Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [14]
The world just didn’t work like that any more.
Cosgrove wasn’t sure the world worked at all.
The meeting was going to be in the United States.
California.
Enemy territory.
Cosgrove wondered if it was Baskerville’s joke at his expense.
He had twelve hours to get there with his scientist – if he was going to travel by commercial airline, as was the usual practice, then he would barely make it. Even travelling hypersonic, he’d have to get a move on.
He told his autosec to ready the royal airliner, but the autosec complained that it wasn’t authorised to do that. So Cosgrove had to make the phone calls himself. Convincing the people he needed to convince took almost as long as the trans‐Atlantic flight would. By then, Penny Lik was downstairs in his car, with a packed suitcase.
There were formalities before he left. Cosgrove didn’t believe in ritual blessings, but it was procedure, a tradition dating back to the late eighteenth century, and these things were audited. He pricked his thumb, let a drop of blood fall on to the map, then drew a sign of power over Los Olivos. That done, he wiped the blood off the page, before it had a chance to congeal.
The secret signs of power, as determined by the men in secret societies, who thought they were the secret masters of the world. That’s what the sigil on the front of the Atlas was meant to mean. ‘Ours.’ The conspiracy theorists had been saying it for decades – there was a group of people, small enough to fit around one table, who controlled the flow of capital, who manipulated the economies of the world.
Cosgrove knew of at least nine organisations, six of which were still active, who thought they were the ones in charge, that they were the secret masters of the world.
Only one of them needed to be right, of course. But Cosgrove had thought for years that if there had been a small cabal of people running the world then it would be a lot better run than it actually was.
He had been in the Secret Service for sixty years. He knew a lot of secrets. There were things out there, beyond the normal, human, world. The truly ancient, the ones for whom this mere world would not be enough. There was a grand scheme of things. If there was a master of the world, he wouldn’t waste his time with mere national economies, or local stock markets.
An instinct, and he realised that this was what he was dealing with. Something not of this Earth, not of this time. Something alien to humanity. Something that had to be fought.
He headed downstairs, to Professor Lik, and his car.
* * *
Anji came back into the control room, buttoning up the silk shirt she’d found in the TARDIS wardrobe. It might not be the height of fashion where they were going, but it suited her. It felt odd to be wearing her bikini underneath instead of proper underwear. It felt more odd than being in a time machine en route to Athens airport some years in her future.
She was sure that should have told her something very profound about her psychology and lifestyle, but wasn’t quite sure what. She remembered that Fitz had warned her about that, told her that you get swept up in all the weirdness, that the ordinary stuff would start to feel odd.
‘Where’s Fitz?’ she asked.
‘The invitation to Athens was for two people – a scientist and his assistant. So I’ve sent Fitz on an errand. I’ve just dropped him off at Neverland.’
‘Neverland?’
‘That’s right.’
The Doctor was leaning over the console, looking relaxed.
‘You’re not going to explain, are you? Are you going to explain why you can fly the TARDIS to, er, Neverland and Athens, but you won’t take me home?’
‘We’re not going to Athens. We’re on the way to London. It’s important we take a flight from Heathrow.’
‘I’ve never been to Athens,’ Anji noted. ‘You have, I suppose?’
‘I would have thought so. Yes… yes. I remember attending the Olympics.’ He hesitated for a moment, relaxed, let the