Jonah and Mariko’s Beach House, Sisik Beach, Malaysian Geographic
Friday 3 January 2110, 7:04am +8 UTC
Being able to watch a sunrise every day is a luxury. I waited in the dark, standing on the deck. Still hurting, but feeling good from the morning’s run. Ten kiloms of punishment, the last kilom run in the soft sand.
“Build those legs,” Mariko had shouted, jogging backwards in front me. Looking out to sea my legs still felt wobbly and my hand shook as I drank my first cup of coffee for the day.
Mariko had left for New Singapore an hour ago, carrying her newly acquired bicycle over her shoulder and walking up the beach to Abdul’s restaurant, where the dirt road joined the beach. From there she rode the fourteen kiloms to Kuantan. Once at Changi she took a Lev up to Topside and biked the remaining sixteen kiloms to UNPOL headquarters.
We had spent the first day of the year reading and discussing Gabriel’s information that I had unlocked on my Devstick while offline. When we’d returned to the beach house, the first thing she had done was to go to the kitchen on the ground floor and bring the heat pad up to the second floor. She placed it on a table, and then my folded-out Devstick on another table below it. The twin screens of the Devstick, the keypad and touchpad were all under the heat pad. Mariko explained that this way, infrared sat imaging could not be used — the movements of my hands and the Devscreen would be shielded by the heat signature from the pad.
Yesterday, after my run and after Mariko had left, I had sat down at the unfolded Devstick and started to plan. The root of any good plan is the outcome that you desire. I listed the outcomes I wanted:
— stop the Tag Law
— expose the existence of the Hawks and if possible their members
— Justice for my parents, Gabriel and me. Or failing that
— get rid of Sir Thomas
— survive!
It was a daunting list and I procrastinated in the task of forming plans, thinking instead pointless speculation about who I was. At least I had a name for myself. Mark Anthony Zumar. The problem was that I knew nothing about him. But if now wasn’t the time to spend thinking about that, it did cause me to think of something else.
Why hadn’t my DNA matched Gabriel’s? It was obvious to me that a DNA search would have been made on Gabriel, and it was obvious to me that we were related, but if we were related as closely as he said we were, then our DNA would have been matched. But it hadn’t been. I was reasonably sure that if a search was done on my DNA, it would bear a closer resemblance to Sir Thomas’s DNA than Gabriel’s. Sir Thomas had fabricated a story around me and had substantiated those first lies with evidence in the online system. My fake DNA, no doubt, was planted along with my fake birth date, thirty-four years ago on the 29th of October, 2075. Gabriel had said that I was born on the 23rd of September 2075 but Sir Thomas had changed that to the 29th of October, and there were the fake medical records showing my birth at the Glasgow Memorial Hospital.
He had planned carefully. So must I. The best plans provide an action related to an issue. The action may well be a tactic to enable the next stage of the plan, or it might be an action that was the entire plan. With the Tag Law I realized an immediate problem. If I suddenly started researching privacy laws, UNPOL or whoever was watching me would get suspicious. So either I had to find a way to do the research without causing suspicion, or I needed an accomplice. I dismissed the idea of finding someone to help immediately as too messy, with too many dynamics involved. It would be simpler to find a way to investigate the Tag Law without it being suspicious.
Exposing the Hawks and their members was a much more difficult task. To expose them meant getting in, and even then with their insular behavior, it would be possible to expose only a few. Gabriel had described them as a tree. Roots, branches and leaves. From the original twelve heads, Gabriel had put together a list. Seven identified and eighteen maybes, all people who attended that first meeting. It is from them that the Hawks had grown. Over two hundred years of growth from twelve different roots. How many people is that? Assuming that the first twelve each had two children, and assuming that each of those children had two children — with thirty years between the generations — that was over fifteen hundred people. Allowing for deaths the number of Hawks could be anywhere from one thousand to three thousand.
Gabriel had used Sir Thomas as the basis for analysis of the founding members tracing back from Francis Oliver, Sir Thomas’s father and through him to identify the first Hawks, or at least some them — the rest were conjecture based on their actions. The more I thought about this, the more impossible I realized it was to actually stop or identify them. If something is impossible don’t try do it. The next best thing to stopping them was exposure. To make people aware of their existence and how they acted. This was not easy because there are always conspiracy theories, and theorists usually end up in the ‘crackpot’ category in most people’s minds. For exposure to work, the evidence would have to be concrete and compelling.
