Forever (90 page)

Then there was silence.

Everything inside Stephanie seemed to
contract. 'No!' she screamed wih a dry, aching throat. 'Eduardo!'
And it seemed that her limbs were tearing themselves from her
hands, and that her muscles and bones and cartilige were stretched
to the point of snapping.

She thought: But I don't want to die! I'm
not ready to die yet!

'S-t-e-e-p-h-a-a-n-i-i-e-e . . .'

From above the sounds of traffic drifting up
from below, she could hear Johnny's bellow rising. Could it really
be him?

'H-a-a-n-go-o-n . . .'heyelled.

Her heart pounded wildly with hope. It was
Johnny. If only I can hold on a moment longer. . . and then another
moment. . .

Her eyes filled with tears. It was getting
more and more difficult not to let go. Her hands were slick with
sweat, her fingers and wrists and arms totally numb. It was a
miracle her grip hadn't loosened already.

All I have to do is hang on a moment longer,
she told herself. Just a moment longer . . .

That moment stretched into another moment,
and that moment into eternity.

S-t-e-e-p-h-a-a-n-i-i-e . . .

The memory of Johnny's voice was all that
kept her clinging there, fighting to keep her tenuous grip on life.
Battling to survive. For Johnny. My Johnny . . .

Suddenly she could hang on no longer.

Stephanie screamed, 'Nooooo!'

And then her hands loosened and she let
go.

The rest happened so quickly and
unexpectedly she was barely aware of it. Johnny's hand clamped
around her right wrist and he pulled her to safety. Once he had her
on the terrace, his strong arms closed around her. Holding her
tightly, he kissed her all over her face, saying, 'I love you
Steph. God, how I love you, my darling! It's all right now.
Nobody's ever going to hurt you again . . . ever . . .'

She listened to his soft, soothing words,
and suddenly she realised that the nightmare was over and they were
together.

Twenty-four hours had passed since Eduardo's
death. With no one left to perform the daily task of checking in
with Grupo da Veiga's sophisticated computer system, the virus
which had lain dormant for all these years suddenly activated
itself.

Unnoticed, it raced throughout the tentacles
of the far-flung system, criss-crossing the world through telephone
cables and fibre-optic lines and satellite transmissions. It jumped
from mainframe to supercomputer and on to individual terminals and
programmes. But only once it had spread to every corner of the de
Veigas' empire and had settled into every programme and disc did it
kick in and carry out its manifest destiny.

And then it happened.

Around the world, the entire de Veiga empire
began to self- consume.

It began as a minor glitch.

At Stockholm's Arlanda Airport, Greta
Stenmark, an airlines ticket agent, used the de Veiga-developed
Fleet Wing Airlines Reservations System to provide a business
traveller with a round- trip ticket to Mexico City. After the
computer printed the ticket, she took it out of the machine and
began to tear it along the

perforated edges.

'What in the world she began, and
stared.

For instead of containing flight
information, the ticket was a mass of incomprehensible garbage:
K87&?DNVCXW*Y + QVY%$.

She tapped on her keyboard, but now the
monitor was going haywire, too. And a moment later, the screen went
blank.

The virus spread like wildfire:

Within the hour, the entire Fleet Wing
Airlines Reservations System, used by six international and ten
national carriers - not to mention over 26,000 travel agencies
around the world - spat out nonsense and then went dead. The result
was chaos at every major airport. Passengers were stranded,
scheduled flights suddenly no longer existed, and crew manifests
disappeared, never to be retrieved. The computerised car rental and
hotel reservations systems, which were subdivisions of FWARS, went
next.

Within three hours, the entire FWARS System
itself ceased to exist. It was as though it had been swallowed up
by a black hole.

At each de Veiga factory, the computerised
robotics went berserk, performing their jobs with ever-increasing
and unstoppable speed -faster, faster, faster! - until, one after
the other, the complex, state-of-the-art machinery ceased to
function.

In France, Groupe Byi S.A., the country's
third largest insurance company, a de Veiga-controlled corporation,
electronically lost track of three billion dollars in investments -
not to mention one and a half million subscribers.

Funds and information which were lost
forever.

