The Mandel Files, Volume 2: The Nano Flower

‘How many?’

  ‘Twenty-five, thirty. Perhaps a few more.’

  ‘Oh, great.’

  Victor’s face formed on Greg’s cybofax as soon as he entered the code.

  ‘Charlotte Fielder was lifted out of here,’ Greg said. ‘No doubt about it. This is a real pro deal; lot of money, lot of talent. The Pontiac that spirited her away from the Newfields ball was hired, the bloke who paid was the chauffeur. There’s no trace of him, he wasn’t entered in the police memory core. Same result for the boy she left with. As for the other person in the car, I couldn’t even tell you if they were male or female.’

  The other three, Rachel, Suzi, and Pearse Solomons were sitting quietly round Claude Murtand’s office, happy to let him summarize. The air conditioner was humming softly, sucking out the accumulated moisture. Claude Murtand and André Dubaud were on the other side of the glass wall, talking in low tones, and casting an occasional unhappy eye in his direction.

  ‘I can’t add much,’ Victor said. ‘Fielder hasn’t used her Amex card for the last three days, so no leads for that. But then she hadn’t used it for a ten-day period prior to booking into the Celestious, either.’

  ‘What did she use it for ten days ago?’ Greg asked.

  Victor glanced at something off screen. ‘It was in Baldocks, that’s a department store in Wellington, New Zealand. A bill for forty-three dollars; but it wasn’t itemized.’

  ‘Not important,’ Greg said. ‘So what was she doing for the ten days between Wellington and Monaco?’

  ‘That’s what you’re supposed to tell me,’ Victor said.

  ‘Meeting Royan,’ Suzi said.

  ‘Right. But where?’ said Greg. ‘I have two questions, based on what we’ve found out so far. Firstly, why take so much trouble over a courier? Given that all she had to do was deliver the flower box to Julia, someone has gone to a hell of a lot of effort to stash her away.’

  ‘Because she can lead us to Royan,’ Suzi said.

  ‘Fair enough. So that means the people behind her, the ones with the Pontiac, don’t want us to know where Royan is. Ordinarily, I’d say that pointed to a kidnapping.’

  ‘But there’s the flower,’ Victor said.

  ‘Yeah, and also the eight months that Royan’s been missing. Holding someone for eight months without a ransom demand is ludicrous.’

  ‘Who knows how alien minds work?’ Suzi asked.

  ‘Not me,’ said Greg. ‘But the chauffeur and the kid were human—’ he broke off, remembering the boy’s perfection. ‘Make that humanoid.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ Suzi said. ‘Fucking aliens walking round Monaco.’

  ‘They might have the technological know-how to enter and leave the dome whenever they wanted,’ Greg pointed out. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Too complicated, especially now they had established money could do the job just as easily. ‘The thing is, someone powerful is moving Fielder around. That’s the second question. Why not bring her in to Monaco the way she was taken out? Letting her come in through the normal channels, going through Passport control, thumbprint, the legal construct, then booking into the Celestious; all of that let’s us find out who she is. Why? When they could obviously have handed over the flower to Julia, and left us completely in the dark?’

  Suzi stretched in her chair. ‘Go on. You’ve obviously got an answer.’

  ‘Two different groups,’ Greg said. ‘She came from Royan, to deliver the flower. Then afterwards, someone else nabbed her.’

  ‘If it was a tekmerc squad, could you find out, Suzi?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Maybe. But it would take time. Week, maybe two. Then longer to find out who put the deal together.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ said Victor.

  ‘Fuck you too.’

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ Greg said, ‘the group that arranged for Fielder to be lifted are the ones who took the first sample from the flower.’

  Victor nodded. ‘That fits. You think they’ll have found Royan by now?’

  ‘If they had a psychic interrogate Fielder, it would take a minute to find out what she knew. Drugs and a polygraph, that’s about thirty minutes. They’ve had her for nearly three days now.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘There’s one easy short cut we could try,’ Greg said. ‘Phone Fielder’s cybofax number, and use whatever clout Event Horizon has with English Telecom to find out the co-ordinate.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Victor.

