Jan Kees Vogelaar is living in Berlin under the name Andre Donner, where he runs an African private and business address: Oranienburger Strasse 50, 10117 Berlin. What should we continues to represent a grave risk to the operation not doubt that he knows all about the. knows at least about the but some doubt as to whether. One way or another any statement lasting Admittedly, since his no public comment about the facts behind the coup. Nevertheless Ndongo’s that the Chinese government planned and implemented regime change. Vogelaar has little about the nature of Operation of timing Furthermore, Orley Enterprises and have no reason to suspect disruption. Nobody there suspects everything. I count because I know, Nevertheless urgently recommend that Donner be liquidated. There are good reasons to
‘Orley Enterprises.’ Yoyo frowned quizzically.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Tu grinned slyly. ‘The world’s biggest technology corporation. We were just talking about them! If you ask me, that throws a whole new light on the matter. It seems to have less to do with some violent handover of power in Equatorial Guinea and much more to do with who’s top dog—’
‘—out in space.’ Jericho felt his ear. Right now he felt as though he’d been slogging and stumbling along a rutted country road for hours, and had just found out that the main road was running alongside. According to Vogelaar, their problems had begun in 2022 when a delegation paid a visit, supposedly from the Chinese aerospace ministry; Mayé had seen all his hopes dashed and was ready to take any deal. He signed a contract which could hardly have been more absurd, but Kenny stood for Beijing, and so Mayé had believed that he was dealing with an official delegation.
‘Good.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘Let’s forget Mayé for a moment. Yoyo, do you remember what Vogelaar said about the launching pad? Who built it?’
‘The Zheng Group.’
‘Exactly, Zheng. And who is Zheng’s biggest competitor?’
‘America.’ Yoyo frowned again. ‘No. Orley Enterprises.’
‘Which more or less amounts to the same thing, if I’m not mistaken. Orley helped the Americans towards lunar supremacy, and he’s always just ahead of Zheng, any way you look at it. So Zheng turns to espionage—’
‘Or to sabotage.’
‘I see that you’ve got it.’ Tu scrabbled around in the Brazil nuts and pistachios. ‘They’re talking about an operation, and the fact that Vogelaar continues to represent a grave risk because he knows all about something. But what kind of operation could this be where people have to die in droves to keep it secret?’
Yoyo’s face clouded over.
‘An operation that’s not been carried out yet,’ she said slowly.
‘I think so too,’ Jericho said, nodding. ‘Vogelaar doesn’t seem to know anything about the nature or its timing, but he could send the whole thing sky-high if he made a public comment about the facts behind the coup. The whole world still believes that Ndongo got the presidency back under his own steam, or with Beijing’s help—’
‘Quite, and just for once we’re not going to fall into the usual trap,’ said Tu. ‘Then there’s more. Furthermore, Orley Enterprises – blah blah – have no reason to suspect disruption. And—’
‘Nobody there suspects everything.’
‘So they suspect something.’ Yoyo looked from one to the other. ‘Isn’t that right? I mean, that’s what you’d say if they know something.’
‘We can’t assume that the second phrase is actually complete, just because it looks it,’ Jericho said. ‘What’s quite clear is that Orley Enterprises is part of the picture somehow. Then Zheng stands on the other side. The disaster in Equatorial Guinea is all down to some faked-up space programme that he got onto its feet. Zheng represents Beijing, although he could be acting on his own account. Julian Orley stands for Washington, he’s the saviour of the American space programme and Zheng’s natural enemy—’
‘That’s only true to a limited extent,’ Tu butted in. ‘Julian Orley is English himself, if I’m not mistaken, and he only plays that game with the Americans because they’re useful to him. Even he’s just acting on his own account.’
‘So what’s going on here? A proxy war?’
‘Possibly. We’ve known since last year if not before that the Moon’s got the potential to cause a crisis.’
‘Vogelaar sees things differently,’ Yoyo threw in. ‘He reckons that Beijing was just a bluff on the part of whoever was actually behind the Equatorial Guinea satellite programme.’
