by I C Cosmos
She wished she could wash the sticky cloak of duplicity away, but the ancient shower produced merely a trickle of lukewarm water. Helen rushed to get out of the room, not wanting to spend another minute there, feeling unsafe.
She checked out and left the hotel, her senses absorbing the pine-scented air, the lively birdsong, the serenity of the mild breeze, the dramatic panorama. She paused to cherish the moment as if it were her last.
“Is this it?” she whispered, the enormity of her situation weighing on her mind, the key fob burning in the palm of her hand.
No! I am not done yet!
She continued to the car.
Nuoro
Nic’s bomb detection app came back clean, but Helen’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest when she pressed the key fob regardless. She drove slowly down the mountain to Nuoro, thankful the Mercedes didn’t explode.
She parked near the center and walked along Corso Garibaldi, passing black-shawled elderly women and small groups of teenagers thumbing their phones. Her destination was Caffè Tettamanzi, one of the oldest establishments in town, which used to be popular with writers.
Nuoro, the birthplace of the Nobel Prize winner for literature Grazia Deledda, had a long history of being Sardinia’s cradle of arts and literature. Caffè Tettamanzi, with its antique mirrors, a ceiling painted with cherubs, and a collection of old books, lived up to the tradition.
Helen selected a place in the back of the café and sipped her coffee as if it were a lifesaving elixir, feeling the fog lift from her mind.
On second look, her situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed when she woke up.
So far, all Operation Sardegna assignments were successfully completed, the outcomes documented and ready to be compiled into a final report for the Consortium. The data had been encrypted and stored in three super-secure places only Helen could access.
She had bots to handle the annoying rogue units, the process mostly automated.
Nic had left her the Mercedes and the unit that connected her with the Consortium, thus she was mobile and able to receive and carry out new assignments.
But two questions remained. If something unexpected happened on the “battlefield,” would she be able to handle it on her own? And what was Nic up to? Why did he quit?
Helen was confident about handling the super-phones—friendly, rogue, or insurgent. But Nic was a huge unknown. He had designed the system and could hack in and sabotage future operations without breaking a sweat.
Is Nic friendly or unfriendly?
Helen opened a secure document on her phone and typed in whatever she could recall about Nic’s behavior that triggered her attention. His obsession with having a good cover, his brilliant stealthiness, his never-ending irritability, not shaving. Refusing to report the rogue units because “it’s better if no one knows that we know.”
The more she wrote, the more scenes were replaying behind her eyes.
“Where would you go if you wanted to disappear?”
“Keep the ring on. Always. And never give it back.”
“I’ll never marry a woman.”
“My dad is a fraud… Well, he’s not my dad, really… He is one of them… Betrayed me. Us.”
Helen sat back and reread her notes. There must be a pattern in it somewhere.
Nic’s unit lit up. The Consortium was back in action.
>> Olbia. Museo Archeologico Nazionale. 13:30 tomorrow.
Your objective is to infiltrate and disrupt.
Good! She was in business. And had more than a day to regroup and prepare for the next action. Operation Sardegna started in Olbia and perhaps would end in Olbia, a little fishing village that had become Sardinia’s busiest ferry port.
Olbia meant “happy,” and Helen hoped for a happy ending after all.
She confirmed that she received the message and looked up, ready to leave the café. Her eyes fell on a figure standing under the massive arch that framed the bar section of Caffè Tettamanzi.
Heavy boots, black pants, aviators dangling from the unbuttoned placket of a black polo.
Olbia, Sardinia
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Olbia
Helen held her breath, lips rolled in tightly.
This isn’t a test.
A fierce alarm buzzed through her mind. This wasn’t a stupid field trial. This was the real thing! But it felt as nightmarish as the trial in Stockholm.
It had all started innocently with a scheduled session of the Project’s undercover team testing legitimate units. Helen had been sitting on the top floor of the National Archaeological Museum of Olbia, feeling good about having the session under control on her own.
Then the rogue disruptors jumped in and almost obscured a string of critical messages. Helen felt lucky she didn’t miss them in the chaos. It was definitely a live operation in progress, orchestrated by the rogues.
The orders flying between their hot units were directing a terrorist to drive a car loaded with explosives onto a ferry.
Helen infiltrated the exchange and instructed the terrorist to drive the car to the container parking lot instead and stay there. That done, she sent several text messages to the local police department, complaining about suspicious activity taking place at the terminal and giving them the exact location of the car.
She let out a sigh of relief when she finally heard sirens wailing and saw several police cars speeding to the terminal and blocking the way to the boats. She left the museum and walked slowly to her hotel, shaking inside. A TV crew rushing to the scene passed her on the way.
Helen made it to her room and turned on the TV. The woman reporting from the harbor didn’t yet know what was going on. The information slowly dribbled in over the next half hour. Carabinieri and antiterrorism units on the site…explosives detected…a suspect apprehended while running from the car… Ferry to Livorno not departing until it was thoroughly checked, the authorities not taking any risks given the more than two thousand people on board.
