The Mandel Files, Volume 2: The Nano Flower

  ‘Very well, Ms Evans. I think Mutizen can agree to that.’

  ‘Odd,’ Peter Cavendish said after Eduard Müller and his two assistants had left.

  ‘Yes,’ Julia agreed. ‘They produce a few giga-bytes of data, and we embark on an open-ended research project for them.’ There was something else, the way Eduard Müller had been wanting a decision straight away. Even if he had wanted it, he shouldn’t have shown her that he did. Either he wanted her to know, which made even less sense, or he was under a great deal of stress. Whatever the answer, she had more cards to play with than she’d started with.

  She got up and walked over to the window. The mist had melted away under the first rays of the sun, exposing the chocolate mud of the quagmire. Tepid oil-rainbows shivered across its surface. ‘He was right about one thing, though. I can’t afford not to be involved.’

  Peter Cavendish rose from his seat. ‘You think they have solved the generator problem?’

  ‘No. At least, nothing past a fundamental theory, a notion how it might be built; that’s why they want to bring in Nicholas and his team.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’ll need you to draw up two sets of contracts. The worst case, where we have to agree to Mutizen’s current terms. The second, I want Mutizen paying half of the development costs with us, and Event Horizon owning fifty-one per cent of the marketing subsidiary stock.’

  Peter Cavendish let out a whistle. ‘Do you think you can get them to agree to that?’

  Julia abandoned the view of Prior’s Fen Atoll. If she closed her eyes she could see hologram-colour data streams like arched fairy bridges looping around her. She was woven into the web via her implant nodes, digesting and contributing, but never controlling. The topography of the global data net had long left human understanding behind.

  The key to the modern world is retrieval, Royan had told her. All the answers you could possibly want exist somewhere within the world’s data cores.

  She didn’t know what questions to ask. The glowing data web was contracting. Smothering.

  Julia opened her eyes, seeing Peter Cavendish’s concerned face.

  ‘We’ve got two days to find some leverage,’ she said. ‘In the mean time, I’ve got a speech day to attend.’

  8

  Greg slipped his leather jacket over a sky-blue sweatshirt. The black leather was thin enough to move easily, thick enough to shield him from the chill of early morning. It had been a present from Eleanor a couple of years back when his old one had finally torn.

  ‘You’re going to wear that in Monaco, are you?’ Eleanor asked. She was sitting on the edge of their bed, wrapped in a quilted housecoat. Hands fidgeting in her lap, knotting and unknotting the belt.

  Greg glanced at himself in the bedroom’s antique full-length mirror. Flat stomach, sideboards frosted with grey, a hint of excess flesh building up on his neck. Not bad for fifty-four. He managed to get down to the gym in Oakham twice a week, the fitness bug was something he’d caught during his Army days. After surviving the war in Turkey and the street violence in Peterborough, it would be silly to succumb to clogged arteries and wasted muscles.

  ‘I thought it was all right,’ he said. ‘Fits the image of an English gentleman farmer.’

  Eleanor tsked in disapproval.

  ‘It’s not as if I’m going to a social function with the Prince.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ she mumbled.

  Greg went and sat beside her on the bed, his arm going round her shoulders. Eleanor’s head remained bowed, focusing on her hands.

  There was none of the old pre-mission exhilaration that used to fire his blood. He’d thought there might have been, the one final deal, proving he could still hack it. He knew plenty of married officers in the Army, combat deployment was something their wives accepted. But family had come after that stage of his life, there was no way the two could be reconciled now.

  ‘If you don’t want me to go, then I won’t,’ he said.

  ‘That’s blackmail, Greg. Putting it off on me. You know you have to go.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He kissed her on the side of the head, tasting hair.

  ‘And you behave yourself around that Suzi.’

  Greg laughed and gave her a proper kiss.

  Eleanor responded hungrily, then pushed him away. ‘Don’t, you know where that sort of thing leads.’ She looked down at her belly, smile fading.

  ‘Tell you, it’s funny,’ he said quietly. ‘Even five or six years back I would probably have pleaded with Julia for the chance to do this. I mean, Royan missing, in trouble. What could be more important? But now … I resent it, this being ruled by the past. And I think Suzi does, too. That was a nice girl she’s living with. Pregnant, as well.’

