Free The Cassandra Complex by Brian Stableford

You’d better wait with DI Grundy.”
    All but one of the fire engines had now been withdrawn, so there was plenty of space in the parking lot for the chopper to set down. Lisa watched four men climb down from the belly of the aircraft. They were all wearing black overcoats, which seemed as distinctive as a uniform—much more so, in fact, than the relatively casual shell-suits of the paramedics, let alone Mike’s plainclothesmen.
    Lisa had had contact with MOD field operatives on numerous occasions, but she didn’t recognize any of these men. She couldn’t even guess which of the many available sets of cryptic initials might be used to identify their department. They looked like businessmen, but that wasn’t inappropriate to the kind of work they would be routinely engaged in. The government for which they worked was not one of those conventionally regarded as a mere puppet of the megacorps, but its supposed independence meant that its dealings with the corps were all the more intricate and challenging. The only way to compete with crocodiles, or even to avoid becoming crocodile food, was to cultivate crocodilean habits.
    Lisa thought she identified Peter Grimmett Smith even at a distance, and her guess was confirmed when she saw him shake Judith Kenna’s hand. He was a tall, dark-haired individual, handsome in a stately sort of way. He seemed to be tired and fractious. Lisa was perversely pleased to note that he must be in his sixties, easily old enough to be the chief inspector’s father.
    Poor Judith , she thought. Just can’t get away from the older generation. Mike, me, Sweet, the senior fireman, and now the man from the Ministry. Is his expertise past its use-by date too, I wonder? Is this his last mission before he retires to the old bee farm? If he’s waving the flag for gray power, he’s really going to jangle her nerves, especially if he succeeds in getting to the bottom of all this while she’s still flummoxed.
    She wondered briefly whether the spook’s name really was Smith, but decided that it probably was. No one used Smith as a nom de guerre anymore; it was too twentieth century. The Grimmett, which presumably served to distinguish him from all the other Peter Smiths on the civil-service roster, was a bit of a giveaway.
    Lisa was tempted to hang around and watch, but the advent of daylight hadn’t banished the relentless wind and she’d neglected to put on her own black overcoat before leaving home. She retreated into the building and went back to Sweet’s office, where Mike Grundy’s men were still impatiently gathering information and trying to judge its significance. Sweet had rejoined them, but no one seemed to be restricting their conversation in case he might be an enemy keeping tabs on their progress.
    “They’ve got to be local,” Jerry Hapgood was saying. “The blackout proves that.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” Mike told him. “The blackout only proves that they were clever enough to know they couldn’t transport Miller crosscountry without being tracked, unless they could work a concealed switch. We don’t know that they didn’t bring him out of the blackout before Powergen got its act together—and even if they bring him out now in the trunk of some commuter’s car or the back of a pickup, we don’t stand the slightest chance of intercepting him, even with real containment measures about to come into force.”
    “This whole containment thing’s a joke,” once of the PC’s observed. “It’ll all be show no matter how far it goes, so that the government can pretend they’re doing something. When hyperflu arrives, if it hasn’t already, there’ll be no way to pin it down. If we don’t have a cure soon, it’ll run riot.”
    Lisa knew that the PC was right. Even the strictest imaginable containment strategy would leave far too many loopholes where a cityplex like Greater Bristol was concerned. The inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides might manage to control traffic