System Shock Part 11

Her favourite non-sequitur in the meeting so far was the exchange: 'Do you honestly think we have a chance of making the cut-off s.h.i.+pment dates?' The reply to this had been: 'French actually takes up more s.p.a.ce than German when translated.'

This was almost as good as the question she had overheard on her way to her desk that morning: 'What day is next week's Wednesday morning meeting?'

The only difference between the whole environment and school, Sarah thought as she stared down at the street below, was that here they were all adults who ought to know better.

Sarah wondered (as an academic exercise rather than because she really intended it) how best to manufacture a sudden illness. Then she realized that the figure she had been watching dart its way through the busy traffic, pausing only to 99 hold up a long arm to stop a bus as it screeched towards him, was wearing a wide-brimmed saggy hat and trailing a long scarf. It was an effort not to hammer on the window and wave, but she restrained herself and made an effort to follow the meeting. Seeing the Doctor had lifted her spirits and her confidence. If he was wandering about in plain sight outside, then everything must be going well.

'So I suggest we take a short comfort break and reconvene in seven minutes.' The words filtered through to the part of Sarah's brain that was still operating, and she joined the crowd jostling at the doorway. She was tempted to send them back to put their chairs up on the desks. But contented herself with a grin and the promise of some strong black coffee. Or E19 as the drinks machine insisted she refer to it.

Peterson was beginning to wonder if he had not perhaps exaggerated his own importance slightly. There again, he was not quite sure who could object.

To be honest, he had not expected Eleanor (he had to remind himself not to call her El) to agree to come to the opening of Hubway and accompanying reception. But she had resisted all his subsequent attempts to dissuade her. 'I want to see you at work, darling,' she had told him with that slight knowing smile of hers and her head c.o.c.ked to one side.

But that was not the problem. The problem was that the date conflicted with her mother's birthday party. And since the woman would be sixty she was having a binge. Eleanor insisted that she could not miss it, and that Peterson must also attend. He could not very well reject her suggestion that he bring forward the Hubway ceremony by a few days. Especially since he had explained in painstaking detail not only that the systems were pretty much up and running already, but also that he was in total charge and could do what he liked.

He was sitting at his desk in the Ministry shuffling papers from one pile to another when the idea came to him. He was glancing through the daily report from the security manager at Hubway, correcting the man's punctuation with a red biro. The report suggested that security for the opening ceremony would have to be pretty tight, with extra staff drafted in. Peterson read 100 it again, even more slowly, and suddenly it seemed an extremely sensible proposition that the ceremony be brought forward a few days at short notice so as to lessen any security risk. h.e.l.l, he could probably justify it on the savings they would make by not hiring the extra security staff.

Peterson reached for the phone. And the tiny transmitter embedded in the circuitry clicked into life as he dialled.

Harry met the Doctor as he arrived back at MI5, and persuaded him to come along for the ride, and to tell Harry what he had discovered en route.

'Aliens?' He supposed he should have guessed. It was always aliens when the Doctor was involved. Well nearly always. The Doctor asked him about the feasibility of involving UNIT, but Harry was opposed to that. The Brig had long since retired, and there was a new chap Bam-something. Harry knew nothing about him, and consequently preferred to play things closer to home.

'Well, at least you've got me,' the Doctor boomed happily.

And Harry had to admit to himself that he was indeed grateful.

He was especially grateful for the Doctor's presence as they made their way carefully across the scarred and uneven landscape that had once been a chemical works. In the distance, Canada Tower and the other buildings of Canary Wharf rose up seemingly from nowhere. The whole of the immediate area was devastated. The earth was blackened and the remains of the buildings around were shattered and charred. Across the broken, pitted ground, small fires still burned, oily black smoke lazily lifting into the early morning sky. The whole place smelt greasy and Harry could almost taste the smoky atmosphere.

The Doctor was squatting down and examining a burnt area of ground. He did not seem to notice as Kindred, the forensic chief, picked his way carefully towards them and greeted Harry.

'I got here as quickly as I could, but it's chaos in Hampstead.

No power at all. Substation blew up, apparently.' He looked round at the destruction. A short way off a patch of what had 101 been office floor was still smouldering. 'It's got nothing on this, though.'

'Blew up?' The Doctor rose into the gap between Kindred and Harry, forcing them each to take a pace backwards.

'Good grief,' Kindred muttered, and Harry made hasty introductions.

'Blew up,' the Doctor repeated. 'That's a coincidence. And I don't believe in coincidence.' He turned to Kindred. 'How long will it take you to find out anything useful, Mister Kindred?'

'Well, I've only just arrived, of course.' Kindred looked round. 'But I'd say a while.'

'A while,' the Doctor echoed. 'How very precise. Come along, Harry.' He started across the site, taking long strides and not worrying what he stepped through or into.

'I'd better go with him,' Harry said to Kindred, 'I suppose.

Let me know as soon as you have anything.' And he set off after the Doctor.

'Where are we going?' Harry asked when he eventually caught up.

