by Thomas Locke
“No professional security at all?”
“The woman and the boy act as guards, as I said. This one man who arrived today, he is different. Some do not like him.”
The Prince said, “Tell me of this man.”
“He is quiet, watchful. When he speaks, they all listen.”
“The beautiful lady is his woman?”
“I cannot say.”
The Prince translated again, then added, “So they have one guard who may be a professional, or he may simply have come for a lovely Italian woman. I think we should definitely—”
He was interrupted by the cleaner. When the woman finished speaking, the Prince translated, “She says she wants her daughter. In exchange for the information.”
Montefiori said, “Her daughter dances at our biggest club. This woman pesters me constantly with her pleas.”
“Would the daughter be missed?”
“She has started doping heavily.”
“A pity. Very well. Give this woman what she wants. But—”
The woman wailed so convulsively she toppled from her chair.
“Help her up. Shah, my dear lady, calm yourself. You must do one thing more for us. Montefiori, make certain this happens. Bring the daughter into your personal care. My dear woman, you must stay at the villa until after this is all over and done, do you understand? There can be no surprise at your vanishing, no alarm raised. And when it is over, no concern can fall upon you and thus upon us. Are we clear on this?”
The woman made as to reach out for the Prince’s hand but was kept in the chair by the man who had brought Montefiori.
“Excellent.” He waved the woman away. “Montefiori, please accept my sincere compliments. When you arrived, we all wondered if this would prove to be a waste of time. Instead, we find you are indeed . . .” He turned to his associate and said, “How should we put it?”
The heavyset man replied, “Con una marcia in più.” The expression meant he saw Montefiori as having potential.
The young man’s chest puffed out far enough to strain his suit. “Thank you very much, capo.”
“See this goes well and you shall be rewarded.” The Prince beamed at the room. “I have a very good feeling about this. Very good indeed.”
26
Our job is to make your job possible.”
Charlie had said the words a hundred times. More. They were his standard opening line when dealing with new clients. Gabriella’s scientists were seated around the table in the center of the kitchen, a vast chamber thirty feet long and twenty-five wide. The walls were granite. The floor was polished flagstone. The beamed ceiling was twenty feet high. The lone kitchen window was six feet wide, with panes so old the glass had run.
Sunlight formed a dappled design over the vast iron stove and the copper-rimmed vent and the stone sink and the walk-in fireplace. It was a good room, meant for laughter and family meals and perhaps even a few mountain melodies sung in the regional dialect. Not the frowns and the confusion and the fear that presently encircled the scarred table.
Gabriella’s team had their set stations, like chess pieces upon a half-finished game. Brett was at the opposite end of the table from where Charlie stood. He had the sunlight at his back. His silhouette showed the hunched shoulders and stiff posture of a very angry young man. Or jealous. He snapped, “I don’t know about the others, but I’m not satisfied. I want to know what is happening. I want to know how we’re supposed to get on with our work. What’s the point of our being here at all?”
“You’ll have to cover those issues with your teammates. My one job is to keep you safe. If we are successful, you should be able to ignore us.”
“I’m still trying to figure out whether there’s any real danger.”
Charlie waited. He might as well let the guy go ahead and finish that thought.
Brett glared at Gabriella and said, “As in, why you brought this guy here at all.”
Gabriella stared at her hands on the table. Charlie gave her a minute longer to respond, then addressed the whole group. “There are just three rules you need to keep in mind at all times.”
Brett snorted. “Here we go.”
“Point one: leaving the compound. Everybody needs to be accompanied by one of my team. And you need to make a record in the book that we will put by the front door. You time out, you detail your destination, and you time in. Point two: stay alert. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, tell me or one of my team. Don’t assume you are safe anywhere except inside this house. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t worry about bothering us with details you think probably aren’t important. That’s why I’m here. And point three: if any of you still have cell phones, destroy them. We’ll work out a safe method of communication, probably via an internet cutout.”
“Sounds to me like you’re setting yourself in the spotlight,” Brett said. “Creating danger where there isn’t any.”
“We’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, my job is to give you as much freedom as possible while keeping you safe at all times.”
The two Tibetan ladies, Dor Jen and Daisy, were seated by the cooker. They had their chairs drawn close to one another. Their heads turned in unison, like they were drawn back and forth between Brett and Charlie by the same thread.
Dor Jen asked Charlie, “Do we truly face a threat?”
Brett snorted again.
“I can’t say for certain yet. I hope not.”
Elizabeth, the pharmacologist, sat opposite the two Tibetans. She carried an aura of inapproachability. The chairs to either side of her were empty. “That’s the party line. Now give us the reality check.”
Charlie lifted his cup off the end of the table and sipped cold coffee. He debated replying. He would have preferred to wait until he had a better feel for Gabriella’s team. But they were all watching him now. And building trust depended upon giving them total honesty.
He replied, “You want my opinion? Fine. I think you’re busy running in useless circles. Right now you’re completely focused on a possible danger. Your argument is over me. What this means is you’ve already handed your enemies their first victory.”
