Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  She sent a silent command that summoned her most experienced Terminator from its work in the cellar. It came, massive and impassive, smelling slightly of chemicals and mold, standing with an eerie motionlessness before her desk.

  “Sarah Connor is in Villa Hayes, Paraguay,” she told it. “You will be flown to Paraguay tomorrow. You will be met at the airport in Asuncion by a human named Marco Cassetti. He will take you to Villa Hayes. Have him find out for you exactly where she can be found. Go there. Kill her, kill her son, John, who is sixteen. Terminate any witnesses; this will include anyone Marco Cassetti might have spoken to about Connor. Mission priority is to remain undetected, followed by the termination of John and Sarah Connor. Prioritize your actions according to circumstances.”

  For a moment she considered having von Rossbach terminated, then decided against it. The last thing she wanted was an organization like the Sector taking

  an interest in her affairs.

  “Return to the airport in Asuncian,” she continued, “park the car in the lot there.

  Your return flight is at eight o’clock. Contact me if there are any significant deviations from the plan.”

  She sat it down and uploaded a Spanish program from her own internal computer. The Terminator would be fluent in under an hour. There was some information on Guarani; she downloaded what was available, as well as a short text on the local customs and political situation. Then it would turn to studying maps of the area.

  She’d drive it to the airport herself tomorrow morning. It was still stiff in its manner, but she didn’t think it would attract attention to itself.

  It just wouldn’t make any friends.

  VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY: THE PRESENT

  Dieter sat in his office in the late afternoon studying the police reports that Jeff had sent him. The light breeze carried a hint of roses from the garden and he looked up and out into the fading sunlight on the whitewashed adobe, enjoying the tremble of bougainvillea for a moment before he returned to his reading.

  These were the unadulterated versions of the Sarah Connor file, complete with personal notations in the margins by people who had been there, files the public would probably never see. And he could understand why: they were completely unbelievable.

  The first time in her life that Sarah Connor came to the attention of the police for more than a parking ticket was the day that two other women with the same name were shot to death in L.A.

  Execution-style hits, he noted. One large-caliber pistol round in the head, then the magazine emptied into the body.

  She heard about the second killing on the news and called the police from a nightclub. Dieter smiled at the club’s self-consciously clever name: Technoir.

  Before the police could get to her there was a shoot-out in the club. Witnesses said that the main aggressor was a very big man in a grubby jacket decorated with chains. They claimed that though he’d been shot multiple times, he got up and ran after two people who escaped from the back of the club.

  Kevlar vests were just coming into wide use then, he thought.

  The people who ran were Sarah Connor and a man who called himself Kyle Reese. He claimed to be a soldier from the future sent back to protect Connor from a killing machine he called a Terminator.

  The next part of the report included a videotape of a man in sunglasses and a leather jacket walking through a police station calmly shooting anyone who got in his way. He did not miss anyone who fired at him and he usually killed anyone at whom he leveled his weapon.

  Even I can’t do that, Dieter thought, watching the man use an automatic shotgun as if it were a pistol. And I’m better than most with a gun.

  He could also swear, though the picture was really too grainy to be certain, that this man was shot by the police defending the station. Dieter shook his head.

  One of the few survivors suggested that he was hopped up on PCP. But he seemed too controlled to von Rossbach; there was none of the bug-eyed, teeth-bared wildness that was a trademark of the drug. If the man hadn’t been so obviously real, he’d have sworn that this was a CGI animation rather than an actual human being.

  Reese and Connor had fled the police station together and taken refuge in a motel. Somehow the maniac, being relentlessly single-minded, succeeded in tracing them—something the police were unable to do until well after the fact.

  What followed, according the report, was an extremely violent chase involving a tank truck that was completely destroyed in an explosion.

  Connor and Reese then sought shelter in a nearby factory, which was also severely damaged. At the end of the night Kyle Reese was dead, Sarah Connor was hospitalized with various wounds and shock, her mother, her roommate, and her roommate’s friend were dead, and there was property damage left in their wake to the tune of almost a million dollars.

  Upon her release from the hospital, after what must have been the worst night of her life, Sarah Connor, then pregnant, had gone to Mexico, Central America, and farther south. Eventually she had sought out mercenaries, gunrunners and smugglers, dragging her little boy behind her and talking about the end of the world.

  A corner of Dieter’s mouth lifted. Well, a lot of those types are crazy, too. She probably fit right in. I pity the poor kid, though.

  He picked up the report on John Connor. Trespassing, shoplifting, disturbing the peace, vandalism—he was quite the little hoodlum under his court-appointed foster parents’ care. He’d been placed with Todd and Janelle Voight after his mother had been shot and arrested for attempting to blow up a computer factory.

  With a sigh von Rossbach put aside the report. Given John’s upbringing and the things he’d been taught to believe, there must have been an unbridgeable gulf between him and the Voights. With his mother in an institution and everything in his life a lie, it was no wonder he’d rebelled.

  His mind turned to the boy he’d recently met. That young man seemed so centered, so assured. It was difficult to imagine him as a petty thief or the intimate of mercenaries and madmen.

