Whatever It Takes Read online

  ‘It was tragic, but life had to go on for the Subramanians in their new country. His parents paid for his education by working two jobs each, and Parmesh eventually landed up on Wall Street with an MBA.’

  I stopped and waited once more for a reaction or a question.

  Nothing.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that this guy ended up with so much cash, he could have bought his own US state with just the spare change he had sitting in his own bank.’

  Still nothing.

  I carried on. Of course, they already knew all of this, but I needed to explain to make sure that when the revelations came they were in context.

  ‘So what do you do when you’ve got more money than the Sinaloa drug cartel and nobody likes you because, one, you have it and, two, because of the way you got it?’

  This time I didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘You build yourself a little – or in this case quite big – hideaway here in New Zealand.’

  They were all doing it, I told them – the dotcom guys, the bankers, the rock stars, the bitcoin whizz kids, even American politicians. They all had houses down here. Cash was no problem. Parmesh wasn’t the only one with a castle in Paradise.

  ‘The thing about billionaire venture capitalists is, they have the time, energy and vision to think about these things. But the difference between them and other thinkers is that they have the cash to be able to do something about it. And they considered New Zealand to be the future. So much so that they bought real estate, and some even became Kiwi citizens to make sure they’d be let in when everything went to shit in the rest of the world.

  ‘Look, the mega-wealthy are not concerned with the world’s smaller problems, like terrorism. They know it’s been around since Jesus, and over twice as many people are shot dead every year in the US as get killed by terrorists worldwide. What’s more, terrorism is containable and can make money. It’s the big picture, the planet’s nation states collapsing – that’s what gets them edgy.

  ‘And just in case you can’t think of how many ways we’re all going to die, there are people who certainly can. Nuclear war is more likely now than ever before. The threat is more real now than it was during the Cold War. North Korea is on the verge of putting nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. Tensions are racking up with Iran.

  ‘The Americans have a president who can still be baited with tweets. He has resorted to military force against Syria, which is backed by Russia, after seeing television images of children dying during sarin gas attacks, and he has boasted of building the biggest and deadliest nuclear arsenal. Also, let’s not forget Russia has taken Crimea by force, and NATO fears an invasion of the Baltic States. And that’s before we start on China. They say, when trade stops, war starts. Not good, is it?’

  Still no reaction.

  ‘What about a synthetic-virus breakout? Water wars – all manner of resource wars? Then there’s artificial intelligence unleashing a nuclear attack of its own during a conventional conflict. But none of those are as clear and present a danger as the main one that Parmesh had identified.’

  Janet and Lawrence looked very bored. I must have sounded like some mad conspiracy-theory guy being interviewed for a late-night documentary on cable. Time to make it up-close and personal.

  ‘I can promise you that people like Parmesh think about this sort of stuff, and when it happens, they’ll get on their private jets and fly down here to New Zealand to sit out the collapse of civilization, then re-emerge.’

  These two weren’t mugs. Like every other local, they knew that, within days of Donald Trump becoming US president, the number of Americans interested in gaining New Zealand citizenship had gone through the roof. New Zealand became the hideaway of choice, not just for Silicon Valley’s tech elite but anyone with a vision of the future and the money to prepare for it. And, more importantly for some, a plan as to how to cash in on the aftermath or be part of the planet’s reconstruction.

  I wondered if resentment bubbled up in these two like it did in a lot of New Zealanders, fed up with the influx of people who didn’t even bother to check how many zeroes were on the price tag as they drove house prices to unaffordable levels. I wondered if these two had voted for Jacinda Ardern. Her government had finally shut the door on absentee foreign buyers. They could only buy farms now, and I was sure that that loophole would be closed down in a year or so, when everyone who wanted to had bought.

  I wondered, too, if they knew this movement of wealth to the islands hadn’t started just because Trump was elected. The tech elite in Silicon Valley had been thinking and planning since the late nineties. Between themselves, they had made many predictions that became true. Things like the rise of cryptocurrencies that made it harder for governments to interfere with private transactions and thus harder for them to tax incomes. Things that freed people from government restrictions to the extent that governments started to lose their power, and, in time, became obsolete.

  We’d had years of news headlines screaming at us that multinationals were not paying their share of the tax burden. But why should they, if governments weren’t strong enough to enforce their ever-declining power?

  ‘It’s not that I have any interest in the apocalypse,’ I said. ‘I’ve had mine already. What interested me was the bunch of billionaires who called themselves the “cognitive elite” that I started to read more and more about, who were setting up down here.’

  What they had said would happen had started to happen. They were visionaries. These people weren’t like politicians who had more education than intelligence: these people had bucketloads of both. They were planning that out of the wreckage they, the cognitive elite, would rise to power. They commanded vast resources yet would no longer be subject to the power of nation-states. They would redesign governments to suit their ends. They were big enough, strong enough, and had the mental capability and drive to make it work, so why not?

