A fork of lightning cracks across the sky; and in a flurry of sparks and burned-out wires, a new computer virus is born. Robert Hoffner and Peter Burks have been waiting to see its unique signature on the World Wide Web for years. Now, they must track down the original author of this deadly worm and help him disable it. If they fail, the Information Age will come to an abrupt end.

The trouble is, Dan Becker is already dead. Harvey Becker, his twelve-year-old son, has just witnessed his brutal murder in the front room of their south London home. But the nightmare-ride of his life is only just getting started. Within hours he will have seen the inside of Belgravia Police Station, the outside of an airplane hanger at Heathrow and the underside of a hotel lift in Zurich. He’ll have crossed swords with a Canary Wharf billionaire and gotten his name on the CIA’s most-wanted list.

Trying to reverse the effects of the Lightning Bug will take him to a hundred places he never knew existed; a luxury hotel, a sprawling factory and an oozing, Georgia swamp. But eventually, he will silence his father’s legacy and avenge his untimely death.

I wanted to write an honest, straightforward pre-teen thriller with a great cast of baddies. If I could drag in a Swiss hotel for the super rich, a stunning London skyscraper and a monstrous, four-cylinder motorbike then so much the better. I loved the idea of a latent virus, present in some popular operating system, triggering the end of the Information Age. Choosing a bolt of lightning as the catalyst for this disaster was a revelation one long and weary evening...

Dan Becker is studying for a degree in Information Technology. The year is 1993. He is particularly interested in controlling computer processes with physical triggers, like lightning. He produces some code that will shut down a system, any system in the world in fact, if it senses a significant surge in direct current. Later, he realises this code has been accidentally copied into a popular operating system. The Lightning Bug is thus propagated across the globe.

Dan tries to get the virus removed from as many systems as possible. Years pass and the threat seems to have disappeared. It is now 2010. Everton Knight, a Canary Wharf billionaire, is about to launch his new range of bio-technology computer systems onto the market. He discovers a computer in London that is still running a version of the infected operating system and instantly realises its potential.

The company that maintains the machine (MicroCorp) have struggled to find a suitable replacement for it. So, they’ve left it alone. They are completely unaware of the malicious code that lurks within its sluggish processor. Their computer is housed in 30, St. Mary’s Axe, a building known unofficially as The London Gherkin. Everton has the lightning conductor on The Gherkin diverted to the main fuse box on their floor. Then he waits. When a violent electrical storm hits the City, he has Dan Becker killed. Now there’s no one to stop the Lightning Bug from spreading all over the world.

The CIA immediately detect the virus’ unique signature on the Web. Two retired agents, Robert Hoffner and Peter Burks, are sent to England to speak to Dan Becker. But of course, Dan Becker is already dead. Desperate for a lead, the ex-agents kidnap his twelve-year-old son, Harvey Becker instead. Stealing him from an interview room in Belgravia Police Station, they rush him to Zurich to the dazzling lobby of the Dalder Grand Hotel.

The Dalder Grand is a sort of luxury hotel-come-bank, a super-safe place for the super-rich to deposit their money. It has a unique computer system, which is completely impenetrable from any outside threat. From the Dalder Grand, Harvey and his friends plan to reverse the effects of the Lightning Bug. Harvey knows a bit about it but more importantly, he knows exactly how his dad’s mind worked…

CIA agents based in Langley grapple with the Lightning Bug code at the same time. They are in constant contact with Robert Hoffner via his mobile phone, until Europe’s mobile phone networks go down. Now Robert, Peter and Harvey are on their own. The Swiss police raid the hotel basement in which they’re working. Their national intelligence systems have crashed so they can’t find a record of Robert Hoffner or Peter Burks leasing the room from Interpol. They conclude they are a threat, which must be eliminated.

Any support Robert and Peter expect from either Interpol or the CIA quickly evaporates. Both organisations are stretched to breaking point trying to maintain law and order in a world descending into anarchy. They decide to escape into the streets around the hotel. Opposite them, a fire alarm sounds in the foyer of the Dalder Grand’s sister hotel. The hotel residents poor out onto the pavement, making it impossible for Harvey and his friends to stay together. They are separated.

Harvey runs inside the evacuated building. Pursued by a single Swiss police officer, he hides behind the main reception desk. But he can see squad cars through the atrium windows, pouring onto the drive. He knows he’ll be caught if he stays where he is. Gambling the fire alarm is only ringing because the Lightning Bug has affected its systems, he scuttles through a door to his left into a maze of back offices.

Still being tracked, he bursts breathlessly into the hotel’s main dining area. Fire has already destroyed the curtains on the far wall. It’s spreading rapidly across the rest of the richly furnished room. Harvey is trapped. He can’t go back, and he can’t go on. He sees a picture window, overlooking the hotel gardens. Eventually, he manages to put a chair through it and escape.

Rounding the next corner, he bumps into Robert and Peter again. The three have accidentally converged on a tiny Internet Café just off Zurich’s famous Bahnhofstrasse. TVs in a nearby shop window show world systems shutting down. Armed guards surround nuclear power plants and oil refineries as site security systems collapse.

