“Majorie Hemmings, New Washington Post. Sir Thomas, I gather from your statement that you have subversive elements within UNPOL that are Hawks. Have you identified who these UNPOL staff are?”
Sir Thomas cleared his throat, took a swallow of water, and pulled his chair closer to the table until his stomach was pressed against it. Leaning forward, he spoke. “Again, I am not at liberty to discuss current operations, however what I can say is that progress is ongoing and we are confident that with this latest bombing, the forensics will provide us with the final evidence we need to expose the most senior subversive elements.”
Stephanie brought her hands together as if in prayer and said, “One last question and we must allow the honorable gentlemen to get back to their contribution. Yes, Steven”
“Steven Haines, GNBC. Sir Thomas, did UNPOL allow Gabriel Zumar to escape so that you could track his movements?”
Sir Thomas glared at the journalist with a blank expression and shook his head from side to side. “No, we did not. Gabriel Zumar is an enterprising and utterly ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing to maintain his freedom in order to continue his criminal activities.”
“Sorry, Sir Thomas, one last question. Is Gabriel Zumar any relation to Philip Zumar, Bo Vinh’s confidante and friend?”
Sir Thomas lowered his head slightly and shook it softly then looking across at Deng turned to face the journalist from GNBC. Sir Thomas brought his clasped hands up from the table and placed them under his chin, looking down at the journalist.
“We believe, sadly, that he is Philip Zumar’s son. Our information is that his father was murdered by those criminal elements responsible for Bo Vinh’s assassination and that they kidnapped and brought up this Gabriel Zumar in their criminal ways.”
Sir Thomas turned in his seat and smiled at Deng. The two men rose together to walk off the stage and through the door that was opened by an UNPOL guard, standing at attention beside it.
Marty, laying on her sleeper with her arms crossed behind her bed, said, “Devscreen off.” She had watched as Sir Thomas had left the room with Deng. She sighed. Tomorrow perhaps, even this morning, the stolen Devstick would be found among the debris in the club and she would be identified and contained as a Hawk. She looked at the time on the Devstick on the table beside her sleeper. 10:20pm. She had to go rogue. She was bone tired but knew that she had to move. Do it now or it was over. Move and there’s a chance. A slim chance, but a chance.
Her mind went back to the meeting that had led to this moment. Governor Tilling, Flederson and her, just over three months ago, after the seminar ‘Enterprise Level Commercial Crime’. Governor Tilling saying that an eyewitness to a murder allegedly committed by Sir Thomas had come forward but there was no evidence. Flederson — ‘Mother’ — asking her to go undercover and dig for evidence. And now he was in a coma and Tilling was dead. Sir Thomas had outsmarted them all and acted swiftly and ruthlessly. She was sure of it, but she couldn’t prove it. Or was it Cochran? She didn’t know and now was not the time to spend brooding about it.
She puffed her cheeks and blew out her breath, unfolding her hands from behind her head and swinging her legs over the side of the sleeper. She rubbed her face vigorously with her fingers trying to coax energy out of her body. Fuck it, she thought, and reached to the handle of the table drawer beside the sleeper. Pulling it open, she took out a small capsule that looked like a tube of lipstick. She lifted her bum and pulled her bottom outers down, spreading her knees. Taking the capsule in one hand she pressed one end against her inner thigh. A little green light flashed several times and she pressed the top of the capsule. Marty hated stimulants but she just didn’t have the energy to run. While she sat waiting for the drug to hit her system, she took a deep breath in and held it. The stimulant hit. She felt it coursing through her veins.
She put the capsule in her pocket and pulled her outers over her bum again. Time to run.
Chapter 29
Jonah and Mariko’s Beach House, Sisik Beach, Malaysian Geographic
Monday 6 January 2110, 7:13AM +8 UTC
I felt hopelessly out of my depth.
The sun climbing over the horizon seemed to be moving faster than usual, forcing its influence on the colors in front of me. The news over the weekend had shown me that I was outnumbered, outwitted and had little chance of success. The odds were stacked too high. How could I possibly convince people that a man sitting with the Secretary General of the United Nation could be a murderer and genocidal?
Although I had crafted Sir Thomas’s speech at the the UNPOL press conference, Sir Thomas had told me to include the Hawks name. That puzzled me at first. Why bring them into the spotlight? But then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Pre-emptively naming the Hawks as the terrorists was a smart move. Now, if anyone claimed that the real Hawks were a small cadre of highly placed officials in positions of power, the claim would automatically be rejected as propaganda from the terrorists. The opinion polls focusing on the Tag Law told its own story. The number of those for adoption of the Tag had increased to over sixty-five percent. Gabriel’s image was everywhere. On every feed and broadcast Devscreen in every city around the Globe.
Where are you my brother? I sighed.
“Hey, why so solemn?”
I jumped and spilled my coffee on the railing of the deck. Mariko laughed.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Yes you did,” I said, smiling back at her and reaching out with my arm, pulling her in close to me. I put my mouth close to her ear.
“I don’t think we can stop them,” I whispered. Mariko pulled my head down and put her mouth next to my ear.
“Let’s go for a swim. Bring your Devstick,” she whispered. It was high tide and the underwater cave entrance would be hidden. I smiled at her and went inside to get my swimmers and the Devstick. When I came back out onto the deck, she was already stroking hard for the point off the headland where the cave was. I ran down the beach, putting the Devstick in a side pocket of my swimmers, running into the surf as far I could before diving in.
The tide was still coming in and I had to swim hard through a choppy swell. I didn’t hurt as much from the running now and my times had improved every day. I was thankful for the training — if I’d had to swim in this swell a week ago I would have been exhausted by now. About fifteen meters from the headland, I dived and swum down till my eardrums hurt with the pressure and then aimed for the mouth of the cave. I surfaced in the darkness and swam to the wall with the ledge where we had sat before, reaching out my hand, feeling for it in the dark.
My hand touched Mariko’s leg and I felt her grab my wrist and pull me up onto to the ledge. I skirted my bum over and got a firm seat, taking the Devstick out of my pocket. I opened it and folded it out onto the ledge in between us. The light from the screen of the Devstick lit the cave. Mariko was squeezing the water out of her black hair, twisting it into a thick rope that reached to her belly button. She turned to look at me.
I sat back a bit farther on the ledge. All the warmth that she had shown on the deck had gone from her eyes. She looked the same as when she’d come out of my Env in Woodlands that day when we’d left to come to Sisik. I scrambled to think who she could have argued with.
“Mark. You can stop this defeatist bullshit right now.”
I started to speak, but she sharply held up the palm of her hand right in front of my nose. “No, not yet. I am going to say this once and once only because we don’t have time for another one of these kinds of talks. I called you Mark because that is your real name. That is what your parents named you. Your brother has not been captured and so far he’s run rings around Sir Thomas and his friends. And now he needs your help. Our help. This was never going to be easy and it was always for high stakes. The minute you opened that file on your Devstick you accepted this role. Let’s run our conversation from this morning in a different way. Let’s start with the premise that defeat is not an option. Now what do you have to say?”
I looked at her, feeling pretty low about myself. I looked into her eyes. They held no compromise. There was
