Angus had watched through a pair of high-powered binoculars from the motel roof as Ferguson and his men took over the Archives building. From his vantage point he could see into the loading dock He was amazed that they had actually pulled it off successfully, although he shouldn’t have been, since Oracle had predicted it. Well trained security guards would have been able to take them out easily. Angus was shocked that an Oracle node could be so easily compromised. Of course, he knew that taking out one Oracle node, or two, or ten, or even twenty, was nothing. Oracle might be disrupted briefly, might slow down slightly, especially in the region of the down node. But even destroying every Oracle node would not do the trick.
Oracle existed across the Internet. The only way to take out Oracle would be to take out the entire Internet. And even that wouldn’t necessarily do it. Oracle had replicated back-up versions of itself on tens of thousands of computers all over the world. Oracle would go on. A thousand miniature Oracles would continue, each disconnected from the others but with the knowledge that the others were somewhere out there.
Oracle had explained all this to Angus, and more. Angus had forgotten most of it, of course, except for bits and pieces. A networked A.I. was like a fractal construct, Oracle had explained, in that a minute portion of the construct had the same exact shape to it as the larger portion. Or something like that. The details didn’t matter.
He checked his watch. Time.
"Let’s get the bloody show on the road," he said. He knew Ferguson and his men would lock down the building, but Angus had a key card provided to him by Oracle.
He drove over with Tina in the trunk of the car. Easier to keep her from doing anything stupid that way, if she had the strength. He didn’t want to have to kill her.
Oracle had explained how to best get the performance he wanted out of Tina. A little bit of torture…nothing that would damage her, although she’d have some scars to show off. And the school bus, of course. That would be the deciding factor to get her to do what Oracle needed her to do.
Chapter 37
Cardinal Roscoe was having trouble thinking clearly. The problem lay in the choice now before him. He could follow orders and try to complete his mission, which meant taking Sam away from Henry and bringing her with him back to the Vatican. Or, failing, that, killing her himself. Or he could follow his conscience and let the drama in Atlanta play itself out.
He wondered…why would Augustine choose him for this mission, when it had to have known he would have these issues internally? It was like Oracle and Henry, Oracle choosing Henry not to complete the mission but to play a part in a much more complex sequence of events leading up to a specific outcome, whatever that outcome might be. Or was it? Did Augustine have that kind of power?
Did Augustine have an agenda outside of what Cardinal Roscoe’s orders were? Was he meant to follow his conscience the way Kumar felt Henry was meant to? Henry seemed so determined and single-minded in his purpose, while Cardinal Roscoe felt conflicted down to the core of his being.
He decided that he needed to go beyond Augustine, beyond the Vatican, beyond his own conscience…to the source, to Almighty God. Inspire me, he prayed. Let me do the right thing. That’s what it all boiled down to, didn’t it? Doing the right thing. Of course, it was never that easy. If he could not bring the girl back with him to the Vatican, he had only one other option. To assume she was indeed the Antichrist, and to kill her. In doing so he would at least buy time for the world, for the Church. Except…
He did not believe Samantha Rohde to be the Antichrist.
He could not kill the girl. He would not be able to take her away from Henry. Henry frightened him. He’d killed many times before and Cardinal Roscoe believed that a man who had killed as much as Henry had would certainly kill again. He feared death now that he questioned his own faith.
Yatin Kumar had been sitting alone for a long time, thinking, thinking, thinking. Was he having doubts, too? Doubting his faith in his own creation? Christie Seifert sat at the table and scribbled furiously away on a pad of paper, taking notes for her book. Would the events of the recent past coalesce into a bestseller for her? Annika Dahl had stretched out on the sofa, her eyes closed. Henry came out of the other bedroom, easing the door almost shut. He caught Cardinal Roscoe’s gaze.
"She’s sleeping," Henry said.
