“You’re welcome. Right this way.” He took her downstairs and left her in the capable hands of Mrs. Jennings, the I.T. manager. “Come along, dear,” her voice boomed as he left. “This is your workspace.”
“So lovely but so distant.” James wondered what went on in Shelly’s closed, defensive world. He hoped she would ask him to show her around outside the fence. It would be fun to share his magical outdoor experiences with someone who appeared genuinely interested.
He returned to his desk, mildly pleased that he could still find women attractive; lately he’d been a little worried.
Unbeknown to anyone, James’s predecessor had linked his computer to the security database and bypassed the password system. One afternoon a few weeks before, James had been working on his computer when an error occurred, corrupting a file. He was attempting to rectify the problem when he discovered a hidden executable file with a strange name. He used a dis-assembler to look at the content and it seemed to be a communication program of some sort. He changed some of the code and executed it to see what it did. The menu for the closed-security-system appeared and, amongst other things, he was able to directly access maximum security communications intended for the eyes of the Director only. The Director was the most senior staff member on the base and answered to the head of EuroSpace.
Initially, James wasn’t interested in this information and respected the Director’s privacy but, after the security meeting with John Gilmore on Sunday and with all the uncertainty on the base, he decided to see how bad things really were.
Albert had sneaked up on him once already today, so he rearranged the desk to get a better view of the office before starting the program.
He ran the utility, logged-on quickly and selected “New Correspondence” from the menu. A list of three documents appeared and he chose the first. It was titled “SitRep - Congo unrest.” He knew from his military days that “SitRep” was a security abbreviation for ‘situation report.’ What followed was an alarming, although in parts vague, summary of the state of the civil war in the country. He was surprised to learn the extent and degree of hostility. There would be a serious morale problem if this got out.
The report was dated April 3, two weeks earlier, and had originated at NIS in Washington. The second document was even more alarming. It had come from the US embassy in Kinshasa (the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo), also two weeks ago, and mentioned the imminent evacuation of embassy staff from Kinshasa and the general disintegration of law and order across the country.
It seemed almost every province and tribe was at war with someone, and it had spilled into the eastern regions of Kivu and into Rwanda. Men, women, and children were being butchered indiscriminately, in both the cities and the countryside. Expatriates were a prime target due to their perceived wealth and vulnerability, often taken for ransom. A horrendous quote from the regional governor of Kasai province followed.
'Barbarism flared at the Catholic mission eighteen kilometers east of Kisangani where eight nuns were raped and tortured before their legs were amputated below the knees. They were then forced to walk on the stumps until they collapsed and were executed – what has become of our people.'
James believed the report to be accurate; he'd heard many similar stories as a child when unrest in the Congo had resulted in mass evacuation of all Europeans due to horrific violence.
The third document was a personal letter from CG Casey, Head of EuroSpace, to AA Althorpe, Director, Orion Base. In essence, it was an apology for ‘too little action, too late’ and implied simply that ‘you are on your own until further notice.’ The only light note in the whole document was the hope that Orion was too far from ‘civilization’ to be affected. It suggested the conflict with Rwandan rebels two hundred miles to the east had concentrated troops in that area and Orion was currently in a ‘strife-vacuum.’
James now understood how the ‘need-to-know’ system at Orion worked. The director told John Gilmore what he thought he needed to know and John Gilmore distributed his own version or part-thereof to whomever he thought needed to know.
He logged off and sat back, shaken by the state of affairs. “It’s time to consider options and make plans,” he thought, resolving to keep fully up-to-date with all matters of security, and be prepared at all times.
Suddenly, intense anger swept over him when he realized that the authorities had known about the unrest in Congo before Shelly Walsh had left the USA. Anyone who could send a young woman to this situation deserved punishment, and he chivalrously decided to expose the culprits at the first opportunity.
He started weighing up possible emergency scenarios: escape to the coast at the mouth of the Congo River was becoming increasingly difficult; more than one thousand four hundred miles of hostile natives and then widespread civil unrest at the end of the journey. To the north were four thousand miles of jungle and desert to Cairo or Tripoli. East was Rwanda with its ongoing civil war. South was Lusaka in Zambia, four hundred miles of almost uninhabited jungle and unexplored territory, following the Congo to its source, and then another three hundred through Katanga province in Zambia, another hotbed of unrest. One could probably count, on the fingers of one hand, the number of Europeans who had been to the source of the Congo since the famous journalist Henry Stanley in 1880. The term ‘heart of darkness’ sprang to mind; the region was so isolated and undocumented that no one knew who or what lived there.
James now realized where his sense of uneasiness yesterday had originated; the situation could optimistically be described as precarious, with the potential to get a lot worse.
Although he had had logistics training in the military, and expedition experience in Argentina, these skills just made the situation more dangerous. Only an ignorant, very desperate person would consider leaving Orion in any direction other than by air, if aircraft were available, and even that was dangerous.
As the day progressed, he settled down to work on his batch-program. He was concentrating so hard he didn’t notice everyone had gone home until the room went suddenly dark; someone had turned off the lights assuming they were the last to leave the office.
A huge thunderstorm far across the jungle obscured the setting sun and completely filled the wall-to-wall view from his office. He sat back to admire the spectacle. To study the awesome natural power of an equatorial thunderstorm from the comfort and security of an air-conditioned office was a pleasure indeed.
The massive cumulonimbus cloud, boiling to forty thousand feet, towered over the landscape like a thermo-nuclear explosion of unimaginable proportions. Immense, silver-grey plateaus projected horizontally from the broad central column, casting swathes of gloomy shade hundreds of miles over the jungle. Lightning flashed and glimmered deep inside, illuminating the inky blackness below and shooting searing shafts of white fire downward, blasting everything in its violent path. Curtains of sheet-lightning highlighted the background as trillions of gallons of water and hail-stones the size of golf balls fell in a devastating, cobalt-blue wall onto the submissive terrain.
Beneath the storm, all life cowered in fear; lion, elephant, warrior, and snake bowed to its ultimate supremacy and infinite power. Even at thirty miles, thunder reverberated against the tinted-glass windows, intimidating the occupants and shaking the building with continuous, sub-audio bass rolls of giant drums.
James gazed intently at the spectacle, so engrossed that he didn’t notice Shelly at the door. She watched him curiously, wondering what he was looking at before she too was captivated by the magnificent storm.
Florida has its share of bad weather but she’d never witnessed anything even close to this, or had the opportunity to study one in relative safety. The living cloud, bigger than some European countries, completely filled the window that ran the length of the building, swelling and heaving beyond the frame as it strove to suppress the savage land below with enough electrical energy to power Manhattan for life.
Shelly stood, absolutely fascinated, her delicate lips parted slightly in silent awe. For a while she wasn’t even aware of James, who was totally absorbed in the sheer drama of the spectacle.