by Edwin Dasso
The girl had locked herself into one of the storehouses next to an observation room, one that he’d never been able to break into in all the years. He’d tried. He’d attempted to smash the window, with no success. He suspected that it could take a bullet or a bomb if it needed to. This room was a place where something dangerous happened, observed by someone on the other side of the glass. It was a place where someone could hide out indefinitely. With all that food and water, the girl could survive in there for a very long time.
A permanent guest.
The Comrade wasn’t sure if he could find a way in, but he would try. He would work it out, eventually, even if it meant scraping his way through the thick steel door. His sickle—the makeshift weapon he favored like an old friend, would get its taste.
But not before he did.
He had all the time in the world.
The girl wasn’t going anywhere.
4
“This is never going to work,” Kayne said, keeping her voice low.
She kept glancing around, fidgeting with the collar of her blouse, spinning the silver ring on her finger, trying not to seem too obvious but still feeling like there was a spotlight on her.
There were no spotlights. But there were agents. Agents everywhere.
Every instinct was telling her to run. After more than two years of listening to that instinct, she was finding it very difficult to ignore. But she managed to hold her ground, to keep trying for a casual look, to keep her screaming nerves in check.
Dr. Dan Kotler stood next to her, close by, apparently trying to be reassuring, though Kayne felt anything but reassured.
“You look completely different from the last time I saw you,” Kotler said quietly, leaning in slightly.
He was smiling. That was annoying—it was like a touch of smugness, an over-familiarity that Kayne resented a bit. She wasn’t sure why. Kotler seemed like a nice enough guy, but at the moment he was annoying the hell out of her.
Why isn’t he freaking out, too? she thought.
The answer, of course, was that he wasn’t on the FBI’s top ten list, standing within cuffing distance of two armed agents.
She tried to calm herself, taking a couple of deep breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth.
He was right, of course.
When she’d done the video chat with Kotler, a couple of days earlier, Kayne had been a brunette. Now she was sporting a dirty-blonde look that did a lot to change her general appearance. But there were other differences, as well. She had a bag of tricks, and she was pulling most of them out now.
“This isn’t going to fool Agent Symon or Agent Mayher,” Kayne said tersely.
Kotler nodded, then shrugged. “Doesn’t have to. The two of them have been assigned duty in town, interviewing a few people, tracking leads. That sort of thing. They won’t be accompanying us on this excursion.”
That did make her feel a little better.
But only a little.
One of the two agents approached them and Kayne tensed, ready to bolt if she had to.
In her typical fit of over-prepared paranoia, she had arranged several escape routes from here—just in case. She could be out of here faster than anyone could say “zip line,” in the wind and never to be seen by Kotler and his people again. She was always ready.
But if she and the agents moved from this location—which was the plan—her options would quickly become limited.
The agent—a man who looked like he’d likely been a quarterback at some point in his life—squared off with Kotler and Kayne, glanced at her, and then directed his comments to Kotler. “We have coordinates for two entrances, thanks to the intel from Agent Symon’s CI. We’re rolling out in ten.”
Kotler again nodded, then gestured toward Kayne.
Oh, I really wish you wouldn’t…
“Roland, this is Dr. Alicia Carter. Liz assigned her to this. She’s a new addition to the Computer Forensics team, a civilian specializing in encryption and decryption. She’ll be our expert on whatever Dr. Rivers meant by ‘quantum encrypt.’” Kotler smiled and turned to Kayne.
The agent reached out a hand, “Agent Roland Denzel, FBI. Well… I guess now it’s FBI by way of Historic Crimes. I’m still getting used to it.”
The agent smiled—a genuine and polite smile that did a lot to knock some of the edge off of Kayne’s mounting paranoia.
She took his hand, “Same here,” she said, and meant it. She was still getting used to the shift in her status with the FBI, from purely being a wanted fugitive to being… well, still a wanted fugitive, but also a CI. It was dizzying to consider what it all meant, or might mean.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Denzel,” Kayne said, putting on a smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” From your file, and the deep background check I ran on you, and about a hundred news stories spanning the time since you hooked up with Kotler.
