Final Days

SIXTEEN

Lakeside, Montana, 3 February 2235

Early the next morning, Saul caught a red-eye hopper to Montana, then fell asleep in the back of a hire car as it carried him towards Flathead Lake. By the time he woke again, cramped and hungry, mountains that had been a distant blue at the start of his journey now rose all around him, their grassy slopes dense with forest and spotted with clumps of snow.

He pulled in at an autocafé, less than fifty kilometres from his destination. Breakfast consisted of paste sandwiches and coffee with a faintly metallic taste, and he sat by the window, browsing local news feeds in case he could discover anything more about Jeff’s supposed suicide. Once he’d finished his coffee, he placed a call to the police station in Lakeside. He soon found himself talking with the sheriff there, a man by the name of Waldo Gibbs, who agreed to meet him when he arrived.

Just over an hour later, Saul pulled up outside the police station in Lakeside, a two-storey brick building with an open garage next door, crammed with trucks and cars built for the mountainous terrain. Gibbs stood waiting for him on the steps. Saul guessed he was in his mid-fifties, with a weather-beaten face beneath a fur-lined hat, and he looked like the type who preferred a life outdoors. Saul made sure to activate his UP so the sheriff could confirm his identity, as they shook hands.

‘Mr Dumont. I’m a little unclear why the ASI has been showing so much interest in Cairns. Did your boys forget something before they left?’

Saul kept his face impassive. He’d had no idea ASI agents had been involved in the investigation. ‘When exactly were they here?’

Gibbs squinted at him in the early afternoon sun. ‘Just this morning, but I’m afraid you’ve missed them. I’m sorry if that means you’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘I’m here to follow up on some things,’ Saul improvised. ‘Were you present when they pulled his body out of the lake?’

Gibbs nodded. ‘I was there all right, and I told your boys they had the wrong man, but they didn’t seem interested in listening to me. Now they’ve gone and put it out that Cairns is dead, when I know for a fact he ain’t.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What I’m saying is, the man we dredged out of that lake was not Jeff Cairns. But, the way you guys act, it’s like you don’t give a damn.’

‘Then . . . in that case, who was it?’

Gibbs led him round one side of the station to a one-storey extension at the rear. ‘This is our morgue,’ he explained. ‘You wouldn’t think we’d need one this big for a town this small, but our catchment area covers a good chunk of the Rockies. If somebody’s got a body needs putting on ice, they either fly ’em in or drive ’em here.’ Gibbs pushed his way through a swing-door, and Saul followed him inside. ‘If a pathologist needs to see them, then they go on to Miles City.’

Saul noticed a lab assistant sitting at a live-desk. ‘How did you know for sure it wasn’t Jeff Cairns?’

‘We didn’t know who the hell he was, when we pulled him outrsquo; said Gibbs. ‘He was wearing contacts, but they’ve got some kind of heavy-duty encryption on them that we can’t break.’

‘You still have them?’

‘Nope.’ Gibbs shook his head. ‘ASI took them. You’re lucky you got here when you did. They told us to cremate the body straight away. As it happens, it’s still waiting to be picked up.’

Gibbs stepped over to a wall of metal drawers and pulled one open. Saul stepped up alongside him and watched as the policeman pulled the sheet back off the corpse contained within.

Saul found himself staring down at Sanders, Donohue’s partner. One side of his skull had been caved in.

‘His head—?’

‘He got run over by a motorboat,’ said Gibbs, ‘which we later found abandoned and half sunk on the far side of the lake. With bullet holes in it, I should add. Now, Jeff Cairns has been coming up to Lakeside for some years, Mr Dumont,’ Gibbs continued, ‘and I’m sure you’ve noticed this isn’t a very big town.’ Saul stepped back from the drawer as Gibbs slid it shut. ‘I knew we had the wrong guy, soon as I set eyes on him,’ Gibbs continued, ‘and I told your people that. Except next time I watch the news they’re claiming it’s Cairns that’s dead.’ Gibbs made a helpless gesture. ‘Whoever that is, we can’t even trace him through the tags in his clothes.’

‘Why not?’

‘There just aren’t any. Looks like he didn’t want anyone being able to track him.’

