EKOPE
THRACE
NORTHERN GREECE
Alex slept fitfully. Finally, he dozed off, at around half three in the morning, only to be woken hours later when an idiot elsewhere in the taverna thoughtlessly slammed a door, hard. After a little lethargic cursing the Serb rolled over, pulling a pillow over his head and sleeping again.
The alarm brought him back to life (reluctantly) at half past ten, squinting balefully across the room at it. Hot already, and he felt sweaty and sticky before even getting out of bed After a cold shower Alex felt more like a member of the genus Homo sapiens again. Now, first order of the day for recently revived human beings was breakfast. Food and drink. He went down the wooden stairs, three at a time, but avoided running his hand along the railing, since in several places the passage of many hands had worn away the varnish and left splinters. Nobody else seemed to be around at the moment, oddly enough, since Mister Kazaklis would by now be sipping on his nth cup of coffee, his wife would be cleaning and tidying. Alex scanned the darkened room with underway curtains, empty wooded tables partially open door. Where were they?
A bustling Yianni Kazaklis came in from the street outside, pale and mopping his brow. Seeing Alex, he stopped. The normally relaxed and affable taverna owner looked unusually tense.
'Oh, Mister Petrovic, such bad news.'
Alex stopped in his tracks. Fear, at least a kilo of it, fell internally from his heart to a location near his colon. Non-specific fear, the kind that generated a flicker of panicked images: bad news? like what - war in Greece? death in his family? his flat burned down? the money traced?
'Ah, such bad news. Have you heard?'
Hardly possible, given that the taverna didn't have television in its rooms and guests needed to travel into the village to get a newsfax. Alex asked the Greek to explain. Kazaklis sat down at a table. He looked unwell. Had some disaster befallen Mrs Kazaklis?
'The Americans, you know. They had a bomb, a nuclear bomb, that went off last night, near Turkey. Radio Elados says it was an accident, but what do we know? There may be war. The Americans and Turkey and Greece -'
His coffee cup rattled as he shakily placed it back onto its saucer. Alex went cold and his feet tingled. Gooseflesh crept up the back of his neck. To a Yugoslav the thought of a nuclear explosion that may have been hostile brought back a host of evil memories - the Last War, when Hungary and Romania's tiny nuclear arsenals had killed millions in each country and -
Holy Mother of God. Fallout. The stuff that had killed his father.
'Mister Kazaklis, did the radio say anything about fallout - radioactivity, plutonium, anything like that. Please; it's important.'
How commensurate Mister Kazaklis felt with these terms was a moot point, since his English didn't run to technical vocabulary.
'"Fallout"? No, no, I think not. Why?'
He spoke to an empty space. Alex raced back upstairs to his room. A string of unspoken expletives ran through his mind as he dropped onto all fours alongside the bed and stretched under the blanket that hung to the floor. Where had it - ah, the handle, right, he panicked.
A small suitcase came into view as he pulled. It resembled the type of item an office executive might carry sandwiches in; Petrovic used it to keep his TACT unit in. He only ever got one of the status-symbol artefacts when going on holiday in Greece. Too expensive and exclusive to hand out freely otherwise and, besides which, he felt sure that one reason he received one was in fact to impress the locals with a FedCon device.
Dial the number, press the lock, insert and turn the key; presto, revealed, one Total Access Communications Terminal, slightly scratched, capable of communicating via Polsat and dedicated uplink modes or compatible non-agency transceivers. A marvel of compact communication with the FedCon world-wide. Having opened the case and turned on the TACT - source of feeble puns in English - he needed to remember the access code number sequence for the channel he wanted. Nine zero five six, Civilian Traffic, News Update, and listen …
There was no news about any explosion, nuclear or otherwise. None at all. That meant a cover-up, which by implication meant bad news, which meant bad times ahead for Alex. It was preposterous to imagine that there really would be no information about such an event because the one type of crisis impossible to hide from concerned citizens, dosimeters, sleepless satellites, luxometric scanners, aircraft, EMPaths and all was a nuclear explosion. Or, rather than a cover-up, knowing from experience how bumblingly inept the Higher Echelons could be, more probably they were sitting on the information until it could be given a pretty gloss.
Alex replaced the communicator glumly and sat on the bed. Holy Mother, he thought, look at my options now. I can stay indoors to avoid fallout, get outside to hunt down a few more facts, or leave Greece immediately. Hardly a richness of choice!
Long awareness of the Seven-tenths Rule from childhood lessons meant Alex chose the first option; stay indoors for at least forty-eight hours. While doing so he checked Radio Ellados for further updates; these remained infuriatingly low on hard facts but removed any lingering doubt that the affair had been hoaxed or a colossal mistake. From what the specialists said, given Alex's very poor Greek, the fallout seemed to be confined to a small coastal footprint.
The evening meal felt tense and unpleasant, merely eating as a form of absently passing the time. The host and his wife made themselves scarce after dining rapidly, leaving a solitary Alex looking around wondering what to do in the coming day, looking outward and inward and being bored with both. Then fate, fickle genius locii, intervened.
A stranger wandered into the taverna, dusty, drawn and not one of the villagers. He looked all around, curiously, as if he knew where he was but not what it was. Alex pushed a glass toward him and the stranger poured himself a glass of wine, nodding silently in appreciation. After emptying the glass with a thirsty relish, the man stood again, his clothing stiffened with sweat and dust. From wherever he had come, it had been on foot.
'Hello,' he said, in English. Unusual, or prescient.
'Hello,' said Alex in cautious tone.
'Would you know where to find Mister Petrovic?'
'Enosis. Taksim, varek grada kosec grada.'
