Limit (175 page)

She peered indecisively into the corridors.

What would make sense?

What did people do when nuclear attack threatened? They built bunkers, underground bases for protection. That was because an atom bomb exploding up on the surface would destroy everything for miles around, but there was some chance of survival if you were in a reinforced bunker. Did that mean that the underground would survive at Peary Base?

Hardly.

She looked at her watch. Twenty to five.

Think, Minnie! An atom bomb was an inferno, devouring everything in its path, but even a doomsday device could be deployed more or less optimally. Towns and cities were built on the surface, never mind all the tunnels, cellars and sewers below ground. If you wanted to destroy New York with an atom bomb, your best bet was to drop it from above, but life on the Moon demanded a mole’s-eye perspective once you’d lived there for a few months. If you wanted to destroy the base,
really
destroy it, it had to be done from inside. The bomb would have to tear apart the bowels of the plateau, and only then blaze up over the crater.

It
had
to be down in the catacombs. Between the aquaria, the greenhouses, the residential quarters and the laboratories.

She glanced across at the airlock.

Hmm. She didn’t need to search beyond the airlock. There was nothing there.

Wrong! That was where the unused part of the labyrinth began, and some of the passages led into the canyon.

How had Hanna even managed to get into the igloo? Through the surface-level airlocks? It was possible. But if he had, wouldn’t Wachowski have seen him on the screens? Well, maybe he had. Maybe Hanna had just strolled in, all above board and official, but if so, why hadn’t he gone from the ground floor to the control room on foot? It was only a couple of metres. Why had he taken the lift?

Because he had come from underground.

‘Nothing here,’ said a tense voice over her helmet link.

‘Here neither,’ Palmer answered.

And how had he got into the catacombs unnoticed?

She walked towards the airlock. Hardly anybody ever went into the caves beyond. From here, the labyrinth burrowed endlessly into the massif and the crater wall beyond. It would have taken a whole army of astronauts weeks or months to search the labyrinth’s full extent, but DeLucas knew that the only logical place to look for the bomb was nearby, somewhere central, below the habs, and that meant the Great Hall and its immediate surroundings.

She went into the airlock, put on her helmet and pushed the button that would pump the air out. When the airlock door on the further side opened, she switched on her helmet lamp and stepped out into the forgotten corridor beyond.

Almost immediately, she stumbled across Tommy Wachowski’s corpse.

‘Tommy,’ she gasped. ‘Oh my God!’

Her knees trembling, she squatted down and played the cone of light over the body. His limbs were twisted as he lay there, his face deformed.

‘Leland!’ she called out. ‘Leland, Tommy’s here, and—’

Then she realised that the interior radio network didn’t work this side of the bulkheads. She was in no man’s land, cut off from the world.

She felt sick.

Gasping, she fell to all fours. Cold sweat broke out all over her body. It was only by a mighty effort of will that she succeeded in not throwing up inside her helmet. She crawled away from the dead man on all fours like an animal, into the corridor, where she closed her eyes and quickly took in a few deep breaths. Once she dared open her eyes again, she saw a shadow in the light from her helmet. It was just a few paces away.

For a second, her heart skipped a beat.

Then she realised that there was nobody standing there, that this was just a narrow gap in the cave wall. She squinted, her eyes still watering from retching, then pulled herself together and stamped on her fear. She climbed to her feet like a puppet, walked across to the gap and looked inside. She saw that it was more like a crack than a corridor. Not very inviting. Nowhere you would choose to go of your own accord.

And that, she thought, is exactly why you’ll go in.

She drew in her shoulders and pushed her way in until the roof dipped sharply down and she had to crawl. Her breath caught and choked in her throat as the fear fought back. Then there wasn’t even room to crawl. She had to lie flat on her belly,
feeling her heart hammering against the rock below her like a jackhammer. She considered turning back. This was going nowhere. Dead end. She would go one more metre. Gasping, she pushed herself on, following the scurrying disc of light, imagining what it would be like to be buried alive here, and then all of a sudden the passage opened wide and her fingers were scrabbling in a heap of rubble.

That was it. End of the line.

