by Layton Green
“Rest. See where she goes today. We have others in place.”
“Understood.”
There was a long pause. “When the time is right, we trust she won’t escape this time? The Archon was not pleased.”
A flicker of fear swept through Omer, despite his mental training. Archon simply meant “ruler” or “lord” in ancient Greek, and the secrecy around the head of his order was so great that not even a given name was known. It was not just that the Archon could snuff Omer’s path to Ascension—or his life—with a whispered command to the others. There were strange stories, tales of secret knowledge at their leader’s disposal. Stories of prisoners who had killed themselves rather than face prolonged interrogation.
He took a deep breath to bring his apprehension under control. Caution was healthy, normal. There would always be people more dangerous than he.
Fear, on the other hand, was a distractor. A mental weakness that, like any other, can and should be controlled.
Omer spoke quietly into the phone. “I’ll do better.”
“We hope so. You should know the protocol has changed as well.”
“To what?”
“Elotisum.”
The line went dead without further explanation, leaving Omer to figure out the rest. With a little shudder, he began adjusting his preparations, thinking through how to proceed. Elotisum was a special, elevated version of the deliverance protocol. An edict of the highest importance.
Elotisum meant the Archon wanted to conduct the interrogation.
Los Angeles
12
Beverly Hills isn’t even a real place, Cal thought as he drove down a commercial avenue lined with expansive gold-framed windows displaying an endless parade of luxury goods, shuttered for the night but still gleaming in the aura of the streetlamps. Meant to emulate the finest old-world Europe had to offer, the architecture instead smacked of new wealth, nothing subtle or refined about it.
Porsches, Range Rovers, and Bentleys were as common as minivans in a suburb. A Lamborghini Aventador had just roared by. Cal’s battle-worn Jeep Cherokee felt like an old Yugo sputtering down the Moscow Ring Road on the way to a vehicular nursing home.
The destination was the Mandrake Hotel, a limestone tower right in the diamond-studded, silicone-laced heart of the neighborhood. If Dane’s info was any good—and it always was—then the company that owned the black van was in turn owned by a man, Elias Holt, who frequented a secret club called the Infinity Lounge on the thirteenth floor of the Mandrake on select nights of the month.
Tonight was just such a night. Not wanting to be seen when he arrived—or rolling up in a pedestrian ride sure to raise eyebrows—Cal parked two streets over from the hotel. He grabbed a peak-lapel tuxedo jacket from the back seat and threw it over a silk gray T-shirt and his lone pair of designer jeans. The outfit had served him well over the years, when he needed to mingle. He had splurged on the tux for a friend’s wedding over a decade ago and was pleased it still fit. A frugal lifestyle was good for the waistline.
Carefully trimmed stubble, a pair of slip-on loafers, and Cal felt right at home. His real disguise was the bleach-blond wig, horn-rimmed tinted glasses, pencil mustache, and zirconium stud earring, all of which he had taken from his props chest. Following the advice an actor friend had given him long ago, Cal changed his walk to an arrogant swagger, a peacock’s strut. Observers keyed on body language as much as appearance.
He knew he was taking a risk, but Cal wanted to lay eyes on Elias. Besides, they already knew where he lived, so what changed if they spotted him in a public place?
He tried not to think too hard about the potential answer to that question. His strange Twitch chat with Mercuri999 had left him even more convinced he was on the trail of something important, and perhaps very dangerous. Whoever she was, unless Cal’s guess was way off, Mercuri knew about the Leap Year Society. He had gotten chills when, following her tip, he read about the physicist gunned down in Bologna. The news report said it was a robbery gone wrong, but an American professor shot to death outside a nice hotel in a sleepy part of western Europe, by some random guy in a hoodie?
Unh-uh.
Halfway down the block, Cal cut through a narrow lane with immaculate paving stones, its line of dumpsters tucked discreetly behind tiled walls and potted palms. Goddamn, even the alleys are nice.