McDuff and Beck both wore their serious expressions. McDuff seemed normal but Beck visibly emitted death-rays from his eyes. It seemed that Assistant Manager Beck disliked his staff: going for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday to a non-FedCon state. Although Alex had gone on vacations to Greece for years, Beck never seemed to be able to come to an accommodation or to appreciate leniency.
' - and finally, Mister Petravacci -' a little slip Beck frequently made apparently hinting that Alexander Dragan Petrovic was really Italian - 'make a mental note of this phrase: Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada. If that phrase is used by a person in conversation when you are in Greece, then they need your urgent attention and aid. Is that clear? Urgent attention.' Beck detested having to inform travellers beyond the FedCon boundaries of this rubbish, James Bond nonsense, but UNION insisted he do it.
Alex knew the origin of the phrase. "Gnosis" had been the rallying cry of those who wanted a united Greek Cyprus, a dream long since turned to dust; "Task var. grad Kosei grad" was an old Albanian folk song in dialect, not a phrase that would ever crop up in conversation with nationalist tension running high. Last year the danger-passage had been a quote from Macbeth he couldn't remember.
'Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada,' repeated the stranger, wiping his forehead with a hand that came away grimy with sweat and dirt.
'Oh yes?' enquired Alex politely. He got a sour look from his new friend.
'Don't play silly word games with me, mister. I need help.' He spoke in English, precise but accented. From a pocket he produced a tired-looking garlic sausage, wrapped in a ziplock plastic bag, almost as sweaty and dirty as himself.
'To get past the roadblocks,' he explained when Alex stared at the bagged sausage. 'Oh, there is practically no fallout. Those Demolition devices have to be clean. Here, take it.' The sausage was offered. 'DON'T eat it and be careful handling it, there's a thermally-sealed plastic ampoule inside the sausage with a water sample from Metaxas Barracks, ninety-nine per cent probability poisoned.'
The stranger didn't go into any of the details of the hair-raising activities undertaken to obtain that sample - bribery, threats, theft.
The Serb looked puzzled at his new drinking partner's description.
'You get the easy part, mister tourist. Get this sample to RSFG Munich within twelve hours. That's your assignment. It comes from the top levels of UNION so try not to screw my work up, okay?'
Oh, right, great, wonderful, fantastic! - what the hell was this lunatic on about? Cut short a holiday to take a second-hand, third-rate wurst to Germany - mad!
Mister Mad rose to leave, then paused and turned back, as if on a whim. He gave a smile more like a sneer.
'Oh. Try nine zero five seven, civilian traffic, special news review. They're running a coded confirmation. You might find it interesting.'
He left and Alex neither saw nor heard of him ever again. On the other hand, channel nine zero five seven did have coded confirmation of the "incident"; "Enosis taksim varek grada kosek grada" was the emergency catchphrase; there really was an ampoule hidden within the sausage. A nasty creeping hot-and-cold feeling came over him, working it's way from the toes upwards. Whoever or whatever the stranger had been, he was well-informed, aware what was going on.
And exactly what was going on? A person (i.e. Alex) needed to carry an ampoule, with a sample of water therein, to Research Science Foundation Germany at Munich. He hadn't asked for it but an adventure had come to him unbidden and settled uncomfortably in his lap, although as yet Alex didn't think of events as an "adventure", more an "unpleasant sustained disturbance". He sat glumly on his bed upstairs, thinking slowly and carefully. The strange visitor with his salami might be an entrapment attempt by the Americans (or, less likely, the Greeks) but how could they suborn the Polsat and Internal Net news channels? By virtue of Occams Razor the bad news he almost disbelieved must be true. Unfortunately.
Should he leave Greece? Yes, a good idea, all things considered, and while leaving he might as well take that farcical sausage with him, too. No entrapment could be so bizarre, could it?
He checked his chrono; eleven hours until they expected him back in Munich. So kind of them to set him such a generous deadline. Greek customs protocol alone might take eleven hours if they felt awkward.
Problems!
A spark of resolve grew within him. So, the FedCon were unable to solve this little problem, were they? Two million of them in total and they chose to unload upon him and him alone. Well, he'd show them. Just out of spite, too.
In all, it took Alex suprisingly little time to reach the Graeco-Bulgarian border. His bill was settled in cash (the Kazaklis being sorry to see him go); bags were packed and Panos hailed on the intangible village grapevine within half an hour; it then took another hour to reach the border in Panos' automobile accompanied by the smell of sweat, hot leather, petrol and aftershave. The taxi driver reminded Alex of the Special Device, wished him luck and departed at high speed for home.
The Komotino customs post sat on a feeder road to the west of the town itself; used mainly to check articulated transport and ground-effect vehicles carrying cargo to and from Bulgaria, it was a small, low-key operation compared with the joint FedCon/Bulgarian one on the other side of the border. Normally the staff consisted of four men, two on duty, two off. Their job mostly consisted of examining paperwork and routinely passing it. Mostly. If they were annoyed or bored then to acquire a simple "Approved" stamp might take hour; this much Alex knew from previous visits and at all costs he needed to avoid such a delay, which was where the Special Device came in. Not that it looked especially device-like: a brown paper bag containing food and a small knife.
Here goes, he thought.
George and Ari sat idly playing cards together in their plastic waterproof Customs cabin. Although initially transparent, years of dust, wear, weather and hard usage had given it a translucent cover which rendered the outside world only semi-visible. This meant they didn't spot the stranger immediately. Also, he came on foot; this was unusual behaviour at this particular point on the border. Nor did the stranger carry on up to the border or the customs post. Rather, he sat calmly upon one of the worn stone walls leading there; from a brown paper bag he produced food and began eating slowly, unaware of how incongruous such behaviour seemed. George spotted the stranger whilst Ari remained intently scanning his cards.
