Apocalypse (29 page)

Jarvis scanned the documents before them. ‘And that’s where this Ivy Mike comes in, right?’

‘Exactly,’ Ryker enthused. ‘Look, here’s Montgomery Purcell’s name on the Manhattan Project roster for work on uranium enrichment at Sylacauga, Alabama, and at Oak
Ridge, Tennessee. This work led to the Trinity test and ultimately the end of the war. But the work does not stop. As the Cold War got into full swing and McCarthyism got everybody hysterical about
Communism, so scientists like Montgomery Purcell found themselves the subject of immense demand. National laboratories were opening up everywhere as America raced to stay ahead of its nuclear
rivals, and men like Purcell were offered resources they could only have dreamed about a decade earlier.’

Jarvis was well aware of the escalating nuclear arms race of the post-war years, and the associated paranoia and fear of atomic Armageddon that had overshadowed the lives of every human being on
the planet. For almost half a century, governments had maintained secret bunkers designed to withstand the tremendous devastation that modern nuclear weapons could unleash. Ordinary families,
meanwhile, had been sent leaflets detailing how best to survive the coming holocaust, and had built their own pitifully inadequate bunkers in their backyards stocked with dehydrated food and
bottled water. None of them had realized that, with the world outside consumed by the nuclear fires and irradiated for decades, surviving the initial attacks only guaranteed them a later, much
slower death amid the crumbling remnants of civilization.

‘Where did Montgomery Purcell go?’

‘The Pacific proving grounds,’ Ryker informed him. ‘He becomes one of the leading scientists on Operation Crossroads, testing and detonating atomic weapons on Bikini Atoll.
Soon after, he’s in Nevada on Operation Ranger, a further series of tests. Finally, he ends up back in the Pacific for the legendary Ivy Mike shot, part of Operation Ivy.’

‘Early fifties?’ Jarvis hazarded.

‘Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, November 1, 1952,’ Ryker confirmed. ‘It was the location of the first ever fusion-bomb detonation, a true thermonuclear device that let
fly with a blast of over ten megatons, or the equivalent of ten thousand tons of TNT – four hundred-fifty times more powerful than the Nagasaki weapon. The Ivy Mike shot produced a fireball
over three miles wide and a mushroom cloud that reached an altitude of twenty-five miles in less than five minutes. The shot entirely destroyed the island of Elugelab in the atoll, totally
vaporized it. That was pretty much the start of the Cold War, right there.’

Jarvis rifled through the documents, searching for Purcell’s name.

‘How does this figure with what his son might have achieved, this ability to see into the future?’

Ryker leaned forward, stroking his beard. ‘That’s the really interesting bit,’ he said, and picked up one of the documents as though he recognized it on sight.
‘Montgomery Purcell was being provided with almost limitless funds to continue his research. Congress was willing to virtually write blank checks, so obsessed were they with maintaining their
lead over the Russians. But there were other groups working on entirely different uses for nuclear detonations.’

‘Such as?’

‘Earth moving,’ Ryker said. ‘The Sedan test on July 6, 1962 yielded a blast of 104 kilotons, but it was detonated underground, demonstrating that weaponry was not the only
product of the nuclear age. Such bombs could be used for industrial purposes, and of course for power generation via controlled nuclear fission. One of the scientists who had worked on the
Manhattan Project had resigned from the military soon after the war, to continue his research using a private company he’d founded before the war, seeking government funding to research
peaceful uses for nuclear power.’

‘What was the company called?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Pacific Ignition,’ Ryker said with a wry smile. ‘Sounds ominous, until you realize that the word Pacific means
peaceful.
’

‘What’s the interesting bit?’

‘The person who founded the company,’ Ryker replied, and handed Jarvis a black-and-white photograph of a stern-looking man with a broad mustache. ‘Isaac Abell.’

‘Joaquin Abell’s father,’ Jarvis murmured.

‘The very same,’ Ryker confirmed. ‘Charles and Joaquin’s fathers were rivals for almost a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, each competing for
government funding. Montgomery Purcell sought money for weapons research, while Isaac Abell focused on the holy grail of energy generation: controlled nuclear fusion. He’d begun experiments
off the coast of South Bimini Island in 1941, experimenting with huge magnetic-field generators, but got sidetracked into the Manhattan Project.’