‘Call it Beijing or call it Zheng.’ Tu shrugged. ‘Do we really want to rule out the possibility that if a global corporation planned an attack on a rival, its government would give tacit approval?’
‘Do dogs get in dogfights?’
‘Wait a moment.’ Jericho put his fingers to his lips. ‘Orley Enterprises – haven’t they just been in the news? There was a report about the Moon crisis a few days ago, and—’
‘Orley is always in the news.’
‘Yes, but this time there really was something new.’
‘Of course!’A spark of recognition lit up in Yoyo’s eyes. ‘Gaia!’
‘What?’
‘The hotel! The hotel on the Moon! Gaia!’
‘That’s right,’ Jericho said pensively. ‘They’re planning a hotel up there.’
‘I think they’ve even built it by now,’ Tu said, frowning in thought. ‘It was supposed to be ready last year, and then there were delays thanks to the helium-3 flare-up. Nobody knows what it looks like. Orley’s big secret.’
‘You can find all kinds of speculation on the net,’ said Yoyo. ‘And you’re right, it is ready. Sometime round about now there’s even supposed to be— Hmm.’
‘What?’
‘I think there’s supposed to be an inaugural trip. Some gang of filthy rich guests are flying up there. Maybe even Orley himself. Utterly exclusive.’
Jericho stared at her. ‘Are you saying that the operation might have to do with this hotel?’
‘Interesting.’ Tu ran his fingers through the sparse growth at the sides of his head. ‘We should get to work straight away. We’ll have to learn all the latest about Orley Enterprises. What’s up right now? What’s planned in the near future? Then we’ll have a look at the Zheng Group. Once we have Vogelaar’s dossier on top of all that, we’ll probably be one giant leap further. When were you going to meet this guy, anyway?’
‘Tomorrow noon,’ said Jericho. ‘At the Pergamon Museum.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Of course you haven’t. Three thousand years of Chinese civilisation puts everything else just that little bit out of focus.’ Jericho rubbed his jaw and looked at Yoyo. ‘By the way, I don’t think it’s a good idea if we both turn up there.’
‘Now wait a moment!’ she protested. ‘So far we’ve been through everything together.’
‘I know. Nevertheless.’
‘I see!’ She tightened her lips into a hostile line. ‘You’re still pissed off because of Nyela.’
‘No, not in the least. Really, I’m not.’
‘Do you think that Vogelaar will try to shove you into the meat-slicer again?’
‘He’s unpredictable.’
‘He wants money, Owen! He chose to meet in a public place. What’s going to happen there?’
‘Owen’s right,’ Tu put in. ‘Do we know whether Vogelaar even has this dossier?’
Yoyo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. He told you about a dossier. Did he actually show you one?’
‘Of course not, he wants us to give him the—’
‘So he could have been bluffing,’ Tu interrupted her. ‘Precisely because he wants the money. He could try to get the drop on Owen in the museum and make off with the hundred thousand.’
‘Get the drop on him how?’
‘Like this.’ Jericho stretched out an index finger and put it to his temple. ‘It works, even in crowds.’
‘Well great!’ Yoyo squirmed in her seat from rage and frust
ration. ‘So that’s why you want to go into the museum on your own?’
‘Believe me, it’s safer.’
‘It would be safer with me and my haunch of antelope.’
‘I’m faster and more adaptable on my own. I don’t have to watch out for anyone but myself.’
‘Like you can look after yourself, bunnikins.’
‘I can look out well enough to save your skin twice.’
‘Oh, so that’s what it’s about,’ Yoyo huffed, turning red. ‘You’re worried you’d have to save my skin a third time. You think I’m a nitwit.’
‘You’re anything but a nitwit.’
‘So what am I?’
‘Could it perhaps be that you’re trouble?’
‘I should hope so!’
‘Yoyo,’ Tu said gently but firmly, ‘I think the decision’s been made.’
Yoyo had got herself worked up into a storm of indignation, and now came the cloudburst. Fat tears like raindrops gathered in the corners of her eyes, brimmed over her eyelids.