Next to — expose the existence of the Hawks and if possible their members I wrote exposure — get concrete compelling evidence. I ignored the last three things on my planning list. As much as I wanted to see a positive outcome for each of them, they were of secondary importance. Six point three billion people were going to lose their lives in about eighty days. Allowing eight days for the Tags to be delivered to their homes. Stopping that delivery had to be the primary goal.
The most difficult part of my plan was to gain the trust of Sir Thomas, and use that trust to gain access to the Hawks. I had an in via his asking me to write his memoirs, but how to go beyond that I hadn’t yet worked out. I had to come up with a way to push his buttons, to get him to accept my word as trustworthy and then… And that was it, I didn’t really know what was going to happen. And Gabriel’s advice in that area was noticeably vague.
I took a sip of my coffee as the sun peeked over the horizon then I turned and went into the house. The sun cast its warmth on my back when I returned to the unfolded Devstick under the table, under the heat pads. I called up Gabriel’s file of information and pressed delete. I couldn’t keep the information on the Devstick — it was too much of a risk — and anyway I had what I needed in my head.
I folded the Devstick and pushed the clip over to lock it into its hand-held configuration and thumbed my contacts.
“Call Sir Thomas.”
The stored image of Sir Thomas, sitting behind his battleship of a desk, annoyed me, so I flicked over to the global feeds. As the news of the planet filled in, the image was cut by that of Sir Thomas.
“Hello, Uncle. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time?”
“No, Jonah, it’s all right. I was just on my way to UNPOL.” I could see the dawn sky of New Singapore bobbing around behind Sir Thomas’s head as he walked and talked. He must be walking from his Penthouse to UNPOL across Topside, I thought.
“I saw your speech the other night. I thought that you came across really well. It looked good.”
“Thank you, Jonah. And thank you for finding the right words for me as well. I think you may be on to something with this writing idea of yours,” he said, smiling into the camera. I smiled back, forcing my eyes to smile as well.
“I was wondering when you would like to get together to discuss your memoir. I obviously don’t have anything on yet and I have some time on my hands so…”
“Yes of course. Well the sooner the better really. Um, I tell you what. I was looking to get a round of golf in today at the UNPOL Officers’ Course. Would you be free about, say 4:30pm for nine holes?”
“I haven’t been on a golf course in years, Uncle. I’m afraid I won’t give you much of a game.”
“Nonsense, man, it’s like riding a bike and fucking. Once you know how, you never forget!” Sir Thomas laughed loudly in the screen of my Devstick. I couldn’t laugh, but somehow I managed a broader grin. My cheeks hurt.
“Right, well, OK then. I’ll see you at 4:30pm then. Please book a set of rental clubs for me could you? I sold mine before I came out here.”
Sir Thomas nodded and then the screen reverted back to the Global News feeds. No more bombs yet. That was the good news.
“Find me shops selling golf shoes in New Singapore,” I said into the Devstick.
I strolled down the narrow white-walled corridor to the entrance of the UNPOL Officers’ Golf Course, near to UNPOL Headquarters on Topside. It was 4:25pm. Reaching the end of corridor I entered the lobby of the Clubhouse and walked up to the reception.
“Hi my name’s Jonah Oliver. Do you have some golf shoes behind there for me?” I said, smiling at the Indian-looking old man behind the counter. He grunted and reached under the counter, pulling out a cloth bag containing what I guessed were the new Nike golf shoes I’d credded that morning.
“Thanks, oh and, ah, where can I pick up rental clubs?”
He looked to his right. I followed his look. A large sign with white letters carved into dark brown wood said, ‘Rental Clubs’ and had a long white arrow pointing past the reception counter. I gave him another smile. He picked his teeth with a toothpick and continued looking straight ahead to somewhere over my left shoulder.
I followed the direction the sign suggested and came out to a small paved area about a hundred meters away from the first tee. Ten golf bags on three-wheeled Dev caddies were standing around.
“Jonah Oliver,” I said, and a Devcaddy with a black bag of newish looking clubs turned, came towards me and stopped. Its camera rose until it was about the same height.
“Good afternoon, Jonah, I have your clubs ready here in the bag. I understand you’re playing the back nine today. Would you like a quick rundown on the tenth and the weather conditions before we get there?”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, and sat down on a white stone bench to put on my new golf shoes.
