She’d imagined a well-to-do husband with dazzling smile, manicured fingernails, ruggedly handsome and with a checkered past that was all behind him by the time they’d met. She’d imagined feeling beautiful, sexy, loved, and appreciated. She’d imagined having a walk-in closet of clothes like the former Mrs. Alonso’s, dressing up for the Symphony, the Theater, or a four-star restaurant. She’d imagined feeling safe with him, whoever this man would be who would someday sweep her off her feet.
Tina did not feel safe. She was scared.
Who were these people? A Cardinal in the Catholic Church, and this man Alonso… Tina wasn’t religious, but she was inclined to believe that the Cardinal had Sam’s best interest at heart. At least, she was inclined to want to believe that. There was always something slightly sinister about religious officials, priests and ministers and rabbis… There always seemed to be a secret agenda behind everything they did. God’s work, perhaps. And Alonso, he seemed like a decent man. He was also quite handsome. Tina felt a little ashamed of herself for noticing, considering the circumstances, but some things just couldn’t be helped.
As for Henry, she didn’t know what to make of him. Had he really killed Sam’s parents? It didn’t make sense at all. If he could kill Sam’s parents in cold blood, how could he care about Sam?
How could the U.N. be behind something like that? One didn’t have to be paranoid to believe in a conspiracy, but believing that the United Nations supported an ongoing program of assassination, and was using Oracle to choose the victims, was a bit much. Of course, there were plenty of people who had long believed the U.N. sought to create a New World Order by eliminating nations altogether. Tina had worked with such folks. They were usually also life members of the National Rifle Association and supporters of the ultra-nationalist Senator Joshua Watts for President. She wondered what it was like to be so paranoid, afraid, and angry all the time.
While these thoughts battered her mind, she continued looking through the clothes almost without seeing them. Finally, she found a simple print sun dress, the least expensive looking thing in the closet. She changed and looked at herself in the mirror. Better than sweat pants and a t-shirt, at least.
What now? She started to head back downstairs, but stopped. Maybe she needed something like a plan. For what? Anything could happen. She told herself to just play it cool for a while, try to determine what was really going on, who was really behind it, who was really a friend…and who wasn’t.
Tina came back down to find Cardinal Roscoe telling the "truth" about the U.N. and Oracle. The truth according to Augustine, which Roscoe explained was the name of a secret A.I. that the Vatican had built only a couple years ago. Technically, it was a more powerful, faster computer than Oracle by a factor of ten. Augustine was not networked like Oracle, with dozens of nodes around the world that were connected via the Internet, but it was connected to the Internet.
Augustine’s core program operated in much the same way, though. It had been fed every shred of Catholic doctrine and philosophy ever written. It viewed the world through Catholic-colored lenses. It saw patterns of behavior that led people astray, away from the Church, and it figured out how to bring them back into the fold. It instructed the three orders of Cardinals on how best to conduct Church business and to represent the interests of the Church. The Catholic Church was still a pale shadow of its medieval self, but its core was being strengthened and slowly the effect was reaching outwards to the flock.
One of the things Augustine continued to do was watch Oracle. It had hacked Oracle and had learned enough to allow it to predict the events that were now happening. There had already been a number of suspicious assassinations, and Augustine was able to connect the dots that, ultimately, led to Samantha Jeannette Rohde…and Henry. According to Roscoe, the assassination of Generalissimo Sanchez had been the confirmation Augustine needed to put the wheels of the Catholic Church in motion concerning Sam.
Sam had been only one of several possibilities, according to Augustine. Two of the others had been in the New York area, one was in the Chicagoland area, and then one was in San Francisco. Augustine had figured out that whoever Oracle sent to do the job would balk at killing a child, hence Roscoe’s phone call. It was all a gamble against the odds, at least that’s how Roscoe explained it.
"So what do you think?" Roscoe asked Henry.
"What am I supposed to think?" Henry replied. "That God works in mysterious ways?" What was he supposed to think upon discovering that he’d been in the employ of the U.N.? Or what was he supposed to think about being sent to kill a little girl when it knew he wouldn’t do it?
"God does work in mysterious ways," Roscoe said.
Cardinal Roscoe did not mention that photos of the girls provided to him by Augustine revealed a startling fact. The girls, all the same age, looked remarkably similar, with dark eyes and dark hair and an olive complexion. Perhaps God was not the only one to work in mysterious ways.
Chapter 16
Martin Avery pulled up in front of the Rohde house in a rented Ford Expedition precisely one hour and twenty-five minutes after his arrival at Hartsfield airport. He’d arrived from a routine intelligence mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina; some wire-tapping, picture-taking, and sensitive document destruction all regarding the British Ambassador to Argentina. The man had fallen in love with an Argentine heiress who was actually a spy for her government. No killing was necessary, just some vague and not-so-vague threats regarding the Ambassadors future.
Now, here he was in Atlanta for a decidedly less pleasant affair.
