Apocalypse Page 16

  ‘What, to get us killed?’ Jarvis uttered.

  Ethan looked at the bullet in the bag.

  ‘I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure: we didn’t advertise our presence and Captain Ahab’s boat here is just one among thousands moored in Miami.’

  Bryson ignored Ethan’s flippancy. ‘Did you find the aircraft?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lopez nodded, ‘along with all of the occupants. And that’s what doesn’t figure. There were divers down there. They tried to ambush whilst we had our noses stuck into that airplane.’

  Bryson squinted at the flotsam now drifting on the ocean nearby.

  ‘We didn’t see any divers leave those speedboats.’

  ‘That’s because they were already there,’ Ethan said. ‘It was an ambush.’

  ‘But they couldn’t have known we would be here,’ Jarvis protested. ‘Unless somebody on Kyle Sears’ team is acting as an informer.’

  ‘The police?’ Lopez replied. ‘I thought Kyle’s team were kept out of the loop?’

  ‘They were,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘but we can’t guarantee that somebody with inside knowledge wouldn’t be keeping an eye on us.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Ethan said. ‘There was a buoy tethered to the tail of the aircraft wreckage, very small, but it could have held a camera.’

  ‘We need to find it,’ Lopez said.

  ‘You won’t,’ Bryson cautioned her. ‘The sea’s so choppy we could be right on top of it and not spot it. It would take hours.’

  ‘Hours we don’t have,’ Jarvis agreed.

  ‘Somebody must have been here before us.’ Ethan looked down at the bullet in the bag in his hand. ‘Purcell’s family were killed by bullets that were dipped in something called Rubidium-82,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping that these bullets have traces of the same compound.’

  Jarvis looked at the slug.

  ‘You think that Purcell’s being hunted by the same people who were shooting at us?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Ethan said. ‘Chances are the two are connected, and that could mean that Purcell is waiting for us to make that connection before he comes out of hiding. Once any doubt can be thrown on his role in the killing of his wife and child, he’ll be able to start fighting his own corner.’

  Lopez shook her head.

  ‘But he could have done that anyway, just gone straight to the police with all of this information instead of leading us on a chase and nearly getting us killed. What good will it do him if we, the only people who know about his possible innocence, get iced?’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know, but right now it’s all we’ve got for his motive. Somebody is hunting Purcell and us at the same time.’ A thought occurred to him and he turned to Jarvis. ‘What if Purcell saw into the future using somebody else’s equipment? We’re assuming he did it himself somehow, but he’s been working freelance since leaving NASA, right? Purcell might have only a limited amount of time to clear his name. He said he was going to be murdered, right? We got any idea who he was actually working for when all this started?’

  Jarvis nodded.

  ‘Some corporation called IRIS,’ he said. ‘He was privately contracted, so we don’t have any real details of what he was doing for them.’

  ‘I’ve heard of IRIS,’ Lopez said. ‘Big charity headed by that Joaquin Abell who’s always on television screaming for donations.’

  Bryson chimed in from where he was leaning against the wheelhouse.

  ‘IRIS is whiter than white, totally non-profit.’

  Jarvis’s cellphone trilled, the musical tone sounding strangely feeble amidst the vastness of the open ocean. Jarvis flipped it open and answered, listening intently for a few moments before he raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ The voice on the other end of the line warbled for a few moments more. ‘Okay, we’re on our way.’ Jarvis snapped the phone shut and looked at Bryson. ‘Head for shore, pronto. Something’s come up.’

  Bryson remained leaning against the wheelhouse.

  ‘Once we’re ashore that’s it; we’re done,’ he replied. ‘This trip’s already cost me a lot more than I bargained for.’

  Lopez turned to the captain.

  ‘We hired you for this,’ she pointed out, ‘and for a lot of money.’

  ‘Yeah, sure you did,’ Bryson agreed as he turned toward the wheelhouse. ‘And that money’s what I’m going to need to rebuild my goddamned boat!’

