John McNally - The Forbidden City

“I can explain …” Kelly started.

“What the hell?!” Al said. “I was about to come and wake you all. And you, young man,” he said to Finn, “aren’t supposed to know this vehicle even exists!”

“It’s his birthday present! We were just taking the kid for a ride!” said Kelly.

“I’m telling my mum!” Al said.

This sent a bolt of fear through Finn.

“That’s a top-secret, prototype nano-vehicle of incalculable value and you have just put all your lives in danger,” Commander King hissed from on high.

“Ah, nuts. He’s thirteen years old. What were you doing at thirteen?” said Delta.

“I was at Eton,” said Commander King.

“This country needs a revolution,” said Kelly.

“We don’t have the time,” said Commander King, turning smartly to lead the way up the gantry. “Come.”

They entered the Control Gallery as it was blinking to life, the place crammed with computers and control systems. Various members of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committee were already settling themselves around a giant horseshoe-shaped table.

As Al sat, he placed the Bug on the table in front of him then carefully transferred all four of the crew to the Sony Walkman nDen, which he hooked to his top pocket and tapped to switch on the loudspeaker.

Commander King called the meeting to order with the words: “Lock us down”.

Doors locked and blinds whirred down across the long gallery windows. Numerous screens switched on, showing live feed images of the UK Prime Minister and the other world leaders who sat on the G&T. For the first time in ages , Finn tasted danger and, with only a hint of guilt, felt a growing excitement.

Commander King turned to the main screen. On it appeared the two most powerful men in China: the President of the People’s Republic and his security chief, Bo Zhang.

“Zaoshang hao daren.” Commander King addressed the President with courtly authority.

“Good morning from Beijing,” replied the President in perfect English.

“Mr President,” King began, “on behalf of the Global Non-govern—”

“Yeah, it’s late here,” Al interrupted. “Let’s skip the diplomatics and catch up at Christmas instead. What have we got?”

“Thank you, Dr Allenby,” sighed King, and ordered: “Slide.”

A picture appeared on the central screen.

It was of a Chinese police officer inside his car.

Dead.

“Shanghai, China, twenty-four hours ago. A dead police officer with no obvious sign of injury. He’d been running a simple ID and security check on a young foreigner.”

Blurred CCTV footage appeared on-screen.

“White Caucasian male, false Belgian passport, no fingerprints, nothing to trace. We think late teens. He popped up enough times on both the Airport and Forbidden City CCTV systems to provoke a routine stop-and-search enquiry.”

“The Forbidden City? I’ve been there with Her Majesty the Queen and it is most certainly not in Shanghai,” asserted the Prime Minister with idiotic certainty. “It’s in Beijing – look it up.”

“Correct, the Forbidden City was the Imperial Palace of Chinese emperors for centuries, but it’s also the name of the 23rd Industrial Progress Zone of Shanghai, a massive purpose-built, high-tech hub to the South of the city.”

Pictures flashed up on-screen of a factory complex, miles of production lines, thousands of masked workers in shiny white facilities; then of the whole huge industrial area from the air – laid out like a complex crop circle. A diagram was then overlaid, illustrating the layout and adding numbers.

“Genius!” said Al.

“It’s a picture of Pi!” Finn called out, delighted.

“Correct,” King said. “The city is laid out as a circle divided into tenths. The ratcheting out of each arc, or sector, expresses the number Pi in multiples of one tenths of a rotation, thus – 3.141592654 recurring – the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.”

“You worked that out?” said Al, amazed at Finn’s insight.

“We got shown it once in class,” Finn admitted.

“It’s the densest area of computer manufacturing in the world and the site of several advanced research plants,” King continued. “A newspaper dubbed it the Forbidden City when it was being built and the name stuck. Nearly every piece of technology we’re using and communicating on now was produced in China, much of it here –” he pointed to the screen – “in the world’s hardware hub.”

King returned to the picture of the dead policeman, then turned to the video feed from China.

“Secretary Zhang?”

Bo Zhang rose, poised, proud and perfect, mind as sharp as the creases in his uniform – the most powerful man in the world under forty, with some 10 million security personnel under his command. He was uncomfortable having to defer to a foreigner, but his President was a founding signatory of the G&T (which Bo had only that morning learned the existence of).

“Commander,” he began, in perfect English, “Officer Ju intercepted the suspect in a food hall in sector 9 of the Forbidden City at 7:22am yesterday morning. CCTV analysis shows he’d travelled directly into the Forbidden City from Shanghai Airport six times over the previous five weeks. When questioned, the suspect contradicted this surveillance information and Officer Ju made a decision to bring him in. Last contact by radio was at 7:24am. An assault of some kind then took place. There were no marks on the body apart from a pinprick wound on the right temple. When the cranium was opened, massive nerve damage was observed in a clear path from the wound.”

An animation flashed up, a revolving 3D CAT scan of a human head, with broad red lines marking the projectile’s devastating progress through the brain.

It was like a child’s scribble inside someone’s head, thought Finn, and it reminded him of something …

“No weapon known to our analysts could have caused such damage. Given the global strategic importance of the Forbidden City complex, this committee was informed.”

“Weird …” Al said, and got up to look more closely.

“What could have done this?” asked the UK Prime Minister.

“The most extraordinary bullet in history …” Al muttered as he studied the diagram. “How big was the projectile?”

“One point five millimetres square,” Bo Zhang replied.

Then Finn remembered. “It’s like what a grub would do to an apple! Or if a human botfly gets trapped in a human skull and eats and eats through the brain till the person goes mad and eventually dies.”

“A what ?” asked the Head of British Security in disgust.

“A human botfly,” came the voice from the box on Al’s top pocket. “I’ve always wanted one. How long was he under attack?”

“Less than two minutes. Who am I addressing?” asked Bo, confused.

“One of the nano subjects,” explained King.

Al popped open the Sony Walkman before a camera to reveal the four tiny people ranged across the sofa. They waved. Bo, who had been frankly disbelieving of their existence to this point, gave the tiniest nod back.

“But an insect didn’t do this,” said King, returning to task. “This is the suspect arriving on a flight from Macau.” He called up an image of a man in an airport security line. “And this is his hand luggage.”

An X-Ray image of his bag appeared. King zoomed in on a bright but tiny dot that seemed to be inside the top of a pen. Al went right up close and screwed up his eyes.