  It sounded like a plan to me, and certainly a plan that many gazillionaires had bought into. That was why they had already been able to reshape the planet in less than a generation. Some were already advocating the Valley’s complete secession from the US to form its very own corporate city-state.

  Scary plan. But already old news.

  I stared into the GoPro once more. ‘Okay, here goes. My sixth robbery, and it should have been the easiest. This is what happened – and what happened at Sanctuary, and why I’m sitting here in Parmesh’s house as if it’s my own.’

  I pointed down to the floor for the camera’s benefit, seeing as these two were more dull-eyed than the lens. ‘Like I said, it all started here, November last year, right here in this house.’

  Part Two

  * * *

  EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER

  3

  Sunday, 25 November 2018

  The locals loved Akaroa. It was small-town New Zealand. Everybody knew everybody else. You could leave your front door open and your car unlocked. There were only a few hundred houses, including Parmesh’s, on the Banks peninsula area just outside the town, on the hill overlooking the ocean and yacht club at the southern end.

  The Maoris had lived there for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, consuming their enemies to, in turn, consume their power, but to me it felt and looked like a slice of France – maybe because it very nearly was one. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the area about eighty Ks south-east of Christchurch had been the beachhead for the French attempt to take control of South Island. The peninsula stuck out a thumb from the middle of the island on the eastern side, and they’d used it as a natural harbour for their whaling fleet to get a foothold and install some form of administration. As soon as the Brits had got wind of the plan they’d cleared them out.

  The massive inlet for the Pacific Ocean was in fact the top of a volcano, the ocean side of which had collapsed. Farmers chopped down the forests to make way for sheep and cattle, and now they’d made way, too, for live
stock of a different kind. Tourists flocked to Akaroa aboard cruise ships or via the steep, narrow and very winding road from Christchurch, so they could take in the French street names, visit fake French patisseries, admire the views and watch the dolphins. The whales were long gone. British harpoons had made sure of that.

  I had studied the day trippers, and now, with my little daysack on my back, along with its plastic water bottle shoved into the side netting, my cheap Craghoppers shorts along with Decathlon walking boots and socks pulled up far too high to mid-calf, I looked like a Brit accountant on his walking holiday. Even though it was a Sunday, I’d shaved. That was what nerds did. I didn’t want anyone looking at me twice.

  Not that they ever did anyway. Average build, average height, that was me. Short back and sides with a side parting, maybe that was why. Or the colour. Bit of salt and pepper beginning on the sides. Showed I worked hard, and worried even harder. As for looks, Charlotte called me Parker. We used to sit on the floor in front of the TV, me aged eight, Charlotte ten, the two of us watching International Rescue save the world each week, and shouting, ‘Thunderbirds are go!’ as they took off. I always wanted to be Alan Tracy, the astronaut who flew Thunderbird 3. Charlotte wanted to be Lady Penelope, International Rescue’s secret agent. I used to joke that that was never going to happen. Charlotte was never going to be a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Lady P. She always came back at me that no way was I an Alan Tracy: I looked more like Aloysius Parker, Lady Penelope’s driver. The names stuck, and I liked it. Nothing wrong with driving Lady P’s Rolls-Royce, Thunderbird 1.

  As I took the long driveway uphill to where Parmesh’s house was hidden, the sun poked out from the clouds to make it even hotter for me. That was good. The sweatier and more confused the lost tourist, the better.

  The fir trees either side of the very smooth concrete drive were getting thicker. I stopped, caught my breath, hands on hips, and turned back towards the sea. There was a stunning view of the inlet, and between us a perfect example of the have-nots and the have-yachts. Parmesh’s gleaming white and super-sleek yacht was moored in the centre of the sparkling blue water. Green hills curved 3.8 kilometres the other side of the inlet. I know, geeky, but I like detail. From this distance it was hard to tell if it was a big yacht, or maybe just a small helicopter on the back. But compared to the cruise ship further out in the bay, it wasn’t that big.

  The liner was in for the day. Smart blue motor launches ferried tourists to and fro to buy their fridge magnets and munch a croissant. I pulled out my phone and took a couple of pictures to send back to Charlotte, and couldn’t help smiling like an idiot to myself as I turned back towards the hill and the house. No matter how big, or whatever it is you’ve got, there’s always someone with a bigger or better one.

  I carried on up the hill, sweat pouring down my face, and the house came into view. It was old, sixty-eight years, to be exact. I knew because I had found out all the details, like I did on all my targets. But you wouldn’t find it on Google Maps, even if they had recorded the area. Part of the local tour guides’ repartee was that members of the US Senate owned houses round here, wanting a quiet life when the rest of us started to burn. So why bother showing everyone where anyone with influence lived?

  The front elevation of peeling blue paint was of a wide, wooden colonial, with first-floor balcony for the bedrooms and a ground-floor veranda that went all around the house, surrounded by more firs. But the real house, the new construction I was interested in, was being built underground, all nice and safe. Well, I hoped it wasn’t going to be that safe. I still wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to break in – hopefully, walk in – next spring, but I was in no rush. As long as I didn’t stay longer than two weeks at the Top 10 campsite on the other side of town, I would be just one of the many European or Chinese tourists taking in the views and excursions.

