Omega Series Box Set 1 Read online

  “So was Neville Chamberlain.”

  His face constricted with irritation. “Don’t be absurd. There is no comparison!”

  “I disagree. These people are ruthless. They’re beyond ruthless. I know. My father was one of them. Did she tell you that they had my father kill hers?”

  “She told me, yes.”

  “Did she tell you why they chose him for the job?”

  He eyed me a moment and told me no with his face.

  I told him why. “They chose my father because Frank Gilbert, Marni’s father, was his best friend.”

  He turned away. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “That’s your choice. He told me the whole story when he asked me to find Marni after she disappeared. The price for refusing to kill him would have been the death of his own family, as well as Marni and her parents.” I paused a moment, then asked him, “Are you able, fully, to see what they did to him?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “They offered him a choice, but it wasn’t really a choice, because only one of the two options was even conceivable. And the conceivable option meant the destruction of his own soul. It meant murdering his best friend, doing something so horrific that he would detest himself for the rest of his life.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels. I lit up with my battered old brass Zippo and blew smoke across the morning air. Then I went on.

  “Having forced him to make that choice, to kill his best friend, they then rewarded him. They elevated him to a position of inconceivable wealth and power. Can you begin to imagine what that did to his mind? They showed him two things. One, that there was no depth they would not sink to to achieve their ends; and two, that they owned him completely.” I gave him a moment to assimilate the full horror of what I had told him. “You are like Chamberlain, Gibbons, wanting to negotiate peace in our time with people who have no conscience and no inhibitions. There is no limit to what they will do to another human being, or eight billion human beings, in order to consolidate their power. If you believe you can reach a compromise with these people, you are already dead.”

  His face flushed and he turned on me. “And your solution is to kill them all?”

  I held his eye for a slow count of three. “Yes.”

  He threw his hands in the air. “You see! This is why it’s impossible! Have you any…” He screwed up his face like he had brain constipation and put his fingertips to his forehead. “Have you any conception of the enormity of what you are suggesting? The logistics…!”

  “I don’t know, I spent ten years in the SAS, what do you think?”

  “This is the real world, Walker! This isn’t a bunch of overgrown schoolboys running around the desert shooting at each other! We are talking about people’s lives!”

  For a moment I considered picking him up and throwing him over the bridge into the lake. Instead, I snarled, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He sighed, “I’m sorry, Walker, but you and your chums in Hereford live in your own rarified world where things are solved by shooting people. That might work in Afghanistan, but in London, New York, and Beijing, things are done differently. It is a very delicate balancing of power and you simply cannot go in just shooting people and blowing them up!”

  I sucked on my cigarette and inhaled deeply, then let out the smoke slow. “Gibbons, my father was a lawyer. He got his degree from Harvard. He was a very intelligent man, and if anybody understood power, he did. He used to say, ‘Murder is the most serious of all crimes, not because it is the most heinous offence against the person, but because the State reserves to itself the authority to inflict violence and take life. This is because the ability to inflict violence and take life is the root of all power.’”

  He closed his eyes and groaned loudly. “Heaven preserve us! A philosophizing thug!”

  I studied the burning tip of my cigarette for a moment. “OK, Gibbons, I’ve been patient, but I have had about enough of your arrogance and your insults. I’m not going to try to convince you that you’re wrong. You’re stupid and you can’t help it. I figure soon enough Omega will convince you of that. Now, I want to see Marni, and I am not going to take no for an answer.”

  He looked at me as though my poodle had just shat on his doorstep. “Fortunately it is not up to me. She does not want to see you, Walker. She asked me to come here and convince you to leave us alone.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s your choice. But she believes, as I do, that you are a loose cannon. You are a danger to everybody. You are out of control. You have no discipline…”

  I shook my head. “Discipline is not about obeying orders, Gibbons, it’s about staying cool and taking the right steps to achieve your ends. Believe me, I have discipline. Now you are going to listen to me, and you are going to listen with care.”

  His eyes were resentful, but there was a hint of fear there, too. “Don’t try to bully me, Walker.”

  “Shut up and listen. You are right about one thing, I am dangerous, and I am all that stands between you and torture and death at the hands of Omega. The moment they realize that Marni won’t come to me, they will destroy you, or worse. Now tell me, is she going to present her father’s research at her talk?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Is it as explosive as Omega fear?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I sighed and flicked my cigarette butt into the water. “As soon as she presents it, you’ll have played your hand and you will have no defense against them.”

  “No, then they will have to talk to us…!”

  “Don’t be stupid, Gibbons! Once she exposes their research they will have nothing to lose. They’ll kill you both and create the biggest cover up since Kennedy. Think about it! If they did that to Marni’s father and mine, what the hell do you think they’ll do to you?”

  His skin had acquired the color and texture of porridge.

  “You have to convince Marni to talk to me, Gibbons.”

  I reached out and took hold of his tie. I pulled his face close to mine. His eyes were wide and I let him see death in mine. “She is committing suicide, Gibbons. She knows it, but she figures your life and hers are a fair price to pay for bringing down Omega. But her death will be in vain. She’ll hurt them, but she won’t destroy them. Talk to her. Make her talk to me.”

