Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy

Chapter 3

3

THE PLANE WAS of the private jet type, unmarked and quite new, I thought. There was a Nations of Earth logo on the side. We climbed up the narrow ladder into the cabin, carpeted and lined with birch wood. A tinny voice that came from a hidden loudspeaker told us to strap into our seats. The seating consisted of a luxury couch and a couple of easy chairs with covers of cream-coloured leather, arranged around a low table. Works of art hung on the walls, and there were blue curtains over the windows, held aside with silver rope. Soft, cream-coloured carpet lined the floor. I checked my shoes so as not to make dirty footsteps on it. A short passage led to a kitchenette behind the front wall of the cabin, and sounds of clicking glass drifted from the open door.

The passage ended in a closed door with a panel next to it on which a green light burned. I presumed this led to the cockpit.

We sat and strapped into the chairs. Judging by the expressions on Thayu’s and Nicha’s faces, they felt just as out-of-place as I did. This was not a place for me or any of my team. This was a place for top diplomats and movers and shakers at Nations of Earth. I wondered if it was Danziger’s private jet.

Some people clearly had far too much money.

Both Thayu and Nicha were looking around, dark eyes roving the ceiling—looking for bugs, of which I had no doubt there were plenty.

We did seem to have acquired a flight attendant. She came out of the kitchenette to ask if we wanted drinks. I asked for coffee—I was still trying to wake up—but Nicha and Thayu stuck with water. Before getting those drinks for us, the flight attendant pressed a button next to the door which set a mechanism in motion that pulled up the ladder and closed the door. Then, while the engine fired up, she brought our drinks, all smiles.

I spotted Thayu drop a little tablet in the water. It fizzed on the way down in a stream of yellowish bubbles. Some sort of red-coded supplement, likely with a high concentration of hydrofluoric acid—hence the bubbles? Something that was exceedingly poisonous to me for sure.

Nicha sat sideways on the couch, his eyes closed. Thayu was reading something. We didn’t speak much. The message was clear: this was not our territory and we didn’t know who would be listening.

Security-speak for this was “the weather forecast”, since the weather was considered one of the safest subjects.

The plane took off and levelled out above the moonlit landscape.

I looked out the window, seeing patches of light scroll past. Cities and towns asleep, while I was up here, recalled urgently to attend to some disaster.

As usual, my mind mulled over the possibilities.

I’d recently discovered that way back in the time of Mizha Palayi, some time not too long after 1975, Asto had made payments to Libya for the use of their land to build a desert colony.

At the time, the murder of one of Mizha’s seconds and the protracted subsequent troubles had left the whole of Asto’s society in danger of collapse, and a good section of the Palayi clan had been looking for a way to safety.

I wasn’t sure if the money was for a rental agreement or if land ownership had ever been transferred, but it had disturbed me. Ezhya had assured me that Asto had never considered the plan seriously, but the p*****t showed that it had been a good deal more serious than he made it out to be.

I’d learned that with Coldi, you needed to be careful with what they said about events in the past. They did not consider the past as important as most people on Earth did.

And now Danziger wanted to see me about this discovery, urgently, even? Had his main opponent in the election for the position of President of Nations of Earth gotten a whiff of the rumours surrounding the plan, and now wanted an explanation of what Libya had done with the money? That sounded like something Margarethe Ollund would do.

Last year, the murder of Sirkonen and subsequent stupidity by Danziger had almost brought the world to a war with Asto. I don’t think anyone appreciated how close Asto had been to using military action to free their citizens trapped on Earth. Nations of Earth would have considered that an act of war and the situation would have spiralled out of control from there.

I knew little about Asto’s armed forces. Heck, few people did, even Thayu and Nicha, and Thayu had worked for them, and their father was some kind of admiral. But what I knew about Asto’s army was enough to realise that you did not, ever, want to provoke them.

It was still dark when the jet touched down on the runway in Rotterdam, and lights blazed in all the airport buildings. Smaller planes were waiting on the tarmac to take off, mostly private craft. It would be a couple of hours before daylight came and the big solar suborbitals could take off.

Another car waited for us outside the Members’ Lounge entrance. It was a Nations of Earth service vehicle with a uniformed driver, who took our bags with barely a word spoken. The air was so cold that our breath steamed. Thayu clamped her arms around herself.

The car took us over the dyke that connected the airport to the rest of the city. Moonlight glittered on the water on both sides.

The streets were still quiet. The occasional tram trundled in the other direction, with the bleary light in the cabins wasted, but for the occasional passenger coming back from a night shift or going to work at this ungodly hour.

We arrived at the Nations of Earth complex, where the gates were closed, but the guards let us through with a simple wave. The only signs of life in the broad, tree-lined avenues were the guards that stood on the corners and a pair of squirrels chasing each other across the road in the headlights of the car. They brought a bout of laughter from Thayu who had spent many hours at my father’s veranda feeding oranges to possums, and didn’t want to believe him when he said that most people in New Zealand hated them because they were introduced pests.

She sat as a warm presence next to me, comforting in this very cold and bleary night.

We didn’t stop in front of the building that held the president’s office as I had expected, but turned into an alley that ran down the side. It gave access to an underground parking area, closed off by a steel gate that opened at the driver’s command and rolled shut as soon as we had gone inside.

The car stopped in an underground car park in front of a set of double steel doors, gleaming, threatening and forbidding.

A reception committee of armed guards waited for us. The highest-ranking officer, with the emblem of the Special Services on his chest, came to me.

“Mr Wilson, come with me. The president’s aide has been notified that you’ve arrived.”

Another of the guards said, “Uh, sir, what about . . .”

He glanced at Thayu and Nicha.

I said through clenched teeth, “They’re with me.” Seriously, when was this nonsense going to stop?

“We need to check with our supervisor.”

“They come with me. I am the gamra delegate and these are my zhaymas. They will come with me to the door of the meeting room. It’s gamra protocol that they come inside with me, but we accept that the president may wish differently.”

“Um, yes sir. I have to check, sir.”

After a brief exchange of words with a supervisor, Thayu and Nicha were allowed in, to the door of the meeting room only. The guard clearly didn’t like it.

The steel doors slid aside and let us into a dark corridor. I guessed this was the president’s private entrance into the building, but why did we need to come in here?

I expected to be taken upstairs in the lift, but the Special Services officer took me along the corridor that was only illuminated by lights in little alcoves in the walls. There were a few doors to the left and right, but they were all closed, with security locks on the doors.

I’d heard people speak of this place. It looked like this meeting was going to take place in the safety bunker that was built for wartime purposes.

What the hell were we doing here?