by Andrew Lane
‘Calm down,’ Bex said through his earpiece. ‘Even from here I can see that you’re trembling. The glasses are shaking. Remember – we’ve got a job to do here.’
‘Could you – would you do that?’ he asked Todd. ‘I mean, that’s a pretty huge favour for you to do for a complete stranger.’
‘Hey – glad to help. Look, some companies take their business contacts out for dinner, or to sporting events, or to nightclubs. You look like you prefer a burger and chips to a steak, you don’t look like you’ve seen the inside of a sporting arena, like, ever, and I’m thinking you’re too young to get into a nightclub. Besides, it’ll be such fun.’ His smile stayed where it was, but his eyes were suddenly hard, like polished pebbles. Kieron felt a chill run through him. ‘Which reminds me – I have to ask: just how old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ Kieron said.
‘Liar,’ Bex said, although only he could hear her. He ignored her – they’d rehearsed this.
‘And yet you’ve managed to create your own highly accurate brain simulation, plus the software necessary to produce anti-brainwaves that can cancel out the normal brainwaves. That’s very impressive for someone so young.’
Kieron gestured around. ‘You’ve accomplished much more, and you can’t be much older than I am.’ He drank the rest of his iced water, trying to look calm.
‘Nice save,’ Bex murmured.
Todd shrugged. ‘You’ve got a point. It’s young people like us who have all the ideas, and the energy to develop and capitalise on them. Anyone over the age of thirty has pretty much done all the useful things they’re going to do.’ His face lit up, as if an idea had just struck him, but Kieron was beginning to get the measure of Todd Zanderbergen now. What looked like an improvised, intuitive attitude towards life was actually just an act. He suspected that the man thought very carefully about what he was doing, then made it look as if it had just sprung into his mind. ‘Hey, here’s a thought. While I’m organising the trip to see Lethal Insomnia recording their album, why don’t you take a tour of the Institute? I’ll get Judith to accompany you. See what we do, see what we’re like, and then come back and we can discuss your non-lethal weapon concept.’
‘That sounds great,’ Kieron said. Actually, it did sound great, and it would get him away from Todd for a while. The man’s apparently innocent but probing questions were making him edgy.
Todd turned towards his computer. ‘Judith – come here, please.’
Kieron was about to comment on the voice-activated technology when he felt the empty glass being taken from his hand. He turned, to see Tara Gallagher standing beside him.
‘Let me get rid of that,’ she said. She tried to smile, but it wasn’t very successful.
As she moved away, back towards the glass office door, Bex spoke in Kieron’s ear: ‘Don’t be too flattered about the offer of the tour. It’s a distraction to get you out of the way while Todd gets his people to check you out. Good thing we planted all that stuff on the Internet for him to find.’
Kieron noticed Judith approaching. Beyond her, he saw Tara Gallagher. She was now bent over one of the computer desks, fiddling with something.
‘Don’t look away!’ Bex said, suddenly sounding tense. ‘I’m just zooming in. I want to see what she’s doing.’
Judith entered Todd’s office and smiled at Kieron. He smiled back, trying to make it look as if he was paying attention to her while keeping the ARCC glasses pointed at the desk where Tara was working.
‘Judith,’ Todd said, waving a hand, ‘can you give Ryan here a tour of the place? Show him everything.’
‘Sure,’ she said.
Over at the desk, Tara glanced over her shoulder towards Kieron.
‘She’s got your glass of water,’ Bex said suddenly. ‘She’s just scanned it for fingerprints and DNA. They really are checking you out.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
From just outside the impressive security fence of the Goldfinch Institute, where she had parked the hire car, Bex watched and listened as Kieron dealt with Todd Zanderbergen’s subtle attempts to question him.
The car’s air con made it chilly enough that the hairs on her forearms were standing up, but whenever her hand touched the driver’s side window she could feel the thudding heat of the sun bearing down on the car’s metal skin. It was an odd juxtaposition. Still, at least the heat here was dry. Not like the humidity that she’d recently experienced in India and Pakistan.
