Futura: Parallel Universes. Book 1

by Valerio Malvezzi

  Yes!

  232 days earlier

  The statues of Rome will be glistening in the morning sun on that beautiful spring day. On the top floor, of the ancient building, the sixth, Commissioner Cervetti will be standing at the window looking at the statues in the courtyard. A police aircraft will rise from the ramp on the roof with flashing lights on. The thin and nervous woman with platinum blonde hair will arrive, dark in the face, stiff as a stick, her heels clacking in the void of the hallway.

  “The Chief Commissioner is free, Commissioner,” she will say coldly, shaking hands with the man with the beard, a good head taller than her, and with a headful of dark curly hair. “Follow me, please.”

  Cervetti will find himself uncomfortable as always in the room of the Chief Commissioner of Rome, full of commemorative plaques and flags.

  “Sit down, Cervetti,” the Chief Commissioner will rise from the desk in a vaguely military way. He will be in his seventies, thin, gray hair still flowing and oiled, slightly bent, with a hollow face and light eyes that remotely resemble those of a bird of prey. “Thank you, Dr. Patrella. Go ahead.”

  Cervetti will sit on the large burgundy leather armchair in front of the coffee table. The woman will come out, closing the door.

  “Therefore, Cervetti, as you know, the whole affair is burdened with total state secrecy. However,” the man will sit at the table, opening a holographic file, “the Minister is breathing fire and flames. The risk of some information escaping on the network is high.”

  The holographic dossier will show a series of recordings and montages of the scene of the failed attack, taken from different angles by satellites, and units present that morning.

  Strange, how different everything looks between what you’ve seen firsthand and a recording.

  “We have reason to believe that there is a mole.”

  The Commissioner’s face will not betray any emotion, nor will he comment on his superior’s heavy statement.

  “The dynamics of the attack involve grave suspicions,” the Chief Commissioner will continue.

  “Wipe. Wipe.”

  He will collect the two wipes from the sink dispenser machine, and with these he will take Whiley’s personal device, turning on the program for connections to personal items. He will take the dead man’s hand and put it on the gun handle. A green light will appear followed by a short sharp tone.

  Yes!

  Whiley will try not to let his gaze settle on the blood stain on the sink while his fingers quickly move over the space in front of him, and the program quickly searches for the gun’s serial number. Then it will order the program to reset the weapon programming. The gun will go out, while the program will clean the weapon’s loading files. After about a minute, he will leave the bathroom and run into his own room, take his own personal display and, holding the gun, will start the fingerprint recognition program.

  Stay strong. Stay strong.

  Two minutes later, he will hold the gun, looking with a sigh at the green start light. He will take away the startup sound option, put the wipes in his pocket, put his personal display exactly in the position where he found it. Then he will look around, trying not to touch anything, leave the lights on, place the gun with the charger in his pocket, and wonder, with one last look into the hallway where the music will finish playing. Then he will head to the front door without looking back.

  In the café of the Allerton Hotel, the stout man will look at the Vietnamese woman gazing at the grandparents and the little girl. Grandma will take the little girl by the hand and patiently tuck her into a pretty white and pink windbreaker, then follow her husband to the cafe exit.

  “What problem?” The man’s rasping voice will be almost inaudible.

  The Vietnamese woman will put down the coffee, cleaning her lips with the napkin. With exasperating slowness she will pull out her lipstick and, looking into the round mirror, she will again color her upper lip bright red.

  “Another dog might bark.”

  “The place, the knowledge of the route details, of our escort” she will add, “not to mention the use of the remote driving device, all this can’t be the work of a single terrorist. Someone helped from the inside.”

  In midair will appear the photo of a hollow-faced man in his thirties with black eyes and hair, portrayed from different angles.

  “An Algerian, belonging to a fighting fundamentalist faction, we found out that he was driving. Trivial. The path of religious protest is too obvious. Just today, the new pontiff, for the first time, spoke openly of the unity of the three monotheistic religions and the commonality of faith. Someone hired the terrorist, of course, but who?”

  “Such an operation requires coordination and support,” a statement, not a question, from the Commissioner.

  The Chief Commissioner will lean back, inhaling deeply, before continuing.

  “Precisely. And that’s what you have to investigate. I had to respond to specific accusations yesterday in the Internal Affairs Committee, Chief Commissioner. The Minister of the Interior is breathing down our necks. I argued that it was necessary to use force, that it was not possible to arrest the terrorist at that time, and that the decision was the most correct given the circumstances.”

  The Chief Commissioner will turn off the projection.

  “However, we are now on the front line. At least seven governments have already secretly launched international intelligence actions, and we must cooperate. I don’t think I have to explain to you how much this has panicked half the Catholic world.”

  “What about the Vatican?” Cervetti will ask.

  “You have made yourself an enemy, Commissioner. Captain Hauser would like to throw you in the dungeons and give you to the Holy Inquisition, if he could. I don’t think anyone would have been out of it at other times. In any case, His Holiness has no intention of changing his plans for the coming months. I mean, no flames for you and nothing new under the sun for us.”

