I raised an eyebrow. “It’s nice to see you, too. What am I playing at? Well, you know what? I’ve been wanting to ask you a question. You see, there was this cabin outside Turret, where you kissed me, and where you were so worried that I had been hurt after I destroyed the sun beetle farm. Then I blinked, and next moment you disappeared and showed up negotiating for a seat at the Omega high table. I blinked again and, after I’d helped you escape, you killed my father. Now, however boring and inconvenient it might be for you and your academic colleagues, I think at the very least you owe me an explanation.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, the anger had gone out of her face. I noticed absently that the deep blue of her eyes looked deeper because of the color of her dress. She looked beautiful and for a moment, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of loss.
“I’m sorry, Lacklan. The part of your story that you omitted was where you told me that your father had murdered mine. You hated your father, but I loved Daddy. He was my idol. And when I discovered that your father, whom I had trusted all my life, who had always been there for me and Mom, when I discovered that he had not only killed my father, but that he was a member of Omega…” She shook her head. “You can’t imagine what that did to me.”
“I think I can, Marni.”
She looked away. “I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. Of course you can.”
“I am no stranger to betrayal.”
She raised her eyes to meet mine.
“I have been betrayed by just about everybody I have loved.”
“Don’t say that, Lacklan.”
“Why are you cutting me out?”
She stepped close and placed her hand on my chest. “Please believe me, you are too dangerous.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t realize the power our enemies wield.”
“I think I do. I think I know them a damn sight better than you do. How do you think I got into this party?”
She frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that we need to talk. You don’t understand the danger you’re in, or what will happen if you release your father’s research at the conference. They will kill you, Marni, and they will kill Gibbons and they will kill me. We need to join forces. You have to stop running from me.”
She was still frowning. “How did you get into the party?”
“You remember Ben, my father’s personal assistant?”
She nodded.
“He is with Omega. I don’t know what his position is, but he carries weight.”
Her frown had deepened. “But why did they want you to come… To talk to me? They wanted you to talk to me?”
There was something like panic in her eyes. I gave her a moment, then said, “Look at me, Marni. Look at me.” Her eyes met mine. “As long as they think that I am looking for you, as long as they think we have a bond, your life is safe. The minute they decide that I cannot reach you, we are both dead. Do you understand that? You need to assimilate that fact. Because it’s the only thing keeping us both alive.”
She nodded. “Yes, I see.”
“They want you on board, but above all, what they really want is your father’s research.” I shook my head and narrowed my eyes at her. “What the hell did he discover, Marni? Why is his research so important to them?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, examining my face. “You don’t know?” She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”
“How would I know? Why can’t you tell me?”
“Not here. Lacklan, have you gone over to them?”
She must have seen the anger in my face because she closed her eyes and raised a hand. “All right, I’m sorry!”
“Marni, you’re accusing me of being a loose cannon, but you are panicking and you are out of control. You need to get a grip, realize who you can trust. And we need to start making a plan together, coordinating our efforts.”
She nodded again. “Yes, you’re right. I have been so scared. I’ve missed you, but Lacklan, you scare me sometimes.”
“Come home with me tonight.”
“I…” She glanced at Gibbons. “I don’t know…”
“Marni?” She looked back at me. “Come home with me tonight.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, all right.”
“We’ll join them, chat for a while, then we’ll walk out together.”
“What if they are waiting for us?”
“They won’t be.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they know I would kill them.”
“Jesus!”
“And that would attract too much publicity. They want to do this subtle and quiet. We’ll play on that.”
She was staring at me with horrified eyes. “What happened to you in England?”
“It wasn’t in England. It was in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in a hundred other places. If you stop running away from me, maybe one day I’ll tell you about it.”
“What about Gibbons?”
“He can come along if he wants to.”
She hesitated. “OK…”
“Come on, let’s go and be sociable for a while. And Marni?”
“Yes?”
“Be nice to me, OK?”
She nodded. “I know, so we don’t draw attention.”
“No, because I’m tired of being brushed off by you, and I like it when you’re nice.”
She sighed and repressed a smile. We made our way back to the group. Gibbons was taking a break from lecturing, and Salman was speaking with an earnest look on his slim, handsome face.
“With the greatest respect, Professor, despite everything that has been said about politics, the many volumes that have been written on the subject—it has been defined as both an art and a science—in reality what it boils down to in the end is that it is a simple practice. And the practice is no more than the acquisition and retention of power. That is all politics is—‘how can I acquire more power, and how can I retain the power I have?’ And for both of these ends we need two conditions…” He paused and held up two long, delicate brown fingers. “One, the people over whom we exercise power must be divided, and two, they must fear some outside threat. It may be the Jews, or the Muslims, it may be the Communists or the decadent west, it may be the aliens…” He paused, holding his audience suspended from his arched left eyebrow. “…or it may be the environment! But as long as people live in fear of an outside threat, they will give their political leaders a good deal of latitude in how they are governed.” He smiled. “In how they are controlled!”
