Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [39]
Anji didn’t expect to get straight through to the President, but she was a bit annoyed to hear some old dear tell her she was through to the White House general enquiries line. It was obviously the one the little kids and nutters were directed to.
‘Hi, I’m a CIA agent,’ Anji began.
‘Of course you are,’ the woman said in that way that you’d describe as ‘sweetly’, but which was oozing with patronising scorn. ‘How can I help?’
‘Tell the President it’s Malady Chang, and then put me through to him.’
The phone clicked, then started ringing.
‘Yes,’ a deep, firm voice answered.
‘Mr President, this is Malady Chang.’
He hesitated for what seemed like three years.
‘Hello there, Malady. I guess in the circumstances you’re using any phone you can?’ He was playing along.
‘That’s right, Mr President’ – was that what CIA agents called the President? – ‘I have to tell you that this line might not be secure. But Baskerville has a time machine, and I’ve seen it work for myself.’
‘Understood, Malady. So…’
The door to the cabin opened, and Baskerville walked in, and took Anji’s phone from her.
‘We can end this charade. Mr President, this is Baskerville. Mr President, your agent here has seen that I have a working time machine. She says that your government has access to the European ULTRA computer… Are you saying that she’s lying, sir?… I require half an hour’s access to ULTRA. In return, I will give you the blueprints that will allow you to build a time machine, and I will supply certain components, special minerals and software that will allow you to build a working version… I will only hand over the blueprints to you, personally. And we will do that in Istanbul… Istanbul, Mr President, or no deal… Be at the Green Hotel, Istanbul, in exactly twenty four hours. That’s one twenty, European Standard Time.’
Baskerville pressed the button that ended the call, and turned to Anji.
‘Thank you, Ms Chang.’
* * *
Cosgrove slumped back in his seat, amazed.
‘A trick?’ Penny Lik asked him. The young Service lieutenant who’d called him into the communications room was nodding. There were four other techies there, sat at their consoles, connected to ear and eyephones. None of them thought it was genuine – not on an open line, without even basic encryption.
Cosgrove wasn’t so sure.
‘I’ve met Baskerville, and that was his voice.’
‘Voice patterns of the other man match the President.’
‘But they wouldn’t use an open line,’ one of the techies complained, and Cosgrove knew the man was right.
‘Do you know who the girl is?’ Cosgrove asked. ‘She didn’t sound American.’
‘All we know is that she isn’t Malady Chang.’
The picture of an attractive Chinese girl in USAF dress uniform appeared on all the video screens. It was a formal portrait – although she looked too old for it to be a graduation photograph. Perhaps it had been taken to celebrate a promotion.
‘That is Lieutenant Commander Malady Chang. And this is what she sounded like last year when she attended a meeting in New Kabul.’
‘Not very much. I’m interested to see you. But there’s something I’d like to get finished. It will only take three or four minutes –’
A Californian accent, unmistakable, and almost entirely unlike the woman on the phone.
‘She sounded English,’ one of the techies agreed. That was Stevens, a linguistics expert. The first time Cosgrove had worked with him, he’d been impressed when he’d just said hello, and Stevens had deduced Cosgrove had a Swiss mother and hadn’t lived in Scotland since the late fifties.
‘You can do better than that.’
‘I can. Like you, Professor Lik, that woman is a university‐educated third‐generation immigrant brought up in London. Her family were originally from Pakistan, though, not Korea. She’s… there’s something else in there.’
‘Something else?’ Cosgrove asked.
‘Yes. Everything about the way we speak is influenced by our surroundings. If you work abroad, your voice starts picking up new inflections. That woman… she sounded like she was in her twenties, but spoke like a woman twice that old. There are