Sam watched the thermal image feed change as each camera switched direction.
“And Al Nadir haven’t tapped into the frequency?” asked Sam in disbelief.
“They don’t even know we’re close. Signal delivered via qubit encryption. The photons take on different properties the moment they’re observed. Therefore, the qubits can take on many different values simultaneously. Only the qubit reader back at Langley can strip out the signal, translate it, and send it back here securely. It all happens in a fraction of a second! Apparently, they’re using some kind of turbo-charged magnetic field to control the quantum properties. Whatever they are? You’ve got to hand it to Langley’s boffin squad, they sure know how to hide something when they want to.”
Sam nodded with sheer admiration as he listened. MI6 had been working on qubit encryption but hadn’t managed to keep the quantum entanglement stable enough. When this mission is over, he thought, I’ll have to catch up with my techy pals at Blacksburg.
“It’s impressive.”
Ricky caught the touch of envy in his voice. “Hey, don’t feel so bad. You guys got there with the Stealth Suits. That’s one hell of an invention.”
The Stealth Suit was the latest in camouflage technology, an ingenious British invention that used photo-chromic nano-reflectors embedded into the fabric. All frequencies, including white light, reflected away from the suits giving the impression of invisibility. The suit’s photo-chromic nano-reflectors gave a shield across uncovered skin such as hands or face, providing a totally inclusive field of invisibility for the wearer. Although the suits were prototypes, the promise of what they offered was too great for Ricky, and he’d leapt at the opportunity to play guinea pig.
“I can’t wait to try them out.” Ricky tapped the holdall and then leaned back, smiling, and took a swig of his Budweiser.
“Now to business.” Sam’s face, now deadly serious, indicated their small talk had finished. “How far is the facility from here?”
“It’s just over 25 klicks southwest of here. Once we’re done, I’ll evacuate with you. This house won’t be viable afterwards.” Ricky looked around the room. “Can’t say I’ll miss it.”
Sam looked back at the screen. “So we’ve got ten warm bodies around the two exits, a collection of five in the center, which is probably the clean room area, and a few stragglers on the perimeter facing east. So we’ll enter from the west.”
“That’s about it, Sammy boy.”
Sam lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long, deep drink, and then stared at Ricky. His friend, ever the optimist, grinned at him in his crazy, gung-ho way. Sam nodded.
“Ok. So let’s get it on.”
On Sam’s command, Ricky leapt from the chair. He unzipped the holdall and handed Sam one of the gun-metal grey jump suits.
“Sorry it’s a bit last season.” Ricky slipped into the suit. “But you can accessorize.” He held up his Glock.
“No, thanks,” said Sam. “My Sig’s more than enough.”
Sam zipped up the suit.
“Hey, don’t forget the specs.” Ricky chucked Sam a pair of the purple-lensed glasses. “It’s the only way we’ll be able to see each other.”
“Not that I’m gonna want to see what you’re up to!” ribbed Sam, and Ricky laughed.
“Just got to set the detonation sequence and then we’re out of here. Take this.”
Ricky threw Sam a little blue square, matchbox sized.
“Portable detonation unit,” muttered Sam, knowing he had to give it to the pilot in the helicopter outside.
“In case our bird needs to take flight.” Ricky programmed the villa’s alarm to auto-detonation. “Ok. We're primed. Just need to click this little button.” Ricky indicated to the third knob on his Omega watch. “And this place will be Villa Vesuvius.”
Sam smiled coldly. “We synch at 06.22.”
Ricky nodded, synching his own watch. Sam threw the little blue box in the air and then caught it. “I better get this to the pilot. I’ll see you outside.”
At the helicopter, Sam handed the blue box to the pilot who held it gingerly as if it were a radioactive isotope.
“Wait here until we report back,” said Sam. “ETA 06.50. If we’re not back by 07.00, detonate the place and leave. Get word to MI6 Station Head, Greaves. Any sign of trouble, leave and detonate.”
The pilot gave a thumbs up to Sam. “Good luck, sir.”
