Apocalypse Page 24

  Purcell shook his head.

  ‘No, Mr. Warner. You have to get out of here. I must remain.’

  ‘Why?’ Lopez asked. ‘What difference does it make? You’ll be safe if you come with us right now.’

  Again the faint smile, as though Purcell were wistfully wishing that it were true.

  ‘Yes, I would be safe. But then everything that I have achieved so far would have been for nothing.’

  ‘The codes, and messages,’ Ethan said. ‘You left two trails.’

  ‘One for you, designed to help you learn something of what has happened,’ Purcell nodded, ‘and another for the person who is hunting me down as we speak. He is a fool, albeit a dangerous one who will not stop until he finds me.’

  ‘Why did you write that date and time on the wall of the apartment in Hallendale?’ Lopez asked. ‘What happens at 8:48?’

  ‘This evening, at 8:48,’ Purcell said, ‘marks the end of everything and justice for my family.’

  Ethan took a deep breath.

  ‘Okay, you’d better lay down what you know for us in a real hurry.’

  Charles Purcell reached down to the earth at his feet and picked up a small but chunky digital camera. He spoke slowly, his timbre conveying the gravity of his words.

  ‘You must listen to me extremely carefully, for what I’m going to tell you will often sound impossible or go against your common sense and intuition, but trust me, every word is true.’ He waved the camera in his hand. ‘In this camera is a drive that contains a digital record of a series of news feeds, and thereafter images captured through the camera’s own lens that extend six months into the future.’

  The silence permeating the Everglades seemed to deepen around Ethan as he processed what Charles Purcell was saying.

  ‘That camera has seen six months into the future?’ Lopez asked incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ Purcell said. ‘I have seen everything that has to happen to ensure that those responsible for the murder of my family, and for many other crimes, are brought to justice.’

  Ethan took a pace forward.

  ‘Copy the drive,’ he said, ‘then you won’t have to—’

  ‘Freeze!’ Purcell shouted, his voice causing a small flock of storks a hundred yards away to take flight, their wings flapping into the distance. ‘Don’t move another inch.’

  Ethan looked down at the ground for any sign of buried mines or explosives, but the sand was unmarked apart from Purcell’s own footprints.

  ‘Copying the drive will be ineffectual in altering the space-time continuum,’ Purcell went on. ‘You must listen to what I have to say whilst there is still time.’

  Ethan took a pace back from Purcell, who continued.

  ‘The people who have pursued me, and who appear now to be hunting the two of you, work for a company called International Rescue and Infrastructure Support.’

  ‘IRIS,’ Ethan replied. ‘We know all about them.’

  ‘Not all about them,’ Purcell assured him. ‘Joaquin Abell has for years been filtering government and taxpayer charitable donations into the building of a complex beneath the Florida Straits. I was contracted to IRIS as a freelance consultant, working on what Joaquin claimed was a series of electromagnetic devices designed to produce an alternative source of fuel that could save humanity from the impending fossil-fuel crisis known as “peak oil”.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘The point where the consumption of fossil fuels totally outstrips supply,’ Purcell replied. ‘It will start with rising fuel costs, then economic shocks, rapid recessions, and end with the lights going out in all of the world’s industrialized nations.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Lopez uttered. ‘It’s already happening.’

  ‘Yes, but the project Joaquin has engineered has nothing to do with generating energy,’ Purcell said.

  ‘You had evidence,’ Ethan said to Purcell, ‘documents you stole from IRIS that contained proof of Joaquin’s fraud. They were destroyed in an attack on a courthouse in Miami earlier today. Did you make a copy of them?’

  Purcell’s features hardened, a brief glimpse of the iron will that still resided within.

  ‘I did,’ he replied.

  ‘Where is it?’ Lopez asked quickly. ‘If we can present it to a court as evidence, then we have a chance to bring Joaquin to trial for what he’s done.’

  Purcell glanced around him as though somebody was listening.

  ‘That is a secret that I shall take to my grave,’ he replied finally. ‘Only time will tell.’