Last week. She shook her head in disbelief. It had only been a week ago that she’d been in those two countries. And now she was in America. Sometimes she just wanted to sit back and wonder at this lifestyle of hers. One day she might be able to stop and settle down, but not yet.
As Todd instructed Judith to give Kieron the tour, Bex’s thoughts whirled as she watched her old friend Tara Gallagher scanning Kieron’s fingerprints and DNA on the Institute’s computer system.
She understood that the news that he was being checked out so thoroughly would freak Kieron out, but she needed to tell him. Todd Zanderbergen was a charismatic man, and he’d already offered Kieron the biggest bribe a teenage emo could wish for by offering to take the boy to the Lethal Insomnia recording studio. There was a distinct risk that Kieron might get star-struck and give something away. She needed to remind him that there was danger all around, but she didn’t want him panicking. It was a fine line to walk.
‘I think it’s safe to go on the tour,’ she said. ‘Give Zanderbergen the USB stick with the non-disclosure agreement. He’ll virus-check it before he uploads the file, but the virus on the computer is more sophisticated than he’s expecting. While he’s checking you out, the virus will be modifying his system just a little bit. And while you’re on the tour, I’m going to take the opportunity to head back into Albuquerque and do a little bit of investigating of my own. I hope that’s OK.’
‘You ready to go?’ she heard the PA – Judith – saying to Kieron.
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘It beats hanging around.’ Bex realised that as well as answering Judith he was also talking to her. He was really getting the hang of working with the ARCC.
She made that little mental leap in her mind that allowed her to push to one side the things Kieron was seeing through the ARCC glasses and acknowledge what was happening in the real world around her. Everything was quiet, and her car was the only one on the tarmac area just outside the metal gates, but the security guard was standing outside his cabin, watching her. Maybe he was just bored.
With a slight pinch of her fingers she reduced the size of the virtual screen showing her what Kieron was seeing and pushed it to a corner of the lenses.
She put the car into drive and turned it in a tight circle, then accelerated away from the Institute.
‘I’m going to check out the local coroner,’ she said, not because she thought Kieron needed to know but because she didn’t want him to think that the link was down or that she was ignoring him. ‘Then I might see if there are any local newspaper archives I can check for obituaries, death notices and the like.’
Glancing automatically in her rear-view mirror, even though she was the only car on the narrow road, she saw that the metal plates that sealed the entrance to the Goldfinch Institute had slid into the ground. As she watched, a black car drove out. As it passed the security guard he made a strange little salute. Obviously someone important, she thought.
As Bex got to the interstate junction and headed towards Albuquerque, she looked in her rear-view mirror again. The black car had turned the same way. Not a surprise – the city was the biggest conurbation for some miles. Most of the Institute’s employees probably lived there.
She checked in with Kieron briefly, glancing up to the corner of her vision. He was walking down a corridor, Judith just ahead of him. Bex wasn’t sure whether he was concentrating on the PA’s backside as she moved or whether it was just coincidence that his gaze kept on slipping down there. Typical teenage boy.
She moved her attent
ion back to the road. Traffic was light, but she kept her speed low. The last thing she wanted was to draw the attention of any traffic cops. A pickup truck and a yellow school bus were ahead of her on the road, travelling slightly faster than her in the same lane.
She checked the rear-view mirror again. The black car was maintaining the same speed as her. That was probably just as coincidental as the fact that it had turned right at the junction.
Without really thinking about it, Bex eased her speed up, indicated and moved out to the next lane. Now she was travelling slightly faster than the pickup and the school bus and she began to creep up on them. As she overtook the truck, Bex looked in the mirror again.
The black car had sped up and changed lane. It was still behind her, pacing her.
Not looking like a coincidence any more. Intriguing. Intriguing, and slightly worrying.
