Apocalypse

54

Ethan watched as the US Navy Gulfstream C-20D jet taxied in from the runway, silhouetted against the low sun streaming in beams across the ragged clouds in the sky. Dozens of television crews were amassed near the boarding gates, restricted from getting too close to the aircraft but able to get shots using their powerful zoom lenses.

Ethan glanced at the camera crews as they filmed the aircraft’s arrival, and slowly an idea formed in his head. There was no way that he could predict which news broadcasts Joaquin Abell was using to predict the future, but it seemed likely that all of the major networks would be among them. Ethan realized that, for once, there might be a way to turn the tables on the megalomaniac.

Ethan stood with Jarvis as the Gulfstream braked to a halt just fifty yards from where they stood, its engines whining deafeningly before the pilots shut them down. Ethan had no idea how many people were aboard or how seriously injured they might be. Early reports were that the area where Lopez and Bryson had been working had been ravaged. Casualties, from multiple nations, would be in the thousands.

‘She’ll be okay.’

Jarvis stood alongside him, clearly aware of Ethan’s agitation.

‘The place got leveled,’ Ethan hissed. ‘That bastard Abell has killed thousands to feed his own ego and ambition. Right now, I want his throat in my hands.’

‘This is not a revenge mission,’ Jarvis cautioned, as the airplane’s main door opened. He reached out and stopped Ethan from approaching the aircraft. ‘The moment you make it personal, you become ineffective. Keep your cool, Ethan, or this’ll blow up in your face.’

Forcing himself not to run toward the Gulfstream, Ethan watched as crewmen began helping people down the steps, some of them hoisted down on stretchers with saline bags held aloft. Others hobbled down onto the asphalt, their hands resting on the shoulders of the pilots or paramedics. Then three bedraggled figures, wrapped in thermal blankets, clambered out into the low sunlight.

Ethan felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he saw Lopez’s thick tangle of black hair. Katherine Abell and Scott Bryson accompanied her, the big man’s arm across her shoulder as they shuffled across the landing area to where Ethan was standing with Jarvis. Ethan forgot himself and strode toward Lopez, who squinted up at him in the bright sunlight and smiled.

‘Enjoy your vacation, cowboy?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been busy whilst you’ve been sitting on your ass drinking coffee.’

A broad grin spread across Ethan’s face as he wrapped his arms around her. Lopez returned the embrace and looked up at him.

‘No use getting cute with me,’ she said.

‘Just glad you got out okay.’

‘Thanks to this guy,’ Lopez said, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Rescued us from drowning when the tsunami hit. Only a SEAL could improvise a boat out of a floating garbage dumpster. I’ve never see him move so fast.

Ethan looked at Bryson, whose jaw twisted into a crooked grin as he shrugged.

‘What can I say? I’m a hero.’

Ethan released Lopez and strode up to him, then stuck his hand out. The big man gripped it.

‘I owe you,’ Ethan said without fuss, and then he leaned in close and wrapped one arm across his broad shoulder. Bryson’s single eye flickered curiously as Ethan whispered quietly enough for nobody else to hear. ‘I need you to leave, Scott, and make a damned fuss about it.’

Ethan released Bryson before he could respond, while Doug Jarvis gently took Katherine Abell’s arm.

‘You need to come with us,’ he informed her. ‘We don’t know what Joaquin will do next and we need to stop him before—’

‘I can’t,’ Katherine uttered, and hugged her blanket tighter around her shoulders. ‘We don’t know for sure if he’s really behind all of this.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Lopez said, and turned to Jarvis. ‘I know how to crack Purcell’s final code. I can find the documents that prove IRIS is guilty of fraud.’

Jarvis had his cellphone in his hand almost before Lopez had finished her sentence. ‘Shoot.’

‘You said that his code was a cipher code that needed another code to decipher it,’ she said. ‘Charles told me that he and his father both took their secrets to the grave, and that time would tell. But his father didn’t have any secrets, only Charles did. If time would tell, then I’ve got to assume it’s the time of death of one of the two men. Charles’s “secret” was the code on his chest. I’m guessing, but try the date of Montgomery Purcell’s disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle: 9 October, 1964.’

Jarvis dialled the crypto-analysis department of the DIA immediately, and dictated the dates to them. ‘Oh-nine, ten, sixty-four,’ he said as he grabbed a pen and paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. Ethan turned his back, letting Jarvis lean on it and scribble whatever his contact was saying.

‘Okay, got it.’ Jarvis rang off, and looked at his notepad. ‘Okay, here’s the code,’ he said showing them the page.

‘And here’s the cipher.’

‘What do we do with that?’ Ethan asked, deciding not to mention that math had never been his forte.

‘You skip either backwards or forwards however many places the cipher tells you to in the alphabet,’ Lopez explained. ‘So f-r-s-b-z becomes… “first”. It fits.’

Ethan watched as Lopez took over from Jarvis and swiftly decoded the message.

‘Outstanding, Nicola,’ Jarvis said, and immediately turned to Kyle Sears. ‘Get a warrant from the DA. I want your men down there within the hour, and I want whatever documents they find in relation to Charles Purcell in police custody. No more accidents.’

