She didn’t believe in coincidences.
She stepped into the crowd, her plain clothes allowing her to blend, and her relatively young age not making her stand out too much among what was still mostly students, though there was a significant contingent from the general public now on the periphery, listening earnestly to what those working the crowds had to say.
Their message was getting out.
She glanced at the Senate.
But I doubt it’s getting in there.
She made her way closer to Gadeiros and his wounded companion, when the professor raised his hands, silencing the crowd. “It is time.” And with those few words, the crowd broke, and he and the bandaged man headed for the canal, apparently to catch a transport. The crowd parted, letting their distinguished leader on the platform first, and there would be no way to join him without using her identification and thus defeating the purpose.
She eyed the canal and spotted a small government transport bobbing gently against the stone edge. She rushed toward it and flashed her ID at the pilot. “I need your boat.”
He shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She pointed at the transport ahead of them as it pulled away. “Follow that.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He attached to the powered line and the small craft lurched ahead, sending her tumbling into her seat. She didn’t bother chastising the man, the urgency in her own voice to blame, and instead sat back and enjoyed the ride.
She loved riding the canals, and often wondered what it must have been like before the transportation system had been created. The canals were ancient, but the concept of rapid transit using waterpower instead of manpower, was only about a century old. Massive waterwheels at the end of each line constantly spun, keeping the lines moving at a near steady speed. Leads from the boats were simply clamped on and off, and the boats moved at a reasonable speed that allowed anyone to get pretty much anywhere in the city within half an hour. The worst that ever happened was a line breaking, and there were crews stationed throughout the city to respond immediately. It was an ingenious system that had allowed the city to spread even farther from its core, and had nearly eliminated horses from the streets. She had never ridden one, their numbers now greatly reduced, most relegated to the fields and forests, used for labor rather than transporting people.
The transport slowed ahead, and her pilot disengaged from the powered line, bringing them to a halt along with other boats in the queue. Normally, a boat like this would simply disconnect and glide by, the pilot on the tiller expertly guiding them past, but not today, which made them somewhat conspicuous.
She leaped to her feet, spotting the professor and his companion disembarking. “That’s them.” She stepped onto the platform then rushed up the steps to the main street, searching the crowd in the fading light, soon spotting her subjects. She tailed them through the thinning crowds, the slower pace of the elderly man making her all the more conspicuous, especially after a couple of streets were passed and they were in a residential section. Fortunately, she was trained, and trained well.
She managed to avoid being made, and was soon smiling as the two men entered a rather nice residence, large enough to suggest means, though plain enough to leave little doubt substantial wealth did not live behind the walls. She saw a curtain move, as if someone were checking the street for pursuers, then nothing.
She strode toward the home, casually, its façade directly on the sidewalk, as were all the homes along this street, any courtyard to be found in the back. She slowed to as relaxed a pace as she could without being obvious, and strained to hear any voices from inside.
And had to suppress a smile at the first words she heard.
“I was beginning to worry!”
“Ampheres, my old friend, you have bigger things to worry about than my wellbeing.”
Kleito didn’t bother listening to any more. She had them. But she was only one, and she had no idea how many lay beyond that door. She noted the address, then headed for the canal and its MessageStream. A few minutes later, she removed her Enforcer key from around her neck and unlocked the emergency access point. She quickly scrawled a note, then rolled it up, placing it into the brightly colored emergency tube, then dropped it into the fast flowing water. She closed the access hatch then locked up the station, rushing back toward her target’s hideout.
Backup will be here soon!
29
East of the Azores, Atlantic Ocean
Present Day
Gavin Thatcher smiled at the others as they gathered for lunch. “We did good today, my friends. Very soon, when people bury themselves behind their phones, they’re going to discover that they can’t contact a lot of their friends, that things just might get so slow it won’t be worth trying, and when our bots finish their job, our message to the world will be the number one most trending video on every single social media network.”
“From your lips to God’s ears!” Giselle raised her glass and grinned. “And hopefully She’s listening!”
Thatcher laughed then raised his glass. “Hopefully!” He took a drink then sighed. “I never thought we’d see the day.” He raised his glass again. “To Mr. Kozhin, the reason we’ve been able to do so much!” The glasses were raised again, though not as enthusiastically. His eyes narrowed as he looked about the table at the people he considered his closest friends in the world. “What’s wrong?”
Giselle lowered her chin, her eyes darting about the room. “Well, umm, I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but can we trust this guy?”
Thatcher’s eyebrows rose, and he motioned at their surroundings. “Without him, we’d have none of this. We’d still be sitting in your flat, wondering what we could do with no resources to change the world.”
She nodded. “Yes, well, while I don’t deny that, just think about it. We’re talking about a man who obviously has a lot of money, and clearly questionable friends.”