  Ethan saw Lopez’s crestfallen expression as Bryson stormed off up into the wheelhouse and threw the throttles forward angrily.

  ‘We’re done with him anyway,’ Ethan said to her before turning to Jarvis. ‘Who called?’

  ‘My office was left with the task of monitoring any evidence of Charles Purcell’s whereabouts. His name’s just turned up as a witness in a court case being held today in Miami.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Lopez said. ‘IRIS?’

  ‘One and the same,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘Looks like Purcell turned whistleblower on the company, sent documents to a prosecutor in the city. Could turn the case in the prosecution’s favor and expose corporate fraud by IRIS executives.’

  Ethan looked again at the bullet in his hand.

  ‘What’s the chances that we can get this bullet analyzed today?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Jarvis said. ‘In the meantime we need to get to that courthouse as fast as we can. There’s people there we need to speak to.’

  ‘Who?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘The prosecutor, a Macy Lieberman, and the defense lawyer. Turns out she’s none other than the wife of IRIS’s Chief Executive Officer, Joaquin Abell.’

  Ethan looked about them at the empty ocean and thought for a moment.

  ‘We get codes from Purcell hinting at future events,’ he said. ‘He’s seeing things that haven’t happened yet. Then people turn up here and try to kill us before we can figure out what happened to this downed aircraft. Even if they did have a camera out here on the ocean, they couldn’t have gotten out here so fast without knowing in advance that we would be here.’

  Jarvis balanced on the boat’s rolling deck.

  ‘Nobody on the police force could have placed a camera all the way out here without somebody knowing about it,’ he added. ‘That rules out a mole in Kyle Sears’ department.’

  Ethan was about to respond when he saw in the water a small, round object bobbing on the waves. He leaned over and saw a buoy half sunk in the water, its shape distorted by the impact of a bullet. The round, black eye of a camera lens looked out at him as the buoy slowly sank into the churning water.

  ‘Which means one of two things,’ Lopez surmised as Bryson turned the boat around to head back toward Miami. ‘Either Charles Purcell wants us dead, or somebody else is able to see into the future.’

  28

  RICHARD E. GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING, MIAMI

  June 28, 12:31

  Katherine Abell stepped out of the courthouse and closed her eyes as the sunshine caressed her face. Most all the television cameras had already dispersed, and the few that remained kept a respectful distance between themselves and the four minders lingering behind her. Some of the tension she had built up in the courtroom bled away onto the warm air as she focused on breathing from the pit of her stomach. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Yoga helped, but ultimately Katherine Abell felt as though she were struggling alone against an unyielding tide of self-serving litigation that threatened to overwhelm not just her career but the entire legal system.

  Fact was, half a lifetime spent defending victims of injustice had infected her with the corrosive frustration of being unable to shield her clients from the very laws that were supposedly designed to protect them. During her career she had seen the altar of American law defaced by those for whom greed held greater value than justice.

  In the modern age, the proud heritage of defending the innocent, prosecuting the guilty and maintaining the delicate balance between effective deterrent and appropriate punishme
nt had been bastardized into a crude business of making money from the crimes of the guilty and the misfortune of their victims. Lawyers no longer defended the presumption of innocence until the proving of guilt: they merely sought the exoneration of their client, regardless of guilt, in return for their fee and the reputation of invincibility it gave them on the circuit.

  Katherine opened her eyes and let the sunshine in but it carried no warmth or comfort, only the muggy weight of gathering storms. Since the Uhungu family had brought their case to the courts, Katherine had felt herself slowly sinking beneath the burden of a society that seemed to have collapsed into a paranoid maelstrom, where even acts of kindness were met with spite and malice.

  ‘It’s just not worth it,’ she whispered, the words falling unbidden from her lips, as though somebody else were speaking for her.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  She turned to see Peter Hamill standing beside her. His reassuring smile carried some measure of comfort, but she shook her head slowly.

  ‘Joaquin saved the lives of that family, and this is how they repay him.’

  Peter sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets.