Swiss police officers emerge in an adjacent alley. Luckily, a giant supermarket lorry pulls across its mouth. Its driver parks up, unable to make further deliveries until his sat nav system comes back on line. Harvey and his friends break in to the Internet cafe. All the major routes out of the city are choked with cars. But traffic on the World Wide Web has shrunk to almost nothing. They have the place to themselves. They find a few terminals and a server still working and set about forging a direct link between the Internet café and the Dalder Grand Hotel. Hopefully, they can pick up their work where they left off.

They make good progress. Soon, they are testing their anti-viral software on the dozen or so infected machines in the café. They are close to finding a solution they can release into the wild, when the owner of the café confronts them. He has a gun. He insists they back away from the machines they’re using and put their hands over their heads.

Harvey tries to explain the situation, but the café owner ignores him. He tries to contact the police, first on his mobile, then on his landline but he can’t get through. He panics, thinking he is dealing with the original authors of the Lightning Bug virus. At gunpoint, he forces them out onto the street.

The café is completely surrounded. A megaphone announces a firearms unit has all four of them in its sights. TV screens in the shop windows opposite display live coverage of the siege. Harvey can’t believe he’s watching himself mediate with the Swiss police. They begin to approach despite Peter’s best efforts to stall them. Someone loses their cool and shots ring out. Harvey sees the bullets fly on TV. His eye’s bulge. What has he got caught up in? Then, the TV screens dissolve into snow. The broadcasting networks have gone down too.

The last few computers still working in the Internet café begin to fail. Robert realises it’s now or never. Two jumbo jets appear in the skies above the city. The distance between them rapidly decreases. They look like they’re going to crash, head on. In desperation, Harvey pleads with the police chief to let them re-enter the Internet café, to see if there’s anything left they can do. In light of the pending air disaster, the police chief gives way.

Harvey, Robert and Peter only have one vital piece of code left to deploy. They type in the necessary machine instructions and hit ENTER. The command is accepted and the Lightning Bug is stopped in its tracks. Slowly, it begins to delete itself, first from the computers in the Internet café, then from computers all over the world.

The planes narrowly miss each other as Swiss air traffic control systems come back on line just in time. Harvey, Robert and Peter are quickly arrested and bundled off to a high security detention centre at Zurich International Airport. Later, they are released without charge. Interpol have interceded on their behalf.

Back in London, Everton Knight is questioned by Scotland Yard. But no evidence linking him with the Lightning Bug can be found. Nor can he be tied to the murder of Harvey’s dad. Swiss airspace is re-opened and Harvey books a flight home. Slumped in the departure lounge, he glimpses the German assassin who shot his dad. He tries to assault him but is tackled by two beefy airport security guards and is brought down.

Disappointed not to have avenged his father’s death, he travels back to England in a foul temper. His mum deals with the brunt of his frustrations at Heathrow. Everton immediately comes after them, chasing their taxi from the airport. The billionaire has had to cut short an enjoyable round of golf to sort out the mess Harvey’s made of his plans to dominate the printed circuit board market.

He has his chauffeur run them off the road. Harvey is bundled into the back of his black limo and driven to a vast, deserted industrial complex on the edge of the South Downs. This is where, over the next few weeks, Everton would have begun production of his bio-technology computer chips. A reservoir of their liquid ingredients has already been installed beneath the site’s puddled, empty car park. Harvey is thrown in.

Left to die beneath one of a hundred identical, grey manhole covers, he fumbles desperately with his mobile phone. But it’s no use, the UK’s mobile networks are still down. He tries to select an alternative service provider, one dedicated to the support of Her Majesty’s Special Forces Overseas. Robert Hoffner tried to do the same thing in Zurich but was denied access. To his surprise, Harvey’s phone accepts the request and his call connects. Help arrives in the nick of time and he’s rescued.

A month later, Harvey and his mum are living under false names in a police safe house. To cheer him up, his mum has arranged for him to go on holiday with Robert Hoffner. Robert meets him in Miami. They take an RV to the Okefenokee Swamp National Park on the Florida/Georgia border. There, they watch swarms of lightning bugs illuminate the early evening sky. Their simple beauty is breath taking.

Harvey knows Robert can never replace his real father (whose funeral he attended last week) but at least he’s a good friend determined to cheer him up at a very tough time. They watch crocodiles slide into the Suwanee canal together and relax. Another swarm of lightning bugs sweeps overhead. At least, Harvey shrugs, the other kind of Lightning Bug is now officially extinct. 

Opposite them sat a sleek, black motorbike. Harvey’s dad threw his leg over it. He kicked up the side-stand and turned the keys in the ignition. Harvey climbed on behind him. He found the stubby pegs for his feet and flicked them down. They both put their helmets on, black to match the bike but with streaks of silver to make them stand out on the road.

A shiver of excitement floated up Harvey’s spine. He tapped his dad on the shoulder, telling him he was all set and waited. There was a moment’s silence in which Harvey craned his neck over his dad’s shoulder to see the instrument panel in front of him. The rev counter red-lined at 11000 RPM, the speedo read 100 MPH at 12 o’clock.

His dad pressed a little red button on the handlebars with his right thumb and the bike roared into life. Harvey found the grab rail behind him and clung on. With a last wave and an I’m-shutting-my-visor-now salute, he said goodbye to his mum. His dad pulled them forwards, revving all the time, letting the engine warm up. They rested for a moment with just the front wheel on the road, and then, raced away.

