The Lure (40 page)

The rifle was loaded with a single bullet, reflecting the marksman’s confidence. While the 300 FAB Magnum was a popular choice amongst his peers, the rifleman preferred a 173 grain HV. This was purchased from a source in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It was a 30-calibre bullet, with an exit speed of 3650 feet per second, quite capable of stopping an elephant or piercing body armour. In a few minutes, if all went well, the powder in the bullet would be detonated and the shocked vapour would propel the soft-nosed head through the cold, dense air on a precise trajectory to the target’s skull, spreading brain and bone fragments across the gritted road.

‘Switch off the laser, you fool. You want someone to see it?’ The man stopped flapping his arms and picked up his night-vision binoculars. A thin road, already gritted, led into the town below from the left. At the town’s entrance was an open yard. In it, half a dozen big diesel trucks were throbbing, the noise drifting faintly up to them. Steam from their exhausts rose up to roof height and disappeared into the blackness. Over the door of a single-storeyed building in the yard, harsh lights illuminated the words
Henrik Hedstrom.

There was nothing to say what business Henrik Hedstrom was in. For all the waiting assassins cared, Henry Headstrong was Santa Claus. What mattered was that the target had hitched a lift in a Hedstrom truck and was heading this way; that she would get off either in the street or the yard; and that for a few moments, while she was saying her farewells to the driver, she would be a static target.

The man said again, ‘I’m going to die of fucking cold.’ He swung his binoculars to the right. Next to the yard was a post office, and then a two-storeyed timber house, glowing yellow in the streetlights. Pastel-coloured wooden houses lined the road, which hugged the fiord to the point where a massive rocky outcrop hid the view. At intervals there were boat-houses, and a mile away a pier jutted into the dark water. Smoke from overnight fires curled into the sky. In a few houses, chinks of light filtered through shuttered windows. One room had its shutters open and lights on, and it blazed into the darkness like a searchlight. The man peered into it, hoping to see something interesting like a woman undressing, but there was only shabby green wallpaper and a wooden dressing-table to be seen.

Somewhere below, a dog howled, wolf-like; answering howls came from around the little town. The noise died down. ‘What if he takes her past the yard?’

The corpse grunted. ‘Will you shut up? You want me to miss?’

‘Not with what we’re paying you.’

The marksman said, ‘It’s not enough. I’m losing my nuts.’

His nervous companion had no time to wonder if the statement was intended literally. His binoculars were picking up headlights, far to the left, where the road appeared round the edge of a mountain. His mouth was dry with fear and he could hardly get the words out: ‘Here she comes.’

49

Endgame

The cabin steward shook him awake and Petrie was hit by his third surge of terror in twelve hours.

The first had been in Warsaw. At the check-in he withered under the steady gaze of hard-eyed officials. And again at Heathrow, the Special Branch officers seemed to have X-ray eyes which penetrated his mind. Petrie knew that a mistake at either of these key points, a tremor of nerves attracting attention, would have been fatal.

And now, on the screen showing the transatlantic progress of the jumbo, the aircraft was pointing south and practically touching Washington. He looked down, and glimpsed snow-covered ground through clear patches of cloud.

The endgame. A good one won’t save you. It needs to be devastating.

In the Dulles terminal Petrie defiantly pulled off the wig and sideburns and the heavy spectacles, eased the plastic padding out of his mouth and the stupid little moustache from under his nose, and tossed the lot into a litter bin. He put on his usual round-framed spectacles from a case. Amos and Obadiah escorted him to the sidewalk at the front of the airport, where a stretch limousine was waiting, with another large black car behind it. Amos opened the door for Petrie and said, ‘So long, Tom.’

In the back of the limousine, three people. Eau de cologne lingering in the air. He sank into leather opulence next to a strikingly beautiful young woman who gave him an open, almost naive smile. Her voice was melodious and tinged with a Scandinavian accent: ‘What took you so long?’

For the first time in his life Petrie was out of words. He squeezed her hand.

