by Ward Larsen
Meeting Ed Murch and his sister had been a pleasant diversion, and acquiring a car under such simple circumstances was a godsend. He had ample cash to see him through the coming days, and a vehicle that could not be traced to him. DeBolt suspected things were about to get more difficult.
When he passed through a place called Columbia Falls, his connection strengthened, and a new idea came to mind. He had requested a locator history on Joan Chandler’s phone, and gotten it, albeit a day late. Why not check my own phone? Voice mail, email, messages—perhaps there was something to advance his cause. At the very least, he might hear a familiar voice. He uploaded the request, and it seemed to process. The delay this time was only sixty seconds:
3 NEW VOICE MAILS
He tried to select them, and got the response:
AUDIO DISABLED
STANDBY
What on earth did that mean? DeBolt was wondering if there was some kind of audio capability in his new cranial system when the voice mails arrived in transcript format. The first two were anticlimactic—his mother’s nursing home thanking him for a donation he’d made, and a reminder for a dental appointment he’d missed because he was dead.
The last one caused his heart to miss a beat:
TREY, IT’S SHANNON LUND, KODIAK CGIS. I KNOW YOU’RE STILL OUT THERE. CALL ME.
* * *
“Another, monsieur?” said the sommelier.
“Yes,” said Atif Patel, “but no more until my guest arrives.” His glass came full with the rich Rhône garnacha, and without so much as a sniff he sucked down a great gulp.
Restaurant Ville was ten miles west of Vienna, along the A1 West Autobahn near Pressbaum. Patel had chosen it for his meeting with General Benefield because it was one of the few things he could control. The place was small, with a subdued atmosphere and, more relevantly, served some of the most varied and exotic cuisine in Austria. Not that the general was a connoisseur of fine dining. To the contrary, he was, as they said in America, a meat-and-potatoes guy. Restaurant Ville would do its small part to keep the man off kilter.
Patel had arrived thirty minutes early, but was shown to a table in spite of it. The general was now thirty minutes late. In that time Patel had kept the sommelier busy—only, he told himself, to appease the staff in light of his protracted use of the table. He turned his glass by its base, spinning an endless circle. His eyes bounced between his Timex and the room around him. The place was busy. He saw staunch business meetings where profits were being toasted, and other tables where happy couples celebrated … whatever happy couples celebrated. Patel had never found the time to marry, much to his mother’s despair, but he thought he might manage it someday. Perhaps even a child or two. He was still young, having only recently eclipsed thirty. The problem was that in his field, youth was reserved for making one’s professional mark. The good news—success was imminent. This Patel knew with absolute conviction.
He had just emptied his third glass when the general appeared. He wasn’t in uniform, of course. Benefield unfailingly dressed in what he called “civvies” when he traveled overseas. He’d once explained that it was actually a higher headquarters directive—in too many foreign countries, terrorists, kidnappers, and political protestors would salivate at the sight of a flag officer of the United States military in full regalia.
Benefield saw him right away, and he ignored the maître d’ and charged across the room as if assaulting a pillbox. Patel rose and took a bricklayer’s handshake.
“My flight was late,” said Benefield. It was as close to an apology as Patel had ever gotten. As soon as they were seated, the waiter appeared—one of his best tables had been occupied for an hour with but three drinks to show for it. Benefield didn’t even look at the menu—a disappointment for Patel—but simply told the man to bring him the biggest steak in the house, medium rare. That was exactly how he said it, in blunt American English, and Patel thought he might have heard a tsk from the waiter. He himself ordered the six-course special, and the waiter was gone.
“There’s been an accident,” Benefield said, never one to bog down in pleasantries when business was at hand.
Patel hesitated before replying. “What kind of accident?”
“A fire in the operations center—it was catastrophic. We lost the entire team.”
“What?” Patel went ashen. “Lost as in—”
“Yes,” said the general impatiently. “Everyone was inside during a shift change. There were no survivors.” Benefield said nothing for a time, letting it sink in.
“Howard? And Ann Dorsett?”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you personally—I know you were close to many of them.”
“Dear God … when did this happen?”
“Yesterday. I don’t have many details yet, but apparently everyone was overtaken by some kind of toxic smoke. The facility is a total loss.”
Patel set his fingers very deliberately on his silverware. He stared at the empty bread plate in front of him.
“I’m afraid there’s more,” said the general. “This will cast everything in a very bright light—something you and I knew from the beginning that the META Project could never survive. Not without putting both our careers at risk. That being the case, I’ve decided to shut it down.”
“You can’t be serious!” said Patel incredulously. “Not after so much work!”
“I’m sorry, but my decision is final. I’ve already informed our overseers at DARPA. Aside from a wind-down account, funding has been zeroed.”
The diminutive programmer stared pleadingly at the soldier, and got a predictably iron gaze in return.
“I’ll carve out a good severance for you from the budget,” said Benefield. “A man of your talents will have no trouble finding new research.”
“It’s not that,” said Patel. “What we’ve put into place is so … so unique, so groundbreaking. META is a visionary concept. The government access you worked so hard to attain might never be repeated. Who can say when such an opportunity will come again?”
