More news portraits were drawn by opponents in court cases, especially from my early days, painting me as arrogant and ruthless. I realized this was Gabriel at work. Supporting me with Sir Thomas, making it appear as if I were ‘a chip off the old block’ as he often said lately.
I had gotten into a routine. Up at 4:30am. Fifteen minutes for dressing, stretching and warming up. Then the ten kilom run on the beach. Mariko running beside me. She’d been assigned as my bodyguard, after I asked Sir Thomas if he could arrange it. We ran to Kampung Bugis and back. We had the run down to forty-nine minutes, which on the sand was a fast time. After the cool down, we’d have a swim and sometimes a chat in the cave to catch up on our plans. Then I’d have a coffee and by 6:30am, get to work writing. I wrote solidly until noon. A light lunch of fish and vegetables and I’d go back and edit what I’d written, taking as my examples the chapters heavily revised by Harper’s Editor. By 4pm I’d be done editing and we’d go to a spot we had worn clear in the jungle and spar. Gloves and headgear on, I was still no match for Mariko as we shadow-fought. Getting as close as we could to hitting one another without actually making contact. It taught control, timing and focus.
An hour of sparring and we’d return. Shower and have dinner. Then at 6:30pm I would sit down and turn to the legal case, sometimes writing until midnight. Most nights I stopped before 11pm and got some sleep. I broke the routine, three days in seven, going down to New Singapore with Mariko discreetly armed and by my side. She would leave me alone with Sir Thomas while he recounted his past to me. How much was fiction and how much was truth I had no idea and no way to know. It didn’t matter. The point was to make him trust me. To bond.
The dinner tonight had been his idea. When we’d finished he had taken my elbow in his bony hand and steered me away from the Lev port and back across Topside to his penthouse. His bodyguards in front and Mariko trailing us, we came up to his penthouse to, ‘have a drink and a chat’. Charles had let us in.
The bodyguards and Mariko stayed in the living room while Sir Thomas grabbed the whisky and two heavy lead crystal glasses and led me out onto the balcony.
We sat in darkness, the lights from the city providing enough light to see our shapes but not much else.
He sighed a long, drawn out sigh.
“This has been a messy business getting the Tag Law in place. What have you learned from Bardsdale?”
“She’s planning on using the Rape laws to prevent the Tag Law. The Rape law states no person may be violated without their permission. It’s possible to argue that the injection qualifies as a violation of one’s body.”
“Whose idea was this?”
“Mine.”
“And is it a solid case?”
“Yes it is. There are actually some precedents, which I have shown Annika, that support the position.”
“I see, and — ”
“And it’s solid, but not watertight,” I said, and smiled a low grin at him. He smiled back.
“Go on.”
“The precedents I chose were all individual against individual or corporation, i.e. a private entity against another private entity. And if that were the case, then they would hold up. The problem with the position is that this is not a private entity. It is the will of the people and therefore cannot constitute violation of an individual because an individual is the people.”
Sir Thomas chuckled and took a belt of his whisky, looking at me over the rim of the glass. He glanced inside the living room of his penthouse to see if the guards and Mariko were still sitting in the same place, then he leant closer to me.
“How are you going to disengage from her and the party?”
“I’ll have a change of heart just before the final presentations of the differing sides of the argument. That should be on March 14. Without me, they’ll use their party arbitrator, and your lawyer can tear him to shreds.”
He chuckled and poured us each another shot. Then he launched into a soft-voiced rambling discourse, intermittently pouring us double, then triple shots from the bottle, talking about the Tag Law and the control it would bring. From the Tag Law somehow he segued into Darwin and the natural law of selection. Leaning back in his lounge chair and saying softly, almost a whisper, “Technology has betrayed Darwin’s natural law. Nature needs help.”
His words sent a shiver through me in the warm night air. And then he fell silent, and we sat side by the side the half-empty bottle of Macallan’s between us. I waited, alert, but feigning a sluggish drowsiness.
His voice came out of the darkness. I had to strain to hear what he was saying.
“It took me a long time to be sure that you were ready, but this work you’ve done for me, with Bardsdale, tells me you are. Are you ready, Jonah?”
Clearing my throat heavily and sitting up slowly in the lounge chair I said, “Ready for what, Uncle?”
“Are you ready for power, Jonah. Pure power. The power of life and death. The power to change people’s lives. The power to do anything you want. Are you ready for that?”
I turned my head slowly to look at him. I smelt his excitement and I could see, in the shadow outline, a tremor in his jowls. His eyes caught a glint of the light from the living room, giving them a yellowish glow. The hatred I felt for him put an edge in my voice. I hissed a sharp, cold-voiced, urgent, “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Are you sure? I have had my doubts in the past but lately you’ve shown me a side of you that I hadn’t appreciated. Perhaps because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. But now I feel you’ve become the man I wanted you to be. You’re like me in so many ways, but you are your own man and you’ll make your own destiny. This is no trivial matter. If you are ready, truly ready, and remember what I said about the power of life and death, then tell me so. But think hard before you answer because there is no turning back. If you say yes, you will be asked to take a test of loyalty to me, to us, and failure to pass that test is death. You say yes and then you are one of us for life.”
“Who is us?”
“Are you ready? Life and death, Jonah. Are you capable of that kind of decision? Are you sure you are ready?”
I felt spittle hit my hand as he spoke, and used the darkness to hide wiping the back of my hand on my outer leggings. I sat silent, my brain hurtling at maniacal speed with the thought that this was it. This was the moment we’d been working towards since my trip to the Moon. He was asking me to join the Hawks.
Using my hatred for him, I said in an even, soft voice, “Yes, I am capable of a life or death decision. I am sure I am ready. I was trained for this moment wasn’t I? You trained me. All those special schools, the exercise and mental regimes I went through. This is my destiny, is it not?”
“It is, Jonah. It is, and it gives me great pleasure to hear your words. ‘Us’ is the Hawks, Jonah. Not everything in that runner’s letter was a lie. The Hawks are very real and I am a very senior Hawk. Now that I have told you this simple truth, you will die a Hawk. There is no going back now.”
A quiet panic spread through me as his words sunk in. Survival was never a priority but his words squashed that hope with the finality and certainty of their tone. ‘You will die a Hawk’.
He stood up, supporting himself on my armrest as he rose. He said, “Wait here. I have a gift for you.” And he walked around me down the length of the balcony, past the living room and stopped at the large windows of his sleeping room, tapping softly on the clearfilm windows. Someone, I guessed Charles, opened the door from within and he stepped out of sight.
I dared not show any reaction. My mind was racing. I sat up straighter then I reached down and picked up my glass of whisky, taking a long swallow.
Sir Thomas came back out onto the balcony, his silhouette blocking the blood red light of the SingCom sign behind him. He walked over and knelt by the side of my lounge chair obscuring the view of those inside the living room. I turned to face him. I could smell the whisky on his breath. I could see a bubble of spittle on his lip.
“Here, take this. You’re going to need it,” his voice rasped, and he slid something out of his sleeve. Holding the armrest of my chair and feeling for my arm, he slipped his hand down until he felt mine, and placed there something cold and heavy. He pushed my hand away until it was in my lap. He took out his Devstick and used the glow from its screen to show me the dagger in its scabbard.
It was about thirty-six cents long with a silver chain hanging from the cross guard. An SS sign and an Eagle with its wings spread were inset into handle. I was shocked that I was holding something from that evil time. The shadows cast from the light of his Devstick made him look ghoulish as he reached over and, taking the dagger by its handle, slowly withdrew the blade from its scabbard. There were German words written on it. ‘Meine Ehre heisst