Harvey caught a glimpse of them, a blurred reflection in the blacked out windows of a Transit van parked opposite their house. The bike was fully faired so that his dad’s legs seemed to merge into its frame. Its twin headlights were on, burning like the fierce eyes of a big cat. Its chrome exhausts shone white-hot in a brilliant shaft of sunlight filtering through the city smog. 

Lyne Becker listened to the distinctive, throaty growl of her husband’s Triumph as it accelerated down the street. Eventually, it grew fainter until it was lost in the general background noise of the day. She closed the garage door. ‘When oh when was her husband going to get round to clearing out some of the junk he kept in here?’ she thought to herself. ‘It was one of the things she liked least about him, his instinct to hoard everything.’

She’d have to have a word with him, when he got back. Dan Becker didn’t know it yet, but he was going to throw some stuff away on the weekend. He was going to get rid of some of the crates and crates of college notes he’d insisted they bring with them from Los Angeles. The computer systems he’d worked on back then had probably been superseded years ago anyway. It was high time the Becker family had a clear out. High time they said goodbye to their past.

Harvey and his dad returned from their motorbike ride exhausted but elated. They had put nearly fifty miles on the clock, charging down the A4130 through Hurley Bottom and into Henley before turning round and coming back along the bendier, country roads. They might have stayed out longer but the forecast was for rain. 

They locked the bike away and went indoors. Their helmets were placed next to each other on the kitchen worktop, their boots on the mat. Then they settled themselves in front of the TV. Harvey picked up the remote and flicked through a dozen Sky Sports channels before he found one he liked. Motocross Unlimited was just starting.

Lyne Becker frowned as she came in with their tea. She’d put it on two trays, so they could eat it on their laps. She guessed they’d want to watch something manly. ‘Is this the best you can find?’ she tutted. Her husband and son deliberately ignored her. ‘Was it good then, your bike ride?’ She set their meals in front of them. ‘Worth all the moaning and whining?’ She gave Harvey a sarcastic stare.

He nodded. ‘Mmmm. Fantastic,’ he said. ‘I want one.’
‘When you’re older, maybe,’ his mum frowned.
Harvey pointed at his plate with his fork. ‘This is delicious,’ he said.

Lyne Becker excused herself and went upstairs to wrap some last minute presents for him. His twelfth birthday was tomorrow. His main present, a brand new computer, was stashed in the loft. She knew he was going to love it. Still, it would feel like a bit of an anti-climax now. He’d so obviously got what he really wanted already. That ride on the back of his dad’s bike had been a long time coming. She smiled as she thought of the two of them scoffing their pizza, glued to the tele. She knew, deep down, she’d done the right thing. She was glad she’d let him go, a day early. 

It was nearly midnight in London now. Tendrils of rain writhed their way down Harvey Becker’s windowpane like snakes in a jam jar. He could feel the wind buffeting the house even through the double-glazing. A spine-tingling fork of lightning exploded across the heavens right in front of him and, like something out of a Hollywood disaster movie, all the lights went out over the city.

Gripped by the intense atmosphere the storm was generating, Harvey stayed glued to the window. As he stared into the blackness, still blinking, a car turned into his street. Its misaligned headlights screamed for his attention as they accelerated towards him. Harvey could see the windscreen wipers sweeping backwards and forwards like frantic robot arms through the driving rain.  But he couldn’t see the driver’s face.

Slap! Slap! Slap! He could almost hear the wiper blades as the sleek, silver saloon approached. Slap! Slap! Slap! But he couldn’t see the driver and that bothered him. He didn’t know why. He didn’t recognise the car or expect to know its occupant but something seemed wrong somehow, like an out of place shadow or an unexpected echo.  Something about the scene didn’t make sense.

And then, all the lights in the street flashed suddenly back to life. In the same instant, a figure darted into the road. The car’s brakes screamed, it swerved violently to avoid the pedestrian and mounted the pavement. Doing thirty or forty miles an hour, it ploughed into the railings that enclosed Swinstead Park to Harvey’s left.

Harvey’s eyes followed it in disbelieve as it came to rest under the children’s swings by the Sports Pavilion. For a moment, his focus flicked back to the twisting threads of rain on his window pain. Outside in the street, nothing was moving. Not a single plane blinked its way across the night sky. Not a single piece of litter drifted into the gutter. No one came to see what had happened and no one climbed out of the wrecked car. The person who’d fallen into its path a moment earlier seemed to have disappeared.

In a trance, Harvey watched the rain, like beads of sweat, crawling over the car’s bonnet. Then, he woke up to himself. He had to go outside, immediately, go outside and see if anyone was hurt. He stepped off the edge of his bed, grabbed his coat from the back of his bedroom door and ran downstairs. His dad was asleep on the sofa. His mum was working nights.

Putting the front door on the latch, Harvey carefully let himself out. The rain had gotten worse. He put his hood up and stepped into it. There, almost completely hidden by the trees lining the park’s northernmost boundary, he saw it… the brooding silhouette of the crashed car. It appeared no one had moved inside.

Harvey hurried over. Climbing into the park over the twisted railings, destroyed by the force of the impact, he rounded on the vehicle’s steaming bonnet and approached the front, nearside door. There were scratches all the way along it, as though some giant dog had drawn its claws through the metallic paint. He clutched the handle, squeezed and pulled.