“I understand your frustration. If one of the subjects had survived the neural implantations, even without achieving a network … maybe we could have made a case.”
“None of the original subjects were expected to survive—all were terminal cases from the outset. Phase two might bring success.”
“Atif, you know we’ve put ourselves on extremely delicate ground. Terminal or not, we subjected live human beings—service members, for God’s sake—to extremely invasive surgery. In my opinion, META is as much a breakthrough in ethics as it is in technology, but the risks going forward were simply too great. Which leads me to something else. You said there would be a way to wipe the servers clean of your control architecture—some kind of abort code to erase the highest level software. We can’t just leave something like that lying around like an unexploded bomb.”
“We didn’t get past phase one, so the software never activated. I don’t see any harm in leaving it in place.”
“That,” Benefield said decisively, “is out of the question. We have to be very careful in shutting things down. The software code you inserted must disappear—it’s the only way to be sure the more delicate aspects of META can never be traced back to us.”
“All right,” Patel relented, “I will take care of it.”
“No, Atif—I need to take care of it. I worked very hard to get unprecedented access. The host agency only agreed, only gave us that autonomy, because I guaranteed that I would have a kill switch. Since we never reached phase three, I never bothered to ask you for it. But now we’re aborting, and only I have the security clearances necessary to initiate the termination.”
Patel sighed. “Yes, there is a special sequence of commands. It requires a series of codes.”
“Do you have them memorized?”
Patel might have laughed if the situation weren’t so delicate. Those who were not brilliant gave great credit to those who were. Sometimes too much. “I will return from the c
onference next week. When I get back to Washington—”
“No!” Benefield said, chopping his hand down on the table like a blade. He whispered in a venomous tone, “I need them now!”
“All right. But I would never keep anything so critical on my laptop—it will take time for me to retrieve the codes securely. Even then, I’ll need help from my liaison on the server end.”
The general seemed to look right through him. Or perhaps into him. Patel held steady.
“All right,” said Benefield. “We’ll meet again tomorrow evening. Have them by then.”
Dinner was an afterthought for both men. Benefield seemed content, devouring a massive slab of beef. Patel mostly spun his fork, nibbling at three of his six courses. In the end, the general paid and they walked outside.
“Where are you staying?” Patel asked.
“The Grand Hotel Vienna—it’s not far from the Hilton. I took a cab here.”
“I have a rental,” said Patel. “Can I give you a lift back to town?” There was little invitation in his voice.
Benefield smiled congenially.
23
Lund was on a private mission to cook more at home, shunning the caloric content of restaurant food. To that end, she created time each day for a trip to the grocery store in search of something fresh. Today it was a halibut fillet that would carry her through two nights. She’d just dropped the fish into her cart, and was turning toward the produce department, when her mobile rang.
The number didn’t register as known, but she picked up all the same. “Hello?”
“Hi, Shannon … it’s Trey DeBolt.”
Lund froze in the middle of the seafood aisle. “Trey … well, hi. I’m really glad you called.” She heard him expel a long breath. “Are you okay? Last time I saw you … I mean, when you left here, you weren’t doing so hot.”
“Still kicking,” he said.
Lund had heard that one before—a rescue swimmer’s response. “Look, I know we only met once, but do you remember me?”
“Sure I remember. You interviewed me at the Golden Anchor about that drunk skipper who lost his boat.”
“That’s right.”
“There was almost one other time,” he added. “You were at Monk’s Rock Coffee House … I saw you talking to another guy, so I didn’t want to bother you.”
Lund racked her brain, trying to remember. “Okay, right, a couple of months ago. I was with Jim Kalata, the petty officer who works in my office. He and I make up CGIS Kodiak. I wish you had come over.”
DeBolt said nothing for a time. The small talk was clearly awkward for them both. “Anyway,” he finally said, “it’s good to hear a familiar voice. When I got your message it surprised me. I guess it means you’ve been looking for me.”
“I have.”
A hesitation. “Can you tell me why?”
“Trey—”
“The reason I ask,” he interrupted, “is because some other people are looking for me. They’ve already tried to kill me twice.”
“What?”
“I watched them gun down a woman in cold blood. Now they’re after me.”
Lund wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Look, I know this sounds crazy … like I’m some paranoid lunatic. But there’s a lot going on, and … and I don’t know who to trust.”
Lund sensed an edge in his voice, and she tried to place it. Fear? Anxiety? Whatever it was, he sounded nothing like the easygoing, confident young man she’d had a beer with at the Golden Anchor. Lund was deliberately calm with her response. “Who are they, Trey?” she asked, caring less about his answer than his reaction.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure they’re under DOD, but I have no idea which branch.”
“DOD?” Lund struggled for another calm reply, something logical and full of assurance. Nothing came to mind.
“Sounds delusional, doesn’t it? The government is out to get me. I don’t know how to make you understand what’s happened. I wish I could, Shannon. I wish someone could explain everything to me and…” His voice went hollow and trailed off.