‘You got it.’

Ethan turned to Katherine, who stood beside him with her head in her hands, her long auburn hair hiding her face and obscuring her speech as she whispered to herself.

‘This isn’t happening.’

‘Katherine, this is all part of his scheme,’ Ethan said. ‘We know that he caused this. Charles Purcell predicted exactly where and when the earthquake would strike, and he told us both how Joaquin is able to cause these disasters and why. He’s been planning this a long time.’

‘But why?’ Katherine asked. ‘He could just as likely have achieved power or influence by being himself, by helping people.’

Jarvis shook his head.

‘IRIS could not have funded all that it has done without embezzling funds from government,’ he explained. ‘It would have ceased to exist as an entity years ago. Joaquin has invested in charitable acts only a tiny fraction of what IRIS has received over the years from governments — the rest has gone into the construction of this device of his, something designed to gain him unassailable power and influence. He has to be stopped.’

Katherine was about to reply when a Navy jeep rolled up alongside them to collect the Gulfstream’s crew for debrief. Thomas Ryker jumped out and waved them across.

‘Guys, we’ve got something you need to see.’

Jarvis led them across to the vehicle, and as one they huddled beside the door. Ryker had a portable laptop that was sitting on the passenger seat and he turned it to face them.

‘Streamed from the Robert Murtaugh News Channel just a few minutes ago,’ Ryker said. ‘Most of the news channels are covering the earthquake disaster already, but this one’s different. It’s Joaquin Abell.’

Ethan watched as Joaquin Abell’s face appeared on the screen. He was standing on the quarterdeck of his yacht, the sun illuminating his face as he spoke to the camera. The news channel’s scrolling text drifted past at the bottom of the screen, outlining details of the disaster.

‘It will of course be the responsibility of IRIS, as part of our charter, to send supplies, medical aid and construction materials to the Dominican Republic at this time of terrible tragedy. We cannot stand idly by after such a horrific event, waiting for the endless procrastination of world government. We must move now to prevent the spread of disease and decay and bring this beautiful part of the world back into the light.’

Joaquin raised his hands imploringly at the camera.

‘This is the chance for us to do something personal, something right. We do not need to wait for governments any longer to take these terrible tragedies and turn them into something worthwhile, like a phoenix from the ashes. I ask you now, as citizens of the greatest country on earth, to do something that has never been done before. I ask each and every one of you, every American citizen on our planet, to donate just a single dollar to the rebuilding of the Dominican Republic via IRIS. Just one dollar. Even in these hard economic times, a single dollar is something that we can all spare. Yet, combined, that equals hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to the protection, healing and future care of a people devastated by loss, by pain and by suffering. People who no longer have that single dollar to spare. Do it today to turn a crisis into an opportunity, and I give you my word, as Joaquin Abell, that your money will create a heaven where, right now, there is only hell. Thank you.’

The news channel switched to its anchor, and Ryker hit the pause button on the screen before looking at Jarvis.

‘He’s on his yacht,’ the old man said.

‘Which means that he can’t have caused the disaster!’ Katherine pointed out.

‘Not necessarily,’ Ethan said. ‘He doesn’t have to press the button himself to activate the horror that he’s created. He’s got plenty of people working for him.’

‘Is the yacht still anchored out at sea?’ Lopez asked.

‘Right where it’s always been,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘Doesn’t make sense if he’s trying to hide his little undersea laboratory. He’s anchored within a mile of it.’

‘It does if your ego is as big as Joaquin’s,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s cocky enough to think that we don’t know anything about what he’s done, and arrogant enough to think that hiding in plain sight is clever.’

Ethan stared at the static image of Joaquin’s face. Something was wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

‘That was fast,’ Bryson said, as though reading Ethan’s mind. ‘Getting a news crew out on his yacht.’

‘There’s no news crew,’ Ethan realized. ‘He’s talking to a static camera.’ Ethan turned to Lopez. ‘We got footage of his yacht from a few hours ago and Robert Murtaugh was aboard along with a congressman, the governor of Florida and a few others.’

‘So he’s maybe heard about the earthquake,’ Katherine said, ‘and arranged a quick appeal, which Murtaugh has then sent to his people for broadcast.’

Ethan looked at the screen thoughtfully for a moment and then something clicked in his mind. He looked across at the Gulfstream’s pilot, who was waiting patiently behind them.

‘What was the prevailing wind across the Florida Straits this morning?’

The pilot replied immediately, having had the standard meteorological briefing before flying that day.

‘Southwesterly, eight knots, variable above five thousand feet.’

Ethan gestured to the computer.

‘Wind that back,’ he asked Ryker, ‘then play it at high speed.’

Ryker frowned in confusion but obeyed nonetheless. The broadcast played at four times normal speed. Ethan leaned forward and watched Joaquin’s comical babbling, but focused instead on the clouds as they raced across the sky, approaching from the horizon to pass overhead.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Ethan said. ‘Looks like our boy Joaquin’s not as goddamned smart as he thinks he is.’

‘You think he’s lying or something?’ Lopez asked.

‘I know that he is,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s just given us our evidence to convict him.’