'Hey. Ari. Look.'
''Shh.'
'Someone's on the wall.'
'Oh. Doing what?'
'Eating.'
'Not illegal.'
'Your deal. Ah, here he comes.'
'Right. Pick your cards up.'
'What for?'
'So I can't see them, stupid.'
Alex left his peeled onion half-eaten when he saw two officials leave their cosy cubicle and wave imperiously at him, their interest triggered by his standing up. He gave them a lazy, friendly wave back. They waved even harder. One made a "come here" gesture with forefinger that dispelled any ambiguity.
Oho, thought the Serb, Step One completed successfully. He got up slowly, picked up his hand luggage, looked approvingly and admiringly at the sky and started to walk. The first hurdle had been to make the customs people notice him instead of vice-versa.
'Hello,' he said, in a cheerful tone, in English. The two customs officers didn't so much as blink.
'Yes sir.'
'Can we help you sir.'
'I see you have luggage, sir.'
'Can we inspect your bags, sir.'
Certainly they could! Alex first casually opened the metal-edged secure case, revealing boxed slides by the dozen. The customs officers were interested, made obvious by the way they suddenly became quieter, although their double-act continued.
'Yes sir. What are these sir?'
'Slides.'
'Slides sir?'
'Yes. Here, let me show you. I can use this flat-screen viewer. Just give me a second. Right, these are - these six - are from the oracle at Ekope, one slide from each point of the compass and two from the middle. This shows the Doric columns; this one shows the detail in some of the seating - it's a good one, isn't it! I'm quite proud of that one. Ah, now this set are various statues on the road towards Xanthos. Two for each statue, one from the front and one from the rear, so you can judge the condition of each, and there's a reference one that shows the whole prospect. The quality of light is inconsistent in a few but the Department of Antiquities forbids anyone using illumination greater that two-thousand six hundred lux, and as you can see from the built-in flash mine is only rated at a thousand.'
Not a little bored by this monotone monologue, the two guards nodded and waved magnanimously, being familiar with the culture tourists who came to soak up Hellenic culture. They sorted through each case in a rapid and practiced manner, not missing anything, running a scanner over any object deemed worthy of study. What interested them most of all was the TACT unit Alex had clipped to his belt. They recognised the device but not why a tourist would be carrying one.
'Yes sir.'
'Satellite communicator sir. Not spying are you sir.'
'Oh, this thing? No, just regulations. I have to carry it at all times in a country out of or beyond the auspices of the Federated Concordat, since there aren't any reciprocation clauses and if there should be an accident or illness I would have to be air-ambulanced out to the nearest mandated medical site, providing that there wasn't -'
'Yes, yes, yes, sir,' interrupted one of the officials, which was a good thing since Alex would happily have paraphrased the entire Manual of Personnel Operations if needed.
'Do you have anything to declare, sir.'
'Um - well, no.'
'Why are you leaving the country sir.'
Alex gave a diffident shrug. Now he needed to angle for a little sympathy or mild derision, either would do.
'My landlord kicked me out. He said with all the troubles and the Americans messing about, he didn't want a foreigner under his roof. I had enough money to get a taxi but not much for food.'
Glad to be rid of this boring foreign oddity, the two customs officers stamped his docket, put "Approved" in Greek and English stamps on any spare space available on his luggage, then sped him on his way, still blustering about taxi fares, re-imbursement foreign policy and xenophobia. They exchanged glances, watched their visitor amble off over the brow of the hill towards the FedCon/Bulgarian customs house, looked at each other again and started to laugh; they swapped a few choice insults about stupid foreign tourists (a Slav, too, by the sound of it) and their stupid foreign ways.
They would have been considerably less amused if they had been able to see the passer-by, once out of sight, throw his paper bag away, retain a gnawed salami and stick it into a smart-card holding slot in his TACT unit; the rest of the luggage went into a ditch and a sly grin spread over Alex's face. Phase Two successfully completed; now for a quick sprint and Phase Three.
Bibor heard the buzzing coming from a great distance as if through a tunnel; gradually the sound grew louder and louder, like a circular saw cutting wood. Persistent and insistent.
Awake. He'd been asleep, not dreaming, just sleeping. And the buzz-saw noise was his alarm, flashing on and off whilst generating a hideous droning noise guaranteed to vibrate even the soundest sleeper awake. Shuddering and blinking once, he looked around. Shit. Still on the Iceberg. According to his alarm there was still half an hour before his duty started. Christ, it felt like a quantum jump from Senior Supervisor to Deputy; he still hadn't adjusted to it; he was still apprehensive that his tour of duty aboard ICE07 might be extended because of his promotion. Still - those three extra increments on the pay scale would be highly welcome; maybe he could repaint the gloomy grey cubby-hole that laughingly masqueraded as his cabin.
Right. Now for the four "S's". Christ, about the only decent thing about cabin B7 was the personal shower cubicle. That was how he woke up of a morning. After a few weeks you no longer noticed how stale and flat the recycled water was, nor did you dwell much on the nature, exactly, of recycled water.
Dressed in a regulation blue jump-suit, orange life-preserver, green lace-ups and utility belt, Bibor jogged easily through corridor after corridor on his "morning" constitutional, an exercise routine aided by the miniscule gravity aboard the Iceberg. An occasional member of staff would nod to him as they stood aside to let him by. An earlink monitor kept him au fait until he trotted over to the central stairwell and leapt for the ladder, using his hands and feet to slide down. A neat trick. Less neat if someone happened to be sliding up the down ladder as he was descending it, but low-g collisions weren't too painful.