Or was it? She hesitated. The rubble looked odd. Not a natural pile. DeLucas stooped, and the light scurried over the stones and reflected off something buried in among them. She began to clear the rocks away with one hand, and then saw the surface of something bulky and metallic, smooth, machine-tooled, sleek.

It couldn’t be anything else but—

She shovelled the rubble aside madly, uncovering the thing. It was the size of a briefcase. She tugged it towards herself. There could be no doubt, now she saw the blinking display and the timecode running backwards from—

‘Oh no,’ she whispered.

So little time. So little time.

Frantic, clinging on to the bomb with both hands, she began to wriggle out. She had to get out of here, but the next moment her backpack was wedged against the low roof and she couldn’t move another inch. She was stuck fast.

Waves of panic came crashing together over her head.

‘You are crazy,’ said Shaw.

Her workspace was an identical copy of Norrington’s office, modest and functional, the only difference being a few hints that she had a life beyond the Big O. Photographs showed that Shaw had a husband and grown-up children, that little kids somewhere called her granny. Jericho thought of the exile of his own existence, and had a hard time imagining this flinty-featured security chief as someone with wants and needs, hormones, a woman who had whispered and moaned and cried out with pleasure, limbs entangled. Jennifer Shaw was in charge of the safety of the world’s largest technology corporation. He wondered what her pet name was. At home, within her own four walls, between the TV set and the dental floss, was she Bunnikins or Mummy Bear? He glanced outside quickly, but Norrington’s office was out of sight from here.

‘Doesn’t all that give you pause for thought?’ he asked.

‘What makes me pause is the thought that you’ve been abusing my trust,’ said Bunnikins, or Mother Bear, sternly.

‘No, you’re not looking at it right. We’re trying to
stop
someone from abusing your trust.’ He drew up a chair and sat down. ‘Jennifer, I know we’re on very thin ice here, but Norrington lied about his relationship to Vic Thorn. He obviously knew him better than he’s letting on. Why would he do that if he had nothing to hide? He may have had perfectly understandable reasons to take Hanna under his wing, but given all the resources he has at his disposal, how come he couldn’t identify an ex-CIA man?
Before
the moon trip! And once he noticed that we’d cracked his pass-codes, well – what would
you
have done, in his place?’

She looked levelly at him with her grey-blue eyes.

‘I would have nailed you to the wall.’

‘Quite!’ Jericho slapped his hand down on the desk. ‘And what does he do? Comes slinking in, lets the MI6 fellows haul him over the coals and then rushes off again. Now, you told me that it was Edda Hoff who passed on my theory that Thorn had been supposed to arrange the attack, and that she told the security services too. Shouldn’t we suppose that she told Norrington as well?’

‘She’s certain to have done so. Edda is extremely conscientious.’

‘But when I went into his office to talk to him about it, he acted as though it were a complete surprise! Even though, by that point, he must have known we were thinking along those lines. And don’t you get the feeling that all his activity is actually slowing down the Big O’s attempts to find anything out, rather than helping?’

‘I have told him that we’re fighting on too many fronts at once.’ Shaw gave him a level look. ‘And what should I do about that, in your opinion? Relieve him of his duties because of one or two odd bits of behaviour? Have his data searched?’

‘I think you know quite well what you should do.’

Shaw was silent.

* * *

Two doors down, Norrington was dialling a number on his phone, his fingers trembling.

He had made mistakes. He’d reacted without stopping to think. The noose was tightening, since they would find proof, and once they decided to put him through the wringer he would lose his nerve, he’d break down, he’d spill the beans. He was an idiot to have got involved in the whole thing to begin with, from the moment they offered him money to suggest Thorn for a second mission. But it had been so much money, so incredibly much, and there was the promise of much more once Operation Mountains of Eternal Light was done with, once the course of history
had been changed. He had been a quick learner in the school of corruption, and had risen to be one of Hydra’s chief planners, had fed the many-headed monster with information about the OSS, about Gaia and Peary Base. He had even come up with the shadow network which the conspirators used to communicate their murderous plans. A white-hot inferno, disguised as mere white noise. He had met Hydra’s immortal head, the brains behind the whole scheme, the criminal mastermind whose identity only six other people knew. It had been seven, but one of them had got cold feet. That was when Norrington had learned that if need be Hydra would sooner cut off one of its own heads than let it turn blabbermouth.

