by David Archer
They arrived at the hotel at ten thirty on the dot. Indie had insisted that they not call ahead, because she wanted to surprise Sam. Sure, she admitted, he knew she was coming, but he didn't know exactly when she would arrive. She warned Gary and Joshua both to just shut up and let her enjoy herself.
Fortunately, Sam and Ken had finally given in to the sun's insistent demands that they get up, and were seated under one of the umbrellas in front of the bistro next door to the hotel. When the limo pulled up in front of the hotel's entrance door, which was merely a single door cut into a solid wall, both men took notice. When Gary stepped out of the car, they recognized him, got up and hurried over just in time for Sam to catch Indie in a hug as she got out.
“Oh, my goodness,” Indie said. “Oh, Sam, I was trying to surprise you!”
“Baby, just seeing you is surprise enough! I was blown away when Harry told me to call and ask you to meet me here, but this is big enough and important enough that I can understand why he'd want you on it with me.” He kissed her, then turned to Gary. “So, kid, I gather you're on our team, now?”
Gary shrugged, but nodded his head. “Looks that way,” he said. “Listen, I've brought along everything I could snag out of Mr. Chandler's computers, notes, everything. But I've been pounding on this stuff for a couple of days, and I just haven't come up with any answers. I'm not sure why they wanted me over here with you, but I'll do whatever you tell me to do.”
Ken patted his shoulder. “That's all we can ask of you, youngster. Hey, we're just grabbing breakfast, you guys hungry?”
Joshua had climbed out with them, and unloaded their luggage. That done, he was standing by without interrupting. He took this cue to speak up. “Okay, it looks like I've done my job and delivered you where you're supposed to be,” he said. “I gave you both my card, if you need anything you can reach me on the phone number there.” He turned to Sam and Ken and extended a hand. “Gentlemen, it's rather obvious that I can leave these good folks in your hands. If you need anything, they know how to reach me. Whatever you're up to, I wish you all the best of luck, and I mean that very sincerely.” He turned and closed the back door of the limo, then stepped up and climbed into the front seat with the driver. A moment later, the car pulled away.
“Well, the guy could at least have given me the chance to thank him for bringing you to me,” Sam said, “but Ken's question still stands. You guys want some breakfast?”
“I'm starving,” Gary said. “I'll tell you a secret about those overnight flights—they figure since it's overnight, they don't need to feed you a real meal. They give you a snack, instead. I need more than a snack, I'm a growing boy!”
Sam grinned. Indie nodded, and said, “I'm not a growing boy, but I'm definitely hungry. Should we take this stuff to your room first?”
They all agreed that it would be a good idea to carry all of their luggage up to the suite, so the four of them made a procession of it. Indie had brought two suitcases, some of which contained extra clothing for Sam, as well as her carry-on with her laptop in it. Gary, on the other hand had only one suitcase full of clothes, but he had two more cases full of electronic gear that he said he brought along, “just in case.”
Indie was delighted to find that she and Sam would have a room of their own, and managed to make Gary turn red by warning Sam that she planned on making him make up for lost time later when they went to bed. Poor Gary, on the other hand, decided he would rather sleep on the couch in the sitting room than share a bed with a professional killer. Ken didn't help by joking around about needing someone to cuddle, and he finally apologized to Gary after Sam told him he was being a jerk.
“We can put everything away later,” Indie said, “let's get downstairs to the food! I hope it's good!”
“No kidding,” Gary said. “On the other hand, it won't take much to be better than the cheese sticks and pretzels they gave us on the plane. The pretzels were bad enough, but I think the cheese was at least twenty-five years old.”
As they got into the elevator, Ken quipped, “Hey, don't you know that cheese gets better with age?”
“Then maybe it wasn't cheese. I mean, to be honest, I couldn't really tell for sure. It was sort of yellow, but it was more gooey than cheese should be. At least, I thought so.”
“Hey, I didn't eat any. I left that stuff alone,” Indie said.
The bistro wasn't much as far as bistros go, but they did offer a light breakfast menu that included eggs and sausage. The sausage was Italian, and spicier than what most Americans are accustomed to, but all four of them thought it was delicious.
“So, okay,” Indie said, “all we've got, then, is a general clue that the pope is going to be assassinated, right? So how do we figure out when and where? Anybody got anything on that?”
Sam shrugged. “Not quite yet,” he said, “but Harry gave me a number to someone he knows at the Vatican. He told me not to call until you were here, and that you and Gary would figure out why. Got any inkling on that?”
“That's an easy one,” Gary said. “That means he wants a tap on the guys phone line, so that we'll know if he calls anyone after you make contact. I'd say it's pretty good odds that he'll be calling somebody as soon as he's off the phone with you.”
Sam looked at him. “But why? If he's a friend of Harry's, why would he be calling someone else?”