  I let him go when I saw in his eyes that I had got through to him. Then I watched him hurry away toward Bethesda and 5th Avenue. It was odd, I told myself, how a man could be brilliant and brave, like Gibbons, and at the same time be so stupid and cowardly.

  I smoked another cigarette, watching the dark water beneath me and wondering what to do next. I didn’t have much time. Omega knew that Marni and I were both in the same city. Despite my stunt the morning before, they would be watching me. They’d be watching us both like hawks. And it wouldn’t take long for them to realize that Marni didn’t want to see me. When that happened, when they realized that I was no use to them in getting to her, two got you twenty they would kill us both. They were rats, and Marni and Gibbons, in their emotional stupidity, had put them in a corner. A rat in a corner is not a good thing.

  I started walking back through the park, taking my time, and wondering if my time had come; if everything, my unhappy years in prep school; the fights, the girls, and the drinking in high school; the endless battles with my father; loving my cool, distant, unreachable mother at a distance; and then the ten years of relentless killing and surviving, living always with Death at my shoulder, if all of that now resolved itself into a single, breathless, shocking moment, when I too died.

  For a moment I wanted to take it all in, every car, every tree, every pretty girl, every bird, every birdsong, every note on the blue summer air. I wanted to take it in and hold it and live it for eternity.

  But that’s not how it works. You live each moment as it comes. And then you die.

  He was waiting for me at the 97th Stree
t exit, leaning against the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, watching me. He looked lean, healthy, and cruel. I wasn’t surprised to see him. I had half-expected it.

  “Hello, Ben.”

  “Hello, Lacklan.”

  I went and stood at the crossing, waiting for the lights to change. He stood beside me. “Have you got anything to report?”

  “I don’t report to you, Ben. I keep telling you, but you don’t hear.”

  He ignored me. “Why was it Gibbons and not Marni?”

  I looked into his face. “Mind your own business.”

  The lights changed and we started to walk. “I’ve been patient, Lacklan. I need a result and I need it now, or I can’t keep protecting you.”

  “I don’t need your protection. You need mine and you know it.”

  He eyed my face as we walked, trying to read my expression. “Is she going to reveal her father’s research at the conference?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

  “What did Gibbons tell you?”

  “He said he wants to negotiate with Omega. He believes he can influence you and reach some kind of agreement.”

  We reached the far side of the road and I stopped. He faced me. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him he was stupid. I told him the only solution was to kill you all.” He frowned at me. I didn’t smile. “I told him the truth, that the only thing standing between him and Marni and death was me, and that I needed to talk to Marni.”

  His eyes made little darting movements over my features, like he was trying to read them. Finally, he said, “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d try to persuade her.”

  “Where is she?”

  I smiled, then gave a single, humorless laugh. “I don’t know, Ben. And if you try and torture it out of him I guarantee she won’t be there by the time he talks.” I sighed. “He wants guarantees, Ben. He believes, and so does she, that there is common ground between you and them, and some kind of compromise can be reached.”

  He nodded. “I am sure they are right. I keep telling you that, Lacklan. Isn’t it time you started listening?” He jerked his head in a northerly direction and said, “Have a drink with me.”

  He led me to Columbus Avenue by way of 105th Street, to a bar with bare red brick walls and rough wooden tables. He ordered two martinis and we sat. Neither of us drank. He leaned back in his chair to study me for a moment.

  “Lacklan, we are at a stalemate. You and Marni, and Professor Gibbons, can do Omega a lot of harm if she publishes her father’s research. You know that, we know that. You also know that we have the power to hurt all of you very badly. You know that we won’t flinch, and you know that we can and will kill you, without hesitation. Right there is the stalemate.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That if we play chicken, if we keep on this course toward a head-on collision, you will die—all of you. We will be very badly hurt, but we will survive. And in time we will recover.”

  It was, in so many words, what I had told Gibbons. I sipped my martini. “I’d rather die fighting you, Ben, than live serving you. I know what that did to my father, remember?”

  He nodded. “Maybe there’s a third alternative.”

  I told him with my smile that I didn’t believe him, but I said, “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  “We, the members of Omega, Lacklan, are just people. We are not evil aliens from a parallel dimension, and we are not clones of each other. We are just people, and not everybody agrees with the way things are done. I am not going to stick my neck out and put myself at risk, but I will tell you that there are people, among the twenty-seven leaders, who would be willing to listen. For God’s sake, Lacklan, your own father was Gamma, and it was no secret that he had his doubts. We have one objective, and only one. That is to preserve the little of good that humanity has created, when the end comes. But how we achieve this end, we are open to new ideas about that. And I genuinely believe that the Twenty-Seven would listen to you and Marni, and Gibbons.”

  I sighed, letting him know that I was bored. “Words.”

  “OK. Let’s go one step at a time. Tonight, there is a cocktail party at the residence of Prince Mohamed bin Awad, in honor of the delegates and speakers at the UN conference.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Because he is the New York consul for the Awadi Arabian Kingdom, and his family have a vested interest in the outcome of the conference. The Middle East stands to lose a lot if the planet keeps getting hotter.” He shrugged. “Everybody south of parallel forty-five does, but let’s face it, nobody stands to lose more than a bunch of billionaires living in a desert and making money from oil. Climate change is not good news for them, right?”