CLICK. It released easily. It was a good quality car, like a Saab or a BMW; Harvey hadn’t noticed the badge above the radiator. He swung the door open, smoothly on its greased hinges. His head tilted forwards, straining to see round the doorframe. And suddenly, it was all there in front of him, like the curtains had been drawn back from a theatre stage. The passenger seat… empty, thank God. The radio… blinking 98.2 – TRAFFIC ALERT – 98.2 – TRAFFIC ALERT. The air bags… deflated, like two limp balloons hanging from the cracked dashboard. And the driver… Harvey swallowed hard before lifting his gaze to look at him. What sort of shape was he in?

Instinctively, he sought out the driver’s eyes first. They were open, staring straight ahead. Was he still alive? Harvey had never seen a dead body before. Was this going to be his first time? The man’s head was slumped over the steering wheel. He wasn’t moving, but that needed mean anything. Maybe he was just unconscious.

Alive or dead, Harvey thought he must have looked ill, even before the accident. His skin was pale and blotchy, his cheeks gaunt and his hair lank. How old was he? Forty, maybe fifty Harvey guessed. He thought about going to get help straight away but something about the way the man’s seatbelt cut into his neck, made him want to reach inside and undo it.

He did. Instantly, the man’s bruised hand grabbed his arm. Harvey nearly choked. Bony fingers bit into his skin. He hadn’t expected him to move. He noticed a grizzly tattoo of a scorpion on the back of his hand. More tattoos stretched away up his arm, visible beneath his torn shirt. ‘Are you alright?’ Harvey stuttered, suddenly afraid.

The man didn’t reply. Instead, he tightened his grip. Blood was dripping down his forehead into his eyes. He tried to wipe it away but couldn’t reach. His other arm must have been trapped by something. Then, in a flash, he turned his head away from Harvey and let go. The driver door opened, he must have managed to release it with his other hand. He tilted his shoulder forward and rolled out onto the cold, wet matting of the playground floor.

‘Hey!’ Harvey crawled backwards over the gear stick and passenger seat, easing himself out of the car feet first. ‘Hey!’ He ran round, expecting to see the man crawling towards him, wallowing in pain, ‘Take it easy,’ he said. But the man was gone.

Scanning the surrounding streets, Harvey spotted him running up to his own front door. He was limping and holding his side but he had covered the thirty or forty yards in between very quickly.

‘Oy!’ he shouted. ‘What do you think you’re doing? What do you want?’ He watched as the man tried the front door handle. Finding the house unlocked, he went inside.

‘Damn!’ Harvey cursed. The stranger gently closed the door behind him. Had he drawn something out of his pocket as he’d done so? Harvey thought it could have been a gun. But no, that was a ridiculous idea. Why on earth would he be carrying a gun? He dashed across the street after him. He hoped whoever it was hadn’t thought to lock himself in.

Harvey jumped through the thin, privet hedge that flanked his garden gate and threw himself at his front door. It flew open but even before it hit the stop against the wall, he knew he was in trouble. The house was dark. He was confused. What was going on? The lightning must have shorted the electrics in the street again. He stepped forward and thump, thump, heard a noise from the living room. It sounded like someone had volleyed two tennis balls into a big feather pillow on the sofa.

‘Who’s there?’ he breathed.
No one answered.
‘Dad?’ he crept down the hall towards the living room door. ‘Dad? Was that you?’
Still nothing.

‘Dad did you just hear…’ Harvey began to speak again but his sentence was cut short. The crash victim burst out of the room right in front of him. He was off balance, in a hurry to get away. He knocked Harvey clean off his feet.

‘Es bleibt nichts enderes ubrig,’ he spat as he stepped over him. ‘Angenehme ruhe.’

Harvey blinked, trying to take everything in. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he coughed. The man was holding something in his right hand, something heavy. He slipped it inside his coat pocket before Harvey could see exactly what it was. ‘Were they being robbed?’ he thought. ‘Was that one of his mum’s figurines off the mantelpiece?’ He looked again but the man had his back to him now, jogging down the hall.

A trail of blood led away into the darkness. He heard a door slam shut. The thief must have darted out of the French doors. He would soon vault the low fence behind the greenhouse and be gone. Harvey realised he could also hear the television. It was prattling away to itself in the front room. ‘Odd,’ he thought, ‘if there’s been a power cut?’

He stood up, rubbed his bruised knees and stepped purposefully into the gently glowing room beside him. He saw his dad’s face immediately. It was reflecting the light of the T.V. The light’s intensity kept changing, making it look like his lips were moving. Light and shadow… light and shadow… Was he breathing awkwardly or trying to speak?  Harvey got closer still. He could see now that in fact his dad’s lips were pressed closed. He wasn’t even awake. Nor was he asleep. What was he then? Dead…?

The question hung there in the air like a curse. Harvey realised at once what had happened, what he’d heard. The thumps of the tennis ball must have been shots from a powerful handgun. Probably one fitted with a silencer. The figurine from the mantelpiece had been nothing of the sort. It had, in fact, been a Beretta pistol. His dad had been murdered and his lips were never, ever going to move again.

