Quirk nodded, looking disappointed.
‘On Ethan’s instructions, we’ve had a team researching Argon’s employment records,’ Kralinsky continued, ‘hoping to find something, anything, that would help us. Well, Mr Quirk here was dismissed recently and, of course, we wondered why. After we had a little chat, he decided to pop along today and give us some very interesting news.’
Ethan looked at Kralinsky with rising interest. Knowing the man for most of his life, he’d never seen him try so hard to contain his excitement.
‘Are you actually sitting on your hands, Kralinsky?’ he teased.
‘You have no idea how hard this is,’ his friend admitted. ‘I just hope I’ve got this right.’
The room became silent as all eyes turned to Terry Quirk.
‘Relax and take your time Terry. Tell us what you were doing at Argon to start with.’ Sam asked.
‘Security, I was in security,’ Quirk said. ‘I was a senior guard—been with them for years.’
Quirk fell silent.
‘What sort of duties?’ Kralinsky prompted.
Quirk licked his lips.
‘Is this …umm …confidential?’ he asked. ‘I did sign stuff and I don’t want anything on my record. Times are tough and I’m still looking for a job.’
The President sighed.
‘This is as confidential as it gets,’ he assured him. ‘You have my full protection in this matter and I’m sure there’ll be adequate compensation for taking valuable time out to be here today. However,’ he added, his voice hardening, ‘there are considerable penalties for failing to assist in matters of national security. I believe a fifty years plus stretch is the going rate.’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Quirk said, quickly, ‘I’ll help all I can.’
‘Terry,’ Sam said, holding the man’s gaze, ‘what will really help us here is the truth. No back-stabbing or hitting back—just the honest truth.’
Quirk nodded.
‘I was one of the guards in the special projects labs,’ he said, nodding at Sam. ‘There were only five of us—all experienced guys and been with the company a long time. We’d do twelve hour shifts and it was pretty cushy.’
‘Cushy?’ Ethan asked.
‘Yeah, well, we got to know all the geeks. They were off the planet most of the time. Ass up and head down in their computers, if you’ll excuse my French. Anyway, they were pretty human underneath all the gobbledygook and regular too.’
‘Regular?’ Sarah echoed, lifting her eyebrows.
‘Yeah, they all had their weirdo habits, but they also had a routine for everything. Like one guy would do yoga buck naked in his lab at the end of his shift. Another dude had to watch half an hour of kid’s cartoons before he started—that sort of thing. We got to know them and everyone got along fine. We even had a few good card games from time to time.’
‘So what went wrong?’ Sam asked.
Quirk stared at the table top and sighed heavily.
‘Me and this geek got on really well. He was about my age and quite normal, even if he was a clever bastard. He showed me stuff—you know.’
‘What stuff?’ Ethan asked, his interest quickening.
‘I’m not queer,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that. I don’t want to get into any trouble either.’
‘Talk Mr Quirk,’ the President snapped.
‘Yeah, well, he showed me how to bypass the national online filters and see real porn—the banned stuff. We’d sit and watch it at night and, you know …’
The President looked at the ceiling.
‘Christ!’
‘What else did he show you?’ Sam prompted, hiding a grin.
‘There was like this amazing diamond he was working on. He told me that it could store million of books. He’d rabbit on with all this technical shit that went over my head.’
‘Did he say what it was for?’ Ethan asked, trying to remain calm.
‘Yeah books, like I said,’ Quirk replied.
Ethan felt his shoulders slump.
There was a silence as Quirk screwed up his face. Suddenly it brightened.
‘Well, part of a book, if I remember rightly. I don’t read ‘em so I didn’t take that much notice. Not until he started getting himself upset that is.’
‘What was he upset about, Terry?’ Ethan asked.
‘At first he wouldn’t say,’ Quirk answered, ‘he just got depressed and miserable. He even stopped watching porn. One night he brought in a bottle of vodka and wanted me to have a drink with him. Normally I wouldn’t dream of it, but he was in a terrible state, so I had a couple and stuck around. That’s when he told me that what he was doing would fuck the world up, and I knew he’d lost the plot.’
Ethan was conscious of collective breaths being held around the room.
‘How was it going to fuck up the world?’ he asked.
Terry Quirk snorted.
‘I really liked the guy but I think he was writing a fairy story in his spare time, or taking some really bad shit,’ he said. ‘He went on and on about how this algri … alleg …’
‘Algorithm?’ Ben said, almost shouting at him.
‘Yeah, algorithm thing,’ Quirk responded, watching Ben warily for a moment before continuing. ‘He reckoned that it would get everyone smoking cigarettes again.’
‘Smoking?’ asked the President.
‘That’s it,’ Ben exclaimed, ‘the first two books were designed to create the agitated state in readers. That’s what we’ve been seeing with all the discontent and argumentative tendencies. Then they’d be hit with subliminal messaging to start smoking and alleviate all the stress.’
‘And Argon was hit incredibly hard when tobacco was outlawed in most countries. They lost billions,’ Ethan said, but I’m still not sure …’
‘Oh, God,’ Sarah interrupted, ‘Ethan, your brother’s last words. Mark Payne wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to peddle a few smokes. He had something far bigger in mind.’
‘“Everybody addicted … narc … smokes,”’ quoted Ethan, remembering those last brutal seconds of Joey’s life.
‘Oh, the absolute bastard!’ Sarah said.
‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘he must have booby trapped all the cigarettes people are going to be forced to buy. They’ll end up addicted to some form of narcotic.’