“Maine,” she said. “I can come to Maine.”
“What? Christ, you’re triangulating this call! You’re tracking it to tell them where I am! I’m outta here—”
“No, I swear I’m not, Trey! Please don’t hang up! I got a call from a detective, a place called Washington County. He called me because he’d discovered you were stationed at Kodiak—he said you were implicated in a case he was investigating there.” Lund waited, not breathing. The disconnecting click didn’t come.
“Implicated in what?”
“There was an explosion—a cottage along the coast blew up from a gas leak. They found fingerprints in the wreckage and got a match to yours, what the Coast Guard has on file. This detective saw right away that you were listed as deceased, but he was trying to figure out why you’d been to the cottage. He seemed to think the blast was suspicious.”
“Suspicious? That’s putting it mildly. I know exactly who was responsible—the same men who are trying to kill me. They did it to destroy any traces of their murder.”
For the first time Lund sensed a thread of reason, slim as it might be. That was good, because otherwise DeBolt was right—what he was telling her sounded delusional.
“But you left a voice mail I could access,” he said. “You didn’t believe I was dead. Why?”
She explained that she’d gone to his apartment and seen things that didn’t add up. She told him about the med-evac flight that never went to Anchorage.
“So that’s how I got here,” he said, “a private jet. I never even knew. I have a hazy recollection of being in a hospital, but the first thing I remember for sure is waking up in Joan’s cottage. That was her name, Joan Chandler—she was a nurse. Look it up. Now she and her house are both gone.”
“Excuse me!”
Lund turned and realized she was blocking the aisle, a stern-faced woman trying to get by. She steered her cart to one side, then leaned forward on the push handle.
“Trey, I’d really like to help you. But whatever else is happening, I can’t ignore the fact that you’re AWOL right now. For God’s sake, think about it … the Coast Guard, your commander, your friends. They all think you’re dead.”
Another silence. “Maybe I am.”
“Trey, I want to help you.”
“Let me guess—I should proceed to the nearest Coast Guard facility and turn myself in? Look, I know it’s part of your job to track down AWOLs, but I’m not some E-3 who’s running from a child support payment or who got caught in a drug deal. You know the condition I was in after that accident—I did not leave Kodiak of my own free will.”
“I understand that.”
“My life was taken from me! And … and there’s something else, Shannon. Something that overshadows the very fact that I’m alive. I don’t know how to explain it, but believe me when I say I can never go back to Kodiak or the Coast Guard. I can never be what I was. In that hospital—they changed me.”
“Who changed you? How?”
Silence.
“Trey, I only want to help!”
“They gave me an ability to do things, Shannon. Things you could never imagine. A few days ago I wouldn’t have thought what’s happened to me is possible. It’s a curse more than anything. The whole world is mine for the taking, yet at the same time I feel … I feel so damned isolated.”
Lund didn’t know how to respond. She felt like a crisis counselor. He wasn’t making sense, sounding more unbalanced by the moment. Was it the damage to his brain? she wondered. The ensuing silence stretched too long, and she felt him slipping away. “Trey, I’m coming to help you. I’ll be on the next flight. I want you to go to Boston, meet me there tomorrow.”
No response.
“Trey, I won’t ask where you are, and I won’t tell anyone I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I will be in Boston, whether you like it or not. You have my numbe
r, call me tomorrow.”
Silence.
“Trey, please! Sooner or later you have to trust someone.”
A click, followed by silence. Lund stood still, but only for a moment. She left her cart and her fish where they were. By the time she reached the parking lot Lund was already talking to Alaska Airlines.
24
DeBolt turned off the burner phone and set it on the Buick’s passenger seat. The car was parked on a dirt pad along the remote road he’d been navigating. Straight lines had gradually surrendered to casual curves, and the forest had gone thick. The hills here were more demanding, the air still and noticeably cooler. Sharply angled shafts of light cut through a high canopy of maple and aspen, accentuating shadows on the road before him.
The hospital where Joan Chandler had worked, according to the tracking data on her phone, was half a mile in front of him. It had been ten minutes since he’d left Route 9, and in that time DeBolt had seen only one other vehicle, an official-looking sedan with a state-issued license plate—a plate he should have run, he realized only after the car was gone. Would his abilities ever become second nature?
He looked up and down the road, and tried to imagine why anyone would put a hospital in such a remote location. There wasn’t a town within miles. The only answer he could think of was reinforced by the government car he’d seen leaving. Was this a DOD facility of some kind? Intentionally remote to be out of public view?
DOD.
In spite of the remoteness, his prepaid phone had a good signal here, and he had parked the car wanting to give full attention to his call to Lund. It felt good to hear a familiar voice, and while he couldn’t say she was on his side, DeBolt felt reasonably sure Lund wasn’t part of the threat. He supposed he could research her later, find out everything possible about Shannon Lund of Kodiak, Alaska. And if he saw no red flags? Would he do as she asked and go to Boston? His mood took a downswing when he remembered what happened to the last person he’d trusted—Joan Chandler.