Thatcher’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Giselle leaned forward, staring at him. “Ahh, hello? Explosives? Detonators? How the hell did he get those things? We were so eager to accomplish our goals, we never sat back and asked whether the price was worth it. We know almost nothing about this guy, and beyond that first meeting in Manchester, none of us has even talked to him in months.”
Thatcher raised a finger. “I’ve talked to him almost every day.”
“Yes, and that’s all well and good, but you’ve been so blinded by this opportunity, have you even stopped to think about it for a moment?” She pointed out a porthole. “Hell, we’ve taken prisoners today! And to top it off, you left them with two morons!”
Tarrell Fleming grunted. “Better than having those idiots handling the explosives.”
Chuckles reluctantly emerged around the table at the muttered comment, and Thatcher smiled. “They’ll be safe, don’t worry. As soon as our message is delivered and the explosives are detonated, they’ll be set free, since it will be too late.”
“But they can identify us!”
Thatcher shrugged. “So? We all approved the message I recorded, and it names our organization. We haven’t exactly kept a low profile on the Internet. The authorities are going to identify us regardless, and probably within minutes. They’ll eventually capture us, and when they do, it will give us another platform in which to spread our message. If we pull this off, and detonate all these transatlantic cables, our arrests will be front-page news for weeks, and our trials will be for months. People will be forced to listen to our message, and the governments won’t be able to stop us.”
Giselle frowned, her shoulders slumping as she leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I guess part of me just hoped we’d get away with it.”
Thatcher shrugged. “Who knows, maybe we will. We’re not exactly going to hand ourselves over, are we?”
The comm panel on the wall squelched. “Thatch, I’ve got a strange call for you.”
Thatcher’s eyebrows s
hot up as he rose and pressed the talk button. “Who is it?”
“They’re claiming to be from some university, looking for two missing professors.”
Thatcher tensed as faces around the room paled. “Wh-what have you told them?”
“Nothing, I said I’d see if you were available.”
His heart hammered hard. “Did you give them my name?”
There was a pause. “I-I might have said ‘Captain Thatcher.’”
He closed his eyes as his pulse pounded in his ears. “Put them through.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was another squelch.
“This is the Captain.”
“Hi, Captain Thatcher”—his head slumped—“my name is Chris Leroux. I’m calling from St. Paul’s University in Maryland. We had two of our colleagues diving in your area this morning, and they’re now missing. We were wondering if you might have seen anything.”
Thatcher forced several deep, slow breaths. “I’m, uhh, not sure why you think we would have.”
“Well, they were in the same area you were this morning.”
Thatcher’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know where we were?”
“Oh, nothing clandestine, I assure you. The dive shop noticed your boat in the same area, and provided the name of the vessel. Then it’s just a few quick calls to actually reach you. So, did you see anything that might help us?”
Thatcher leaned his head against the cold metal wall, his eyes closed. “No, I’m afraid we didn’t.”
“Okay, thanks for your help. Leroux, out.”
A final squelch signaled the end of the call, and Thatcher slowly returned to his seat.
“What the hell just happened?” asked Giselle.
Thatcher shook his head. “I’m not sure, but there’s no way that was a university looking for their people.”
Giselle stared at him. “What makes you say that?”
“Because it’s only been a few hours. There’s no way they should even know they’re missing yet.”
30
Operations Center 3, CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Leroux turned toward Randy Child. “So?”
Child spun in his chair, a hand raised in the air, a finger pointing at the ceiling. “He’s lying!” He dropped a foot, bringing his spin to a halt, then pointed at the display showing the stress indicators in “Captain Thatcher’s” voice. “He was definitely lying about something, and since you pretty much asked him only one thing, I think it’s safe to say he knows what happened to the professors.”
Leroux agreed. “That’s my read too.” He pointed at the boat. “Okay, run down everything you can on that boat, and see what we can find about this Captain Thatcher.” He turned to Sonya Tong. “Any luck in Portugal?”
She nodded. “I’ve got them getting into a vehicle. I ran the plates and it belongs to an ex-pat named Zek Gerald, currently residing in Portugal. I’m running him down now.”
“Excellent work as usual.”
Tong blushed, her crush on her boss apparently still in full bloom.
“As soon as Agent Reading lands, get that intel to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door to the ops center hissed open and National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison rushed in, staring at the displays then turning to Leroux. “Are you still working on the missing professors?”
“Yes, sir. Making some progress, too.”
Morrison waved a hand. “Leave it with your team, I need you.”
Leroux’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”
“Something big. Priority briefing with the White House, right now. I want you there.”
Leroux gulped. “Umm, okay.” He followed Morrison toward the door. “What’s it about?”
“We just received a ransom demand, and I need to know if it’s complete bullshit, or if what they’re threatening is actually possible.”
