The War of Immensities (33 page)

They bounced
the cracked and debris-strewn roads in a land rover, amid frantic
Italians. It was total chaos, the emergency services seemed as
disorganised as the victims and each little region seemed to have
its own entirely different way of going about the evacuations. And
no one wanted to understand anything they said. They would have
been a total loss had Chrissie not been with them to interpret
everything.

And then help
arrived. The Red Cross moved in and immediately began to prepare
lists of names of the victims, and NATO troops, mainly French and
American, came to secure the region. From afar, Thyssen and Lorna
had been doing their bit too. On the fourth day after the disaster,
she was summoned to this meeting in Naples. A British diplomat
named Sanderson was there to advise her on protocol and
explain.

“They have all
been advised of Project Earthshaker, and received instructions to
co-operate and now they want you to tell them what to do.”

Good old
Harley, Felicity smiled.

So she stood
before the table in the opulent marbled room. Before her, the heads
of the most powerful organisations and all of them were there to
hear her, mere Felicity Campbell, GP, from lowly New Zealand. Now
Felicity Earthshaker. She cleared her throat and found it
unnecessary. She was calm and clear, despite sleep deprivation, and
it was all in her head and ready to flow.

“Gentlemen,”
she said resonantly. “This is what must be done...”

There aren’t a
lot of parks in a vertical city like Hong Kong where real estate is
fabulously costly, and therefore not a lot of park benches. This
one was really in the forecourt of a skyscraper owned by an oil
company, but there was grass, there were trees, and a fine view of
the harbour. Away to his right was the ferry terminal and a bustle
of activity to occupy his mind while he waited—the sky was grey but
it was warm and the office workers were all about, eating their
lunches from bags. The British had gone and the Chinese came but
you still sat on the grass and had lunch with your girlfriend.
Absolutely everyone he could see—several thousand people he
supposed—wore western dress—suits and ties, mini skirts and high
heels—the regimental uniform of the world’s most numerous army, the
forces of commerce.

Joe Solomon did
not have his lunch in a plastic bag and brought his own equivalent
of a park bench anyway—plainly this Mr. Cornelius didn’t know
everything. He parked his wheelchair beside the bench, making a
personal annex, and waited for the secret rendezvous to occur. His
knowledge of such matters was entirely gleaned from Ian Fleming and
John Le Carre. They were meeting in a public place, out in the open
where they couldn’t be overheard, in a noisy place where they could
not be bugged; if Cornelius turned up in a trench coat all the
clichés would be in place.

Fortunately, it
was not so. He proved to be a craggy beanpole of a man, in a
creased blue suit, bent at the middle, a week’s grey stubble on his
chin. In fact, he looked rather more like the park bench was his
living room. Joe had dumped his briefcase on the seat to keep a
place for him and the young couple who had sat there while he
waited now moved on at the convenient time. John Cornelius advanced
and if the wheelchair was a surprise, he did not let it show.

“Mr. Solomon,
is it?”

“I guess you
must be Mr. Cornelius.”

“Please, call
me John.” Joe doubted that he ever would.

The briefcase
was moved to the frame attached to the wheelchair which was its
customary position and Cornelius suffered to bend his long frame
and seat himself. Joe could see he had a bad back and probably
piles. He was at least sixty, his face heavily lined, and what was
once a fine crop of white hair now thinning.

“Ah,” Cornelius
breathed. “Nice to get out. It’s a lovely view from here, don’t you
think?”

“Nice to get
out of where?” Joe asked. He suspected it might have been a cave or
a soft spot under a bridge somewhere.

“Oh, the hotel
and all that. I don’t get out as much as I would like, and I
haven’t seen Hong Kong since the handover.”

“So where do
you usually live?” Joe asked. Had this man really come to Hong
Kong, just to see him? No. The location had not been known when the
meeting was originally proposed.

“Where the work
takes me.”

“What
work?”

“A book. I’m
writing a book. Research, you know.”

“What’s it
about?”

“Oh, the old
agency days. All I know really.”

“But you don’t
work for the CIA now.”

“Heavens no.
Fully retired. Ten years now.”