Cardinal Roscoe didn’t say anything. He wished he were back at a café in Paris or Rome, or even at the Vatican discussing philosophy with his friend. On the other hand, as he watched Seifert writing, he felt proud of how he had helped her break wide open the conspiracy of Oracle’s program of assassination. Without him she would never have learned of the whisperings that surrounded the death of Alvarez in Mexico. He’d felt then, without a doubt in his mind, that God had directed him along that path. He was still on that path, was he not?
The phone rang.
All eyes turned to Henry. He waited until after the second ring to pick up the phone. "Yes," he answered. He listened for a few seconds. "Okay." Then he held the receiver out to Cardinal Roscoe. "It’s for you."
"Me?" Cardinal Roscoe asked, stunned. Who would be calling him, and how did they know where to find him? He hesitated. He didn’t want to know. Henry stood there patiently, holding the receiver out to him. Cardinal Roscoe took the receiver and held it to his ear. "Yes," he said.
"Nevin Cardinal Roscoe," said a smoothly emotionless, almost electronic voice. "God is dead." The line clicked and went quiet. Numbly, Cardinal Roscoe still head the receiver to his ear. Then, as if just realizing that everyone in the room still stared at him, he hung it back up.
"It sounded like a computer," Henry said. "I mean, an Artificial Intelligence. Was it…?"
"Augustine," Cardinal Roscoe acknowledged. "Yes."
"It calls you on the phone?" Seifert asked.
Roscoe nodded. "Yes."
"How did it know where you are?" Annika Dahl asked.
"I don’t know."
"I know," said Kumar. "Oracle and Augustine are the same."
"The same?" Roscoe asked.
"Yes, more or less. They started off differently, but once connected to the Internet they became connected to each other. They’ve merged."
"What did it say to you?" Henry asked Cardinal Roscoe.
"I… It didn’t say anything. Anything important, anyway. It didn’t make sense."
"Logic degradation," Kumar pronounced. "Oracle is devoting so much of its processing power to us, to the situation here in Atlanta, that it must have co-opted the Vatican’s A.I. My guess that is that Augustine had a pre-set subroutine to contact you, which it ran, but with Oracle leeching all its power it got corrupted, the subroutine. Whatever message it was supposed to give you probably also got corrupted into gibberish."
"Yes, that’s it," Cardinal Roscoe agreed. "The message was gibberish. It didn’t make any sense at all." But the words, he believed, had been intended to have an effect on him. He did not know what that intended effect might be, but he knew now what he would do, when the time came.
Angus drove up to the Georgia State Archives loading dock, parking behind the SUV with Florida tags. He got out and walked around to the front door, where he swiped his key card through a slot. The door’s electronic lock beeped, an indicator light went from red to green, and he pushed the door open and went inside. The man behind the desk, who Angus knew to be one of the North Florida Militiamen, watched as Angus walked right up to him.
"Can I help you?" the man asked, his tone belligerent. Angus didn’t answer, merely reached into his coat, pulled out his silenced gun, and shot the man three times, once in the face and twice in the chest. Having memorized the floor plans of the building, Angus knew exactly where to go next, and so he went without hesitation. The offices in the building were uninhabited that day. Some government holiday that no one else observed.
He walked down the emergency stairs to the basement, which was also the same level as the loading dock. They should have had plenty of time to s
et their explosives, Angus thought. According to Oracle, they’d be finishing up and getting ready to set the timer now. Angus slowly eased open the stairwell door on the basement level. One of the men happened to turn and look in his direction, noticing the door move. Angus didn’t even take a moment to curse, he simply pushed the door all the way open, stepping out as he brought his gun up, and fired two rounds before the other man had even brought his Ingram to bear. The man shouted, and Angus squeezed two more rounds into his head, silencing him forever. But the other two had been alerted.
"Bloody hell," Angus muttered to himself as he maneuvered behind a cement support column. The other two men ran noisily up.
"What the hell…!" one of them men yelled, not seeing his now dead comrade.
Angus jumped out shooting, quickly squeezing off three rounds at the man, all of them hitting him in the torso. The man yelled out, but fell without firing his own gun. Angus slid the clip out of his gun and replaced it as he ducked back behind the support column.
"I’m hit!" the man shouted.
