Ethan was ushered with Lopez out across the asphalt and into the waiting Air Force transport. The vehicle pulled away quickly, armed soldiers sitting silently either side of Ethan and Lopez, their expressions hidden behind sunglasses. Jarvis remained silent as the escort travelled across the vast complex toward ranks of security gates far from the administrative buildings and visitor centers to the east. The escorting unmarked cars peeled away as the transport passed through the gates and eased to a stop alongside a heavily fortified building that looked to Ethan like some kind of bunker. The transport doors opened and the soldiers spilled out into the bright sunshine, weapons at the ready as Ethan and Lopez followed Jarvis out of the transport and through an eight-inch-thick steel door.
The interior of the bunker was cool, the heavy walls sealing it from the blazing sun outside. Bare white walls stared at Ethan and simple gray tiles lined the floor. The bunker was entirely empty but for the industrial elevator shaft in the center. Outside the elevator stood four extremely competent-looking soldiers, each carrying enough weapons and ammunition to start a small war.
‘What is this place?’ Lopez asked.
‘Former observation bunker for watching rocket launches,’ Jarvis explained as he gestured toward the elevator. ‘Hasn’t been used since the fifties.’
Ethan looked at the heavily armed soldiers. If ever a place had screamed ‘secret facility’, this was it. He glanced questioningly across at Jarvis.
‘What’s down there?’
A bearded man wearing a light shirt and casual shorts opened the elevator’s shutter doors as he beckoned for Ethan, Lopez and Jarvis to follow him.
‘Something so classified,’ Jarvis explained, ‘that there was no real way to protect it except by making it look so uninteresting that nobody would bother investigating it. It can only be accessed via direct clearance from the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, which I obtained earlier this morning when the nature of this case became clear.’
The four guards moved neatly aside as Ethan stepped into the elevator alongside Lopez and Jarvis. The man in the shorts pulled the shutters closed, and with a press of a button they were on their way.
‘You knew what we were up against beforehand?’ Lopez asked Jarvis.
Ethan replied before Jarvis could.
‘Of course he did. It’s becoming your modus operandi, Doug, telling us the minimum that we need to know.’
‘Official secrets are exactly that,’ Jarvis responded. ‘Secret. I wouldn’t have brought us down here unless it was absolutely necessary.’
Lopez snapped, ‘How many deaths does it take before something becomes necessary to you?’
Jarvis sighed, keeping his voice low. The man in shorts remained discreetly silent, standing with his hands behind his back.
‘It’s not always my call to make, Nicola,’ he said, clearly frustrated at the limitations of his influence at the DIA. ‘Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to get the top brass to relinquish some of their paranoia and give permission for classified technology like this to be used in non-military investigations. You know the score, both of you. It takes a lot of effort to support you from behind the scenes, and there are plenty of pen-pushing bureaucrats at the Pentagon who would be only too happy to see us shut down.’
Ethan watched as walls of dark earth passed by, braced back by huge steel pillars. Lights set into the bare soil cast shifting shadows through the elevator as it descended into the depths.
‘How far down does this go?’ Lopez asked.
‘Three hundred meters,’ came the response from the man in shorts, speaking for the first time. ‘Deep enough to prevent any electromagnetic signatures showing up on privately held orbiting cameras or foreign spy satellites.’
‘This is Michael Ottaway,’ Jarvis said. ‘He’s our lead scientist here.’
The elevator continued to sink, and then the sound of activity permeated the air as the temperature began to rise. Ethan belatedly realized why Ottaway was wearing shorts. The elevator slowed down and an exit appeared that opened out onto a long, well-lit corridor. Four more guards awaited them and opened the elevator’s shutter doors before forming a phalanx and marching away down the corridor.
Ethan followed, flanked by Lopez and Jarvis as they were led to the doors at the far end. The soldiers stopped, and one of them entered a key-code into a pad. The doors hissed open and the soldiers stood aside, allowing Ethan to pass through.
The underground facility was about the size of a basketball court and half-filled with computer terminals manned by an odd assortment of uniformed military figures and scientists whose civilian clothes, almost without exception, included shorts.
Across one wall, a huge screen displayed a digital map of the earth, laced with orange lines mapping the trajectories of what Ethan guessed were satellites or spacecraft.
‘This way,’ Jarvis said, walking past Ethan and heading toward a large raised platform edged with padded railings, like a giant boxing ring.
Within the platform, a pair of soldiers stood wearing strange dark-gray helmets with visors and blocky-looking gloves. Each stood upon a rolling platform like a running machine. The platforms themselves were supported by a gyroscopic frame that rotated to match the soldier’s direction of travel.
‘What are they doing?’ Lopez asked, watching the two soldiers.
‘Retracing the paths of their fallen comrades,’ Jarvis explained.
Ethan said nothing as they walked to where a group of men wearing the obligatory shorts were watching a series of plasma screens next to a computer terminal. Ethan spotted a large steel casing descending from the ceiling on the opposite side of the underground facility, a thick bundle of wires and optical fibers spilling from within the casing and snaking their way to the rear of the facility. Across the entire back wall were ranks of what Ethan could tell were supercomputers, all humming as they ran trillions of calculations through immense databanks.
