Strike a Match 5 Page 2

  “And he created the A.I. which caused the Blackout?” Woodley asked.

  Atherton gave an agitated sigh.

  “Mitchell?” Weaver said.

  “There never was an A.I., not in that sense,” Mitchell said. “A couple of academics were in London to present a mathematical principle which would revolutionise research in the field of artificial intelligence. Marr sent killers to assassinate them and to steal the research before it was distributed. The assassins failed. Marr let loose a digital virus to wreck London, so as to give a second hit-squad a chance to finish the job. The virus got loose, went wild, and spread beyond anyone’s ability to control until it was finally stopped by the EMPs generated by the nuclear warheads.”

  “How do you know this?” Woodley asked, the cracks in his voice matching the cracks appearing in the coalition. “And how is it I’m only hearing of it now?”

  “It was only an unsubstantiated theory,” Atherton said airily.

  “Even so, I should have been told,” Woodley said. “We are supposed to be partners, yet you are keeping secrets from me.”

  “You’re being told now,” Atherton said. “Last month your responsibilities stretched no further than fixing the energy crisis.” He pointedly peered at the nearest dim lantern. “I am still waiting to see the results.”

  “If I may?” Mitchell said. “Over the years, we’ve picked up a clue here and there, but it wasn’t until the last few months that we were able to connect the disparate pieces of this conspiracy. The assassination attempt, Longfield’s failed coup, the attack on Calais, the corruption within the police and the Railway Company, it’s all connected, and connected to the Blackout.”

  “By this lunatic you call Marr?” Woodley asked.

  “He’s almost certainly dead,” Weaver said. “If he were between fifty and seventy at the time of the Blackout, he would be between seventy and ninety now.”

  “I am seventy-one,” Woodley said.

  “It’s not just his age which hints at him being dead,” Mitchell said. “We only learned of this a few months ago, and we’ve had to guess at some of the details. Before the Blackout, Marr hired programmers and scientists from across the world. They lived, and worked, in a compound near the Black Sea. Among those coders was a couple. About seventeen years ago, she had a child, a daughter. Eleven years ago, the couple fled the compound, and made it all the way to a refugee camp in Kent. One of Marr’s agents, the man we know as Emmitt, followed and tracked them down.”

  “I know that name,” Woodley said.

  “I should hope so,” Atherton said. “He was linked to the assassination attempt, Longfield’s coup, the Railway Company’s treachery, and the attack on Calais.”

  “But he’s dead, yes?” Woodley asked.

  “He is,” Mitchell said. “Eleven years ago, Emmitt used a biological agent to kill the family which had run from Marr’s compound. Thousands of refugees died as collateral damage. Here’s the twist. Emmitt was only interested in the child because he believed her to be Marr’s daughter. We don’t know the circumstances behind how the child was conceived, and it is possible the child was a genetic copy.”

  “Do you mean a clone?” Woodley asked.

  “It’s a possibility, not a certainty,” Mitchell said. “His efforts at cloning were notoriously unsuccessful before the Blackout. It is possible he perfected it afterwards, though unlikely, and it doesn’t matter because that child died years ago. The body was found a few months ago, and has been buried. At the time, eleven years ago, Emmitt either wanted control of this child, or wanted the child dead. Back then, he thought the child had died. At some point in the last few years, he came to believe the child had survived. Last year, he came looking for her. It was due to that search that he was identified, pursued, and killed during the attempt to arrest him.”

  “What did he want with this child?” Woodley asked.

  “We don’t know,” Mitchell said. “But because Emmitt came looking for the child, we are certain Marr is dead. Since they’re both deceased, we have to guess at their plans. Marr had a vault in Switzerland, somewhere near Zurich. He knew that his digital virus might get out of control. He knew there might be a global catastrophe, though we doubt he expected it to be as severe as it turned out. In this vault, he stashed a failsafe. A back-up. Over the years, that’s taken on mythical proportions, but it’s probably some weapon system.”