He took a duffle bag from the back seat of the SUV, and went up to the front door, stepping around the pink bicycle in the driveway. The door wasn’t locked. Suffering from no illusions, Martin put the bag down on the walkway and pulled his Smith & Wesson .45 from the shoulder holster under his jacket. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit, the only kind he ever wore, in the only color he ever wore: navy blue. He’d read that navy-blue suits commanded respect and obedience from small-minded people. In his line of work sometimes he needed to present himself as an authority figure. The suit helped.
He eased the front door open. The first body, Mr. Rohde he presumed, was right there in the hallway. Avery stepped inside, scanned the room. The second body, Mrs. Rohde he presumed, was over by the phone.
He sensed no one else in the house. All that was needed, then, was clean-up. As expected.
He put the bag on the floor and zipped it open, then pulled out a roll of heavy-duty plastic trash bags, a hammer, an electric bone saw, duct tape, bleach… He paused to light a cigarette, - a Camel, the only American brand he deigned to smoke - inhaled deeply and mentally prepped himself for the grisly task. He’d done it before, of course, but it never got any easier. Unlike others he’d heard of, he didn’t enjoy it. He wasn’t a barbarian, after all.
Martin especially didn’t enjoy cleaning up somebody else’s mess. His own, that was one thing. He knew what had happened beforehand. Knowing made it easier to deal with. Somebody else’s…it was spooky, sometimes, imagining what had happened there.
The male victim in the hallway had obviously been the target. At least, so the assassin had thought at first. Professional hit. One in the head and one in the chest. The woman had brought it on herself, apparently. Martin found the bullet in the front hallway wall, and saw a light spray of blood on the carpet in the den. Carpet cleaner and spackle would take care of that.
So the assassin had been wounded. Lightly, apparently. Didn’t stop him from taking out the woman. And taking off with the girl.
Soon they would be nothing but suburban ghosts, the man and woman who’d lived at the house. The Rohdes. Only their little girl, Samantha, was still alive. Once Martin Avery finished disposing of her parents’ bodies, he would find her and do what he’d been ordered to do.
Martin didn’t pretend to comprehend the logic behind his actions. He never questioned his orders. When he was sent to do a job, he thought of it as doing his part to as
sure the continuance of England. He fancied himself something of a revisionist, working class James Bond.
Peter Cornwall and Vincent Waldrup shared a limousine to Long Island for the Swedish Ambassador’s party. They’d be fashionably late, as usual. The two men chatted amiably about the weather, the stock market, their wives who were staying home that night.
"What do you make of the situation in Atlanta?" Cornwall asked suddenly, leaning forward a bit.
"What situation?" Vincent replied.
"We have not received confirmation that the…event, as it were, has taken place."
"That’s not a situation," Vincent said.
"No, of course not," Cornwall agreed, smiling pleasantly. "I suspect that it will become a situation, however."
Vincent narrowed his eyes at the smiling Brit. "What’s that supposed to mean?" he asked.
"I have certain intelligence in my possession that leads me to believe that this…non-situation…" The smile widened. "…could become something of a problem."
"What intelligence?" Vincent asked. God damn the British and their intelligence, was what he thought.
"You realize that I cannot reveal my source of this particular intelligence," Cornwall said.
"Whatever. Just tell me what you know. Or what you think you know, I should say."
"Quite." Cornwall’s smile seemed to dim a little bit. "The girl’s parents are dead, and the girl has been taken."
"Who took her?"
"One assumes the same person who was sent to…do the job, as you Americans like to say."
Cornwall leaned back again.
Vincent Waldrup had a pretty good guess as to whom, or what, was supplying Cornwall with the information he had. He was tempted to tell him that he knew all about England’s A.I, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything. Besides, he didn’t know all about England’s A.I, just that they had one. He just hated that British smugness. The reality of it, though he hated to admit it to himself, was that it angered him for Cornwall to know more about the situation than him.
Yes, it was a situation, now. It amazed him that Cornwall had let the cat out of the bag. Probably trying to put him in his place, Vincent thought. That was fine with him. If Cornwall didn’t have the discipline to keep information like that close to the vest, sensitive information that could possibly be used to gain an advantage over the other permanent members of the Security Council, well, too bad.
An operative for Oracle had gone rogue. The question was, how much did the operative know? Did he, or she, know who was involved? The other question was, had Oracle taken the necessary steps to resolve the situation? There would be no way to find out until after the party. Vincent was tempted to tell the driver to turn around and take him to the U.N., but what would he do there?
One thing worried Vincent more than anything else. Among the programmers working under Yatin Kumar, a few were supposed to have created a secret back door for the United States into Oracle. Contributing most of the budget for the Oracle project meant that the U.S. had maintained a certain amount of influence over who Kumar would have on his team. It was precisely what China, especially, had suspected. Buried in Oracle’s code was a propensity to weigh the interests of the United States a little more heavily than the interests of other countries. If the truth about the assassinations leaked, it would not take some vigilant journalist very long to make the connection between them and the influence the U.S. had over Oracle. That would be bad. The U.S. would need a scapegoat, and who better than the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.?
He had to do something. He would not let himself be hung out to dry.
For his part, Peter Cornwall sat back and watched Vincent Waldrup’s face. Waldrup’s face was calm, but his eyes were not. It was apparent that the gears were turning and a scheme was forming. Waldrup had a lousy poker face, as the Americans liked to say.