'Morning all! How fares the world; Duty Officer update, please.'
A harassed-looking woman checked through a greenscreen and began to recite a list of incidents: Graeco-Turkish hostility had climbed yet another point on the Henderson scale; a submarine freighter had fouled an undersea fish retainer in the English Channel; there was a corruption scandal on the Russian bourse; Munich Research had their sample; September Station had carried out a successful interdiction; a typhoid epidemic was sweeping through the Campo in Mexico, denied by the Mexican government, confirmed by the FedCon teams on the ground there. The Duty Officer, a lanky Swede ill-designed for the cramped orbital environment of ICE07, looked peevishly at her superior, wondering how it was possible to be so vivacious and informed this early in the day.
Knowing all the methods of "enhancing" long and boring periods of duty, Bibor sniffed at an ashtray, trying to detect tobacco. He looked in the dead spaces between island-consoles and found a disposable wrapper for a sandwich. Tut tut. Food was not allowed on duty. Looking between two other consoles Bibor found a full wrapper. He could hear the technicians silently cursing their over-inquisitive overseer.
'Tut tut,' he said, holding the offending article up between thumb and forefinger. 'Naughty. Lose it.'
One of the technicians looked aggrieved. Bibor gave her a withering look. Shouldn't have got caught, should you, madam.
'Just a minute - what was that about Munich?' The Duty Officers precise suddenly came back to him. 'RSFG got their sample? That was damned quick.'
He checked the wall chrono: six hours (and seven minutes) until the deadline elapsed, Colonel Weiss would be happy indeed, because he had worried about missing the delivery time after his uncharacteristic lapse. Next time (if or when there was a next time) he'd told supervisors, there would be precisely no rash promise to deliver anything whatsoever.
'Fenestre. Atria,' he snapped, very businesslike. 'Hello sir. Good news.'
Upon receiving the news, Weiss relaxed a little in his fluid swivel-seat, gently moving it from side to side to the discomfiture of his aide. Well. Six hours was not a long time considering the personnel and resources RSFG could apply to a problem. Had he been a smoker he would have lit a cigarette; as a confirmed non-smoker he merely sucked a mint. Now, all that remained was for Munich to analyse their sample and pronounce their findings, hopefully within six hours.
'Ah, sir, how soon do we need those seven new members?' asked his visitor, Olukaside.
'Pardon? Oh, them. Yesterday. Why ask? You know we always need new inductees.'
The Nigerian nodded.
'As a suggestion, sir, why not try the courier who carried that sample to RSFG from Greece? It means only six others to look for. From what Bibor told me he seems, er, appropriate.'
Yes. Appropriate. Forging a Red Card through faintly criminal family contacts and bluffing a route across four countries, nonchalantly depositing a crumpled paper bag with half a pitta and a salami in RSFG Reception and declaring it to be their "poison polony". Such behaviour smacked of dishonesty and, Weiss thought, we could use a person like that. Still, since he hadn't been pre-selected and vetted perhaps an Eagle Three would be advisable.
4) Unveiled
BADFORT TOWERS
LONDON
Alex looked out over his balcony at the dull British Skies laded with rain, promising a deluge. At least the phototropic smogs were gone, a memory of autumns past. All he needed to contend with now was the grating contrast between modern, Integrated Britain - part of the FedCon and up to the millisecond in terms of technology, time, pace, taste and fashion - and Greece, an Isolate nation that looked to the distant past and it's heritage from antiquity to survive contemporary strife.
Transition would have been easier if he hadn't made a frenetic journey across Europe within hours of meeting "Mister Mad" at the Kazaklis' taverna. There would, doubtless, be repercussions about his using a Red Card facsimile freely to bluff a passage by VSTOL from that airfield in Bulgaria, easily the most difficult and stressful part of the whole enterprise; and the ride to Pristina airport; and the jet from there … well, They had wanted a delivery within twelve hours, hadn't They? Oddly enough, in retrospect, the whole affair had been exciting enough for him to regret completing it.
He gripped the warm balcony railing tight, himself in the grip of an un-named emotion that defied analysis but which an observer might have called an unease within the soul. Diverting himself, he looked at the skies to judge the weather, calculating that there wouldn't be any stargazing, nor any chess games with El Quatro. Which reminded him; at a cursory examination his telescope seemed to have shifted orientation slightly. Perhaps a bird perched on it, although he felt almost positive that birds were extinct within the London boundaries. Maybe a migrant.
Turning from the drab sky, he cast a knowing eye over the apartment from his balcony vantage, then re-entered, shutting the louvre doors behind him. Ever since moving in he'd had trouble from those doors; despite being so many floors up in a secure condominium set in a quiet residential area the alarm used to insist on chiding him should be leave the doors ajar or incorrectly locked. Eventually consulting a technical manual, he'd taken a pair of cable-cutters to the logic centre; the doors no longer squawked when left half-shut.
Oh the wonders of technology. Still, there were some decent things to be said about it. Fridges, for one thing; he had yet to encounter a properly working one in Greece. Apparently due to the exigencies of embargo and American supply, only the rich could afford them. A minor item, you might think, but when a person wanted a cold tube of beer it was a major disappointment to be presented with a tepid one.
He caught himself mentally. Cold tubes of lager? Jesus, Alex, remember Mexico. There is more to life than pandering to a dry throat. Somewhere in the world people are dying from dehydration and you worry about a cold drink.
Slightly less complacent, with a (cold) tube of lager clutched in his hand, Alex found his favourite fluid-seat to settle in. He decided to test one of the major technological differences between Greece and Britain, a true embodiment of FedCon-powered research and design as applied to conspicuous consumer consumption.
