Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  “Maybe offer a trade, Al,” Fox said. “His weight in fine, uncut Turkish hashish.”

  Al laughed and wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. The guards opened the door and—

  A smell hit them; a smell and a hum, coming from the darkness within.

  “In,” the smoking guard said, motioning inside with his rifle. “In!”

  “After you, mate,” Fox said, nudging Gammaldi into the building. He stepped in behind him, followed by the guard. They walked down well-worn stone steps and came to a thick timber door. The guard turned a key in the lock and then slid a bolt across. The door opened and they were shoved inside, the door slamming behind them.

  They stood on a small stone platform, dusty stairs leading down. The room had a vast domed roof with a single skylight. The hum, and the smell, emanated from the people corralled there. Men, as far as Fox could tell in the dim light; some young, most old, at least two hundred of them.

  A heaving sea of humanity.

  “I’m slipping!” Gammaldi said, grabbing Fox’s arm. The landing they were on was worn with use, angled down towards the stairs—

  Before they could stop themselves they were in the crowd, just another two added to the mass that moved around the room in a slow circle. It was so crowded, none of the men could stand still against the motion.

  “This is just great,” Gammaldi said, pushing past a white-haired man to get back to Fox.

  “Just stay close, Al,” Fox replied, moving sideways until they were shoulder to shoulder, getting into the rhythm of the place. “We won’t be here for long. Hutchinson. GSR. They’ll find us.”

  “How will anyone find us in here? Where the hell are we?”

  “They’ll—”

  “Hey!” Gammaldi turned and pushed back at a couple of young guys who seemed intent on prying his jumper off him. They came straight back at him, the swell of the human tide behind them. One had something shiny in his hand—

  Fox laid him out with an uppercut to the chin, and Gammaldi threw the other guy a few metres through the air ahead of their position.

  The crowd moved on, no one perturbed; both young men vanished beneath two hundred pairs of feet.

  Gammaldi nodded to Fox as they were forced along and fell into step. Each had mastered the escape and evasion survival techniques required in their former jobs in the Navy. Fox’s experience included rigorous anti-interrogation techniques with the SAS—and he’d been through this kind of thing once before, and so had Gammaldi. He still had the dental work to prove it.

  They kept close as they walked in rhythm to the room. The men around them looked like walking ghosts.

  After a while Fox spoke loudly in his mate’s ear: “We’ll be right, Al. Won’t be long.”

  58

  LOUDOUN HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA

  The CIA agent walked into his house, kissed his wife and checked on his kids—six and four, boy and girl, everything picture perfect in their catalogue-neat home. He’d had a vasectomy two years ago, so these two little sleeping angels were as good as it got. He picked up some toys in the hallway, and dropped them in the basket in the lounge room.

  He poured a neat bourbon and took it with his warmed dinner into his study. His wife had Tivo’d Idol and was half a bottle of merlot and two packets of popcorn into the evening. He had work to do. He shut the noise out behind solid oak and sat at his desk. He started up his laptop and tasted the chicken—some kind of one-pot number: chicken thighs, rice, tinned tomatoes, onions, orange slices, wine, herbs. It was good. He typed in his password, a twelve-digit random combo.

  The commute from Langley was short in miles but took far too long, especially in peak hour, which he usually circumvented by being busy enough to put in long hours and travel home at night. Their previous place, a rental, had been near the Springfield Interchange, where he and his fiancée had spent five years listening to the traffic of the Beltway converge with that of the I95, a mixing bowl of noise and pollution that was still a hum of anger in the back of his mind. She blamed her fertility problems on that place, and that had been the tipping point.

  He had planned to have dinner with the family, a rare treat that tonight would have included a vomiting son and a daughter who refused to eat—fortunately, work was predictably demanding. There was a time, just a few years ago, when it wasn’t even dinnertime for them yet; they’d be laughing and joking and talking and entertaining.

  He switched on the Net through his regular connection. He never did sensitive work on a computer plugged into the mains—it could all be read. The only Agency work he did at home was reading over printouts, reports and briefs that he hadn’t managed to fit into his working day. He was only a couple of rungs below Deputy Director, so he pretty much saw it all.

  He logged on to World of Warcraft and saw the small envelope icon at the top right of the screen, attached to the mini-map. He took his avatar, Darkshadow, around the streets of Stormwind and headed for the nearest mailbox. As he navigated the streets, he thought back to today’s conversation with Hutchinson. Fuckin’ Bureau queer.

  He ran his avatar up to a mailbox and right-clicked it. His inbox was brought up onscreen and he clicked on the latest mail icon—a message from SwordsmanM, his occasional pointy-end guy, an Agency asset who did black-bag work in the US. This man was a Marine once, but he had been a little too trigger-happy even for them, and after a mess in Iraq he’d been welcomed home to undertake simple but blunt work for the Agency. He’d been tasked with taking out Fox and Gammaldi in New York.

  The subject line was: F and G. The message read: Unable to engage target. Fed protection. Left from Kennedy. Advise.

  Little late, he typed in reply. Already onto it. Stand down until further instruction.

