Final Days (18 page)

Voices called out to each other from above and behind. Jeff started to move more quickly, grabbing hold of tufts of grass or branches to keep from skidding too fast down the steep gradient. The air smelled of barbecue smoke drifting across the lake from cabins on the far side, as he slid down occasional stretches of snow on his butt.

The clouds passed away from the face of the moon, illuminating the slope beneath him and making the going easier. The ground began to level out, and Jeff started to run. Suddenly a point of red light was visible on a patch of snow a few metres ahead of him. A second later, a thin plume of snow erupted from the same spot, followed by the sound of a gunshot echoing across the valley.

Jeff threw himself towards the relative cover of some bull pine, in his terror almost colliding with a granite boulder. Manoeuvring his way past the boulder, he caught sight of the lakeside road, maybe only forty or fifty metres away. His shoulder blades tingled as he imagined that red dot alighting between them next.

He stumbled over a root, just as the trees began to thin out, and hit the ground hard. He staggered upright, despite the pain, and forced himself to keep moving, pushing through a tangle of brush until he reached the edge of a steep incline overlooking the road. He came to a stop briefly, then darted along the upper edge of the slope until he came across another flight of stone steps leading steeply downwards.

Shit
. Jeff stared across the roadway towards the wharf, and suddenly realized there was nothing moored there – nothing he could use to try and get away to safety across the lake. A derelict hut, once home to a diving outfit, stood right next to the wharf, the side of it facing the road adorned with a crude illustration of several divers swimming amidst cartoon bubbles.

As clouds passed across the moon, Jeff grabbed the opportunity and ran across the road, desperate to avoid becoming target to another sniper shot. Glancing to one side, he nearly cried out in relief when he spotted a dinghy pulled up on the shore, quite close to the wharf but just far away enough for him not to have noticed it from the top of the incline. He hurried towards it, the gravelly sand crunching underfoot, and also saw that the dinghy was equipped with a small outboard motor.

He pushed the craft out into the freezing water, getting his ankles thoroughly soaked before he pulled himself inside and settled on the single narrow wooden bench. Jeff touched the engine’s interface, and a menu rendered in softly glowing panels superimposed itself against the night sky. The dinghy was fully juiced up, enough power stored in its battery reserves to keep it going for several days.

At the sound of someone splashing through the water towards him, he reached out in a panic to activate the motor. Just as he began to pull away from the shore, a dark shape threw itself halfway inside the dinghy, making it rock wildly.

Jeff didn’t even have time to feel scared, but he grabbed hold of the bench on either side of him, and used it for leverage as he kicked out with both feet. He heard an
oof
, and kicked again, as the dinghy began to turn in tight circles. His assailant staggered upright, and Jeff fell backwards against the outboard motor as a fist connected with the side of his head.

His assailant, the tall thin one, had a gun trained on him. Without thinking, Jeff grabbed hold of the tiller and twisted it frantically. The dinghy slewed wildly to one side, and the thin man staggered. Light and sound exploded from the gun, and Jeff felt something hot sear past his cheek. There was a yell, then a splash, as the other man lost his balance and fell back into the freezing water.

Jeff heard another shot, then another, from the direction of the shore. Crouching low, he twisted the tiller back again. Clouds were passing back in front of the moon and, in the pitch darkness, he was unsure where the far side of the lake now lay.

The dinghy jerked, and spun half around, as it smacked violently into something. For one heart-freezing moment, Jeff wondered if he’d somehow run himself aground somewhere alongside the wharf.

Instead, the dinghy continued on its way, its prow cutting cleanly through the water. He saw a dark shape slip past, arms spread out and motionless, and guessed it was the same man who had attacked him.

As the clouds cleared from the face of the moon, he caught sight of another wharf on the far shore, now only a few kilometres away. Shots rang out again, splashing water up on either side of the dinghy. Hoping to make himself a more difficult target, Jeff twisted the tiller frantically from side to side.