  Surrounding the house was a standard 2.4-metre-high chain-link fence, protecting concrete mixers, plant diggers and Portakabins, where the workers would get stuck into their bacon rolls.

  A few acres of rough ground had been churned up all around what had once been a grand and imposing building. And it would be again, after Parmesh had finished his complete rebuild.

  Suddenly I felt at home. All I needed was a Marks & Spencer’s off-the-peg suit, white shirt, and tie, along with a pair of wellies and a hard hat, and I could have been back working in the UK.

  Today was my second recce of the site to check how far the contractors had got with a particular piece of concrete structure that would house some electrical circuits that were going to be very important to me next year. If the concrete casting was exactly the same as the plans, all was good. If not, I’d have to rethink.

  Assuming the best, I could go back to Christchurch and buy what I needed to get myself a nice back-door set-up. But all that was for another day. Today was about checking out all of the construction to see if they were on schedule and following the original plans.

  4

  The easiest place to push through the fence was right next to a warning sign telling the reader to keep out. It wasn’t high security, more about protecting the plant so it didn’t drive itself onto a flatbed one night and disappear than keeping any secrets in the house. Not that they’d be able to build in complete secrecy. This was hardly Putin’s Russia. But they could go a long way towards it by keeping all the subcontractors separate so no one person or company had the total picture. Some of the contractors would have known about the underground connected rooms, a modern-day version of Hitler’s Berlin bunker, but so what? They would also have known it belonged to some American gazillionaire and they were all weirdos, right? It was up to the weirdo what he wanted. As long as they got paid on time, who cared?

  Like all summer construction sites, it was a sea of rutted dried mud churned up by heavy plant tracks. These lads were doing a good job. The drainage had just been laid and there were some deep trenches ready to be filled with the soakaway crates piled near the treeline. Sheets of rigid insulation boards were stacked ready to fit. Coils of conduit for underground cables rested against a couple of Portakabins. As I walked past the dusty windows I could see construction-issue drawings pinned to the walls.

  Without a doubt there’d be a kettle and some half-gone-off milk on a side table in both of them.

  Apart from that, there’d be no consistency. Different companies, different working practices. They might speak different languages. It was just an escalation of the rule for fitting intruder-detection systems to business premises: have one company carry out the first fix on the exterior, and the second, the interior, by another.

  Back when I was on sites, nobody knew what was going on in the whole job. That was more to do with inefficiency than security – all Parmesh need have done was get some Brits down here.

  In a year or so, he would be sitting pretty in his nice new hideaway and at some stage in his idyllic life discover he wasn’t so safe after all. Fuck him and his oh-so-beautiful, smiley, happy UN family.

  The old colonial building was, for now, a shell. Its insides had been gutted so only the outer walls remained. It looked like it belonged on a film set.

  Once past the façade, I headed for the bare concrete steps leading down, taking care not to trip on all the power cables that snaked below ground level. I tried to work out which was which before I reached complete darkness, and felt my way to a mobile arc light on a tripod and hit the switch.

  I got my laser measure out of my daysack and laid it against a wall. When it came to retaining information, I was pretty old-school. Jotting stuff in a notebook always seemed quicker on-site – and, of course, a pencil would still work in the rain.

  I hadn’t heard any vehicle. How could I, tucked into the side of a hill, inside a concrete box?

  It was their shouts I heard at first. A South African voice, out of nowhere: ‘We’re coming down for you! Stay calm – stay where you are!’

  Then I heard boots on the concrete, more than one set. My
heart pounded. The combination of multiple boots and that hard, low South African accent got me thinking very quickly.

  The voice. It clearly belonged to a man who knew a thing or two about violence. I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go, apart from the stairs that the boots were coming down. All I could think of was hiding my notebook and laser, and I started to shove them back into my daysack to get it on my back as quickly as possible. I’d stand my ground, see what was coming down towards me, then work out what to do about it.

  Next thing I saw were two pairs of boots, then grey cargoes, and then black polo shirts.

  ‘Put the daysack down! Show us your hands! Do it before I have to make you!’

  The second, heavier, accent came from Leeds, and round that way they can make ordering coffee in Starbucks sound like a death threat. This one was a little smaller but still built like Schwarzenegger.

  What could I do? I was cornered. I could fight but this was the real world and I would lose against these two. I was a nerd walker, so why not try to be one and maybe have a better chance of coming out of this in decent order?

  I would do nothing, but I had to say something. Saying nothing would mean I knew what I was doing. Playing stupid, I was good at. I had learnt that because it went with the nerd look. Playing scared, even better.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I got lost and came across the house. It’s a fantastic house – I saw it was empty and I was being nosy. I – am – so – sorry.’

  I didn’t have time to say it again. The Brit picked up my daysack and the South African pushed me towards the steps.

  ‘I didn’t think it would hurt to have a look.’