“Wind conditions are good. A slight eight to nine kilo breeze out of the north-east, humidity at a nice sixty-five percent and the stimpmeter is at seven point five. The tenth is a par four, four hundred and twenty yards long, with two bunkers on the right at about two hundred and fifty yards, and a single small bunker on the left at two hundred yards. Best angle of approach is down the right side of the fairway to catch the slope.”
It made me smile to listen to the word ‘yards’. You hardly ever heard it anymore, only on a golf course, where golfers stubbornly refused to adopt the global metric system. I stood up and bounced on the soles of my feet to test the shoes. They felt good, a perfect fit, and walked out of the rental area towards the tenth tee, with the Devcaddy trundling along behind me.
Sir Thomas was standing on the green with a driver tucked behind his back and locked inside his elbows as he twisted back and forth. He was wearing a peaked cloth cap, white polo shirt, khaki long outers and white golf shoes. His eyes frowned slightly as he realized that the guy walking on to the tenth tee wearing green baggy surfer shorts and an orange batik shirt with fluorescent green golf shoes was me. I smiled and waved.
“Hello, Uncle. I’ll be right there.”
Sir Thomas, nodded and smiled weakly back. “Good afternoon, Jonah. Taking this beach thing a bit seriously? Did you lose your clothes in the move?”
“No, not all. I just thought I’d bring a little sunshine into the grim, dark world of UNPOL.”
“Hah, grim dark world indeed.” And saying this Sir Thomas flipped his tee into the air, spinning it. It landed point first towards him. Somehow I knew it would.
“What do you say, Jonah? Fifty creds a hole, and two hundred on the score? I’ll give you two shots on the handicap.”
I nodded and smiled, standing up on the tee. Looking down the fairway, I said, “Yes, that sounds all right. Are you still playing off twelve?”
“Yes, yes. Last time I checked.” A small grin from my uncle made me think that he might not be telling me the truth but I let it slide. It wasn’t quite true that I hadn’t played golf for a long time either. I played a lot of golf on the Dev, just not on a golf course. The world-famous UNPOL Officers’ Course was one that I had played a lot. I knew every hole, bunker and green on the thirty-six hole course having played it hundreds of time on my Dev in Woodlands. Virtual golf is not the same as real golf but it comes very close. I was looking forward to this.
Sir Thomas teed off with a respectable drive that faded right and put him on the fairway about two hundred and twenty yards from us. I selected the two wood and took a couple of practice swings, letting the muscle memory come back into my swing. I addressed the ball and swung, driving the ball low and out towards the right of the fairway, landing about ten yards beyond Sir Thomas’s ball and rolling to stop twenty yards farther on.
“Good shot,” Sir Thomas said, and started walking off up the fairway. Handing my club to the mechanical hand of the Devcaddy I followed and caught up to him as we passed the ladies’ tee.
“So have you had any further thoughts on how you would like this memoir to be constructed? I’m quite excited about the project. Your life has covered a very interesting time in our history and perhaps I may have the chance to learn more about my parents too.”
Sir Thomas glanced across at me and nodded. “Well, yes, uhm, I think I have told you everything I know about your parents but, certainly there have been many changes in the world of ours this past seventy-five odd years. I think tying it into the big moments and movements that we’ve seen these past decades since the Great War of 2056 would be an excellent idea.”
“You were in Europe during the Great War. Is that correct? I seem to remember you telling me that, or have I just picked that up along the way.”
“Yes, I was in Europe. I was very lucky in a way because I was supposed to be in London, and if I had been where I was supposed to be, I would have been incinerated in the two bombs that hit London. Bit of overkill there, one bomb was more than enough. Anyway, I was supposed to join my regiment in London for the regimental dinner but I got a call from battalion ordering me to replace a lieutenant who had been wounded in a firing range accident the day before. Of course I departed right away and joined the nuclear response command bunker the next day. At noon that day the war started.”
Sir Thomas stopped. We had reached his ball. Hands on hips and looking towards the hole, he said, “Three iron.” He struck the ball cleanly and it flew straight towards the hole, hitting the front edge of the green. But it had too much pace and, reaching the slope that begins in the middle of the green, rolled off into the bunker on the far side.
“Blast!” Sir Thomas exclaimed and there was a loud thunk as he smacked the club into the Devcaddy’s outstretched hand. I walked on without saying anything, thinking about the shot I had to play, and the moves I had to make with Sir Thomas to gain his trust. I was playing it by ear, probing with my questions, looking for an opening. My ball was sitting up nicely.