‘I don’t want to just sit about!’ she said in a ragged voice. ‘I got all of us into this mess. Don’t you understand that I want to do something?’
‘Of course we do. You’ll be doing something if you help me with the research.’
The waiter appeared and checked their table. Tu plunged his hand into the bowl, as though afraid that he hadn’t been giving due attention to the nuts.
‘We’ll haff to fime oup emryfing abou’ Orley,’ he muttered indistinctly. ‘On fop of all vat’ – he swallowed – ‘I want to know more about Zheng’s solo projects. After all, he’s the only Chinese entrepreneur who could go building a satellite launch pad anywhere on Earth without prior state approval. You see, my dear Yoyo, even if Owen were to beg me on bended knee to let him take you with him, I’d still refuse.’
Yoyo glowered at him. ‘You eat like a pig, just so you know.’
‘Are you going to help me or are you not?’
‘Have you two alpha males even considered letting Orley Enterprises know?’
‘I have,’ Tu said. ‘All the same, I don’t know exactly what we could tell them.’
‘That something is going to happen, at some point in time, though we don’t know what it is or what’s the target, but that they are possibly the victim.’
‘All admirably specific. Shall we also tell them that Zheng is behind the whole thing?’
‘Or Beijing. Or the Chinese Secret Service.’ Yoyo was visibly calming down. For the time being, it seemed that the dams would not burst. ‘We don’t know when the attack is going to take place – if indeed it is an attack. Mayé was deposed right around the time of the Moon crisis, it could even be that the crisis was the operation, but our text tells us something quite different. It’s still to come. But when? How much time do we have? We zoomed over to Berlin at Mach 2 to warn Vogelaar. We should send word to Orley Enterprises at the speed of light, even if our message is very vague.’
‘Excellent strategic argumentation,’ Jericho put in.
Yoyo leaned back. She looked only halfway mollified. Jericho knew what she was going through, the rage, the shame and the helplessness of a child who isn’t even allowed to clear up the mess she’s made; he knew that her father’s reproachful silence loomed up somewhere inside her. Like so many children, she had learned early enough that she wasn’t up to some unspoken standards.
There was a pimply boy who knew all about such things.
* * *
Like the goddess Kali, the Orley conglomerate had many arms growing from its torso, so many that at some point Tu got fed up with following links and flowcharts. The company presented some excellent targets for attack. The hotel project was nominally part of Orley Space, which was responsible for the space programme and ancillary technologies, but then again it wasn’t, because private travel to the Space Station and the Moon came under Orley Travel. For helium-3 mining and freight, NASA and the US Treasury were the people to talk to, but then again so were Orley Space and Orley Energy, whose main business was building fusion reactors. The further they delved into the labyrinthine structures of the company, the less they felt they knew about where the ‘operation’ might be aimed. Orley Entertainment produced films such as Perry Rhodan, which had made the Irish actor Finn O’Keefe one of the top earners in the movie world; it was also experimenting with the next generation of 3D cinema, and had built an Orley Sphere in several cities around the globe, each a huge spherical arena for grandiose concerts and events, seating thirty thousand visitors. Currently a concert on the OSS was in the planning stages, to be given by David Bowie – almost eighty years old – and this of course was Orley Entertainment’s brief, but Orley Space and Orley Travel were also part of the project. There was a division for marketing and communication, Orley Media, as well as an innovation incubator where young researchers tweaked tomorrow’s world into shape – this was Orley Origin. Once you got to the internet, the conglomerate grew and ramified like a spiral galaxy. When Diane tried the simple keyword news, it came up with a complete agenda for the twenty-first century. Everything was new, and everything really did mean everything, since there was hardly a field of human endeavour where Orley Enterprises wasn’t trying to plant their flag, all of course with fervent belief and noble intent. There seemed no end to their search by the time they found OneWorld, an initiative which Julian Orley had founded to prevent global collapse; it poured forth projects for prevention and adaptation as reliably as the gushing geysers of Iceland, constantly testing new fuels and reagents, new kinds of engine, new this that and the other, all the way up to the meteorite shields which were being developed aboard the OSS in collaboration with Orley Space and Orley Origin.