‘And there’s little we can do stop it,’ Ethan added.
‘Umm,’ Quirk said, watching the conversation intensify around him.
‘Nobody will believe us until it’s too late,’ the President said.
A sharp slap on the table made them all jump.
‘But he didn’t do it,’ Quirk said, conscious of every eye in the room glaring his way.
‘You tell ’em, Terry,’ Kralinsky said, patting the man’s back.
‘Didn’t do what exactly?’ Ethan asked, as he caught Kralinsky’s wink.
‘Whatever it was he was supposed to do,’ Quirk said.
‘Give me strength!’ the President wailed.
‘It’s all right for you fuckers,’ Quirk said, anger rising in his voice. ‘You’re all still alive and he’s dead. He killed hisself because he couldn’t let it happen.’
Sarah reached out for Quirk’s hand before remembering where they were.
‘Tell us what you mean, Terry,’ she said, watching Quirk’s face dissolve into tears.
‘He was a brave guy,’ Quirk sniffled. ‘I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was pissed with him because he didn’t have any time for me. It was all about his precious fucking diamond. You should have seen him the night he jumped off that bench with a wire around his neck. Just an hour before he died, I thought he was talking shit again, but now I know he was trying to tell me something.’
‘What did he say Terry?’ Sarah asked.
‘He said that he’d reverse engineered the algorithm thing and everything would be OK.’
‘My God!’ the President exclaimed.
‘Did he say why?’
‘Yeah, but i
t didn’t make sense at the time. He told me that his wife was pregnant and he wasn’t going to allow his child to be born into hell.’
In complete silence, everyone stared at Quirk.
‘This changes everything,’ Ben said, eventually.
‘Wait a minute,’ Ethan said. ‘Let’s not get too excited here. It’s just a little too convenient, don’t you think?’
Ethan felt everyone’s eyes turn towards him.
‘Do you think …?’ Sarah asked, looking quickly at Quirk and then back to Ethan.
‘Think what, for goodness sake?’ the President growled.
‘I’m sorry folks, but we’ve been dealing with one of the most manipulative and clever men we’ve ever known. If he wanted to throw us off the scent completely, this is exactly what he would have come up with. Just let us dig around long enough to find Mr Quirk here and allow ourselves to be sucked in again.’
Quirk stood up, his mouth working soundlessly. Kralinsky took his arm and coaxed him back into his seat.
‘Easy Terry,’ he said, before turning to face the group.
‘I thought about that,’ he said. ‘And what I discovered was that Terry here has a rare condition caused by a childhood trauma. He actually cannot lie without the distinct possibility of choking himself to death. He agreed to be tested and it’s actually true.’
‘You can’t lie. At all?’ the President asked Quirk.
Terry Quirk looked directly at the President.
‘No. Never,’ he said.
‘The perfect husband,’ Ben said, with a smile.
The President laughed.
‘You have my permission to kick him Sam.’
*
Over the following days, as copies the last book poured from a thousand different sources, they watched their map of the world engulfed by flashing red lights. They had called the interceptions off. It was now a case of simply hoping, as Argon swung the biggest publicity campaign the world had ever seen into action. And it didn’t take long before the results became apparent.
*
‘Incredible,’ Ethan said, thinking over the last few weeks as Sarah put her head on his shoulder and sighed happily.
‘I know I am,’ she purred.
They were thirty eight thousand feet and on course for New York. Ben and Sam had already left and would meet up with them in a week’s time. They were scheduled to meet the President—this time in the flesh. Meanwhile Sarah’s boys, escorted by Kralinsky, were being flown to meet up with Sarah and Ethan in Grand Cayman for some very expensive fun.
‘It all turned out well, although it could easily have been a different story,’ Ethan said, accepting a glass of Chateau Margaux from Air Force Two’s chief flight steward.
It had been a tense thirty six hours in the control room after Terry Quirk had told them about the sabotaged algorithm. Slowly, country by country, as the rogue technician’s work took effect, an extraordinary peace descended. The first indicators were a steep plunge in assault statistics followed by a welcome easing of cross-border tensions. When blogs and online columns previously regarded as vitriolic and incendiary suddenly became flavored with positive and uplifting comments, they knew it was over.
‘You never found your high-ranking mole,’ Sarah murmured.
Ethan frowned as Juan’s shadow crossed his mind. He still had a promise to keep there.
‘No, but we will one day,’ he said, ‘along with our friend, Payne, believe me.’
‘I do,’ Sarah said, taking his hand sleepily, ‘and I always will. By the way, there’s one thing that’s been bothering me. How did you know I would be at Bambi’s funeral?’
Ethan turned his head to look at her, but Sarah was already fast asleep.
Table of Contents
Book burning
The Last Book
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1. Brownsville
Something’s wrong in the city
The Boy
2. Sydney
Writers’ block
3. New York
A pact with the devil
4. Sydney
A writer’s lot
5. New York
Whatever it takes
6. Sunnyside
The ghost
7. Chicago
Life’s a blast
8. New York
I spy with my little eye
9. Sydney
There is no truth in a whiskey bottle
10.
Crash test
11.
12.
Ashes to ashes
13. Washington DC
A disappearing act
14. Georgetown
The name game
15. Midtown, New York
Brunch and a nice chat
16.
When threads unravel
17. St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney
You can die in hospital
18.
Flying high
19.
The ring
20. When things go pear-shaped
21.
Write for her life
22.
The inside story
23.
Getting the message
24.
Scarface
The Last Book. A Thriller Page 28