To his infinite disgust, the main subscriber selection now showing was "Pander", a game show of witless, lowest-denomination catering to bad taste. Put simply, people rang in to the studio to request guests, celebrities and presenters to perform explicitly degrading acts. The last time Alex encountered it he had rashly kicked the set and bruised his toes. Now he merely turned it off and fumed quietly. Greece definitely had something going for it. Any desire to vegetate in front of a television program, even a quality public channel one, flew out of the window. To make an insult more injurious, the picture quality had improved. Perhaps the London atmospherics had improved: it certainly cost enough in the anti-pollution surcharges for him to wish that true.
Bibor stood uncomfortably before his superior, Weiss. Bad news was always unpleasant to impart and it rarely earned those unfortunate to bear it any great reward either. All the more unpleasant when the bad news concerned a matter that Weiss had raised himself Bibor felt like the carrier of funeral tidings.
As requested seven people had been vetted. And Alexander Petrovic as well. Weiss raised his eyebrows a little at that: why was the Serb assessed separately, making a total of eight in all? That brought forward the news Bibor liked least. He showed Weiss the vetting report.
VETTING REPORT
SAVER 1037
SUBJECT: PETROVIC, ALEXANDER DRAGAN
FEDREGNO: 0772725436
STATUS: C.I.P.R.O. FILE (QV)
LOC:
FIL:
TUN:
ACT: PENDING
VETTING TEAM: S.I.E. VAN; I.O. CLEMENTS; I.O. KUREISHI
INSPECTING SUPERVISOR'S REPORT FOLLOWS:
Eagle Three carried out as per instructions (q.v. standing orders). During check following anomalies were detected under the terms of Contract (Contract Violations)
1) a) Apartment status: E3 subject currently owns in perpetuity 5 room apartment in secure condominium development, no rental, lease or sub-let in evidence, implying assets in excess of £250,000.
b) Subject currently owns Ford Khan Series 4 mod, market resale value est. £20,000 as at date of E3.
c) During premises search 1.5 kilos of loose-leaf tea (variety unknown) plus 0.5 kilos of coffee beans were discovered, market value total £3000.
d) 10cm refracting telescope (see below). Insurance documents indicate value of £27,000
2) a) Subject's salary £120,000 p.a. Savings £37,000.
b) No other source of income discovered. Further investigation necessary.
3) Atypical selection of specialist literature in view of subject's overtly anti-militarist stance
4) a) Telescope, as above, mounted on tripod.
b) Wehrmacht-surplus laser-sight mounted co-axially with telescope.
c) Austrian compensator mechanism attached to telescope mounting.
5) Downloading of information in personal computer reveals coded instructions to unknown third party (no decrpyt available at present). No indication of nature of user, communication or recipient.
After reading Weiss looked thoughtfully at his desk for a long time, thinking about the implications of the report. Substantial hidden income undeclared for several years, source unknown. It sounded very damaging for the subject, not to mention Weiss for having chosen him. Finally he spoke.
'Carry on with the recruitment selection, but go through an Eagle Two with Petrovic. If he comes through cleanly, make him the Offer. If not, if he's working for another power, disappear him.'
'Terminal Sanction?'
'Yes. Officially noted and approved as Terminal Sanction.' FedCon didn't kill double-agents, that would be immoral; no, they sent them to undertake hazardous duty at McMurdo Sound or at the bottom of the Philippines Trench.
Weiss dismissed Bibor. There was a sub-committee meeting scheduled for two hours beginning shortly and he still had to assimilate the necessary information for it. He wanted a report from September Station and RSFG Munich, too. As a replacement Bibor still failed to completely manage the routine details yet. Damn Chernovsky, wherever he was. By now the Russian had been declared officially "Lost". He could have been kidnapped, killed, defected, got amnesia, fallen ill - nobody knew what had befallen him, but the longer he remained absent the more likely it became that foul play was involved. As if he didn't have enough to cope with. In fact, while he remembered …
'Fenestre. Rossi.'
There was a slight delay until the call was acknowledged.
'Rossi here, sir,' came the fluid, accented English.
'Rossi, I'd like you to take up the matter of Sample A and Munich RSFG and the problem of how to hurry them along. Use my direct authority; in fact, take the Sky Clipper Downside and see them in person. They've taken far too long to assay. I take it you are familiar with their instructions?'
'Oh yes, sir.' Of course Rossi was; Weiss kept his staff on their toes and expected them to be informed. 'I'm on my way.'
Good. Rossi was reliable. He could be relied upon to bark loudly at people and get results, losing his temper just enough to make things go faster.
Fidelio Guido Rossi had been catching up with current affairs while on the observation deck, sitting in one of the seclusion cubicles watching a screen, when the call came through. Realising it was confidential he plugged in his earlink and so prevented anyone else from overhearing his conversation. After switching off Rossi dialled the Duty Officer to check on the next departure window. He bullied a little to get clearance for Number Three Shuttle, the solo pilot model; it went faster than the others and he wanted to get Downside quickly. He unplugged a flying suit from the rack in the Ready Room, signed out the suit and a helmet from the Sub-Flight Monitor and went through the airlock and into the shuttle bay. It took a few minutes to reach Number Three, clambering carefully over the walkway that skirted the other shuttles, reserved for emergency use. The small shuttle he wanted to use didn't have the large, luxurious airlocks of the other models so he needed all his innate agility to wasp himself inside the coffin-sized airlock and into the cockpit. After five minutes of pre-flight checks and warm-ups, getting to 94 effective, he traded banter with the Sub-Flight Monitor and asked for permission to leave ICE07.