A large man in a brocade waistcoat and a deep purple dinner jacket had moved up to us like a Spanish galleon in full sail, parting the sea of people as he went. He had a huge, leonine head, silver hair brushed back and a complacent smile on his face.
“What you say is absolutely true, Salman. But it is merely the circus part of bread and circus. The virtue of the circus is to keep people’s attention focused on something other than the fact that their leaders are making free with their possessions and their liberties. There is no special virtue in a terrified populace. All you really need is a distracted one.” He turned his complacent smile on Gibbons and then Marni. “Professor Gibbons, Dr. Gilbert. Speaking of circuses and distractions, I believe you have some entertainment in store for us.”
I felt Marni stiffen and gave her arm a gentle squeeze. Gibbons curled his lip. “Your Excellency, what a pleasant surprise to see you at a conference of this type. The rate at which your country’s rainforests are being depleted, one would be forgiven for thinking your government had no interest in climate change at all.”
His Excellency chuckled the way a mountain might chuckle. “Climate change! Reds under the bed. We have other things to frighten our people with. But I’ll tell you what I am interested in…” He looked around at us one after another. “Screens!” He announced it as though he expected us to gasp. “Screens,” he said again. “You
know, in 1955, the Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the last great fascist, was being conducted around the brand new studios of Television Española, due to be inaugurated the following year. Franco had been the supreme, authoritarian leader of Spain for some sixteen years by then. The fascist regimes of Italy and Germany had collapsed, the Allies had won the war, and there was a new mood of hope and liberalism in the world. So Franco was under a lot of pressure from his so-called technocrats to liberalize his regime. They wanted reforms, but Franco had been holding out, resisting their pressure.
“But on this day, he was shown around the brand new television studios at Prado del Rey, in Madrid, and it was explained to him how every village would have a television in the church hall, and with time, every home in Spain would own a television. And naturally, the government, and ultimately Franco himself, would control the content of the programs.” His Excellency laughed out loud. “At the end of his tour, as they were leaving the studios, he turned to the leading advocate for reform in his government and said to him, ‘You can have your reforms, I have Television Española!’”
There was much laughter around the group, except that Gibbons did not laugh. He looked sour. “The man was a swine, but he was prophetic. Today, practically every brain in the western world is controlled by a screen. Not even Orwell foresaw that we would willingly carry the damned things around with us.”
Salman was nodding as he finished laughing. “As I say, politics is merely the practice of acquiring and retaining power, by whatever means. Franco was a past master at it, and he understood well the power of the screen in controlling people’s minds. And let’s be honest, ultimate power is the power to control people’s thinking.”
Gibbons scowled at him. “More than that, Salman, much more than that. The power of information technology, delivered via ubiquitous screens, is to mesh, by means of an information matrix, all minds into one single mind, controlled from one single source.”
Salman and His Excellency smiled at the floor. Salman muttered, “A little extreme, science fiction, surely, Professor Gibbons.”
Gibbons grunted ill-humoredly and I thought this was probably a good time to go. So I spoke up.
“Well, gentlemen, I think we’ll be pushing off.”
Gibbon’s head snapped around.
I smiled blandly and went on. “It has been fascinating. We must do it again.” I turned to the professor. “Gibbons, are you coming or are you going to stay?”
He opened his mouth, looked at Marni, and said, “I…um…”
Marni turned to me. “Just give me a moment to fix my hair, will you?”
I searched her eyes behind a smile. “Sure.” I grinned. “I think I’ll fix mine too.” I looked at the group. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure.”
We moved across the ballroom toward the exit. The entrance hall was empty, save for the doorman, who had now moved inside and watched us with incurious eyes. Marni glanced at me. “The restrooms are upstairs.” I followed her up a broad, mahogany staircase to the next floor, and then down a passage. She smiled, but there was an edge to her voice. “You going to come in with me?”
“No, but don’t do a disappearing act on me again, Marni.”
She stopped outside a door with a brass plaque that bore the legend Ladies on it in French script. She looked up into my eyes. “I won’t. Just wait for me a moment.”
I nodded and she pushed through the door. I strolled back to the landing and stood leaning on the banister, looking down into the entrance hall. After a moment, a man in a dinner jacket came into view and stopped to talk quietly to the doorman. I went cold inside. I knew him, but it couldn’t be.
I watched him pull out a silver case, extract a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. He lit it with a gold lighter, made a comment, laughed, and went to step outside. Then Gibbons came strutting into view and asked the doorman something. The doorman answered and jerked his head at the stairs. The guy with the cigarette turned to look at Gibbons and when he did, I saw his face. Hot rage welled up in my gut. It was him. It was Abdul Abbassi, nicknamed by his pals the Butcher of Helmand. It had been five years, but I would never forget that face as long as I lived. But the question that was burning inside me right then was, what the hell was he doing at this party?