Gary looked at each of them in turn, and then shook his head. “I thought you guys knew who you were up against,” he said. “Since you brought me in, I'm guessing that my old boss is no longer among the living, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a genius at this kind of crap. Remember that he spent years and years studying how terrorists work, and looking at the mistakes they made. He's not going to leave any loopholes in his own plans, they're going to be so airtight that you can't pierce them with a missile, let alone anything else. We're dealing with a man who could look at Hitler's entire operation, see the flaws in it and easily write an operational plan that would've made it a smashing success. If Osama bin Laden had had half of Grayson Chandler's brains, we'd all be Muslims by now. Just because he's dead doesn't mean he's beaten, trust me on this. Anyone he had working with him is not going to stop being scared of Chandler just because he's dead.”
“You're talking about his dead man's stash, right?” Ken asked.
“I'm talking about a whole lot more than that,” Gary said. “Chandler had people all over the freaking world who did nothing but make sure that other people did what Chandler wanted them to do. These folks aren't on a payroll, they don't collect a paycheck every Friday, they get paid in power. Chandler gave them enough knowledge to make sure they could always accomplish whatever he wanted them to do, and then he made sure he had enough evidence of what they did to see to it they were buried if they ever turned on him. He has that system so well-built that just being dead won't stop it.”
“But do we have any idea who these people are?” Ken asked. “You can tell us all day long that he has these people, but unless we know who they are that does us no good. What else have we got on them?”
Gary shook his head. “I could identify a few of them, but not many. The point, though, is that these aren't the people that we're looking for right now. The people I'm talking about are the ones that those people are looking over their shoulder for. I can assure you, just as sure as we're all sitting in Rome, that the people who are going to carry out these plans for Chandler have not one, but two separate and complete motivations. First, they want to make sure they are in the power elite when all this goes down, but second, and just as important to them, they want to be sure that they're not on the target list when it's over. Anybody who gets in the way, or who doesn't do what they're supposed to do, is going to be on that list.” He pointed a finger at Sam. “You call that friend of Harry's, but not until we got everything set up so that we can see who he calls afterward. I'll guarantee you, he's going to be calling someone, and that will give us another lead. Considering we don't know how soon this
is all going to go off, I'll take any lead we can get right now, won't you?”
Sam nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “I'm with you, a hundred percent. We've got to find some way to get to whoever's behind the assassination of the pope. If that's the trigger, then we need to know who the trigger man is, and right away.”
Indie leaned forward. “Gary,” she said, “what about the people in this guy's office? He may not make any phone calls at all—the people watching him could be right on top of him all the time. What about that situation?”
Gary looked at her, and shrugged. “You could be right,” he said. “There's not a list of Chandler's muscle out there anywhere, at least not one that I'm aware of. All I can tell you is that we need to ID this guy, the one you're supposed to call, as quickly as we can. Then we can be all over him, watch every move he makes until he leads us to somebody who leads us to somebody, etc., etc. Geez, it almost sounds like you're on a witch hunt. That's how they use to track witches down, back in the dark ages, by getting one person after another to point fingers. As long as they could point at someone else and claim they saw that person doing something evil, they got to walk away. It was the poor woman who couldn't or wouldn't accuse someone else who ended up burning at the stake.”
“If that's what it takes,” Ken said, “then so be it. We don't have the luxury of time, this is all about to start happening. If we don't come up with some answers, and real soon, people are going to start dying. I'm not Catholic, and I'm not all that crazy about the pope, but I don't want to see him get killed.”
“Nor do I,” Sam said, “but I'll be honest enough to admit that I'm a lot more worried about those thousands and thousands of school kids, not to mention the innocent people on the cruise ships. The Pope, the politicians, people who choose public life always know, somewhere in the back of their minds, that assassination is one of the risks they run. People on a cruise and kids in their classrooms should never have to worry about things like that.”
“I agree with Sam,” Indie said. “Yes, we need to stop the pope getting killed, but we have to remember that this is just a step on the way to stopping all the rest of the killings. If I understand all this correctly, it's the killings, and their aftermath, that Chandler was counting on to put his people in power, right? So, whoever it is that's expecting to step into that position is already in place, somewhere. He's just waiting for his cue in this big script, and then he can step up and say whatever it is he supposed to say to make people believe he's the new Messiah, right?”
Sam nodded. “Right. Although, there is something new that indicates that his new Messiah might be a woman, rather than a man.” He looked sideways at Ken. “The last words Chandler said was that someone he called she would make us all pay. Sounds like maybe he has a woman groomed for that position.”
Gary looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes half closed as he ran this new data through his mind. “A woman?” He asked. “Holy cow, surely it couldn't be…” He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to clear a mental image he didn't want to see.
“Gary?” Sam asked. “Gary, what are you thinking?”
Gary looked him in the eye, and Sam pulled back a bit in surprise at the look of pure terror on the boy's face. “Look, I don't know anything for sure,” he said, “so this is nothing but conjecture, but I can only think of one woman who would want the kind of power Chandler was offering, and who might be willing to allow these kinds of atrocities to happen in order to get it. If I were to say that I'm thinking of a certain ex-First Lady, I'd bet it wouldn't take you five seconds to figure out who I mean.”
