Apocalypse

71

Ethan stepped into the office of Warner & Lopez Inc. for the first time in five days, tossing his keys onto his desk and standing in the center of the room for a long moment. His shoulder still throbbed with a dull ache from the damage he’d endured in the IRIS facility, and he had slept deeply and eaten ravenously ever since; but he knew that his wounds were superficial compared to those suffered by Lopez.

She followed him into the office, devoid of the feisty spirit and short temper that had enshrouded her like a force field ever since Ethan had first met her.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ she said, observing the office without interest. ‘It’s like we never left the place.’

Ethan looked around the office, but then hesitated. A feeling that he’d occasionally experienced in his life, a sixth sense that somebody had preceded him, filtered into his consciousness. He remained still, letting his eyes soak in the office until he realized what was bugging him.

‘Some of the surfaces have been cleaned down,’ he said, and made his way over to the filing cabinets.

Truth was, neither he nor Lopez were much into cleaning: a little dust makes a place feel lived in, he figured. But the handles on the filing-cabinet doors were spotless. He turned and checked the drawers in his desk. They were still locked, no signs of tampering, but also looked suspiciously clean.

‘My keyboard’s been wiped,’ Lopez said.

‘Mine too,’ Ethan confirmed, and then looked at her. ‘We’ve been swept professionally enough to not have left any evidence, but they’ve been overzealous.’

‘CIA?’ Lopez hazarded. ‘Shit, I don’t want to have to deal with this right now.’

Ethan nodded, choosing not to reply just yet. He’d felt that Lopez needed a break after their return from Florida, and had suggested that she head home to Guanajuato, Mexico. Catch up with her family. Maybe see friends and just goof around. Lopez had thanked him for his concern but said that she was fine — and that was what had bothered Ethan. In the past she would have just told him to fuck off or something. The loss of Scott Bryson, a man whom Ethan had reluctantly realized was something of a heroic figure, had hit her harder than he’d expected, and right now he didn’t have much of an idea of how to deal with it.

Ethan flicked a small television on as Lopez sorted through the pile of mail that had built up. A news article on an earthquake that had hit the Florida Straits caught Ethan’s eye, and he turned up the volume as the news anchor outlined the story.

‘… The clean-up continues on Miami Beach today after the magnitude 6.8 quake that hit the Florida Straits just before nine in the evening on the twenty-eighth and caused a tsunami that hit the coast just four minutes later. Although there were no casualties from the wave, Governor MacKenzie has suggested that more suitable warning facilities should be installed along the Florida coastline to guard against such geological events in the future, and provide earlier warning of tsunami conditions.’

The image of Miami was replaced with one of Puerto Plata, with a picture of Joaquin Abell in the top right corner of the screen. The news anchor kept reading from her autocue, but was not visible on the screen.

‘The governor’s comments come just days after Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic was hit by a similar quake and tsunami, killing over five thousand residents and tourists. The CEO of IRIS, Katherine Abell, has led calls for international intervention in the crisis, a plea made all the more poignant after her husband, Joaquin Abell, pictured here, was tragically lost at sea and presumed killed along with several of his employees, after a diving accident aboard his yacht, the Event Horizon. With currents in the Straits so strong, it’s considered unlikely by the Coastguard that their remains will be found.’

Ethan looked down at Lopez.

‘That’s the news article that Joaquin Abell saw,’ he realized. ‘Without sound on the report, he knew nothing of his own death, and with no anchor on screen there was no way anyone could have read her lips.’

Lopez nodded vacantly.

‘The yacht accident’s a perfect cover for Joaquin’s disappearance.’

As if on cue, the image switched to a scene of the Everglades, where police and forensic teams were working amid a small knot of trees in the vast wilderness.

‘Investigators in Dade County have announced that the remains found in the Florida Everglades on June 28 are those of one Charles Purcell, a man who was suspected of murdering his family.’ The images showed Purcell’s body being lifted onto a stretcher and carried from the scene. ‘However, it has recently come to light that Purcell was innocent of any crime after an investigation led by the Miami-Dade police department uncovered evidence proving that Purcell was not at the scene when his family were killed but was in fact on his way home. Police remain baffled as to why he fled the scene, but believe his grief and despair at having lost his young family may have driven him to take his own life. A funeral for family and friends is to be held for Purcell in his hometown.’

Ethan saw Kyle Sears among officers searching the scene in the Everglades, and then glimpsed both himself and Lopez in the background between the trees, talking to Jarvis.

‘Sears would have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements by the DIA,’ Ethan said. ‘Must have driven him nuts, having so much of the case kept from him.’

Ethan turned the television off as Lopez held out a UPS package for him.

‘The one Doug took from you, before we left,’ she said.

Ethan took the package and opened one end of it before tipping the contents out into his hand. From within fell a single photograph. As Lopez watched, Ethan looked at it and felt a supernatural tingle ripple down his spine into the pit of his belly.

Lopez saw his expression change.

‘What?’ she asked.

Ethan stared down at the photograph in his hands: it showed Charles Purcell standing with his wife and his daughter in front of the sea on a bright and sunny day, their arms around each other and their smiles as bright as the sunlight beaming down upon them. Ethan turned the photograph over and felt something tighten in his throat as he read the words written there.

Ethan handed the photograph to Lopez, who looked at it and read the inscription, one hand flying to her mouth as she looked up at him.

‘The photograph that was missing,’ she said.

‘From the mantelpiece in Purcell’s house,’ Ethan replied, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘He took it with him, must have posted it along with the diary that he sent to me at Cape Canaveral. He planned everything, even his own death, knowing that to sacrifice himself was the only way to ensure that we got this photograph and that Joaquin Abell would be defeated.’