Tonight was going to be the first time Harvey ever saw a dead body. But not the body of a total stranger behind the wheel of a crumpled car in Swinstead Park. It was going to be the night he saw his own father’s body lying inelegantly across the sagging sofa in their tranquil living room. Shot twice, at point blank range in the chest, he never stood a chance.

As Harvey stood transfixed, his dad’s eyes tried to say something. But it was too late; much too late.

Elsewhere in London, a message appeared on a computer screen. This is what it said :

It stayed in the centre of the display for about a minute. Then the machine shut down. The computer belonged to the MicroCorp conglomerate. Their headquarters in England were in the heart of the City’s financial district, on the 28th floor of number 30, St. Mary Axe to be precise. That put them just six floors off the top of the building known unofficially as The London Gherkin.

This was a fantastic skyscraper, visible from all over the capital. It was unusual because it wasn’t full of sharp angles like most big buildings. Instead, it was shaped like a cigar. It was covered in reflective glass panels and, in one of those huge glass panels right now, was the shimmering reflection of a helicopter.

Inside the helicopter sat Everton Knight, a bald, overweight man, originally from the West Indies. He was wearing more jewellery than clothes. Everton was a billionaire who owned property on Canary Wharf. He was a self-made man, constantly looking for new ways to make even more money. And his newest business venture, STORM bio-systems inc., was poised to make him richer and more powerful than he’d ever dreamt possible.

A week ago, STORM’s board of directors had told him they were ready to launch their latest product line onto the market. But Everton had told them to wait. He gave everyone at STORM a fortnight off and shut down the factory. He was waiting for a night like tonight, before giving them the green light to push ahead. Because tonight was a very special night.

From his seat next to the pilot’s in the tiny bubble-cockpit of the helicopter, he had just watched a bolt of lightning strike the roof of The London Gherkin. For Everton this was a momentous occasion. He laughed sickeningly as electricity surged down the building’s lightning conductor and disappeared into the conduit that ran down its side. The heavens cracked with thunder. Everton saw dollar signs.

‘Yes!’ he screamed, clenching his fists. ‘That’s what I came to see.’ He signalled to the pilot. They could go now. The pilot dropped his right hand, taking the helicopter joystick with it and they arced around, away from the river Thames. Everton had done it. He had captured mother nature’s most powerful weapon, and used it for his own ends.

He would phone STORM’s executive team the minute the helicopter touched down. Production of their advanced bio-chip processors could begin again at once. Now there was nothing and no one who could stand in his way.

Incredibly, there were still a few people working in The London Gherkin when the lightning bolt struck. Not that they felt anything. They had all been called into an emergency meeting to discuss the future direction of their company. They were cocooned in a soundproofed room, safe from the elements.

It was a fowl night outside. They all knew that. A fierce electrical storm was raging over the City. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of their air-conditioned conference suite, they could see jagged forks of lightning ripping across the sky. But they were in one of the safest buildings in the capital. They barely gave the weather a second thought. 

Their meeting got underway. It was delivered with a level of professionalism you had to admire. It was going to be a fantastic year for profits. At least, you’d have thought it was, if you were in that meeting… Instead, while the blinds came down and the first slide was shown to the focused audience, more computers on the site began to display the same error message. A virus had begun to spread across their network. Perhaps the weather deserved their attention after all.

‘We’ve managed to contact your mum,’ a policeman leaning on the boot of a saloon squad car told Harvey Becker. ‘She’ll be home in no time.’

‘Thanks,’ Harvey acknowledged him. He was glad to think he’d see her soon. He felt uncomfortable, standing on the edge of a group of CID officers at the foot of his drive. A radio crackled. People shuffled about in the cordoned off area of pavement around him. He was in the way, he knew that, but he didn’t know where else to put himself.

A firearms officer in a flack jacket ushered him into the gutter. ‘Be careful son,’ he said. ‘Gotta get this to Ballistics.’ He eased past Harvey, carrying a clear, polythene bag with a single, blood-red bullet in it. Harvey assumed he’d dug it out of the back of the sofa, rather than the back of his dad!

‘I can’t remember,’ the policeman by the patrol car spoke again. ‘If you said the man who hurt your dad was English? Sorry. I know we’ve been over this a few times now, but I want to be certain I’ve got everything.’ 

Harvey nodded. ‘I think he was German,’ he said. He had a fair image of the man in his mind. It should have been a lot better, but he’d been too on edge at the crash scene to take much notice of him. ‘He spoke to me in a foreign language, I remember that. Es bleibt nichts enderes ubrig, he said. I was lying on my back in the hall at the time but I’m sure those were his words. He was badly wounded, from the accident. His lip was bleeding and he had a gash across his forehead, but it’s his voice I’ll never forget.’

The policeman relayed the information to his superior, via the radio pinned to his breast pocket. ‘He can’t have got far,’ he reassured Harvey. He was gazing at the wrecked Mercedes Kompressor half on and half off the rubber matting surrounding the park swings a couple of hundred yards away. ‘Made a mess of that didn’t he?’ he said. ‘Now he’s on foot, we’ll soon have him in custody, don’t you worry.’

