“It could be the government, the CIA or someone like that. Think about it for a minute. If you could really read someone’s mind, you’d make a perfect weapon. You could be a spy. You could be anything!”
“You really think they’d believe in that sort of stuff?”
“Of course they believe in it, Jamie. They spend millions of dollars every year experimenting with the paranormal. And there are major corporations out there who run programs, working with special children and their families. I even got in contact with one. I thought they might be able to help.”
“Who was that?”
Alicia put down her beer. “They’re a huge multinational. They’re into communications, healthcare, security, energy… just about everything. But they also have a division that specializes in paranormal research.” She paused. “They were the people who came for you in the theatre. Their name,” she said, “is Nightrise.”
BUSINESS AS USUAL
The boardroom was on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail – which was the name of the newest and most spectacular addition to the Hong Kong skyline. The Nail had been constructed at an angle so that it slanted towards Orchard Hill and away from the waterfront. It seemed to be made of solid steel, an illusion caused by the one-way glass in all of its windows. The top three floors, sixty-four to sixty-six, were circular, and wider than the rest of the building. Viewed from Kowloon, on the other side of Victoria Harbor, it really did look like a giant nail that had been hammered into the heart of the city.
There were just three men in the boardroom, although fifty could have fitted in easily. A conference table made of black, gleaming wood stretched the full length of the room with black leather chairs placed at exact intervals. Two of the men were already seated, going through papers, preparing themselves for the conference that was about to begin. The third was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that curved round in a great arc, enjoying the view.
The Nail was the worldwide headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The man standing on his own was its chairman.
Unlike the office, he had no name – or if he did, he never used it. He was simply the chairman, or Mr Chairman when he was directly addressed. He was in his sixties, although he had done his best to disguise his age with extensive plastic surgery. This left him with a face that was younger than it should be and yet strangely unnatural, as if it belonged somewhere else. He had thick, white hair which could have been a wig but was actually his own, and silver, half-moon spectacles. As always, he was wearing a suit, made to measure by his own personal tailor.
It was seven o’clock in the morning and the sun had not yet fully risen. The great sprawl of Kowloon was still half asleep, the bars and electronics shops briefly shuttered before the start of another day. The sky was a blazing red. The chairman thought it appropriate. Kowloon means “nine dragons” and it seemed to him, looking out from the window, that they had all breathed at once.
Behind him, one of the other two men spoke.
“They’re coming on-line now, Mr Chairman.”
The chairman walked to his place at the head of the table and sat down. He rested his hands on the polished surface and composed himself. There were thirteen plasma screens mounted all around the room and one after another they flickered into life as the other executives, in different parts of the world, came on-line. A webcam, standing on the table, pointed at the chairman, carrying his own image out. In Los Angeles, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. In London it was midnight. But the time of the day was unimportant. This was the monthly meeting of the senior executives of the Nightrise Corporation and none of them would have dared to have been even a minute late.
“My greetings to you, ladies and gentlemen.” As ever, the chairman was the first to speak. He had an unpleasant, throaty voice, as if he were ill. He spoke very softly and his voice had to be amplified as it was transmitted. He had no obvious accent. This was an international businessman and he had managed to develop an international voice.
“I don’t think I need to remind you that this is a critical time for us all,” he went on. “It is a world-changing time. Everything we’ve been working for all these years is about to come to fruition. Business has never been better but right now there is so much more at stake than simple profit and loss. We have the Psi project. We have news from South America. And, of course, we have the upcoming election
… the race to become the most powerful man in the world.” He paused and it was almost as if a thin mist had passed across his eyes. “I hardly need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is one time we cannot afford to make mistakes.”
He stopped. Nobody moved. The images on the television screens were so still that they could have been accidentally frozen. Two thousand miles away, the private Nightrise Corporation satellite that was making this conference possible continued its orbit around the world, picking up the signals and beaming them into the different countries. And it was as if something of the black emptiness of outer space was being sent with them. The images were dead. The dozen offices with their dozen televisions seemed to contain no life at all.
“Let’s start in New York. The election. What can you report?”
The New York executive’s screen was about halfway down the room. He was a solid, square-shouldered man who had spent twenty years in the army before moving into business – and it showed. His name was Simms. “This is a hard nut to crack, sir,” he reported. “And whatever happens, it’s going to be close… maybe as close as one or two states. Our guy is doing better than expected, but so far we haven’t been able to do serious damage to Trelawny.”
“Advertising?”
“Sir, we’ve taken out advertisements that suggest that Trelawny is soft on crime and soft on immigration. We’ve said he’s a coward and a liar. We’ve even managed to plant newspaper stories that hint he might be gay. But nothing seems to hurt him. For some reason people like him, and right now all the indications are that the two of them will be neck and neck by November.”
“Baker must win. There can be no other result. Trelawny must not become president.”
“Well, short of assassinating John Trelawny, I’m not sure what we can do.”
“I think, Mr Simms, you should be considering every possibility.”
“Yes, sir.”
Next, the chairman turned his attention to a screen that was next to him, on his right-hand side. “Could you please make your report,” he said.
“Certainly, Mr Chairman.”
The woman on the plasma screen gazed directly into the room. She looked more like a school teacher than a business-woman, with glasses that were too big for her face, very cropped grey hair and a long, thin neck. She was dressed in black. She was speaking from an office in Los Angeles and although outside the sun was brilliant, none of it had been allowed to reach her. There was a shadow across her face. Her skin was pale. She could have been lit by the moon.
Her name was Susan Mortlake.
“I have good news to report and also bad news,” she began. “It has now been almost a year and a half since we began the Psi project but we may have had a breakthrough. It seems that we have finally managed to track down two of the Gatekeepers.”
This caused a stir around the room. The disembodied heads in the television sets turned, even though they couldn’t actually see each other. The two men making notes scribbled furiously. One of them turned a page.
“It’s still too early to be absolutely sure that they are who we think they are,” the woman went on. “The fact of the matter is that we’ve looked at hundreds of children who have demonstrated any measure of psychic power. Telepaths, fire starters, clairvoyants… anything out of the ordinary. Half of them, of course, have turned out to be a waste of time. A few of them have moved away before we were able to track them down. But as for the rest… we’ve managed to take possession of seventeen of the most promising subjects and we’ve been experimenting with them in our facility at Silent Creek. However, it now looks as if all our efforts may have been a waste of time. We have one of the Gatekeepers in our power, I’m sure of it. So far, we’ve only been able to begin a brief examination, but it’s already obvious that his powers are far greater than anything we’ve yet encountered.”