Nightrise

BUSINESS AS USUAL

The boardroom was on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail – which was the name of the newest and most spectacular addition to the Hong Kong skyline. The Nail had been constructed at an angle so that it slanted towards Orchard Hill and away from the waterfront. It seemed to be made of solid steel, an illusion caused by the one-way glass in all of its windows. The top three floors, sixty-four to sixty-six, were circular, and wider than the rest of the building. Viewed from Kowloon, on the other side of Victoria Harbor, it really did look like a giant nail that had been hammered into the heart of the city.

There were just three men in the boardroom, although fifty could have fitted in easily. A conference table made of black, gleaming wood stretched the full length of the room with black leather chairs placed at exact intervals. Two of the men were already seated, going through papers, preparing themselves for the conference that was about to begin. The third was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that curved round in a great arc, enjoying the view.

The Nail was the worldwide headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The man standing on his own was its chairman.

Unlike the office, he had no name – or if he did, he never used it. He was simply the chairman, or Mr Chairman when he was directly addressed. He was in his sixties, although he had done his best to disguise his age with extensive plastic surgery. This left him with a face that was younger than it should be and yet strangely unnatural, as if it belonged somewhere else. He had thick, white hair which could have been a wig but was actually his own, and silver, half-moon spectacles. As always, he was wearing a suit, made to measure by his own personal tailor.

It was seven o’clock in the morning and the sun had not yet fully risen. The great sprawl of Kowloon was still half asleep, the bars and electronics shops briefly shuttered before the start of another day. The sky was a blazing red. The chairman thought it appropriate. Kowloon means “nine dragons” and it seemed to him, looking out from the window, that they had all breathed at once.

Behind him, one of the other two men spoke.

“They’re coming on-line now, Mr Chairman.”

The chairman walked to his place at the head of the table and sat down. He rested his hands on the polished surface and composed himself. There were thirteen plasma screens mounted all around the room and one after another they flickered into life as the other executives, in different parts of the world, came on-line. A webcam, standing on the table, pointed at the chairman, carrying his own image out. In Los Angeles, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. In London it was midnight. But the time of the day was unimportant. This was the monthly meeting of the senior executives of the Nightrise Corporation and none of them would have dared to have been even a minute late.

“My greetings to you, ladies and gentlemen.” As ever, the chairman was the first to speak. He had an unpleasant, throaty voice, as if he were ill. He spoke very softly and his voice had to be amplified as it was transmitted. He had no obvious accent. This was an international businessman and he had managed to develop an international voice.

“I don’t think I need to remind you that this is a critical time for us all,” he went on. “It is a world-changing time. Everything we’ve been working for all these years is about to come to fruition. Business has never been better but right now there is so much more at stake than simple profit and loss. We have the Psi project. We have news from South America. And, of course, we have the upcoming election

… the race to become the most powerful man in the world.” He paused and it was almost as if a thin mist had passed across his eyes. “I hardly need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is one time we cannot afford to make mistakes.”

He stopped. Nobody moved. The images on the television screens were so still that they could have been accidentally frozen. Two thousand miles away, the private Nightrise Corporation satellite that was making this conference possible continued its orbit around the world, picking up the signals and beaming them into the different countries. And it was as if something of the black emptiness of outer space was being sent with them. The images were dead. The dozen offices with their dozen televisions seemed to contain no life at all.

“Let’s start in New York. The election. What can you report?”

The New York executive’s screen was about halfway down the room. He was a solid, square-shouldered man who had spent twenty years in the army before moving into business – and it showed. His name was Simms. “This is a hard nut to crack, sir,” he reported. “And whatever happens, it’s going to be close… maybe as close as one or two states. Our guy is doing better than expected, but so far we haven’t been able to do serious damage to Trelawny.”

“Advertising?”

“Sir, we’ve taken out advertisements that suggest that Trelawny is soft on crime and soft on immigration. We’ve said he’s a coward and a liar. We’ve even managed to plant newspaper stories that hint he might be gay. But nothing seems to hurt him. For some reason people like him, and right now all the indications are that the two of them will be neck and neck by November.”

“Baker must win. There can be no other result. Trelawny must not become president.”

“Well, short of assassinating John Trelawny, I’m not sure what we can do.”

“I think, Mr Simms, you should be considering every possibility.”

“Yes, sir.”

Next, the chairman turned his attention to a screen that was next to him, on his right-hand side. “Could you please make your report,” he said.

“Certainly, Mr Chairman.”

The woman on the plasma screen gazed directly into the room. She looked more like a school teacher than a business-woman, with glasses that were too big for her face, very cropped grey hair and a long, thin neck. She was dressed in black. She was speaking from an office in Los Angeles and although outside the sun was brilliant, none of it had been allowed to reach her. There was a shadow across her face. Her skin was pale. She could have been lit by the moon.

Her name was Susan Mortlake.