She could see the black car passing the pickup truck now. Glancing ahead, she also saw that she was approaching the yellow school bus. She touched the brake lightly, just to slow herself down a fraction, and changed lanes again so that she was directly behind the bus, with the pickup truck a little way behind.
Seconds later the black car swung smoothly into her lane. It now sat between her and the pickup truck.
It was following her. She was fairly certain of that.
The best way to establish that for sure would be to leave the interstate and see if the black car did the same. The trouble was, if she then rejoined Route 66 her follower would know she’d spotted them. Worse, she would have given away the fact that she was watching for followers and didn’t want to be followed. That in turn would cast suspicion on Kieron, because whoever was in that black car – or maybe their boss – would know that she’d dropped him off.
She had a problem. She couldn’t just let the car keep following her, because she didn’t want the driver to know she was going to the local coroner. That would raise just as many suspicions as if she let on that she knew it was following her. What to do?
A sign a little way ahead told her that a turn-off was coming up: a side road leading to somewhere called Los Lunas. Impulsively she indicated again and slid into the feeder lane for the exit.
Behind her, the black car did the same.
Steering one-handed, Bex called up the mapping function on the ARCC glasses. A secondary translucent window sprang to life, showing her the local area. A red dot identified her position. As she steered the car off the highway and onto the rougher local road she saw that there was a right-hand turn coming up ahead that eventually led to a Navajo reservation and, shortly after that, a left turn that wound back to Route 66. After that the road they were on kept on going all the way to Los Lunas, which seemed to be on the outskirts of Albuquerque.
She slowed down almost imperceptibly. As she’d intended, the black car started to creep up on her.
The right hand turn flashed past.
The road was badly pitted with potholes, and Bex’s car juddered as she drove. She kept both hands on the wheel, making sure that she avoided the worst of the holes.
Just as she’d hoped, the other driver realised that he was catching up with her just before the left-hand turn came up. Without indicating, Bex abruptly jerked the wheel, sending her car into a slide that left an expanding plume of dust behind her. The black car momentarily vanished in the cloud. She pressed her foot hard down on the accelerator and her car sprang ahead like a greyhound released from a trap. She completed the left turn and started speeding back to the interstate. Behind her in her mirror she saw the black car going past the turn, continuing towards Los Lunas. If she was lucky, the driver would think she’d made a mistake, come off the interstate too early, then made a panicked manoeuvre to get back on – a panicked manoeuvre which he’d seen too late to copy.
Before the black car could turn around, come back and make that turn, Bex accelerated as fast as she could. Within moments the junction with the interstate appeared ahead of her. Instead of resuming her journey towards Albuquerque, she went under the highway, then rejoined it but heading back the other way, towards the Goldfinch Institute. That way, if the black car did get back onto the main road, it would be going in a different direction to her, heading into town and looking desperately to catch up with her.
At the Los Lunas exit Bex came off again, crossed back under the interstate and rejoined it, now heading into Albuquerque, but hopefully a long distance behind the black car. If she kept her speed low she wouldn’t catch up with it, and its driver would have no idea where she was.
It was a hell of a routine to have gone through to get rid of what might have been an innocent driver who’d just ended up accidentally copying every manoeuvre she made, but Bex was pretty sure it had been necessary. As one of her trainers had said, years ago: ‘If something happens once, it’s an event. If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence. If it happens three times, it’s enemy action.’
Tara Gallagher had been on that course with her. Strange, the way things connected up.
As Bex drove she put the cruise control on and checked again on Kieron. He appeared to be in a firing gallery, shooting non-lethal beanbags from a gun with a broad, short barrel. They zoomed away from him in a shallow arc, hitting a target like a hanging punchbag, making it swing back and forth. He looked as if he was enjoying himself, based on the way Judith was watching him and grinning.
Okay – time for some research.
