service … “the Director must regretfully advise that a group comprising a known security risk have appropriated materials …”’

  When Eddie finishes reading he adds, ‘For those of you who can’t understand plain English, this is what it means. The rag-heads have got their hands on biological weapons, and these drones that will spread it from the sky. Stuff that Saddam Hussein was cooking up years ago. They’re going to wipe out London — cities all over the world. They tried in Sydney, but were stopped just in time.’

  The anger in the room is palpable.

  ‘It’s a kind of anthrax. Deadliest fucking disease in existence. They are going to finish us off, unless we finish them first. Our contact in the Met says that they’ll make their move tomorrow — but not if we throw every single one of them into the sea first. The moment we’ve waited for all these years is finally here. The planning committee has estimated that one hundred thousand of us will mobilise.’

  The crowd growls in anger. Eddie again calls them to silence. ‘Precision is necessary now. Planning. I need your attention. This is going to take a little time. I want to talk through every district. I’ll detail the starting points for each group, and the
n we’re going to flash up contact numbers for the organisers. At the end I want every bloke and woman here to know exactly what they are going to do.

  ‘First thing is, as soon as you leave here, buy gas masks, industrial ones with the one-micron ratings — you can get them from hardware shops or surplus stores. Buy them for you and your families. Get in fast because they’ll more than likely sell out.

  ‘Then listen, brothers and sisters, within twenty-four hours you and I are going to celebrate the end of the age of leftist bullshit, the end of the dogma of multiculturalism, and the beginning of an age where the white man takes his rightful place as the leader of the world.’

  The door of the church opens and Aedd Mawr, the druid priest, walks in, arms waving in front of his body and eyes closed in some kind of religious trance.

  ‘This,’ he shrieks, ‘is the soil in which your ancestors are buried. It is defiled. Defiled. Take it back for your children and spill the blood of an insidious enemy.’

  Wild cheers, and breathing like the drumming of an army.

  FORTY-FIVE

  BLACK SEA, 35000 FEET

  LOCAL TIME: 1800

  Julian had time only to dress in his best jeans and shirt, tie his long blond hair back with a leather thong, and pack his computer equipment carefully.

  The Singapore Airlines A320 is less than full. He has a spare seat beside him, allowing space to keep working with his laptop spread out on the tray table, the screen tilted lower than he would have liked because of the size of the machine.

  Beautiful air hostesses treat him solicitously, bothering him as little as possible while he works single-mindedly away on the computer.

  Julian senses that the next twenty-four hours will be momentous in his life. Finishing the work of months is now urgent. It will be needed, he can sense it.

  The hardest thing about creating an informative and resonant multimedia version of what he learned during his time with the Zaw has been to simulate the experience that they refer to as the ‘Opening of the Eyes’, an experience critical to the overall transformation.

  ‘When the Zaw migrated out of China and into these areas,’ Mu had told him, ‘they found an older people inhabiting these lands, practising a blend of Buddhism and millennia-old supernaturalism. Westerners generally see Buddhism as a very pure faith, but like all other religions, local mythology was incorporated. Belief in witches, ghosts and nats is almost universal in this country, even today.’

  ‘Witches?’ Julian grinned back.

  ‘Oh yes. The stories would curdle your blood. Burmese witches can apparently detach their heads, which then roll around looking for human excrement to eat. There’s a folk tale about a man picking up a witch’s head, thinking it was a watermelon, and getting bitten on the face.’

  Julian laughed, but Mu admonished him. ‘You might think that it’s funny now. At night they fly around, their headless bodies cloaked in black. Other witches brew potions made of dogs’ penises, crows’ beaks, and cemetery earth. Potions that control nats, cause illness; punish and kill enemies. Luckily, they say that you can usually tell a witch, because when you look in her eyes, your reflection will be upside down. She knows this, of course, so a witch will never look you in the eye.

  ‘The aborigines of this area worshipped a nat called Wungyi. According to legend he was a royal minister in the Pagan Empire of Bagaan under King Kyansittha. Wungyi was in charge of collecting taxes, but the country was then in the grip of a drought. He was a soft-hearted man, so he became lenient. The king was furious, and sent his bodyguard to kill him in the night.

  ‘A benevolent spirit, however, woke him, and enticed him out to take the night air on the Bagaan city walls. When he returned to his chambers he found his wife and three daughters riddled with stab wounds in their beds. Afraid for his life, he slipped away in the night and travelled north for a week. He took up abode in a limestone cavern near here. There is a shrine, called a nat sin, to him near the entrance, and amazingly — in line with what I told you earlier — that shrine bears an uncanny resemblance to the Hebrew Ark of the Law. Behind the shrine is an entrance that leads deep into the mountain. There is magic in those twisted passages and caverns.