The driver merged smoothly into the flow of airport traffic. A middle-aged woman sat across from Petrie, on the luxurious backwards-facing long seat. She pressed a button on the arm rest and a glass partition slid up between the uniformed driver and the passengers. She extended a hand. ‘I’m Hazel Baxendale, the President’s Science Adviser. On behalf of President Bull I’d like to welcome you to the States. Don’t let Dr Størmer kid you. She arrived only a few hours ago.’

Her companion, elderly and white-haired, nodded at Petrie but didn’t extend his hand. ‘And I’m Al Sullivan. I run the CIA, for my sins. Glad we got you out okay.’

Heady company for a junior post-doc.
Petrie said, ‘I feel as if I’m inside a Bond movie or something.’

Sullivan managed a near-smile. ‘We have a few guys like that on the payroll.’

The limo was now moving smartly along the freeway, the heavily tinted glass protecting them from the curious stares of other drivers. The CIA Director leaned forward. ‘The deal is this. You give us the password to the DVD. In return we go public with the ET signal. We put everything into the public domain, all the new knowledge and all the material still to be decrypted. But all of us agree to keep one thing back.’

Petrie waited.

‘The celestial coordinates of the signal, pending a decision from the United Nations. If they decide on a reply, we release that information too.’

Freya said, ‘It’s everything we’ve asked for, Tom.’

‘But the moment I give them the password,’ he warned her, ‘they can do anything they like.’ He looked across at Sullivan. ‘You have the DVD, then.’

‘Came in the pouch weeks ago. But we can’t bust it. Neither us nor the NSA.’

‘If I give you the password you could decrypt the message, use the knowledge for your own national advantage and keep the knowledge of the signallers to yourselves.’

‘But if they did that they’d have to silence us, Tom,’ Freya said.

‘Seen the car following us?’

She glanced nervously out of the rear window.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Hazel was smiling, but the smile had an edge.

Petrie said, ‘How do we even know you are who you say you are?’

Freya attempted a light tone. ‘It’s the castle. It had an effect on everyone in it. We all ended up paranoid.’

Nobody smiled. She turned to Petrie. ‘Tom, if they want the knowledge of the signallers suppressed they’ll bump us off with or without the password. We’re in their hands.’

The even chance.
‘It kills me to say this, Freya, but we have to focus on getting the signal out. That matters more than us.’

Sullivan closed his eyes. ‘Young man, there are people at the Farm who’d have the password out of you before the day’s end.’

Petrie remained silent.
Yes, the duress one, the one that would wipe the disk clean.
Beside him, Freya had frozen, and suddenly the air was thick with hostility.

Hazel tried to break the tension. ‘It must be the jet lag, Tom. May I call you Tom? You have to trust someone.’

It’s not going well. Not the devastating game that Vash demanded.
Petrie tried to unclench his fists, think carefully. The car was stuffy and he felt sweat down his back.

Freya broke the long silence. ‘I trust you. You’re nice people.’

There was a mystified silence. ‘But before I knew you were such nice people, I made several copies of the disk when I was in Prague and sent them around to colleagues and friends, with instructions. If there was an accident, everything would go out, including the exact location of the signallers. To sub-arcsecond accuracy, if you understand that. Do you know how many backyard radio telescopes there are in the States alone? Hundreds! All convertible to answering devices.’

There was a brief silence as they assimilated Freya’s bombshell. Hazel broke it; she threw back her head and laughed. The driver glanced in the mirror.

‘There’s another condition,’ said Sullivan. ‘A little rewriting of history. No mention must ever be made of the attempts to muzzle you people and suppress this discovery. The British and the Russians insist.’

Hazel said, ‘And we’re happy to agree. What else are friends for?’

Petrie asked, ‘But what about our colleagues, Svetlana, Charlie and Vashislav? How will you explain their deaths?’

Hazel said, ‘They’re alive.’

Freya raised clenched fists, squealed with delight.
‘Fantastisk! Hvordan ei all verden…?’

‘All in due course, Dr Størmer,’ Hazel said.

Sullivan spoke quietly. ‘The password?’

Petrie looked out of the window. The facts were in and he had them analysed in a second. Freya, probably, was lying in her teeth. He glanced over at her. She nodded, almost imperceptibly; it was little more than a slight narrowing of her eyes. But Vashislav alive was like the
Bismarck
loose on the high seas; the genie practically out of the bottle; membership of the club all but guaranteed. This thing was beyond stopping.

