Apocalypse

31

The IRIS helicopter skimmed low over the waves, the crystalline blue rollers churning beneath it. Through the windows, Ethan could see the shadow of the helicopter racing across the surface of the ocean.

Ethan Warner sat next to Lopez in the rear of the helicopter, with Doug Jarvis sitting opposite them flanked by two armed DIA soldiers. Katherine Abell had chosen to sit in the cockpit alongside the pilot, which at least gave Ethan the chance to speak freely given the engine noise in the cabin. As a precaution, Jarvis leaned forward so that he could lower his voice as he spoke.

‘You do realize that if Joaquin is involved in this, he may decide to keep us aboard his yacht or feed us to sharks or something. We’ve only got two guards as escorts.’

‘This isn’t a Bond movie, Doug,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘If Joaquin has killed a lawyer as well as twenty-or-so scientists, having all of us iced is going to be one coincidence too many.’

‘Is it?’ Jarvis challenged. ‘Or is it possible that there is simply nothing that this man will not do to achieve his goals?’

‘He could flee,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘He could make Mexico or even Brazil on his yacht before anybody would know.’

‘Which would kind of defeat the object of being a famous humanitarian,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s carved himself a niche as the world’s nicest guy and he’s not going to want to lose that popularity. If it goes public, he won’t go down without a fight.’

The helicopter descended and slowed as Ethan saw the wake of an enormous yacht cruising the Straits. The helicopter slowed until it hovered alongside the yacht’s stern, and Ethan caught a glimpse of the yacht’s name emblazoned there: Event Horizon. The helicopter drifted slowly across over a large helipad and then settled down onto the deck. Immediately, men in blue jumpsuits ran out to secure tether lines to the helicopter’s fuselage and open the side doors. Ethan jumped out into the down-wash of the spinning blades and jogged to the edge of the platform with Lopez and Jarvis close behind.

The helicopter’s engines whined down as Katherine Abell climbed out and walked toward them. As she did so a door opened in the yacht and Joaquin Abell strode out from the interior, his black suit stark against his white shirt and the clinically clean white decks. He jogged up the steps onto the helipad and held his arms out to his wife. Ethan watched as the pair embraced tightly and he felt something pinch his throat as an image of Joanna appeared unbidden in his mind’s eye. He missed that; the intimacy of returning home to someone who’d actually missed you.

Joaquin reluctantly released Katherine and turned to look at Ethan.

‘You didn’t tell me you were bringing guests,’ he said. ‘Or armed guards.’

‘I didn’t know that I would be,’ Katherine replied, casting a wary eye at Ethan and his companions. ‘Joaquin, this is Ethan Warner.’

Joaquin shook Ethan’s hand. The billionaire’s skin was soft, unblemished by the scars of honest work. Ethan introduced him to Lopez and Jarvis, who gestured to the two soldiers.

‘Mr. Abell, these men are charged with searching this vessel for evidence of weaponry that we suspect may be linked to crimes committed in Miami yesterday and today. They cannot legally enter your vessel without your permission, but I trust that won’t be an issue.’

Ethan watched as Joaquin processed what Jarvis had said. He couldn’t tell if the man was affronted or confused by the thinly veiled threat, so unconcerned did he appear.

‘What crimes?’ he asked finally.

‘Homicides.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ Joaquin said, ‘and we have no weapons aboard. If you must search this vessel then at least do so without damaging anything.’

Jarvis nodded to the two soldiers, who immediately began scouring the yacht. Ethan turned and followed the others inside.

Ethan had never really known luxury in his life. Although his parents had raised himself and his sister in comfort, they were a working-class military family and lived as such. Coupon days, holidays out by the lakes rather than abroad, buying used instead of new. Ethan had learned to live with a certain austerity and had been happy to do so. Now, he found himself marveling at every aspect of the yacht. Sumptuous carpets adorned the floors of even minor passageways, the wooden doors to various cabins polished to a deep mahogany. Oil paintings the size of tables depicting naval battles lined a gallery in the center of the vessel, that itself faced an ornate staircase leading up toward the bridge. Deep carpets, the tasteful decor, the paintings and the fittings — everything was highly polished and in its place, even the chrome railings and handles buffed to a mirror finish. And this was just the guy’s yacht, for Christ’s sake. Ethan couldn’t even begin to imagine what Joaquin Abell’s house might look like.

