Bzrk Apocalypse (5 page)

look he knew he was being followed. His speed was being matched.

31

MICHAEL GRANT

He walked slower, stopped, pretended to admire the lamb; but

the presence did not pass him by.

He moved suddenly toward the produce department, walking

too fast, and he felt his pursuer keep pace.

Well.

Well. Ah. So.
So was it cops or killers?

His heart was heavy in his chest. His feet dragged a bit, just the

toes scraping on the tile. Shit, he’d just started to think maybe he was

out of it, that maybe the Armstrongs would let him go. He’d given

them a lot of good work, after all.

If not some hit man for the Armstrongs, was it police? Or even

MI5?

He stopped in front of a bin of oranges and rested his hand on

one, just feeling it. He liked oranges. Was this the last one he would

see for a long while? Or the last one ever?

He turned, resigned, not seeing the point really in continuing to

pretend. And there was his pursuer.

Now surely
that
was not a cop or MI5.

The man was well dressed, almost like a banker. Far too elegant

looking to be a cop. He was a black man, tall, thin, with glasses, and

when he met Anthony’s eyes he smiled. Like an old friend. At first

Bug Man felt himself relaxing, but no, no, that was a bad idea. A smile

meant nothing.

“You want something?” Bug Man asked. His voice was ragged.

Maybe the expensive suit hadn’t noticed.

“Anthony Elder?”

He nodded. What would be the point in lying?

32

BZRK APOCALYPSE

What about running? He could surely outrun this man.

“Are you here to kill me?”

The man was not surprised by the question. “Not at this time.”

He smiled. “But you will be taken for questioning by this time tomor-

row.”

“Haven’t done anything.”

“Oh, come now, you know better than that. People of our particu-

lar skin tone don’t need to be guilty of anything to be questioned by

the police, now, do we?”

Bug Man moved a step sideways, edging along the oranges. He

spotted the onions. The white ones.

“Met police will pick you up tomorrow, but of course it’s not

really for themselves. They’ll turn you over to the Security Service, to

MI5, for questioning.”

The man moved closer so he could speak more quietly. He smelled

of sandalwood and spearmint. Bug Man liked the cologne, didn’t like

the man belonging to it. He had a ridiculous urge to ask him whether

it was available for sale here at Tesco.

“They will detain you on a secret warrant, and in all likelihood

you will be given a chance to plead guilty so as to avoid a public trial.

They’ll put out a statement accusing you of something like embezzle-

ment. Something safe for public consumption. They’ll promise to let

you out in a few years, and they would, really they
would
. Except that

you’ll have been gutted by some hardened lifer in your cell long before

that. They’ll make sure of that. If they don’t, their cousins will—the

Americans.”

Bug Man licked his lips. This was a threat, but not just a threat.

33

MICHAEL GRANT

This was the beginning of an offer.

“Whatever they want, the Twins, whatever they want, I’m still the

best; I’m still fucking
Bug Man
.”

“The Twins?” The man made a crestfallen face, an act, a little

show that he was putting on. Bug Man wanted to punch him. “Oh,

yes, the
Twins
. Well, Anthony, this is not really about them. I’m not

able to tell you anything, really, but I can tell you that I don’t work for

the Twins.”

Bug Man took a breath. He’d forgotten to do that. “Who are you,

then?”

“My name is George. George William Frederick.”

He said it as if it should mean something to Bug Man. And it did

ping some distant, dusty strand of memory. But nothing meaningful.

It was a name out of a different time, Bug Man felt.

“You slept through history, didn’t you?” George William Fred-

erick said. “That’s a shame. History is everything important, really.

In any case, I’m here because the surveillance team that has been on

you for every minute of the last month is outside, in the parking lot,

drinking coffee in paper cups and eating HobNobs, confident that

you will soon emerge with your groceries. They’ll follow you home,

as per their orders, log your movements, and go off shift at eight p.m.

They won’t bother with physical surveillance after that; they’ll be

watching on the cameras they have in your home. Yes. So, as it hap-

pens, this would actually be an opportune time for you to follow me,

out of the back of the store, to a waiting car.”

Bug Man immediately ran through some of the more embarrass-

ing things that would have been observed by cameras in his home.

But he was mostly over the concept of privacy. The Twins had had

34

BZRK APOCALYPSE

cameras on him from the start of his employment by them.

“And then?” Bug Man asked.

George-With-Three-Names shrugged. “All I can tell you is that

an Armstrong hit team is also looking for the right moment to shoot

you, and tomorrow MI5 will bundle you off to prison where they or

the Americans will do for you, and the third alternative, the one I’m

offering you, is preferable.”

Bug Man knew the man was speaking the truth. Or at least

believed himself to be telling the truth.

George-With-Three-Names. George William Frederick. The

penny dropped.

George III.

The mad king.

“You’re BZRK.”

“Think what you like,” George said with a self-satisfied smile.

“I’m your way out.”

“You
are
going to kill me.” Bug Man was proud that he managed

to get the words out with only a minor tremor in his voice.

George tapped his waist. There was something there that was no

belt buckle. “If that were my instruction, you’d never know about it.

By the way, you’re not Roman Catholic, are you?”

“What? Church of England, I guess. But—”

“Good.”

Bug Man let it go. The point was, this wasn’t an assassination.

“Will I have time to say good-bye to my mother?”

George shook his head.

“Good,” Bug Man said. He nodded, smiled for himself alone, and

thought,
Okay then:
back in the game
.

35

(ARTIFACT)

An exchange of texts

Plath:
Back in NYC. What is our mission?