‘Lightning,’ murmured Harvey, going over the events of the last hour in his head. ‘That’s how all this got started you know. Lightning knocked out all the streetlights. Then someone ran into the road…’ he frowned, as though trying to piece together scenes from a rapidly fading nightmare. ‘And there was an almighty SMASH! The car, the Mercedes, hit the playground fence… but it didn’t stop there, it kept going… I went over… and I found the driver, alive but stunned. He came to and ran off… ran to my house… and went straight into the living room where he… murdered my dad.’

The policeman blinked. He had no idea what to say. His basic training at the academy hadn’t covered this sort of thing. He felt like he was way out of his depth in a giant swimming pool. He wanted to call for help but the lifeguard was off duty.

‘He was taller than you,’ Harvey went on. ‘The killer I mean. And he was wearing a suit, a brown one with a funny weave. The accident tore the sleeve, so I could see a load of tattoos on his arm. He had thin, grey hair, green eyes and was probably in his late forties.’

‘Very helpful,’ the policeman exhaled. He looked like he wanted to smoke a cigarette but had given up. Harvey started over towards the ambulance where some paramedics were putting on a show. They were trying to convince anyone watching that the life of his dad still hung in the balance. But Harvey knew it didn’t. He wasn’t impressed by their little charade. His dad was dead. Dead, as in ‘Never coming back.’ Dead, as in ‘Switched off at the mains.’

Harvey could see the purple stain on his unbuttoned shirt as the defibrillator was brought in for one last, valiant attempt at resurrecting him. When it failed, the ambulance’s rear doors were closed, its rotating lights stopped turning and its driver bumped it off the kerb. A female police officer, who’d been talking to the ambulance crew, came over to speak to Harvey.

‘My name’s Silvia Statton,’ she said. ‘How are you holding up?’
Harvey felt completely numb if the truth be told.
‘Stupid question,’ Silvia smiled. ‘What I meant to say was, I’m here if you need to talk to someone. I’m on your side. OK?’

Harvey smiled back. His heart felt like it had been ransacked of all its emotions. He wanted to curl up into a ball and cry but instead, he found the strength to go on. ‘I appreciate it,’ he said.

‘Your neighbour, Mrs. Wills is it?’ Silvia grabbed the handle of the blue and white patrol car. ‘Has she spoken to you? Only she mentioned she’d be more than happy to accompany you to the police station, if your mum wanted to meet you there.’

Harvey realised at once there was no point in anyone going to the hospital. He allowed himself to be bundled into the back seat. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Whatever.’ He was in a bit of a daze. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him.

The car’s engine started. It pulled away. Curtains twitched up and down the road. Harvey stared back blankly at them through the rear windows. He was driven through the ghostly quiet streets of Pimlico to the Belgravia Police Station, a few miles away. Mrs. Wills never materialised. Maybe she went back to bed.

Belgravia Police Station looked like a bunch of egg cartons stacked on top of each other. It wasn’t very pretty, even when the sun was shining. Right now, under the moody glare of a hundred amber streetlights, it looked like a soviet detention centre from some long-forgotten cold-war movie.

Inside, Harvey was shown to a windowless interview room where he was sat down on a cheap, plastic chair. He gave a statement about what he’d seen and heard that night, talking, all the time, into an antique tape player on a chipped, Formica table.

Silvia brought him a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of pink-iced birthday cake.
‘My 21st yesterday,’ she said. ‘Had some left in my desk and thought you might like to try a bit.’
Harvey thanked her. She was very pretty. Despite himself, he felt the beginnings of a crush on her. He wasn’t hungry but he ate the cake anyway, to show they were friends.
‘Where’s your mum work?’ Silvia sat beside him.
Harvey slurped his chocolate. ‘Charring Cross Hospital,’ he answered.
‘And how long’s it normally take her to get home from there?’ Silvia nibbled her piece of cake and waved to a colleague through the open door.
Harvey blew his nose. ‘Half an hour,’ he sniffed. ‘Twenty minutes if she breaks the speed limit.’

‘I expect she’ll be here soon then,’ Silvia put her hand on his knee. He smelt her perfume as she leant forward. He kept thinking he should be more upset, more cut up about his dad’s death. But he just felt cold, like ice. He relaxed. At least Silvia was here. She made him feel better.
‘Harvey?’ she said. ‘Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill your father?’
Harvey felt his stomach tighten. He’d been afraid someone would ask him that, sooner or later. He made sure the expression on his face didn’t change. ‘No,’ he replied simply. ‘No reason at all.’

Silvia sighed and sat back. She seemed to believe him. ‘What did he do anyway, you’re dad?’ Her manner was casual and light. You could almost believe they were passengers on the Tube, chatting to each other to pass the time of day.

‘He was a computer programmer,’ Harvey said. ‘He used to work for NASA, on a sort of contract basis, a few months at a time.’ He thought that was a full enough answer, for the time being. He knew they were not talking on a tube train. Silvia was great but she wasn’t some random punter, killing time as she sped across London.

In truth, she was a trained police officer, talking to him in a secure room within a central London police station. She would be going over everything he said in her mind with a fine toothcomb. He would have to be careful. Harvey was painfully aware they were talking about his dad in the past tense too. He didn’t like that. It made him feel uncomfortable but what could he do? It was true after all, his dad was dead. That meant everything about him was a thing of the past.