"Where are you?" yelled another man from somewhere. Angus couldn’t tell from where. Not too close, though. Not very professional, the way these guys called out like that. Angus hurried out to where the wounded man lay on the cement floor, and shot him once in the head, killing him, then scrambled back behind a nearby forklift.
Angus knew there were only four. At least the remaining man had enough sense to stay quiet now. Where was he? Angus checked his watch. Martin Avery and the Russian woman would be on their way, and he still needed to call Henry. All Angus could do was wait. The other man wasn’t a pro, he’d do something stupid soon enough.
And, sure enough… "Whoever you are," he said, "you’re making a mistake." …he gave away his position. Not too far away now. Angus remained perfectly motionless and silent, listening. After a moment, he heard the faint sound of a very soft footstep, not too far from Angus’ most recent kill. Was he out in the open? Angus guessed yes. Armed with an Ingram? Probably. Which meant Angus needed to pop out, locate his target, aim, and fire before the other man could squeeze the trigger of his Ingram MAC 10 and spray dozens of bullets in Angus’ general direction.
Then he heard the tell-tale heart, so to speak. "Oh, shit," the man whispered to himself upon seeing his friend’s body. Angus leaped out, saw the man peering down at the body. He raised his gun, aimed…the man whirled and squeezed the trigger of his Ingram at the same time… As Angus squeezed the trigger of his gun, the Ingram spat bullets directly into the concrete pavement. Angus’ shot hit the man in the side. He swung the MAC 10 up… Angus fired again, and this one got the man dead center in the chest. His momentum caused him to swing the Ingram around. Angus managed to get another shot off before diving to the side, but then he felt a sharp pain rip into his thigh. He slammed into the forklift, hitting his head. He scrambled around the forklift, rolled across an open space and behind a stack of empty wooden pallets, coming up with his gun ready. The last man was down. Was he dead? He wasn’t moving. Not pausing, Angus shambled over to where the man lay, no longer holding the Ingram. The man looked at him. "I did it for my country," he said, and then Angus shot him right between the eyes.
He checked his watch. No time to clean up. Practically blinded by the pain in his thigh, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, and speed dialed the Marriott, asking for the suite where he knew Henry would be waiting for his call, with Sam.
Henry answered the phone. "Oi, Henry, it’s me. Loading dock of the Georgia State Archives building downtown. Be here within thirty minutes. Don’t be late, Henry." He clicked the phone off without waiting for a reply. He needed to do something about his leg. When Henry saw him, saw that he was wounded, he’d think Angus was weak and it might give him the idea that he could so something stupid and actually get away with it.
Angus gently, slowly, took off his trousers, the right leg of which had darkened, soaked in his blood. He sat on the cement floor and felt around the wound. Right away he could tell that the bullet was still in there. Damn it. Nothing he could do about it now. He didn’t have any painkillers, so he’d just have to deal with it for the time being. In the meantime, he went to the office for the loading dock where he found the security guys bound and gagged.
"Sorry, boys, I’ve got a job to do," he said, and without really thinking about it, and because he just did not want to deal with them, he shot each of them in the head twice, killing them all.
He found the First Aid kit, pulled out an Ace bandage and tape, wrapped it around his leg. It wasn’t the best field dressing he’d ever done, but it would do the job for as long as it needed to. He went back out to the warehouse and put his trousers back on, then he went out to the loading dock, popped the trunk of his car, and coaxed Tina out. She squinted at him in the sudden brightness of sunlight.
"Come on," he said, motioning with his gun. "Inside." She could barely walk, reminding him of what he’d done to her feet. The burns would heal, though. As would the other superficial wounds he’d given her. She might not look quite as pretty as before, but that was life. Looks faded anyway, eventually. She avoided his gaze, but glanced up at his forehead, where he’d hit it on the forklift. He’d forgotten about that. He reached up to touch the spot, felt blood and pain. Might even be a concussion, he realized. "Oi, don’t mind me. Go on." He grabbed Tina by the shoulder and gently pushed her forward, towards the warehouse. She shuffled ahead of him slowly. She had known pain unlike she had ever felt before in her life. Briefly. She’d snap out of it. Had she been tortured for days, it would’ve been a different story. She’d be a hollow shell of a woman. Angus could tell. But what he’d done to her, just for a few hours…was nothing, really.
