to be done; a correction, an adjustment, a little bit of house cleaning. ’
Ash paused.
‘It’s running out, you know?’ he said. ‘There’s a lot less of it than people think . . . oil. Yes, a lot less than the publicly stated reserves. They decided there were simply too many of us all expecting our oil-rich luxuries, all expecting our big cars, big homes, and an endless supply of power and oil to feed them. It wasn’t going to last for much longer. They knew that fact long before anyone else. And they knew that there were going to be wars, horrific wars, most probably with a few nukes being thrown around . . . for the last of that oil. And you don’t want that - nukes being thrown around. They knew economic necessity, oil-hunger, would drive us to destroy ourselves. And I suppose you can see it from their point of view, after struggling so hard for . . . well, one could say, since the Middle Ages, they didn’t want to see it all thrown away. You can see how annoying that might be, can’t you?’
He slid his blade back into his ankle sheath.
‘So they made the decision at a gathering back in 1999. A decision to lance the boil, if you’ll excuse such a crude euphemism. They chose to cull mankind, before we went too far down that road. You see Mike, these people I work for, they’re like . . . I don’t know . . . they’re like caretakers, quietly steering things, balancing things, keeping those big old cogs turning. They did this for the sake of us all . . . because it needed to be done.’
He studied the face of the dying American. There still seemed to be life in those glazed eyes, Mike was still hearing this, he was sure.
‘So, the decision was made back in ’99, right at the end of that year,’ Ash laughed gently, ‘as the sheep all prepared to celebrate an exciting new century and got all worked up about that millennium bug, and had their big, big parties, and nursed sore heads the morning after. It was decided that things needed to be put in place for this; to get everything ready to turn the taps off.’
Ash nudged Mike. ‘You see, that’s the great thing about oil, it really is our oxygen, our life’s blood . . . it’s the perfect controlling mechanism. If you turn the tap up, the world gets really busy; you turn it down enough, things grind to a halt. It’s like the throttle on a motorbike - a perfect device.’
The American let out a bubbling gasp of air, a noise Ash recognised as a man’s final gasp.
‘It’s taken them some time to organise this, a very big project you see. And you know, everything since ’99 . . .’ he looked down at Mike. His pupils had completely dilated now and gazed sightlessly up at the ceiling. He wasn’t hearing him any more.
‘Everything, I mean, everything - all starting with two passenger jets crashing into New York - everything since then, my friend, has been about one thing; getting the world ready for this . . . the culling.’
The American was dead.
‘Pity,’ said Ash, and listened for a moment to the breeze, whistling along the landing and down the stairs. He’d wanted this dying man to hear it all, to understand why it had to happen, perhaps even to agree with him that it was a measure that had to be taken, for mankind’s benefit. But most probably a good portion of what he’d said had made no sense in the man’s dying mind.
‘Pity.’
He closed the American’s eyes and got to his feet, grunting with pain. Sutherland’s wife had hit him in the collarbone, and even though he’d bound the wound up efficiently, he knew all was not well - he was bleeding internally.
He felt a little light-headed.
Not good.
There were still some loose ends to tidy up.
Sunday
CHAPTER 89
12.01 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Andy awoke. Something had disturbed him; a noise, one of the kids stirring? His eyes opened and he let them adjust to the dark whilst he sat still, listening.
Just the breeze outside. Mike and his colleagues were silent; there was no quiet, wary murmuring as there had been earlier.
That’s worrying.
He eased himself out of the tangle of limbs on the sofa and walked quietly across to the door that opened on to the hallway. He looked to his left