31
East of the Azores, Atlantic Ocean
Thatcher and the others sat around the table, an array of laptops opened and connected via satellite to the main news sites around the world, along with constantly refreshed Facebook and Twitter trending lists.
And nothing was happening.
“Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?”
Thatcher nodded at Giselle. “I would have thought so. When I spoke to Kozhin and told him we had finished, he said he’d be sending our message shortly, then detonating all the charges.”
“Maybe we should go back, see if it detonated.”
Thatcher shook his head vigorously at Giselle’s suggestion. “Absolutely not! If it did go off, then us sailing back into the area will just deliver us into the hands of the authorities, and if it didn’t, then something has gone wrong, and perhaps the authorities are already there.”
Tarrell Fleming jabbed a finger at the comm panel. “I think that guy who called you is behind this. I bet he was CIA or something.”
Thatcher gave him a look. “Riiight. The CIA is looking for two missing professors. That makes absolutely no sense.”
Fleming shrugged. “Well, whoever he was, knows your name, so you better hope he doesn’t pass it on to the authorities.”
Thatcher tensed and everyone at the table tore their eyes away from their screens, staring at him.
Giselle cleared her throat. “Maybe we should let them go? That way whoever it was will have no reason to keep asking questions?”
Fleming dismissed her suggestion with a derisive grunt. “They were still kidnapped! There’s going to be questions, no matter what. We can’t let them loose until we know the charges have detonated, and the message has been delivered, so that way they can’t stop us.”
Thatcher closed his eyes, his optimism rapidly draining. Something was definitely wrong. If the cables had been detonated, and the message delivered as Kozhin had promised, then they should have heard something by now. He stood.
“I’m calling Kozhin.”
32
Conference Room 212, CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Leroux sat against the wall, only the senior staff sitting at the table, a grid of monitors showing dozens of other faces jacked into the meeting with the senior administration officials, the big man himself absent.
White House Chief of Staff Nelson kicked things off. “For those of you who are unaware, we received this message only minutes ago.”
The displays switched to show the silhouette of a man’s face, superimposed on an image of an underwater scene showing several people doing something to what appeared to be a cable of some sort. A computerized voice spoke.
“This message is for the American President. Over the past week, teams under our employ, have placed explosive charges on over a dozen transatlantic data cables. These charges are large enough to completely sever the connections, and severely inhibit the ability of North America and Europe to communicate electronically. Should you doubt our sincerity, please check the status of the TAT-14 cable. You will find it was destroyed at the same time this message was sent.”
The image paused, and Nelson appeared for a moment on the screen. “We have confirmed that this connection has been severed, though we don’t have confirmation yet that it was physically severed or if this is some sort of digital block.”
The silhouette reappeared, the recording resuming. “I won’t bother explaining all the ramifications, as I’m sure you have experts who can explain them to you. The repair of these cables will take time, and will be quite expensive, however the damage to your economies will be in the billions. Again, you have experts who can explain this to you.” The silhouette moved closer, revealing no additional identifying details. “Our demands are simple, and a mere token compared to the true cost to your economies. You have two hours from the time this message was sent, to transfer one billion American dollars into the account number we have attached to this message. If we do not have the full amount in our account within two hours, we will detonate
another cable, and the price will double. Another two hours, and the process repeats, and the price again doubles. We highly suggest you don’t delay, as quite quickly the price will rise to an amount even you can’t hide from the public. Oh, and Mr. President, if you try to disarm any of the bombs, I will know, and the price will again double.”
The message ended, and the display returned to the grid of attendees. Leroux was already firing a message to Randy Child when Morrison leaned back in his chair and turned toward him. “What do you think?”
Leroux’s phone vibrated.
Confirmed.
“I’ve just confirmed the cable is down. I think we have to take him seriously.”
Somebody overheard him. “What if it’s only one cable? And what if it’s just a hack?”
Morrison leaned forward, addressing the room. “How long will it take to determine how the cable was severed?”
“It depends on where the break happened,” replied somebody from the monitors.
Leroux cleared his throat. “We should be able to quickly determine where the break is—that capability is built into the system. Then a visual inspection should confirm the method.”
Somebody guffawed. “You do realize how long that cable is? How deep it is? Who is this idiot?”
Leroux’s cheeks and ears burned. Morrison glared at the monitors. “That idiot is a hell of a lot smarter than you could ever dream of being, Director. I suggest you listen to him, because one day he’s probably going to be sitting in this seat.” Leroux flushed even more. Morrison turned to him. “You were saying?”
Leroux’s mouth was suddenly dry, but he pushed through. “Unless we’re dealing with someone who has access to a military grade submarine, then I doubt we’re talking significant depths here. And if we aren’t, then the device shouldn’t have been placed too far from shore. Once we determine where the break occurred, I’m guessing local authorities could be on site before the deadline.”
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