Tropic of Death (22 page)

- were the opposite of his security force.

She smiled to herself as she followed Paul through the centre of the smart room. The area was hemmed in by wall-sized screens.

Projected onto these were images of virtual creatures, all slightly grotesque, moving around cartoon-like interiors. As the two of them moved through it, a virtual Paul walked across the screens, accompanied by a virtual Rita, chased by a virtual dinosaur snapping at her heels. She found it disconcerting; another aspect of warped reality.

They left by a rear exit, which muffled the music as it closed behind them and led to a further labyrinth of grey corridors.

Paul stopped beside a steel door with the number 538 printed on it.

‘My place of abode,’ he said.

Paul swiped a security pad with his pass, opened the door and took Rita down a connecting passage. The claustrophobic dimensions and grey metal fittings were suggestive of below decks on a warship. At the end was another doorway. They went through it into a narrow sound-proofed room, lit only by task lamps and images displayed on a wall of computer screens. A heavy steel door closed them in with a cushioned hiss.

‘What
is
this?’ asked Rita.

‘The project coordinator’s control room,’ he answered, dropping into a swivel chair in front of keyboards. ‘My primary work station.’

‘And why have you brought me here?’

‘To show you classified material and break federal laws. Take a seat, Van Hassel.’

Despite a constrained intensity about him, there was a cavalier element in his approach. He was displaying the characteristics of a highly strung man who’d finally thrown caution to the wind.

Not that he was showing signs of being reckless. It was more as if he’d made a calculated decision to break the rules and there was no looking back. If that was the case Rita could expect to learn something that would take her a step closer to the truth.

She pulled over a chair, dumped her shoulder bag on the floor and sat down. While the bank of screens and digital decks dominated the room, the rear wall was lined with more mundane items - a rack of clipboards, a unit filled with disks, a fire extinguisher and a coat stand on which a denim jacket hung.

There was also a desk with an open laptop. Beside it was a tech toy in the shape of breasts and a desk calendar with a sepia print of King’s College Chapel. Everything was neat, not a thing out of place. Even a couple of loose pens were aligned precisely with a notepad. It was all beginning to fit with Rita’s initial impression of Paul’s personality as fastidious to the point of compulsive. It was the sort of personality that made her wary.

‘Let’s pick a location in the town,’ he said. ‘Any you fancy?’

‘Why?’

‘I want to show you the system in action. How about the high street? Let’s see what’s going on there.’ He clicked a mouse and a wide-angle view of traffic and pedestrians in motion filled a high-resolution computer screen. ‘Ah, some of our American cousins. Let’s take a closer look.’

The view homed in on half a dozen US sailors. As they ambled along the pavement, chatting and joking, the view on the screen tracked along with them. To adjust it, Paul tapped a keyboard.

The Americans stopped outside a bar, lingering a moment before pushing open the door and disappearing inside. Rita recognised the exterior as the Steamboat.

‘Let’s follow them in,’ said Paul. ‘Incidentally, there are no physical bugs in the place.’

Rita watched as the exterior image of the pub dissolved to be replaced by an interior scene, with the sailors pulling out chairs and sitting around a table as they ordered drinks, their dialogue loud and clear. The picture too was sharp, as if it was being fed from a live TV camera mounted inside the bar. But she realised it couldn’t be, not if Paul was being straight about it. Assuming he was, this system seemed to defy logic. It also went beyond any technology currently in use. To see and hear inside rooms at random was a radical advance in surveillance. This allowed total accessibility. No wonder Steinberg had seen Rita’s Orwellian analogy as accurate.

‘By the way,’ said Paul, ‘these are computer-generated images.’

‘Do you want to explain that to me?’

‘That’s why you’re here.’ He swivelled around to face her.

‘I’m on the team testing an experimental surveillance system for deployment in the so-called war on terror. It means from my copper-lined control room here I can observe and eavesdrop on anyone within a two-hundred-and-forty-degree sector, up to a distance of ten k from the base.’

She was watching him carefully. ‘I assume it’s an integrated system.’

‘Correct, combining input from all sources of electronic data -

mobiles, landlines, cables, emails, CCTV, satellite coverage - the lot. Plus something else: an EM Net.’

‘How does that work?’