According to the ARCC glasses, it was the job of the Office of the Medical Examiner to investigate any death occurring in the State of New Mexico that was sudden, violent, untimely, unexpected or puzzling. The OMI worked out of a building on the campus of the University of New Mexico in the centre of Albuquerque. Following the directions on the map function, Bex left Interstate 40 at a massive junction comprising lots of roads curving off in different directions. Within a few minutes she was parking in the OMI car park, in the shadow of a modernist building constructed from white and orange stone.
As she opened her door to get out, a black car drove slowly past. For a moment her heart jumped, but then she realised it was a different make than the one that had been following her.
‘Hi,’ she said to the receptionist, who had glanced up with a professional smile when she entered the building. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I’m, like, a research student, looking into clusters of similar deaths – seeing whether they might be related to things like faulty air conditioning, areas of vegetation that have toxic spores, that kind of thing. Is it possible to get access to some kind of database that would help me?’
‘You look a bit old to be a student, hon,’ the receptionist said, raising a sceptical eyebrow.
‘Post-graduate programme,’ Bex replied. She wasn’t even sure they had post-graduate programmes in the USA, but she’d heard the phrase and thought it was worth a try. ‘Student exchange,’ she added for good measure. ‘I’m from England.’
The receptionist hesitated for a heart-stoppingly long moment, then nodded. This was obviously the kind of query she had to answer several times a week, and she had a script memorised. ‘Sure, why not,’ she said. ‘A lot of our data is available to the public, and it’s searchable. Everything is held electronically. Basically, the reports that the medical examiner produces are: a report of findings, which is a summary of everything, plus a full autopsy report, a toxicology report, if applicable, and a report of external examination. We do charge, unless you’re a family member, and I’m guessing you’re not. It’s $1.50 per hour you spend on the computer, with a minimum of one hour. If you want to email documents to yourself, it’s $7. Paper copies are $1.40 per page. Is that OK? We take all major credit cards.’
‘Of course you do,’ Bex said. This was, she reminded herself, America.
Ten minutes later she was sitting at a computer in a small cubicle in a room on the first floor, with a bored clerk giving her a quick lesson on how to use their database system. Five minutes later he’d left, and she started to type.
OK,
she thought, her task was to look into deaths of Goldfinch Institute personnel. She didn’t know their names, how they’d died or where. All she knew was where they’d worked before they’d died. Fortunately the system allowed her to search specifically on ‘Employer’.
Fifty-nine people employed by Todd Zanderbergen had died in the past five years. That was a noticeable proportion of his workforce. Intrigued, she split it up by year.
Five deaths, eight deaths, four deaths, seven deaths … and thirty-five deaths. For the first four of those five years, Todd Zanderbergen had lost an average of six employees a year. In the last year he’d lost thirty-five. Unless a coachload of employees on the way to a company picnic had crashed and burned, that was very odd.
Changing the parameters of the search, Bex checked the causes of death over the same period. Yes, there had been a few car crashes, although not an unexpected number and no disasters involving coaches, plus a climbing accident, a couple of strokes, some deaths due to cancer, two murders and a suicide. Well, this was America she thought cynically. The largest cause of death however was heart attacks. That was hardly a surprise, however. Heart disease was the single biggest cause of death in the USA, and also in the UK. Bex’s own mother had died ten years before of a sudden and unexpected coronary embolism. She’d been discovered by her father in their bedroom. She’d died while getting dressed: one sock on, one sock off, and a surprised expression on her face.
Unexpectedly thinking about her mother broke her concentration, and she leaned back in her chair for a moment, feeling a lump in her chest. She swallowed, pushing the memory away and trying to recapture the momentum she’d lost by checking in on Kieron. By now he was in a large, gleaming white laboratory, being shown a bizarre weapon that looked like a cross between a water pistol and a rocket launcher. A voice she didn’t recognise was saying: ‘… And then we transmit an electric charge along the stream of water, powerful enough to temporarily incapacitate anyone it hits.’