Lopez stared at the picture, and sighed.

‘No less a sacrifice than Scott made.’

Ethan managed not to sound trite. ‘Every bit as brave.’

Lopez looked up at him, and he saw there in her expression a desolation that unnerved him.

‘Why did that have to happen?’ she asked him. ‘Why didn’t he make it?’

Ethan had never been any good at this kind of stuff, especially with women. Most of the time a good slap on the back and a few beers in front of the game with friends was enough to snap a guy out of his misery. Most of the time it was good enough for Lopez, too.

But Lopez didn’t need beer and football right now. She needed comfort, someone to talk to who wouldn’t screw it up. Someone resolutely not like him. Ethan racked his brains for something profound to say in reply.

‘The best people always get taken from us first, it seems.’

Ethan watched her, waiting to see how she would respond. Lopez stared at him for a few moments.

‘He was alone, no family.’

‘He was adopted as a baby, never knew his folks,’ Ethan said, recalling what Jarvis had told them when they’d returned to the Event Horizon without Bryson. ‘The Navy was the only family he had. Probably why he hit the bottle when he was wounded and medically unable to stay with the SEALs.’

Lopez nodded vacantly, not replying to him. Ethan sucked in a deep breath as silently as he could, and tried again.

‘Look, when people pass on we end up grieving for them, but really we’re only grieving for ourselves, for what we’ve lost. Scott’s not in pain, not suffering, maybe he’s not even alone anymore. Nobody knows what comes next, if anything. If there’s nothing, then Scott’s problems are over and his life was sacrificed knowing that yours would continue, something that I know would have made the one-eyed jerk very happy.’

Lopez’s stony facade melted slightly. She did not smile, but Ethan glimpsed the briefest ray of light flicker behind her eyes.

‘And if there is something after we die?’

‘Then Scott’s problems are still over, and he’s probably sipping a stiff drink right now whilst looking down on us with both of his goddamned eyes working.’

A tiny smile flickered at the edges of Lopez’s lips, and Ethan felt his own spirits lift a little. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at this shit after all.

‘Y’know what he said, while we were in Puerto Plata?’ Lopez went on. ‘He said that you probably wished he’d get lost, as he was getting in the way.’

‘In the way of what?’

‘In the way of us.’

Ethan’s stomach did a little back-flip, like the one he’d experienced at high school when he’d been informed that a well-known cheerleader considered him ‘cute’. He looked down at Lopez.

‘There’s an us?’

Lopez gave a little shrug. ‘Scott seemed to think so.’

Ethan’s throat felt suddenly dry. He realized he was slouching and probably looked like a slack-jawed hick. He squared his shoulders and tried to look normal.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he uttered, in a voice that sounded oddly higher in pitch than normal.

Lopez sighed.

‘I guess I just don’t know who you are, Ethan,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked with a lot of guys over the years since I moved to the US, and almost every single one of them has made a move on me. The only ones that didn’t turned out to be gay or happily married. I’m pretty sure you’re neither of those, so what’s the deal?’

Ethan dodged the question.

‘Is this about what happened to Scott?’

Lopez’s inquiring face flushed and she looked away from him for a moment, before regaining her composure.

‘Scott just came out with things,’ she said finally. ‘He was an open book. You, you’re totally closed. He was all over me and you barely even reacted. I guess it just makes me wonder why?’

Ethan gathered himself together. Lopez had just suffered a great personal loss and now she was looking for honest answers from him. Just say what you feel. Stop being such a dick and be a man for a change. The tension drained from his shoulders and Ethan looked her in the eye.

‘I guess I just haven’t been able to tell you how I feel because—’

The door to the office cracked open and Doug Jarvis strode in. Lopez flinched in her chair and then glared at the old man.

‘Damn it, Doug, don’t people knock where you come from?’

Jarvis looked down at her in surprise.

‘Sorry Nicola, but this is an emergency.’ He turned to Ethan. ‘Ethan, you need to come with me right now, there isn’t much time.’

Ethan rolled his eyes up into his head. ‘Not again?’

Jarvis placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘No, it’s nothing like that. There’s something that I need you to see.’

‘Our office got swept,’ Lopez growled at him. ‘Your boys been playing out of hours?’

Jarvis looked at her quizzically. ‘No, not at all. I’ll look into it, I promise, but right now we’ve got to leave.’

Ethan sighed, and looked at Lopez.

‘Okay, let’s go and see what this is all about, and maybe we can talk later about—’

‘Just you, Ethan,’ Jarvis cautioned them, as Lopez stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Nicola, but this can’t wait and I can only show one of you.’

Ethan looked at Jarvis. ‘Where I go, Lopez goes.’

‘Not this time,’ Jarvis replied. ‘I’ll have you arrested if I have to, Ethan, but you’re coming with me and you’re coming alone. It won’t take long.’

Lopez stared at Jarvis with something approaching contempt, but she waved them away.

‘Just go,’ she said.

Ethan looked at her for a long moment, and then turned to Jarvis.

‘Sorry, Doug, but it’ll have to wait. Nicola and I were talking about something important, and I want her to hear what I have to say.’

Lopez looked up at Ethan and for the first time in days a true smile melted her features. Jarvis looked at them each in turn, unable to decide how to respond. Lopez answered for him.

‘It’s all right, Ethan,’ she said, still smiling. ‘You can tell me when you get back, okay?’

Ethan looked at her.

‘You sure?’

Lopez nodded, and seeing her still smiling provoked a gentle warmth that spread through him.

‘Okay,’ he said to Jarvis, grabbing his jacket. ‘What’s so important?’