  “OK, I see that.”

  “So they have an interest in this conference, at the very least as observers, but more likely as attempting to influence the speakers and the delegates.”

  I shrugged. “So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Marni will be at the party, and I can get you on the guest list. I want you to go. Ambush her. Make her talk to you. Let us at least have a dialogue. We all have things to lose, and we all have things to gain.”

  He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out an invitation which he slid across the table to me. I stared at it and felt a hot pellet of excitement in my gut. I was going to see her, talk to her, and touch her, after all this time. I was going to see her that night.

  Three

  There are not a huge number of houses in the immediate vicinity of Central Park. This one was a neo-gothic monstrosity on East 79th Street that looked as though it had once belonged to Dr. Frankenstein. It had too many arches and gabled roofs, and Central Park as a back yard. I’d bought an expensive evening suit that afternoon, with satin lapels and a bowtie, and decided to arrive fashionably late, at twenty minutes to nine. But when I got there, there were still gleaming limos arriving out front and disgorging glittering people onto the sidewalk and the broad, stone steps that led up to the grotesque pseudo-Tudor arch over the doorway.

  There was a man at the door dressed up like Jeeves. He regarded me with a special kind of contempt he reserved for people who were not famous or billionaires. I showed him my invitation and he looked at it without touching it, like he might catch vulgarity from it. He gestured me toward the door with something that should have been courtesy but wasn’t, and I stepped inside.

  The inside was carpeted in red and paneled in oak, and populated by more of the same glittering people I had seen outside. I took a glass of champagne from a passing tray and moved through a set of double oak doors, half expecting a portcullis to drop on me from above. I figured there were at least a hundred people there, possibly twice that many. Most were in their fifties or sixties and many had the look of senior academics, or those strange creatures that hover in the gray area between academia, politics, and the military-industrial complex. They stood in small groups, smiling urbanely at each other, preening themselves, discussing exhibitions, concerts, and plays, accidentally dropping names, letting slip connections, like peacocks with important friends stuck up their asses, instead of tail feathers.

  Somewhere I could hear a chamber orchestra playing Mozart, and I headed in that direction. Nobody seemed to notice me, which suited me fine. I crossed one large room and entered another. By the size of it, and the checkerboard floor, I figured it was a ballroom. A small stage at one end held a string quartet with a clarinet and an oboe, all in traditional eighteenth century clothes. They were busily playing a selection of Mozart and Handel which made you want to grab the nearest woman and break into a crazy minuet. The crowd was more dense here, and I stood on the periphery a while, watching. But I couldn’t see any sign of Gibbons or Marni.

  I spotted a waiter approaching with another tray of champagne and signaled him over.

  “Is there a bar where I can get a real drink?”

  He smiled. “Sure, other end of the ballroom, they g
ot all the beer and spirits you want.”

  I put my glass down by a palm and negotiated my way through the throng to a long table covered in a white linen cloth, silver buckets of ice, white wine, and champagne. There was also a reassuringly large range of spirits. The guy in the white dinner jacket behind the table smiled. I said, “Give me a Bushmills, straight up.”

  While he poured it, I looked around. That was when I saw her. She was in a mauve satin evening dress and had her dark hair lifted into a knot at the back of her neck. She had a glass of champagne in her hand and was listening to Gibbons talk. There was a small group around them. A couple of the men looked Middle Eastern.

  I felt a jolt of cold anger inside. I ignored it and strolled over to join the group. Marni was the first to see me. She went pale and her eyes stared. I smiled down at her.

  “Hello, Marni. It’s been a long time. How are you keeping?”

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “Lacklan…”

  I was aware of Gibbons staring at me. The group had gone silent, smiling pleasantly, expectantly. I smiled back. “Professor Gibbons, how are you? Please don’t let me interrupt. Do carry on.”

  He stammered. “Yes, I…Walker. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “And yet, here I am!”

  The groomed and polished guy standing next to me held out his hand. “Salman bin Awad, how do you do?”

  I shook his hand. “Lacklan Walker.”

  “Professor Gibbons was giving us a most fascinating talk on political philosophy.”

  I smiled with my mouth while my eyes did something else. “He’s very good at that. He gets a lot of practice, don’t you, Philip?” He scowled at me and I took Marni’s elbow. “Please, carry on, I am just going to borrow Marni for a second. I promise to return her in one piece.”

  Gibbons flashed a look at her and she sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

  We stepped over to the wall and she glared at me. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Lacklan? What are you doing here?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It’s nice to see you, too. What am I playing at? Well, you know what? I’ve been wanting to ask you a question. You see, there was this cabin outside Turret, where you kissed me, and where you were so worried that I had been hurt after I destroyed the sun beetle farm. Then I blinked, and next moment you disappeared and showed up negotiating for a seat at the Omega high table. I blinked again and, after I’d helped you escape, you killed my father. Now, however boring and inconvenient it might be for you and your academic colleagues, I think at the very least you owe me an explanation.”