Denzel shook her hand once, firm and assuring, then let it go. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said.
She waited. But if Denzel recognized her, or had any hint of who she really was, he wasn’t showing it.
She felt like sighing in relief, but held that in check.
Denzel turned back to Kotler. “You need anything, before we get on the road?”
Kotler shrugged. “Miracles and good fortune wouldn’t hurt. But I’d settle for a cup of coffee.”
Denzel scoffed and turned, leaving them standing there.
Kayne let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“I would really like to not do that again,” she said.
Kotler laughed lightly. “Relax. Roland is a good guy. And he’s used to working at the outer edges, mostly thanks to me.”
She glanced around, then leaned in a bit to whisper, “You’re not a fugitive. I am. And I’ve read up on Agent Denzel. He’s as straight laced they come, just like Eric—Agent Symon.” She shook her head, a quick gesture. “He’ll arrest me, the second he figures out who I am.”
Kotler sighed, then nodded. “Yes, he will,” Kotler said. “But I’ve read your file, too. You’re good at this. A master of disguise, quick on your feet. You probably have six different ways to get out of here, if things go sideways.”
“Nine,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
Kotler laughed. “See? I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You look nothing like yourself. Nothing like any photos I’ve seen of you, anyway. And certainly nothing like you did in our video chat.”
This was true.
For the Alicia Carter persona, Kayne had gone to extra care to change her appearance entirely. She couldn’t rely on prosthetics or anything that might come undone with time, but she’d taught herself a bunch of makeup tricks, thanks to YouTube tutorials. With the right application of eye liner, blush, and lipstick, she could virtually change the shape of her face.
It was an illusion, but it worked very well. She had breezed right by people who had memorized her features right down to her cheekbones, without so much as a blink.
For this gig, she had used makeup to give her face a fuller, more plump look, adding shadows and lines so she might appear a few pounds heavier. For good measure, she’d also plumped her figure up a bit. Shoulder pads, lifts in her shoes, a bit of padding in strategic places, and she appeared to be a woman about ten years older and twenty pounds heavier.
And she’d gone from brunette to blond.
She had opted not to wear a wig. Too easy to spot. But she had paid a special visit to a hair stylist operating out of her home in Los Lunas. Her request for “dirty blonde, as if the dye job is starting to wear off” had been unusual, but the Hispanic woman doing the coloring had seen, heard, and done stranger things in her time. And after nearly two hours of work, Kayne had paid the woman twice her usual rate, all in cash, and left looking very different from when she’d arrived.
She currently looked like a soccer mom turned computer forensics agent, which was precisely the
look she was going for.
It was an impressive transformation. Enough to fool nearly anyone. But it didn’t keep her from worrying that things could go South any minute.
She’d been recognized while in disguise before—the FBI and other law enforcement agents were trained to do just that, spotting fugitives in disguise. But her hope was that here, in the lion’s den as it were, no one would be expecting her to pop up. Everyone would be so focused on finding Dr. Rivers that, she hoped, no one would pay attention to her.
That was the idea, anyway.
It helped a lot that Agent Symon wasn’t here. She felt certain he’d recognize her instantly. No one knew her the way he did.
Thank God he was off site.
“Dr. Carter?” Kotler said. He had moved away, toward one of the off-road vehicles that would take them into the mountains. He had opened the rear door and motioned for her to climb inside.
She smiled. Everything’s fine, she projected. Nothing unusual here. No fugitives with advanced AIs in our presence. No need for handcuffs or throwing anyone into a cell.
She climbed into the 4x4 and slid over to allow Kotler to slip in beside her.
“Down to three now,” she said, quietly.
“Three?”
“Escape routes,” she replied.
Kotler chuckled, and they fell silent as Agent Denzel and another agent climbed into the front seats, and the 4x4 lurched forward.
