by Lee Burvine
Pulling with all his strength, Rees hauled himself back onto the beam. As he lay there catching his breath, he spotted the white plastic bag, amazingly still on the ledge with him a couple feet away. He grabbed it and pulled it in close.
From down here, Rees could see all the way under the bridge now. Another twenty or so feet below him, a series of crossbeams ran horizontally beneath the bridge deck. All the way to the west side of the span. If he traversed the underside of the bridge on one of those, then climbed back up ... he might be able to double back unseen to the toll plaza.
A slanting support beam provided the only route down there. Rees felt his guts go watery just thinking about it, but there was no other choice.
He'd need both arms again for this. He rolled the top of the bag up and chomped down on it once more, then climbed out onto the steeply angled support beam. Hugging the iron like it was a long lost brother, Rees managed a terrifying shimmy down to the bridge's next level of construction.
The raindrops scattered some of the amber roadway light under the deck. It was still very dark down here, but Rees could see well enough to find his way to one of those beams running to the other side of the bridge.
The crossbeam itself looked to be a little more than two feet wide. Wide enough to walk it easily, if it were just two lines painted on a sidewalk. But with a fall meaning certain death? He decided he'd really rather not chance it.
Rees got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl forward, inching his way out under the bridge deck. To make matters worse, the cold metal was slick with the mist that swirled around under there. He slid his knees along the slippery surface rather than lift them.
Rees had crawled maybe forty feet out onto the crossbeam when the now familiar voice came from behind him.
"I must compliment you on your determination, Dr. Rees."
He craned his neck to look back over his shoulder. Faraj was carefully walking the very beam Rees was on. In the low light the dark blood running down the man's face looked like black tar.
Faraj could easily shoot Rees now. That he wasn't doing so suggested how badly he wanted Rees to pay for breaking their deal. Or how much he needed the artifacts. Or perhaps both.
One thing for sure, Rees couldn't outpace the man by crawling like this. He swallowed hard, sucked in a deep breath, blew it out.
And stood up.
"You have more grit than I gave you credit for, sir."
Without even looking back, Rees could tell Faraj was closer now than before.
Rees's hands were free, but he kept the white plastic bag gripped in his teeth, holding his arms out for balance. It wasn't like he needed to chat with this maniac anyway.
He moved by stepping forward with his right foot, then scooting the left foot up behind it. Doing this over and over. He didn't want to risk swinging one leg out past the other, not if he could avoid it.
As he progressed farther out under the bridge deck, Rees began to see some kind of vertical crisscross bracing blocking the way up ahead. When he got a little closer, he spotted a gap in the lattice. Maybe fifteen feet up from the beam he was on. It looked like he could fit through it.
Behind him Faraj began to wax philosophical. "The fear you feel right now, the terror-it teaches you how wonderful are the dull everyday moments in life. Yes? We need the dark to appreciate the light, Dr. Rees. You can see that now, I'm sure."
Rees had arrived at that crisscross bracing. He grasped two handholds over his head. With the plastic bag still in his teeth, he started up it like he was climbing a giant iron trellis. One that happened to be more than twenty stories up in the air.
Just like going up a ladder. That's all. Just one move at a time.
Step up, take new handholds.
There, see? Not so hard.
Step up again. Reach a little higher.
Step up again.
Almost to that gap now...
Rees felt a hand clamp onto his right ankle.
He looked down.
Faraj's bloody face looked back up at him. "I don't wish to pull you off this bridge, Dr. Rees. Please, come down now."
Rees tried to shake his leg free, but Faraj had a grip like a bulldog's bite. It wasn't going to happen.
"Keep that up and you're going to fall," Faraj warned with what sounded like genuine concern.
He really doesn't want me to die here, Rees thought. It would spoil his party.
Faraj had pulled Rees's right leg off its foothold and he continued to tug hard on it. Rees's weight rested almost entirely on his left foot now.
A bizarre thought went through his head. That this was why a lizard's tail evolved to snap free. In order to escape predators. Caudal autonomy, it was called. Sadly, he couldn't just give Faraj his leg and race away.
No. But I can give him more of it than he wants...
"All right. All right, I'm coming down." Rees took the plastic bag from his teeth. He needed a better grip on it, or he might lose it when he made his move. He stuck his right arm through the handle holes and slid the bag up to his elbow. Then he re-gripped the metal bracing.
"Carefully, Dr. Rees. Climb carefully." Faraj hadn't eased up the tension on Rees's right leg at all. He was still reeling in his catch.
Good. You just keep on pulling down there.
Leaving his left foot just where it was, Rees lowered his handholds one at a time and crouched down. Then he grabbed two lower handholds and crouched down some more. He was in a deep squat now. Coiled up. All the weight still resting on that left foot.
Faraj continued to pull on Rees's cocked right leg.
Rees gripped his two handholds as tightly as he could. You want that leg, huh? You want it? All right ... take it!
Rees popped his left foot off its toehold, uncurled both legs, and let himself drop until he was hanging full length, straight-armed from the bracing.
With no tension to pull against now, Faraj started to fall back and away. He flailed his arms for something higher up to grab.