‘This way, please.’

A young man dressed in black pants, white shirt and a bowtie waved them into a large, oval-shaped room ringed with cream leather couches that faced a plasma screen bigger than Ethan’s entire lounge. The room was overlooked by a broad bay window that revealed the panoramic ocean beyond the yacht’s stern.

‘I’m afraid that I do not have any refreshments prepared,’ Joaquin said as they sat down. ‘Had I known in advance of your arrival I would have alerted the galley.’

‘Not a problem,’ Jarvis replied, ‘we’re here on business, not for fine dining.’

‘They think that you killed Macy Lieberman,’ Katherine told her husband.

‘Macy Lieberman?’ Joaquin said. ‘The lawyer?’

‘She was killed in a hit-and-run wreck in Miami barely an hour ago,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘A suspect is being hunted as we speak. Do you know this man?’

Jarvis handed Joaquin the image of the big blond man. Ethan watched as Joaquin studied the image intently for a moment before shaking his head.

‘I’m sure I don’t; he looks very distinctive.’ Joaquin handed the image back to Jarvis. ‘IRIS employs a lot of people, but I’ve never seen this man before.’

‘Your wife said she saw him in the gallery during the hearing,’ Lopez said.

Joaquin sighed and opened his hands palm-outward in a gesture of helplessness.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve been aboard my yacht for the past day and I was in Puerto Rico yesterday. I’ve only seen what’s happened on the news channels. Perhaps this man you suspect of the killing is some kind of neo-Nazi? He looks somewhat the type, and the court case has garnered a great deal of press attention. Perhaps he disliked the Uhungu family’s lack of gratitude for what IRIS had done for them.’

Ethan smiled thinly.

‘If that was the case, he’d have likely killed the Uhungu family and not their lawyer and an innocent bystander.’

Joaquin’s features sagged.

‘Another murder?’ he said. ‘My God. This is dreadful.’

‘And that’s not all,’ Jarvis cut in. ‘Your company lost some twenty employees yesterday in an aircraft crash in the Bermuda Triangle, is that correct?’

‘An appalling tragedy,’ Joaquin replied softly. ‘We’re talking to the families of the victims of the accident right now to arrange compensation for their loss and to secure their futures.’

‘How do you know that the crash was an accident?’ Lopez asked.

‘I don’t,’ Joaquin replied. ‘But there was nothing to suggest that the aircraft was tampered with in any way. It simply disappeared over the ocean.’

‘Not quite,’ Ethan said.

Joaquin looked at him expectantly, but Ethan purposefully let the silence hang until it became too much for their host to bear.

‘What do you mean?’ Joaquin asked.

‘The aircraft was found,’ Ethan replied, ‘and there are some major questions being asked by the NTSB.’

Ethan saw the faintest quiver in Joaquin’s studied expression, a tremor of unease.

‘What kind of questions?’

‘The ones that get asked when an aircraft disappears after it crashed,’ Lopez answered for Ethan.

‘That happens naturally from time to time,’ Joaquin countered. ‘The currents here in the straits are extremely powerful — it’s these currents that are responsible for many of the Bermuda Triangle’s legendary “vanishings”. Aircraft and ships are downed by natural causes but drift for miles across the ocean before settling.’

‘That’s entirely true,’ Ethan conceded, ‘but the aircraft was found, lying flat on its belly in less than fifty feet of water. The nose and cockpit were crushed, revealing that it went into the ocean almost vertically, at very high speed, before falling onto its belly.’

Before Joaquin could answer, Jarvis leaned forward in his seat.

‘And underwater currents don’t open fuselage panels and remove the black boxes,’ he pointed out. ‘What’s more, Mr. Abell, when the authorities returned to the site, the aircraft had vanished entirely.’

Joaquin gaped at them for a long moment.

‘As I just said, the currents in these waters are notoriously powerful. And why would anybody have removed the black boxes? I had no reason to tamper with the wreck, if I even knew where it was.’

‘Didn’t you?’ Lopez challenged. ‘The court case your wife was defending concerned revelations revealed by a former employee of yours, a Charles Purcell. He’s a whistle-blower claiming to have evidence of corporate fraud by IRIS. He was on the passenger manifest of that aircraft and was supposed to have been aboard when it went down, Joaquin. You see a pattern developing here?’