  “So this gang, they’re all in Switzerland?” Woodley asked.

  “For a time, we thought they were,” Mitchell said. “And perhaps they were, once. They’ve been moving around a lot, but never strayed too far from Switzerland. They had access to a lot of weaponry. Assault rifles, anti-air missiles, and mortars. We know some of this was Soviet era stock sitting in warehouses along the Black Sea. With these guns, they armed gangs of bandits until there were only three major groups left, the three groups which launched the attack on Calais. Their strategy was to remove any threat from central Europe. Not just the threat of bandits, but also the threat presented by another organised state that might emerge from the ruins. Meanwhile, over here, they kept us fighting ourselves when we weren’t fighting pirates. They organised coups and conspiracies, and the plagues which swept through people and crops.”

  “But who is running them? Where are they?” Woodley asked.

  “Who doesn’t matter,” Mitchell said. “They were always a very small group, which is why they had to use the consolidated terrorist tribes as their foot soldiers in Europe. It’s why they corrupted those who gave orders to the police and the Railway Company. Each scheme we thwarted reduced their personnel and resources. With each failure, they had less time to plan their next attack. They slipped up. We know they’ve moved their base of operations a number of times over the last two decades. We know they’re producing their own glass. We know they’re refining their own diesel. We know, during the attack on Calais, they gave their radio and refuelling teams German-language maps. We know they’ve rendezvoused at old campsites. But the fuel turns a search radius into an address. The impurities act like a fingerprint. We took samples from the supplies captured in Nieuwpoort and hunted down old reference documents against which to compare them. The fuel came from the Vienna Basin.”

  “I thought Vienna had burned down,” Atherton said.

  “The basin extends beneath Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia,” Mitchell said. “The scientists gave me a search grid which centres on the Austrian town of Matzen. It’s an ancient place with an equally ancient castle, run as a luxury hotel before the Blackout, and which features on all the tourist maps.”

  “I’m sorry, perhaps I’m missing something,” Woodley said, utterly unapologetically. “Where’s the actual proof? Where’s the evidence? It sounds to me as if you’re suggesting we send all twenty-five of our tanks a thousand miles into Europe on a hunch.”

  “Eleven tanks,” Atherton said. “The others are only suitable for training.”

  “The report said twenty-five, with another thirty due to be operational before spring,” Woodley said.

  Atherton gave an exaggerated sigh of exasperated superiority. “You do understand the concept of disinformation, Craig? They had agents in the police, the Railway Company, and who knows where else, but you certainly can’t have forgotten they caught a spy in Dover at Christmas. Regardless, Mitchell isn’t proposing to send a tank anywhere. Not yet.”

  “The army are going to push south, towards the Med,” Mitchell said. “The navy are making a big deal about an expedition to the inland sea with the goal of pushing into the Black Sea by autumn. Any spies still lurking in Britain, and any still-loyal radio-teams in France, will assume that’s our focus. I’m taking a small team by boat into the Baltic. We’ll go ashore in Poland and drive south to Matzen. It won’t be hard to find a smoke-belching oil refinery. We’ll deploy a radio team in southern Germany, and another in Belgium. Once I find their refinery, the location will be relayed, via the radio teams, back to our lines.”

>   “And that’s when we send in the tanks?” Woodley asked.

  “We’ll send in a plane to destroy their base with a missile,” Atherton said.

  “What plane?” Woodley asked.

  “The B1-B Rockwell Lancer the reclamation team in Suffolk restored,” Atherton said.

  “That’s one of the USAF planes we promised to give back to the Americans,” Woodley said.

  “And they shall have the plane,” Atherton said. “But after we’ve given her a test flight.”

  “This plane hasn’t flown?” Woodley asked.

  “Not yet,” Atherton said.

  “Do we have pilots?” Woodley asked.