‘On the same principle as radar. Emitters fire waves of electromagnetic pulses across the sector, with particle-beam accelerators and laser pulses embedded in the system to give pinpoint accuracy. With me so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Image and acoustic data is transmitted in digital form via scanners to a quantum supercomputer executing more than one million trillion operations per second.’

‘Bit of a load.’

‘Too much for human brains. The complexities have to be monitored by a form of AI using new advances in fractal geometry to process the decision-making. It’s known as the Omniscient Demographic Tracker.’

Rita frowned. ‘Omniscient? Sounds like someone’s idea of playing God.’

‘Ever studied English utilitarian Jeremy Bentham?’

‘I’m familiar with his Panopticon idea.’

‘Well, this is it gone digital - all-seeing, all-knowing. It makes total surveillance possible. You understand the implications?’

‘I can see all kinds of implications. But why am I here?’

‘To look at footage I’ve pulled from the system’s memory.’

Paul turned back to the keyboard. ‘It’s from the night Rachel Macarthur was murdered.’

Rita sat forward, her concentration intense as the significance of Paul’s words struck home. She fixed her eyes on the screen where a still image appeared. It showed a dark but clear figure of a woman. It was Rachel. She was at the top of the alleyway leading down to the Rough Diamond Club, the neon sign aglow at the bottom of the slope.

‘This is digitally captured and enhanced,’ explained Paul. ‘That’s why the focus is so sharp.’

He tapped a key, triggering the image into motion.

Rita watched as Rachel walked down the cobbled alley, leaving behind the glow of a streetlamp, past the shadowed shopfronts and boarded doorways. The view tracked along beside her as Rachel approached the point where she was attacked. Suddenly the picture dissolved in a blur of static. Nothing was visible. When it resolved itself there was just a perspective of the murder scene after the attack, the mutilated hump of Rachel’s body lying dimly visible in the gutter as rain began to fall.

Paul tapped another key and the image froze.

‘What happened?’ asked Rita.

‘A cover-up,’ he said. ‘Okay, the system has teething problems, with odd things happening at the sub-atomic level. And there’s no way it’s ready to be deployed anywhere. But that sort of blip is something else entirely. It’s what I wanted to show you. Someone edited the memory by deliberately contaminating the data.’

‘Who?’

‘Only someone with level-seven access.’

‘How many people are we talking about?’

‘That’s just it, I don’t know.’ Paul pushed himself back from the keyboard. ‘There are nine directors on the Whitley Sands board, but not all of them have access.’

‘What about Captain Maddox?’

‘He’s certainly got it. So does the DG, Willis Baxter, and the CIA’s man, Rhett Molloy.’ Paul threw her a caustic look. ‘But a few off-base officials could also have access, like the man you were getting cosy with in the smoking room.’

‘Luker?’

‘He’s a possible candidate.’

As she thought about it, Rita groaned.

‘You’ve just given me one huge headache,’ she said. ‘By any chance does the surveillance sector include Leith Ferry?’

‘It does. And I can answer your next question. Yes, there’s footage of Steinberg’s electrocution. Do you want to see it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to see your arrest by the base Gestapo?’

‘Absolutely not. I want to forget it. What I’d like to see is whoever paid a visit to Dr Steinberg’s house before he arrived home.’

‘Well, guess what. There’s a half-hour gap. That’s been edited too.’

‘Another cover-up?’

‘Absolutely.’

Rita gave him a careful look. ‘Something you haven’t explained is where you stand in all this.’

‘I told you: I’m a target.’

‘Why?’

‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Now I know why your name’s familiar,’ said Rita. ‘You were inside the club the night of the murder. You were one of the customers questioned by police.’

‘Not just the police, Maddox too. He grilled me like an inquisitor, called me “decadent”, told me to pull my head in or face the consequences. At the time I didn’t get it. I thought he was concerned about bad publicity.’

‘What changed your mind?’

‘After Steinberg’s death I was interrogated again. Maddox accused me of “associating” with Steinberg. Even if I did, I couldn’t see how that was a security breach. All I did was chat with him in the smoking room. I hardly knew him. He worked up on level four in electromagnetics.’

‘Steinberg didn’t mention a report he was compiling?’