Ottaway gestured to the plasma screens as he turned to Jarvis.
‘So, what can I do for you?’
Jarvis handed Ottaway the photograph of Charles Purcell.
‘I need you to find this man and let us follow him up until the present day, right this moment, if possible.’
Ottaway took the photograph from Jarvis and glanced at it.
‘Do we have a name, address, where we should be looking, all that kind of stuff?’
‘You will,’ Jarvis said. ‘His name’s Charles Purcell and he used to work upstairs at NASA. Start searching in Miami.’
‘Okay, no problem. It’ll take us about ten minutes to track him down.’
Ottaway turned and pressed a button on his computer before speaking into a microphone that he clipped around his ear.
‘Okay, change of plan. We need you to perform a search-and-identify mission. Stand by.’
The two soldiers on the platform stopped moving and waited with their hands clasped before them as Ottaway began scanning the image of Charles Purcell into his computer. Lopez turned to Jarvis.
‘Okay, why don’t you quit the cloak-and-dagger and tell us what this place is?’
‘This,’ Jarvis replied, ‘is Project Watchman.’
‘What does it do?’ Ethan asked.
Ottaway looked up from his computer.
‘Watchman is a classified program handled by the Air Force and NASA. Put simply, we collaborate with the Air Force’s spy satellite program, gathering visual intelligence from global sources, and crunch the data streams here at this facility to produce a three-dimensional representation of the entire planet.’
Ethan hesitated for a moment as his brain attempted to digest and process what he had just heard.
‘You mean this is some kind of virtual-reality device?’
‘In a sense,’ Ottaway confirmed. ‘But this is a bit more than just virtual reality.’
Jarvis grinned as he looked at Ethan.
‘Charles Purcell seems somehow to be able to see into the future. It would also ap
pear likely that Joaquin Abell, or somebody within IRIS, possesses that same ability. But here, we can do something that they cannot.’
Michael Ottaway tapped a button on his keyboard and an image of Charles Purcell appeared, along with a progress bar emblazoned with the word SEARCHING. He turned to look at Ethan.
‘We can look into the past.’
34
IRIS, DEEP BLUE RESEARCH STATION, FLORIDA STRAITS
June 28, 14:18
Joaquin Abell stood alone in his private quarters, his hands behind his back as he looked out of a portal into a bleak, dark, underwater wilderness. Thick glass protected him from the freezing water and the immense pressure outside, but the movement of the occasional fish fascinated him. Small, almost insignificant creatures, and yet they were perfectly adapted to the world in which they lived, one in which humans required the benefits of technology to survive.
He felt strangely alone now that Katherine had gone. The darkness outside seemed a little closer than it once had, his world devoid of meaning. Joaquin closed his eyes and struggled with an unfamiliar emotional turmoil. He called out to it, reeled it in, and then recoiled from the sensations that surged deep through his core, emotions that were as alien to him as the ancient creatures scurrying across the seabed. He crushed the shame and regret, for they were the true obstacles to enlightenment, the Achilles’ Heel of success. Stay the course, he told himself, and all will be resolved. There is no gain without loss.
He felt uniquely privileged, standing down here, immune to the dangers of the world, his wealth and the technology of mankind enveloping him securely. And now he possessed a gift like no other, the ability to predetermine his own future, to see literally what no man had ever seen before. Mankind had ceased long ago in his subservience to his environment, to be subject to the harsh judgment of Mother Nature over those of her children who failed to adapt and thus to survive. But never had mankind believed it possible that he need not be enslaved by the bonds of cause and effect.
Joaquin breathed deeply in the knowledge that he would never again fail in any endeavor, never again be defeated. For centuries, millennia even, mankind had dreamed of travelling through time, of witnessing events from the past and those yet to come in the future, yet for all of that time the scientists and the dreamers had been doomed to failure. Only Joaquin, by way of his father’s unique vision, had been able to come to the realization that the notion of travelling through time was itself the flaw in mankind’s thinking. Just as it was not physically possible, with current technology, to travel through time, it was, in fact, not even necessary.
One only had to see through time.
The past surrounded every species that possessed sight, even the glass of the window through which Joaquin watched was, ever so slightly, a part of history. The distance is the past. Space is the past. Warp that space enough, wrap it into a ball so tightly that not even light can escape, and then the path of time becomes so distorted that, for an observer close to its immense influence, time elsewhere runs faster.
‘So simple,’ Joaquin whispered.
‘Sir?’
Joaquin blinked and turned to see one of his men holding a satellite phone. Joaquin strode across to him and took the phone in his hand.
‘Abell.’
The monotone voice on the other end of the line sounded out of breath.
‘It is done.’
Olaf Jorgenson had proven his loyalty to Joaquin a thousand times and, despite everything, Joaquin knew that without his friend, much of what he had achieved so far would never have occurred. However, what nature had blessed the mighty Nordic with in terms of physical prowess it had taken from him in intelligence. The fool had exposed himself, and therefore was now a liability.
‘The authorities have a photo of you, Olaf,’ he said. ‘It is only a matter of time before they hunt you down.’