She’d been lying, of course. She had more than three escape routes. Just as she’d had more than nine while standing and chatting with Agent Roland Denzel.
One of the life lessons that her Papa Kayne had taught her now echoed in her head:
Never let them see all your cards.
It was good advice. It had saved her more than once. It was the reason she always played with a loaded deck, making sure she had every contingency planned for, every door unlocked and every window left open. Papa’s advice was the foundation of all of her golden rules.
Of course, she was actively ignoring another piece of advice that PaPa Kayne had always given her:
Never willingly climb into a car with trouble.
Agent Symon was grumpy.
This was clearly grunt work—driving all over Los Lunas, and out into the hills, asking questions of people who knew next to nothing about “the Pit,” or Dr. Rivers, or anything else connected to this case. It was the sort of thing newbie agents were assigned to, when there was a team as big as this one. Hundreds of agents from dozen of agencies, not to mention the civilians.
Symon was the top fugitive hunter in the Bureau. He was used to running operations like this one. Right now he felt like he had all the authority of a mailman.
He sighed.
Ego was something he actively tamped down in himself, but sometimes even he couldn’t help it. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and shook his head as he and Mayher approached the Los Lunas government records office.
The job isn’t always glamorous, he reminded himself. But you always do the job.
They showed their badges at the front desk and explained why they were there, and the receptionist immediately ushered them into the office of the District Manager—a thin, balding man named Alfred Cox.
Cox seemed excited, even eager to speak with them.
“When the other agent came in, I knew something big must be happening!” His voice as a bit high pitched, and he exuded a sort of nervous excitement, like a chihuahua anticipating a trip outside.
“Other agent,” Symon noted. “You’re referring to Dr. Rivers?”
Cox nodded enthusiastically. “She was here about a week ago, I think. Came in looking for any records we had on a defunct facility North of here. We didn’t have much—nothing at all, really. Just some survey maps and some stuff about the stone.”
“Stone?” Mayher asked.
He grinned. “The Mystery Stone! It’s famous. Most famous thing around here, anyway. See, it was written by the Egyptians, five thousand years ago, when they were living here with their gods.”
He said all this in a knowing, conspiratorial tone, leaning forward, grinning.
Symon exchanged a glance with Mayher, then turned back to Cox. “I… thought the language was Hebraic?”
“Exactly!” Cox said, leaning back and slapping his desk with both hands, a satisfied look on his face. “It all comes together, see? The Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt. So the Egyptians took them out with them to find new lands to conquer,” he waved vaguely toward some distant horizon. “Sailed in big Egyptian ships, and found America by accident, just like Columbus! And the Hebrews that came here with them carved that stone in secret. Kind of a quiet defiance, you know?” He was grinning absurdly, proud of his knowledge of ancient, alternate history.
Mayher frowned. “But… didn’t the Hebrews get the Ten Commandments after they were liberated from the Egyptians?”
Cox again laughed and again slapped the desk. “Mysteries of history, am I right?”
Mayher looked again to Symon, who could offer no help.
“Mr. Cox,” Symon said, leaning forward. “You mentioned that Dr. Rivers asked after a closed government facility?”
Cox nodded. “Sure, sure. We gave her everything we had. Land surveys, any records that might have something to do with it. Not a lot. We have a lot more about the stone, honestly. And that’s what I told Dr. Rivers. She said she’d heard of the stone and thought it was interesting. But she was after the facility. I gave her everything we had, but I told her… I told her… you go look for that stone! That Mystery Stone holds all the answers!”
Symon wasn’t sure what to say to this, but at the man’s urging wave he glanced down to the notepad in his lap and jotted something there. Mystery stone, he wrote. It was the only thing he could think of.
“So,” Mayher said, leaning forward, “did Dr. Rivers say where she was going after this? Did she happen to mention to you where she was staying?”
Cox thought, then shook his head. “Only thing I knew was that she was going into the hills, to find the stone.”
“She actually went to the Decalogue stone?” Mayer asked.