  ‘That’s not good enough!’ Lopez snapped. ‘You want this guy to go down for what he’s done, then you need to start helping us!’

  ‘Joaquin pretends that he’s a philanthropist,’ Ethan said, ‘and right now the entire world believes that. You knew that wasn’t true and you did something about it. Why? What started all of this?’

  ‘Joaquin Abell is not a scientist and has no idea that, to me, his deception was obvious from the moment I started working for him,’ Purcell explained. ‘When I first visited his site I saw that the electromagnets he had built were enormous and the tokamak structure was clearly designed to contain something of immense power; but nothing that he was doing looked relevant to nuclear fusion. After a couple of years, Joaquin’s lead scientist was killed in what was called a “tragic car accident” and I was offered a more permanent, on-site role.’

  ‘What was he really building?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Joaquin had justified his fiddling of the taxpayer’s money by saying that a source of free, clean energy would repay humanity back a million times, and most of his employees were happy to believe that. But when I saw what he’d created, I knew that he had no such repayment in mind. What he was building was a device to see through time, and he’d built it purely so that he could see the future and profit from it, both financially and politically. What Joaquin has created is a black hole, here on earth, contained within a vacuum chamber surrounded by electromagnets that keep the black hole suspended in place.’

  Lopez stared at Purcell for a long moment.

  ‘I thought that black holes sucked things in and destroyed them?’

  Purcell shook his head.

  ‘No. Black holes do not suck anything in at all. They possess such enormous gravity that they wrap space, and with it time, around themselves so tightly that, once you’re close enough, all paths lead to the black hole’s center. Nothing, not even light, can escape. The point of no return is known as the “event horizon”, and if you’re stationary alongside the horizon, you would perceive time as being “twisted” along with space. Essentially, the closer you get to a black hole’s event horizon, the slower time will run for you, while time beyond your perspective will appear to run faster. Joaquin’s genius, if you could call it that, is to get these cameras to do the viewing for him.’

  ‘So why doesn’t he just use the thing to win the lottery?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Because it would be too obvious,’ Purcell said, ‘and because Joaquin’s ambitions don’t stop at money. He has his eyes on changing the world, with him at its head.’

  ‘How?’ Lopez asked. ‘Supposedly he’s all about helping the needy.’

  ‘That’s his cover story,’ Purcell replied, ‘and one he intends to stick with. However, his plan is not to just wait for disasters to come along so that he can sail in and rescue the needy. His plan is to create the disasters himself, and become the savior of mankind.’

  40

  Olaf Jorgenson crouched low on the bow of his airboat as it drifted silently on the still water, ignoring the swarms of mosquitoes that hummed on the heavy air. Through the swaying reed beds that rose like islands from the water, he watched as the big man with the eye-patch sat idly on the deck of his airboat and smoked a cigarette.

  Olaf scanned the island ahead and guessed that the man’s two accomplices had gone ashore. He had recognized them both, the Americans who had chased him back in Miami. He could not understand how they had arr
ived here in the Everglades before he had, but that could not be changed. Now his only thought was to overcome this unexpected adversity and complete his mission. Luck had favored him and he had spotted their airboat several miles back as he searched the Everglades for Charles Purcell. The news feeds that Joaquin had accessed had not been accurate enough to pinpoint the scientist’s location, but the images had been good enough to put Olaf within a few miles. Spotting the airboat with the two Americans aboard had been a shock initially, and then an opportunity.

  But there was a problem.

  They had guided their boat with unerring accuracy to this one tiny spit of land marooned amidst the wilderness. That could only mean one of two things: that they had already been in contact with Charles Purcell, or that somehow they had access to the same images as Joaquin Abell, visions of the future that had allowed them to find Purcell. Olaf could only assume that Joaquin’s missing camera was what had enabled them to move one step ahead of him and find Purcell in the middle of nowhere.

  Olaf would no longer be able to stay ahead of them. This had to be finished now, and then he would be forced to flee back to Joaquin’s yacht. Olaf intended to ensure that he took the contentious camera with him before Purcell could hand it over to the authorities as evidence that would sink Joaquin, and with him, Olaf.