  “The two USAF pilots who were assisting in the restoration,” Atherton said.

  “Are you saying the Americans know about this?” Woodley asked.

  “They don’t not know,” Atherton said. “Their politicians wish to maintain plausible deniability.”

  “You told them before me,” Woodley said.

  “Look at this from a different perspective,” Atherton said. “We’re not risking our plane, or our pilots, or burning our fuel. If Mitchell is unable to find the target, or if the plane won’t fly, we can still send our tanks east. But if we can neutralise this enemy with one flight, and with one missile, the diesel reserved for the tanks can be used by our farmers. Imagine how many extra fields we could plough, and not just in Britain, but in France, too. Not only would rationing end, but we would have a feast at harvest time. That won’t be very long after the election, whichever of us wins it.”

  “We’ve identified a runway we can use in Belgium,” Mitchell said. “The plane will fly light to there as its test run. If all’s well, it’ll refuel and load the missile. The radio teams will set up beacons to guide the plane to Matzen, and I’ll use a laser designator to make sure the missile hits its target. The plane will take off at dawn. We know the enemy used anti-air missiles to target our ships, but as this will be the first flight for twenty years, and the first attack on their stronghold, we don’t think they’ll be prepared for an aerial assault.”

  “What kind of missile?” Woodley asked. “I want to be clear, are we talking about a nuclear warhead?”

  “It’s just a conventional explosive,” Atherton said. “The toxic fumes from a refinery fire will force any survivors to flee. They will have no more fuel, and no access to supplies. It is low risk, and very high reward.”

  “There is no such thing,” Woodley said. “Twenty years ago, I was a dentist who was forced to become a battlefield medic, but I remember the proclamation when we were told there’d be no more armies. We were going to build a peaceful world. First came the navy to protect us from pirates, then the Marines to secure the shore. Now we have a conscript army. We have tanks. Our first flight in twenty years will be a bombing mission. Where will it end?”

  “Hopefully with tourists flying to the pyramids for a holiday,” Atherton said. “I would like your support.”

  “If I don’t give it, the mission will take place anyway,” Woodley said. “If it fails, I will share the blame. If it succeeds, I won’t get the credit whether I support you or not.”

  “This is one of those times where we must set aside politics,” Atherton said.

  “Then it would be the first,” Woodley said. “You swear these are just conventional warheads?”

  “Of course,” Mitchell said. “Anything else would be unthinkable.”

  Unthinkable. The word ran around Mitchell’s head as he left Highcliffe. Yes, what he was planning was unthinkable, but it was unthinkable that this twenty-year war could be allowed to continue for another minute more. A conventional warhead would only scatter their enemy. The survivors would regroup, and the cycle would begin again. No, there was one chance to bring peace, but it would require him to do the unthinkable even if it meant no return. He headed back to the road to catch a cab back to Twynham so he could see his daughter and say goodbye.

  Part 1

  A Burning Passion for the Arts

  Dover and Twynham

  25th January

  Chapter 1 - Showing Today

  The Excelsior Cinema, Dover

  Inside Dover’s Excelsior Cinema, flickering lights cast dancing shadows in a tiered chamber almost completely absent of furniture.

  “Well, yes, Josiah,” Sergeant Elspeth Kettering said. “You have been robbed.”

  “It’s a disaster,” Josiah Braithwaite said. The portly owner of the cinema, turned grain silo, turned refugee camp, turned theatre, which had just finished re-conversion back into a cinema, exuded a sweaty glow which matched the gloss paint on the walls.

  “How many seats should there be?” Constable Ruth Deering asked.

  “Three hundred down here,” Braithwaite said. “There are two hundred upstairs, but they weren’t touched.”

  Ruth glanced back up at the balcony, then at the rows of chair-backs missing their seats. Only ten seats remained, all in the front row, though the fabric had been slashed so the wooden base could be removed, leaving the rough wool padding scattered about the crime scene.