Lights in the gloomy hangar blinked and flashed, a sequence of red and yellow warnings; a klaxon sounded within the Iceberg to warn crew that a shuttle would be departing in seconds, not to worry about loud noises and structural vibration. This would be the Italian's first time on a solo shuttle flight, but he didn't feel nervous, he'd got over 150 hours on the shuttles already and travelling Downside would be the easy part; returning to the Iceberg, riding a radar beam to dock with a moving body, now that was un-nerving. Rossi secured himself with the seat harness and retainer cage, then tapped his earlink monitor. Working. Good.
Solid metal clunked and scraped outside, transmitting the sound only through the structure of Number Three shuttle. Rossi uncovered, unlatched and pressed the Big Red Switch to release the parking clamps. A shudder ran through both pilot and craft as the eight mechanical feet let go; now only the magnetic dolly held Shuttle Three in place on the induction rail, "only" a misnomer since it could hold an object of up to two hundred and fifty tonnes. Ahead a wall slowly split along the seam marked with yellow and black hazard stripes; beyond it was another similar door that remained shut. Shuttle Three moved into the airlock this created and the "wall" shut behind it. More lights were coming on, now, enough to accustom a pilot to light outside. Finally the outside wall parted to spill actinic light on the parking bay. Rossi hastily polarised his helmet, not wanting to get his vision affected by the sunlight sweeping over him. Finger on the throttle, he felt the shuttle lurch forward and arrow off the induction rail, outwards into an indigo sky. There was a brief, disorienting weightlessness before gravity reasserted itself as the aircraft began to dive. Rossi did a quick visual check, then a radar scan to detect any nearby traffic. There wasn't any: the Iceberg flew in it's own special "box" and other aircraft, sub-orbital or otherwise, kept well away if they were wise. He turned on the Pilot's Friend. This left him free to concentrate with both hands on a greenscreen detailing his mission brief, namely to chase RSFG Munich and Sample A, courtesy of his temper and tongue. For more rapid results he ought to land at Bergen-op-Gauss airstrip, the satellite facility that served RSFG itself. He punched up the codes and fed them into the Pilot's Friend, then sat back for the twenty minute journey.
However, it was not to be. Five minutes away from Bergen-op-Gauss, his aircraft suffered total systems failure and despite all the efforts of its pilot the shuttle fell out of the sky and destroyed itself in a terminal dive.
Alex at work: diligent, conscientious, motivated. He concentrated on the "Techna" range that had sprung into being during his absence; one of the wonders of FedCon was the way it occasionally leapt upon ideas and turned them into actualities with a startling speed utterly divorced from the prosaic committee-base procedural. His outline sketch of a series aimed, via television, at children had reached the planning stage with an in-house design team already assigned. He knew one of these involved, Chellakooty, and wasn't too pleased about it. The man was a neo-monetarist, profit-powered, not the person to design toys for kids.
MacDuff at work: he gave his Serbian minion a very peculiar look. He wondered how such things were possible, repeatedly, looking every time the thought struck him. No answer came to mind so he clocked-off for lunch. Peter immediately turned on his radio, hidden in a desk drawer. Someone else produced a hip flask full of anonymous liquid and passed it rapidly around. Neil finished reading a comic purchased earlier in the day. Alex looked at them all in turn with amused circumspection because if he guessed right -
MacDuff bounced back into the room unexpectedly.
'PUT THAT AWAY! TURN IT OFF! DON'T TOUCH THAT!'
His staff leapt upright in either surprise or guilt. The Scot glared at everyone with uniform venom and left for a second time.
Shortly after, Neil and Alex clocked off, riding an express lift to the main staff canteen together. Neil finished reading his comic (a nasty, violent, adult-oriented publication that had nothing comic about it) during the ride, Alex stared at a public information poster years old, that remained the only decoration within the lift. All four corners had been ripped away and graffiti scrawled on it. Some wit of years past had carefully amended the official poster message to read
MARSHMELLOW NEEDS YOUR BONDSAGE
The floor heaved, the door pinged and gaped wide.
'Come on, the food's calling,' said Neil, ambling out.
Both chose Lasagni Nuovo al Pesci (that is, processed krill) as their main course. Alex beat Neil to a piece of bread and watched the other successively take a packet of crisps, an apple, a doughnut and a slice of processed cheesecake that always seemed to taste of synthetic chemical agents.
'That,' mumbled a masticating Neil, between mouthfuls of lasagne, 'was a particularly nasty trick of MacDuff's. He caught us.'
Alex wagged a chiding finger.
'Of course. I could predict it. You people ought to know better.'
During the afternoon a collection went around in aid of refugees in Algeria; Alex suddenly considered asking for a transfer out of CI and back to the DRA again. Lots of acronyms but basically a move from pen-pushing to people-aiding. He felt a vague sense of uneasy guilt, a response that begged an epiphany of some sort, although he didn't articulate matters so consciously. How could he sit at home and squander his life doing nothing positive when - amongst other catastrophes - thousands were dying of privation in the Maghreb's refugee slums?
Marie tapped him on the shoulder, trying to attract his attention but enveloped in melancholia, he'd totally failed to notice her and her collection bucket. He blushed, thinking that she might feel he had been deliberately avoiding a donation; that made certain he poured all the loose change from his pocket into the collection. Marie beamed - what a nice man!
MacDuff dumped a large wad of memory-paper in front of Alex.
'Right, friend Petrovic. I want you to format all this info, index it and then do a search on the seven - here, on this sheet - the seven criteria. By, oh, Friday morning stats call. Can you manage that? Get a clerk to help you do the legwork tomorrow.'
The Scot felt especially annoyed at catching his staff slacking. Although he wouldn't admit it, even to himself, Petrovic had gotten the work because he'd complete it in time - even though it was actually enough for two people.