Saul nodded slowly. ‘So any idea what happened to the real Cairns?’

‘None,’ said Gibbs, ‘and I already asked your people that same question. Now, you have to understand that whenever shit like this happens in my own backyard, I take a considerable interest in it – not that your people were exactly forthcoming when it came to sharing information. When you told me you were on your way, I hoped you might be a little more open with us than that other guy.’

That other guy. ‘Was his name Donohue?’ asked Saul, taking a chance.

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ Gibbs’ face screwed up like he’d eaten something sour. ‘Is there anything else you need from me?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Saul, ‘I’d like to take a quick look at Cairns’ cabin.’

Gibbs guided the truck around the first of several switchbacks ascending a hill dense with forest. The sheriff clearly had a taste for driving on manual, and had complained, before setting out, that the auto-drive function in most vehicles wasn’t up to the mountainous terrain surrounding the lake.

Saul caught flickering glimpses of the lake itself through a tangle of trees and brush, while he thought about everything Gibbs had told him during their drive here to the lake.

‘So whoever stole the motorboat also stole the car?’

Gibbs glanced at him and shrugged. ‘Makes sense to me. I figure it must have been Cairns. He drove down to the lakeside, grabbed the boat, made his way to the far shore and stole a car, making mincemeat out of our friend there in the morgue on the way. Seems to me that whatever kind of trouble he was running from had caught up with him.’

‘Did he seem to you the kind of guy to get himself mixed up in something like this?’

Gibbs thought for a moment before replying. ‘Depends on what you mean by “this”. But, y’know, not really. Not if you’re talking organized crime or whatever.’

‘Right.’

‘But sometimes people get out of their depth, without even knowing it. Next thing you know, there’s bodies everywhere.’

‘I guess.’

‘Why ask me anyway?’ said Gibbs. ‘You wouldn’t be here unless you were looking for something. Maybe you should be telling me what Cairns was involved in?’

Saul smiled. ‘That’s not something I can talk about, sorry.’

‘Fuckin’ ASI.’ Gibbs shook his head. ‘Ever thought about cooperating once in a while?’

Saul shrugged, as if to say, What can you do?

The sheriff sighed heavily. ‘Do you need to see the incident report?’

Saul nodded. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

A moment later, a copy of the report appeared within Saul’s vision. He focused on the dashboard, thus projecting the report’s contents on to it. He quickly shuffled through several UP-generated video-files of Sanders’ bedraggled form being pulled from the water, along with several still shots of the motorboat and the bullet-holes drilled through its hull. He next skimmed the text, trying to build a picture in his mind of events as Gibbs had already described them.

Glancing away from the dashboard, Saul saw they had almost reached the cabin.

‘I figure the dead guy and one other chased your man Cairns down to the lake, meaning to kill him,’ said Gibbs. ‘Maybe they meant to shoot him out in the middle of the lake, where it’d be easier for them to dump the body. Except Cairns got away and took the boat for himself – which would at least explain the bullet holes.’

‘Two men chased him? Do you have any evidence for that?’

‘It’s as clear as daylight if you take a good look at the hillside up there. You’ll find a shitload of skidding footprints and broken branches. There were two of them all right.’

Saul nodded. ‘And you reckon your dead guy shot at him from the shore, then waded out into the water, and got hit on the head by the motorboat?’

Gibbs took one hand off the wheel and waved it in the air. ‘Something like that. I don’t have any better ideas at any rate.’

Maybe Sanders had been in the boat along with Jeff, thought Saul, while the third man was waiting on the shore. Sanders had fallen out, and got himself rammed in the head, then the third man had tried to shoot Jeff before he could get away. And if Sanders had been present, did that make Donohue the third man?

‘Look, I’m dying of fucking curiosity here,’ said Gibbs, ‘but I know I shouldn’t stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong. The important thing is that you make sure ASI understands the victim’s body has been misidentified. Cairns is still out there somewhere.’

And somebody doesn’t want me, or anyone else, to know that either Jeff or Mitchell are still alive, thought Saul. Both of them worked for the ASI . . . and now Donohue or someone else was trying their damnedest to cover something up.