  ‘That’s the way it is. It’s not justice, but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To make sure that they don’t get away with biting the hand that fed them.’

  Katherine was about to reply when she saw Macy Lieberman approaching them. The prosecutor carried herself with an arrogant sway of her hips and a laser-bright Hollywood smile that seemed to dull the sunshine. Fashionably oversized sunglasses shielded her eyes, glossy black discs that reflected the buildings and the sky above.

  ‘Not like you to take a break from the stand,’ Macy observed as she reached them, her own assistant, a young man named Michael, by her side.

  ‘I needed some air,’ Katherine replied, with the briefest ghost of a smile.

  ‘Me too,’ Macy replied as she fished a menthol cigarette from her Gucci bag. ‘It just gets so stuffy in those courtrooms sometimes.’

  Katherine held the brittle grin on her features but she didn’t miss the jibe.

  ‘Must be something to do with all the hot air.’

  Macy squinted at Katherine over the cigarette as she lit it, and puffed a thin cloud of smoke between them.

  ‘That’s cheap,’ she replied.

  ‘Like your case?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Macy smiled, the effort almost cracking her glossy lipstick. ‘We’re on the same side here really, aren’t we?’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘We’re both lawyers. We both represent people. We can’t help that they’re often blood-sucking scum who would take their own grandmother to court over a dime.’

  Katherine turned to face Macy, her fists clenched painfully as her nails dug deep into the palms of her hands.

  ‘Your clients are an impoverished family from south Miami,’ she growled. ‘And mine is my husband, who saved their lives. You don’t give a damn about either of them. All you’re interested in is the media coverage of the case and making sure you win, regardless of who’s guilty of what.’

  Macy sucked down another lungful of smoke and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh dear, we have hit a nerve, haven’t we?’ she purred. ‘Surely you must be confident enough of your husband’s integrity to be sure that he’s not guilty of defrauding the taxpayer?’

  Peter stood forward and raised a hand at Macy.

  ‘Maybe we should save this for the courtroom, okay? Nobody here is on trial.’

  Katherine said nothing, but Macy took another pace closer and pushed past Peter’s hand.

  ‘Everybody is on trial,’ she snapped back at him, before turning to Katherine. ‘They just don’t know it yet. I can’t wait to see the newspaper reports tomorrow, after we’ve blown IRIS’s dirty little game out of the water for all to see. You do realize, don’t you, Katherine, that your defense of a man who is little more than a petty criminal will raise suspicions that you yourself are a part of his fraud.’

  Katherine felt excess heat simmering beneath her skin.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to concoct any story to suit your case, Macy,’ she replied. ‘You’re like a tabloid, spouting bullshit from one day to the next and hoping that nobody will notice that you change your stories as fast as you invent them.’

  ‘Like your husband?’ Macy purred.

  ‘You disgust me,’ Katherine uttered, feeling suddenly nauseous.

  ‘What is it, Katherine?’ Macy probed. ‘Is there perhaps just a little part of you that suspects that your icon of the great and good, the much-worshipped Joaquin Abell, is in fact nothing more than a glorified fraudster? You picked your husband well, didn’t you? A corporate monster and a corrupt lawyer. I bet your kids will turn out as rotten as—’

  Katherine’s hand whipped out in one reflexive action and slapped Macy across the cheek with enough force to send the cigarette spinning from her mouth. Macy staggered backwards, her hand clasped to her face as passers-by stopped and stared at them.

  In a flash, the four minders were at Katherine’s side and glowering down at Macy.

  ‘You bitch,’ Macy hissed, but she smiled savagely as she looked at her assistant. ‘Did you see that, Michael?’

  ‘I did see that,’ Michael replied. ‘It makes me wonder if Mrs Abell is fit to take the stand in her husband’s defense.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ Macy said. ‘Maybe we should bring His High and Mightiness Joaquin Abell down here to the courtroom to stand trial himself?’

  Katherine stepped toward Macy. ‘You threaten him and I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what, Katherine? Are you threatening to assault me again?’