“How far to the pin?” I asked the Devcaddy.
“One hundred and sixty-two point three five yards to the front edge…”
I laughed and interrupted, “Hey, what’s your name? Sorry I forgot to ask.”
“Name, Jonah? No, I do not have a name. I am a Callaway Devcaddy from the UNPOL Officers’ Course.”
“All right, look. I’ll call you Call, short for Callaway, and from now on just give me the yards rounded down to the nearest five yards. OK?”
“Certainly, Jonah. One hundred and sixty yards to the front edge and the pin is one seventy-five from your current position.”
“Seven iron please, Call.” On my practice swing I saw out of the corner of my eye that Sir Thomas was standing, hands on hips, watching me. I swung and hit cleanly in the sweet spot. The ball soared high and landed just before the front edge of the green. Taking a single bounce it then rolled to a stop about six feet from the pin.
Call, my new electronic buddy, said, “Good shot, Jonah.” Sir Thomas marched off up the fairway, leaning slightly forward and swinging his arms briskly as he went.
At the green I stood to one side leaning on my putter, looking at Sir Thomas in the bunker. He swung but all that came up over the lip of the bunker was sand and, “Blast.” I didn’t say anything. Another swing and the ball came out, landing on the green and rolling about three feet away from the hole. Normally, in a friendly game of golf, I’d just call that a ‘Gimme’ and let the other player have the shot but I wanted to get Sir Thomas off-balance.
I said nothing, walked over to my ball and took a long look at the line of the putt. I dropped it.
“Nice putt,” Call said and I smiled. Call didn’t have a mouth but I am sure he would have smiled if he did. Sir Thomas sunk his three footer and with a little glare at me as he bent down to pick up his ball, walked to the next tee without saying another word.
Despite the warm air, the silence was frosty and loud. The eleventh was a short par four just two hundred and fifty yards to the hole but with a narrow fairway with water running down both sides and a green surrounded by bunkers.
“Eight iron please, Call.” I cleared my mind and swung, putting the ball about one hundred and fifty down the fairway with a good approach to the green. Sir Thomas stepped up, and using his seven iron, landed his ball close to mine. He looked over at me with a tight grin.
“Good shot, Uncle,” I said, and we turned and started walking up the fairway. “So, you were in the command bunker in… where was that actually?”
“Spain. Just outside of Barcelona in a mountain, in a place called Sant Vicen del Horts. I finally arrived after a SNAFU, at 6pm on the 14th of May. I hadn’t arranged accommodation yet as I wasn’t sure how long I’d be there, so I just headed to the command bunker and slept there. In the morning we went on full alert and into lockdown. It was a terrible time and the strain on the men, one in particular, was too much. That strain is now called Holt’s Syndrome from that time.”
“Halt’s Syndrome? How do you spell that? H-A-L-T-S? What is it?”
“No, with an O. That’s how you spell it. The extreme stress that comes with knowing that mass destruction is within your power. The man I was talking about cracked under that stress and killed everyone in the bunker except me. I was wounded but was the only other person aside from Holt — that was his name, Keith Holt — with a sidearm. I managed to shoot him before he got me. Terrible thing though. He launched the missile we were in command of. Nothing we could do of course. Flight time was only a few minutes but he wiped out Bucharest, just after the ceasefire was ordered globally.”
We reached my ball. I had played for this spot knowing that this green was bowl shaped with a funnel that would lead you off the bottom left side of it if you played the shot anywhere other than into the top right corner. One of the advantages of virtual golf is that you can take the same shot a hundred times and see exactly where you land on the green.
“Call, give me the sand wedge, please.” Call handed me the sand wedge and I shook it a little to get the feel of the weight. I took a full swing and follow through, trying for as much back spin as I could get on the ball. I didn’t need to see it land to know that it was perfect, and turned to Sir Thomas without looking at the green. He was still watching my shot.
“Wouldn’t such an incident cause a blemish on your career?”
“Well of course there was a court martial but the evidence against Holt was strong. He had emailed his sister with crazy talk about how he could rule the world from where he was, God of the universe, that sort of thing, and I was completely exonerated.” He looked up at me and smiled as he stood over his ball, “Gave me the DSO at the end of the court martial.” Sir Thomas swung and I saw that the line he had taken was wrong. It was a good shot but he’d be left with at least a fifteen foot putt.