'Weren't you listening?' the Doctor asked. 'Hampstead, of course.'

'Of course, Doctor.'

Greg Anderson was a large man. He was nearly sixty, but still fit. He exercised every morning and played golf every free afternoon. His grey hair still had a hint of brown in it. He laughed often and loud, and the creases on his face were a permanent reminder of where he laughed.

His carefree easy-going att.i.tude was one of the main reasons Anderson had been appointed American Amba.s.sador to the United Kingdom. Anderson had only one real worry in his busy life that there were never enough afternoons free for golf.

His PA, Colin Hunter, was well aware of Anderson's love of golf. Part of his job was to accompany Anderson on all important and official trips and visits. They had a mutual agreement that this extended to the golf course. So it was with a wide grin that Hunter broke the news to his boss that an appointment had been moved and now clashed with another.

102.

'Let's get this straight,' Anderson said. 'The Hubway ceremony is now three days earlier '

'For security reasons. If that's okay with us,' Hunter cut in.

'If that's okay with us, right. Can we rearrange things round it?'

Hunter nodded. 'Yep.'

Anderson nodded. 'Okay. Let's do it.'

Hunter turned to leave. But a thought seemed to strike him at the last minute. 'Of course, that does leave a free afternoon, since we won't be at Hubway.'

Anderson appeared genuinely surprised. 'Does it?' It was a routine they both enjoyed.

'I took the liberty of booking a couple of rounds.'

Anderson smiled his appreciation. But another thought had struck him. 'Hunter,' he asked seriously, 'is there a security problem with Hubway?'

'Nah. Just Peterson being officious. Neither the Agency nor the Bureau's reported anything.'

Anderson thought for a while. 'Nevertheless, warn the boys, would you?'

Hunter shrugged. 'Okay,' he said. 'Sure thing.'

The substation was wrecked, but the main building was still recognizable. Harry smoothed over the relations with the local police while the Doctor the one largely responsible for those relations busied himself inside the burnt-out sh.e.l.l of the building. When Harry eventually caught up with him he was trying to trace the charred remains of a bundle of electrical wiring back to its sources.

'I say, what a mess,' Harry remarked.

The Doctor's answering look suggested that he had also noticed. 'Come along, Harry.' The Doctor started out of the building.

'But aren't we going to investigate or something?'

'We already have.' The Doctor stopped suddenly and turned round. Harry almost cannoned into him. The Doctor's eyes bulged and he pulled his hand from his coat pocket and waved it under Harry's nose.

'What have you got there?'

103.

The Doctor opened his clenched hand. 'It's a chip. An integrated circuit.'

Harry was not impressed. 'Well, this was a computer-controlled station you know, Doctor.'

The Doctor plunged his hand back into his pocket and strode out of the building. He nodded politely to the policeman at the door and set off towards Harry's car. 'Interesting, though,' he said loudly as he went, 'that the single circuit robust enough to withstand the blast and the fire is of such a similar design to the chip I found in Sutcliffe's watch.' He spun round to see Harry's reaction. 'Don't you think?'

Harry nodded. He was uncertain of how everything tied together, but it was beginning to seem that it did. He unlocked the car and they got in. Questions began to formulate in his mind, but the Doctor had reclined the seat back as far as it would go. Now he had his hat over his face and was snoring loudly.

Just as it seemed that things could get no more complicated, the radio bleeped.

'I think you might want to stop off at Euston,' Gibson's voice said after the usual call-sign and code word formalities.

Harry braced himself, and asked why.

Angela Ridpath, thirteenth d.u.c.h.ess of Glas...o...b..ry, took the call from Peterson herself. The servants had long gone, as had most of the family money. But she made pretence that she had just been pa.s.sing the phone and called out to the nonexistent Maria that it was quite all right and she would take the call herself thank you. Maria was an established figure in the depleted household and provided much amus.e.m.e.nt for the d.u.c.h.ess.

Peterson came quickly to the point. This made it much easier for the d.u.c.h.ess to ease into another of her games. She hummed and hahed and sounded put-out. Having established that Peterson was desperate, she suggested that changing the date at such short notice was extremely inconvenient and mentioned full diaries and disappointments. When she felt Peterson had just about reached the point of maximum fl.u.s.ter, and that if she continued he would apologize and find another 104 dignitary, the d.u.c.h.ess suggested that an increased financial incentive might help her to see her way clear to rearranging her other appointments.

The ensuing conversation was quite short, and left Peterson audibly relieved and the d.u.c.h.ess elated. She put down the phone, giggled like a woman less than half her age, and wished Maria was real so she could tell her all about it.

'We took it off-line as soon as we isolated the problem.'

Harry and the Doctor both nodded as BritTrack's Chief Information Officer explained about trace-backs and diagnostics. They had already been given a run-down of the situation so far, including the numbers of trains late, lost, derailed, and even crashed together. Seventeen pa.s.sengers and seven crew from various trains had been killed. Another thirty or so people were in intensive care. Harry and the Doctor were now standing outside the main computer suite at the Euston information processing centre.