He glanced down to see water trickling through a hole just below the waterline, which he was sure hadn’t been there only seconds before. There were further shots behind him, but then no more. Assessing the trickle of water pooling around his boots, he decided it wasn’t likely to become a serious issue before he reached the opposite shore.

Jeff shivered as the wind cut through his soaking-wet clothes. It froze him to the marrow, and he wondered how long he had before hypothermia set in.

He was going to have to find some kind of transport soon. If he tried to hide in the woods or make it to Lakeside on foot, he’d only wind up dead of exposure.

As he sailed on, the dinghy’s motor emitting a barely audible hum, lights became increasingly visible through the trees above the far shore, and music drifted across the still waters. Several minutes later, he finally ran the dinghy up on to the shore, alongside a luxurious-looking motorboat moored to the wharf. He looked back across the lake and saw some headlights suddenly come on close by his cabin. Jeff watched for a few seconds as the same lights headed back down the long switchback road, and he realized he was far from being home and free.

Crossing the road, he soon found himself at the foot of another steep switchback track leading to a cluster of cabins he vaguely recalled were owned by some rental agency in Missoula. He jogged a short way up the road until he came to a cul-de-sac, where he found several private vehicles parked together, some of them busy chewing on bales of leafy biomass. The rear hatch of one car had been left open, revealing the shrink-wrapped cartons of beer stacked inside. Judging by the music, a party was currently in full swing.

Jeff glanced through the trees, and back across the lake, in time to see the headlights descend the final switchback bend in the road. He had five, maybe ten minutes at most, before it circled the lake.

He stepped forward, lifting the cartons of beer out of the rear of the car and dumping them on the grass verge, before crawling inside and pulling the hatch shut behind him. He manoeuvred himself into one of the front seats and tugged his backpack off, dropping it on to the adjacent seat before reaching out to touch the expanse of black glass that constituted the dashboard. He was far from surprised when nothing happened.

He fumbled around inside the backpack until he found Dan’s car-jacker, and pressed it against the dashboard. After a few moments the glass flickered, random lines of code scrolling by at speed. For one awful moment Jeff wondered if he’d managed to fry the car’s brain, but before very long a standard set of options appeared in place of the gibberish.

He closed his eyes in silent relief and let his head tip forward, as if in prayer, before reaching out and tapping the dashboard to select manual drive. The wheel unfolded before him, optional virtual menus materializing to either side.

He heard someone yell and glanced through the rear windscreen to see a figure running down the road leading from the cabins. Clearly, the car’s owner had returned for the rest of his beer.

Jeff gripped the wheel and put the car into reverse. A rear tyre hit a tree root, and one side of the vehicle slammed upwards as he turned it in a tight circle. Fists beat against the door next to him and he found himself staring at an angry face. Jeff hastily engaged the locks before the man could yank the door open, then hit the accelerator hard. The car shot forward, sending its owner tumbling away.

It bounced as it came off the switchback and hit the main road. The wheels spun as Jeff floored the accelerator, the lake sliding past at an ever-increasing speed.

With luck he could reach Lakeside in just another twenty minutes.

He turned up the heating as far as it would goeraut the car back on automatic. The wheel folded itself away again while he stripped off his sodden clothes, throwing them on to the rear seats. He’d stowed a spare change of clothes in the rucksack, but unfortunately it wasn’t waterproof, so he climbed into the back and dug around until he came across an oil-stained T-shirt that at least had the virtue of being dry, even if maybe three sizes too big.

Jeff glanced behind, but couldn’t see any sign of his pursuer’s headlights. The only thing left now, he realized, was to try and find Mitchell. So he accessed his UP and placed a call.

Hong Kong, 30 January 2235

Following his arraignment before a Taiwanese military judge, Saul spent the better part of forty-eight hours in a secure penal facility on the outskirts of Tainan, close to the island’s south coast. On his second morning there, a guard woke him by poking a baton into his ribs, before informing him in broken English that a diplomatic intervention had set him free.