  His image on Greg’s cybofax slid smoothly to one side. Julia appeared on the other half, sitting in her study again. Nothing behind her had moved, even the sunlight shining through the window was at the same angle.

  ‘No need to make it an official request,’ she said. ‘I’m infiltrating the location response targeting software in Intelsat’s antenna platforms. Calling Fielder’s number now.’

  Greg waited.

  ‘No reply,’ Julia said. ‘There isn’t even a signal from the transponder.’

  ‘Keep trying.’

  ‘If all they wanted from Fielder was Royan’s location, then she’s probably been snuffed,’ Victor said.

  ‘No, she hasn’t,’ Greg said.

  ‘OK.’ Victor subsided with good grace. He had seen Greg’s intuition at work before.

  Greg wondered what young Pearse Solomons was making of all this. The security hardliner had been sitting at attention ever since Victor had come on the cybofax. After Julia appeared he hadn’t taken a breath.

  ‘That just leaves us with Baronski,’ Greg said.

  ‘What can he tell us?’ Suzi asked.

  ‘Charlotte Fielder left the party early, with a rich young boy, in an expensive car. She walked out of the El Harhari freely, I’d almost say happily. That means the boy was either someone she knew, or more likely the son of a client. Either way, Baronski should be able to tell us.’

  9

  It was the sun again, inexplicably wrong. Charlotte finally twigged the reason when she was having a latish breakfast in the Colonel Maitland’s aft dining-room.

  Fabian sat opposite her as usual. He acted dazed, almost in shock, barely eating his cereal. Every time he looked at her it was with an unsettling degree of reverence.

  But then Fabian was a boy in lust. He was also a remarkably fast learner. She had spent a strenuous two hours last night coping with his enthusiasms and demands before he finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep, then he’d been ready for more this morning. Which was why they turned up late at the table.

  Jason Whitehurst was already sitting at the table waiting for them. He greeted them with an unabashed smile. ‘Ah, glad to see you young people are getting on so well.’

  Fabian blushed hot crimson.

  Jason Whitehurst had chosen his cereal, unperturbed, and ordered his cybofax to display the London Times, which he read as he ate.

  Charlotte could hear the waiter squeezing fresh orange juice at the side table behind her. She started in on her own cereal bowl. The sun was filling the dining room with a liquid rose-gold light, rising into view directly behind Jason Whitehurst. She stared at it, feeling cold despite the thick cotton of her summer dress.

  Jason Whitehurst looked up from his cybofax. ‘Something wrong, my dear?’

  ‘West,’ she said numbly. ‘We’re heading west.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But Odessa is east of Monaco. I thought we were going around Italy, then up into the Black Sea.’

  ‘No.’ Jason Whitehurst inspected a slice of toast, then began buttering it. ‘My agent has taken care of my business in Odessa. There’s no need to go there now. Great relief all round, one expects. I told you what it was like.’

  The waiter put a glass of orange down in front of Charlotte. She ignored it. ‘Where are we going, then?’

  ‘Going?’ Jason Whitehurst affected puzzlement. ‘Why, my dear girl, the Colonel Maitland simply drifts. On a whim and a prayer, I always say. I had a notion that South America would be nice. You and Fabian cou
ld laze around on the beach, that sort of thing, whatever it is a boy and a girl do together these days. How does that sound, young man?’

  ‘Great, father,’ Fabian said cautiously.

  ‘Which country in South America?’ Charlotte asked. It was hard to maintain her pose of polite seminal interest.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I really hadn’t given it any thought, to be woundingly honest. Why, have you got any preferences?’

  For once she was stuck for a reply. There was a small part of her mind thinking that Baronski would be shaking his head in dismay; questioning her patron’s intent, letting her own disapproval show. It simply was not done. But either Jason Whitehurst was the most carefree soul she’d ever met, or he was being deliberately obtuse.