Joaquin stood upright and looked down at Lopez.

‘Yes, I do. I see a lot of accusations all going in one direction: that I, or somebody in my company, is responsible for all of this. I see a more likely possibility — that this is being orchestrated by the likes of Charles Purcell in order to bring disrepute to IRIS and to my name.’

‘Murder,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘is an awful long way to go to achieve that. If what you’re saying were true, Purcell could simply have walked into any police station with his evidence and handed it over.’

Joaquin shook his head.

‘The man is wanted for the murder of his own damned family! Does that not count for anything? You’re here questioning and accusing me, without jurisdiction, when a man suspected of a hideous crime remains free — and yet is able to submit evidence to a court and be taken seriously!’

Ethan leaned back on the couch.

‘All avenues need to be explored, Joaquin,’ he replied, using the man’s first name purposely in order to annoy him. ‘Everybody who has a connection to these events is a suspect, and right now we’re running out of time to find the perpetrator or perpetrators.’

‘Why?’ Katherine Abell asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

Ethan shrugged.

‘It’s always after the first forty-eight hours that cases start going cold,’ he replied, and then fixed his gaze again on her husband. ‘And it’s not like we can see into the future to figure out what’s going on, is it, Joaquin?’

Joaquin’s eyes briefly flared with surprise and Ethan saw him swallow thickly.

‘If only we could.’

‘If somebody had,’ Lopez murmured, ‘then we’d know a little more about this case than the perpetrator might think.’

Joaquin’s studied calm withered as he stared at Lopez, attracting the attention of Katherine, who stood up.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘This is getting us nowhere. If you have no more questions, Mr. Jarvis?’

At that moment, the two DIA soldiers appeared in the doorway to the room. One of them looked at Jarvis and shook his head.

‘Not a thing. The whole ship’s clean sir, no weapons aboard.’

Jarvis stood up and extended a hand to Joaquin.

‘Thank you for your valuable time, Mr. Abell,’ he said, as Joaquin shook his hand. ‘I foresee that we’ll speak again — in the future.’

Joaquin coughed and managed a weak smile in response.

‘I’ll arrange for the ship’s helicopter to take you back to Miami.’

Ethan and Lopez followed Jarvis out of the room. As soon as the door was closed behind them and they were walking down the corridor, Ethan turned to Jarvis.

‘He knows something.’

‘Indeed he does,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘but what?’

As they walked out onto the helipad Ethan looked back across the yacht, and something that he hadn’t seen before caught his eye.

‘There’s no evidence that he’s hiding anything out here,’ Jarvis was saying, ‘either physically or financially. Unless we can prove otherwise we’re chasing rainbows.’

‘Oh, he’s hiding something all right,’ Ethan replied.

‘How can you be sure?’ Lopez asked. ‘There’s nothing aboard this ship.’

‘I know,’ Ethan replied and then pointed toward the yacht’s bows. ‘But maybe what we’re looking for isn’t actually aboard.’

Jarvis and Lopez looked in the direction Ethan was indicating, to where two large yellow submersibles emblazoned with the IRIS logo sat on their launches.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Jarvis said. ‘Those things could give him access to the seabed.’

‘Listen, Doug,’ Ethan said. ‘Somebody, somewhere, knows what’s happening before it happens, and we can’t do anything about it unless we can get the jump on them. It might be Joaquin Abell but we’ve got nothing solid on him yet. We’ve got to find Purcell and learn everything that he knows or this is going to wind up a cold case that’ll never get opened again.’

‘But if the people responsible already know what we’re going to do,’ Lopez said, ‘then anything we can think of has already been pre-empted. We can’t fight what we can’t see.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ethan said. ‘The only person that we know for certain has that ability is Charles Purcell. Maybe if we can trace his steps from the point where his family were murdered, we can figure out how to get ahead of him.’

Jarvis fished his cellphone out of his pocket.

‘I feared that it would come to this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something that I need to show you, and it might help us catch up with Charles Purcell. But this is above-Top-Secret, Cosmic clearance. You’ll have to sign non-disclosure agreements before we leave.’

‘Where are we going?’ Lopez asked.

‘Back to Cape Canaveral. But not a part of it you’ll have seen before.’