“Good shot, Sir Thomas. What does DSO stand for?” I asked, and he beamed at me.
“Yes not bad, eh? Well, let’s go take a look shall we? DSO stands for Distinguished Service Order.” And he turned to walk up the fairway. I joined him.
“And you were what twenty-one, twenty-two at this time?”
“Twenty-one. I’d been in the army since one month after my sixteenth birthday, the absolute earliest age that one can join.”
We reached the top of the slope at the edge of the green and I saw that my ball was about four feet from the hole. Sir Thomas’s ball was way off to the left of the green with at least a twenty footer. He grunted and I walked down to mark my ball. I walked to the rear of the green and watched as Sir Thomas made his putt. His ball rolled by the hole by a good five feet and I waited while he walked up, my arms across my chest, stroking my jaw and looking at the line of my putt. Sir Thomas putted. His ball rolled to within an inch of the cup and then stopped dead. He stayed bent over at the waist shoving his putter at the hole as if willing the ball to go in, but to no effect. He looked at me, still bent over. I pretended not to notice, stroking my jaw. He straightened up with a glare at me and, stiff-legged, strode to the hole.
“Oh that’s OK. That’s a gimme,” I said, pretending to notice just before he was about to tap in. He bent down to pick up his ball, giving me an appraising look. I ignored his look and stepped over to my ball, kneeling down to line it up. Sir Thomas walked off the green and on to the small wooden bridge that went down to the twelfth. I sunk the putt. As I crossed the green I had an idea.
“Call, can you record the game for me?”
Call’s oval shaped head with his camera lens eye turned to face me as I replaced the putter in the bag, taking out the driver at the same time.
“Oh yes of course, Jonah. That is part of our better golf program. For twenty creds I can also provide you with an analysis of your swing.”
“That sounds good, but if you could record everything that would be great. I mean us walking and talking — I’d like a memento of this game with my uncle. Is that possible, and can you upload the record to my Devstick?”
“Yes, I can do that. Shall I use the impression you gave me earlier at the clubhouse for the twenty cred?”
“Yes, use the earlier impression. Now the twelfth is five hundred and sixty yards right?”
“Yes, Jonah, bunkers at two fifty on the right, water all the way down the left, and the first part of fairway slopes up to the bunkers. If you can crunch a drive then you’ll catch the back slope and roll down, leaving a safe six iron short of the water before the green.” Call said all this with the clubs clattering on his back as he rolled across the wooden bridge. We joined Sir Thomas on the twelfth tee. I walked straight up to the tee and crossed to the right side. Sir Thomas was directly behind me, standing by our Devcaddies. I put my ball on its tee, took two practice swipes and lined up to let one rip.
At the top of my back swing, just as I was about to unleash, Sir Thomas coughed.
I stopped the swing just in time, leaving the driver held high in the air behind my back. I didn’t turn around or say anything, but slowly lowered the club to the ground and addressed the ball again. I cleared my mind and swung. I crunched it as Call wanted, easily clearing the bunkers on the right, the ball disappearing over the crest of the slope.
“So you joined the military at sixteen. Before that what was life like for you? Do you have any material from that time, letters or images?”
“Yes, I do have some things. I will send them to you. I have had everything digitized. Life was difficult with the death of my parents when I was twelve. I am sure you know what a loss that is to a person. But for you, not so much perhaps, as you never knew your parents. But for me, I lost them when I was twelve and that was not so easy.” Sir Thomas smiled at me, and I thought I could kill him there and then. The thought shocked me, and he saw something in my eyes because he spoke again. “Well, of course, I don’t mean it was easy for you, Jonah, losing your parents — of course not. What I mean is that I knew my parents and therefore I lost what I had known and that is perhaps more painful.”
I recovered myself and smiled at him.
For a man of seventy-five, Sir Thomas was still fit and strong, hitting his drive further than most golfers of thirty-five do, but he still didn’t clear the hill.
“Nice drive,” I said softly and fell in step with him as, driver in hand, he began to walk up the slightly sloping fairway.
“The military became my family, though of course I couldn’t join straight away — I was too young. My brother, your father, well he was busy with the estate and the family businesses so most of the time I stayed with the cadets. As soon as I could, I joined up. Later of course UNPOL became my family, but when your father died and the estates and the family businesses all passed to me, that is when I thought of creating the Oliver Foundation.”
