Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

“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.”

“Why do you only have one of them?” the chairman asked.

“That’s the bad news, Mr Chairman.” Susan Mortlake paused. “The two boys – Scott and Jamie Tyler – were performing a telepathy act at a theatre in Reno. It was their guardian, who was also the producer of the show, who first brought them to our attention. He was quite happy for us to take them in return for a sum of cash – although, of course, it was always our intention to kill him. This we have done. I arranged a fairly simple operation to pick the boys up but unfortunately something went wrong. It may be that their power is even greater than we had imagined. At any event, they knew we were coming and one of them – Jamie – managed to get away.”

“Where is he now?”

“We have no idea. My agents tell me that he was helped in his escape by a woman, but they were unable to get her registration number. It all happened too quickly and it was dark. However, I believe the situation is now under control.”

“Go on.”

“We shot the producer, a man called Don White. He was living with a woman, Marcie Kelsey. We shot her with the same gun and then used our contacts within the Nevada police to set up a false trail. Jamie Tyler is now wanted for both murders and it can only be a matter of time before he’s tracked down. At which point, we will have him.”

Susan Mortlake sounded confident, but the chairman was unimpressed. “Your agents allowed one of these boys to slip through their fingers. They also failed to track down the car. Have you taken any disciplinary procedures, Mrs Mortlake?”

“No, sir.” The woman looked up defiantly. “It did occur to me that you might be asking for my own resignation.”

The chairman considered, then shook his head. “If you have one of the Gatekeepers, that will be enough,” he said. “We only have to break the circle and we will have won. However, you still need to make redundancies, Mrs Mortlake. We cannot have people letting us down.”

“Of course, Mr Chairman. I thought as much myself.”

“And I want you to deal with Scott Tyler personally. You understand that, generally speaking, it would be better if he were not allowed to die.”

“I understand. But as a matter of fact, we may be able to use him. I’m hoping to bring him round to our point of view.”

“Good.”

The single word was praise indeed. The chairman never complimented his staff on anything. At the Nightrise Corporation, excellence was taken for granted. He spoke again, this time addressing all the executives.

“As I began by saying, this is a critical time. It’s also a very positive time and before we part company, I want to introduce you to an associate whose name will be familiar to you. We have worked together on many occasions and he has very kindly agreed to say a few words to you today.”

There was a fourteenth screen at the far end of the table, opposite the chairman. Until now it had been blank, but it suddenly flickered into life. At first it seemed that there was something wrong with the picture. The head that had appeared simply looked too big for the screen, too heavy for the neck that supported it. Its eyes were very high up, above a nose that seemed to travel a long way to the small and rather babyish mouth below. It was as if the image had been stretched – but in fact there was nothing wrong with the transmission. The man was Diego Salamanda, head of Salamanda News International. He was beaming the signal from his research centre in the town of Ica in Peru. And this was how he really looked.

“Good evening,” he began. The local time was just after seven o’clock. “It is a great pleasure to be able to speak with you. I would like to thank your chairman for inviting me. And I have some excellent news to share with you.

“I have now had a chance to decipher the diary of the mad monk of Cordoba which was unearthed very recently in Spain and passed into my hands. I don’t need to remind you that this is the only written history of the Old Ones and their fight against the five children who came to be known as the Gatekeepers. The Old Ones ruled the Earth about ten thousand years ago. They were all-powerful but they were defeated – according to the diary – by a trick. Sadly, we have no more details. There was a great battle, which the Old Ones lost, and they were banished. Two gates were built to keep them out of our world. Many of us have been working for their return ever since.

“Further examination of the diary has provided me with the answers that I have been looking for and I can tell you that, without a shadow of a doubt, very soon we will have achieved our aims and a new millennium will have begun. Yes, my friends, the Old Ones are about to return to take control of a world that should, in truth, have been theirs all along.”