IT WAS PLAYING on Alice’s mind that the text and the incident in the bar were somehow connected to Stain’s death. Thoughts wheeled in his head. Is Drago working for the SSD? They’re known for cajoling prisoners to do their dirty work for them — sometimes even issuing a day pass out of jail to hit someone, before returning to the big house. Being in prison was the alibi — it was called the perfect crime. Did Drago send that text? Or had it been a case of getting square, as Stain had suggested? If that was right, had Drago killed Stain in hospital?
Someone had, he was sure of that, and in reality, the killing had to have been another warning, just like text had indicated.
Stain’s death had caused him to question his involvement in the Octagon. It had shattered his principles, made him more wary of the world around him. He couldn’t see himself performing with the band for a while. Any songs he tried to compose would be full of regret and remorse for the loss of Stain, and that shouldn’t happen. Her death was his to mourn, nobody else’s. But he was determined to find her killer, that was for certain.
There was definitely something in the air. He could feel it, and he had a hunch he was about to come face to face with it whether he liked it or not.
Becoming restless, Alice was slowly circling the orb in the netherworld tunnel. “That’s all very interesting,” he growled. “But I still don’t get the point of this?”
“Humans who like giving advice rarely take it themselves. Have you noticed that?”
Alice stopped, “So now you’re a philosopher. You trying to tell me something?”
“It does seem obvious that nothing but trouble was going to result from your visit to SSD. Have you ever considered how that might have affected others?”
“There’s always some collateral damage,” Alice said dismissively.
“That is quite true but it pays to know who is fighting for you.”
“Not the first time I’ve been told that. I’m always at war with the great unknown.”
“Might well be, but also perhaps your celebrity has you lose sense sometimes of the identity of your real allies.”
Doctor Hope made her way into the lobby of Oceana Headquarters like a woman on a mission. An attractive 30-year-old, she was turned out in a crisp white lab coat with the black and chrome Oceana insignia embroidered on the right breast pocket, and wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Her long blonde hair was held in place by two black chopsticks.
She stopped at an elevator door and pressed the call button. The doors opened, she stepped inside and selected the top floor.
Hope had joined the Oceana Scientific Research Department (OSRD) on the express invitation of her brother Secta, the senior scientist and department head. Secta, six years older than she, recognised her potential in chemistry and physics research, and snapped her up as soon as she graduated with a doctorate in applied physics from Sydney University. It didn’t take much to convince the President, to whom Secta reported directly, that she was a chip off the old block.
Hope had her reservations about joining and it took quite a determined pitch from Secta to convince her to come aboard. She eventually bought in because Secta explained the job wasn’t subject to the politics or the totalitarianism of which the government and its dictator president were being accused. However, over time, she had started to wonder. With a strong moral compass and social conscience, Hope was doubting herself for believing in her brother’s determined pitch, especially now that the government was on the brink of permitting a nuclear submarine to enter Sydney Harbour, in complete defiance of the long-standing treaty. Such a careless act was likely to undermine the fragile trust she had in her employer, a trust that was really only there because of her brother.
To Hope’s way of thinking, the field of scientific research in which she and Secta were working would improve the world, not threaten it. With these new revelations, she was beginning to believe she had more in common with the nuclear non-proliferation policies of the Octagon, who were in total opposition to the government she worked for. She was developing a deep respect for morals and initiatives of Black Alice, leader of the Octagon. Hope had been around idealists long enough to know that the peace movement was not safe from schism and ideological infighting. They had split into equal-sized groups. On one side there were the fundamentalists, who believed everything should be done at once, and that living standards of the whole country should be equal. They wanted technology reduced and religion abolished. The less extreme pragmatists wanted a middle-class society driven by technological change but not consumed by it. Alice seemed to her to fit in with the latter faction. Hope was biased towards the pragmatist view, but neither faction aligned enough with her sentiments to garner her complete support. Both options were, however, better than the tyranny of the current government.
Hope had been ordered to attend an interview with the SSD. She had no time for the secret police and was offended by the order. It was a part of working for the government that she found abhorrent. She considered the hard-core scientific research she and her brother were undertaking to be infinitely more vital for the wellbeing of the world than the disruptive banality of bureaucracy, and the machinations of the secret police. ~~~
Senior Inspector Fanny Honor took the rolled-up banknote from her officer, Agent Karzoff, and proceeded to snort a long rail of cocaine from the boardroom table. Karzoff had already done a line and was busy pinching his partially numb nose between his fingers. Both were dressed in the black, red-piped uniform of the Oceana secret police.
A tall attractive woman in her late thirties, Honor wore her black hair up, tied with a thin sash of crimson ribbon that matched the piping on her uniform. Her three-quarter length, tight-fitting black skirt was split conservatively up to a little past the knee.
Karzoff, on the other hand, was in his early fifties and sported short-cropped, artificially coloured bright red hair. Both were of East European extraction. Honor was Polish and had come to Oceana as a child, while Karzoff had migrated from the former East Germany when he was 20, after graduating from the STASI training school.
They were waiting to conduct an interview. Honor was removing the last remnant of blow from her nostrils with her long, chrome-painted pinkie fingernail, when a flash of white entered the room. Doctor Hope strode in and took a seat at the table.