As the truck lurched around a corner, Saul saw the cabin itself for the first time. Gibbs parked close to the edge of the wooded slope out front, and they climbed out. Mountains rose beyond the far side of the lake, and the air was startlingly cold as Saul drew it into his lungs. He walked over to the edge of the driveway and peered down through the trees towards the lakeshore, to where he could just make out a wharf and a boarded-up hut.

‘Let’s take a look inside,’ he suggested.

Gibbs led him over to the cabin, and Saul followed him inside, wondering what the hell benefit anyone got from sitting halfway up the side of a mountain with no one to talk to and the nearest bar a half hour’s drive away.

Gibbs closed the door behind them and Saul gazed around. The place seemed comfortable enough, and less primitive than he’d expected. There was even a TriView that responded to his contacts. All in all, it looked quite cosy. There were ashes in the hearth, and the bedroom was visible through a half-open door. The way things were scattered about made it clear that either Jeff Cairns had left in a great hurry or someone had recently turned the place over.

Gibbs waited by the fireplace while Saul stepped through into the bedroom. He glanced under the bed and behind some mementoes gathering dust on a single shelf alongside the window. After that, he proceeded to check out the bathroom and the kitchen.

‘Forensics boys already been over the whole place,’ said Gibbs when Saul rejoined him a few minutes later.

p height="0" width="1em">‘I guess,’ said Saul, checking the time: almost four. Maybe it was time to give Olivia a call. He made an excuse to Gibbs and stepped out on to the veranda, pulling his jacket close around him as he walked on across the driveway towards the trees.

Olivia answered after just a few seconds. ‘You were more than right,’ he said. ‘I’m at the cabin right now, and they pulled someone out of the lake, but it wasn’t Jeff.’

She made a small sound in the back of her throat, followed by a stifled sob. From background noise, it sounded like she was somewhere in town. After a moment the traffic noise faded, and he guessed she’d found somewhere quieter.

‘Then Jeff’s still alive?’ she asked.

‘Well, all I can say for sure is that you were right about him being in some kind of trouble. I’m still not sure just what kind.’

‘Do you think you can find him?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

He headed closer to the trees. ‘I need you to be absolutely straight with me, Olivia. If you’ve been holding anything back, now’s the time to tell me.’

‘Saul, I swear I haven’t, and I wish I could tell you more. I tried so many times to get him to tell me whatever the hell was bothering him, but he just wouldn’t open up. And if he is still alive, there’s a part of me wants to wring his neck for not being straight with me.’

Saul chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, in that case. Look, from what I can tell, the police have already been over the whole place thoroughly. If there was ever anything here that might tell us where Jeff’s gone, it’s not here any more.’

‘Did you check the tool shed?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Tool shed?’

‘It’s around the back of the cabin, just where the trees start. There’s a safe embedded in the floor.’

Saul glanced back towards the cabin and saw Gibbs peering out of the window towards him. Saul smiled and raised a hand. Gibbs nodded grudgingly, then moved back out of sight.

Saul ran a quick search of the report Gibbs had given him earlier, for any mention of a tool shed, but found nothing. ‘Hang on while I take a look myself,’ he muttered, then headed around behind the cabin, where the trees resumed four or five metres to the rear.

He looked around. ‘I’m here,’ he told her quietly, wary of Gibbs overhearing him. ‘I don’t see anything.’

‘It’s quite well hidden,’ she explained. ‘Look to your left, away from the cabin . . . there’s a boulder and some bushes. See them?’

Saul glanced to his left. ‘I see them.’

Then he spotted the shed, almost out of sight beyond the boulder. It was painted green, so nearly invisible among the tangled undergrowth.

The structure was in a semi-derelict state, leaning slightly to one side, and he pulled the door open only with some difficulty. Various tools hung from hooks, and the disassembled parts of a chainsaw lay scattered on a tarpaulin spread across the floor, so that he had barely enough room to squeeze inside and close the door behind him.

‘What am I looking for?’ he asked next.

‘All I know is that he kept some stuff in a floor-safe there. Maybe there’ll be something there to tell you where he’s gone.’