The two techies, Milo and Jorge, were seated across the central table from one another. Jorge, the Brazilian, was on Charlie’s left. He was a tall man who held himself with a hunter’s stillness. Milo was smaller, with curly black hair and a lean, expressive face. He smiled at his colleague, who nodded once. A quick gesture, meant only for his pal. But Charlie caught it. And so did Brett. Charlie knew because the silhouette of the man’s body frown grew tighter.
Charlie went on, “To understand your enemy, you have to determine their motive. Their principle aim has nothing to do with you personally. They want to shut you down.”
Jorge’s voice was surprisingly deep. “The man has got a point.”
Brett said, “If this enemy exists at all.”
But they weren’t listening to Brett anymore. Not even the Tibetan ladies glanced his way.
Charlie said, “You need to stop running in place like trapped hamsters and get off that wheel. You’re scientists. You’re on to something big. They’re not after you because of what you’ve done. They want to stop you because of what you represent. What you might do in the future.”
Milo had a teenager’s grin, so big it dominated his face. “All right. This is good.”
“There’s only one way to win. And that’s to let us take care—”
“This is totally insane.” Brett’s chair crashed over. “I can’t believe you’re listening to this drivel.”
Charlie waited while Brett stormed from the room. He gave it another beat, just to make sure no one else chose to follow him. Everyone else stayed where they were, focused intently upon Charlie.
He glanced over to where Irma and Julio were leaning against the wall by the window, almost lost to the shadows. That was fairly astonishing. Charlie had not said anything to them about placement. But somehow they had sensed that there needed to be a
subtle separation between the inner circle and the hired help.
Gabriella said to the group, “Charlie has protected some extremely important people in very dangerous places.”
“Yeah?” Every word Elizabeth spoke carried a combative edge. “Like who?”
Milo was still grinning. “Try Glenda Gleeson.”
“The star?”
“I found the story online. Gleeson took her own security for the UN Goodwill Ambassador gig. She claims this guy saved her life in Darfur.”
Charlie asked, “How important is Brett to your work?”
Gabriella replied to the table by her hands. “Very.”
“Brett has focused on the bioelectrical impulses inside the brain,” Elizabeth said. “He’s interested in how quantum principles might apply to mental states.”
“That means what, exactly?”
Gabriella replied, “Brett is applying chaos theory to my brain-wave observations. There are real-world situations where you can’t predict a certain outcome because of so many different variables. Weather is a perfect example. You can’t state exactly when a hurricane will strike. But chaos theory uses uncertainty formula to calculate the probability of a certain outcome.”
Milo said, “Up to now, all work on replicating brain functionality was restricted to one wave pattern at a time. Otherwise there are simply too many variables. Too much vibratory noise. But the brain never uses just one pattern. That’s why it has been so difficult to replicate a mental or emotional state. Brett theorized that if we could replicate a series of patterns, we could magnify the power of influence over the subject’s mental state. And elevate them more readily.”
Charlie saw Irma and Julio exchange astonished glances, and said, “Amazing.”
But Elizabeth snorted. “You’re all missing the point.”
Gabriella said, “Excuse me?”
“Brett is here because he wants to be a star,” Elizabeth said. “If he came back with the first genuine proof that mental activity is a quantum state and not restricted by Einstein’s concept of time, you know what would happen?”
Jorge nodded slowly. “They would place his name in lights.”
Milo echoed his friend. “His very own slot as a talking head on TV. Maybe even a Nobel.”
Gabriella said, “I never thought of that.”
“Hey, don’t let it bother you. We’ve all got our blind spots.” Elizabeth glared at Charlie. “You never answered my question. How real is the threat?”
Charlie nodded acceptance that the woman would not let him go. “Since meeting you at the Vero hospital, I’ve been chased by two Delta squads disguised in FBI assault uniforms. They attacked my house in force. They were backed by real-time intel. After my first contact with Gabriella, the group I formerly worked for was offered a security contract worth tens of millions of dollars by a member of your opposition.”
A round-eyed Milo asked, “Does the group have a name?”
“I’ve heard them called the Combine. They may bring almost unlimited resources and connections.” Charlie gave that a beat, then finished, “They are real, they are serious, and they are on to you.”
Gabriella said, “But there’s no way they can know where we are.”
Charlie did not respond. His silence spooked the entire table. But he was not going to lie.
Elizabeth asked, “How long do we have?”
“They will want to infiltrate before you have a chance to establish a stronger network of safety.”
“How long?”
“My guess is twenty-four hours. Forty-eight max.”
When he started to leave the kitchen, Gabriella said, “No guns.”
That stopped him. “I’m not sure that’s workable.”
“No guns,” she repeated, using as hard a tone as he had ever heard from her. “The images about this have been extremely vivid. Inflicting death has no part in our project.”
Charlie started to object. But for once, he faced a unified front. Every scientist watched him with the same grave determination. He said to Gabriella, “You and I need to go check out the future.”