Silvia had begun to take notes. ‘Did you say he was a scientist, your dad? I mean, if he worked for NASA he must have been pretty smart.’
‘Not a scientist exactly,’ Harvey corrected her. ‘An expert in computers, that’s all.’
‘Really,’ her pencil lead scratched frantically over her notepaper. ‘Are you into computers Harvey?’ She stopped writing and looked up. It was as if she was trying to tell him this was an off-the-record sort of question.

Harvey shrugged. ‘Games more than anything else,’ he admitted. ‘Like Solar-Rip. Do you know Solar-Rip?’
Silvia said she’d heard of it. ‘The latest title from MicroCorp isn’t it? For their PlayCube machine?’
Harvey nodded. ‘Even better than Ridge Racer,’ he said. ‘Cool graphics.’

Someone else, a plain-clothed CID officer, entered the interview room now. He was tall and waspish, wearing a toupee if Harvey wasn’t mistaken. He whispered something in Silvia’s ear.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she said, following him out.
Harvey spilt hot chocolate all over the table as soon as she left. He didn’t know why. He mopped it up with his handkerchief as best he could.
‘It might be better to wait,’ he heard Silvia say. She was standing with her back to him, in the corridor. ‘He hasn’t got any kind of legal council yet. His mum should be here any minute.’

‘They’re pretty insistent,’ the CID man replied. ‘They want to speak to him immediately. They reckon the next ten or fifteen minutes could be crucial in their efforts to catch the guy who did this.’
Silvia snuck back into the room. ‘There are some men in the next building,’ she explained. ‘They’re asking to speak to you. They say it’s urgent. Apparently, they’re from the CIA, in America.’ She flicked her hair out of her face. ‘They think they’re losing the killer’s scent, but if you could tell them what you told me, about the car crash and the shots you heard fired, they might be able to recapture it.’

‘I-If it will help,’ Harvey stuttered. A wave of emotion swept over him. It took him completely by surprise. He realised at once he wanted the police to catch this man, the man who’d shot and killed his father, more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his whole life.
Silvia gave him a hug.
‘If you think we can get this guy?’ he said.
She did. She was certain of it. Harvey pushed back his chair and she helped him stand.

‘This is Tim,’ she introduced the waspish CID man. ‘He’ll take you to meet the CIA agents. I’ll be along in a few minutes.’ She winked at Harvey then ducked away down a corridor. ‘Softly, softly,’ she said to Tim as she walked away.
Tim looked at her hips. Harvey didn’t like the way his greedy eyes followed her. He trod on his left foot to teach him a lesson.
‘Hey! What d’you do that for?’ he barked.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be going somewhere?’ Harvey snapped.

They set off. Harvey quickly realising how incredibly tired he was. He understood if he wanted to help his dad, or at least the memory of his dad, he had to talk to the CIA tonight. But he really didn’t want to. He was fed up of retelling the same old story over and over again. He wanted to see his mum. He wanted to go to sleep actually and wake up and know that this had all been a really bad dream. Never mind, that wasn’t going to happen any time soon so he kept walking.

He and Tim finally reached the end of a long hallway that linked the main building with a satellite office block to the north. Tim opened a set of fire doors and they carried on through. A stark, square room just beyond beckoned. Inside, two men from the world’s most powerful secret service agency were waiting to speak to Harvey.

He sat opposite them. They were both middle-aged, wearing cords and comfortable, v-neck polo jumpers. They stared back at him through prescription sunglasses as though their eyes concealed a thousand top-level government secrets. They looked exactly like you’d expect CIA field agents to look, only a bit shabbier at the edges. Harvey wondered if they were jet lagged or something.

‘Hi,’ said the first, holding out his hand in friendship. ‘I’m Agent Robert Hoffner. Pleased to meet you.’ He sat forward.
Harvey shook his hand.
‘This is Agent Peter Burks,’ the man gestured to his colleague.
Agent Peter Burks winked at Harvey.

‘Now,’ continued the first man, ‘we already know a bit about your dad’s background, the work he did for the space agency, his considerable achievements in the field of computer science, all that.  But what we don’t know is what exactly happened tonight. We’d very much like to know more, if you’d tell us?’
Harvey explained about the crash, the injured driver and the thump, thump of the gun again.
‘A silencer,’ muttered Agent Peter Burks. ‘A professional hit?’

Agent Hoffner raised his eyebrows as though surprised, but Harvey sensed the possibility had already occurred to him. ‘Could we have a moment alone with Harvey?’ he asked Tim. Tim had been observing silently from the door. He didn’t look very happy at the thought of leaving the room. He had never dealt with the CIA before but he’d heard they were slippery customers. If he wasn’t careful, they’d take all the credit for this bust and he’d be left doing all the paperwork. Eventually, he gave in and excused himself but only after he’d underlined the importance of inter-departmental co-operation to the two men he was leaving behind.

As soon as he had closed the door, Robert Hoffner grabbed Harvey by the shoulders. For some reason, Harvey wasn’t frightened. He sensed the man only wanted to make sure he had his full attention. ‘We know,’ he said, looking deep into his eyes. ‘We know.’