Saul bent down and quickly moved some of the chainsaw parts aside, then hauled away the tarpaulin to reveal a flat steel panel embedded in the concrete floor. ‘I’ve got it,’ he told her, ‘but there’s no external lock.’ Doubtless it needed a UP-coded password before it would open up. ‘Short of digging it out of the concrete, I can’t see any way to get inside.’

‘Maybe you won’t need to,’ she replied.

‘How so?’

‘Because if he was going to store anything in there, it would probably be a set of contacts, or the like.’

‘Yes, but if I can’t open the safe, I can’t get to them.’

‘Remember how there are back doors built into a lot of the commercial contacts. Maybe I can get you in through one of those. Are you physically close to the safe?’

‘I’m kneeling right over it, Olivia.’

‘Okay, I’ve got a data key that should do the trick, and I’m sending it to you now.’

An icon suddenly materialized, looking bright and cheery against the drab browns and greys inside the shed.

‘Got it. What next?’ he asked.

‘All you need to do is run it. If there are any contacts, or anything UP-compatible, in there, then they should open right up.’

Saul did as instructed, and a bright blue bubble popped into existence, hovering just above the floor-safe door.

‘I see something.’ He was suddenly excited. ‘Looks like you were right on the money.’

He touched the bubble and it expanded into a three-dimensional image of a filing cabinet. The wall of the shed cut through one side of it, shattering any illusion of solidity.

Saul pushed the shed door back open and peered in the direction of the cabin. Gibbs must be wondering where he’d got to by now.

He touched one finger to a drawer marked ALL, and it took mere moments to copy the complete contents of whatever data device was hidden in the safe over to his own contacts. Once he’d disengaged, the filing cabinet abruptly vanished in a cloud of animated smoke.

‘Thanks,’ he said, as he exited the shed.

‘Did you get anything?’ she asked.

‘I copied some data across, but I can’t check it out just yet. I’ll let you know what I’ve got later.’

He walked back around the front of the cabin and almost ran into Sheriff Gibbs, who had evidently come outside looking for him.

‘Find anything useful?’ the sheriff asked.

Saul gave him a sheepish grin. ‘Not a damn thing.’

Gibbs squinted at him, then scanned the line of trees amongst which the tool shed was hidden. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell me just exactly what it is you’re looking for?’

‘If I already knew that,’ Saul replied, ‘I wouldn’t need to be here at all.’

Gibbs gave him a frank stare, his whole demeanour radiating suspicion. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘I guess not.’

That evening Saul checked into a Lakeside motel with a fine view of the mountains. He closed the blinds with a single spoken command, before summoning up the same filing cabinet he’d discovered in the tool shed. Some of its drawers refused to open, so he guessed they had been provided with extra security to guard whatever they might contain. Other, more easily accessible drawers contained merely junk: copies of scientific papers and back issues of journals, along with the random bureaucratic detritus of a lifetime.

Saul sat down on the edge of his bed, unable to fight a sense of disappointment. It wasn’t hard to guess that if there was anything that might help him find Jeff, it was hidden in one of the restricted drawers. He called Olivia and explained the problem.

‘Maybe you could forward the files to me?’ she eventually suggested.

Having sent them over, and now feeling obliged to wait for her to get back to him, he pulled on his shoes, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and walk off some of his pent-up frustration.

The air outside was chill and sharp but, to his surprise, Saul found himself enjoying it. His mind felt clearer, more focused as he breathed in the fresh mountain air. He walked a few blocks until he came to the start of a nature trail, little info-bubbles popping up along its length as he approached. A faint white line joined the bubbles together, snaking upwards and over the crest of a hill.

He had supper later that evening in the hotel’s restaurant, where a TriView provided him with a selection of UP-compatible news feeds. Most were focused on volcanic activity near the Mariana Islands out in the Far East.

Olivia got back to him before he could watch any more. ‘I’m stumped,’ she told him, as he made his way back up to his room. ‘Whoever set up the encryption, they did a scarily good job. This is military-level work.’

‘You sound hurt.’

‘I am hurt,’ she replied. ‘It makes me feel like he didn’t trust me.’

Or maybe, thought Saul, he was trying to protect you. ‘Don’t you have any more keys or whatever that you can use?’