The young officer who ran after and arrested the terrorist came on, gesticulating excitedly, saying that the guy had tried to escape while screaming that there was a bomb in the car. The officer was treated like a hero who’d saved the lives of thousands of people, a lot of them children.
Nic’s unit lit up. The Consortium had sent new orders.
>> Board the 14:45 ferry to Livorno tomorrow. Vehicle included. Debriefing upon arrival.
Helen frowned. The same ferry the car bomb was meant for today. She wasn’t looking forward to being stuck for seven hours on the Tyrrhenian Sea, vulnerable. Too vulnerable. She wished she could fly off the island immediately.
A beep appeared on her signal locator. It was one of the rogue units. A second unit joined. Helen tuned in. Her hotel…black two-seater Mercedes…her license plate. Helen froze. Someone was planning to put a bomb in her car.
She made sure that the communication was being recorded and the mini cameras she’d mounted on the Mercedes were engaged. Then she hacked into the security camera under which she’d parked the Mercedes in the hotel’s car park.
Keeping an eye on the rogues, she called room service, ordered a salad and a pot of coffee, and went to work, ready for a long night.
Olbia
The next morning
Helen slipped from her room and went two floors down using the stairs. She was unrecognizable, wearing heavily rimmed eyeglasses, an auburn wig cut into a tight bob with long bangs obscuring her eyebrows, and a shapeless dress with a large floral pattern.
Still, she wasn’t taking any chances. The hotel corridors had no cameras, but the elevators did. And so did the staircase entry next to the reception desk. Taking the elevator from a different floor was her best bet to slip out unnoticed.
Helen made sure that no one had seen her entering the lower floor, and pushed the elevator button. The carriage stopped with a thump, and Helen stepped in without making eye contact with the family that nearly filled it with their luggage. Against all odds, a co
uple with bulky backpacks squeezed in on the next floor. Helen took a deep breath when the door opened in front of reception, relieved that the elevator didn’t get stuck. Hunching her shoulders, she walked slowly to the front of the hotel and blended with tourists waiting for the shuttle to the ferry terminal.
The unbecoming appearance made her “invisible,” but Helen was on high alert, systematically scanning everyone around her and burning their faces into her memory. The shuttle arrived and, after a short, uneventful ride, stopped at the terminal. The long line of cars in front of the boat moved, signaling that the 7:30 a.m. to Civitavecchia, Rome’s ferry port, was boarding.
Helen patiently shuffled forward with the dense line of passengers traveling on foot, her heart beating uncontrollably. She relaxed slightly when she cleared the ticket booth and proceeded to the café on the highest deck of the ferry and ordered a cappuccino. She sipped it slowly until the giant horns blasted and the boat departed the dock. But she wasn’t in the clear yet. The journey to Civitavecchia would be the longest five and half hours of her life.
In spite of her disguise, she felt exposed and trapped. Leaving Sardinia on a ferry turned her into a sitting duck, but it was her only option. Flying was out of the question because she wouldn’t clear security unnoticed, and staying on the island wasn’t a viable alternative either.
Her fingers were itching to engage her apps, but she’d turned all her devices off and taken out their batteries in the hotel. Staying off the radar was her highest priority. She bought Vogue and flipped through the pages distractedly.
Having so much time to immerse herself in the world of fashion, interior design, and the latest buzz would have been a cherished luxury under other circumstances, but Helen was too tense to enjoy it now. Her mind kept replaying the last several days, trying to make sense of the events.
She wished she could sort and analyze the data she’d collected in Sardinia and finalize her report, but that too would have to wait until she was safely in Rome. At ten thirty Helen stood up and walked outside. It was a gray, foggy day, and the deck looked spooky as most passengers stayed inside. Helen returned to the café, focused on maintaining her calm appearance.
By now the Olbia police should have received Helen’s video showing two thugs, supervised by the aviator man, putting a bomb in the Mercedes.
Nerves stretched to the limit, Helen bought more fashion magazines and forced herself to read them, her eyes darting to the TV screens. Almost five hours into the ferry ride, the local channel reported that another bomb had been found in Olbia, showing Helen’s hotel, the car park, and the Mercedes. The message spread through the boat like a wildfire.
Clutching their phones, people couldn’t wait to the leave the ferry and rushed out as soon as it arrived in Civitavecchia, some of them leaving their cars behind.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Helen slipped off the boat, shocked by the last image she saw on the local TV station.
A photo of Nic, presented as a fugitive responsible for planting the bombs.
Washington, DC
The library
Ten days later
Icy chilliness that had nothing to do with air-conditioning permeated the library.
“I said from day one that Helen and Nic were the weakest links in the chain.”
“Should have disposed of them a long time ago.”
“They totally threw off our launch schedule.”
“And now Nic disappeared without a trace and she is playing games with us.”
“We shouldn’t be negotiating with her. It’s crazy.”
“You are all wrong.” An angry sweep of a hand turned on the private lamp and revealed a delicate face framed by perfectly coiffed brunette hair. Moira.