His gaolers had taken his gear and contacts away and, Saul felt sure, were already working hard to extract from them whatever data they could. In exchange he was given a pair of powder-blue trousers that flapped around his ankles, and a short-sleeved maroon shirt with a dark stain on the collar, which he suspected was the original owner’s blood.

They led him out of the prison in handcuffs, and shoved him in the back of a police car. Saul spent the next hour watching the traffic slip by in either direction, before finally they arrived at an airport on the city outskirts, where he was placed directly on to a commercial hopper bound for Hong Kong.

On his arrival there, he was escorted through a restricted part of the main terminal building, still in handcuffs, to a room displaying the universal attributes of every interrogation room he had ever set foot in: a single table with a chipped plastic surface, unforgivably bright strip-lighting, ceiling-mounted scanning gear and a mirror that was almost certainly two-way.

Donohue was waiting for him there, seated on a plastic chair by the table, clutching a paper cup filled with black coffee in one hand. He watched as the two guards removed Saul’s cuffs before they departed.

‘You got here fast,’ said Saul, his voice cracking slightly.

‘You look fucking terrible,’ remarked Donohue, then wrinkled his nose. ‘And you smell worse. Didn’t they give you a shower?’

Saul rubbed his wrists carefully, squinting under the harsh light. ‘I just spent most of two days in a prison cell with twelve other men, and a trough in the floor for a toilet,’ he said. ‘They were out of toilet paper.’

‘There’s a pay-shower somewhere in the terminal,’ Donohue replied. ‘But I’m afraid there probably won’t be time for you to use it before you ve.’

‘Leave?’ Saul echoed.

‘You’re going home,’ Donohue explained. ‘You have a flight to catch in less than an hour. I’m sure you’re glad to hear that.’

Saul nodded, and lowered himself on to a second chair with infinite weariness. ‘Where’s Sanders?’

‘He couldn’t make it,’ Donohue replied, his expression suddenly sour. He sighed and got up, stepping over to a cabinet, where he poured the dregs from a cafetière into another paper cup before placing it in front of Saul. A faint wisp of steam rose up from its tarry black contents, as Saul curled one hand around the cup, feeling the heat work its way through his skin.

Donohue sat down again. ‘I’ve just spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to find ways to extricate you before the Taiwanese decided you were trying to overthrow their government, and locked you up for the next hundred years. Care to tell me your side of things?’

Saul lifted the coffee to his lips and took a tentative sip. It tasted better than he’d expected.

‘Hanover’s your man,’ he said. ‘He was on to you from the start. Have you got him back yet?’

Donohue shook his head. ‘No, we haven’t, but that little excursion is costing us dearly. There are videos and photos of dead ASI troopers all over the nets.’

‘I found him destroying hard copies – evidence of some kind, I’m guessing. He didn’t even try to hide what he was up to, because he knew he was going to get caught, and made plans to save himself. He did, however, tell me he wanted me to deliver a message.’

‘Go on.’

‘He said that if you don’t guarantee his family safe passage to the colonies, he’ll tell the Sphere everything he knows.’ Saul shrugged. ‘I can’t make any sense of what he told me, but I assume
you
can.’

‘That’s all he said?’

‘He mentioned some other stuff that didn’t make any more sense to me either. Tau Ceti, and something called a Pacific growth?’ Saul shook his head in puzzlement. ‘I had no idea what he was talking about.’

‘You didn’t ask him to explain?’

Saul gulped more coffee, and winced as it burned its way down his throat. ‘He had a gun to my head, after nearly burning me to death. It didn’t feel like a priority under the circumstances.’

‘I’ll need a full and detailed report.’

Saul shruggeo;There’s not much more to tell, except that Hanover sacrificed his entire squad rather than give himself up to me. Whoever was using that compound must have cleared out just before we arrived, so they’d obviously received plenty of advance warning. It doesn’t take a major leap of intuition to guess that Hanover’s the one who tipped them off.’