‘The tools I’d need to get past encryption that strong could only come from the ASI, and everything I can access from the work servers is tracked and tagged. My own security protocols would flag an unauthorized action and sound an alert.’

‘It’s funny how you’re suddenly worried about attracting the ASI’s attention, but just a little while ago you were feeling frustrated because you couldn’t get them involved.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ She paused. ‘It’s different now. Now that I’m sure he’s alive.’

Her breathing had turned coarse and ragged as she made this last statement, and Saul guessed she was weeping.

‘Olivia?’

‘I’m sorry, Saul.’ She cleared her throat and, when she spoke again, she sounded a little calmer. ‘Looking at what you sent me reminded me of a detail I’d almost forgotten. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a man called Farad Maalouf,’ she explained. ‘When Jeff wouldn’t tell me where he was going, before he disappeared, he told me he’d make up for it. He said that, once he’d done whatever it is he had to do, he was going to take me to Newton, to see Farad. He said Farad had family there – and that we’d both be safe.’

‘Safe from what?’

‘I don’t know, Saul. I’m not really sure I even want to know.’

‘This Farad guy, do you know who he is?’

‘I met him about the same time I met Dan Rush, back at the Florida Array. He was another of Jeff ’s colleagues.’ She paused. ‘The thing that made me remember Maalouf just now is that he’s an encryption specialist. He’s well known in certain specialized technical fields. I couldn’t think at first why Jeff would need to hide something with military-grade locks on it, but then I remembered him talking about Maalouf and Newton and, with everything else going on, I wondered if maybe there was some connection with the files. It seemed strange he’d bring up Maalouf, of all people. And, even if there isn’t a connection, if there’s anyone that could break the encryption on those files, my guess is it would be Maalouf.’

‘And that’s everything you know? Are you absolutely sure there isn’t anything else you need to remember?’

‘Nothing, I swear.’

Saul found it hard to hide his irritation. ‘Jesus, Olivia, military-grade encryption? What exactly is it you think Jeff’s got himself involved in?’

‘I already told you I don’t know,’ she said, her voice taking on a ragged edge once more. ‘I just want to know he’s safe.’

Saul was surprised at how much her last words cut him. He’d thought he’d left his feelings for her far behind him, but it looked like he’d been wrong.

He sighed and fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. ‘What makes you so sure this Maalouf guy could get inside those files?’

‘He’s got a fearsome reputation. He’s published a few articles, most of it pretty arcane stuff. If you want to build an encryption system, he’s the man you call up.’

‘Too arcane even for a dedicated systems specialist like yourself?’

She laughed. ‘Even for me.’

‘Say I managed to get hold of him, how do we know we can trust him?’

‘Well, he did work with Jeff,’ she said tentatively, ‘and I had the definite sense they were friends – maybe even close friends. That must count for something.’

‘D’you think he might know where Jeff is?’

‘It’s possible. Maybe I should try and get in touch with Maalouf myself. I know I’ve asked too much of you already.’

‘No,’ he said, sitting up, ‘I don’t want you getting any more involved than you already are.’ He had a mental image of dark figures struggling by a moonlit shore, shots ringing out. ‘I can start by taking a look in the ASI’s personnel databases – see what I can find about him from there.’

She let out a sigh that was comprised in equal parts of relief and worry. ‘Thank you, Saul, from the bottom of my heart. Really.’

‘There’s a lot more going on here than just one missing scientist,’ he said. ‘I assume you realize that by now.’

‘I do.’

‘If nothing else, I can go to Newton and track Maalouf down in person – or at least try to find out where he might be.’

And maybe he can tell me just what the hell is going on, he thought.

Once she had signed off, Saul found himself reliving his memories of her body, the way she had whispered his name over and over as he moved inside her, all those many years ago. It had been hard sitting next to her the day before in the bar, wanting to reach out and touch her but keeping his distance nonetheless.

He sighed and pulled himself off the bed, striding across the darkened room. Sleep clearly wasn’t coming any time soon. He dropped himself into an armchair by the window and linked into the ASI’s security databases, and from there to its personnel files.