  Each message was capped at 400 characters, so although they couldn’t write an essay, it was good for, say, a brief list of targets. The downside of this type of communication, as with most dead-drop sites, was that it was seldom real-time; each receiver accessed the information in their own time, and none of the gamers in his guild was in the habit of being online at a specific time. It was slow, but it was relatively secure, and that was the most important thing.

  He logged out, then remotely checked into the desk at Langley—the real-time tech team was there, responding to him via an Intellipedia link: the JFK flight plan for all GSR aircraft; visa documents logged for Lachlan Fox; and the scan of all communications regarding Fox showed he was in India. The latter revealed a relationship that for him was opportune—it would be informative, and his scapegoat. He had re-routed all communications to and from Bill McCorkell’s computer and phone system so that there was full NSA Echelon intercept and remote ghosting of McCorkell’s programs. He could now listen to, read, intercept and replace all McCorkell’s communicated data. Technology operating outside the law was a handy thing.

  59

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON DC

  Bill McCorkell walked into the Roosevelt Room more than an hour late for his meeting with the President’s science advisors. There were two men there, each with laptops and slideshows ready and mountains of papers on the table. On the table sat several pots of coffee, long cold.

  “Hey, Charlie, thanks for waiting,” McCorkell said to Dr Kaufman. As a science advisor to POTUS, he was a regular face in the House but not regular enough to get an office in the West Wing—he had a basement cubbyhole in the EEOB next door.

  McCorkell knew that the pace of this meeting would be a little slower than his usual security briefings—four-star generals tended not to talk in scientific jargon or get too excited about pie charts—and he hoped to get through it as quickly as possible.

  “I wanted you to hear as many opinions as possible,” Kaufman explained. “You’ve probably met Dr Jonze?”

  “I was here last year presenting the proposal to build the Antarctic cryobot—”

  “To melt down into Lake Vostok,” McCorkell finished. “How’d that turn
out?”

  “We’re still working on next-stage funding,” he said, resigned. “It’s an important step if we are to test the technology to make a system to get into Europa.”

  “But we’re not here to talk about Jupiter’s moons,” Kaufman said. “Bill—”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” McCorkell said, taking a seat.

  Kaufman looked deflated, the Apple remote in his hand suddenly limp. “I asked for half an hour…”

  “Sorry, Charlie, we’ve got a couple of situations to deal with at the moment.”

  “India.”

  McCorkell looked at him.

  “And Pakistan,” Jonze added. “That’s why we’re here.”

  He looked from Jonze to Kaufman, then said: “All right, you’ve got my attention.”

  “Okay,” Kaufman talked slowly. “We’re talking about Siachen Glacier, that’s Siachen as in—”

  “And like I said,” McCorkell said, “I’ve got to get back to a thing, so can you, like, give me the Reader’s Digest version?”

  The two doctors traded looks.

  “Five minutes?” said Jonze.

  “That was half a minute ago,” McCorkell replied.

  “Well, sir, if you listen very carefully,” Jonze said, “I might be able to teach you how to spell it.”

  “Ha!” McCorkell laughed. “Way to break the ice.”

  He picked up the phone and typed in an extension; told his secretary he would be a little longer than expected.

  “Okay,” McCorkell said. “What have you got?”

  Kaufman brought up a map onscreen. “The Siachen Glacier is located in the disputed Kashmir region and is claimed by both India and Pakistan,” he explained, clicking through slides. “The glacier is the highest battleground on earth, where India and Pakistan have fought intermittently since … but you know all that.”

  McCorkell nodded, leaned forward and watched the screen as the slides clicked through to the next relevant section.

  “The glacier’s melting waters are the main source of the Nubra River, which falls into the Shyok River,” Kaufman said. “The Shyok in turn joins the Indus River, which is crucial to both India and Pakistan. And the real volume of water is where we don’t see it—underground.”

  “Which is what’s being tapped into by Pakistan’s new water project.”

  “The roots of the conflict over Siachen lie in the non-demarcation of the ceasefire line on the map beyond a map coordinate known as…” Kaufman trailed off, noting the look McCorkell gave him. “… the Karachi Agreement, and the 1972 Simla Agreement presumed that it was not feasible for human habitation to survive north of NJ9842.”

  “Which is incorrect,” Jonze added.

  Kaufman continued, “Prior to 1984 neither India nor Pakistan had any permanent presence in the area—”

  “Guys, you’ve got to cut to the chase.”

  “Okay, best case?” Kaufman said, “We’ve got a hundred and twenty years.”

  “Best case what?”

  “I think we’ve got thirty, tops,” Kaufman countered.

  “That’s why you’re stuck at Stanford.”

  “Oh, and Yale’s better?”

  “Do I need to knock your heads together?” McCorkell asked.

  Kaufman sat up a little straighter.

  “If global warming continues at its present levels, there will be too little weight at the north and south poles,” Kaufman said. “And the earth will shift on its axis and we’ll enter a global cataclysm of weather patterns not seen on this planet since—”

  “Oh come on, Chuck, is this your third-pole theory?” Jonze interrupted sharply.

  “Third pole?” McCorkell asked, but neither seemed to notice him as they set on each other—

  “That’s all you got?”