The lighting in the executive boardroom on the top floor of Oceana SSD Headquarters was subdued. The tense atmosphere could have been cut with a knife. Hope wasn’t happy about being there.
Standing at the head of the table like an overgrown raven, Honor was engrossed in a report and didn’t look up to acknowledge Hope’s entrance. Honor’s jealousy of the younger, smarter and infinitely more attractive woman opposite caused her Eastern European accent to become even more conspicuous. “Doktor Hope, Agent Karzoff and I haff read your report and ve totally disagree wiz your doltish attitude to zer problem at hand.”
With daggers in her eyes, Hope glared over her glasses at Honor and snarled: “You have the attitude problem Honor. Black Alice, the man in question, is a peace activist. He—”
Honor cut her off. “I don’t care for your scientific opinion,” she sneered.
“What would you know of a scientific opinion?” snapped Hope. “Come to think of it, what would you know about anything?”
“Ve cannot legislate for feelings, Doktor,” Honor countered, facetiously. With a flash of her dark eyes, she signalled Karzoff to add his sentiments.
He chose a more passive approach. “Doctor Hope,” he started with his slight Teutonic accent. “We all have a job to do, and it is not up to us to question our orders. You see, the man is a rebel ... and rebels must be eliminated. No single person is bigger than the Oceana government — and that goes for you too!” He suddenly realized he was pounding his fists on the table and froze as thunder resounded outside, providing punctuation to his action. Karzoff was easily overcome by excitement; it brought out the neo-Nazi in him.
The rapidly-developing storm brewing outside had announced itself with intermittent flashes of lightning, followed by rolling thunder. Hope knew that the time disparity between lightning and thunder in seconds roughly equated to how far away the storm was: for every five second interval the storm would be one mile away. She’d automatically calculated that this one was about four miles away. She removed her glasses and spoke emphatically. “Really? Well consider yourself informed: no-one is about to use our experiment on a human subject. No-one.”
Honor fractionally curled the left of a perfect upper lip in the start of a carefully-constructed sneer. She learned forward and placed a document on the table in front of Hope. “Vell, zat is vere you are wrong, Hope,” she hissed. “Doktor Secta has given his permission. So, how does zat affect your moral compass, huh?” Confident she had the scientist exactly where she wanted her, she fired Karzoff a smug smirk.
Hope read the document. Shocked by its contents, she angrily screwed it into a ball and hurled it at Honor. “I can’t believe he’d sell out to you vultures!”
Honor bristled, and snapped back: “Any rebel is a threat to Oceana security!”
“You and your disciples of death are the only threat to security I can see around here,” said Hope.
“You’d better be careful, doktor,” snarled Honor. “Or you might meet zer same fate as Black Alice.”
“Cut the nonsense, Hope,” said Karzoff, sharply, cutting Honor off before she admitted something she shouldn’t. “You are here either to pledge your loyalty to the project, or to hand in your resignation.”
Hope rose abruptly from her chair and strongly but calmly said: “Then I’ll continue my work elsewhere.”
Honor sat down and leaned back in her chair pleased with herself. She added, nonchalantly: “Good … no great loss.”
Hope eyeballed the pair and snarled: “I don’t envy the person with the job of picking up the pieces of the world after you cokeheads have finished with it.” She spun on her heel and stormed out of the room.
“How fucking dramatic,” Honor purred at Karzoff, content with the outcome. “Best we prepare, our visitor will be here soon.”
The sound of a chanting crowd filtered in from outside. Honor got up from the table and strode over to one of the oval windows. She peered down to the street, forty floors below.
“Ah, vhat a night Karzoff. Look at zose idiots down zere … another rally zat vill undoubtedly result in a riot.” She had heard the voices of anti-nuclear protestors, chanting while marching: ‘One two three four we don’t want no nuclear war, five six seven eight, we don’t want to radiate!’
Karzoff joined her at the window and looked down at the seething crowd. “They’re probably on their way to the rally against the American nuclear submarine. It arrives in the harbour tonight?”
“Oh, zey zink zey are bigger than us, but look how small zey are,” sneered Honor. “And I vill bring zem to an end.” She turned sharply from the window and added: “Zat rat race down there… vot vould zey know? All zey do is protest! Zey vould protest against anyzing, as long as it vas anti-establishment. Zat is precisely vy ve haff orders to put a stop to zer likes of zis rock rebel, zis leader of zose morons, zis Black Alice. Oceana, now zat it has been joined by South Africa, cannot remain nuclear-free. It needs security, and must be armed. So, ve have our orders to break them.”
She left Karzoff standing at the window, staring down in disbelief. “South Africa? … That’s news to me.” Honor flopped into a swivel chair behind Karzoff and swung around to stare blankly at the back of his balding head. “It vill be announced in zer media tomorrow.”
Still staring at the sea of moving people and lights below, Karzoff mumbled to himself: “That’s sure to incite a riot … Maybe even … revolution!”
Alice could only agree with En-Ki. “Now I get your point. But hey, I know Hope is my ally.”
“There is more, but first to continue with your passage to the interview.”
Fed up Alice said, “If you must.”