  “It is a very interesting case,” Kettering said. “Very interesting indeed. Why don’t you gather your staff in the foyer, Josiah? We’ll come have a word in a sec.” She patted the portly man on the arm and ushered him to the door. When he’d gone, Kettering turned to Ruth, who was examining the ten seats which hadn’t been stolen. “You can tell a lot from blood splatter,” Kettering said. “Wool splatter, not so much.”

  Elspeth Kettering had been a police officer in Dover before the Blackout. She’d been born in the city and been married here. After the Blackout, it was where her children had been born, and, more recently still, where she’d buried her husband. He’d died young, like so many in their toxic world, but she’d continued walking her old beat, refusing promotion to the big city in order to serve her hometown.

  Ruth, by contrast, had only been in Dover for three months, and had only left the police academy two months before that. For her role in preventing the assassination of the prime minister, she’d been given an early promotion to full constable, and been sent to Dover to learn a more local kind of policing. But Calais had been attacked. The war had begun. Crime hadn’t stopped, though it certainly had changed.

  After the Blackout, Dover had become a clearing hub for European refugees and then traders and scavengers. After Calais came under siege, it had become a staging camp for the military. Now that the enemy’s advance had been broken, restrictions were slowly being lifted. Businesses were re-opening, though this cinema wouldn’t unless Mr Braithwaite seriously bent the meaning of standing room only.

  “There are three hundred seats,” Ruth said. “But the ten closest to the wooden stage aren’t missing. The covers of those ten seats have been slashed. The padding has been left behind, and the metal frame is untouched, but the wooden base of the seat was taken. Judging by the size of the frame, the missing wooden panel is about fifty centimetres wide and long, with a depth of about five centimetres.” She held her hands in front of her. “I suppose I could carry ten in a stack.”

  “Then you need to spend a bit more time in the gym, and a little less time in front of that screen Mr Isaac gave you,” Kettering said.

  “There are such things as documentaries,” Ruth said. “How else am I supposed to learn what a shark looks like?”

  “Jaws is not a documentary,” Kettering said.

  Ruth said nothing, but continued her mime as she walked her imaginary stack of wood to the fire door at the back of the theatre. “Ten at a time is easy enough, but I’d need someone to stack the load in my arms and to hold open the door. It’s definitely a two-person job.”

  “Minimum,” Kettering said. “Do you see the scuff marks on the floor near the door?”

  “I do, and I was just getting to those,” Ruth said. “The missing chairs were brought down here and stacked near the door. Based on the frames, and the bolts on the floor, they were of the same construction as th
e seats that were slashed. They were built in pairs, with a half-upright between the two seats. I think one person could carry a pair down to the front, but only after they’d been unbolted. That would have taken all night, so why not finish the job and unbolt the last ten?” She tried the fire door. “Unlocked. It leads to a corridor. There are stairs upstairs, probably to the balcony, but there’s a door leading outside, and it’s also unlocked.” She opened the door and checked the frosted alley before returning to the auditorium. “There are wheel marks out in the slush. I think they belong to a bicycle cart with thick leather tyres nailed in place. The cart is narrow, but tall, and has wooden sides and a cloth roof. It’s pulled by two bicycles in a staggered harness so the left is slightly in front of the right. Both bikes were painted red with old house paint which has flaked in the cold.”

  “If you saw some paint chips, you should collect them as evidence,” Kettering said.

  “I didn’t look,” Ruth said. “I didn’t need to because I know who did it and I think I know why. Shall we go and arrest him?”

  Nine employees had gathered in the cinema’s foyer and stood beneath the disapproving eyes of Paddington Bear. The hand-painted poster, and its three nearly identical copies, took pride of place on the pillars facing the doors. Demoted to a wall by the wood-framed ticket booth were gloomier posters for The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, and Remains of the Day, the other movies approved by the Copyright Board before the cinema’s re-opening was delayed by the attack on Calais.