And snagged the plastic bag hanging from Rees's elbow.
The force of the big man jerking to a halt tore Rees's right hand loose from the bracing. He kept his right arm bent like a hook, to stop the bag from sliding off. Both feet hanging in space. Nothing but his left hand's grip keeping them both from a fatal fall now.
Down below Rees, Faraj leaned way out over the bay. Thirty degrees or more from vertical, feet hinging there on the edge of the crossbeam.
Rees looked at the white plastic bag dangling from the crook of his right elbow, with Faraj's dark hand gripping the other end. It was the only thing stopping the big man from toppling off the beam.
Reese's mind flashed on the artifacts in that bag and what it had cost to have them, on everything that they could change.
But he could feel the fingers in his left hand starting to slip, and knew exactly what he had to do.
There was no other way.
Faraj was looking up at him. He seemed to know what Rees had decided and his green eyes burned with hate.
"You go back to hell," Rees said.
He unbent his right arm and let the bag slip off past his hand.
Still clutching the precious bag, Faraj fell away from him like a tree chopped at the base. He didn't scream.
From Rees's perspective, watching from directly above, Faraj seemed to fall in slow motion. His body growing smaller and smaller, spinning and shrinking, until the only thing still visible was the white dot of the plastic bag.
And then that vanished too.
Gone. Faraj was gone for good this time. And the dearly won artifacts along with him. All of it gone forever.
Rees felt like he wanted to cry or maybe scream out in anger and frustration. But he couldn't. He was just too drained.
Inside there was nothing left.
CHAPTER 64
REES DIDN'T HAVE to wait long for bridge security and the police to show up. They had probably mo
bilized right after they saw him on the camera back by the pedestrian gate.
They insisted that he stay put down there, and Rees saw no reason to argue. He was too cold and shaking far too much. Probably couldn't manage the crawl back from the center of the bridge's underside on his own anyway.
The rescue squad from the Southern Marin Fire Protection District arrived next with climbing ropes and a safety rig.
While he waited for them to reach him, Rees took out his wallet and surreptitiously dropped it into the bay. He wanted to buy himself at least a little time before they figured out who he was. Who knows, it might be useful.
Soon they had him back up on the bridge deck, where the rain had diminished to a light drizzle.
Soaking wet and with his hair plastered down flat, Rees wasn't immediately recognized. Anyway he was the victim here, running for his life from a man with a gun. Bridge security would have seen that much on their monitors and told the police about it. That might be why they weren't scrutinizing him that closely.
Rees had decided it would be wise to say nothing at all from this point forward. At least not until he could contact a good lawyer. So he remained entirely silent as the police asked their questions. The paramedics soon stepped in to inform the officers that their man here was clearly in shock.
It wasn't very far from the truth.
He had no thoughts of making some kind of daring escape, going back on the run. He was far too tired and discouraged. This despite the fact they were probably going to lock him up for a very long time. Espionage, murder, treason. Who knows what else his enemies would frame him with?
We lost. No artifacts. No time-recordings. No way to corroborate our side of the story at all. It's over.
REES FOUND HIMSELF lying on a stretcher in the back of an emergency rescue vehicle for the second time in as many days. Different police officer this time, though. It was a pity Officer Honeycutt wasn't there. Rees would've enjoyed seeing the look on his face.
An image of Kerry Morgan popped into his head. He hoped she was all right. San Francisco General seemed like an excellent hospital. She would be getting the best possible care there.
Rees noticed the blue gym bag lying nearby him in the back of the emergency vehicle, the one he'd taken with him from the motel room. One of the rescue workers had tossed it in there with them.
The mystery of the food diary still ate at him, even now. He wanted to see it one last time, before they confiscated everything. He decided to risk speaking. Curiosity, always his defining trait, won out over fear that saying anything at all was a bad idea.
Rees checked the nametag on the officer accompanying him to the hospital, and cleared his throat. "Officer Dover, can I have my diary, please? It's in that blue bag down there."
The police officer looked understandably puzzled. It probably seemed like an odd way for Rees to break his complete silence. He tried asking Rees questions again, as he had back on the bridge.
Rees just kept repeating, over and over, but softly and politely Can I have my bag please?
After a minute or so Officer Dover turned to the two EMTs. "Is that all right with you guys?"
They had no objections. Dover started inspecting the bag-for weapons or anything dangerous probably. The man's eyes widened a few seconds later. He pulled out the thick stack of cash he'd just found in there and showed it to Rees. "This is yours?"
"Yes," Rees answered. It didn't even feel like lying. Faraj owed him that much and more. And he certainly wasn't going to need it now.
The officer put the money into an evidence bag, and explained to Rees that they would keep it for the time being. Then he handed the gym bag over.
Rees reached in and removed the food diary.
Whatever that is, it's not insanity. This much I know. Kazemi's words coming back to him.
He thumbed through the pages, flipping them back and forth, hoping some pattern would jump out at him.
Nothing did.
If he just had more time and the right resources, maybe he could crack whatever code or cipher Fischer had used here. Find the actual time-recordings. They were only half the picture, yes, but they would certainly be helpful in court.