'As far as we know,' the CIO said. 'It's chaos. We've no communications, nothing. The system schedules everything.

Signals, trains, rolling stock movements everything.' Neither Harry nor the Doctor showed any reaction. They were both still shocked by the deaths and the picture of mayhem painted by the CIO's words. 'It even allocates the sandwiches to the buffet cars,' he confessed.

'A surfeit of BLTs in Skegness,' the Doctor muttered as he blinked his way out of his reverie. 'I think I had better examine the patient.' He pushed his way past the official and into the main computer suite.

'Are you sure you people are qualified?' the CIO asked Harry dubiously. 'I wasn't exactly expecting a doctor, you know.'

'He's not a physician,' Harry pointed out as he followed the Doctor into the room.

'Well that's a relief, at least.'

'But I am,' Harry called back rea.s.suringly over his shoulder.

Martin Carlson offered to take Sarah to lunch, but she declined saying she had to do some shopping. He seemed 105 willing to accompany her even so, but she managed to dissuade him. She was due to meet Gibson at one o'clock.

They met in a coffee bar off the Charing Cross Road. Gibson came in five minutes after Sarah, though she suspected he had seen her arrive and waited. He made a great play of asking if she minded him joining her. Sarah was not sure how convincing this was, despite the fact she had taken the last table. But she played along.

As they drank coffee, their sandwiches finished, Gibson said: 'There doesn't seem to be anyone watching us. Everyone at the nearby tables has moved on at least once, so unless they're operating in teams of two or more with X-ray eyes and super-hearing we should be okay.'

'Oh good,' Sarah said. 'Does that mean we can talk properly?'

Apparently it did. 'How's it going?' Gibson asked.

'I'm bored out of my mind,' Sarah told him. 'It's as if they all talk another language and follow strange tribal customs. They started by giving me a lecture on security and worked up to the details of how to cla.s.sify doc.u.ments to various levels of confidentiality according to content. The meetings seem to be opportunities to talk forever and then do nothing, and my desk is like one of those sound-proofed areas where they put telephones in cheap hotels.'

'Sounds like a typical hi-tech information company to me,'

Gibson said. 'No sign of it being a front for any sort of subversive activity, then?'

Sarah snorted in mock amus.e.m.e.nt. 'I doubt they'd ever get round to it. But the whole setup is bizarre.'

Johanna Slake had stayed just long enough to see who Sarah was meeting. The tracker chip embedded in Sarah's pen had led Johanna straight to the coffee bar and she had stayed hidden behind Sarah. She was not interested in what they discussed not yet.

She watched Sarah leave the coffee shop and head back towards the I2 offices. Johanna checked the tracer was giving a true reading, adjusting the calibration minutely as she watched Sarah round a corner and disappear from sight. Then she waited for Sarah's contact to leave.

106.

The man left a few minutes later. He headed back towards the Charing Cross Road, towards the nearest public telephones.

Johanna was ahead of him. She had antic.i.p.ated this was the way he would go, and made her way quickly to the line of phones. There were two free. She stood for a moment in one of them, then moved to the other as the man approached.

He went for the vacant phone, and Johanna watched him through the gla.s.s of the adjacent booth. Satisfied, she headed back to her car, parked several streets away.

Gibson called in his report, confident that he had not been followed. The bug Johanna had inserted into the telephone receiver relayed his voice to the digital tape deck in her car. It a.n.a.lysed every word and phrase, looking for meanings and implications. By the time Johanna reached the car, there was a full semantic a.n.a.lysis of Gibson's report waiting for her.

107.

08.Set-up

Eleanor Jenkins phoned Peterson. She could not bear to see him again so soon. The previous night had been traumatic to say the least, and despite four showers she could still feel her skin crawling.

Eleanor had been recruited to the Little Brothers while at university. She was a member of one of the radical political groups, mainly because her boyfriend had joined. He probably believed in some of their aspirations. She had stayed active in the group after she ditched him, more out of habit than fervour.

She did some of the organizational tasks, and arranged for the magazine to be printed. She also hosted the visiting speakers, almost always in her own flat and regardless of gender.

Then the Brothers had found her. And although Peterson was the most important person she had hosted, she could not remember any she found as repulsive. So she called him.

His voice oiled her ear as he spent what seemed like forever saying how much he liked her voice. Eleanor suspected he preferred his own. It wasn't difficult to steer him into telling how clever he had been to rearrange the Hubway opening.

It was simplicity itself to suggest there should be quality refreshments laid on and have him believe it was his own idea: 'You know you asked me to cast around for someone to do the catering,' she sneaked in during a lull in the monologue.

Peterson seized on it. He only needed to hear her remind him about his request for a champagne buffet and he was off again.

'So I'll get a quote from my friend then, shall I?' she asked loudly.

'Yes, by all means, El. Of course I have put out feelers myself.' He paused, perhaps expecting her to affect a giggle.