  She’d heard of patrons like that, not that there were many, thank heavens. Instead of physical mastery, they went in for nasty psychological games. Mental kinks designed to rip the sense of order from a bewildered girl, reduce her to a disorientated nervous wreck. It gave them a sense of power. A mind set which got its bang from destruction.

  Charlotte remembered talking to one of the women tutors that Baronski had sent her round to learn the extras which put her so far above the others of her trade. The woman had told her it was all down to age and bitter jealousy; the patrons wanted to punish the girls for their youth and beauty, something their money could never bring back to them.

  Charlotte reckoned that no one with a trading empire as large as Jason Whitehurst could have the kind of slapdash mind he alluded to.

  She ran quickly through her options. ‘French Guiana is supposed to be nice,’ she said with cheerful enthusiasm. ‘It has some wonderful beaches. Then there’s the tropical nature park we could tour; that has some of the oldest original rain forest on the continent. And they’re still discovering new insect species each year.’ French Guiana was also one of the closest South American countries to Europe; which meant the voyage would be over as quickly as possible, and she could skip out.

  ‘I can’t somehow imagine Fabian being vastly interested in bugs; is that right, young man?’

  Fabian looked at Charlotte, then at his father. Trapped, not wanting to disappoint either. She felt sorry for him.

  ‘Isn’t French Guiana where Devil’s Island is?’ Fabian asked.

  Jason Whitehurst pulled at his beard. ‘Yes, do you know, I think you’re right there. The jolly Île du Diable. I might have guessed a red-blooded lad like you would show an interest in the totally macabre. Still, can’t be helped, all part of growing up. So, French Guiana it is, then.’

  Charlotte dived straight into the Colonel Maitland’s pool and started doing lengths, a smooth easy freestyle with a neat flip at each end. It was one of the best ways she knew of working off frustration, losing herself in the mechanical spin of limbs, not having to think. She stopped after thirty lengths; the pool was smaller than she was used to. There wasn’t the distance to work up a decent speed, or maybe she was just spoilt.

  ‘Crikey, is there anything you’re no good at?’ Fabian asked. ‘I thought I was a good swimmer, but you just left me standing.’

  ‘Sorry. I was a bit wound up over Odessa.’

  ‘Oh.’ The corner of his mouth depressed. ‘Father can be a bit, well, casual, at times. I suppose it must be unusual unless you’re used to it.’

  She swung her legs up, and floated on her back. Now probably wasn’t a good time to ask what happened to his father’s previous girls, if they left in floods of tears.

  ‘Now I know where we’re heading I’ll be all right.’ She began to swish her feet, heading for the window. ‘You didn’t have to say you wanted to go to French Guiana, you know. I wouldn’t have been offended.’

  ‘No, really, I wanted to go.’ He started swimming beside her. ‘Well, all right, not the trees and caterpillars and things. But I would like to see Devil’s Island. And the beaches, with you.’

  Charlotte steadied herself on the side of the pool by the window. She looked down thoughtfully on the water below. ‘Where are we now, do you think?’

  Fabian held on to the side, eyes on her rather than the water. ‘It’s the Atlantic, we’re west of Africa. I can get you the exact co-ordinates if you want.’

  ‘No, thank you Fabian, that’s all right. It’s just a pity we missed seeing Gibraltar. Have you ever been there before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If the Colonel Maitland comes back to the Mediterranean some time, then remember to ask your father to show you. The Straits drop flow is quite something; that tiny little gap is the only place the Mediterranean basin can fill up from. Thermal expansion didn’t raise the Mediterranean’s level as high as the oceans, the water was warmer to start with. So the Atlantic is still a good couple of metres higher, and that’s after nearly twenty-five years. They won’t reach equipoise for a long time yet.’

  ‘Did you ride it?’

  ‘No. I was too scared, the drop flow is over five kilometres long. I watched the macho loonies doing it, through. You sit in one of the overhang cafés on the rock, and your bones shake from the turbulence round the base, the sound is like one continual thunderclap. They reckon the rock itself will be gone in a few more decades. Nothing can resist that sort of pressure.’