Sam heard Ricky behind him and the alarm setting sounded through the villa. A hand slapped him on the back.
“Let’s go.”
Ricky climbed into the Land Cruiser. Sam got into the passenger side and Ricky shot out of the gates in the direction of Al Nadir’s nano facility.
“It’s gonna be a cakewalk, sweetcheeks,” declared Ricky with plain conceit. “I just, you know, feel it!”
Chapter 41
The thing Ricky had termed a cakewalk soon turned into something very different. The drive took them into a large industrial area. From the images he’d seen at the villa, Sam recognized the ochre-toned wall. Beyond it hid the low-roofed building housing the nano facility.
“That’s it.”
Ricky parked alongside an adjacent building. Sam pocketed the spare set of keys to the Land Cruiser and got out.
“You reckon this’ll work?” questioned Sam, as he fingered the fabric of the Stealth Suit.
“Only one way to find out,” answered Ricky.
He put on his purple glasses and charged off in the direction of the facility. Before Sam’s eyes, he slipped a switch on the cuff of his suit and literally disappeared.
“Shit!”
Sam watched his hot-headed colleague, true to form, initiate his jump-in-and-think-later modus operandi. Following him, Sam stuffed his Sig into the pocket of his Stealth Suit and flipped the same switch. As he put on the purple glasses, Ricky came into view. He chased and caught up with him at the west side of the facility.
“It works,” whispered Sam, somewhat amazed, as he raced past a patrolling guard.
“Of course it does,” mumbled Ricky. “You gotta have some faith in those brain-boxes.”
Sam smiled. “Keep it down. I was once one of those brain-boxes.”
“Explains everything,” whispered Ricky.
Sam ignored the bait and snuck in close beside his partner. “The gates are closed.”
“Well, aren’t you the master of surveillance?” Ricky’s sarcasm was in full flow as usual. “All we gotta do is get their attention, and then we can move.”
With that, he took out his Glock and fired at the metal gate.
A door inside the bigger metal gate opened and two guards came out, their semi-automatics pointing but a few inches from Sam. He held his breath, edged around the guard and slipped through the open door. Ricky followed quickly behind.
Both kept silent as they ran across the inner courtyard. Sam looked around him, rapidly gaining orientation and reconciling the images he’d seen at the villa with what he saw now. On the left was a set of buildings with dishes and aerials on top. Probably a communications command center, thought Sam, as he sped past. He wished he’d brought explosives. He’d have loved to have created some real mayhem for Al Nadir. But this mission was a ‘quick in-out’, as Maide had put it. Smooth, surgical strike then leave.
Sam looked to his right and noticed a large dark building with reflective glass. He remembered the thermal images had shown hardly any heat in the building. He shivered. The place felt cold although it was easily edging towards 80 degrees in the morning sun.
Sam tapped Ricky’s shoulder. “What do you reckon that is?”
Ricky shrugged as he looked around at the building.
“A weapons store or ammunition pile,” muttered Ricky. “God knows. Get with the program. We gotta hit the clean room, not worry about the scenery.” He turned and made for the building in the middle that they had identified as the clean room lab area.
“Do you hear that?” Sam looked back at the dark
building.
“Hear what?” Ricky turned back, visibly irritated his partner had got side-tracked.
“It sounds like…screaming.” Sam pressed against the glass and looked inside.
“I can’t hear anything.”
“Listen.”
“We haven’t got time for this kind of shit!”
“Just a second.” Sam hesitated. “There’s something going on.” His instinct as an agent was alert and it told him to investigate. Ignoring the hushed protests from Ricky, he sneaked around into the building, tailgating behind a guard walking inside.
He could hear a woman’s voice, icy-cold and cutting with a Sicilian overtone. The woman was talking in bursts of activity, quick and disjointed, interrupted with girlish laughing. The hackles on his neck rose as he heard the laugh.