‘The plot thickens,’ Jarvis murmured. ‘What happened after Ivy Mike?’

‘The Eisenhower administration remained focused on the defense of America, so weaponry maintained the upper hand when it came to funding from Congress. The other problem for Isaac Abell
was that nuclear fusion is so incredibly difficult to produce on earth: the pressures required are tens of thousands of atmospheres, the temperatures in the millions of degrees. It’s only in
the last few years that it’s become a potential reality: our National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California has reported that it may achieve ignition soon, and
in Cadarache, southern France, they’re building the ITER reactor, which may possibly become the first commercial nuclear-fusion reactor.’

‘Sixty years later,’ Jarvis said. ‘So Isaac Abell failed.’

‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Ryker explained. ‘The man was a genius and a hero, a real philanthropist, who, like most scientists, was working to benefit all mankind. But he was
trying to build a device using 1950s technology that could ignite and entrap a miniature star and keep it burning just like our sun. Isaac spent over a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money on
his work, with no positive results, and was rumored to have built some kind of underground test chamber before Congress cut his funding in 1964. Pacific Ignition continued with private funding, but
at nowhere near the levels required to make progress.’

Jarvis nodded, and glanced at a picture of Montgomery Purcell.

‘And Charles’s father?’

‘Montgomery Purcell continued working for the United States Army and Air Force after Ivy Mike, building ever more dangerous weapons, culminating in the most powerful detonation in American
history: the Castle Bravo shot, off Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. He was at the height of his power and reputation when he is reported to have been invited by Isaac Abell into talks about how to
combine their work. Abell was at that time struggling for funding, and Pacific Ignition could not continue its research without financing its operation by doing weapons work.’

Jarvis raised an eyebrow. ‘They went into business together?’

‘Monty Purcell attended the talks in the Bahamas, but apparently walked out after a blazing row with Isaac Abell. Purcell got into his plane, took off for Miami and was never seen again,
the aircraft lost without trace in the Bermuda Triangle.’

Jarvis looked down at the photograph of Isaac Abell. ‘What happened to Abell’s company, Pacific Ignition?’

‘With Monty Purcell dead, Isaac Abell found himself on the receiving end of new government grants, some for weapons research, some for nuclear-power projects. Looks like the government was
forced to compromise in order to get him back on their books, to replace Monty Purcell. Isaac Abell worked for them for several years, but after his failure to achieve nuclear fusion, funding for
Pacific Ignition’s research was finally halted in 1968. Isaac Abell committed suicide in 1973. A trust was maintained by Isaac’s wife until she died twelve years later. It seems that
Isaac was smart enough to filter a large sum of money from government grants and royalties from patented inventions into a trust fund for their son to inherit on his eighteenth birthday.’
Ryker smiled at Jarvis. ‘Joaquin Abell did exactly that, and then changed the company name.’

‘To International Rescue and Infrastructure Support,’ Jarvis guessed. ‘Joaquin inherits a fortune and his father’s life’s work.’

Ryker tapped the picture of Isaac Abell with his hand.

‘Before their fathers became enemies they worked together and were the best of friends. It’s unlikely that their sons were unaware of their connection. It’s plausible that they
might even have met from time to time, as young children. Either way, Joaquin certainly knew exactly who Charles Purcell was, long before he gained access to his father’s fortune.’

Jarvis saw it all come together in his mind.

‘Joaquin didn’t inherit his father’s mathematical mind, so he used Charles Purcell’s skills to continue his father’s work.’ He thought for a moment.
‘But it still doesn’t explain how Joaquin can now see through time.’

‘No,’ Ryker agreed, ‘but it gives us a clue. Isaac Abell built a facility using government funding, that much we know. But we don’t know where he built it. There’s
mention here of the construction of large tokamaks, torus-shaped devices that are designed to produce magnetic fields to contain plasma in modern nuclear-fusion generators; and the purchase of vast
amounts of graphite.’

‘What does that tell you?’ Jarvis asked.