He turned again to the window. ‘
Origin of Species,
chapter three, paragraph three, first sentence. “We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.” Join the words up and write the sentence backwards.’

The DCI scowled. ‘This guy Darwin has a lot to answer for.’

50

Afterglow

His small fat wife was mouthing some words, but he couldn’t make them out. Slightly irritated – he’d reached the climax of the thriller – the President of UCLA put down the book and took the proffered receiver.

‘Professor Goldsmith? Would you wait for a call from the President’s Science Adviser?’

He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. He’d met the woman a few times, but a call at home, at eight in the evening, California time, which made it eleven at night in Washington …

‘Professor Goldsmith? Hazel Baxendale here.’ Her voice was coming over a background of chatter and clattering plates, like a dinner party or something. Goldsmith thought she was using a mobile phone.

‘I have a favour to ask,’ continued the Science Adviser. ‘We’d be grateful if the University could take on board two young people – a British man and a Norwegian lady – for a few years. It would have to be in the Berkeley campus. Not to put too fine a point on it, the country owes them a favour.’

Wisdom and experience had taught Goldsmith that a White House whim was a University President’s command. He didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course. Delighted to do so. What exactly do you have in mind?’

‘Perhaps scholarships of some sort. She has a doctorate in planetary science and I understand he’s a first-rate mathematician. Work permits and the like won’t be a problem.’

‘I’ll arrange five-year appointments and fund them through the University. Have them call into my office whenever they’re ready.’

‘We appreciate it. Also, in confidence, we anticipate a little seed funding – maybe fifty million dollars to be going on with – to look into the ET question which I dare say you’ve been seeing
ad nauseam
on the box.’

Fifty million dollars. To be going on with. Goldsmith felt a light sweat developing on his brow. ‘Ah, yes.’

‘Would Berkeley be able to contemplate administering this money? It still needs Congressional approval but I’m told that this will be forthcoming.’

‘I’m sure the University could manage.’

‘Good. Good.’

The Science Adviser rang off.
A young Norwegian planetary scientist. A British mathematician. The country owes them a favour.
The clues could hardly be more direct. He opened a diary, skimmed over the telephone pages, and dialled a number. ‘Dorothy? Henry Goldsmith here. I’d appreciate it if your Faculty could take on board two young people…’

*   *   *

The morning papers were waiting for them when they giggled their way into the Willard penthouse at midnight. A bunch of red roses on a dressing-table was accompanied by a handwritten card:
In appreciation. Seth Bull, President of the United States.
Freya slipped out of her new shoes while Petrie disappeared to the bathroom. By the time he returned she was under the sheets of the king-size bed.

They fell asleep with the newspapers untouched, the champagne in the bucket and the lights still on.

*   *   *

‘Tom! Are you awake?’

Petrie drags himself up from subterranean depths.

‘I know how Charlie and Vash and Svetlana escaped. They set the castle alight.’

‘What?’

‘Yes.’ Freya laughs. ‘That Melanie girl told me. The flames were a hundred metres high. Anyway, when the local fire brigade appeared, Svetlana was unconscious ha-ha and Charlie and Vash insisted on going with her in the ambulance to the nearest town, which is a place called Trnava, it seems. They had a police escort all the way.’

Petrie struggles into a sitting position. ‘That would confuse the soldiers.’

‘Most of whom were away chasing us over the Tatras. It seems one of the ambulancemen had a mobile phone. Vash borrowed it and got through to the American Embassy. Trnava’s halfway between Bratislava and the castle, and people from the Embassy got there as soon as they arrived, and spirited them away. Like you, Tom, they were kept safe. “On ice”, Melanie said.’

‘That had to be Vashislav. Sometimes I think our Russian friend comes from outer space.’

Freya pulls a face. ‘All that beautiful Hapsburg furniture.’

‘I expect they spared the library.’

‘Tom, why didn’t he let us in on his plan?’

‘In case we were caught, stupid. The less we knew the better. By the way, his temporal lobe stuff. It won’t get worse, and it can be controlled by drugs.’