Dane had provided an identity and the name of the club. Cal’s own research had uncovered that Elias Holt was the founder of a business, Aegis International, which specialized in security for technology companies. Cal dug a little deeper and uncovered a number of employees with backgrounds in intelligence and private defense firms. He had investigated enough of those types to know that, except for deep undercover ops, people with those backgrounds did not conceal their former employers. They simply didn’t disclose the nature of their work. “Overthrew a foreign government” or “expertise in persuasive interrogation” was never a good look on a résumé. Unless, he mused, you were searching for a job in sales.
Onyx sculptures of faceless human figures, chandeliers hanging from a thirty-foot ceiling, and a polychromatic waterfall fountain greeted Cal in the lobby of the Mandrake Hotel. After walking in like he owned the place, he nodded to the concierge, took a wrong turn into the restroom, then doubled back and discovered the elevators were situated behind the sheet-thin flow of the waterfall.
Like many hotels, in a nod to triskaidekaphobia, the Mandrake did not have a thirteenth floor. Cal viewed the avoidance of the number 13 as a ridiculous practice—but one that he followed himself, if it didn’t put him out too much.
He was fully aware that humanity had a long history of succumbing to ignorant beliefs based on primitive superstition. On the other hand, the world was teeming with unexplained mysteries. There was usually some fact behind the fiction, and as the old adage went, sometimes the truth was the strangest thing of all.
After exiting on the fourteenth floor, Cal found a staircase and descended one flight to a landing, where a door led back into the hotel. A thirteenth floor did exist—it just wasn’t for guests.
That was about all Cal knew in advance, except the cover charge was a cool hundred dollars, and two grand for table service.
What a load of LA bullshit.
The door opened onto a hallway with Moroccan-patterned carpeting and blue velvet walls, dead-ending at a red lacquer door. From behind him came the echo of a set of footsteps on the stairs. Another potential patron, he hoped.
But maybe not.
Notes of remixed electro pop floated down the hallway. When he opened the door, he caught a clubby aroma of musk and cedar. The muscular Japanese doorman standing just inside, with his earpiece and fancy vest, looked on loan from the yakuza.
As Cal was being frisked, he heard the door to the stairwell open. He glanced back and saw with relief that it was just a leggy brunette wearing high heels and an iridescent cocktail dress. She shimmered with the sort of almost-movie-star good looks that were as common in LA as traffic jams.
The Infinity Lounge had plenty of open space and a funky retro-future vibe. Lots of neon streaks under dim lighting, silver banquettes, cocktails served in geometric blown glass and smoking with liquid nitrogen. Most of the people were dressed in getups from the Roaring Twenties, gangsters and molls and Gatsby clones.
All in all, a very LA speakeasy. Cal didn’t quite understand the theme. But he never really did.
He sidled to a portion of the bar next to a fish tank lit with psychedelic coral. Along the far wall, downtown glittered through a line of pinched windows. He ordered a fancy bourbon cocktail, the first on the menu, and scanned the room.
It took a minute of casual observation before he noticed Elias sitting in a semicircular banquette, dressed in a chocolate-brown four-button suit with a vest. He was performing a card trick, to the delight of the small crowd surrounding him. The back of the playing cards depicted a rocket shooting into outer space.
Cal moved closer. Elias
had changed so much from his online photo that at first Cal didn’t recognize him. Instead of the awkward young genius whose gaming start-up was gobbled up by Sony—the only picture of him online—the sandy-haired, cleft-chinned CEO holding court at the silver banquette was as suave and attractive as the aspiring actors in the room. Though still thin, his face was firm-jawed, his tanned skin flawless. Sharp cerulean eyes demanded attention. White teeth gleamed. When the trick was finished, Elias stood and spun the cards through his fingers so fast it was hard to follow. He built a multilayered pyramid in seconds, right in the center of the table. Mesmerized, the crowd clapped when it was over, and Elias graced them with a bow.
