Mark stared in silence at the faces of the two men on the screen. On the left was Senator Evan Mitchell. On the right, Clayton Franberger, the Secretary of State.
'It's hardly an appropriate time to celebrate,' Franberger said. 'But I think you and your team may congratulate yourselves on a job very well done.' He smiled. To Mark the man seemed like a rabid dog.
'Thank you, sir,' Mark replied dutifully. 'I'm proud of all of them.'
'And I understand Senator Foreman has already spoken to you to express his thanks.'
'He has, yes.'
The Secretary of State glanced at his watch surreptitiously. 'Well, once again, well done, Mark.'
'Sir, about our findings –'
'Findings?'
Mark glanced meaningfully at Senator Mitchell, who looked down for a moment and coughed.
'The Four Horsemen.'
'Yes, yes, the Four Horsemen,' Franberger said, fixing Mark with a hard look.
After a pause, Senator Mitchell spoke. 'We feel there is insufficient evidence to proceed.' He looked into the middle distance, unable to meet Mark's eyes.
Mark took a deep breath. 'I see. Insufficient evidence. Even though we have records of the men dealing with an assassin known as the Dragon. The man who planted the bombs at the CCC.'
'A dead assassin, Mark,' Franberger intoned. 'I think many would assume the man was operating alone.'
Mark looked directly at the Secretary of State and laboured to quell his fury. He was about to speak when Mitchell's voice cut in.
'Mark, I personally believe this Dragon was a solo operator with his own agenda. Perhaps we'll never know what that was. As Secretary Franberger has pointed out, the man is dead.'
Mark made to speak, but Mitchell went on. 'E-Force, on the other hand, is very much alive, is it not?' He paused dramatically to emphasise his point. 'And this mission has shown just how effective it is – how many lives will be saved in the future because your organisation exists.'
Mark looked away. He gazed at the banks of flashing lights and plastic control panels to one side of the screen. A thousand dead faces swam before his eyes. And then a steeliness gripped him. He swallowed hard and nodded. 'Very well,' he said.
Mark sat alone in the comms suite for several minutes. The only light came from the control panels and the holoscreen floating above one of the keyboards. Suddenly he felt very small. For all he had achieved, for all the resources at his fingertips, he realised – not for the first time – that he was nothing more than a cog in a giant machine. No, less than that – he was a worker ant, at the beck and call of truly powerful individuals.
But then, Mark told himself, those men are only as powerful as the people who elect them. It is the people who make them powerful. Their time will pass, and others will come along to replace them. Today he had been forced to do the bidding of politicians, men who would never get their hands dirty. He and the team had done their best and had saved lives, but he knew that in the future E-Force had to be better prepared and used properly.
E-Force was not simply a testing ground for CARPA's technology. More than half a century had passed since a group of congressmen, worried by the power handed to the military with the establishment of DARPA, had established the rival organisation. He knew that the idealistic days when the remit of CARPA had been to feed innovation into the everyday world of ordinary people had long passed. CARPA now had ambitions to claw back the billions of dollars it had spent over the years. And, of course, he knew that E-Force was an amazing advert for technological innovations at least two decades ahead of their time. But he and the other members of E-Force were not merely field-testing that technology so it could be sold on, and his team were not test dummies. That, he knew, was what the politicians and the holders of the purse strings would want. But he would fight them.
After today, Mark told himself, he would not kowtow to politicians. He had created E-Force, and he would do everything in his power to ensure not only that it survived but also that it worked in the way he knew it should.
He sighed heavily and stood up.