Sam followed the sound and came to a grey concrete room. The door was ajar. He could see a woman, and although she was facing away from him, he recognized the long black hair and the curvy, gorgeous figure. Sabena Sanantoni, Al Nadir’s global second in command. If she was here, something really was going down. He did right to investigate.
In front of her stood another man covered in dust. His body was shaking and he screamed intermittently. Sabena rubbed her hands together and laughed. “This is so good. Hans has exceeded himself.”
Hans, thought Sam, she must be referring to Hans Stein-Muller, the rogue nano-technologist. But who was she talking to? Sam moved forward to get a better look. But the person next to Sabena was further inside the room and he couldn’t see them without going directly inside. Sam took a step forward and suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened and turned around.
It was Ricky.
He signaled urgently for Sam to leave, but Sam shook his head and pointed at the woman. Ricky’s eyes widened as he realized who it was he was watching. At that moment, Sabena turned fully around and stared at Sam straight in the face. Then smiled.
“I’m pleased it’s only us seeing this.”
Her words and reaction hardened Sam’s stomach with fear. He knew he was invisible, but somehow, he felt that Sabena could sense him. Ricky heard her reaction and pulled Sam by the elbow. Reluctantly, he left.
Outside in the courtyard, Sam whispered, “Could she see us?”
Ricky shook his head. “Not possible. We’ve just gone past three guards and they didn’t blink. What makes her so special?”
“I don’t know.”
Sam looked back at the building and shivered again. What were they doing to that poor man? He wished he could’ve helped him.
“We’ve gotta go,” said Ricky, and he headed towards the clean room building. Sam knew he couldn’t linger, but he was determined to find out more once he had the nano-bomb in his grasp.
Ricky saw their moment as two scientists did their retina scan to enter the facility. He and Sam stepped in behind them, being careful not to touch them.
Sam scanned the glass-walled rooms, and in one, on the right, he could see a row of saline phials. He entered the room and crouched down. Inside the phials he noticed that the coloration of the saline was darker in one area, a sure sign that foreign bodies lurked within the solution. He turned his watch dial, converting it to a magnet, and moved it towards the phials. The coloration followed the path of his watch. Nano-bots were inside. This was what he was looking for. He slipped the phials quickly into the deep pockets of his jump suit.
“Got them?” asked Ricky, sidling up to Sam, who nodded. “Great! Let’s go.”
Ricky ran out into the corridor with Sam following behind and turned the corner straight into a woman scientist. She screamed as something unseen smashed into her, and Ricky jumped with an audible yelp.
Guards, hearing her scream and Ricky’s yelp, looked around to see the imprint of something on her white tunic, and a flickering outline of a figure. They instinctively fired at the outline and carried on firing. Sam and Ricky belted down the corridor at speed, and the guards followed the sound of their footsteps.
Reaching the door, they realized another retina scan was called for permission to exit. Sam shot at the glass and Ricky turned back and fired at the oncoming guards. With the alarm now sounding, Sam and Ricky dived through the shattered glass door. The fragments tore into their suit fabric. Suddenly, Ricky and Sam flickered into view. Their incredible Stealth Suits had one drawback that neither knew: the suit’s fabric had to remain unbreached. One tear in the fabric and the collective system of photo-chromic nano-reflectors broke down, rendering the wearer of the suit visible.
The two agents ran like crazy horses, firing over their shoulders and taking out guards as they headed towards the wall. Amid the commotion, Sabena Sanantoni emerged from the dark building and watched their escape. A wry smile sneaked across her beautiful face.
They had been almost free of security when a guard caught in their blind spot saw them climbing the wall and fired. Ricky dropped as the armor-piercing bullets with their heavy tungsten cores sailed through his Kevlar-padded jacket into his back and into his heart. Sam didn’t look around. A second taken in sad thought for his dead friend would certainly have killed him too. His focus was to get away.
With cold desperation, Sam scrambled over the wall as bullets flew around him. He leapt to the ground and dived into his car, keeping low in the seat as he started the engine. Slamming the accelerator down hard, the car screamed as he pushed its performance to 60 mph in seconds. He could hear engines revving, and behind him, the metal doors opened. But they were too slow. Sam was already away and heading for the safety of the waiting helicopter.