  Amazingly, he appears to smile.

  “Now the problem is ours. We need to get the initiative back. The Italian Government is on the rack,” he will say, almost friendly.

  The man will try not to show his disappointment.

  “Where does this come from?” the man will ask. “We had the list of the section.”

  The woman will move on to her lower lip.

  “Not of the section. Someone outside. It was unforeseen.” The woman will touch the empty space in front of her, and at the man’s side, a file will be projected with a detailed dossier. A stock image will be projected of a researcher in the Social Research Methodology Department. A man under forty, with long hair, a short beard on an all-too-round face and wearing a colorful summer shirt on an evidently obese body on a sunny day. More pictures of a family, with a woman and two children. The man will stop the projection.

  “What does that have to do with the section?”

  “He’s not part of it. He works in another department of the agency,” the Vietnamese woman will respond, closing her lipstick and storing it in her crossbody bag. “However, we recorded a conversation this morning. He was due to attend this afternoon’s meeting, and it seems that he was expected to make a contribution on the subject, from his point of view. He was supposed to be there physically, but apparently he didn’t go at the last moment. We know his address, and he’s at his house right now.”

  The woman will hang the crossbody bag on the chair.

  “You know, the wind these days must have given him a sore throat. Otherwise we would have found him unexpectedly in the sled, and you didn’t know anything about it.”

  The stout man’s short-sighted gray eyes will fix on those of the Vietnamese woman, who will meet his gaze with amusement.

  “Evidently,” the Vietnamese woman will continue, “the dogs you’re interested in have spoken to him without your knowledge because they find his thoughts useful in some way. We need to find out why and whether it has anything to do with it or not. It might just be a coi
ncidence.”

  The man will watch the grandparents go out with the little girl. The doorman will greet them, opening the door with a deep bow, accepting a tip from the elderly guests with a smile.

  “From a high-level interview yesterday, the Carabinieri have reason to believe that the mole has been able to enter our services, Commissioner,” the Chief Commissioner will continue. “You must operate secretly, verifying our officials’ movements and money movements from black funds. I need names, Commissioner, and I need to know if anyone is preparing anything, in Italy or in the world. We need to know if explosives, electronic components, remote air robots, illegal software, anything is purchased. Check the movements of any real or presumed terrorist, of any lunatic who enters our country. We need to find out if it was a fool’s gesture or if that gesture can be imitated by others.”

  He will stop, observing his listener’s reaction.

  “Mr. Chief Commissioner, with all due respect, I agree on all but one thing.”

  “What would that be?”

  “If there really is a hidden and organized design, and if someone within this state is part of it, then the means of the next attack could vary. They could move on to a new strategy.” The Commissioner will nervously wring his hands. “I don’t think the problem is to find out if they want to try again, but when. And how.”

  The Chief Commissioner will look at his interlocutor with his little gray eyes for a few seconds, moving his thin lips as if he were to speak. Then he will get up, buttoning his jacket and holding out his hand.

  “Keep me informed.”

  The man who calls himself Kevin Palmer will smile, walking on the hotel’s soft fifth-floor carpets on Santorini Island. The dinner of Greek cuisine will have been to his taste, especially with the agreement that has taken place. The woman with red-dyed hair will have marked her account number at her Chinese bank’s Hong Kong branch. The three others would leave tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m., they said. He confirmed that he too will leave, but in the afternoon, after touring the island.

  He will smile again, standing at the door.

  “My dear,” the stout man will say calmly, “from my information, I knew that I could count on you in this kind of operation. Given the evolution of the facts, at this point we can’t leave things to chance.”

  The woman will fasten her trendy jacket again.

  “If we had based ourselves on your information, we would now think we only have one dog outside the enclosure, but there are two.”

  The man will turn the holographic screen back on, resizing it with his thumb and index finger to the size of a span, then he will return to the stock market quotes page.

  “So, now what do you think you’ll do?” he will ask, looking at the woman through the numbers.

  The woman will get up, taking her bag from her chair. “At least we know the location of one of the dogs, right?”

  The man will watch the woman get up and turn around, while stock market quotes flow quickly across her back.

  Whiley will go down to the concierge. The woman will have her back turned, looking in the direction of the wall on which an entertainment program is projected. He will open the door. A cat will run between his legs, meowing.

  For Christ’s sake.

  On the desk are two cameras guarding the external entrance and the second floor, the woman motionless from behind, the pulses of blood in her temples.

  Stop knocking.

  Whiley will take the woman by the shoulder, and the swivel chair will rotate. The gun shot in the center of the forehead, the woman’s eyes fixed in the void, a thread of blood along the nose and cheek. The man will instinctively turn his head and rush out of the concierge’s office, opening the side door. He will barely get to the steps of the yard before putting the palm of his hand to his throat, starting to vomit. After a few minutes, he will remember the wipes in his pocket and will clean himself up, throwing them in a basket and then looking around. He will remain with his hands on his hips, near the trash can, trying to catch his breath.