‘I can remain ashore for as long as you wish,’ Olaf replied. ‘My failure is my own.’
Joaquin felt a distant pinch of concern that felt like something from his childhood, a sense of abandonment and enforced solitude. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts.
Katherine was unlikely to be charged with any crime, but considering what had just happened it seemed almost certain that, before long, he himself would be subjected to investigation. The prosecution could hardly fail to suspect that IRIS had somehow arranged the murder of Macy Lieberman. That was fine with him, just as long as they had no evidence of the Deep Blue facility in which he stood. Charles Purcell had done his work well in trying to expose Joaquin’s work, but his vision of the future clearly had not gone far enough to anticipate Joaquin’s responses. With the incriminating documents destroyed, the only thing preventing Joaquin from completing his greatest triumph was the possibility, however slim, that Purcell might somehow convince the authorities that IRIS was responsible for the murder of his family.
‘How did Purcell contact the prosecution?’ he asked Olaf. ‘He must have spoken to them.’
‘He did not,’ Olaf replied with conviction. ‘He posted all of the documents, which have now been destroyed.’
Joaquin felt a new fear creep through him as he glanced around at the underwater facility he had built. Purcell could have posted more than one copy of those incriminating documents. It was, of course, the greatest weakness he had. Over a hundred people had been involved in the construction of the lair, most of them employees devoted to the IRIS cause. A few, here and there, had come to question Joaquin’s true motivations; but as with any complex construction program, tragic accidents occurred from time to time, and none of those individuals had been able to air their concerns. When Charles Purcell had fled the complex after breaching protocol and viewing the future – a future that included the death of his own family – Joaquin had been forced to act immediately and without hubris. Two hours later, Purcell’s family had been murdered and his colleagues killed in a tragic air crash. Now only Purcell remained, a victim of his own curiosity. Had he not succumbed to the temptation of viewing the future, he would not be on the run now.
‘It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone to the press and revealed the location of Deep Blue,’ Olaf suggested.
‘There’s nothing on the news reports in the next few hours that suggests he’s gone to the media, and with his family terminated there is no danger of their exposing us,’ Joaquin explained. ‘And as long as our media-tycoon friend Robert Murtaugh plays ball, any attempt Purcell makes to expose his knowledge will be buried, and we’ll end up possessing any testimony he might make to the press. Murtaugh’s network dominance will overwhelm any other media access to the story. Unless proven innocent, Purcell has no credibility and nobody to look out for him.’
‘That may not be quite true.’
‘How so?’
‘I was pursued by two cops, a man and a woman. I got away, but they were good. Too good to be normal detectives. Somebody else may be involved in this, people who might know what Charles Purcell is trying to do.’
Joaquin considered this for a moment, an image of Jarvis, Warner and Lopez hovering ominously in his mind. He made a decision.
‘Stand by, Olaf. Soon we will know where Charles Purcell is hiding. I will call you back as soon as I can.’
Joaquin cut the line off and turned to the soldier next to him.
‘Tell Dennis to extract the Florida camera, immediately.’
Dennis Aubrey watched as the robotic arm lifted Camera 7 from the black-hole chamber and set it gently down before replacing it with a new camera, set to record. From his vantage point at the control-center panel, Dennis could see that the camera had been watching a screen that was tuned to one of the major Florida news networks.
Despite himself, Dennis was fascinated by the machine and found himself eagerly willing the camera out of the chamber.
So far, he had been able to watch the contents of only three of the cameras extracted from the chamber, but each piece of footage had riveted him. The flickering, grainy and entir
ely silent images were nothing short of spectacular, and as Dennis had watched tomorrow’s news unfold before him he had found himself captivated by the ticking clock at the bottom-right corner of the screen showing the time many hours in advance. There was no doubt about it: Joaquin had achieved something utterly unique, something that could change the balance of power in the world. Even as he thought about it, Dennis found himself enveloped by a fear that, wherever that power went, tragedy would follow it.
He looked across the control panel to a series of radio stacks that controlled communications between the Deep Blue facility and the Event Horizon, and the yacht’s onboard satellite receivers that picked up the news channels. A buoy tethered to the facility floated just under the water’s surface, some two thousand feet above. Its depth was controlled by an automatic flotation bladder that was itself connected to a communications room on the opposite side of the Deep Blue complex. A series of radio transmitters and aerials extended from the concealed buoy up and out of the water. Barely visible on the surface, the aerials enabled both radio and satellite phone communications in all but the wildest of weather. However, the radio was currently disabled, and could be reactivated only via an access code on the control panel – further evidence that Joaquin did not want Aubrey contacting anybody on the surface.
Aubrey reached into his pocket and retrieved his cellphone, scrolling through his contact list until he found the name he was looking for. Just one call and he could reveal everything. Fear warred with loyalty to Katherine in his mind, and he stared down at the number intently as he tried to figure out how to tell her. He wondered briefly if he could use the communications room directly in order to bypass the access code.
‘What news, Dennis?’
Dennis flinched as Joaquin’s voice crackled across the chamber. He slipped his cellphone discreetly back into his pocket and turned as he strode up toward him.
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