  Olaf carefully used one of the emergency oars to push the airboat forward out of the dense reed bank, using his immense strength to shift the vessel and then letting the boat’s momentum on the water do the work for him. The boat drifted silently across the lagoon, closing in on the big man in the boat.

  It was rare for Olaf to encounter a man who was bigger than he was, and such an event required delicacy and planning. Much of Olaf’s impressive physique had been forged by the steroids he had for years forced into his unwilling veins, and the gains he had made in musculature had been paid for by the weakening walls of his equally inflated heart. Olaf was incredibly strong, but was only able to sustain his exertions for a short duration. As he had found out to his cost years before, his labored heart’s ability to pump oxygen into his grossly overgrown muscles failed him after a few minutes and his strength vanished as swiftly as it had arrived.

  A quick glance at the man ahead suggested that he was born large but did not work out. That might have satisfied Olaf, were it not for the large SEAL tattoo adorning the man’s shoulder. Impressive physical fitness and an almost psychotic will to succeed meant that this opponent would be incredibly dangerous. Worse, Olaf could not shoot him without alerting his companions.

  Only one thing was in Olaf’s favor. He was approaching from behind and to the man’s right, the side obscured by the eye-patch he wore. The big man reached down into a cooler by his side and lifted out a bottle of liquor. Olaf smiled, waiting and watching as the man took a deep mouthful from the bottle and wiped his lips across the back of his forearm. A drinker. His reactions would be slowed, his judgment impaired.

  Olaf looked down into the water around him. Although the surface was smooth and reflected the blue sky above, he knew that alligators and snakes swarmed in the murky depths below. To slip into the water now could be tantamount to suicide, and even if he were able to reach and board the boat ahead, doing so would quickly alert the former Navy SEAL to his presence.

  His only chance was to let his own boat slip alongside and then leap across and kill the man before he could turn to defend himself. Olaf quietly slipped a huge hunting knife from a sheath secured beneath the shirt on his back, holding the blade low against his thigh as the boat drifted silently closer. Ten feet. Eight feet. Six.

  The man took another long pull on his bottle, scanning the forest ahead intently, and oblivious to Olaf’s approach.

  Four feet. Two feet.

  Olaf crouched down, his legs coiled like giant springs beneath him.

  The boats’ hulls bumped together with a dull thump.

  Olaf thrust himself forward, almost spread-eagled in midair as he hurled himself onto the other boat’s deck. The big man responded instantly and whirled in his seat, with the bottle already swinging with impressive force and speed. The glass smashed into Olaf’s wrist with a jarring pain that sent the blade spinning from his grasp to splash into the water alongside the boat.

  Olaf slammed his head into the man’s chest like a freight train and they smashed down onto the deck together, the big man’s head cracking against the hard deck. Olaf saw his eyes roll up into his sockets and he raised a chunky fist ready to finish him off. To his surprise, the SEAL exhaled a foul blast of alcohol fumes and his head rolled to one side.

  Olaf screwed up his face in disgust. The impact had knocked the man out cold – he was probably already halfway there from the liquor. Olaf considered retrieving his knife from the water, but there was no time.

  Olaf made to roll the body off the boat and into the water, but then hesitated. The SEAL probably knew the Everglades well, enough so that he could be of use if any kind of law enforcement showed up.

  Instead, Olaf tore off a length of his own shirt and used it to gag the man. Then he stood up and walked across to the boat’s fuel tank, yanked the rubber feeder pipe out and strode back to the unconscious man. He heaved him onto his front and bound his wrists with the length of rubber hose, then vaulted back across to his own boat and pushed away from the shore, once again letting the momentum take him away downstream until he was sure nobody on the island would be able to hear the engine. Then he started it and turned the boat around, aiming for the far side of the island. He would come at them from there, and his first priority would be to silence Purcell.

  He looked down into the hull of the boat, where a Dragunov SVU-A sniper rifle lay in its case alongside an M-16 assault rifle and a small pile of hand grenades.

  41

  ‘What’s Joaquin’s endgame?’ Ethan asked Purcell, as they stood on the little spit of land. ‘What’s he going to do with this black hole of his?’

