‘What happens if a feral old man cuts the power?’
They value security over their own safety . That would surprise me, if I still had any expectations of these people.
Marshall had his gold-coloured keycard ready for the moment the power cut was sorted, and when the lights flickered on McCormick sneaked a look at Pearce’s watch. Twelve minutes past ten.
‘You didn’t think melting the generator would keep us in the dark forever, did you?’ asked Pearce.
‘No.’
‘Well, Grant’s a big fan of renewable energy sources. You wouldn’t think it – the son of Francis Grant abandoning his family’s obsession with fossil fuels. But we had a whole spring’s worth of solar power stored in industrial batteries, just waiting to be connected to the main grid.’
McCormick did not respond. Marshall swiped his keycard and revealed the carpeted corridor that led to his office. Pearce’s handgun prodded McCormick in the base of his spine, and forced him to tiptoe bare-footed into the bright and colourful Floor B. One level down from the villains’ bedrooms, this was as close as the Citadel got to a relaxed, cultured environment. McCormick had often wondered how Ewan and Charlie had felt inside that officers’ sector with its leather sofas, sky-blue wallpaper and fluffy carpets, but it must have paled in comparison to this corridor. He even spotted a recreation room, complete with table football and videogame consoles, and…
Wait – is that a real Monet painting? Seized from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square?
McCormick was dragged into a wide, spacious room that dwarfed any of his university offices. One of Marshall’s walls was overloaded with a fancy collection of war photography, as well as a large television screen. The mahogany desk displayed good quality model fighter jets, a photo of his daughters, and another of his wife in a lesser quality frame. Hannah Marshall, if McCormick remembered right. Shannon had told him about some of the people she had known on Floor A, and there had been a little less venom in her voice whenever she had talked about Hannah. Perhaps Iain Marshall’s wife didn’t share his nature.
Turning around, McCormick could see why the nearest wall was so heavily decorated. The other three were filled from floor to ceiling with the biggest and brightest computer system he had ever laid eyes on. The AME computer was secured against Iain Marshall’s own office walls, each panel a foot thick and filled with a storm of circuit boards, LEDs, transistors, capacitors and other odds and ends that McCormick vaguely remembered from his old electronics classes. The whole three-walled computer seemed to be inside its own huge glass aquarium, filled with a blue liquid that McCormick assumed to be a cooling system. Any computer big enough to power such a feat of technological futurism was bound to need a lot of coolant, and McCormick was embarrassed that the thought hadn’t occurred to him before that moment.
Behind him, Pearce was laughing.
‘Bet you thought you could just come up here, find Iain’s desktop computer and put a bullet through the hard drive,’ he sneered. ‘Unfortunately, the computer for the AME shield is rather big. And protected with bullet-resistant glass.’
The final piece of the puzzle is right here in front of me. We may have done well tonight, but unless this behemoth of a computer is destroyed , we lose.
Once Pearce had stopped talking McCormick could hear faint gurgling sounds, which must have been the coolant liquids in the walls. If Marshall’s hearing was as good as his own, that gurgling must have been hell to work with, unless the impact was softened by the music that came from the speakers.
It didn’t seem like the kind of music that Iain Marshall would enjoy, given how well the rest of his office illustrated his personality. When Marshall spoke, he confirmed McCormick’s suspicions.
‘Great,’ Marshall snarled, as he joined Pearce and Roth in the middle of the room. ‘He’s playing Bach, in my office.’
‘Nothing wrong with a bit of Bach,’ came a heavy but lively voice from the entrance behind them, ‘he was the original father of harmony. Beethoven’s words, not mine.’
McCormick had heard the man’s voice before. Less than an hour earlier, on the other side of Roth’s radio. He knew the man’s identity without needing to turn around.
‘I’d have thought Bach was a bit churchy for your taste,’ McCormick replied.
A hand grabbed the bone of McCormick’s shoulder and turned him around, and he was met with the formidable sight of the most hated man on Earth. Dressed in the smartest of tailor-made suits, with a full head of shoulder-length white hair, the face McCormick had only seen on television had found its way into real life. The man greeted him with an entertained smile, his body giving off the enthusiastic energy of a televangelist. He clamped McCormick’s hand in a vigorous handshake, releasing him moments before cracking his finger bones.
‘My name is Nicholas Grant.’
‘…Dr Joseph McCormick.’
A discomforting smirk settled on Grant’s face as he glanced up and down his prisoner’s body. His head and shoulders swayed back and forth, as if he were a snake readying himself for a strike. After a judgemental shake of his head, his voice rose to a piercing bellow.
‘This is the man I got dressed up to meet?’ he asked. ‘I waited a full year to make contact with the great Joseph McCormick – the leader of the only rebel faction in Britain – the man who united thirty-two people on Takeover Day and turned them into an actual miniature army – the man whose soldiers spent a year burning and sabotaging their way through New London – the man who even convinced my daughter to live among him and his minions… and this is who I end up meeting? An exhausted man in torn clothing, gasping for his final breaths after a simple walk up the stairs, aged in his mid-sixties but with the stench of death already buzzing round him. And on top of that, the good doctor happens to be really fat.’
Wow. I’m glad he didn’t do my best man speech.
Grant dipped his head to meet his enemy’s. McCormick was tall compared to most people he knew, and he hadn’t met anyone taller than him in over a year, but Grant stretched towards seven feet. For the first time since completing his doctorate, McCormick stood before someone who made him feel insignificant. Not just in stature, but in authority.
‘This suit cost me three thousand pounds,’ Grant continued, ‘back in the days of the good old British pound, of course. Way back from my father’s last days in charge of his oil company. I haven’t worn it since his funeral. Tonight was my chance to take off my shirt and jeans and… well, dress to kill. What a let-down this is.’
‘You look like the kind of man who loves a good suit,’ answered McCormick. ‘Fancy offices for your staff, Bach over the speakers… I bet you get suited up daily, just to look good in front of your subordinates.’
The domineering figure spat a laugh.
‘I’m Nicholas bloody Grant. I don’t have to impress anyone.’
McCormick could have smiled, were it not for the terrible truth behind Grant’s words. With the exception of Shannon, none of his friends had ever laid eyes on Grant in the flesh. For a year his friends had waged war against a name: an invisible figure with a larger-than-life reputation. Like gravity, or oxygen, or perhaps even the work of God, nobody saw Nicholas Grant in his physical form, but his impact was everywhere.