Published By US - Berkley, UK - Methuen, Ger - Deroemersche Verlag

THE OBLIVION TAPES.

'A tense journey into the bizarre but not impossible future'. James Kirkwood.
'The Oblivion Tapes tells a horrendous, fascinating story about a deadly plague which has been deliberately started in a South American country to achieve economic gains'. THE HINDU.

In the sultry South American air breeds a deadly infection that be neither identified nor stopped. As doctors search for a cure, a clue, a hint, some scrap of information - millions perish. Television correspondent Piers Shatner discovers that this is more than just a natural disaster - it is a political plot so single-mindedly ruthless that it threatens to destroy civilisation. Only Shatner knows the truth. Only Shatner can save the world from oblivion. But time is running out. Fast.
Published: US, UK, Germany, Holland.

Chapter One

               THE SOLDIER WITH binoculars, a stocky young man of nineteen from the northern provinces, stood on the narrow catwalk of the control tower three hundred feet above the ground and watched the Pan Am 747 from New York descend to the tarmac. The roar deafened him and he pressed his palms against his ears. I t was the fifteenth he'd watched that day and he was bored and hot. For the last two days, he'd watched nothing but aircraft land and take off. He wiped the sweat off his face with a damp handkerchief; there was little he could do about the dark patches under his arms and around the belly of his uniform. He glanced back. He would have liked to stand inside the air-conditioned control room, but the busy, technical men barely tolerated his presence. They'd made him feel gauche and unwanted, so he suffered in the heat.
               The stairs were being wheeled to the open doors of the aircraft, and the soldier pulled a postcard-size photograph from his back pocket. There was a deep crease down the center of the face he stared at, and the edges of the photograph curled. He glanced at the photograph to refresh his memory and then squinted through the binoculars at the disembarking passengers. The man he was looking for was in his mid-fifties, clean-shaven, and had receding hair. His face wasn't memorable. It had a straight nose, high cheekbones, and shy eyes that had avoided the camera.
               The soldier swung the binoculars from door to door, trying to find the man. He didn't know why he was looking for this man. He had been given an order and he just carried it out. He shut his eyes for a moment; the glare made them ache. He straightened hopefully and glanced at the photograph. He sharpened the focus on a man descending the stairs and then lost interest. He cursed softly to himself and wished he were back in the cool mountains. The passengers were down to a trickle now but he kept the binoculars to his eyes. The last man to come out held a briefcase in his right hand.
               The stewardess held his case while he took off his light summer jacket and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. The soldier watched him smile his thanks at the stewardess, take the case, and slowly descend the stairs. As he crossed to the terminal building the soldier noticed that the man made no effort to hurry and in fact deliberately trailed as far behind the other passengers as possible. The soldier reached back to the wall and picked up the walkie-talkie. His eyes never left the man as he switched on and said: 'He's just coming in.'

               The soldier waited until the man entered the terminal building and then happily took off the binoculars, scooped up his machine gun and headed for the elevator. In an hour he would be back in his barracks, standing under a cold shower and drinking a cold beer.
               The interior of the terminal building was cool and gloomy and smelled of fresh paint and varnish. The whole building was brand new and some sections of it were as yet unfinished. It wasn't built to look like an air terminal but rather like a spacious, fountained hacienda. No expense had been spared to make it the best-looking airport in the world. There were doubts by those who passed through it whether it was the most efficient.
                 Some of the passengers who had just disembarked were moving through to the transit lounge to wait for their connections to Rio and Lima and other cities on the continent.