Lear:
Destroy AFGC.

Plath:
What does that mean?

Lear:
Find and kill the Twins. Destroy all AFGC records. Kill or wire

all AFGC scientists and engineers. Their technology must be obliterated.

Plath:
I’m to do this with 7 people?

Lear:
You had your vacation. Besides there is an 8th.

Plath:
Caligula?

Lear:
I’ve always found him very useful.

[Long pause]

Lear:
Time is short, Plath.

Plath:
Short why?

Lear:
AFGC very close to developing remote biot killer. Nature

unspecified. Days not weeks until it is weaponized. You must strike before

then. Ticktock. Death or madness.

36

ELAPSED TIME

The Gateway Hotel could not be repaired or rebuilt. The blowtorch

heat of the burning LNG carrier ship had burned everything capable

of burning. Natural gas burns at temperatures ranging from 3,000 to

3,6000 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s enough to incinerate furniture,

carpet, and paint. It’s also enough to melt glass and soften structural

steel. A human body is a marshmallow.

The Gateway was a black, bent, crumpled horror that reminded

some observers of a very old woman, bent by arthritis, in the act of

falling to her knees.

Buildings on either side had burned as well. Buildings farther

back in Kowloon, where the gas had rolled through the streets before

catching fire, were burned. Some had exploded, simply popped open

like rotting fruit. Kowloon Park was a field of ash.

The Chinese government had not been able to conceal the extent

of the disaster. It was visible from satellites and from the decks of

passing ferries and cruise ships. This was Hong Kong, not some pro-

vincial outpost. The whole world passed through Hong Kong.

The government had kept a faithful account of the dead and pre-

sumed dead. Now over a thousand. The “presumed dead” included

37

MICHAEL GRANT

those so badly burned that no more than a few bones with the mar-

row boiled away had survived and could not be identified.

Divers were still pulling bodies out of the blistered and twisted

hulk of the liquid natural gas carrier—the ship dubbed the
Doll

Ship
—that lay at the bottom of Hong Kong harbor. The Chinese gov-

ernment was nowhere near as forthcoming on this part. The official

story was that it had been simple error on the part of the ship’s cap-

tain. He was dead: he wasn’t going to argue.

No one spoke openly of the bodies of children found blown apart.

No one spoke of the fact that one of the ship’s spheres, and possibly a

second one as well (it was hard to tell), had never contained LNG but

had instead been something very much like a human zoo.

Crewmen who had managed to jump ship were picked up and

spirited away to a camp in far-off Qinghai Province. A small number

of British Royal Marines were held there as well. And twenty-four

civilians, neither crew nor soldiers—inmates on the
Doll Ship
—were

being held at a small local hospital that had been taken over by the

Ministry of State Security. The MSS had drafted a dozen radiologists,

neurosurgeons, and pathologists, snatched them up from cities all

over China and bundled them off to Qinghai.

Interrogations were under way.

Medical investigations were under way.

Neither was terribly gentle.

Chinese premier Ts’ai attempted to shut down the camp, ordered

all survivors to be executed and their bodies cremated. Which would

have worked had not the governor of Qinghai Province slow-walked

that order. He smelled a rat.

38

BZRK APOCALYPSE

Two weeks after the Hong Kong disaster, the MSS briefed certain

members of the Central Committee on their findings from the sur-

vivors. And on Ts’ai’s unusual and very out-of-channels effort to shut

down the investigation.

Twenty-four hours later the Chinese official news agency reported

that Premier Ts’ai had suffered a stroke. He was getting the best care

available, but doctors were not hopeful.

In fact, the top of the premier’s head had already been sawed off.

His brain had been carefully scooped out of his skull, flattened and

stretched, frozen, cut into handy one-centimeter sections, and was

now being examined minutely under a scanning electron microscope.

They found numerous strands of extremely fine wire—nanow-

ire—in segments as long as three centimeters, and a dozen tiny pins.

Similar wire had been found in the brains of survivors of the
Doll

Ship
.

A careful—but less drastic—autopsy of President Helen Falkenhym

Morales found no evidence of brain abnormality. Then again, the

single nine-millimeter bullet she had fired into her own head had

bounced around a bit inside her skull and made a mess of the soft

tissue.

The FBI director, a man who would not have fared well himself if

his brain had been carefully examined under an electron microscope,

pushed for the conclusion that the suicide was a result of depression

following the death of her husband.

FBI forensic experts produced a report stating that the videotape

purported to have been taken (by means unknown) directly
through

39

MICHAEL GRANT

the president’s eye
—the videotape that seemed to suggest that Presi-

dent Morales had beaten her husband to death—was a clever fake.

There was obviously no way for the images to be real. Presidents

did not commit murder.

Then again, they didn’t make a habit of committing suicide,

either. But that undeniably happened.

In a bit of historic irony, the authoritarian state of China discov-

ered the truth, while the American democracy had thus far missed

it.

But there were other investigations under way. A joint committee

of Congress. An independent blue-ribbon panel featuring a former

secretary of defense, a former senator from Maine, and the chairman,

a former president of the United States.

Only one of them had thus far been compromised by busy little

creatures laying wire.

Minako McGrath, who had been kidnapped and taken aboard the

Doll Ship
, was one of the few to escape entirely. With the help of an

ex-marine, former gunnery sergeant Silver, who’d been aboard that

floating horror show, she made her way back from Hong Kong to

Toguchi, Okinawa, one step ahead of the Hong Kong authorities.

But she found some changes when she finally reached her home.