Mrs. Petrovic's son decided to leave work early. He felt bored and fretful, wanting out of the office-prison of South Benford, for today at least. Neil waived the usual lift, having a lengthy evening appointment with a bar.
Despite leaving early, traffic was bad. A three-car road train had shed it's load and overturned a kilometre from the underground car-park at South Benford. Police bollards, cars, men and a helicrane were mustered around the wreckage, live invert midwives. A big, full, dark green bag seeping blood lay on the paving, a handbreadth from cars crawling past, doubtless containing the mortal remains of the road-train driver. Alex turned on the radio and punched in a station he knew, run by Albanian immigrants and broadcasting traditional Balkan music. A song came snaking out of the speakers, about valiant Shqiperi resisting Ottoman onslaught, vaunting blood, thunder and sacrifice.
Christ preserve us, thought Alex with a light overlay of despair, I can well do without this.
After fifty minutes the traffic stream began to break up and accelerate. The delay resulted from a series of secondary accidents, idiot drivers who rashly attempted to overtake in the opposing lane to make up lost time. Once en route for Badfort Towers Alex set the Khan to automatic, settled back in his seat and began to doze, knowing that when "thinking" the car took the safest, slowest route.
The car's grating metallic voice rasped from the cheap Dutch speakers and brought him back to full consciousness, informed that they had mutually arrived safely.
Home again home again. Or subterranean car-park in this case. One of the overhead strip lights was out completely, another flickered erratically and (of course) they lit the area directly around the lift entrance. Shadows leapt at each fluorescent blink, monochrome monsters. That image of a body in a bag, seeping blood, came back to Alex. He shuddered. Suddenly, the cavernous parking spaces seemed bleak and hostile.
Nothing vile leapt at him from the gloom on the way to the lift, but as the doors opened something lunged at him -
'Christ!' he exclaimed in surprise and fright, jumping backwards.
The tall man in a Day-Glo trenchcoat regained his balance, stooped to retie the lace that tripped him, cast a suspicious glance at Alex and departed.
False alarm.
Alex laughed quietly and nervously to himself as he rode upwards. Twitchy. He produced his MagIC key before the lift stopped and strolled down the corridor, keeping a weather eye on Number Seven where the couple dubbed the "Gruesome Twosome" lurked. Occasionally they would glare out at people from a barely-open door for no obvious reason, two very old women (or possibly men) totally at odds with their neighbourhood and environment.
Today they remained indoors. Alex nodded sagely at their absence, as if he had some influence over them. He pushed the key cylinder home and waited until the door slid open with a hiss, extracted the key and dodged through before the door closed again. Odd. There seemed to be a funny smell, faint but discernible, in the hallway. A fire - or did he leave that slow-cooker on this morning? Visions of a completely melted kitchen sprang to life in his fertile imagination. Dropping his file-case, he kicked open the lounge door so he could hurry through tot the kitchen -
'Hello Alex,' said a stranger sat in front of the television viewing screen. A second, very large, stranger standing alongside the first merely nodded towards him.
- thieves. Burglars. Shit, these apartments were supposed to be impregnable - how'd they manage to get in? Kitchen, get to the kitchen, the mono-blade knives were there, get one of those.
He got to the kitchen doorway before a third stranger suddenly appeared in front of him from nowhere (afterwards he realised the man had been hiding behind the vertical storage units). About to lash out, Alex restrained himself when Stranger Number Three pointed a sinister-looking tubular device directly at his stomach. He didn't know what it was but didn't want to discover through painful experience.
'Now, whey don't we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea,' said the stranger in a remarkably bland voice.
Following a gesture from the armed man with his weapon, Alex walked backwards to the sofa.
'Sit down please Alex.'
Alex sat. His interlocutor seemed able to speak without punctuation or emotional emphasis. Nor, it seemed, was he paying any attention to the flat owner. Instead he devoted his entire attention to the viewing screen, showing a commercial channel.
'Hey, I like this one,' snickered the armed man.
Great, thought the victim. A moron, a monosyllabic goggler and a piece of furniture. Three beauties. Who were they? Thieves simply didn't behave like this.
A grim advert about Hepatitis D began running, giving details of how dangerous the disease could be, how relatively cheap the vaccine, could you afford to risk your health or that of your loved ones?
'Really,' sighed the watcher. 'If you believed all of them you'd just give up and die.' Seemingly losing interest, he turned to his aides and nodded. Clearly this sign-shorthand meant "back off and cease causing this person distress", because both did so.
'You can relax now. A little.'
He still wasn't looking at Alex. Then he raised a hand and one of the minions went to work in the kitchen. Alex, meantime, looked around his apartment, half-seeing things. To his mild surprise and considerable curiosity there were no signs of damage or disturbance; the bookcase remained neatly ordered, the tapes and disks alphabetically arranged, card table undisturbed and the chess game as it had been, balcony doors firmly shut. From the very brief view he'd gotten of the kitchen there didn't seem to have been any pillage there, either.
Clinking sounds came from within the kitchen. Alex noticed that his computer interface had been turned on and left running, as the power light remained glowing. A sudden hard knot of fear formed in his stomach out of the already present anxiety. Had they been snooping around on his private library file? And were they capable of code-breaking? Could they be blackmailers?
A thick silence persisted for minutes: only a muted hissing from the viewing screen echoed sullenly around the room. Stranger Number Three re-emerged from the kitchen with one of the old melamine trays clasped firmly in both hands. Placing it carefully between Mister Bland and Alex, he indicated in turn a teapot, two cups, a small jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, two teaspoons and a strainer.