He
mustn’t
end up in Secret Service hands.

Xin picked up.

‘We’ve been found out, Kenny! Just like I told you we would be.’

‘And I told you to keep your nerve.’

‘You go to hell with your know-it-all remarks! MI6 blew Gabriel’s identity. Jericho and the girl hacked into my data. I don’t know when Shaw’s going to shut the trap on me – it could be that I already wouldn’t be allowed out of the building. Get me out of here.’

Xin was silent for a moment.

‘What about Ebola?’ he asked. ‘Do they know about her, too?’

Norrington hesitated. For some reason, he just couldn’t get used to Dana’s code-name.

‘They don’t know anything about her, nor about the rest of it. They just know that the bomb’s at Peary. But of course the next thing they’ll do is make use of all my data, and then they’ll take another look at everybody whose appointment I approved.’

‘Are you sure that Jericho’s been talking to Shaw about you?’

‘No idea,’ he groaned. ‘I hope he hasn’t yet. Under the circumstances, nothing’s certain.’

Xin thought.

‘Good. I’ll be on the flight deck in five minutes. Maybe you should try getting Jericho’s computer out of the building.’

‘Maybe we should try painting the Moon yellow and putting a smiley face on it,’ Norrington snapped. ‘They mustn’t get their hands on me, Kenny, don’t you understand?
I have to get out of here!
’

‘Everything’s all right.’ Suddenly Xin’s voice took on that soft, sibilant note. ‘Nobody’s going to get their hands on you, Andrew. I promised to be there, and I keep my promises.’

‘You hurry up, damn you!’

* * *

While the street lights of London faded away under a magnificent dawn sky, Yoyo decided to call Jericho again. During the night, she and Diane had become fast friends. She’d never worked with such excellent search programs or selection parameters.

‘I have some news,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

‘In Jennifer’s office. We can speak openly. Wait a moment.’ He listened to a soft voice in the background, then said, ‘Look, the best thing to do is call again, direct to her number, okay?’

‘You can tell her straight away that—’

‘Tell her yourself.’

He hung up. Yoyo squirmed around impatiently on her chair. She was burning to tell him about the dossiers Norrington had put together on the guests and staff at Gaia. Diane had done a lightning search, comparing Norrington’s supposed findings with publicly available biographies on the net and found no significant discrepancies, except perhaps for the fact that Evelyn Chambers was telling some whopping lies about her age. As for the staff at Gaia, two Germans, an Indian and a Japanese, they had been chosen by the director of the hotel, Dana Lawrence, who in turn had got the job on the strength of a report from Norrington, knocking four other highly qualified candidates out of the running. Norrington hadn’t actually turned any of these other four down flat, quite the opposite, it was rather that Lawrence’s track record put all the others in the shade. Lynn Orley had made the final appointment, and she would have had to have been insane to refuse Lawrence the job, given such excellent references. It was only when you looked closer that you realised that Lawrence’s official CV on the net was strangely different. Certain jobs that she had supposedly held made her just the right woman for the job in Gaia, but online they were missing, or didn’t quite match up. It was certainly the career of a dedicated professional, but if you wanted to assume the worst, you could easily say that Norrington had massaged the facts to help Lynn make her decision. Yoyo saw nothing at all wrong in assuming the worst.

Eager to know what the others would make of her findings, she typed in Shaw’s name and was just about to let the computer make the call when she heard a noise.

A lift had stopped outside on the gallery. She heard the doors slide apart.

Yoyo froze. Nobody was supposed to be in the Big O right now except for the security patrols and the tireless crew down in the situation room. She strained her ears, becoming aware of her surroundings for the first time. She was sitting at somebody’s workplace, an entirely interchangeable, uniform cell; employees kept their personal possessions in the mobile units that let them log in anywhere needed, throughout the building. Diane lay to her left, beneath the holographic display, a
slim, shimmering machine, while on her right was a wheeled set of drawers, probably containing all the clutter that a computer still couldn’t replace, even in 2025.