'I can remain ashore for as long as you wish,' Olaf replied. 'My failure is my own.'

Joaquin felt a distant pinch of concern that felt like something from his childhood, a sense of abandonment and enforced solitude. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts.

Katherine was unlikely to be charged with any crime, but considering what had just happened it seemed almost certain that, before long, he himself would be subjected to investigation. The prosecution could hardly fail to suspect that IRIS had somehow arranged the murder of Macy Lieberman. That was fine with him, just as long as they had no evidence of the Deep Blue facility in which he stood. Charles Purcell had done his work well in trying to expose Joaquin's work, but his vision of the future clearly had not gone far enough to anticipate Joaquin's responses. With the incriminating documents destroyed, the only thing preventing Joaquin from completing his greatest triumph was the possibility, however slim, that Purcell might somehow convince the authorities that IRIS was responsible for the murder of his family.

'How did Purcell contact the prosecution?' he asked Olaf. 'He must have spoken to them.'

'He did not,' Olaf replied with conviction. 'He posted all of the documents, which have now been destroyed.'

Joaquin felt a new fear creep through him as he glanced around at the underwater facility he had built. Purcell could have posted more than one copy of those incriminating documents. It was, of course, the greatest weakness he had. Over a hundred people had been involved in the construction of the lair, most of them employees devoted to the IRIS cause. A few, here and there, had come to question Joaquin's true motivations; but as with any complex construction program, tragic accidents occurred from time to time, and none of those individuals had been able to air their concerns. When Charles Purcell had fled the complex after breaching protocol and viewing the future a future that included the death of his own family Joaquin had been forced to act immediately and without hubris. Two hours later, Purcell's family had been murdered and his colleagues killed in a tragic air crash. Now only Purcell remained, a victim of his own curiosity. Had he not succumbed to the temptation of viewing the future, he would not be on the run now.

'It's a wonder he hasn't gone to the press and revealed the location of Deep Blue,' Olaf suggested.

'There's nothing on the news reports in the next few hours that suggests he's gone to the media, and with his family terminated there is no danger of their exposing us,' Joaquin explained. 'And as long as our media-tycoon friend Robert Murtaugh plays ball, any attempt Purcell makes to expose his knowledge will be buried, and we'll end up possessing any testimony he might make to the press. Murtaugh's network dominance will overwhelm any other media access to the story. Unless proven innocent, Purcell has no credibility and nobody to look out for him.'

'That may not be quite true.'

'How so?'

'I was pursued by two cops, a man and a woman. I got away, but they were good. Too good to be normal detectives. Somebody else may be involved in this, people who might know what Charles Purcell is trying to do.'

Joaquin considered this for a moment, an image of Jarvis, Warner and Lopez hovering ominously in his mind. He made a decision.

'Stand by, Olaf. Soon we will know where Charles Purcell is hiding. I will call you back as soon as I can.'

Joaquin cut the line off and turned to the soldier next to him.

'Tell Dennis to extract the Florida camera, immediately.'

Dennis Aubrey watched as the robotic arm lifted Camera 7 from the black-hole chamber and set it gently down before replacing it with a new camera, set to record. From his vantage point at the control-center panel, Dennis could see that the camera had been watching a screen that was tuned to one of the major Florida news networks.

Despite himself, Dennis was fascinated by the machine and found himself eagerly willing the camera out of the chamber.

So far, he had been able to watch the contents of only three of the cameras extracted from the chamber, but each piece of footage had riveted him. The flickering, grainy and entirely silent images were nothing short of spectacular, and as Dennis had watched tomorrow's news unfold before him he had found himself captivated by the ticking clock at the bottom-right corner of the screen showing the time many hours in advance. There was no doubt about it: Joaquin had achieved something utterly unique, something that could change the balance of power in the world. Even as he thought about it, Dennis found himself enveloped by a fear that, wherever that power went, tragedy would follow it.

He looked across the control panel to a series of radio stacks that controlled communications between the Deep Blue facility and the Event Horizon, and the yacht's onboard satellite receivers that picked up the news channels. A buoy tethered to the facility floated just under the water's surface, some two thousand feet above. Its depth was controlled by an automatic flotation bladder that was itself connected to a communications room on the opposite side of the Deep Blue complex. A series of radio transmitters and aerials extended from the concealed buoy up and out of the water. Barely visible on the surface, the aerials enabled both radio and satellite phone communications in all but the wildest of weather. However, the radio was currently disabled, and could be reactivated only via an access code on the control panel further evidence that Joaquin did not want Aubrey contacting anybody on the surface.

Aubrey reached into his pocket and retrieved his cellphone, scrolling through his contact list until he found the name he was looking for. Just one call and he could reveal everything. Fear warred with loyalty to Katherine in his mind, and he stared down at the number intently as he tried to figure out how to tell her. He wondered briefly if he could use the communications room directly in order to bypass the access code.

'What news, Dennis?'

Dennis flinched as Joaquin's voice crackled across the chamber. He slipped his cellphone discreetly back into his pocket and turned as he strode up toward him.