  Dieter picked up the other report and read for a while, then flipped to the end, to the section on Connor’s raid on Cyberdyne. This time, bizarrely, the man who’d been attempting to murder Connor had been at her side.

  The casualty report almost made his jaw drop; the sheer numbers were incredible. Amazingly most had been shot in the leg; none were killed. This /

  know I couldn’t do, Dieter thought in awe. Gunshot wounds in the leg were dangerous. There were too many ways a bullet could sever a major vein.

  “He was hit numerous times,” one of the side notes insisted. “His clothing was shredded by the impacts and his face was covered in blood. You could see bone where the flesh had been stripped away.” And after this he had disabled every man there, walked out and stolen a van, and then driven away.

  What human being could do that? Dieter wondered. Even on PCP? He shook his

  head and turned the page, finding that the one death listed was the result of a helicopter pilot taking a high dive out of his craft, an apparent suicide. Dieter stopped and contemplated that.

  It was one of those truly inexplicable, senseless things. Subsequent investigation indicated that the man showed none of the usual signs of a potential suicide, the helicopter had crashed more than fourteen miles away from the site of the so-called suicide.

  The incident plucked his instincts like harp strings. Taken with the known cop killer’s sudden humanitarian instincts, it was one too many strange events.

  Unless Sarah Connor and this Kyle Reese were telling the truth all along. But that was insane. Speaking of which…

  He snatched up the copy of Connor’s medical records and began trying to make sense of the jargon that described her condition. He winced at the amount of anti-schizophrenia drugs she’d been given. No wonder Tarissa Dyson described her as out of control!

  He noted that Miles Dyson’s brother, Jordan, was an FBI agent who had contributed a number of leads to the investigation. Perha
ps he should call him.

  Maybe the chief project manager’s brother would know why Cyberdyne?

  True, Connor had attacked other computer companies, but there’d never been a shoot-out like this one. Though to be fair there’s never been a shoot-out like this one anytime, anywhere, ever.

  Dieter checked the time; Dyson should still be at work. Unless he was in the

  field. It was worth a try.

  With usual FBI efficiency he soon found himself speaking to a secretary assigned to Dyson’s office. He identified himself as a former Sector agent and asked to speak to him.

  There was an infinitesimal pause, then she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. von Rossbach, but former Special Agent Dyson is no longer with the FBI.”

  “That was rather sudden, wasn’t it?” Dieter asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, then went silent, patiently waiting for his next question.

  Dieter racked his brain and pulled out the name of another agent he knew who worked in counterterrorism.

  “Well, then, is Special Agent Paulson there?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll connect you.”

  A few clicks later the phone was picked up. “Paulson,” a distracted voice said.

  “Patricia,” von Rossbach said, “how are you?”

  “Dieter?” She gave a surprised laugh. “I thought you’d retired.”

  “I have, but I’m thinking of writing a book. Not something I’ve investigated—the Sarah Connor thing.”

  “That’s a weird one,” Paulson commented.

  He heard the click of keys and knew she was only giving him half her attention.

  “So I was trying to get in touch with Jordan Dyson to see if I could get some insight. But your secretary tells me he’s left the FBI. When did that happen?”

  “Today actually,” she said. The keyboard sounds stopped. “He went into the supervisor’s office this morning and the next thing I knew he was cleaning out his desk.”

  “Why?” Dieter asked. “He’s a good agent from what I hear. Was he fired?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Patricia said. “He was a good agent. But… under the circumstances the sup thought he should go immediately.”

  “What circumstances?” von Rossbach prodded.

  “He’s going to work for Cyberdyne. Which, if you’ve been investigating this case, must ring a bell.”

  “Yes, it does,” he said slowly. “That’s a surprise.”

  “And no mistake. But from what he said, he should do very well there. The bennies are every bit as good as ours, sometimes better, and the pay definitely is.

  Had I but known they were looking,” she said wistfully.

  “You’d have told them to look elsewhere,” Dieter said. “You know you’ll never leave the Bureau.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “I’ll die in harness or be put out to pasture.”

  “I’m not even going to comment on that analogy,” Dieter said, putting a grin into his voice. “Listen, do you think you’ll be talking to him again?”

  “May-be,” she answered.

  “Then would you mind giving him my number? In case he’s willing to talk to me.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “Sure, why not?”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Good talking to you, Pat.”

  He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, thinking. This case… had something missing. The whole shape of it cried out for that missing piece that would make it all come together. He began reviewing the information he had.

  Cyberdyne was starting up a facility on military property. A buried facility. And they’d been given something that Connor had stolen during her raid. Now Miles Dyson’s brother was going to work for them. Why?

  Perhaps because he believed that sooner or later word would get to Sarah Connor, assuming she was still alive, and that she might react by going after Cyberdyne again.

  Dieter nodded. Not an unreasonable assumption, he thought, and went back to the beginnings of the file.

  Now, Sarah Connor, a perfectly ordinary young woman. A waitress and part-time college student of no particular ambition, no known political affiliations.

  Just a middle-class girl starting out in life. She’s attacked and almost killed by a man intent on murdering women with her name.