And all of this under the aegis of Julian Orley, icon, philanthropist and eccentric, more like a rock star than a business mogul, smiling youthfully, the promise of endless adventure on his lips; he was America’s ally and at the same time nobody’s partner, a concerned citizen, generous patron, unpredictable genius, a master of time and space, the high priest of what-if, a man who seemed to hold the patent on planet Earth and interplanetary space, even on the future itself.
Diane also informed them that Gaia, the hotel on the Moon, was now open for a select group of guests led by Julian and Lynn Orley. The trip was organised by—
‘That’s enough for me,’ Tu declared, and called company headquarters in London, asking to be put through to Central Security. Jennifer Shaw, the chief of security, was in a meeting, and her deputy, Andrew Norrington, was travelling. In the end Tu spoke to a woman called Edda Hoff, number three in the hierarchy, who wore her hair in a pageboy cut like a crash helmet. She had all the personality and approachability of an electronic voice menu: if you want to report a terrorist attack, please say ‘one’. For bribery, corruption and espionage, say ‘two’. If you wish to attack us yourself, please say ‘three’. She spoke as though Orley Enterprises spent the whole day fielding calls from people warning of dark deeds or announcing their own.
Tu sent her the text fragment. She read it carefully, without a flicker of expression passing across her mask-like face. She listened calmly to his explanations. It was only when Tu started talking about the hotel that her features came to life, and she raised her eyebrows so that they almost met her black fringe.
‘And what makes you so sure that the attack is going to target Gaia?’
‘I heard that it was open for business,’ Tu explained.
‘Not officially. The first group of visitors arrived there a few days ago, Julian Orley’s personal guests. He himself—’ She stopped speaking.
‘Is up there?’ Tu completed the sentence for her. ‘That would make me nervous!’
‘There’s nothing in the document about the timing of the operation,’ she said somewhat pedantically. ‘It’s all rather vague.’
‘What’s not so vague is that innocent people have lost their lives because of this document,’ Tu said, almost cheerfully. ‘They’re dead, dead as doorna
ils, definitely dead, nothing vague about it, if you see what I mean. As for ourselves, we’ve also risked our lives so that you can read it.’
Hoff seemed to consider. ‘How can I reach you?’
Tu gave her his phone number, and Jericho’s.
‘Do you plan to do anything about it?’ he asked. ‘And if so, when?’
‘We’ll let Gaia know. Within the next couple of hours.’ The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, giving the illusion of a smile. ‘Thank you for letting us know. We’ll call you.’
The screen went dark.
‘Was that a woman?’ Yoyo wondered out loud. ‘Or a robot?’
Tu snorted with laughter. ‘Diane?’
‘Good evening, Mister Tu.’
‘Just call me Tian.’
‘I shall do so.’
‘How are you, Diane?’
‘Thank you, Tian, I’m very well,’ Diane said in her warm alto voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
Tu turned back to the others. ‘I’ve no idea who or what Edda Hoff is,’ he whispered. ‘But compared with her, Diane is definitely a woman. Owen, I owe you an apology. I’m beginning to understand you.’
Gaia, Vallis Alpina, The Moon
‘Is there someone close to you whom you can trust unreservedly?’
Lynn thought about this. Her first instinct was to say Julian’s name, but suddenly she felt uncertain about this. She loved her father and admired him, and of course he trusted her. But whenever she saw herself through his eyes she was terrified by the image of the woman with sea-blue eyes, the woman Julian called his daughter, and the worst of it was that she could only ever see herself through his eyes, that even as a child she had yearned for his approval as a plant turns towards the sun. But she wasn’t that woman. So how could she trust him, since clearly he knew nothing at all of how she felt, didn’t know that she was just a puppet on strings, a shape-shifting monster, a mimic, a tumour, a thing?
‘Who are you thinking of at the moment?’ asked ISLAND-II.
‘Of my father. Julian Orley.’
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