  ‘That’s when a particular ceremony associated with Wungyi became part of Zaw culture. Each Zaw, male and female, at the age of around fifteen, enters this place and undergoes the ceremony known as the “Opening of the Eyes”.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘There are no words to describe it, and besides, the experience is not the same for all. You’ll have to find out for yourself … if you have the courage.’ Mu’s eyes burned into Julian’s like welding rods.

  Julian swallowed. ‘Courage?’

  ‘The Opening of the Eyes is not for the fainthearted. There is good and evil in the world, and it’s necessary to know both before understanding can be reached.’ Mu looked suddenly downcast. ‘I am an intelligent man, Julian. But this ceremony is something I cannot explain with science. It’s something deep — a leftover from past ages.’

  Mu walked Julian to the entrance and gripped his elbow firmly. The older man had grown increasingly frail by then, cancer stripping flesh from his frame so his saffron-coloured skin hung like loose rags off his bones.

  ‘Nothing you see in there will be real, but it will appear so. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is much to learn, but fear might be your overriding emotion. Each person is tempted with what they desire most, and some do not survive.’

  Julian stepped inside, walking slowly so that his eyes adjusted. In the centre of that first cavern was a shrine, radiant with gold leaf, acrid smoke filtering from a brazier. He stood, waiting, not sure what to do or where to go.

  Moments later, however, a young woman stepped out from the shadows, carrying a bundle of cloth under one arm. She took Julian by his right hand and led him across the cavern to a smaller, separate chamber. In the centre was a smouldering bed of deep orange coals, each bordered with black.

  The girl’s eyes never left his. She was captivatingly beautiful, petite in body, and possibly the cleanest human being he had ever seen. Her skin glowed with life, as smooth as powdered clay.

  She reached out and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. Julian’s eyes enlarged in alarm, but she merely smiled in response, eyes dreamily half closed. After his shirt she moved to his trousers, pulling them down to his ankles. When she tugged at the waistband of his underwear he stepped out of them, ashamed to see that his little member was already peeking through his pubic hair.

  The girl took his clothes and placed them on a stone shelf, before returning with a wooden bowl and cloth, and with this, starting at his face, she began to wash him.

  This was not a gentle dabbing, but a thorough scrubbing performed with incredible strength for such delicate-looking arms. She cleaned both penis and scrotum with the same energy she used on the rest of his body, eliciting a tiny yelp of mingled pain and pleasure from his lips.

  After that, she washed both legs, all the way to his feet, and he looked down at the top of her head. He had an overwhelming urge to touch her jet black hair, to run his fingers through the glossy perfection. Yet the fear of causing offence was too great.

  Strangely, for perhaps the first time in his life, he was not ashamed of his body. He looked with new eyes at the trek-hardened muscles of his thighs, the sharp definition of his abdomen. His chest was small, but no longer seemed puny.

  The young woman put aside the bowl and slipped a thin robe around his shoulders, belting it securely with a sash. Then she invited him to sit.

  Going to an alcove she returned with a metal implement similar to a broad putty knife, and from a clay pot took a dark tar-like substance and placed it on the knife. Then she felt with her free hand, palm down for the hottest section of the coals and slid the implement over them.

  Within a few minutes the substance began to smoke, and a pungent cloud emanated from it into the chamber. At f
irst the smell reminded him of burning plastic, and his nose wrinkled reflexively.

  ‘What is that?’ he asked.

  The beautiful face curved into a smile, and she held a forefinger to her lips. She settled next to him on that stone bench. Julian felt their shoulders touch. It was his most intimate moment with a woman since Leisel.

  The smell was changing. Still unpleasant but different. Like stale incense. Like a dead rat in the wall of his childhood home. A smell that had to be borne until the carcass desiccated or fell apart.

  The smell of dead rat was replaced by deep earthiness, the smell of underground lakes, and Tolkien-like landscapes. An unmistakeable feeling of awakening.

  He was aware of each bodily function; each muscle cell fuelling itself on oxygen and sugar; working together to inflate and deflate his chest, the rods of his eyes processing pixels with digital-like efficiency. Then Julian remembered that he was deep in the Golden Triangle.

  Opium, he thought to himself. She’s drugged me.

  That delicately beautiful face moved closer. Her hand took his, compelling him to stand. Now she led him through the doorway, down a long dark corridor. The corridor gave way to a greater darkness. An underground cavern, huge and inviting.

  Julian stood on the threshold. He looked anxiously around for the girl, but she was gone. He knew instinctively that he had to walk on. But he was suddenly, terribly afraid. Each step was an effort, the desire to turn and run almost overpowering.

  At first the darkness was so complete Julian could see nothing, but slowly, vague shapes came into focus as his eyes adjusted. The feeling in the pit of his belly of impending danger was intense, like the moment the brakes failed on a car, and the giddying drop loomed.

  Then, jagged stone walls, open space. The feeling of danger did not lessen. Instinctively he dropped to his butt, crawled backwards so his back was against rock, breathing as if each breath was of white-hot molten glass.