  Everything will be as expected.

  “Palmer,” the man will tell the speech recognition device. His hotel room door will open silently. The man will enter, making sure the door is latched and locked, then undress. He will sit on the bed, unbutton his shirt, and approach the video unit on the nightstand.

  “Reception, please.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Palmer, what would you like?”

  “I would like an alarm for tomorrow at eight o’clock, classical music possibly, and breakfast in the room at nine o’clock. Eggs and bacon, hardly any coffee or fruit, and whole grain bread, if you have any.”

  “Certainly, sir. Have a good rest.” The video will show a polite girl, barely twenty years old.

  Palmer will turn off the communication video offered by the hotel and approach the holographic screen on the wall, connected with all the world’s artistic productions, including all interactive entertainment. You could simulate a round of golf if you wanted to. The man will speak to the video unit, and, continuing to undress, will choose from the music section, chamber music, Schumann. Then he will order the reader to scroll down and scan the pieces until he finds something of interest to him. The notes of sonata number two in D minor, opus 121, for violin and piano, will fill the hotel room. The man will put on the hotel robe and slippers and, from the bar cabinet, will order a glass of rum, aged twenty-three years. He will pick up the glass of rum, just poured automatically from the silver tray, sitting at the desk. Then, sipping the excellent product, he will savor the taste of sugar cane, relaxing. He will open his own personal display. Tens, hundreds of archive sections, different files, movies, recordings. The man will input several sequences of numbers, launching cybersecurity protection programs. Of course, the display installed subcutaneously in his forearm will only be tiny hardware to simply get connected to personal data residing on remote servers. Palmer’s identity will be different from the one recorded in the documents, and the man will have to enter a set of encryption keys.

  Eventually, he will access his archives and those of the global network.

  He will look up and turn his head to observe the buildings that open onto the courtyard, running a hand over his long, unkempt hair. He will look at the gray walls of the interior of the deserted courtyard, the closed windows, the rain beating incessantly over the buildings, the rivulets running from the roofs.

  Nobody.

  He will run away, lifting the collar of his jacket, gaining the exit under the rain.

  He will ask the artificial intelligence a series of questions, and it will carry out research. The blond with the sideburns will order soft gold light, and the desk will be wrapped in a warm bright blanket, leaving the rest of the room dim. The hours will pass slowly. Images of the latest generation pulse rifles will appear on the video. Palmer will ask a series of technical questions about some aspects of detail, given his experience, also confirmed by a marksman’s medal won in Africa on the battlefield. His mind will examine the critical factors of the plan making its way through his thoughts.

  Weight

  Distance

  Wind

  Bullet

  At 2:00 a.m., Palmer will decide to enter a search of black sites. He will have to move quickly, launching a program for incognito navigation. Of course, if he is tracked down, the guest registered in the hotel room tonight will be wanted. The probability is remote, but it exists. The man will continue to move his fingers in the holographic space, to extract information, to turn around various nodes, until he appears to have found what was indicated in his notes, a woman’s name.

  Saki Nishizawa

  He will compare the image that will appear on video with that on his file. He will take two images with his fingers, rotate them, change their dimensions with his hands to the same size of about twenty centimeters, then overlay the two women’s photos. The first photos will be that of a woman in her twenties, the second of a more mature woman, at least thirty-five y
ears old. The first woman will have long brown hair, the second a helmet and black hair, and also will be dramatically made up.

  Outside, the sky will begin to clear.

  Palmer will manipulate the images with his hands and launch a digital retouching program.

  Wednesday, 11:05 a.m.

  The streets of downtown Chicago will be packed with people on that late November day. Whiley will run, scanning passers-by out shopping, without even knowing where to go. His only thought will be to get away from that house.

  Get to a safe place.

  After a few hundred meters, Whiley will stop, out of breath.

  Contact the agency at the emergency number.

  Even if he were in shape for the sport practiced in youth, his clothes will not be suitable for a run.

  Luckily, the rain is stopping.

  He will rest near a flower shop. His mind will be confused as he tries to catch his breath, his hands on his knees. The florist will look at him too intensely. Why doesn’t he come to the door?

  All dead.

  The eyes of the concierge, those closed eyes with the hole in the middle of the forehead, the streak of blood flowing along the nose.

  All dead, damn it.

  Whiley will walk away, thinking of the florist, who will continue to look at him, realizing that he must not attract the attention of passers-by again. A sound of loud sirens. The man will wonder if they’re already on their way, and who may have called the police.

  Who was it?

  Instinctively hiding under a canopy, he will look into the sky, then see the flashing lights of a police aircraft running east, in the opposite direction of the sandstone house. The man will try to remember all the things learned during the course on emergencies, taken years before, but everything will seem so confusing to him, and he will not be able to divert his mind from the bloody scene.