Peter wondered why Winston had instructed him to tell Waldrup about the situation in Atlanta. Obviously Winston expected the American to react in a certain way, to do something to further the British cause. Of course, Peter wasn’t entirely sure what the British cause was in this case. Not that it really mattered, as Winston was programmed to concern itself with the British cause and nothing else. Whatever Vincent Waldrup did with the information would work out to be in England’s best interest, whether he knew it or not.
Winston was far more advanced than Oracle, or so Peter had been assured. Of course, Winston was not networked nearly to the extent of Oracle; having a half-dozen nodes only in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the British West Indies. Nodes were outrageously expensive and squeezing the money out of Parliament for a project about which they could not even be told had proved difficult, even with Winston’s guidance.
Winston knew about the assassinations. Indeed, Peter had heard that Winston itself had recommended liquidation for certain individuals without whom the U.K. would be better off. He didn’t have a ‘need to know’ in such instances, and so he could only infer from his own experience. Winston, displaying a foreknowledge reminiscent of Oracle itself, had contacted Peter in regards to the upcoming secret meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council, and urged him to vote in favor of Oracle’s next proposed ‘liquidation,’ as Winston put it. Winston had known it would be Samantha Rohde, and had known that Cornwall would have voted against her assassination had not Winston contacted him. So Peter had voted along with the others, to allow Oracle to proceed with the assassination of the girl.
His only hope was that Winston had something else in mind for her fate, something that would undermine Oracle and save the girl. Indeed, that now seemed to be the case, or at least something else was happening down in Atlanta. He had been contacted by Winston, alerting him to the presence of British agent in Atlanta.
Peter Cornwall was not one to speculate, but in this instance he couldn’t help himself. He suspected that Oracle’s days were numbered. Newer, faster, more powerful A.I.’s like Winston would soon make Oracle all but obsolete, or so Peter had been told. And with this situation in Atlanta, doubtless it would prove to be Oracle’s undoing.
Peter wondered if Oracle’s creator, Yatin Kumar, would be at the Dahl party. There had been talk of the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. He’d never met the man in social circumstances, and only briefly on official business with the Oracle Oversight Committee. Kumar knew nothing about Oracle’s secret program of assassination for the good of humanity, of course. Or, if he did know something, he did not let on in the least. He had an amazing poker face, in that case.
Luc Beauchamp and Andrei Udin shared a limousine to the Dahl house, too. They did not engage in small talk about wives, weather, sports, or the International Space Station. They’d known each other far too long to bother. The Russian sat forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together and hanging down. Luc sat straight, arms folded across his lap.
"Oracle is doing wonderful things for my Russia," Andrei said, his eyes cast down. "Almost all of people believe it will make life better for them. I would hate to see anything bad happening to it."
"I, too, would not be happy to see something happen to the A.I.," Luc replied. "It is because of Oracle that the Euro is finally strong. The economy of France is the best it has ever been, I think."
Both men knew that something was afoot in Atlanta. Oracle had yet to confirm the success of its mission there, and Luc had gotten reports that a British agent was on the move there, which was too much of a coincidence. Luc could not go through official channels to get a French agent sent over, but Andrei had maintained personal contact with agents who had served under him in Russia’s Chechen Wars. He could mobilize someone without his government ever knowing.
Did the British intend to sabotage Oracle? Elements in the British government were displeased with U.N. policies concerning Northern Ireland, even though peace and prosperity there were good for the U.K. as a whole. And now there was a British agent in Atlanta.
"If the truth is getting
out about Oracle…" Andrei didn’t need to finish the sentence. The public outcry would be overwhelmingly in favor of putting a stop to the Oracle project. Doubtless, if the truth got out about Oracle, it would get out about the five permanent members of the Security Council, too. Even if the public never found out, if only government officials discovered the truth, it would end.
"To most people, the ends will not justify the means," Luc said.
"We must do whatever it is necessary to make for certain that no one finds out what Oracle has been doing," Andrei said slowly, almost awkwardly, as he nodded his agreement with the Frenchman.
"Whatever is necessary," Luc repeated.
Andrei reached across his seat to the drink-holder where he’d placed a Collins glass of vodka and ice from the limousine’s bar. Looking at Luc Beauchamp, he drank half the vodka in one long draw. Luc regarded his Russian friend’s expression with complete understanding. He knew that look. The last time he saw that look, a car bomb exploded in Moscow three days later, blamed on Chechen rebels. Of course, nothing about it could be connected to the Russian government, and the mere thought that Andrei could have been involved would be laughed at as ridiculous. But Luc knew better. He knew that look, all right. Somebody was going to die.
Chiang Teng-chi sat alone in his limousine, en route to Long Island. He, too, thought about the situation in Atlanta. Teng-chi was an idealist and he believed in what Oracle was doing, but he was also a realist who intended to make sure that if Oracle fell it wouldn’t take Chiang Teng-chi with it. Hence, he had already submitted his request for retirement to China. He knew they would accept. He was not a Communist Party member and therefore a source of stress to his government. Only his skill as a diplomat had kept in office for so long.
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