  ‘Suzi?’ Eleanor exclaimed.

  ‘No, the girl, Andria. Not that Julia and I were actually told. But you can’t hide that from a psychic.’

  ‘Oh. That ought to be interesting. Suzi, a parent.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He went over to the dresser and picked up the Event Horizon cybofax Julia had given him yesterday. ‘For your own safety,’ she’d said. ‘It’s got a locater beacon for the security crash teams to keep track of you. If you need hardline help, just shout, they’ll be there in minutes. And I’ve loaded one of my personality packages into the memory. You never know, I might actually be of some use to you.’

  Greg slipped the palm-sized wafer into his breast pocket. God alone knew what else her security division had squeezed into its ’ware.

  He drew back the honey-coloured curtains. Cool early morning sky, halfway between grey and white. A narrow spire of smoke rose from the dead ashes of the Berrybut estate’s bonfire on the opposite shore. Heavy dew coated the grass of the paddock. The pole jumps for Anita’s pony made sharp splashes of colour among the pale blades. They wanted a fresh coat of paint, he saw, and the grass was too long.

  ‘I’d better get off,’ he said. ‘This is going to be a long day.’

  Rutland Water’s high-water level was marked by a thick band of quarried limestone blocks thrown round the entire shoreline to prevent erosion when the reservoir was full. But it had been a hot summer, the farms and citrus groves of the surrounding district had siphoned off a lot of water for irrigation. The vertical water level was already two metres below the bottom of the limestone; on the Hambleton peninsula that produced a broad expanse of mudflats which had dried as hard as concrete under the relentless sun.

  Greg and Eleanor walked down the slope from the farmhouse to the limestone, and stood on the top of the crumbling blocks. The travellers’ camp was just beginning to stir.

  They heard a shout as Christine came running down the slope after them. ‘Dad, you were going to leave without saying goodbye,’ she accused.

  Greg saw the Event Horizon Pegasus hypersonic sink out of the wispy cloud band and skim across the reservoir towards him.

  ‘I’ll only be gone a couple of days, at the most,’ he said.

  Christine threw her arms round him and gave him a wet kiss. Eleanor’s peck on the cheek was more demure.

  The three of them watched the arrowhead-planform Pegasus slowing; a hundred metres from the shore its nose pitched up. Slats opened in its underbelly, venting the compressor fans’ efflux straight down. The undercarriage unfolded, and it settled on the rusty-coloured mudflats in a swirl of dust. A flock of swans drifting on the water behind it rose into the sky, wings pumping frantically.

  Greg gave Eleanor a final kiss, and clambered down the nettle-swamped limestone.

  There were two security division hardliners waiting for him at the bottom of the hatchway stairs. Pearse Solomons and Malcolm Ramkartra; depressingly young, healthy, and respectful.

  ‘Good morning, sir. We’ve been instructed to provide you with backup should you request it,’ Pearse Solomons told him.

  Greg’s espersense picked up a hint of resentment in the man’s mind. Not a total cyberg after all, then. He went up the stairs in an improved f
rame of mind.

  The windowless cabin had fifteen seats, a compact rosewood cocktail bar at the rear, and a flatscreen on the forward bulkhead beside the door into the cockpit.

  Suzi and Rachel Griffith were sitting at the back. Suzi lounging lethargically in her chair, dressed in a dark purple shellsuit. Her mousy hair had been given a crew cut. At least she didn’t dye it mauve these days.

  ‘Christ, you look keen,’ she said.

  Greg sat in the seat beside her. ‘You know me.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too. I feel like I’ve been press-ganged.’

  Greg gave Rachel an apologetic shrug.

  ‘I gave up hardlining ten years ago,’ Rachel said. ‘Exec assistant suited me just fine.’

  ‘Just point her out to us,’ Greg said. ‘Your job ends there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel said; she looked troubled.

  Pearse Solomons and Malcolm Ramkartra came up the stairs and sat in the front two seats. The belly hatch slid shut.

