“Yes, but Sir Thomas is an evil man. No matter how clever he might be, that fact pervades and touches everything he does. The fact is that your birth is registered in a hospital and your DNA is registered at that hospital. Gabriel substantiated that.”
“But that’s all we have. The birth register in Byron Bay shows Mark Anthony Zumar on the 23rd of September 2075, and then there’s Sir Thomas’s registering of my birth in Glasgow which shows my birth as being registered on the 29th of October 2075, thirty-six days later. Then there’s my entire upbringing within the auspices of the Oliver Foundation. Wait a minute. That is one possible avenue. The Oliver Foundation. What if I’m not the only one? What if Sir Thomas has killed the parents of other children?”
Mariko pursed her lips together and nodded her head. “Go on.”
“The Oliver Foundation was started with me. I mean he founded it the year of my birth and the year of the death of my fictional parents, his brother and step-sister. But it has spread. They are on every continent except the Poles and in every major metropolis. What if there are other Jonahs? And what is he really doing with the Oliver Foundation? It’s for gifted children only, so doesn’t that define them as Hawks, or at least a breeding ground for potential Hawks. Hawks started with families right? Passing it down from one generation to the next, father to son and daughter. Sir Thomas has no family but he has the Oliver Foundation, right. What if he’s using children from there as his branch of the family?”
“Cochran was Oliver Foundation you know.”
“No. I didn’t know that. How do you know that?”
“Just SOE gossip. I was talking with a colleague about her being wounded in the bomb and he mentioned it.”
“I could visit the foundation under the guise of doing the memoir. I mean the home where I was raised, it was the first of the orphanages. I could dig around in my birth records and try to identify other ex-Oliverans.”
Mariko shook her head. “No it would take too long, and what if you do identify others like you? You have no way of knowing if they’re Hawks or not. Stick with Bardsdale. That seems like the best course of action for now.”
It made sense. We were running out of time and to try to convince others without knowing where their loyalties lay was too dangerous. At least if I got close enough to Bardsdale, it could lead me to being more trusted by Sir Thomas and hopefully induction into the Hawks. At least it was a direction to move forward in. I nodded.
“Agreed.”
“I’ll get closer to Cochran. You know I helped her the night of the bombing?”
I shook my head. I had no idea.
“I was the first team member to get to her. Patched her up. Anyway, I’ll also ask her to assign me as your personal bodyguard. In light of the bombing she might agree.”
“Be very careful, OK. She’s telepathic. When you’re with her, don’t think about anything other than what you want her to know. Best would be to think about impressing her and what a brave woman she is. What do you think about that? Was she seriously wounded?”
“No, minor wounds only and the rumor mill has it that a call to her Devstick from her partner Sunita Shido saved her life.”
“Do you think that was coincidence?”
“No, not for a sec. I think the whole thing was intricately planned, and perfectly timed, but it still takes a special kind of woman to walk into a bomb.”
“What about this Martine Shorne, the high-level UNPOL officer who is now on the Most Wanted list right under Gabriel? They’re saying she’s a high-level subversive, and used a booby-trapped Devstick as the bomb?”
“They found her prints on fragments of a Devstick. She’s disappeared and they’ve charged her with being absent from her post for now. Nothing more than that. She used to work with Flederson. The rumor is that he approved and supported her transfer from Large Commercial Crimes unit into Deep Trace. In there she’d have had access to everything. I suspect we just found out who our allies were.”
“You mean Shorne and Flederson?”
“Yes, but they’re no use to us now. One’s in a coma in deep regen. He’s a complete wreck of a human. Lost both legs, burst ear drums, collapsed lungs, ruptured intestines and over fifty fragment wounds. It’s amazing he’s still alive but he isn’t going anywhere for at least a year. Shorne has gone to ground. No sign. Her team were questioned and one of my guys was the guard. They haven’t got a clue what’s going on. Of course it’s possible that she’s already dead.”
I looked down into the dark of the pool. My reflection shimmered in the water. Mariko’s danced and twisted beside mine, the light of the Devstick between us a wavy shaft of white.
“There’s something else that we haven’t explored, but I can’t think of a way to do it without arousing suspicion.”
“What?”
“Bo Vinh and my father had friends. They must have. Some of those friends may still be alive. Sir Thomas couldn’t have killed them all.”
“Yes, and?”
“Well, we might find support there, that’s all. Some of those friends may be in positions of influence and power. Considering the two men, we could say that it is likely that their friends would be their peers and as such share their sentiments. If we could find out who they were, they may be willing to help us.”
“Have you started work on it yet?”
“What?”
“The memoir. I mean he’s going to ask to see what you’ve done at some point.”
“You’re right. No, I haven’t, but he hasn’t put a timeframe on it yet either.”
“Why don’t you suggest one — the Tag Law, March the 15th. What more suitable date to gain maximum exposure for his memoirs could there be than that. But if you suggest such an early date then you’ll need to convince him you’re making rapid progress. How many words is a memoir?”
“Varies but commonly between eighty and one hundred thousand.”
“That’s a lot of words to put together in a short time.”
“Yes it is. Moving up the timeframe is a good idea though. It’ll make my immediately poking around his past more acceptable if we’re on a tight timeline. Give me more freedom to move. I’ll just have to get on with it and start drafting the memoir. Show that to Sir Thomas and hope he sees the need for me to go and see the first orphanage.”
“That’s our plan then. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Mariko held a clenched fist out in front of me. I put my lips to her fist and kissed it softly.
“Not like that. You’re supposed to thump the top of it with your fist. It’s what we do in SOE each time before we go into action.”
“Oh please, I prefer my way. Yours is just a bit too rah rah for me.”
“Rah rah. All right, have it your own way but out there you’re going to need clenched fist not soft kiss. OK?” She fixed me with a stern look made hard by the harsh light and softened by the smile stalking around the corners of her mouth.
“Yes ma’am.”
I looked at the time on Devscreen. It was 10:30am. Since coming back from our swim, I’d worked steadily on the outline and had what I thought was a passable concept. As I’d discussed with Sir Thomas, I planned to tie his life into the most significant major global events that had shaped it. Or perhaps that he had shaped? A quick search online of EarthLog, the major online database of factual events, gave me a list of the major events that had occurred in the last seventy-five years. 2035 to the present day. I noticed there was already an entry for the bombing of the UNPOL Executive Club.
Within each of these ten year periods, I filled in major events. There wasn’t much to write about the early years but perhaps that could focus on his parents. He was the second child and born when his mother was in her early forties. His father fifty. The next decade dealt primarily with the war and its aftermath. His court martial, exoneration and later posting to New Boston to manage a refugee camp.