“Oh yes,” Cox said, his tone turning mysterious. “Sooner or later, everyone goes to the stone.”
Mayher blinked, then jotted something in her own notebook.
“Mr. Cox,” Symon said, “do you have copies of the records you shared with Dr. Rivers?”
Cox grinned, beaming, then stood and motioned for them to follow him. He led the two of them through the offices to a records room, a claustrophobic space crammed with lateral file cabinets from floor to ceiling. Cox hurried to one dark corner and rolled a ladder into place so he could climb and reach one of the higher drawers. He opened this, and practically dove into it, leaning forward and digging through the files.
“We keep meticulous records,” Cox said as he shuffled down the ladder and handed a file to Symon. “That’s why we don’t allow anyone to remove the originals. I gave Dr. Rivers copies. You can have some, too, of course.”
“We’ll take it,” Symon said, smiling at the man. “This is what you gave to Dr. Rivers? This is all of it?”
Cox’s expression suddenly changed, becoming pained, and he nodded his head. “Yes, unfortunately. The rest has gone missing.”
“Missing?” Mayher asked. “Stolen?”
Cox nodded again. “And I know exactly who took it. Andrew Jesup. The Comrade.”
Mayher and Symon exchanged glances, and Mayher asked, “Comrade?”
Cox nodded and sighed. “Worked here years ago. Not even sure how long. I was just a part timer then, but I remember him. Kind of leaves an impression. He went all anti-government, became a…” Cox stopped, looking from agent to agent, then around the room as if trying to make sure no one was listening. He leaned closer and said in a stage whisper, “Became a commie.” He leaned back, shaking his head. “Took it to extremes, too.”
“How so?” Symon asked.
Cox laughed. “W
ell, he went and got a face tattoo! Got the Soviet symbol inked right on his forehead, can you believe it?”
“Face tattoo…” Mayher said. She looked to Symon.
Symon said, “Soviet… as in the sickle and hammer? From the Soviet flag?”
“Exactly,” Cox said, shaking his head. “He got real weird after that, started saying all kinds of crazy, anti-American stuff. Everyone just kind of tolerated him—he was doing his job, you know? Nobody liked him, but there wasn’t much ground to fire him. Not until he started stealing.”
“He stole records?” Mayher asked.
“I think so,” Cox nodded. “But that wasn’t what got him fired. He started stealing things from around the office. Toilet paper from the bathrooms. Food out of the fridge. Stuff like that. Last straw was when he got caught siphoning gas out of the cars in the parking lot. He disappeared after that. None of us were all that broken up about it.”
Cox shook his head, then seemed to suddenly have a thought. “Hey! Do you want any of the records on the Mystery Stone? I gave them to Dr. Rivers, to take with her. I got tons of the stuff, mostly in my office. It’s not official government info, really, but I keep one of the finest collections of records on the stone that there is.”
He said this last with such pride that Symon and Mayher felt obliged to take copies of whatever he wanted them to have. He led them back to his office, where he used a copier in the corner to duplicate everything they’d brought from the records room, plus stacks and stacks of information about the Decalogue stone.
Nearly two hours had gone by since they’d arrived at the offices, and as they left, they loaded stacks of bundled papers into the back seat of their car. They drove away with Cox standing in the doorway, waving farewell after them.
“I’m not even sure what just happened,” Mayher said.
Symon shook his head. “Me neither. But I think we have a lead to follow.”
“Andrew Jesup?”
“Has to be ‘the man with the face tattoo,’ don’t you think?” Symon asked.
Mayher had taken out her phone and was tapping something onto the screen. After a moment she replied, “I only show one Andrew Jesup in the state. Went missing nearly twenty-five years ago. Police report says the guy’s landlord filed the missing persons report. Jesup hadn’t paid rent in three months, and when the landlord opened the apartment, it looked ransacked. Furniture was still there, but the cabinets and drawers were all opened and emptied. It looked like someone might have robbed the place.”