Joe Solomon let
that sink in. It certainly fitted the facts well enough, but it
didn’t explain anything.

“Look,” Joe
said. “I have to ask you a few questions before I decide whether I
want to talk to you or not.”

“Oh, indeed.
Ask away. I have no secrets. Well, not any more.”

“Just exactly
what is your interest in this?”

“Personal.
Private. But I can help. Let me explain.”

“If you
would.”

“I was data
analysis, as most agency men are. Office work. Computers. Hardly
ever left Langley. Just a clerk, really. But, well, freedom of
information, you know. Decided to write a book about the
interesting things that came across my desk over the years, and I
realised that I had never been to most of the places I was talking
about. So I travel, and I write, filling in the gaps, so to speak.
And Thyssen was one of the very interesting things that came across
my desk.”

“I should
imagine.”

“I doubt you
do. He was one of ours, you see.”

“You’re pulling
my leg.”

“No, really.
Think about it. A rabble rouser like him—student activist,
Greenpeace, all that environmental lobbying. Made waves everywhere
he went. Yet the Chair of Geology at a prestigious university was
open to him, as was every door in Washington. Limitless funds for
his pet project. To an outlaw? I don’t think so. No. It’s because
he was undercover all the way, and now all those favours he is owed
for invaluable service to the agency and various presidential
executives are to be repaid. You see?”

“Are you
speculating or do you know?”

“His inside
reports on the Green movement came to me for years.”

Joe hated it.
It was ridiculous. This man was ridiculous. He wanted to just go
away and ignore all this. Here was an Iago, pouring poison in his
ear. Unless, of course, there was proof.

“You can prove
this, of course.”

“Of course,”
and he reached into his inner jacket pocket and extracted a creased
and folded sheet of paper. He handed it over and Joe opened it. It
was on CIA stationery. It was stamped TOP SECRET. It was signed
Harley Thyssen. Joe read enough to give him the drift. Poison.

“You see,”
Cornelius was saying. “That it places the Rainbow Warrior in
Auckland harbour on the appropriate future date. Information for
which the French were most thankful.”

Joe folded the
document and handed it back. Back in his office in Perth, he could
have faked such a document in Photoshop in about ten minutes. But
perhaps the best plan was to go with the flow.

“There’s more,
I hope.”

“Of course. I
can get you all the proof you need.”

“Why don’t you
tell me what you have to say instead,” Joe decided. “And we’ll deal
with proving it later.”

“Watch out for
Thyssen. He has a hidden agenda. That’s all I have to tell
you.”

Joe considered
it. It was spoken with adequate sincerity, there was no doubt about
that, but this man just did not add up. He seemed only vaguely
outlined, as if he was unsure himself of just exactly why they were
sitting there, having this conversation, about this man
Thyssen.

“Look, Mr.
Cornelius...”

“Oh, John,
please.”

“Okay, John.
Look. I’m a lawyer. I spend my life looking for people’s hidden
agendas, even when they don’t have one. It’s a reflex these days. I
assume it automatically. Understand?”

“Of
course...”

“Thyssen is
plainly a dangerous man. He’s dangerous if he’s a bad guy with a
hidden agenda, but even if that isn’t so, if he’s a good guy with
only honourable intentions, he still remains very dangerous. To
everyone. To the whole bloody planet.”

“I hear
that.”

“So unless you
can be specific. Unless you can provide precise information and
back it up with proof, there is no point to this discussion.
Indeed, it amounts, as it stands, to no more than gossip.”

Cornelius,
positively scolded, could not have looked more dismayed.
“Obviously, such matters are classified.”

“Obviously…”
Joe murmured. Inwardly, he was surprised to feel a sense of relief.
More sure of his ground now, he decided on a different tack. “When
did you meet him?”

“I never did. I
told you. I just sat in an office and read reports.”

“Which,
themselves, might have been faked.”

“Oh, I don’t
think so. But I see you are unwilling to believe me. That too
doesn’t surprise me. Many people have reported a reluctance to
distrust Thyssen. He has that effect on people. They get mesmerised
by him. I would, truly, love to meet him one day.”