He paused before bringing up Farad Maalouf ’s data. What he was doing now had gone beyond just helping a friend, and he knew as well as Olivia that he’d be leaving a data trail that might trigger an alert, should someone else have already linked Maalouf’s ASI files to Jeff’s. But his anger at the way Donohue had treated him drove him on, regardless.

What little information he found on Farad Maalouf proved to be out of date. The most recent records were more than a year old, at which point Maalouf had presumably ceased to be employed by the ASI. Then Saul found something that puzzled him. He should have been able to find information on where Maalouf had gone after departing the ASI, but instead there was nothing. It was as if he’d simply vanished for the better part of a year.

Saul felt a prickling sensation throughout his body when he found the situation was much the same with Jeff Cairn’s own personnel records. The curious gaps in the data trail for both men might be explained by their working off-world but, if so, there was no official record showing their time of departure. And hadn’t Olivia told him that Jeff had returned from his work only a few days ago? Again, there was no evidence, either way, that he had passed through the Array.

Of course, Olivia had pointed out that Jeff was working on some secret project for the ASI, therefore it was entirely conceivable it had been secret enough for the security services to want to conceal both men’s movements.

He next checked Dan Rush’s files, and felt little surprise when it turned out to be the same story all over again. He subsequently ran a side-by-side comparison, and found they had all ceased to be in the official employ of the ASI on the exact same date, two years previously.

He lastly checked Mitchell’s records. His death was recorded as having taken place a month earlier, but wen Saul tried to pull up the post-mortem report, he quickly discovered even his own security clearance wasn’t high enough to let him see it.

He woke several hours later, still sprawled in the armchair, to find another call alert waiting for him.

‘Saul,’ Olivia sounded breathless, when he returned her call, ‘have you seen the news?’

Saul pulled his rumpled form upright, the muscles in the back of his neck protesting at the awkward angle they’d been forced into for much of the night. It was still dark outside.

He glanced at the wall-mounted TriView at the other end of the room. ‘Why?’ he mumbled.

‘Just turn it on, Saul. Turn it on right now. Then get back to me.’

He disconnected and watched the news, while he waited for the room to make him some coffee. By the time it was ready, the first glimmer of dawn had started to push its way above the mountains.

Everything else in the news – even the border incidents down Mexical way – had been pushed to one side by the appearance of what some people described as an artificial island, and a few others were even calling an alien invasion.

Endless aerial shots paraded across the screen, one after the other, of a vast flower-like growth rising out of the Pacific Ocean near the Mariana Islands. There were reports of loud booms being heard and seismic activity within the vicinity, which some claimed were both connected to the rash of earthquakes that had already claimed thousands of lives throughout the Asian Pacific region in just the last few days. Saul struggled to take any of it seriously, deciding it was too much like some overwrought science-fiction drama to be remotely believable.

He pulled up other news feeds, expecting to find nothing but the usual sober mix about politicians and murder hunts. Instead he saw those very same politicians being forced to admit they had no idea what was happening out in the Pacific.

It dawned on him gradually that what he was seeing was real – and now, it seemed, there were more of them pushing up from the deep rock-bed of the ocean floor, scattered at distances from the first growth of up to a few thousand kilometres.

Badly shaken, Saul kept a news feed running as his car pulled back out on to the road an hour later, heading south-west. A tsunami had just hit the south-west coast of Japan, and news of further quakes was coming in from other parts of the world. Two talking heads argued over whether or not those things were powering their massive growth with thermal energy drawn from the Earth’s deep crust, which just might explain the unprecedented build-up in seismic activity. By the time the interview ended, the two of them were nearly coming to blows.

He switched to another feed, and listened to a Harvard biotechnology specialist suggesting that the booming sounds were the result of that same furious rate of growth. At the rate the first ‘growth’ was expanding, it would reach more than a kilometre in hight within a few days.

Saul shut down the feed, his skin coated in a cold sweat, and thought of weeds infesting a garden. He leaned back, the seat adjusting to his new position, and watched the mountains slide past under a dawn sky, as the hire car sped him towards a regional hopper port.

Something above and beyond the sheer preposterousness of that thing growing in the Pacific niggled at him, until he realized, with a cold clenching in his gut, that it wasn’t located so very far from the shores of Taiwan.