27
First Charlie had to go see a guy about a job.
The villa held sixteen bedrooms on the top two floors. Since there were only seven scientists, they all slept on the floor holding the kitchen and the parlor. The upstairs bedrooms were used for monitoring ascents. Almost half the bedrooms, including the extra ones along the servants’ corridor, remained empty.
Brett had naturally taken the largest for himself. The room even had two sets of tall French doors with balconies looking north and east. As Charlie hoped, Brett was seated at his desk. Not packing. Not doing anything.
Charlie did not go hard. He did not push. He took the same tone of voice he’d used a hundred times before. Brett was just another soldier Charlie wanted to re-up. The last thing he could show such a guy was how desperately he was needed.
Charlie said, “I’d appreciate it if you did something for me.”
Brett sneered. “What, now you’re trying to get on my good side?”
“I’m not sure you have one. And if you did, I’m not sure it’d be worth trying to find.”
Brett turned his face back to the grey day beyond his window. “Whatever.”
“Make a list of the top people in your field.”
“What?”
“Biochemistry related to the brain, right? Focus on the ones who are between jobs. Make a check mark by those you feel are most qualified to take your place.”
Brett was watching him now. The fact sank in. “You’re replacing me?”
“I just want to be ready when you cut and run. That’s what you’re sitting here planning to do, right? Leave your teammates at a crucial point and bolt. Show them just how trustworthy you really are.” Charlie stared down at him for a moment, his gaze saying what any officer knew how to communicate without words, which was, There’s more where that came from.
When Brett remained silent, Charlie let himself out.
Either it worked or it didn’t.
The main room they used for ascents was located next to the techies’ chamber, so the monitoring equipment could be wired in and the events recorded. The upstairs rooms were somewhat cramped, with narrow windows and a ceiling that leaned inward to match the roof’s slope. Gabriella clearly had not slept well and still carried traces of that shattered look. When she asked if he would make the ascent for them, Charlie readily agreed.
Gabriella settled the headphones onto his ears and asked, “Can you hear me?”
“Five by five.”
“Shall I close the drapes?”
“No need.” The day had grown darker still. Charlie shifted his weight to fit around a lump in the old mattress. The room smelled of dust and disuse. He had slept almost six hours. Even so, jet lag hovered in the background like a distant fog. “Gabriella, I need to ask about your family.”
Her hands froze on the keyboard. “What about them?”
“Where are they?”
“My mother is an anesthesiologist in Milan. My sister lives in Greece. She is a physiotherapist. Her husband runs one of the big luxury hotels.”
“Can you get your mother to go visit your sister?”
Her eyes widened. “You think she is in danger?”
“If they can’t find you, they might use her to get to you.”
“Mama loves to spend time with the grandchildren. If I ask, she will go.”
“Ask her today.”
“All right.”
“This is important, Gabriella.”
“I said I would do it.” She started typing again. The rushing wind filled Charlie’s ears. “You are entering Base Level now . . .”
Charlie was on the move before she even finished counting.
He could hear her go through the drill—find the next danger, identify the route to safety, stay safe and in control at all times. He registered the words, but in truth he was already gone. Like he shut his eyes and in one
instant he was out there.
The sense of being pulled through a massive vortex of power was constant. The images he received were brilliant flashes, photographic stills etched into his brain with multiple lasers.
When it was over, Charlie flew back into the chamber and inside his body with the same sense of catapulting force.
He gasped and sat up.
“Charlie?”
He swung his legs to the floor and sat there a second. Letting his heart rate settle. Filtering through the images. Setting them into careful order.
“Is everything—”
“They’re coming. Tonight.”
“What?”
He was already up and moving for the door. “Tell everybody to stay indoors. Call your mother. Do it now.”
“Who is coming, Charlie?”
He opened the door and forced himself to slow down to a more acceptable pace. “The enemy doesn’t always need a name.”
28
They met in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse owned by Montefiori’s uncle. The group from Milan drove a black Mercedes S500. Montefiori’s uncle considered such cars a waste of money and an invitation for trouble. Montefiori’s three men sat in an Alfa Romeo sedan. Rain obliterated the night.
Vicenzo, the chief of the Milan crew, rose to stand beside the passenger door and called, “Are we going or not?”
The rain was falling so hard Montefiori had difficulty seeing beyond the car’s headlights. So he walked over to the Mercedes and wiped a space on the front windshield and peered inside. He straightened and said, “There are five of you.”
Vicenzo said, “What do you know, the boy can count. The village schools up here can’t be as bad as they say.”
“The Prince said he was sending two men.”
“Two, five, we’re here and that’s it.”
But that wasn’t it at all. Five men from Milan meant Montefiori’s group was outnumbered. After the deal was done, the Milan crew would take credit for their success. Negotiations would go through Milan. The lion’s share of the booty would stay there.
And now Montefiori was no longer boss.
He stepped away from the Mercedes. “The deal is off.”