  Malcolm Ramkartra picked up a slim phone that was built into his armrest. He turned to Greg and Suzi. ‘Is Monaco still the destination?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Greg said. ‘And tell the pilot to put the nose camera image on the screen after we lift.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Malcolm Ramkartra spoke briefly into the handset.

  ‘We travel on these planes when we go on holiday with Julia,’ Greg said. ‘I never can get used to not having a port. I grew up with aircraft that you can see out of.’

  There was a gentle whine from the fans as they spun up. The deck tilted back slightly.

  Suzi grunted. ‘Didn’t know you went on holiday together.’

  ‘Sure. The kids are all big mates. And I sometimes think Eleanor and I are the only ordinary people Julia knows.’

  ‘You’re ordinary, huh?’ Suzi grinned evilly.

  ‘More than you, dear, that’s a fact.’ He felt a press of acceleration as the Pegasus surged upwards. The flatscreen lit up, showing blue sky, splashes of white cloud piling up in the south, and a big pink-gold sun lifting over the horizon.

  ‘It was bad at the start,’ Greg said. ‘People thought we were an easy route to her. The rich and the social climbers. We couldn’t move for presents and invitations. The way they behave, it’s ridiculous, disgusting really. Say hello to one, and you’re a lifelong friend. They don’t know what shame is. One birthday the drive looked like the end of a car factory production line; Jags, Ferraris, Lotuses, MGs. Two of them had a ribbon tied round, for Christ’s sake. I sent them all back to the garages. That type just don’t know when to give up. And I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been asked to be a non-executive director—’ He became aware of Suzi’s silent unsympathetic stare.

  ‘It’s a hard life, isn’t it?’ she said.

  The Pegasus flew at an altitude of twenty kilometres, turning south above the North Sea and passing over the English Channel at Mach two. They hit Mach four heading into the Bay of Biscay, then went subsonic to cross the Pyrenees.

  Greg watched their approach to the tiny coastal principality on the bulkhead flatscreen. Circles predominated below, almost as if some weird genealogy of symmetrical aquatic creatures was surfacing to storm ashore. The pink rings of the tidal turbine lagoons, flat dusty-grey field of the airport. Then there was the Monaco dome itself, a faintly translucent golden egg that had driven itself into the cliffs. Two thirds of it extended out into the rich blue water of the sea, radiating white jetties like wheel spokes. He could just make out shaded rectangular outlines through the monolattice shell.

  The Pegasus settled on to the airport island. Over half of the parked planes were similar white arrowhead executives, the passenger jets were long flattened cones with narrow fin wings.

  Pearse Solomons and Malcolm Ramkartra stood as the belly hatch popped open.

  ‘Are you carrying?’ Greg asked the hardliners as he came forwards.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Pearse Solomons said. ‘A Tokarev IRMS7 laser pistol.’

  ‘OK. Load up with a second, and come with us. Malcolm, you stay here, and maintain constant contact.’

  ‘I’ve got a Browning, fifty-shot maser,’ Suzi said as she slung a canvas Puma flight bag over her shoulder.

  ‘I sort of took that for granted,’ Greg said.

  It was hot outside, the expansion joints on the concrete apron creaking in protest, barely audible over the ever-present piccolo hiss of compressor fans. Greg slipped on a pair of Ferranti sunglasses.

  Commissaire André Dubaud was waiting at the foot of the stairs, Monaco’s deputy police chief.

  ‘Trust him,’ Victor Tyo had told Greg. ‘He’s good at his job, and he understands the politics involved with corporate cases. He’s also totally paid for, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.’

  They shook hands, and Greg introduced Suzi and Rachel. Commissaire Dubaud was in his mid-forties, wearing an immaculate black uniform with a peaked cap.

  ‘Mr Tyo informs me you are looking for a girl,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Greg said. ‘We don’t know her name, but she was definitely at the Newfields ball three days ago.’

  ‘May I enquire why you are hunting her?’ André Dubaud nodded pointedly at the Pegasus. ‘This seems rather a large operation to track down one good-time girl.’

  ‘Certainly. She was in possession of a certain item which interests us. We’d like to ask her a few questions about it.’