“Why gifted children only? Why doesn’t the Oliver Foundation accept any child who has lost its parents?”
“Well, there’s no shortage of care for orphaned children in our world. Indeed, the care given is superb. However, the opportunity for gifted children, or even just above averagely intelligent children, to thrive in that environment is extremely limited with the result that their potential is lost to the world. Over the years, Oliver children have risen to positions of great influence.”
“Was the Oliver Foundation started because of the loss of your brother and because you were alone then?”
“Well, I wasn’t quite alone was I? I lost a brother but gained a nephew. But yes, losing my brother was the influence that led to the Oliver Foundation.” He suddenly side-stepped towards me, and reaching out, put his arm nearly around my shoulders. He missed because he was quite a bit shorter than me, and instead squeezed my elbows awkwardly. I stiffened involuntarily at his touch and he stumbled away, withdrawing his arm and clearing his throat.
“We must do this more often, Jonah. It is one of the hopes of my having more self-time that I’ll be able to spend more time with you.”
“Yes, Uncle, we will. This memoir idea of yours is a great way for me to get to know and appreciate the life you have led. I don’t believe that I have ever thanked you properly for the life that I have enjoyed, and you must allow me to make that up to you somehow.” He smiled at my words and kept walking.
“Of course I will, Jonah, but raising you has been my pleasure. As you know I had some regrets that you showed no interest in a military career but you have made me very proud with your success in the legal field.”
We walked on in silence for a bit. I glanced behind me to see how close Call was to me.
“Exactly where were you when I was born, Uncle?”
“Huh, let me see. You were born on the 29th of October, 2075. I was in Australia at the time — yes, that’s right, official UNPOL business, top secret. But I returned to England the moment I heard the news of your birth.”
Sir Thomas hit a good second shot but still had about one hundred sixty to the green. I took a six iron and played safe just short of the water, leaving me with an easy chip shot onto the rolling green.
“Thirty-four years ago and still top secret — that must have been quite some business you were on?”
“Yes, it was. Well without giving away too much I can say that it had to do with the assassination of Bo Vinh.”
“Really! But Bo Vinh died the 1st of January 2075 and this was more than a nine months later, right?”
“Yes, correct, but something came up that provided a lead in the case and I had to follow that up personally. One of my great regrets, perhaps the greatest, is not finding the coward who killed Bo Vinh. I live in hope that one day we will uncover the truth behind the firing of that anti-tank weapon at Bo Vinh’s convertible.”
We walked in silence for a little while.
“And this lead, was it significant?”
“No. It turned out to be a dead end.”
“I see. So getting back to when you were cleared in the court martial over the annihilation of Bucharest, what did you do next?”
We reached his ball. It wasn’t in a good lie. Sir Thomas grunted and looked at the green ahead. An island green connected by a small wooden bridge with low railings and surrounded by a moat twenty yards wide. The sides of the green where they reached the water sloped sharply down hill and anything landing five feet from the edge would roll into the moat.
Sir Thomas looked at me and grinned, “No guts, no glory eh,” and took out a seven iron. I smiled back at him, thinking how I could probe deeper.
Sir Thomas lined up his shot and I stood waiting. He swung and hit it, the ball crisply rising up high, then sharply dipping as it passed the wooden bridge and hit the green. He’d hit the ball so cleanly it had lots of back spin on it, and Sir Thomas’s proud grin vanished as the ball spun off the green, reached the sharply sloping edge and trickled down into the moat.
“Blast,” shouted Sir Thomas and slashed the seven iron into the dirt in front of him.
We walked up another fifty yards to where my ball was lying. I had a short hundred yard pitch shot — again I had played this shot a hundred times. Nine times out of ten I could shoot a birdie on this hole, with exactly the shots I’d used so far.
“Thanks, Call.” I took the sand wedge that Call had already selected from the bag before I’d asked for it, and adopting a wide stance, lined up the shot. I cleared my head getting ready for some distraction out of Sir Thomas and took my back swing. Too late to stop this time. As I swung, Sir Thomas’s Devcaddy reversed sharply, rattling the clubs in his bag. I was prepared this time and followed through, hitting the ball cleanly and dropping it past the pin by about twelve feet. It bounced once and spun back towards the hole, coming to a rest with a four foot putt for me to make.
I held my follow through sand wedge high across, my right elbow pointed at the flag and Call’s voice rebuked Sir Thomas’s Devcaddy. “Devcaddy violation, course rule Fifteen B. One more incident and you cost your player a stroke.”