‘That Isaac Abell was on the right course for building an ignition chamber that could contain a nuclear-fusion reaction,’ Ryker replied. ‘But the only way that such a device
could be used in order to twist the fabric of time is if the star created within it were crushed to such densities that the electron repulsion of the atoms within it were overcome. Mankind does not
have the ability to do this, but if by some chance reaction it did occur, then a heavily modified tokamak chamber might just be able to contain it.’

‘Contain what?’ Jarvis asked. ‘The star?’

‘A different kind of star,’ Ryker said. ‘I can’t believe I’m even considering it, but if such a collapse of ordinary matter were to occur, then there are only two
possible outcomes: firstly a neutron star, a tiny ball of degenerate material where all of the space between the atoms has been squeezed out. An object of this matter the size of a grape would
weigh as much as a mountain.’

‘And secondly?’

Ryker shook his head.

‘If the pressure was too great, the neutron star would continue to collapse, and would condense time and space down to a singularity: it would become a black hole.’

June 28, 15:17

The powerful V-8 engine propelled the airboat across the silky waters, more like an aircraft than a boat, as the huge eight-foot-diameter propeller roared behind Ethan. The
simple, square hull contained two rows of seats, a raised pilot’s chair and the engine at the stern. He reveled in the breeze as they soared between enormous sawgrass marshes and reed islands
stranded in the endless expanses of cypress swamps, estuarine mangrove forests and pine rockland.

The subtropical wetlands of the Everglades comprised the southern half of a large watershed that was born in the Kissimmee River, which discharged into Lake Okeechobee. Essentially a slow-moving
river sixty miles wide and more than a hundred miles long, the system represented the perfect hiding place for a lone fugitive: if they could survive

‘The Native Americans that used to live here called it
Pahayokee
, the “grassy waters”,’ Lopez said above the roar of the engine. ‘But it only looks pretty.
Living here would have been hard at the best of times.’

Ethan scanned the broad waters filled with periphyton, a mossy golden-brown substance that floated on bodies of water throughout the Everglades, and the scattered islands of ubiquitous sawgrass,
a sedge with serrated blades so sharp they could cut through clothing.

‘The satellite’s GPS coordinates fixed Charles Purcell’s position five miles to the southwest!’ Ethan shouted up to Scott Bryson, who nodded as he glanced down at a GPS
screen next to the airboat’s wheel.

‘Was he alone?’ Bryson called back.

‘Yeah,’ Ethan nodded, ‘or at least he was a couple of hours ago.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Never mind.’

Ethan turned back around in his seat and looked straight at Lopez as she watched Bryson guiding the airboat. She had been able, with her considerable charm, to convince Bryson to continue
helping them, with the proviso that no more of his property was exposed to bullets or blades. Considering what they were going up against, it was of considerable interest to Ethan that Bryson had
agreed. Then he looked at Lopez again, and guessed that maybe it wasn’t just the captain’s sense of honor that had guided him.

Lopez’s long black hair streamed behind her in the wind as she reached up and pinned it back. Ethan found himself watching her openly as she flicked her head to one side and tied her hair
off into a ponytail. The speed of the airboat across the water and the thrill of the wind had touched her face with a bright smile that lit her features like the sunlight on the racing water
beneath them. It was something that he saw less and less in her these days.

For a brief moment Ethan forgot where he was and realized that, despite everything, despite the fact that Joanna might yet still be alive somewhere out in the world, Nicola Lopez meant more to
him than he was comfortable admitting to himself. Maybe it was a sign of just how big a stick he had up his ass that it had taken him this long to realize it. This realization in turn raised the
ugly and unwelcome question of what he was going to do about it. An image of Joanna flickered like a phantom through the darkened vaults of his mind, her long blonde hair, green eyes and quiet
confidence contrasting with Lopez’s dark looks and fearsome temper. Somehow, though, as he pictured Joanna in his imagination, the differences weren’t so great after all.

‘You need a photograph?’

Ethan blinked. Joanna vanished and he found himself staring straight at a bemused Lopez. He stopped breathing.

‘Just enjoying the view. You want to get out of the way?’

Lopez laughed out loud. ‘You’re an ass sometimes, Ethan.’