“I have good news to report and also bad news,” she began. “It has now been almost a year and a half since we began the Psi project but we may have had a breakthrough. It seems that we have finally managed to track down two of the Gatekeepers.”

This caused a stir around the room. The disembodied heads in the television sets turned, even though they couldn’t actually see each other. The two men making notes scribbled furiously. One of them turned a page.

“It’s still too early to be absolutely sure that they are who we think they are,” the woman went on. “The fact of the matter is that we’ve looked at hundreds of children who have demonstrated any measure of psychic power. Telepaths, fire starters, clairvoyants… anything out of the ordinary. Half of them, of course, have turned out to be a waste of time. A few of them have moved away before we were able to track them down. But as for the rest… we’ve managed to take possession of seventeen of the most promising subjects and we’ve been experimenting with them in our facility at Silent Creek. However, it now looks as if all our efforts may have been a waste of time. We have one of the Gatekeepers in our power, I’m sure of it. So far, we’ve only been able to begin a brief examination, but it’s already obvious that his powers are far greater than anything we’ve yet encountered.”

“Why do you only have one of them?” the chairman asked.

“That’s the bad news, Mr Chairman.” Susan Mortlake paused. “The two boys – Scott and Jamie Tyler – were performing a telepathy act at a theatre in Reno. It was their guardian, who was also the producer of the show, who first brought them to our attention. He was quite happy for us to take them in return for a sum of cash – although, of course, it was always our intention to kill him. This we have done. I arranged a fairly simple operation to pick the boys up but unfortunately something went wrong. It may be that their power is even greater than we had imagined. At any event, they knew we were coming and one of them – Jamie – managed to get away.”

“Where is he now?”

“We have no idea. My agents tell me that he was helped in his escape by a woman, but they were unable to get her registration number. It all happened too quickly and it was dark. However, I believe the situation is now under control.”

“Go on.”

“We shot the producer, a man called Don White. He was living with a woman, Marcie Kelsey. We shot her with the same gun and then used our contacts within the Nevada police to set up a false trail. Jamie Tyler is now wanted for both murders and it can only be a matter of time before he’s tracked down. At which point, we will have him.”

Susan Mortlake sounded confident, but the chairman was unimpressed. “Your agents allowed one of these boys to slip through their fingers. They also failed to track down the car. Have you taken any disciplinary procedures, Mrs Mortlake?”

“No, sir.” The woman looked up defiantly. “It did occur to me that you might be asking for my own resignation.”

The chairman considered, then shook his head. “If you have one of the Gatekeepers, that will be enough,” he said. “We only have to break the circle and we will have won. However, you still need to make redundancies, Mrs Mortlake. We cannot have people letting us down.”

“Of course, Mr Chairman. I thought as much myself.”

“And I want you to deal with Scott Tyler personally. You understand that, generally speaking, it would be better if he were not allowed to die.”

“I understand. But as a matter of fact, we may be able to use him. I’m hoping to bring him round to our point of view.”

“Good.”

The single word was praise indeed. The chairman never complimented his staff on anything. At the Nightrise Corporation, excellence was taken for granted. He spoke again, this time addressing all the executives.

“As I began by saying, this is a critical time. It’s also a very positive time and before we part company, I want to introduce you to an associate whose name will be familiar to you. We have worked together on many occasions and he has very kindly agreed to say a few words to you today.”

There was a fourteenth screen at the far end of the table, opposite the chairman. Until now it had been blank, but it suddenly flickered into life. At first it seemed that there was something wrong with the picture. The head that had appeared simply looked too big for the screen, too heavy for the neck that supported it. Its eyes were very high up, above a nose that seemed to travel a long way to the small and rather babyish mouth below. It was as if the image had been stretched – but in fact there was nothing wrong with the transmission. The man was Diego Salamanda, head of Salamanda News International. He was beaming the signal from his research centre in the town of Ica in Peru. And this was how he really looked.

“Good evening,” he began. The local time was just after seven o’clock. “It is a great pleasure to be able to speak with you. I would like to thank your chairman for inviting me. And I have some excellent news to share with you.

“I have now had a chance to decipher the diary of the mad monk of Cordoba which was unearthed very recently in Spain and passed into my hands. I don’t need to remind you that this is the only written history of the Old Ones and their fight against the five children who came to be known as the Gatekeepers. The Old Ones ruled the Earth about ten thousand years ago. They were all-powerful but they were defeated – according to the diary – by a trick. Sadly, we have no more details. There was a great battle, which the Old Ones lost, and they were banished. Two gates were built to keep them out of our world. Many of us have been working for their return ever since.

“Further examination of the diary has provided me with the answers that I have been looking for and I can tell you that, without a shadow of a doubt, very soon we will have achieved our aims and a new millennium will have begun. Yes, my friends, the Old Ones are about to return to take control of a world that should, in truth, have been theirs all along.”

He stopped to catch his breath, his nostrils flaring. It hurt him to speak. It hurt him to do almost anything, a result of his head having been deliberately mutilated at birth.