Mister Bland inspected the tray carefully.
'Careful. Everything on that tray is valuable. So is the tray.' He seemed to know property value. And to have some respect for it, too. Odd but encouraging.
Number Three, surprisingly, had managed to make a decent cup of tea, which Alex found surprising because with the advent of synthetics a great British tradition had dried up and died.
'Now, to business. We shouldn't really be doing this, strictly; it's against regulations. But I simply couldn't resist. Real tea, you know. Ah, money!'
Alex reached for a teaspoon, a stretching action mis-interpreted by Number Two, who abruptly strode forward and grasped Alex's shoulder in an agonising, paralysing grip, sending needles of pain shooting into his deltoid. Mister Bland opened his eyes slightly wider, then waved the muscleman off with a languid gesture.
'So sorry. Where were we? Oh yes.'
Mister Bland's vague demeanour remained vague, yet his eyes met Alex's directly and the latter had the uncomfortable feeling that beneath his uninvited guest's sheeplike exterior lay a far deadlier creature.
"Regulations"? Where did they get that phrase from?
'Um - regulations about what?'
'Oh, didn't I say, how very ah, remiss, of me. We're from FedCon.'
Good - not thieves. Bad - probably investigators.
'Ah - I take it that you're not the Stationery Supplies people then.'
'Goodness no.'
'Ah. Internal Audit, then.' Alex deepened his voice and raised it to project as effectively as possible. 'Well LET ME SEE SOME IDENTITY THEN!' he bellowed.
Mister Bland lost his cool to the extent of raising his eyebrows. One hand snaked into an inner pocket and reappeared with, of all things, a Red Card.
'This one, incidentally, is real.'
Alex examined it closely. Lots of ornate motile holograms. Real. Oh dear. The only people who carried cards like this were (cue sinister minor chords) UNION. Never mind his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen were now playing games, twitching nervously. Mister Bland sipped delicately at his drink.
'Nice tea, Alex, very nice. Real tea leaves, too, I notice. You've got kilos of it. Costing, say, nine months salary?'
Under this unpleasantly accurate questioning Alex felt himself blush. True, all true.
'Hmm. Yes. Drove home, didn't you? Nice to have an automatic in the car, isn't it. Mind you, mine took a bank loan to buy. Still making the repayments. I see you own yours.'
Another hit close to home.
'And some home you have here. Lounge, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, guestroom, hall and balcony - complete with telescope - overlooking the suburbs. In a secure condominium. You don't lease or hire or rent or contract because you own it outright, Alex. Goodness me. Expensive, what? I've got a wife and child, Alex. Even though I'm better paid than you I can't afford something like this.'
Nobody spoke for a while.
'And about that telescope, Alex.'
That was how he said it, with a literal full stop, the type of verbal device that meant more news of a worse nature to come.
'There's evidence on that computer of communication, via your signalling laser, with one of the Lunaville sites.'
SHIT! Thought Alex a his stomach dropped half a metre at least whilst the blushes were replaced by a bilious paleness.
'Let me put it to you, Mister Petrovic, that you work for a hostile agency, probably American, and that you are in return paid by them. That is how you can afford this little residence. Also you have a contact in the Foreign Assignment section of your offices. You collect and transmit information to the American base on the moon; your annual visit to Greece is simply a cover for the annual meeting with your controller. Stop me when I start to bore you. What you didn't -'
Alex waved his hands to stop the accusations.
'No no no! What the hell do you mean, "a contact"? I've never … Christ Risen, you're mad!'
Silence reigned again, this time with a gloating essence to it. One of the ambulatory pieces of furniture moved forward to place a small, unfolded square of paper between the two seated drinkers. From the appearance it seemed to be a name and address, although at this range Alex couldn't resolve the writing and didn't recognise it anyway.
'Your contact from Foreign Assignment. An amateur. Why did they leave this lying around? Sloppy.'
Alex recovered his emotional equilibrium slightly. Alright, they had discovered two of his more guilty secrets but this nonsense about a "contact" - that could surely only be an attempt to muddy waters because they (the ever-present authoritarian "THEY") lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Sledgehammer and nut.
Mister Bland still hadn't finished.
'In fact I don't think you're really Alex Petrovic. You're an imposter.'
Alex felt utterly floored. His jaw even sagged a little while he listened.
'No. Not the real Petrovic. You took his place when he got abducted across the Mexican border eight years ago and you've taken his place.'
'Nice fairy story,' said the Serb, voice dripping with sarcastic poison.
'Oh. Explain away all this, then,' retorted Bland with a scornful sneer and an expansive wave of the hand. 'Your flat and car and money, Petrovic. How do you explain possession. How!'
Yes, you'd like that, let me do the work for you in an admission. Why should I say anything at all -
'You may be wondering what leverage we have, Petrovic,' began Mister Bland, apparently able to read minds. 'Let me tell you what we have.
'One. Proscribed transmissions to and from the Moon.
Two. Undeclared income, in excess of two point five million in total.
Three. Evidence of complicity in conspiracy.
Four. Illegal imports from outside Federated Concordat-bounded territory.
Five. Defiance of and deliberate lying to a FedCon officer.
'All told, Alex, we could send you down for this. "Down" literally. Offences like this mean the Philippines Trench, or hard labour at the Pole, or maybe even despatch to the Moon.'
Despite these word's even tone there was pent-up emotion underlying them.. From what Alex saw he was in big trouble; although his interrogator might have exaggerated those penalties slightly, their effect would be horrendous. They made it clear to him that sentences would run serially, not concurrently. What he long feared as a background anxiety now looked to have become reality.
'Okay, okay, you want the true story, you'll get it.'