Chapter 42
22 March, 2017
Sam remembered that after that assignment, so much had been learned about the nano-bomb. Scientists confirmed that Sam’s sudden revelation had been spot on. The nano-bots were injected into a person through the saline solution. The moment they were inside the body, they self-replicated rapidly. Although swarming in the operative’s bloodstream, the nano-bots were not destroyed by white blood cells. The nano-bots, smaller than a virus, were essentially invisible to a body’s defense system. These swarming nano-bots focused on mutating the enzymes. Ironically, these enzymes in their usual operation played a helpful role. They repaired DNA by sending electron charges along sections of a DNA strand. But the nano-bot’s mutation process changed the enzyme’s iron-sulphur structure at the sub-atomic level. The enzymes were no longer helpful. The change resulted in an increase in acidic concentration. By pushing up the acidic level, the electron charge switched. At that moment of switchover, a completion signal from the principal nano-bot would be sent to an Al Nadir base station. It was this signal that GCHQ had intercepted. The scientists calculated that once the enzyme had polarized, a dramatic catalysis took place, creating a huge electrical current inside the body.
The Al Nadir base station would reply to the completion signal by sending a detonation signal, and the operative would turn into an unseen, undetected bomb.
Having understood the workings of the nano-bomb, British Intelligence scientists had endeavored to find ways to negate its activation. True to form, Al Nadir scientists worked in parallel to develop an even more robust nano-bomb to counter British efforts.
Sam knew the war had already begun, with the world’s top nano-technologists pitched in battle across a landscape created by geometries only visible through an electron microscope. And Sam was well aware that as wars went, it was always the victor who had the right moves to outsmart its opponent.
What had happened with Rikard in Oslo could be the first step in making sure they get the advantage they desperately need.
Chapter 43
The shaping of Treeborne was progressing well. Aswa-da dipped in and out of his life and each time, he was pleased by what was shown. Treeborne used the tablet continuously throughout his days. The energies of the sandstone tool were intrinsically intertwined with Treeborne’s DNA.
Without the tablet, Treeborne couldn’t exist.
Aswa-da
had watched as Treeborne secured his place at Washington and Lee College, just like his tactics with Dave Bateman proved he would. During Treeborne’s four-year stint, Aswa-da observed his activities. Treeborne had read Politics. It was an obvious choice, given Treeborne’s trinity of abilities. Persuasion. Manipulation. Trust. They were the very ingredients of politics.
But for Treeborne, politics would also ensure his endgame: control.
From the Earth second Aswa-da had given Treeborne the tablet, his understanding of its use and value to his being had gone through several changes. From being a tool to manipulate his friends to play with him, to being a channel to persuade those who’d caught Treeborne’s eye to sleep with him, to eventually creating a state of mind in others, those with positions of authority, to trust Treeborne implicitly, to cross the line, and even commit crimes for him.
Aswa-da recognized that Treeborne was a narcissist. He believed he was always right and he expected to have complete control over every situation. For with control, every variable, every outcome, could be predicted and aligned to his exact wishes. So that nothing was left to chance.
His experiment with the human had been more successful than Aswa-da could ever have imagined. Treeborne used the tablet to get through the four years at college and gain his degree in Politics.
Aswa-da jumped into Treeborne’s first year at Washington and Lee College. On screen, Treeborne sat in a rather insalubrious night club. He lounged in an expensive, grey, check, double-breasted suit with wide shoulders that had been made famous by Richard Gere and various GQ models of the late 80’s. All around him was curved, red velvet seating. Metal-topped tables strewn with bottles and glasses dotted in front of him, and to his left was a wide dancing area with multicolored lights embedded in the floor.
A typical nightclub of the 80’s, thought Aswa-da. But he wondered why Treeborne was there instead of college as it was only mid-afternoon in May, 1987. As Aswa-da watched, the meaning became clearer.
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