“We are now in mid-June,” he went on. “And the twenty-fourth of this month is a sacred day in my country. We call it Inti Raymi, the summer solstice. On that day, the second great gate, built in the desert in Nazca, will open. By carefully examining the diary, I have discovered the means to unlock it and nothing can now prevent me.”

He lifted a hand. Next to his head it looked ridiculous, out of proportion.

“But we have enemies,” he said. “Incredible though it may sound, the five children who defeated us all those years ago have somehow returned. You may have found two of them in America. One of them is on his way here to Peru. My agent encountered him in a church in London.

“This much I can tell you. There have to be five of them. It’s only when they come together that they have the strength to be a danger to us. On their own, they are powerless. And nothing can stop us. On June twenty-fourth, the Old Ones will take what is theirs and all of us will share in the rewards.”

Around the boardroom table the executives began to applaud. They were thousands of miles apart: in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing

… all over the world. It was as if someone had turned up the volume. The noise echoed around the room.

The fourteenth screen went black. Salamanda had broken contact.

“Now you know the stakes,” the chairman said. “Just a few days stand between us and the end of the old world. But let’s not fool ourselves that our work is over. It’s just beginning. A war is coming and our job is to prepare the way. We need a president of the United States who is sympathetic to our aims. Mr Simms, I am relying on you. Mrs Mortlake, see to the child. Make him one of ours. Then find his brother and deal with him too.”

The chairman signalled to one of his two assistants. One of them reached out and flicked a switch. The remaining thirteen screens went black.

In her office in Los Angeles, Susan Mortlake watched the red light on her own webcam blink out and knew that she was no longer transmitting. She also knew that she was very fortunate to be alive. The chairman had briefly considered asking her for her resignation. She had seen it in his eyes.

Even so, he had told her to make redundancies. She leant forward and reached out with a long finger, the nail sharpened to a point. There was an intercom in front of her and she pressed a button. “You can send them in now,” she said.

A few seconds later, the door opened and Colton Banes and Kyle Hovey walked in. There were two chairs opposite her desk and they sat down without being asked. The room was ice cold, the air-conditioning turned up to its highest level, but Susan Mortlake noticed that beads of sweat had broken out on Hovey’s forehead. Banes was looking more relaxed. He didn’t even flinch when she turned and looked at him. Both men knew why they were here. It was inevitable that they would be called to account.

“Well?” Mrs Mortlake snapped out the single word. She really was like a teacher now, a headmistress about to select the punishment.

“It was his fault!” Hovey chipped in at once, eager to get over his version of events. He glanced at Banes. “He made serious mistakes. He should have known about the dog.” He raised an arm, wincing at the same time as if to prove his point. Underneath his suit jacket he was covered in bandages where he had been bitten. He’d had to be injected against tetanus and rabies. “And he should have had more men waiting at the stage door.”

“Mr Banes?” Mrs Mortlake turned her head back to him. She was wearing long earrings that jangled as she moved.

Banes shrugged. “It’s true,” he said. “I didn’t know about the dog. The kids were lucky. Sometimes it happens like that.”

Mrs Mortlake considered. She already knew what she was going to do. She hadn’t risen to a position of power in the Nightrise Corporation without being able to make fast decisions.

“It seems to me that you half succeeded,” she began. “Which is to say, you half failed. One boy got away but we still have the other one. If both boys had escaped, I would have no choice but to make you both redundant. As it is, one of you can be spared.” She smiled sweetly. “Mr Banes, I’m very sorry…”

In the chair next to him, Mr Hovey relaxed.

“But I’m going to have to ask you to strangle Mr Hovey. I know you’re friends. I know you’ve worked together for a long time. But the corporation really cannot allow failure and the fact that Mr Hovey is a bit of a whiner, I personally find most displeasing.”

“Do you want me to do it now, Mrs Mortlake?” Banes asked.

“Yes. Please go ahead.”

Colton Banes stood up and walked behind the other man. Kyle Hovey sat where he was. His entire body had slumped in on itself. He was carrying a gun – it was in a holster under his jacket – but he didn’t even try to reach for it. At least this would be quick. Fairly quick, anyway.

Banes’s hands rested briefly on the other man’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Kyle,” he said, “but for what it’s worth, you always were a loser.” His outstretched fingers reached underneath the black ponytail and closed on the other man’s throat. He began to squeeze. From the other side of the desk, Susan Mortlake watched with interest. It took just a minute. Then Colton Banes went back to his chair and sat down. Next to him, Kyle Hovey remained where he was as if nothing had happened.

“Will there be anything else, Mrs Mortlake?” Colton Banes asked.

“No, thank you, Mr Banes. You can wait for me here in Los Angeles.”

Kyle Hovey slid gently to one side, then toppled to the floor.

“You’d better get your friend cremated,” she continued. “And send flowers if he has a family. As for me, I’ll be heading out to Silent Creek. I can’t wait to meet this boy, Scott Tyler. I think we need to begin his treatment right away.”