Sam, Indie and Ken all sat back suddenly, and their eyes all went wide. Indie was the first to speak.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “I know there are lots of ugly stories about her, but get real. She'd have to be willing to sacrifice thousands of innocent children, and I just can't imagine any woman who could do that.”
Gary shook his head. “Okay, something you need to get through your head is that we aren't dealing with men or women here, we're dealing with people who want power. They don't think like you and me, and a human life, to them, is nothing but a bargaining chip. You've heard the old conspiracy theory, how it was really her that ordered the fire that killed all those Branch Davidians in Waco? Well, according to documents in Chandler's files, that ain't just a theory, it's a fact.”
Ken nodded his head. “I've heard from other sources that that was true,” he said. “I'll even be honest enough to tell you that I know personally of several times when her name was invoked as the authority behind a kill order, both when she was first lady, and later as Secretary of State. And before you get all humane on me, let me tell you that I know of things just as bad that were done by lots of other politicians from our country. It's like Gary said, human lives are nothing but bargaining points to people like that. Chandler was pretty much running the black market on power, buying and selling it as he chose, and I can guarantee you that every purchase and every sale involved the loss of human lives. If she's the one, I can't say I’d be all that surprised.”
“Well,” Sam said, “some of the conspiracy theorists have been trying to claim that she was antichrist for years now, so it's quite possible Chandler would've felt like she was ideal for the job. Still, we don't know anything, not for sure. I think we need to stick to what we do know, which is that our immediate goal is to find out who's behind the assassination of the pope.”
Their breakfasts were finished by this time, so the four of them got up and went up to their rooms. Gary immediately began unpacking some of his gear, and Indie was fascinated by a lot of the devices he pulled out of his bags. While he explained each item to her, the others merely watched in silence.
“This thing? That's a Wi-Fi snoop. What that does is it logs on to any Wi-Fi network, and then records all the activity of every device connected to the network. Makes it possible for someone like you or me to go in and basically replay everything that happened on that network for however long the snoop was in place. We can run searches, look for files of any type, check download logs and even see what may have been downloaded, see any videos that may been watched — pretty much lets us know what everyone on the network was up to.”
“Like an activity monitor,” Indie said, “the kind of thing that big corporations use to see what their employees are up to online?”
Gary laughed. “An activity monitor is to a Wi-Fi snoop about like what a caveman would be compared to one of us. Pretty primitive, and not nearly as effective. If I can get that gadget within range of any Wi-Fi network where, for instance, we might have a suspect who is likely to be checking his email or some such, and pound my way through passwords until I get it online, then within a matter of minutes we'd be able to read all of that suspect’s emails, messages, virtual chats, see which dating sites he was playing around on and even check out books on his Kindle library account. Heck, we can probably order pizza with his credit cards. I brought three of those, because sometimes it's easier to put one in place than it is to retrieve it.”
“Gotcha,” Indie said. “What about that?” She was pointing at a small plastic box that had several different digital readouts built into it.
“That's a gizmo that only existed in science fiction novels until a couple of years ago,” Gary replied. “That's what's called a code picker, and it's very useful for opening these high security doors that only open when you've got the right digital key in your pocket, transmitting a signal. It's the same principle as the new cars that don't need a key to start. As long as you got the appropriate transponder in your pocket or on your person, somewhere, all you've got to do is push the button and the car starts up. Well, assuming you want to get through one of those doors or start one of those cars, but don't have the transponder you need, this little gadget solves your problem. In a matter of seconds, it can pick out the right code that should be transmitted in order to open the lock or start the car.”
Sam grinned. “I got a new nickname
for you,” he said. “I'm just going to call you Q.”
Gary grinned back. “Want to know something funny? Q was always my favorite character in all the old James Bond movies, because he always had all the cool gizmos and gadgets. I think if I had half a chance, I could come up with even better stuff than he did.”
“I'll tell you what,” Sam said. “You do me right in this mission, and I'll twist some arms to try to make sure you get that chance. Deal?”
Gary let his grin broaden into a smile. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “you got yourself a deal, there!”
“Okay, if we can bring the spy movie fan convention to a close,” Ken said, “maybe we can move on to more important things. Like figuring out who it is we got to track down here in Rome, everybody up for that?”
“Of course we are,” Indie said. “We're just figuring out where to start, right at the moment. Gary, what do we need to do so Sam can make his phone calls?”
Gary was setting up his computer, which was a whole lot bigger than Indie's laptop. It was portable, in the sense that it seemed to be built into a fairly large and very sturdy suitcase, but there was something about it that said it was years ahead of what she had.
“What on earth is that?” She asked in awe.
Gary grinned at her, a smug grin that said he understood exactly what she was asking. “Eurocom Panther 5SE,” he said. “Twelve core Intel Xeon processor, thirty-two gig of RAM and 6 TB of hard drive space. This thing is an entire IT command center, all by itself. Heck, it's got eight different operating systems installed. I can run Windows, Linux—you name it and I've got it.”
Indie stared at the computer for a moment, then turned to Sam. “I want one,” she said simply. Sam grinned, and looked at Gary.
“Okay, just curious, but what does one of those puppies cost?”