As it turned out, he waited only a few minutes before Olivia got back to him.
‘Send me your coordinates,’ she told him briskly. ‘I need to know exactly where you are right now.’
Saul did as requested. ‘It’s going to be a lot harder than I thought to get out of here,’ he told her. ‘Every car I come across is either burned out or a total wreck. But I can see what looks like a medical drop zone just south of here, with manned choppers landing and taking off. There might be some chance of swinging a flight back to Orlando, or to somewhere else I can get to Arizona from.’
‘Stay put for now,’ she advised. ‘I’ve got hold of the names of some senior staff who’re cleared to carry EDP codes.’
‘I’m impressed,’ he remarked sincerely.
‘What can I say, I’m resourceful. But under any other circumstances I’d be facing about six life sentences right now. Is that impressive enough for you?’
‘I guess it is. So, who’s on your list?’
‘Turns out one of the people you want is holed up in a hotel near the Array. Place called the Dorican. You know it?’
Saul stared over at a row of hotels a couple of kilometres beyond the medical drop zone. ‘I see it. What’s his name?’
‘Constantin Hanover.’
Saul laughed. ‘You’re shitting me.’
‘You know him?’
‘You could say that. I wonder what he’s doing there?’
‘Go ask him yourself. Maybe he’s waiting to be evacuated. Saul, just to be clear on one thing. I don’t know that he actually has the codes you need, only that he’s authorized to carry them. And, even then, I don’t know how the hell you’re going to persuade him to reveal them to you.’
‘I guess I’ll have to rely on my natural charm and powers of persuasion.’
‘Now I really feel sorry for him. How long before you can make it here to Arizona, do you think?’
‘No idea.’ Saul stared at the drop zone with longing. ‘But it’s going to have to wait until I’ve spoken to Hanover.’
‘Fine.’ He heard her sigh. ‘They’re going to try and hold off one of the launches until you get here, but there’s only so long they’ll be prepared to wait.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good luck, Saul. But, before you go, I want to ask you something.’
‘Fire away.’
‘What made you ask about Mitchell?’
Saul started walking towards the group of hotels. ‘A man named Donohue was trying to tell me something about him.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘That’s the thing, I don’t know. We got interrupted before he could finish.’
‘This isn’t making a great deal of sense,’ she said.
‘Right before you tracked me down at Harry’s, I was helping to track down an ASI shipment hijacked out of Florida. According to Donohue, it was loaded with Founder artefacts, but it wound up sinking to the bottom of the Pacific at the exact same location the first of the growths appeared.’
‘I remember hearing about a hijack on the news, but I’d no idea they were in any way connected.’
‘Nobody did, at least not then. But I think Donohue was trying to tell me that the plane going down, when it did, was connected with Mitchell in some way. What that connection might be, I can’t even begin to guess.’
‘But you think there’s something in that?’
‘After the past couple of days, Olivia, I’m prepared to believe pretty much anything.’ He hesitated. ‘This means I’m going to need to ask you for at least one thing more.’
‘What exactly?’
‘That’s kid of hard to define,’ he admitted. ‘I thought if there was anything significant, then maybe it would be buried in the ASI’s own databases.’
‘You’re asking me to break into their records again?’
‘If you can.’
‘I could end up attracting a lot of unwanted attention if I keep doing things like this, you know that, right?’
‘Even if they realize what you’re up to, they’re not going to come after you, not this late in the day. All their resources seem to be going towards protecting the Array.’
‘I hope to hell you’re right,’ she grumbled. ‘There’s nothing else you can give me to go on before I go looking?’
‘I’m afraid not. I don’t know the exact time the shipment disappeared off the radar, or the precise coordinates, but I’m hoping that it might not be restricted data. Maybe you won’t risk setting off so many alarms this time.’
‘You were lucky this man Hanover turned out to be so close at hand,’ she said. ‘But I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for this time.’ She paused. ‘Unless you think I should just go find Mitchell and ask him?’
Saul thought of that video footage he’d seen of Mitchell’s suit disintegrating in some vast alien vault, then of him being lifted naked on to a stretcher. He remembered the medical reports he’d read suggesting that Mitchell had died and come back to life.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t do that. Just see what you can find out, if anything.’
He stared over towards the Dorican, wondering if he might be better off not knowing just what it was Donohue had been trying to tell him earlier.
TWENTY-FIVE
Off the coast of Guam, 8 February 2235
By sheer good fortune, their ferry departed Tumon Bay on the afternoon of the 6th, just hours before a bad storm struck the west coast of Guam, setting the sky above the island ablaze with a lightning storm the likes of which Thomas Fowler had never seen. There was something about the sight that inspired a near-religious terror in his heart, as if he were witnessing the retribution of an angry god. He stood at the starboard rail alongside Amanda and the rest of the passengers, watching this eerie display until the coast faded to a thin smear of green sandwiched between ocean and sky. He overheard someone saying that the same lightning was now wreaking havoc on Yona and Mangilao on the island’s east coast, both setting towns ablaze and killing dozens unlucky enough to be caught outside when it struck.
As she pressed closer against him, he slid one hand arou Amanda’s waist. ‘Have you seen the rust on the hydrofoils?’ she asked, gesturing over the rail towards the foaming waters below. ‘And the hull’s so patched-up, it doesn’t look like it could survive a squall, let alone a thunderstorm.’
‘It’ll make it,’ he said confidently, glancing back at the brightly lit windows of the restaurant deck, as rain began to patter down. Above the restaurant entrance, some of the crew had strung a banner that read ‘END OF THE WORLD CRUISE’, the letters hand-painted in bright rainbow colours. ‘Maybe we should head inside.’
They found the restaurant mostly deserted but for a small group of men and women huddled around a lengthy table, playing cards. These were the geophysicists from Tokyo University, whom they’d met on arriving in Guam, and one of them now waved at them to come over.
‘Jason,’ remarked Fowler, approaching the table, ‘you’re up pretty late.’
‘Never too late for gambling,’ replied Jason, tapping a spread of cards lying face down on the table before him. ‘Care to join us?’
‘Thanks, but not this time.’ Fowler took a seat along with Amanda. ‘We won’t be sticking around for long. It’s been a long enough night as it is.’
Jason turned towards him, resting one elbow on the back of Fowler’s chair, the Minnesota University t-shirt stretched taut over his not inconsiderable belly. ‘Some show, huh? Tesla would have been proud of it.’
‘Tesla?’ asked Amanda.
‘He means Tesla’s earthquake machine,’ said an older Japanese man, his accent by way of Southern California. ‘Resonant frequency, that kind of thing. He reckons those growths are going to shake the world to bits, and that tonight’s lightning storm is the prelude.’
Some of the others around the table chuckled at this suggestion, then carried on with their own separate conversations.