“Dammed Devcaddy. Sorry about that, Jonah, must be something wrong with its circuit.”
“That’s OK, Sir Thomas. No guts, no glory, eh?” and I smiled at him. His apologetic smile froze on his face and his eyes searched mine for guile, but I held his eyes with an innocent look that I’d had years to perfect. Finally he smiled, sure of my innocence, but suspecting that I might just be making a fool of him. I wanted him unbalanced, not thinking straight.
He dropped a new ball on the ground in front of him and I waited while he chipped onto the green. He still had a long putt to make. I didn’t say anything. When he’d finished his shot we crossed over the bridge, me following him, and as we walked onto the green I said, “So after Bucharest, what did you do?” and went and marked my ball.
“Yes, well as you know the immediate aftermath of the war was a troubled time. There was a great shake up in how military forces were organized, and the UK along with most of NATO was deployed to manage the camps. Those were awful times, Jonah. People dying of secondary diseases caused by the fallout. People starving, begging for food. I was sent to the camps outside of Boston, in what was then the United States of America. At the time I must confess that I thought it ironic that a British army lieutenant would be put in charge of a camp in Boston, the birthplace of the American revolt against the British Empire. But it was a small camp, just three thousand people, and Boston was a wasteland.”
He took his putt and missed. He was still outside my putt so I stayed where I was and let him putt again, looking at his ball all the time. He putted and missed again, rolling past the hole by about a foot.
“Pick it up, Uncle,” I said, and walked over to place my ball on its mark. I cleared my mind. Just as I started my back swing I heard the sound of Sir Thomas taking off his golf glove, the Velcro ripping loud as he pulled it off. I held the stroke steady and swung through the ball following it with my putter as it rolled forward and dropped into the center of the cup.
“That’s three in a row, Uncle. Would you like to go double or quits on the next hole?”
“Double or quits? Yes, all right. Why not? Your luck can’t hold forever.”
I laughed and we walked up to the thirteenth, a short one hundred and thirty yard par three again with an island green.
Call held out the pitching wedge for me as I dropped my ball on the green and nudged it forward with my toe to find a slightly better lie.
I took a nice steady slow back swing and swung through the ball hitting it crisply. The ball arced up and landed on the middle of the green, bouncing twice and stopping right next to the flag. I looked over and smiled at Sir Thomas.
“Just lucky I guess.”
He made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt and walked on to the tee. I waited until he’d finished setting up and then just when he was about to take his back swing I said, “What do you know about the death of my parents?”
He stood still with the club face at the ball and not moving said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, I know that they died in a car accident a month after I was born but I mean how did they die? What happened? I’d like to know the details.”
His shoulders dropped a little and he said, “It was a long time ago, Jonah. Those details are just useless bits of information now. Let it go. Your parents loved you. That’s what matters. Hold on to that.”
As he took his back swing I let out a long breath loud enough for him to hear. He thinned the shot, sending the ball flying straight off the tee and landing in the water. I set off along the path beside the lake; the same lake that I’d walked past the first day I met Gabriel.
“I think the drop area is on the other side, Uncle.” He didn’t say anything but I heard the thunk as he slammed the club into his Devcaddy’s hand.
As we walked along the path, Sir Thomas behind me, I said, “So how long were you in Boston?”
He didn’t say anything. When I glanced behind I saw that he was red-faced and muttering to himself.
We reached the thirteenth green and Sir Thomas dropped another ball onto the ground. He looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before, and I thought I knew all of his moods.
“I was there for eighteen months,” he said, and chipped his ball onto the green. I walked over to my ball, waiting for him to say that I could pick it up, but he didn’t. I walked past my ball and using one hand tapped the putter’s face to the ball. It dropped in the cup.
Before the fourteenth was a drinks stop. A cylindrical cement block with a counter set into it, and a couple of refrigerators behind the woman serving. She smiled as I approached. On the counter were hard-boiled eggs, bananas, and fried chicken legs.
“Chicken leg and a Tiger beer please.” I turned back to see my uncle coming up the path behind me and entering the seating area of the drinks stop. I said, “Uncle, would you like anything?”