'Camera 7 is ready,' he reported. 'I was just about to play it.'

Aubrey busied himself with downloading the files from the camera into the control panel's database, watching as the information bars slowly filled and racking his brain for some way to convince Joaquin to give him access to the communications room.

'How do you know that the governor and his friends won't simply tell the government about this facility?' he asked. 'Any one of them could be overcome with moral righteousness, especially Benjamin Tyler.'

'They are greedy men,' Joaquin replied impatiently, 'obsessed with power and image. They won't be able to overcome their vanity.'

Aubrey wondered at the depths of Joaquin's delusion, that he could say such things and be oblivious to the fact that he was describing himself. Aubrey mastered his fear and pressed further.

'You're in danger of pushing them too far,' he cautioned. 'Resentment forces men of power to do stupid things. Perhaps you should ask Katherine down here. Her influence might calm them, convince them to follow you.'

Joaquin's jaw clenched beneath his tanned skin.

'Katherine has gone to work on one of our charity projects in the Dominican Republic,' he snapped. 'She won't be coming here.'

'But she might be able to help us-'

'Nobody will oppose us!' Joaquin shouted. 'By the time I've finished with them here, they'll do anything I say!' The tycoon's rage subsided as quickly as it had arrived. He smiled and clapped Aubrey on the back. 'But I thank you for your concern. Now, play the damned tape.'

Aubrey pressed play. Immediately the image of the Florida news station appeared, racing forward at double speed. Aubrey squinted as he tried to follow the rapidly changing screens and the silently jabbering anchors. Images of the Florida coastline, a Coastguard rescue, and the words falling silently from the moving lips of the anchors: a train wreck down Tampa way; a fugitive chase down the interstate; a murder suspect charged with . . .

'There, that's it!' Joaquin pointed at the screen.

Aubrey paused the image, rewound it to the beginning of the piece, and then set it playing at half its normal speed. Now, the images and the anchor's motions and lips appeared to move at normal speed, only the occasional flare of energy flickering to disrupt the image.

As the anchor mouthed her silent words at the camera, an image of Charles Purcell appeared behind her, captured from a holiday snap with his wife and daughter. Dennis Aubrey felt a terrible pang of impotent despair as he saw the beautiful woman and their angelic child, now lying in a morgue somewhere in Florida.

'It's just a piece on the manhunt for him,' Aubrey said, reading the anchor's lips.

Joaquin shook his head and leaned closer to the screen.

'They did that already, or rather they will do. This is new.'

Suddenly the image changed. A police cordon, tape strung between the twisted branches of mangroves way out in what Aubrey guessed was the Everglades. Aubrey saw that there were no police cars, the scene attended by small hovercrafts, the only type of vehicle able to access the immense swamplands.

'They'll find a body,' Joaquin guessed.

Aubrey glanced at the clock on the lower portion of the screen. The news report was from less than two hours' time. The shot of the Everglades disappeared as the anchor reappeared in the frame, with the shot of Charles Purcell beside her. Now, the scrolling text beneath her ran with new information: SUSPECTED MURDERER SHOT DEAD IN EVERGLADES.

Joaquin stood up from the screen.

'Charles, your time is about to come to an end.'

Aubrey looked at Joaquin in confusion. 'You think that the police killed him?'

Joaquin shook his head as he reached for the satellite phone on the control panel, whilst retrieving his access card and opening a communication channel.

'It would have said so,' he decided.

'Then who did it?'

Joaquin smiled as he held the phone to his ear. 'We did, Dennis.'

Aubrey heard the line connect, and the distorted but familiar voice of Olaf Jorgenson on the other end of the line. Joaquin was still smiling as he spoke.

'We know where Purcell will be in two hours' time.'

35.

PROJECT WATCHMAN HQ, KENNEDY SPACE CENTER.

June 28, 14:27 'You can look into the past?'

Lopez sounded incredulous and Ethan wasn't surprised, but Doug Jarvis nodded as though it were common knowledge.

'Project Watchman has been running under various budgets and with differing degrees of success for over twenty years,' he explained. 'It requires only a small premises from which to operate and thus remains extremely covert. Even Congress does not know of its existence, mainly because the funding is supplied through the Pentagon's Black Budget, which is protected from Congressional oversight by presidential mandate, due to military-and-intelligence community requirements for secrecy. The intelligence signals we receive are likewise lost amongst NASA's standard radio traffic, further concealing its presence.'

Ethan looked at the giant digital display across the nearby wall, where one particular object was highlighted with the designation USA-224 as it orbited the planet.

'How does it work?'

Michael Ottaway gestured to the map.

'Beautifully,' he replied. 'When USA-224 was launched, its optical ability completely surpassed anything that had gone before, anything that even I could have dreamed of.'

'Is it a satellite, then?' Lopez asked.