  She remembered more, the sleek canoe-like capsules that people rode the Straits drop flow in, like phosphene dots zipping across her vision as she watched that incredible surge of white water from the safety of the café. Two of the people in her group had wanted to try it, knowing full well the drop flow claimed a couple of lives a week.

  She thought at the time how little regard they had for their own lives. There was a degeneracy building in the world’s rich, becoming more advanced with each generation. There used to be a kind of adventurism in the excitement they sought, the power boat racing, desert car rallies, polar trekking. But now the element of calculation was missing from the risks they took, superseded by recklessness, a return to the live fast die young ideal. She supposed it was an answer to the increasing jadedness of their existence, in this world so much pleasure could be bought on the cheap. Their urge towards self-destruction set them apart from the poor again.

  ‘Sounds great,’ he said.

  She realized he hadn’t really been listening. He was still looking at her, query and longing bound up in his worshipful stare. What would he be like when he was eighteen? ‘I’ll do a deal with you, Fabian.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you take my bikini off, I’ll pull your trunks down.’

  Fabian’s bedroom had been furnished with the same expensive care and attention lavished on the rest of the airship – an antique dresser, upholstered Nordic chairs, Chinese carpet, two pale still-life paintings in slim plain gilt frames. But the drawer had scratches, and a very odd purple stain that was still sticky; T-shirts, towels, and shorts hung all over the chairs; shoes and blade roller skates dotted that carpet; bawdy holograms of bimbo bands had been tacked up on the walls.

  Fabian was a pretty ordinary teenager after all. One den the size of a small warehouse wasn’t nearly large enough for all his rubbish.

  Charlotte had only ever seen it when the light was low, in daylight it was even worse. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, with her bikini back on, watching Fabian. He was squatting on his towel in front of the big wall-mounted flat-screen; it was tuned to French MTV, playing an old Rolling Stones track, the sound muted. But he was looking down at his cybofax, doing the London Times crossword with one hand, holding a choc-ice bar in the other.

  She had never seen anyone do the crossword so fast. He would take a bite from the ice-cream and read the clues, then his fingers would dance over the keys. There was never any hesitation, no referring back to the cybofax’s dictionary function. She was tempted to ask him about a bioware node again; but that would make an issue out of it. Besides, she didn’t think Fabian had lied back at the pool yesterday. She didn’t think Fabian would know how to lie to her about anything.

  So how co
uld he demolish the crossword like this?

  ‘Doesn’t the maid ever clean up here?’ Charlotte asked.

  Fabian looked round with bemused curiosity. ‘The staff take my clothes and stuff to be washed. But I’d lose everything if it was put into drawers.’

  She picked up a metre-long model of an old-style military tilt-fan. It was heavier than she’d expected. The miniature missiles looked very realistic. ‘What can you do with this indoors?’

  Fabian flipped his lock of hair aside. ‘Nothing, stupid. I fly it from the Colonel’s landing pad. Do you want to come up and try it? I’ll let you use the remote, it’s dead easy.’

  ‘Maybe later. Where do you get all this stuff from? You must go on week-long shopping expeditions when the Colonel Maitland reaches a town.’

  ‘Oh no, I pick it all out from catalogue channels, and have it forwarded to our next airport. The Gulfstream collects it for me.’

  ‘I see.’ Jason Whitehurst hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he kept Fabian on board the Colonel Maitland the whole time. She didn’t approve of that at all. Not that she could ever say so.

  ‘I’ll have the maids clean it up if you don’t like it,’ Fabian offered generously.

  ‘I don’t think your father could afford the overtime bill.’

  Fabian burst into gleeful laughter. ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everything you say is always just right. The clothes you wear make you look utterly fantastic. You can swim well. You’re a super dancer. You know about everywhere in the world, not just what countries look like, but their politics as well. You’re like a superwoman, or something.’

  ‘That’s age, Fabian. When you’re as ancient as me, you’ll have learnt it all as well.’

  Fabian dropped his eyes. ‘You’re not old.’

  ‘You’re very sweet.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t call me things like sweet and cute again,’ he said petulantly. ‘Not now I’m your lover.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we do it again?’