“Give me proof
and I’ll believe.”

Cornelius was
nodding and surveying the scene. “You are the proof, Joe. Living
proof. They ran some sort of test and it went wrong somehow. And
Thyssen has the task of measuring its effects. The Shastri Effect,
you see.”

“But no
proof.”

Cornelius
slapped his knees and began the laborious task of rising from the
seat. “We’ll met again, Joe. Talk again. Perhaps by then your faith
will be dented somewhat. I see that you are wisely skeptical. For
the moment, that is enough.”

“Yes, I think
it is,” Joe Solomon said.

He watched
Cornelius until the man had shuffled completely out of sight. While
he did he measured every part of his consciousness. He felt like
his pocket had been picked only when he checked there was nothing
missing. Only, of course, there had to be. He realised that he must
have lost something that he never knew he had.

When the nurse
summoned her to the telephone and said the call was from New
Zealand, Felicity had to run through the dark stone corridors to
the far side of the ancient building they had been given, a former
convent converted into a hospital sometime around the Second World
War. There had been few improvements since then, but it was a
satisfactory base, even if it had little chance of accepting all of
the sleepers, and no hope of accommodating all of their equipment.
But it was an improvement over where they had started last week, in
bivouac tents in the open.

“I’m sorry,”
Wendell said. “You must be very busy.”

He was
referring to the length of time it had taken her to reach the
telephone and perhaps the fact that she was out of breath when she
got there.

“We have time,”
she said, still gasping. “The project will pay our telephone
bill.”

“I wasn’t
concerned about that...” Wendell said testily.

Emotional
matters on the telephone were always so vulnerable to
misinterpretation.

“Is there
anything wrong?” she asked desperately.

“No, no,”
Wendell grovelled. “We saw you on television. The girls
wanted...”

“But everyone
is okay?”

“Melissa has a
slight cold and I’m suffering from an ingrown toenail. How about
you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You looked
exhausted.”

“I’m always
fine when I’m exhausted. You know that.”

“Megan wants to
speak first.”

“Put her
on.”

“Hullo mummy.
We saw you on the telly.”

They had been
invaded by CNN and less conspicuously by other world media.
Surprisingly, they had been helpful rather than a hindrance. In a
scene of widespread chaos when information was desperately needed,
there were few better sources than news camera crews. They had
picked up at least a dozen sleepers that everyone else had missed
because of prying eyes that seemed to see more clearly through a
viewfinder than they did in reality.

“Yes. They
interviewed me yesterday.”

“Were you at
the beach?”

She had to
think. Beach? No. They were nowhere near the sea. But the interview
had been in the open, in a barren yellow landscape, on a hot day
with the wind in her hair and she was burned so very brown by the
sun. Yes, she could understand beach.

“No, dear. I’m
in Italy. It’s a place where the sun shines a lot.”

In fact she was
having to raise her voice, because of the rain pelting on the
roof.

“Are you going
to be home for my birthday?”

Oh shit! The
fifteenth, but what was today’s date? Day Six was all that would
come to mind. The hit was the 20th. Three weeks away...

“Oh yes. How
could I miss something like that?”

“Daddy said
there’s lots of people to make better and you might not be able
to.”

“I’ll be there,
love. I promise.”

“Okay
mummy.”

Without the
slightest doubt about such a promise.

There was a
pause and Melissa was next, her voice muffled by her cold.

“Hi mum. Is it
dangerous there?”

“Not at
all.”

“They showed
all these volcanoes erupting and earthquakes and fires and floods.
Isn’t that where you are?”

The rain that
was falling was black with ash. The pillars of cloud from both
Vesuvius and Stromboli could be seen in the distance on clear
days.

“Not quite.
Anyway, the volcanoes have quietened and the tremors stopped days
ago. It’s perfectly safe.”

Yesterday a
flash flood carried away a village further up the valley when a
temporary dam formed by a landslide gave way. The day before, a
stationary truck suddenly disappeared underground as the earth
adjusted to the impact of the fissures. A nurse had been
electrocuted by the inadequate wiring, and another infected when
bitten by a rat in the main ward. All perfectly safe.