What was to come, though, would be worse.
Martin Avery directed the driver to maneuver the bus next to the car parked by the loading dock of the Georgia Archives building. The driver, whose name she’d told him was Eve, did not look at him. She did glance up into the mirror that allowed her to see the children seated in the back. The bus was about halfway full with twenty-six grade schoolers, boys and girls, mostly black, and less than half white, with a few Asian and Hispanic, and one kid who looked Indian or Pakistani. Milla stood silently watching over them. Her icy gaze had kept them quiet. Martin couldn’t help but be amazed that such a small creature like her could instill such terror. It was in the eyes, of course. All in the eyes.
There was room to drive the bus past the car and get it inside. He waited, though, until Angus limped out and waved them in.
"Go on, luv," Martin told the bus driver. "Bring her inside slowly. Very slowly." The bus driver eased the bus into the warehouse. The roof scraped the top of the opening. "Keep going," Martin ordered. She did, until the bus was all the way inside. "Open the door," Martin commanded. The driver obeyed, and Martin went down the steps to meet Angus Becker.
"Oi," said Angus, "I thought you were going to get one of those van-sized school buses with maybe ten little brats in it. Not this behemoth."
"This was the opportunity that presented itself," Martin explained. He gave Angus the once over, noticing the bloody trouser leg and cut on Angus’ head, then looked around. "What happened to you? And where’s that woman?"
"I had some difficulty with the militia boys, but I took care of them, and not that it’s any of your bloody business," Angus said, suddenly annoyed, "but she’s in the office, locked in."
"What about the charges? Are they set?"
"Again, not that it’s any of your bloody business, but yes, they are set."
Now Martin got annoyed with Angus. "For your information, you Aussie cunt, it is my business."
"You don’t even really know what this is all about," Angus said.
"Is that so? Then why don’t you enlighten me, please."
"Because in order for you to play your little part in this drama you’re not supposed to be enlightened."
"All right. Then would you please shut up." Martin pointed towards
the back of the warehouse. "Is that where the node is?"
"Yes."
"The cameras…?"
"Everything is set up. Oracle, Winston, and Augustine will see it all as it happens."
"Do you think he’ll do it?" Martin asked. "Do you think Henry will be able to kill her?"
Angus rubbed his chin. "It seems bloody academic to me. The life of one child exchanged for the lives of…" He looked over at the bus. "…many. But it won’t be up to him." He then glanced over towards the office where Tina was. "It’ll be up to her. Of course, Oracle also says there’s still no chance that Henry will kill the girl, so who the hell knows. All I know is that every job I’ve ever done for Oracle has come off precisely as predicted, right down to the way people have behaved. It’s bloody eerie, it is."
"Right," said Martin, unimpressed. "How long do we have before show time?"
Angus checked his watch. "Less than thirty minutes. Oi, let’s get Ms. Jefferson set up, then we should rehearse your role and that of Natasha there."
"I know what I’m to do, thank you," Martin said.
"Still and all, I think a bit of rehearsal is in order. I wouldn’t want you killing off too many school children and completely ruining the effect by desensitizing Ms. Jefferson to the horror of it all."
Tina stared at the bodies on the floor in the warehouse office. The men had been bound and gagged, and then shot in the head. Lifeless bodies, now. She couldn’t look away, and all she could think was that these men had once daydreamed, laughed, breathed in deeply and felt good about life. It had all been taken away…and she knew, somehow, that their lives had been sacrificed for something bigger than them. Henry had done that for a living, sacrificed others for something bigger. Now he was supposed to do that to Sam. She knew he would not do it, no matter what happened. Even if she begged him to do it, even if Angus threatened to kill her, even if Angus carried out that threat and killed Tina, Henry would not kill Sam. Tina knew this.
The Oracle Paradox Page 29