Deadly silence magnified the cold tension of the room.
“Let’s don’t forget that Helen did exactly what we asked her to do,” Moira said.
“She didn’t board the ferry to Livorno.”
“Because a bomb was planted in her car. Her response was more than adequate.”
“She should have informed us.”
“She was under strict don’t-call-us-we-call-you orders.” Moira was unrelenting.
More silence followed.
“The thing is—we assumed Helen would not be able to handle the assignment on her own.” A mellow voice commanded attention. “Had she failed, the ferry would have exploded, hundreds of people would have died, the media wouldn’t have talked about anything else for days, and we could have ridden the wave of fear to launch Total Protection as planned.”
“Yeah, Helen surely surpassed our expectations.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Moira jumped in, ignoring the sarcasm. “We should be using her expertise to our advantage. Let her develop new artificial intelligence for us and train people to use it.”
“What’s to our advantage is keeping her from disclosing the Sardinian data.”
“She wouldn’t disclose the data if we give her her job back.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. She thinks she was wrongly accused of sabotage. Wants to set things right.”
“So we do our mea culpas and lure her in with a new contract. Something she can’t refuse.”
“And we can also use her to find Nic,” Andreas added.
“We should eliminate him the moment we find him.”
The Consortium was up and running.
PART 2
Jon
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Two months later
“We never discussed this.” Helen looked at Andreas, pointing to a paragraph in her new contract. “I didn’t agree to see a psychologist.”
“It’s just a formality, Helen.” Andreas dismissed the offensive clause with a wave of a hand.
Helen didn’t respond, taking in her uncle’s uncharacteristic discomfort. He shifted awkwardly in his seat as the saloon boat they were on slowed down and turned into the Heerengracht.
These classic wooden boats were typically used for intimate wedding dinners or for culinary tours through Amsterdam’s canals, but Andreas had hired one for signing Helen’s contract. Probably to prevent her from walking away without signing as she had done in Geneva a couple of weeks ago.
Andreas had flown to Amsterdam to get the contract signed and wasn’t prepared to engage in new negotiations. A bottle of champagne was waiting on ice, and a three-tiered stand filled with a selection of finger sandwiches beckoned on the polished teak table.
Helen ignored it. She went through the contract line by line. Her salary went up considerably, but she didn’t care about the money. She wanted an opportunity to take the Project further and develop programs that would decimate terrorist financial networks. She wouldn’t sign unless the contract guaranteed that.
“You are indispensable to the Project,” Andreas said, breaking the silence. “You wouldn’t be paid a salary on a par with professional athletes if you weren’t. All your requirements were met, including your desire to be based in Amsterdam.” He glared at her. “The psychologist is merely insurance for the government. They want to be one hundred percent certain that you’ve recovered from Nic’s betrayal.”
“My performance after he left the operation made that one hundred percent clear,” Helen replied, not sharing with Andreas that she never “recovered’’ from the aftermath of Operation Sardegna.
The shock of seeing Nic’s headshot on TV, accused of placing bombs he had never placed. And the much bigger shock when the Consortium accused her of sabotaging the Project, and backed off only when she informed them she would take legal action and disclose the waterproof evidence that absolved her of any wrongdoing.
Colliding with the Consortium head-on had hardened Helen in ways she never thought possible. Gone was the rookie officer eager to fight terrorism, following orders and trusting the process. It made no difference that their accusations had been withdrawn and labeled a terrible mistake. Helen wasn’t fooled by the “irresistible” job offer.
&n
bsp; They didn’t pay her a small fortune because of her unique skills or the risks she was taking while operating so deep undercover. They paid her to never disclose the evidence she collected in Sardinia, which attested to rogue activities the Consortium wouldn’t want to be connected with. Still, why go to such lengths to keep the data hidden? There had to be more to it…
“Your performance in Sardinia was impeccable.” Andreas gave a tight smile. “But it’s imperative that you turn in all the data you collected,” he demanded, verifying Helen’s suspicions.
“I’ve done that already,” she replied.
“But how do we know that there isn’t another copy somewhere?” Andreas’s hard eyes pierced through her.
“You don’t.” Helen returned his look.
Andreas flinched.
“Well, this contract is the best I can do.” He sat back.
Was this Helen’s chance to walk away from it all?
No. The Consortium would never trust her not to disclose the data. And she couldn’t live with herself if she abandoned the Project before finishing what Nic started. The Consortium was stuck with her and she with them.
Helen took the pen Andreas pushed across the table and signed the contract.
Andreas collected his copies without uttering a word, chin jutting out, jaw clenched.
Nonetheless, Helen leaned back comfortably, expecting that Andreas would switch to his favorite conversational topics. The animal rescue efforts he sponsored. Or the newest nonprofit he decided to “make” with an unforgettable nationwide campaign. He didn’t.
Nor did he ask her to support one of his numerous charities, which was the traditional closing act of their outings. Helen had been certain that Andreas wouldn’t miss the opportunity to capitalize on her new “professional athlete” salary and demand a generous donation on the spot. He didn’t.