  André Dubaud glanced at his polished shoes. ‘Very well. Are you intending to extradite her?’

  ‘No. She will answer everything I ask her.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘No messing,’ Greg said.

  They drove into the dome in André Dubaud’s official car, a black Citröen with fold-down chairs in the rear. Greg thought it was the kind of limo a head of state would normally ride in. He looked hard at a thick white pillar sticking out of the water halfway across. It was made of metal, topped by a petal-segment composite hemisphere. There was another one five hundred metres past the first, heat distortion above the sea made it impossible to see if there was a third.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Tactical defence lasers,’ André Dubaud said. ‘If Nice comes knocking again, those bastards will wish they hadn’t. The principality is impervious to all forms of attack now, from rioters with stones all the way up to KE harpoons. It has to be done, of course. Our inhabitants are the natural targets to certain kinds of diseased minds. But they’re entitled to live like anyone else. Inside our dome civilization is total. The one place in the world where you can walk down any street at any time, and never have to look over your shoulder.’

  ‘It sounds as if your department is doing an excellent job,’ Greg said. He glanced at Suzi, but she was hunched down in the Citröen’s leather seat, staring out of the tinted window, her size making her appear like a sulking child. She hadn’t spoken since being introduced to the Commissaire. They were total opposites; Greg reckoned Dubaud knew it as well. If she hadn’t been operating under Julia’s aegis, he doubted Suzi would even have been allowed to land at the airport.

  ‘There is a degree of fraud perpetrated by our financial community,’ André Dubaud said. ‘But physical crime – property theft, the act of violence – that is unheard of.’

  By banishing the poor, Greg thought, the people who commit robbery and muggings. Monaco hadn’t solved crime, they’d just dumped the problem on someone else. Not even New Eastfield in Peterborough went that far. He could sense the stubborn pride in André Dubaud’s mind, mingling with a trace of what seemed suspiciously like paranoia. He held back on the urge to inject some sarcastic observations. Maybe that’s why Suzi had kept silent, instinctively recognizing the futility. Trying to reason with someone like André Dubaud about basic human dignity would be like pissing in the wind.

  The covered bridge from the airport island dipped down, and the Citröen drove through an arch in the base of the dome, coming out on the perimeter road. Clean, that was the impression he got
from the tidy rows of white buildings bathing under a tangerine glow, clean verging on sterile.

  ‘Where’s the casino?’ Suzi asked.

  André Dubaud pointed to a cluster of white-stone buildings on the cliffs. She peered up at them curiously.

  The Citröen took them right up to the marble front of the El Harhari. A footman opened the door for Greg, and he followed André Dubaud up the stairs into the lobby.

  A troupe of cleaners were busy inside, polishing the mirrors and dark wooden furniture, drone vacuums moving up and down the carpet. Claude Murtand, the hotel security manager, met them under one of the chandeliers. With his handsome face and perfect hair he looked like a channel star, dwarfing Suzi.

  ‘A picture of a girl?’ he asked after André Dubaud explained what they wanted.

  ‘Yeah,’ Greg said. ‘She was here for the Newfields ball, name unknown. Attractive, early twenties, short fair hair, wearing a dark-blue gown, possibly silk. We think she’s on the game.’

  ‘This is Monaco,’ Claude Murtand murmured. ‘Who isn’t?’

  André Dubaud scowled at him.

  The El Harhari’s white-tiled security centre had a long bank of monitor screens along one wall relaying scenes from around the hotel. Two big flatscreens showed the floorplans, red and yellow symbols flashing in rooms and corridors. There were two island consoles, with three operators each. Claude Murtand had a small glass-walled office at the back.

  ‘We compile a profile on each guest,’ Claude Murtand said as he led them in. ‘In so far as we can, just what is available in public memory cores. Obviously it’s only a secondary precaution. Customs and Immigration filter out anyone genuinely dangerous.’

  ‘That true?’ Greg asked André Dubaud.

  ‘Certainly,’ the Commissaire said. ‘Our passport control is the most stringent in the world. Nobody with a criminal record is allowed in.’

  ‘You and the wife must get lonely here all by yourself,’ Suzi said in an undertone.