  ‘You provoked her,’ Peter intervened as he thrust himself between the two women and looked at Macy. ‘Is this the best that you can do? Force a confrontation and then use it to try to prove that your case has any validity? If so, you’re an even lousier lawyer than I gave you credit for.’

  Macy’s eyes shone with satisfaction.

  ‘We’ve got everything we need,’ she snarled back, ‘everything we need to bring down IRIS and Joaquin Abell with it.’ She looked at Katherine. ‘You know the most ironic thing about all this, honey? Until twenty-four hours ago even I had no idea just how dirty your husband was. I was all for an amicable settlement outside court, but having read these papers from Charles Purcell I’ll be damned if I’ll stop until IRIS is no more. I’m going to make it my life’s work.’

  Katherine refused to be intimidated.

  ‘Go for it. I’ll make sure you go down trying.’

  Macy turned and headed for her car, Michael in tow. Katherine watched them depart and then looked at Peter.

  ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ she uttered. ‘Whatever those papers are they can’t contain anything useful. Joaquin’s accounts clearly show that IRIS makes no profit, it’s not possible for him to gain financially in the way she’s described. Where would the money go? All he takes is enough to support our family from the estate he inherited from his father – everything else belongs to IRIS itself.’

  Peter sighed and rubbed his temples.

  ‘I think we’d better assume that Macy isn’t trying to just scare us into folding over the Uhungu case. That would be too aggressive, even for her. You heard what she said: she’s going to devote her career to bringing IRIS down.’

  Katherine watched as Macy’s bright-red Pontiac turned out of the lot and joined the traffic flowing toward 13th Avenue.

  ‘Only because she’s taking as fact the word of a wanted murderer. It’s as likely that the account details she has are faked. Maybe Purcell’s got a beef with Joaquin and drew up the papers to try to derail our defense.’

  ‘Or maybe, just maybe,’ Peter said delicately, ‘she’s actually got something on IRIS.’

  Katherine stared at him in shock, as though it were she who had been slapped. She was about to speak when she saw a tall man approaching her. He looked slightly rough around the edges, with scru
ffy, light-brown hair and gray eyes, and he was accompanied by an attractive, petite Latino woman who somehow managed to look friendly and dangerous at the same time.

  ‘Katherine Abell?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Ethan Warner,’ the tall man said, ‘and this is Nicola Lopez. We understand you’re the defense lawyer for IRIS in a trial here at the courthouse.’

  Katherine guessed who they were. Journalists poking their goddamned noses into business that did not concern them, and then reporting false stories back to their editors, all just to turn out what they euphemistically termed ‘good copy’.

  ‘The case is ongoing,’ she replied, ‘and I cannot comment on it.’

  ‘We’re not reporters,’ the woman named Lopez said. ‘Ma’am, we need to speak with you right now regarding a man named Charles Purcell.’

  Katherine glanced at Peter, who raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What would you know about Purcell?’ Peter asked the two strangers. ‘And if you’re not reporters and you’re not police, then who the hell are you?’

  It was an older, shorter man in a dark-blue suit who replied as he arrived behind Ethan Warner and flipped a badge at Katherine. Katherine saw the name Jarvis and a familiar-looking emblem.

  ‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ he said. ‘This is important, Mrs Abell. What we know could affect your defense. We don’t need to know anything about the ongoing case: it’s what we’ve got to tell you that’s important.’

  ‘In what way could it affect my defense?’ Katherine demanded to know. ‘The prosecution thinks they’ve got us over a barrel and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  Warner’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do they have that’s such a big deal?’

  ‘Papers,’ Katherine replied, ‘accounts that supposedly show that my husband’s company IRIS has been fiddling the taxpayer out of millions of dollars. She says they were sent to her by a man named Purcell, who’s wanted for murder. I argued that the warrant for his arrest invalidated any evidence he might have, but the judge ruled otherwise. They’re going to reveal the contents of the accounts when the court reconvenes.’