'Yes,' Ottaway said. 'National Reconnaissance Office Launch 49 is a KH-11 "keyhole" optical-imaging satellite, the fifteenth of her type to be launched. She went up aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 6 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Upon reaching orbit, she received the International Designator 2011-002A, but she's now known as USA-224.'

Ethan stepped in and looked more closely at Ottaway's bank of computer screens. The search he had initiated was flipping through locations in the Miami area at a tremendous rate, and facial images flickered past in a blur of motion, as though the program were searching for Purcell's face amongst millions of Floridians.

'What does it do, exactly?' Lopez asked.

'USA-224 is in a low-earth orbit at ninety-seven point nine degrees of inclination,' Ottaway explained. 'This places it at a typical keyhole-satellite operational orbit, and allows for maximum target exposure on the earth's surface. In short, it can look down upon the planet in real-time and to a degree of resolution so high that if you forgot to wash your hair this morning, USA-224 could spot your dandruff from orbit.'

Ethan turned to look at Ottaway.

'Sure, that's impressive, but it doesn't warrant this level of secrecy: people already know about these satellites, even if they don't know exactly how they work.'

'True,' Jarvis said, 'but the difference is that in the past they could only take photographs or short-duration video of moving targets. The satellites would move out of visual range as they orbited the planet, making identifying targets within narrow timescales difficult, if not impossible.'

'So what's different now?' Lopez asked.

'The fact that we have four of them,' Ottaway grinned. 'Between them, 220 to 224 provide total coverage. Their lenses are of such high quality that they can operate together to not just image anywhere on earth, but to do so in three dimensions. By compiling the data from each satellite on a given target area and recording as we go, we can use supercomputers to crunch the data-streams to produce a three-dimensional world through which investigators can move, examining classified enemy installations or airbases, or replaying events from the past and witnessing them directly.'

Ethan turned and looked at the two soldiers waiting on the nearby platform as a sudden and overpowering realization swelled in his mind.

'How long have you been recording data?' Ethan asked.

'From the continental United States? Almost ten years, with varying degrees of detail, and with the supercomputers we keep every moment of it on record.'

Ethan forced himself to remain calm. Ten years of visual information from every last corner of the globe, the last few years in ultra-high resolution, three-dimensional full color. A single moment in time lodged in his thoughts like a splinter in his mind's eye: the December of four years previously, the Gaza Strip, Palestine. His fiancee, Joanna, abducted by persons unknown.

'You could solve any crime,' Lopez gasped in amazement, 'prove any event happened or didn't happen, just by stepping into the virtual world and viewing it.'

Ethan turned to look at Jarvis, who raised a hand.

'It's not quite that simple,' he said, focusing on Ethan. 'The cameras can only record in detail what happened in the open, not within buildings. True, Watchman also records in the near infrared, so we have some ability to look into interiors, and occasionally the angle of the satellite camera across the earth's horizon allows us to see a small distance inside buildings, but for the most part we're limited to exterior activities. We only have full coverage in daylight.'

The computer terminal pinged and Ethan turned to see Purcell's image and the word MATCH flashing in a red box in front of it.

'You've found him?' Jarvis asked.

Ottaway consulted the screen for a moment and then nodded.

'The face-recognition software has located him leaving a ferry in Miami, approximately twenty-two hours ago.'

'That's before his family was killed,' Ethan noted.

Ottaway looked up at the two soldiers on the platform and keyed his microphone.

'Okay, guys, I'm sending the information over right now.'

Ethan stepped forward. 'Wait a second. Why don't we go up there and do this ourselves?'

Ottaway chuckled and shook his head.

'I'm afraid that won't be possible. The equipment is highly specialized, not to mention classified, and if you damaged it or-'

'They're security-cleared Cosmic,' Jarvis interrupted the scientist. 'Right now, we have more than one suspect in this case. To brief your men on all of the details would take far too long and we're running out of time as it is.'

Ottaway glanced at Lopez and Ethan, then sighed.

'I want your name on the paperwork for this, Doug,' he said as he keyed his microphone again. 'Come on down, guys, change of plan.'

Ethan watched as the two soldiers carefully removed their headsets, gloves and boots and stepped off their platforms. They clambered down from the maneuvering area and looked at Ottaway questioningly before standing aside.

'Go on up,' Ottaway said, 'and put the gear on. Let me know when you're ready.'

Ethan and Lopez climbed up onto the maneuvering area, then each stepped onto a platform. Ethan pulled on the boots, then slipped the helmet over his head, strapping it securely under his chin before pulling on the blocky gloves laced with wires that ran to a miniature antenna on the right wrist. Ottaway's voice called out to them.

'When I say so, close the helmet visors and hold on to the rails either side of you for balance. It will take you a moment or two to adjust to the device.'

Ethan rested his hands on the railings and waited. Moments later, Ottaway gave him a thumbs-up. Ethan reached up and slid the helmet visor down, just catching a glimpse of Lopez doing the same, and then in absolute blackness he waited with his hands resting on the railings beside him.

'Can you both hear me?'

Ottaway's voice came through the earphones loud and clear and he heard Lopez reply.