  Dieter picked up the first set of reports and flipped pages. “Ahhh,” he said aloud.

  The company where she and Kyle Reese had taken refuge, where Reese was killed and where Connor claimed to have killed the “Terminator,” was a test-bed facility for industrial robotics—for a little start-up outfit called… Cyberdyne.

  He sat back, lowering the report to his lap. Well, there’s the connection with Cyberdyne, he thought. Not to mention that at first Cyberdyne had pressed for prosecution of the young woman for trespassing, destruction of property, vandalism, you name it, to the full extent of the law.

  Then, within a day or so, cooler, more compassionate heads apparently prevailed and the charges against her were dropped.

  Still, lying in your hospital bed with that kind of a lawsuit hanging over your head, even for just a day, was bound to make an indelible impression. Maybe she’d eventually come to place the blame for the catastrophe that had overtaken her on them. He’d seen people make stranger connections, and certainly the experience she’d been through was enough to unsettle anyone’s mind.

  And she’d been almost helpless when this thing started.

  She sure isn’t helpless now, Dieter thought. She was still high on the international ‘most wanted’ list. Not that she was known for certain to have actually killed anyone, but she was a very efficient bomber.

  Still, despite the Cyberdyne connection, it wasn’t the first company she’d

  attacked. She’d hit a number of companies around the U.S., all of them specializing in artificial-intelligence research. Most hadn’t been able to start up again.

  Then she escapes from the institution and makes a beeline for Cyberdyne. Why?

  What was different? Dieter thought for a moment. The cop-killer! he thought.

  This time he was with her, fighting for her, not trying to kill her. He rubbed a big hand over his face and frowned. So?

  So this guy disappears completely for ten years, and after killing seventeen cops the dragnet for him was one of the most comprehensive of the twentieth century, then he shows up helping the woman he tried so hard to kill. Did psychotics ever do that? Do a one eighty and suddenly offer succor and support to those they’d once marked for death?

  Well, whether they did or not, that’s what appeared to have happened this time.

  Much to Cyberdyne’s sorrow. So was the Cyberdyne raid just another shot in the dark against the super-computer that Kyle Reese said was going to destroy mankind? Or was it the displacement of Sarah Connor’s guilt onto an innocent corporation?

  Or was Kyle Reese telling the truth?

  Certainly Sarah Connor had been inactive since the Cyberdyne raid— despite the fact that Cyberdyne had started up other facilities. Connor had ignored them.

  This would seem to indicate one of two things. She was dead, or she was convinced that she had destroyed Cyberdyne’s capacity to create that devil computer and was unaware of Cyberdyne’s resurgence.

  And if she did become aware of it?

  A sudden image of Suzanne’s face came into his mind. She looked so much like Sarah Connor. And when she first saw me she ran like a rabbit. And whom did he just happen to resemble? The cop killer. Who, the last time he was on the scene was her friend and helper. So why run?

  “Arrrrggghh!” Dieter rubbed his head vigorously. This was making the inside of his head itch. There was no help for it, he was going to have to confront Suzanne. He reached for the phone and dragged it over. Might as well get it over with.

  WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: THE PRESENT

  Jordan opened the door to find Pat Paulson and two other agents on his doorstep, pizza and six-packs in hand. They crowded in, not even waiting for h
is invitation. The scent of double-cheese-pepperoni-and-anchovies wafted enticingly from the cardboard carton, and he’d just decided to order Italian rather than Chinese.

  “First, we eat,” Paulson said. “Then we pack.”

  Jordan raised his hands helplessly and let them drop.

  “You guys,” he said helplessly, grinning.

  “What, we’re gonna let you do it all yourself?” Pat said.

  “Solidarity!” one of the others cried, and everybody answered, “Unh!”

  “You sound like a union,” Jordan said, laughing. ” And you got anchovies. You never get anchovies when we order pizza.”

  “Hey,” Westin said, popping open a can of beer and handing it to him. “Paulson says you’ve landed this dream job. Make me jealous, tell me everything.”

  So he did. And as Paulson said, they ate, they drank, they packed. As the evening drew to a close he saw that he had very little left to do and he was grateful.

  “Hey, you guys…” He spread his hands. “Thanks.”

  There was a chorus of “Hey, no problem!” and “What are friends for?”

  Jordan shook his head, his grin fading to seriousness.

  “I’m gonna miss you,” he said. And he meant it. Unlike his family, the Bureau had never let him down. But he knew in his heart that Tarissa and Danny would take him back in a minute. Unfortunately it would be difficult, make that probably impossible, to return to the Bureau. And that hurt; it hurt a lot.

  “Aw, you’re gonna have me cryin’ ” O’Hara said, and she hugged him.

  The men shook his hand and Pat hugged him and bussed his cheek loudly. “Oh,”

  she said. “I almost forgot. Dieter von Rossbach called the office today looking for you.”

  “Who?” Jordan asked, frowning.

  “He used to be an agent with the Sector, but now he’s retired. He said he was thinking of writing a book about the Cyberdyne case and he wanted your input.”