Harvey blinked. ‘Know what?’ 
‘We know about the Lightning Bug,’ Peter Burks cut in. He leant forward, crossing his arms on the table. ‘We know your dad wrote it.’
Harvey could see at once the men were deadly serious. This is what they had come here for, what they had come to tell him. They knew about his father’s biggest secret, the Lightning Bug. Presumably, they thought Harvey knew too.

Harvey had no idea who to trust and who to fear, in this new world, the one without his dad in it. But there was something he liked about these men, in their cool shades and smart-casual clothes. Was that enough of a reason to spill the beans to them? He wasn’t sure. Why were they asking about the Lightning Bug? What had happened? He decided he’d give them a chance. He would tell them a little of what they wanted to hear. And see where things went from there.

Tim came back into the room. ‘Long enough?’ he wanted to know.
‘Sure,’ Peter Burks stood up and stepped into the corridor. ‘We’re all gonna walk down to the front desk now and wait for Harvey’s mum. You coming?’
‘Oh, OK.’ Tim held the door for Robert and Harvey, then flicked off the light and followed them to the nearest stairwell.
‘You boys carry guns?’ He nudged Robert with his elbow. ‘In them fancy holsters under your shirts maybe?’

Robert looked disappointed with the question. ‘We’re from a special operations unit based in Charlotte Carolina,’ he said. ‘We deal with virtual crime. We don’t really need to carry guns.’
‘Special operations eh?’ Tim repeated. ‘Virtual crime. That’s the sort of thing I’d like to get into. How do I get started?’
‘First, get a masters in Information Technology from Stamford University,’ joked Peter Burks. ‘When you’ve done that, give us a call.’

Tim frowned. He wasn’t sure if Peter was being serious or taking him for a ride. ‘You must be a wiz with computers and things,’ he guessed. ‘Maybe you could have a look at this for me?’ He took his PDA out of his trouser pocket. ‘Got some kind of a bug in it. Hasn’t worked since about 10 o’clock this evening.’
‘Sure,’ Robert slapped Tim affectionately on the back, ‘we can fix that. No problem. We’ll need the base station and the power lead though. You got those to hand?’
‘They’re upstairs in my desk,’ Tim beamed. ‘Give us a minute. I’ll fetch ‘em’ He disappeared.
‘You do that,’ Peter Burks said after him.

Tim found what he was looking for in his desk drawer. He gathered up the flex, grabbed the manual just in case and ran back to the stairwell where he’d left Robert, Peter and Harvey. They were gone. ‘Of course they were,’ he thought. ‘No need to worry. They’d obviously carried on down to Reception without him.’ He took the stairs two at a time, already squinting slightly, something he did whenever he got stressed.

When he got to the police station’s front desk, Mrs. Becker was there, asking anyone who’d listen where her son was. No one seemed to know. Tim could see her face was stained with tears. Her makeup had smudged under her eyes so she looked like she hadn’t slept for a month. He took her under his wing. He got her a cup of tea and found a room they could sit in. He asked a junior officer to track down Harvey and bring him to them. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to realise he wasn’t coming. Tim had been set up.

Harvey was no longer in the building. He was no longer in the safe custody of the metropolitan police. He’d been kidnapped. How could Tim have been so stupid? At once, he began to doubt whether the men posing as CIA agents Hoffner and Burks even worked for the U.S. government. What could he tell Mrs. Becker? How could he admit to her he’d allowed her only son to be stolen, from right underneath his nose? He was squinting badly as he faced her. He massaged his brow and opened his mouth. Whatever he said, she’d be distraught. What the hell, he might as well get it over with… He made a start.

Bleary eyed and ready for bed, people began to file out of the meeting on the 28th floor of The London Gherkin. Manuel Bong was among them. He sauntered back to his desk, double-clicked on his taskbar and selected an item for viewing. It was meant to be his parting shot for the night; a last show of dedication before he clocked off.

His cursor changed immediately from an arrow to an egg timer. The egg timer stared back at him. It turned itself over. Still the application didn’t open. Eventually, a new window expanded to fill his screen. Data confronted him. It was nothing to look at, just a jumble of & signs and @ signs, but it had a profound effect on him. He looked worried.

He read on, and his expression changed again. Fear coloured his features, his face paled and his pupils contracted. He popped his head over the false walls of the open plan office around him. But there was no one else on the 28th floor now. The lift was full. They’d all gone home.

‘Damn,’ he whispered. He rarely swore but this was a special occasion. ‘Damn and blast,’ he hissed. He felt lost. ‘Could be nothing,’ he shrugged but he sounded unconvinced. He got a glass of water from the cooler in his boss’s office and began to investigate.

Across town, Everton Knight stepped out of a black limousine into his favourite strip club. The owner came over to greet him. He showed Everton to his best table and sat him down. Two pretty girls were summoned from the bar to keep him company. Everton ordered drinks and began to relax. He undid the top button of his expensive, pink, Armani shirt and lit a cigarette.

Another man, apparently one who worked for Everton, came over and whispered something in his ear. Everton smiled broadly. Some of the gold crowns he’d recently paid a cool five thousand pounds for, glinted in the blue-light of the room.

‘Thank you,’ he breathed. He had just received word that a computer in the back offices of the Snow Leopard Club had crashed. ‘Ever heard of the Lightning Bug?’ he said to one of the slender dancers gently stroking his arm.
The girl shook her head.
‘Give it twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘You will…’