“Just a beer, Jonah,” he replied and I held up two fingers as the woman collected the beers from the refrigerator. Sir Thomas took off his peak cap and laid it on the table in front of him, putting his glove and golf ball inside it. The Devcaddies took the path around the back of the drinks stop and trundled over to wait by the fourteenth tee, stopping under the branches of a large flame tree. I looked over at them and could see that Call’s lens eye was still turned in the direction of Sir Thomas and me.
I collected the two beers and the chicken leg wrapped in a paper napkin and went to sit at the table where Sir Thomas was mopping his brow. The evening had turned muggy, and looking at the dark clouds gathered to the north somewhere around Changi, I thought we might be in for a thunderstorm later.
“Have you had any success in tracing the terrorists, Uncle? If it’s confidential and you can’t tell me, I understand…”
Sir Thomas sighed and laid the handkerchief balled up in his fist on the white iron trellis table. “Well yes, it’s confidential but I know I can trust you. You’re practically one of us after all. And the answer is that we have some leads but nothing solid yet.”
I took a bite of chicken and washed it down with the ice cold Tiger beer.
“Have you investigated the Ents who supply the Tags?”
Sir Thomas looked at me sharply and said, “What makes you ask that?”
“Well they have motive. The Tag contract must be worth billions and what better way of ensuring that the law gets through the Popvote than creating a little terror. That’s of course if it survives its final passage through the Supreme Court — which I doubt it will.”
“You don’t think the Tag Law will make it through the National Supreme Court?”
“I doubt it. There’s a ton of precedent case law around privacy, and the whole area of privacy and human rights is strewn with laws that have been formulated but never passed or passed and then immediately repealed. Since Bo Vinh’s time the Supreme Court has always voted on the side of the individual. I am pretty sure for instance that Annika Bardsdale will bring a case before the court within the month. Normal strategy is to wait until the last moment before filing, that way you leave the competition with little time to prepare a counter defense, and that would mean delay of the Tag Law, at the least.”
Sir Thomas took a long swallow of his beer, looking at me around the bottle, draining it he put the bottle softly on the table.
“Who’s Annika Bardsdale?”
“Oh, Annika’s the leader of the Social Responsibility Party. I was listening to her talk about Tag just the other day.”
“Do you know her?”
“Not really, just acquaintances, you know, connections of connections, third degree of separation and all that.”
“I see. And how do you feel about the Tag Law? Where do you sit?” he asked me, one arm leaning on the table, sitting back in his chair. His face was expressionless.
“Well if I was asked at a party I’d say I wanted it. But honestly, because you’re my uncle, I’m a hypocrite on the issue. I don’t want it for myself, but for the rest of the great unwashed I want it.”
“Hah!” he exclaimed, and taking his hand off the table slapped his knee with it. “Great unwashed, hah! You know, Jonah… um excuse me one moment, I must take this,” he said, smiling his tight smile at me. Sir Thomas reached into his bottom khaki outers pocket and pulled out his Devstick which was making a soft buzzing sound.
“Yes, Oliver here. What is it? I said I was playing golf.”
His eyebrows raised and he smiled that quick little smile of his, the corners of his lips flicking up once. Then his jaw clenched. “I see. When?” My one-sided hearing of the conversation led me to think that another bomb had gone off. A chill went through me as I thought about Mariko. I listened carefully to Sir Thomas. “No, no, that’s quite all right. You were correct to notify me. All right then, yes.”
He looked right at me, the Devstick held to his ear, his lips compressed. “All right, I’m on my way.” Sir Thomas snapped his Devstick shut and smiled at me.
“We will have to finish this game another day, I’m afraid. Duty calls and all that.”
I smiled back.
“We’ll have to finish this up soon, heh. What, I’m four holes down? Well, I have to push off. I do think that this idea of yours, tying my memoirs to the great events of our time, is a good one. Sort of puts things in perspective.”
“Yes exactly. Your life as seen through the great events of our time. When do you think you will be able to find some more time for us to continue?”
“Soon, Jonah, soon.”
Sir Thomas sat back in his chair and looked at me for a moment, then he licked his lips and stood. With a tight smile he walked to his Devcaddy and, placing his feet on the pads next to the wheels, said, “Take me to the clubhouse.”
I pulled out my Devstick waving it at the Dev on the counter to pay for our drinks. I walked over to where Call was waiting.
“Looks like our game was cancelled, Call.”
“Yes. Would you like to finish the round anyway?”
“No thanks. I think we’ll call it a day. You can finish recording now — please upload to my Devstick.”
“Yes, Jonah. And congratulations on a great round.”