  “It’s a long way—”

  “Can’t happen.”

  “Guys!” McCorkell said. “You’ve used up your five minutes. What’s the bottom line?”

  “Okay, Bill,” said Kaufman. “You wanted a scientific opinion on this water issue in this region. Here’s my read: there has been conflict over this region for decades. The reason is simple: water. Collectively it’s the world’s biggest fresh water source outside the north and south poles—”

  “So you agree this is a third—”

  “And,” Kaufman put his hand up to silence his colleague, “if there is a severe conflict in that region—if the area itself is compromised by a large-scale attack, be it by India or Pakistan, be it large-scale conventional or nuclear, that’s fresh water for over a billion people that dries up within weeks. Through evaporation, through massive disruption of water tables, through the devastation of a vast weight of frozen water—and it’s something that won’t be replaced, not in our lifetime, anyway.”

  The science men were finally silent while McCorkell took this in.

  “Bill, this area needs to be protected,” Kaufman said. “The ramifications of it being jeopardised are beyond dire. You must secure lasting peace in the region.”

  The phone rang; McCorkell took a moment to pick it up. His secretary spoke rapid-fire: “Tas Wallace just left an urgent message. It’s about Lachlan Fox.”

  60

  JAIL, PAKISTAN

  “Remind me to punch Amar in the nose the next time I see him,” Gammaldi said.

  “I’ll do more than that,” Fox replied.

  What had once been a brick factory was now a death pit. The prisoners were herded out twice a day for food scraps and a brief reprieve from the oppressive stench below, before being driven back inside to continue their human treadmill. The smell didn’t improve on going back in; it hit like a hammer to the face and never went away.

  During their first outdoor break Fox and Gammaldi had tried to communicate with a few of the inmates, but it was clear most were afraid of the guards and tried to steer clear of the new guys. One ancient man, who seemed to have been here so long he was beyond fear, told them quietly in broken English that more than half were political prisoners.

  “Maybe political reasons, or because they are poor, maybe some steal something, maybe commit acts of unnatural lust…” He looked around and kept his voice low. “Our own army put us in here—they are meant to protect us, but who protects us from them?”

  As they’d moved through the night in a semi-asleep state, Fox had started to feel like everyone else looked. He didn’t feel cold in the pit anymore—the heat of the constantly moving bodies around them lifted the ambient temperature a few degrees, and that was enough to make a difference. All through the long night Fox had counted his breaths as he shuffled along, zoned into a place of inner peace.

  There were no quick or obvious ways to escape. Outside the pit was the walled gravel and dirt yard, about the size of a sports oval; beyond that, mountains rose to the north. The air was thin here—they weren’t far from where they had been captured, which was a couple of hours south in the military trucks. Around the yard, the brick wall—an ancient-looking handmade mud, brick and stone construction—looked as wide at the base as it was tall. It was topped with rolls of new razor wire, and there was a single guard tower made from thin steel supports that looked like it was originally designed as a water tower. Two guys were up there, both with rifles. Escape was not an immediate option.

  Fox rubbed his head from where the rifle had clocked him; he still had a ringing headache. The fresh air of this morning’s outdoor break helped a little, but not enough.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Gammaldi said. “Arse end of the world…”

  “We’ll be right, Al.”

  “Yeah? You going to dig a tunnel out of here?”

  “Maybe. We could do that and dump the dirt out of our trousers as we walk outside each day.”

  Fox looked down at his mate, who was lying on the ground. He sat down next to him, feeling the relief in his legs that had been holding him up for twenty-four hours straight. Gamm
aldi gazed up at the sky. He smiled and blinked.

  “There should be a law on how long they can make you stand when you’re a prisoner.”

  “There probably is,” Fox replied. “Some kind of Geneva thing…”

  “Reckon they’re going to realise that we shouldn’t be here any time soon?”

  Fox squinted against the sun and watched as a tired fight ended as soon as it had started in the middle of the yard, near a rusty old hand water pump. The man who fell didn’t get up. His attackers drank.

  “I reckon someone will figure it out soon enough,” Fox said. He lay back and closed his eyes, and felt the dangerous need to sleep. “Remember when you were locked up that time in Italy?”

  “Hmph.”

  “That big guy you told me about, what’d you call him?”

  “A pirate,” Gammaldi said. “He looked like a pirate.”

  “At least there’s none of them here.”

  “Yeah…”

  They lay in silence for ten minutes, the shaft of sunlight warm on their faces, and then the bell rang for them to move back towards the pit. Neither rushed.

  “Remember that meal we had in Venice, when those girls came over?”

  Fox smiled. “Yeah, that was awesome—pasta?”

  “And osso bucco. Let’s not talk about food,” Gammaldi said as he sat up. “Wonder how long it would take me to eat one of these skinnies.”

  He helped Fox to his feet and they trudged over to the well and took a drink from a dusty old tin can. The water was briny, and they knew it would leave their lips chapped and caked in white salty powder.

  The final bell pealed and they shuffled into line with the rest of the prisoners, their morning outing over. Gammaldi tripped over a divot and stumbled forward. Fox caught him before he fell and helped him shuffle towards the door.