He returned the food diary to the gym bag and noticed the one odd scientific paper in there again. He'd glanced at it briefly in his room at the Mark Hopkins. The only paper in Fischer's pouch that wasn't his own work. Something to do with DNA synthesis.
He pulled that out again and read the title.
Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA.
It was research from Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics. The lead researcher, George M. Church.
And then he heard Fischer's voice. A moment from their short conversation on the wharf.
They think they've destroyed all my work, but it's still right here in my DNA. Oddly enough, we owe that one to church.
And suddenly it was so obvious. We owe that one to Church. Not church. Fischer was making a little joke.
Rees skimmed through the opening abstract. The paper's authors had achieved petabyte-sized storage in a fraction of a gram of DNA, suspended in a liquid medium.
That meant the Kafir Project data, all five hundred exabytes could easily be stored in a vial of...
Rees yanked the food diary back out of the bag. What was it Kazemi said, on the way to the UPS store? Something Fischer had told him repeatedly.
Ink and paper. That's how we'll beat them. Ink and paper.
And they had.
Rees opened the diary again. There it was, staring him right in the face. The scratchy-looking handwriting. That was from an old-fashioned fountain pen nib. He'd owned one himself once. You filled them yourself, with your own choice of ink.
Fischer had filled his with a very special ink.
He'd employed a form of steganography. Secret messages embedded in other documents. Hidden in plain sight for anyone with the skill to decode them.
Fischer had encoded all five hundred exabytes of the Kafir Project data into the base pairs of synthetic DNA strands, then suspended them in ink. And then he scratched that ink into the pages of the diary with an old fountain pen.
The time-recordings. The now lost artifacts' identifying atomic signatures. All that precious data. All of it.
It was right there in his hand.
CHAPTER 65
Four months later-San Francisco
"THERE'S NO TIME, Rees." Danni sounded close to panicking.
To her half-naked back Rees said, "If you don't hold still, I'm going to stab you."
"All right, just hurry up."
Rees pulled the two panels of the dress together and held them with one hand while he whip-stitched the top closed. He knotted the thread and bit it off. "I think if I stitch it again in the middle here-"
"Shh, shh, quiet." Danni froze. Then she thumped her foot. "The music's started!"
Rees laughed. "That's just the welcome music. Jesus, Danni, you weren't this nervous when we found a gunman in your kitchen."
"Well, I was armed then. Hey, that's it. If I get Kerry's gun and shoot the organist, that'll buy us time till they find another one."
"Good thinking," Rees said.
Rees tried to work fast, but the dress needed two more stitch points at least to forestall a wardrobe malfunction going down the aisle.
He was tying off the last and lowest point-his face about level with Danni's rear end-when Morgan stepped into the vestibule.
"I knew it," Morgan said. "This started while I was still blind right?"
"Funny. Ha, ha. My damn zipper broke," Danni threw a backward nod to Rees, "and this guy is trying to sew me a whole new outfit. How much time do we have?"
Morgan casually folded her arms. "Well, since you and I are both out here, I really don't think we're going to miss the ceremony."
Rees stepped back to inspect the repair on Danni's wedding dress. "That works," he said.
To h
is eye, the garment just looked like it had hooks in the back now instead of a zipper. The dress itself was fun and a little daring. It suited Danni perfectly.
Danni turned to face Rees. "Is it gonna hold?"
He shrugged. "It's a little slipshod, but it should last at least as long as the marriage. I mean the ceremony."
Danni shot him a withering look. "Wow, you two are just hilarious today."
Morgan stepped over to the full length mirror.
Rees watched her turning around to check all the angles of her ensemble. She wore a flowing, cobalt blue dress that complimented her dark brown hair and light complexion. He'd always found her attractive, but dressed to the nines like this-she was really a knockout.
"You look ... stunning, Kerry," Rees said.
Morgan smiled. "Thanks. You don't have to sound so shocked." She turned to Danni. "Hey, before I forget, your father wanted to know if it's okay to take flash pictures. And to get up and move around during the ceremony. And to take some reaction shots of the guests. He'd also like to go over our vows and make suggestions for changes."
Danni laughed. "That wouldn't surprise me."
She came over to stand beside Morgan in front of the mirror. They looked in the glass at each other. Morgan took Danni's hand.
Danni burst into a huge grin. "It's really happening."
Morgan nodded. "If it's not, Gevin flew out from D.C. for nothing."
Rees huffed out a small laugh. "I'd have flown here for lunch at this point. I needed to get away. Senate hearings are not as fun and relaxing as everybody says they are."
"Yeah. I've been watching on C-SPAN," Danni said. "They're a bunch of idiots. Some of them, the questions they were asking-it's like they're suggesting you made all this up. You and Fischer."
No, it's not like that," Rees said. "It is that. It's exactly that. And on the one hand, they're entitled to their doubts. On the other hand ... they're idiots."
Danni's reflection smiled at Rees.
Morgan was studying her hair in the mirror now. It was still shorter than she usually kept it. It hadn't completely grown out since the last surgery.