According to Cal’s research, Elias had graduated at the top of his class from Stanford, obtaining dual degrees in math and computer science. He was on the chess team, a member of the Magicians Club, and had won an award for a published journal article on machine learning, a rare feat for an undergrad. After graduation, he designed some apps and then helmed a virtual reality start-up. In an interview with Wired magazine, Elias—wearing thick glasses and clothing that looked secondhand—had referred to himself as a computer nerd and talked about his love of video games, as well as his struggles to relate to others throughout his life.
After selling his first company, as far as Cal could tell, Elias had fallen off the radar. There was no mention of him in any press release or public forum, except for his listing as CEO of the security company with the California Secretary of State, a required financial reporting. But Aegis was formed nearly ten years after Elias sold his first company.
Where had he gone? What had he done?
Cal never forgot a face. That was Elias Holt; he was sure of it. Yet as he watched him flirt with the knockout redhead beside him, he wondered what had caused such a radical transformation.
It was almost as if, somewhere along the way, Elias had become a completely different person.
Cal snapped some photos of Elias and his admirers by palming his cell phone against his thigh. When a seat at the adjoining banquette opened up, Cal sidled over.
Elias had switched from card tricks to mentalism. He began by “reading the minds” of the people around him, and then took a slow walk around the detached banquette, lifting jewelry off of a burly Latino man without him noticing. When pressed for his secrets, Elias spouted psychobabble about how the human brain can process only so many things at one time, and how magic is simply another form of technology that appears supernatural to those who do not understand it. Quantum physics labs around the world, he claimed, were performing feats that would appear “magical” to nonscientists.
Cal had no beef with that.
When the crowd around Elias dwindled, Cal left the hotel, retrieved his Cherokee, and idled down the street in front of a sushi restaurant with a view of the entrance to the Mandrake. He ignored his hunger pangs as the night went on. Cal loved sushi. He wished he could still afford it.
An hour later, Elias stepped out with a pair of women, followed by two men in dark suits. After the entourage climbed into a custom Lincoln Navigator, Cal used binoculars to catch the plate, then followed the Lincoln from a safe distance as it turned onto Santa Monica and later into a flat, manicured, palm-lined neighborhood. Once they began to climb into the landscaped hills, where the true wealth resided, Cal grew nervous about the lack of traffic. He had to fall back or risk being spotted.
After rounding a curve and encountering an empty road, he spotted the lights of the Navigator disappearing down a driveway accessed by an ornamental iron gate. Cal kept driving so as not to raise suspicion. He caught the house number but could see only the flat-topped roof of the mansion above a Mexican-tile wall that surrounded the property. He also noticed security cameras atop the gate.
After cruising up the hill, he parked as far away from Elias’s house as he could while keeping the gate in view. Unsure what to do next, he debated trying to order a pizza to a parked car when a pair of headlights swung into view. He gripped the steering wheel as a black van sped up the hill, the gate to the mansion opened, and the van disappeared inside.
Thank God I parked near the top.
Worried a neighbor might get nervous and alert the cops, Cal left and took a different route home. He reheated a plate of pasta as he scratched Leon’s ears, cracked a beer, and ate on his patio, deep in thought.
Halfway through his second beer, he returned inside and fired off a text to Dane.
I need help. Call me.
To his surprise, Dane called him back within minutes. He sounded as alert as ever, despite the fact that it was 2 a.m. “Help with what?”
“The name you gave me,” Cal said.
“What kind of help?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay . . . Why don’t you tell me more. As in everything.”
“I can’t pay you,” Cal said. “At least not yet. I had to give up cable this month.”
“It’s not all about money.”
“Then what?”
“Is it my imagination,” Dane said, “or did you not text me five minutes ago asking for my help?”
“What I have in mind could get very real. Just like you, I prefer to work with transparent motives.”