‘No. But I guessed there was more to his death than a simple accident. That’s when I retrieved the footage I’ve shown you. It’s also when I realised they’ve got me in their crosshairs. Then I just got pissed off.’ Paul gave her a sheepish look. ‘When I found out you were in the building, it was a godsend.’

‘What do you expect me to do?’

‘Just your job,’ he replied crisply. ‘Expose the real killers.’

Rita was beginning to wonder about her next move when a woman’s voice interrupted her.

‘Taking time out, Paul?’

The question jerked him forward and he quickly blanked the frozen image of Rachel’s body. He swivelled around to a bank of monitors where a woman’s face had appeared on a two-way link.

She was gazing at him steadily. Rita recognised her immediately.

It was the face of Audrey Zillman.

‘I got a bit distracted,’ Paul said quickly. ‘What do you want, Audrey?’

‘You need to run a check on the signal-processing software.’

‘I thought we had that sorted.’

‘Not yet.’

Paul pursed his lips. ‘Sometimes I feel like a glorified mechanic.’

‘Well there’s no need to pout,’ she retorted.

Rita shifted in her chair and the movement caught Audrey’s eye.

‘And who’s the assistant mechanic?’ asked Audrey. ‘Not someone on staff.’

‘Shit,’ said Paul under his breath.

Although Rita was on edge she was also intrigued by the chance encounter. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Marita Van Hassel. I’m a delegate at the security review.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Audrey. ‘You seem to have lost your way.’

‘She has level-five clearance and is here as my guest,’ put in Paul quickly. ‘A bit of familiarisation, that sort of thing.’

‘Being familiar has got you in trouble before.’

Audrey sat back and folded her arms. Her face, in sharp focus on the high-resolution screen, radiated annoyance. Rita guessed that, like many males before him, Paul felt intimidated. Even across an electronic link Audrey had a formidable presence. Her cool grey eyes were full of confidence and irony, her broad forehead untroubled by doubt, and her lips were drawn together in a hard analytical line. Rita could see why Byron had fallen under her spell. Audrey had a magnetic quality about her.

‘You need to resume your work,’ she told Paul. ‘And my advice to you, Marita Van Hassel, is to get back to level one. Your session is about to resume.’

With that parting shot, Audrey’s face vanished from the screen.

‘She’s got a point,’ agreed Rita. ‘I mustn’t be late for class. I’ve had detention here before and it’s not something I want to repeat.

Maddox already sees me as a troublemaker.’

‘But it’s Maddox and his henchmen I need to talk to you about. You haven’t got the full story.’

‘I’ve got to go. What about this evening?’

‘Okay, my place,’ said Paul, writing on a business card. ‘Any time you can make it. I’ll expect you.’

Rita glanced at the address on the card before pocketing it: 17

The Ridgeway. ‘This address isn’t in Leith Ferry is it?’

‘God, no. It’s a villa up in the rainforest. Leith Ferry is nothing but a barracks. I wouldn’t be seen dead there.’

Rita saw the unfortunate connotation of his words before Paul did.

‘Unlike Dr Steinberg,’ she said.

Rita felt on edge as she rode the elevator back up to level one.

When the doors opened she glanced around quickly, half expecting to find security guards closing in on her. But there were none on the prowl. Walking briskly along the corridor, she caught up with the last of the stragglers returning to the Situation Room.

Once inside, the doors were sealed and she returned to her seat next to Bryce and Jarrett.

As the chatter around the table subsided, Jarrett nudged her.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, forcing a smile.

The meeting resumed with another preamble from Willis Baxter before delegates began talking logistics, backup and response times.

There were a lot of details to trawl through. With time dragging on, Rita’s frayed nerves became calmer but she now had a headache.

Nothing being discussed had any relevance to her role in Whitley.

It was equally apparent that another reason for locking her into the review was to sidetrack her investigation.

Occasionally she looked at Luker but he seemed to be studiously ignoring her. Of all those on the base perhaps he was the one she should trust the least. She had no way of judging. In a looking-glass world you had to assume that no one was who or what he seemed. That went for Paul Giles as well. For all Rita knew, he was peddling a particular version of events and corrupting the data to suit his own ends. Or, worse, he could be laying a trap in league with Maddox. This, though, seemed unlikely. She was convinced Paul’s state of mind was genuine. Perhaps she’d learn more when she paid him a visit tonight. But that prospect also had its risks.