“Are you sure you’re OK? Wow. It’s on the news again. It looks awful.”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Look I’ve got to see people here. I’m OK. I’ll phone later. I guess I’ll come home early. I’ll ramble on or whatever. OK?”
“But are you sure your not injured?” asked Alicia
“Its just scratches. Honest, Love you lots. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
“Now if you could come this way Sir.”
“Sure” Joe followed the uniformed security man. He hadn’t noticed, but he was the only one security wanted to talk to.
It was a part of the building Joe hadn’t seen before. “In here Sir. If you just take a seat someone will be along soon.”
“Sure” Joe sat and trembled. This was getting too much. He was losing count of near death experiences.
“Now, Joe, there you are.” A man entered with two coffee cups and sat at a desk, looking down on Joe’s lower seat. Were such clumsy interview techniques really still in use? But presumably others were listening in and this man would be getting advice via his skull phone. “Now Joe” he offered a cup “You like it black I believe.”
“Thanks. Is that in my records?”
“Yes. Now, the thing is you sent this enquiry in. I expect you’ve worked out that your search engine started rummaging about in classified matters? Yes? Well you see that started a security alert. Now we wondered if anything had happened and as luck would have it we were operating low scale surveillance in the Cape Maclear area. Normally no one would have checked the tapes for months. Perhaps never looked at ‘em at all. But we did look and this is what we found.”
A light column grew from the end of the desk. Joe leaned forwards to see it closer. He was looking straight down on the beach at Cape Maclear.
“We were actually watching these two in the speed boat. They’re part of the crew from that stranded Mirconian ship that’s orbiting the Moon. We suspected some of the crew were really military and were using the ship for some dark purpose. Now, here we are. That’s you leaving the bar. You slept there overnight”
“I was just tired. Had a few…”
“Well now, you see here? This one aims a gun at you, but you just go down the steps in time. See?”
“But…”
“No point looking for a bullet. I imagine it would be made of nano molecules. They lose form and turn to powder after a minute or so. Now here it gets interesting. The men in the boat let a balloon go. There it is. A toy balloon.”
The red balloon appeared to get bigger as it came further up towards the satellite camera.
“Now there, one of the men points something at you. The balloon releases the killing device. The balloon pops. Now Alicia sees it. Knocks you out of the way.”
“She said she saved my life.”
“She did. Now you have breakfast under the tree and our two assassins come back to wards the beach. One of them swims to your house and presumably attaches a bomb.”
“This is mad. Why?”
“Come to that later. Now you take your house up, presumably to see the wild life.”
“Elephants and baboons.”
“Now, you land here. Now, the bomb was probably set to go off the next time you landed. I suppose they thought that might be in Jerusalem. But you land on the hill. The bomb may have fallen off, at any rate it doesn’t explode till after you are airborne again. You are very lucky.”
“Yes.”
“Now I suppose your house cleaned itself when you got back home? But I’ll have someone take a look. See if there’s any evidence left.”
“Right.”
“Now all this started a full-scale investigation. We discovered your Lady Friend works at the United Planets Embassy. Did she tell you that?”
“Yes”
“I see. Well we discovered that the stranded Mirconium crew may have killed another fourteen.”
“Fourteen? Dead? This is mad.”
“Yes. All supposedly
accidental deaths. Be a job to get evidence. Now these fourteen were
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