“This coming from a man whose former job description included the art of disguise and false entry? Let’s just say I’m intrigued, had too much caffeine today, and that Aegis International and I have very different philosophies on how the world should work. I’m afraid that’s all the motive you’re going to get. Take it or leave it.”
Cal debated how far to trust him. The man had his faults, for sure. In a room full of people, Dane would probably piss off 99 percent of them. Also, despite his gruff exterior, he was an idealist. Cal didn’t trust idealists. When push came to shove, he feared Dane would put his ideologies ahead of Cal’s interests, and maybe even his safety.
On the other hand, Cal was also a bit of an idealist, and if he wanted to take this further, he needed the sort of help Dane could give.
Seeing little alternative, Cal told him about his research on Aegis and Elias Holt, and everything he had witnessed that evening. “I need to get inside that house,” he finished.
After a long pause, Dane gave him a new cell phone number to look out for. “I’ll be in touch.”
As noon rolled around, while Cal was scrambling to meet a deadline for an internet news site in Australia, a piece on transcontinental political conspiracies during the Vietnam War, he received a text from the number Dane had given him.
Gates open at 3 p.m. No guards on-site.
No owner?
Spa appt.
How do you know?
Unimportant.
Unless it’s false info.
There was no response to that, so Cal shook his head and added, Anything else?
Check your mailbox, and use only this number.
After hurrying down his front walkway, Cal found an anonymous package wrapped in brown paper inside the mailbox. After returning inside, he opened the package and found a USB flash drive.
He set it on the kitchen table and exhaled a deep breath. He knew what Dane wanted, and he wasn’t playing around.
The afternoon appointment did not surprise him. Security was tighter at night in most places.
So let’s do this.
He had already thought through the scenario. After renting a van for the day, he finished the conspiracy piece and fired it off, then paced his living room to steel up his nerve. He was afraid of these people and how deep in the shadows they lived. Whoever they were, he got the sense they played for keeps. Mercuri999 seemed to think so too.
But one did not succeed as an investigative journalist without learning to deal with fear.
And one most certainly did not get one’s life back without taking a few risks.
Just before 3 p.m., under a blazing midday sun, Cal turned his white rental van onto Elias Holt’s street. An hour earlier, after leaving the house dressed in jeans and a blue wor
k polo with a SUNSHINE PLUMBERS logo, he had picked up the rental and plastered a matching decal on the side.
Years before, Cal had ordered the uniform and the car decal for just this sort of situation. None of the neighbors would look twice. The question was whether Dane could deliver what he had promised.
Just as Cal reached the driveway, the high iron gate hummed and began to part. He caught his breath and prayed Dane was right about the lack of on-site bodyguards. If not, Cal was about to be stuffed into a black van and disappeared.
The gate closed behind him as soon as he pulled through. The driveway led up a hill lined with manicured cypress. He assumed Dane had overridden the security cameras, and hoped the hacker was keeping an eye on him.
Cal parked as close to the modern trilevel mansion as he could get. Up close, the gleaming white villa was a stunner, an elegant jigsaw puzzle of glass and marble. The patio was a whisper of slender pillars and billowing canvas sheets that opened onto an infinity pool overlooking the golden-brown hillside. The Mexican-tile wall and lush landscaping ensured complete privacy.
Cal had no idea how much the place was worth, but there was no time to dwell on the lives of the rich and famous. He hurried to the front door, flinching at the presence of another camera. Before his hand reached the doorknob, the keypad lock whirred and the door opened on its own. He guessed the entire house was wired to the security system. Very safe and convenient—until someone like Dane decided to hack it.
Inside, Cal took a moment to orient himself, knowing he had very limited time to find a computer and hoping Elias had not carried his laptop to the spa. The bottom floor of the mansion was full of gadgets, fancy appliances, and sleek white furniture that looked about as comfortable as a church pew. A circular robot whirred into the living room, startling him. He assumed it was picking up dust and ignored it.
Just because there was no security didn’t mean there were no visitors. Could Dane see into all the rooms? He took a moment to text him.