All electronic transactions on the Hong Kong
and Frankfurt stock exchanges, which had been designed by one of
the de Veiga subsidiaries, ceased to function, and then the system
itself vanished without trace.

Leaving nothing but useless hardware.

At Sitto da Veiga, the computer-run
artificial environment broke

down. The automatic plant sprinkler systems
created a flood while the temperature and humidity levels rose to
such great levels that the computers themselves burned out and the
residents fled outdoors. Then there was a tremendous explosion, the
entire glass city seemed to rock, and the complex shattered and was
flattened to its foundations.

The fallout was worldwide:

In every major city on four continents, the
automated tellers at all Banco de Veiga locations disgorged their
entire contents of cash in a single transaction - to the surprised
delight of whatever customers happened to be using them at the
time.

In eighty countries, de Veiga-owned
newspapers, magazines, and cable television systems stopped
printing and broadcasting.

On Grand Cayman, de Veiga and Associados
Trading LTD A was like a magician's trick: there one minute and
gone the next. Every computerised transaction and offering and
account simply vanished.

In Walnut Creek, California, Scientiflque
Cosmeceuticals lost all its formulas, test results, orders,
accounts receivable, shipping and client information, payroll - in
short, everything.

Organiza^aos de Caridade, the de Veiga
charity division which ran Children's Relief Year-Round, suddenly
disappeared.

In Paris, Tokyo, New York, and London, the
de Veiga real estate holding companies, which owned seven billion
dollars'- worth of apartments and office towers, no longer had any
record of their assets or tenants, loans or accounts.

In Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and the
Bahamas, the slot machines at every casino, hooked up to
centralised de Veiga computers, all hit the jackpot
simultaneously.

For all practical purposes, Grupo da Veiga
ceased to exist. In fact, in the words of trusted financial
analysts, it's as if it never existed in the first place.'

Stephanie and Johnny watched the picture
postcard view of Rio de Janeiro drop away and tilt as the Varig 747
climbed steeply into the sky. 'Think you're gonna miss Rio?' Johnny
asked.

Stephanie turned away from the window.
'Johnny,' she said with patient resignation, 'after the past five
days of police and government investigation and interrogation, do
you think I give a hoot if I never see a photo of Sugar Loaf
again?'

'They say time heals all wounds.'

'Maybe,' she sighed. 'But it'll be a cold
day in hell before these heal, I'll tell you that.'

'Well, there are two other things that might
make you feel a little better,'he told her.

'Really?' She sounded unconvinced.

'First of all, there's the matter of your
resurrection ... or your resurfacing.'

'I know.' She sighed gloomily. 'I've been
giving it quite a lot of thought.'

'Well, think no more. The minute we land at
JFK, every major newspaper and television reporter will be gathered
for a press conference.'

'Oh, no,' she groaned. 'Tell me it's not so,
Johnny,' she begged. 'Please tell me it's not so.'

He smiled. 'As the song goes, "Don't worry,
be happy". You don't need to say a word about longevity or CRY or
genetics. We've got eight and a half hours before we land in New
York, and that gives both our brilliant brains plenty of time to
come up with a satisfactory press release.'

'Yes, but Johnny! What do we sayV

'Simple. You went undercover in order to
trail and discover the identity of the world's most lethal assassin
- The Ghost. That will take care of any and all questions. As far
as Eduardo is concerned, all you have to say is that you happened
to be there when he fought The Ghost. Just be evasive about
anything specific right now. Tell them you're saving details for a
story.'

'Hmm,' she murmured. 'Not bad.'

'Not bad!' he bristled. 'I think it's damn
brilliant! Oh, and before I forget.'

He reached into his breast pocket, took out
a little green box embossed with the H. Stern logo in gold, and
handed it to her.

'What's this?' Stephanie glanced at him.

'Why don't you open it and see?'

She lifted the lid slowly. 'An emerald
ring!' she gasped. 'My God! Johnny - it must be at least two
carats!'

He grinned. 'Two and one-eighth to be exact,
but who's counting? Now, why don't you try it on? You know what
they say. If the ring fits, wear it.'

'It must have cost a fortuneV she
protested.

'Actually, it didn't. Or did you forget that
Rio's the gem capital of the western hemisphere?'

