The Forbidden City. John McNally
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the very bottom of the pile, uncared for by a diplomatic community with better things to do. After all, it was just a Karst Limestone sugarloaf – a big conical rock stuck like a sore thumb out of the deepest azure ocean, baked by the sun and whipped by typhoons, with barely a scrap of life upon its rocky surface. True, there were some nesting seabirds, patches of vegetation, but mostly it was just a sheer 200-metre column of barren, bare rock …
… within though?
Kaparis settled down. There was nothing quite like moving into a new HQ: they always had that irresistible ‘new top secret operations facility’ smell. And this place, even Kaparis had to admit, was special. The creation of his eccentric personal architect, Thömson-Lavoisiér, it boasted 2km of tunnels, bunkers and laboratories built into the seabed, a submersible weapons platform, a sub-aquatic escape vehicle and – the pièce de résistance – a personal recumbent operations chamber for Kaparis and the iron lung he’d spent his life in since he was totally paralysed by a medical ‘accident’ in 2001.
The chamber was set into the sugarloaf itself and featured not only ‘the usual’ domed screen array and cranial panopticon (allowing a 360 degree field of vision and eye-track control of all screens) but also: a window. Unremarkable, until you realised the whole chamber could move up and down like an elevator within the stick of rock. Kaparis could enjoy a commanding view of the South China Sea and the surrounding islands one minute, then descend to a point six metres below sea level to watch the local sharks the next.
All in all he was delighted. His eyes spun round the opticon as he sought out his butler.
“Heywood?”
“Yes, Master?” Heywood stepped forward – bald, immaculate.
“What do you think to something local for dinner?”
“Of course, Master.”
Heywood pressed a button. For mood music, Kaparis flicked his eyes across the screen array and called up a performance of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.
The sharks circled.
A portal opened on the seabed and an official of the Taiwanese Coastguard – who had attempted to report his superiors for accepting bribes to keep clear of the island – was expelled. He began to swim desperately for the surface.
The sharks exposed their teeth, then expressed their delight … in the only way they knew how. And the chorus sang –
“Behold the Lord High Executioner
A personage of noble rank and title
A dignified and potent officer
Whose functions are particularly vital!
Defer! Defer!
To the noble lord, to the noble lord
To the Lord High Executioner!”
Blood bloomed through the waters and what remained of the coastguard official drifted down to the ocean floor.
Kaparis ordered his chamber to rise then checked the progress of his agent in Shanghai via a live video feed. It was all so nearly over, the Vector Program so nearly complete. He could imagine the weight lifting from his shoulders. The long months of struggle, the long months of effort and excellence in his secret factories beneath the deserts of Niger had resulted in the production of fifty-two of the most devilishly sophisticated robots ever conceived.
Finally he was on the road to recovery, putting distance between himself and the memory of Infinity Drake and all the damage he’d managed to inflict during the Scarlatti episode.
Finally, he was to master mankind and take over the world …
All that remained was to enjoy the yields of his genius. As the chamber broke the surface of the water, sunlight flooded in and momentarily Kaparis felt free again, as free as the Booby Birds and Great Crested Terns now wheeling around the rocks. And in that moment he forgot himself and a thought bubbled up through his mind: I … am … happy …
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …
An alarm sounded.
The bubble burst.
September 29 07:22 (Local GMT+8). Kung Fu Noodles, Concession#22, Food Hall D, Sector 9, Forbidden City Industrial Progress Zone, Shanghai, China.
The food hall was vast. At dozens of outlets staff in ridiculous paper hats served hundreds of customers, night workers just off shift. The air was hot and street-food aromatic.
Baptiste spotted the plain-clothes cop as soon as he walked in – neat, serious, casually checking out the handful of westerners in the food hall. Including Baptiste. The cop glanced down at a palmtop screen, then immediately walked across the seating area towards him.
As he approached, Baptiste touched his phone and initiated emergency contact. His free hand felt instinctively for the fountain pen in the front pocket of his bag.
The cop flashed his ID and said something in Mandarin Chinese.
Instantly, Song Island relayed a translation back to an audio device embedded behind Baptiste’s ear. “He’s asking your name.”
“Jaan Baptiste.”
Baptiste. It had started as a nickname. Many religious scenes remained on the walls of the Kaparis seminary, a school for Tyros housed in an abandoned monastery high in the Carpathian Mountains, including an icon of John the Baptist. With greasy hair that dripped as far as his shoulders and a soft-as-silk teenage beard ‘Baptiste’ was a dead ringer for the dead saint. Aged between twelve and seventeen, the Tyros were the foot soldiers of Kaparis, secretly selected from care institutions across the world and brought to the Carpathians for training and NRPfn1 indoctrination.
“Passport?” the cop asked, in English now.
“At hotel.” Baptiste answered in a Bulgarian accent, mentally checking off the six ways he could kill the cop with his bare hands.
“Hotel name?”
“Tiger Star.”
“This just received by Shanghai Police Command …” Kaparis heard Li Jun report.
From her bank of screens at the edge of his operations chamber, Li Jun posted the image of Baptiste that the cop had just sent to his headquarters. She was an unassuming young Tyro who had became Kaparis’s chief technologist.
Kaparis seethed.
“Happy …” His brief moment of sentiment had been punished. By fate. The following moments would determine the outcome of the entire project.
What to do?
There was a fifty-fifty chance Baptiste would be exposed as his agent. Half the world’s security services were on the lookout for the Tyros and their telltale retinal scarring. Baptiste’s cover could be blown. But if they aborted the Vector operation now and started again they would waste months, years even, of careful planning and preparation.
How close were they? Never been closer. Fifty-one of the fifty-two bots were already in place. The last bot, the one full of executable fn2 data, was about to be released. The brain of the entire operation. The ace.
What