I stepped back and watched Gibbons come stomping up the stairs. I moved down the passage and he followed after me with anger burning in his cheeks and his eyes. As he drew breath to give me one of his lectures I stepped close to him and drove my fist, not too hard—just enough to shut him up—into his solar plexus. He gasped and wheezed and I pulled him down the corridor toward the cans. There I slammed him against the wall and thrust my face close to his.
“Now you listen to me, Gibbons, and you listen carefully. There is a man at this party called Abdul Abbassi. His nickname is the Butcher. I have watched him murder an entire village and kill women and children with his own hands, just to make an example of them. If he is at this party, it is for one reason and one reason only, and that is to kill Marni.
“Marni is coming to my place, now, where I can protect her. You can come along if you want. But get in my way and I swear, Gibbons, I will gut you like a fish and I will not hesitate. Do you understand me?”
There was rage and contempt in his face, but no fear. He was too damned stupid to be afraid. “You damned fool!” he said. “You are going to ruin everything!”
I reached behind my back and slipped my Fairbairn & Sykes commando knife from my waistband. I held it to his throat.
“Your call, Professor.”
The door to the ladies’ room opened. Marni stood staring at me, a mixture of horror and disbelief on her face.
“What in the name of God…?”
I snapped. “I can’t explain now. Just trust me!”
“Trust you?”
I snarled, “Gibbons…?”
He spat the words at me, “You’re insane!” Then he turned his head toward Marni. “Get out of here! Go!”
And she was running along the passage toward the stairs. I shouted, “Marni! No! Don’t!” and made to go after her, but Gibbons was clinging to me, dragging me back, shouting after her, “Run! Run!”
I turned and gave him a savage back-hander with my left fist. His eyes rolled and his legs went to jell-O. He dropped to the floor and I slid the knife back into my belt as I ran after her. As I reached the top of the stairs she was running out onto the street. I took the steps three at a time and went to go out after her, but the doorman stepped in front of me, his left hand on my chest.
I didn’t think. I didn’t look at him. I took his wrist in my left hand and twisted. His arm locked. I jabbed my right savagely into his exposed floating ribs and stepped over him as he went down, wheezing. I wrenched open the door and ran into the night. She was there. Ten paces away, climbing into a yellow cab. I shouted, “Marni! Wait!” But the door slammed and she was away, moving down 79th Street and left onto Madison Avenue.
There was a dangerous rage inside me. I turned to go back, get Gibbons, and beat him until he told me where she had gone, but the doorman was staggering out with a purple face, pointing at me, gasping. “I call the cops! They are coming for you! You in big trouble!” Next to him, watching us, was Abbassi, with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a cigarette. I swore violently under my breath and ran across the road to the parking garage to get my car.
Two minutes later, I was struggling to stay within the speed limit as I cruised down Park Avenue toward Union Square and Broadway. As I drove, I dialed the number for the FBI.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation. How may I direct your call?”
“I need to talk to somebody in the Counter Terrorism Division.”
Four
I was in an interview room on the 23rd floor of number 26, Federal Plaza, the New York field office of the FBI. Special Agent Harrison Mclean was sitting across from me and observing me through slightly narrowed eyes, like he couldn’t make up his mind whether I was a clown
or a jackass. His partner, Special Agent Daren Jones, had just left the room on a pretext, but I was pretty sure he was checking their database to see what, if anything, they had on me.
“I’m having some difficulty getting a handle on this, Mr. Walker. You say you were at a party thrown by…” He checked his notes. “Prince Mohamed bin Awad, at his house on 79th Street. The party was in honor of the speakers and the delegates at the UN conference on climate change. So...” He gave his head a little shake. “How did you come to be at this party?”
“That’s not important.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Walker, I’ll decide what’s important. How did you come to be there?”
I sighed. “I was accompanying Dr. Marni Gilbert, who will be talking at the conference. In fact, she’s one of the key speakers.”
He nodded and made a note. “You her boyfriend?”
I sighed. “No. We’re old friends. We grew up together.”
He nodded again, like my answer was confirming some suspicion he had. Then he went on, “So while you were there you saw…” He looked down at his pad. “Abdul Abbassi, ‘The Butcher of Helmand’, and you recognized him.”
I was struggling to hold on to my patience. “Yes.”
“And you recognized him…how?”
“I was stationed in Afghanistan for a while.”
His eyes narrowed further. “Who with?”
“The British SAS.”
A thin smile, a raised eyebrow. His eyes took in my evening suit. “Next you’ll be telling me your name is Bond, James Bond.”
I didn’t smile. “My name is Lacklan Walker.”
He nodded. “I know it is.” He eyed me a moment, still smiling. “Our Marines too tough for you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re an American, how did you wind up in a British outfit?”
I took a deep breath. “I had personal reasons for leaving home. My mother is English. I joined the SAS. It’s not a soft option.”
“Personal reason?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t stomach my father. Look, Special Agent Mclean, I don’t mean to be rude or disrespectful, but I am trying to report the presence of a terrorist at a party that was exclusively for delegates to the UN Conference…”
OMEGA SERIES BOX SET: Books 1-4 Page 57