She said, 'My hero, the bargain hunter.' But
her voice was warm and devoid of sarcasm. Slowly, she took the ring
out of the box and held it up to the light. The tonalities of the
various layers of thin green strata were incredible.

Solemnly he took it from her and slipped it
onto her finger.

'What do you know?' she said in amazement.
'A perfect fit!'

He grinned. 'Don't forget. This isn't the
first ring I've bought you. Only, you gave the other one back.'

She undid her seat belt and kissed him
solemnly. 'This one,' she said huskily, 'is for keeps.'

THIRTY-TWO

Near West Cornwall, Connecticut • Inflight •
London, England

They tied the nuptial knot far from the
newshounds and celebrity watchers, in her grandfather's
library-cum-guesthouse where she had taken refuge after the
explosion at the Osborne. It seemed the appropriate place to get
married - she felt closest to her grandfather here. Perhaps, she
thought, he was an invisible guest, watching the ceremony. She
liked to think so.

Sammy was there, in sartorial splendour as
always, and Stephanie's producer, Ted Warwick. The rites, performed
by an Episcopal priest from nearby Roxbury, were brief and to the
point. The bride wore yellow and the groom, a dark suit.
Afterwards, they popped champagne, toasted happiness, and cut the
cake.

'Mazel tovP Sammy cried happily, and
draining his heavy hand-cut Baccarat champagne flute, flung it into
the fireplace, where it shattered.

Such wanton destruction of a glass costing a
hundred dollars per stem made Stephanie's insides curl, but even
more, she loathed being a party pooper. So she also cried,'Mazel
tovP and flung her empty crystal glass and watched it smash, and
then Ted and Johnny and the priest followed suit, all chorusing:
'Mazel tovP

'The rest of the glasses are quite safe,'
Sammy assured Stephanie with a twinkle in his eye.

Ted said, 'Would you believe, he went out
and specifically bought those five glasses, and brought them along
just so yours

wouldn't have to get smashed?'

Sammy eyed Ted with disgust. 'Why did you
have to shoot your mouth off about that?' he complained in an
aggrieved voice.

'Ah.' Stephanie bent down and kissed Uncle
Sammy noisily on his forehead. 'You sweet man. I'm glad Ted told. I
love you all the more for it.'

The limousine arrived to take them to
Kennedy Airport, where they boarded the British Airways Concorde
and flew to London on their honeymoon.

When Stephanie and Johnny Stone got off the
Concorde at Heathrow Airport, the sun was shining, the air was hot,
and Stephanie was delirious.

When they came out of customs, a chauffeur
was standing among a coven of his brethren, holding up a sign with
the name STONE neatly lettered on it.

'We're Mr and Mrs Stone,' Johnny told
him.

'Welcome to London, sir. Madam.' He was an
extremely polite man straight out of the Edwardian age. 'Your
ground transportation has been arranged. If you'll follow me?' One
look from him and a porter piled up the luggage and he led the way
out, to a midnight-blue vintage Rolls Royce Silver Wraith waiting
in a No Parking zone.

'I think,' murmured Stephanie, 'we have my
dear uncle to thank for this.'

The ride into London was slow and stately,
as befitted a five-ton, five-mile-per-hour gas guzzler. Finally,
the huge car drove up to the front entrance of the Hyatt Carlton
Tower.

As the chauffeur carefully lifted their
luggage out of the trunk, Johnny said, 'Tell me something, Mr . .
.?'

'Bailey, sir.'

'Mr Bailey.'

'Oh no, sir.' The old man looked shocked.
'I'm called simply Bailey.'

Johnny nodded. When in Rome . . . 'Bailey,
then. Tell me, Bailey.' Johnny gestured up at the huge modern
structure, is this the best hotel in London?'

Bailey cleared his throat. 'Well, sir, it's
. . . er . . . certainly one of the most . . .' Bailey coughed
discreetly into his white-gloved hand.'. . . expensive.'

'I see,' Johnny said, enlightened. 'Thank
you, Bailey.'

'I'm going to kill him!' Johnny said from
between clenched teeth as he watched a porter collect their
luggage. 'I'm going to kill him!'

'Who are you intent on murdering, darling?'
Stephanie asked, unperturbed.

'Sammy. Your dear, sweet, lovable Uncle
Sammy, that's who!'