  Charles Purcell sighed.

  ‘Joaquin’s great plan is to use the enormous energy contained within his black hole to create seismic events in the deep-water channel off the coast of Puerto Rico. It’s a geologically volatile area, one that could easily be destabilized by the gravitational influence of Joaquin’s device.’

  Ethan and Lopez shared a confused glance.

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Ethan asked. ‘He’s going to wreck countries and hold them to ransom?’

  ‘No,’ Purcell shook his head. ‘He’ll appear to be the only private company willing to help developing countries hit by natural disasters because he’ll have foreseen the disaster and will be on the scene first, which will continue to increase his international popularity. But even that’s not why he’s doing all of this.’

  ‘What then?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Have either of you ever heard of something called economic shock-therapy?’

  ‘Economic enhancement, used to break communist state-controlled economies and replace them with capitalist free markets,’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s been the way forward for decades.’

  Purcell grinned tightly.

  ‘The way forward is one way of putting it,’ he replied, ‘but it’s also been the cause of the collapse of economies, the murders of millions of people and the transformation of governments into regimes as bad as anything communism had to offer.’

  ‘How come, and what’s this got to do with Joaquin’s insane plan?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Joaquin’s plan is a natural extension of economic shock-therapy. It happened under Reagan here in America, under Thatcher in the UK, under Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union, Pinochet in Chile . . . the list is endless.’

  ‘Wait,’ Ethan said, ‘you’re talking about privatization, right?’

  ‘At the expense of human rights,’ Purcell replied, ‘to the financial benefit of foreign governments and large corporations bent on securing the profits to be had. Essentially, economic shock-therapy is used to take over entire countries and bind them to debts that the
y cannot possibly repay.’

  Lopez began putting the pieces together.

  ‘You think that Joaquin is targeting countries hit by disasters, providing them with funds to rebuild, and then tying them into debts to IRIS.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Purcell nodded. ‘This is what economic shock-therapy is designed to do – to convert a struggling country’s economy to free-market capitalism, with loans provided by organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But in doing so the country in question is placed forever in thrall to world markets and its own debt. A country’s natural resources are partitioned out to major corporations who have a stake in the funding, so the country loses its own natural wealth and the profits that it could have reaped from those resources. No self-respecting government would admit to being so heavily indebted to a private company, so IRIS would remain free from public criticism of his charitable status.’

  ‘Iraq,’ Ethan said, as images flashed in his mind of the destruction wrought there by the coalition forces. ‘Huge sums of money were handed to private companies by our government to rebuild Iraq, but instead of hiring local people the big corporations went in with their own staff, did nothing, blamed their lack of activity on insurgent attacks and then left. Before we even got there the oil fields had been divided up between international petrochemical companies. Iraq never needed rebuilding at all until it had the crap bombed out of it, and we saw half of the population out of work, while foreign corporations kept their staff in luxury compounds. The supposed handing back of the oil fields to the Iraqi people is just a thin veneer, a corporate subterfuge – America owns Iraq’s oil because we own their debt.’

  ‘And Joaquin Abell intends to do something similar,’ Lopez surmised, ‘but this time causing the catastrophe that drives the economic change.’

  ‘He intends to test the device off the coast of the Dominican Republic this afternoon,’ Purcell confirmed, ‘as a proof of concept to major figures in government and business. Once he has their support he can move forward and start lobbying Congress. The lawmakers will easily be won over by the colossal advantage the IRIS device will bring to American supremacy, both economically and militarily, and Joaquin will almost certainly engineer the nomination of a suitably obedient president. Anybody who opposes him will be branded in the same way that anybody who opposes unbridled capitalism: as un-American or unpatriotic. Joaquin needs to make a lot of money to fill the gaps in IRIS’s accounts, to replace the money he has laundered over the years to build his device. Holding entire countries to debt is the perfect way of doing that. If he achieves his goal, there will be nothing to stop him, because the missing money will have been replaced, and IRIS will appear to be saving lives instead of destroying them.’