It was Christmas Day…
It had been, Simon remembered. As he remembered all things. Things that, now, were taking on the meaning and importance that they should have as they happened. Then, though, he’d been trapped in his old world. His father especially had tried early on to break him free from the prison that was his mind. He had doted on his son as he tried to expose him to as much normalcy that a man of his blue-collar means could.
Until he stopped. The realization hit him as Simon passed his tenth year of life that his son would always be what he was. No circus trips or beach days or sledding down backyard snow hills would change that.
He tried…
“Simon…”
He looked to Emily, who was high-stepping through the snow just ahead of him. His mind had drifted off to the memory he had of snow. A good memory, as he could see it now.
“Yes?”
“We’re going to be fine,” Emily told him as she kept both of them moving.
It was a road they were following, the blacktop blanketed by feet of snow in places, tall orange edge markers defining the width of the two lanes that were, clearly, unmaintained when the weather became too extreme. It would not be fully passable until late spring, she imagined.
But it was all they had. The only route out of the mountains. Already they’d put two miles between themselves and the downed Blackhawk, though she wouldn’t begin to feel some sense of relief until that number was multiplied by a hundred. The dying co-pilot had threaded the proverbial needle, bringing the helicopter down to a relatively safe landing on a patch of snow sloping from the side of a sheer peak, though that spot could be a hundred miles from civilization.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Simon asked.
The question surprised Emily. Not in substance, but that it came at all. She looked back to the man and saw him staring at her, hands plunged deep into the pockets of the crewman’s coat he wore.
“The Rocky Mountains,” Emily said.
Simon glanced upward, to where the peaks to his right showed the glow of sunlight slowly dissolving the morning shadows from top down.
“We’re walking south,” he said.
Emily nodded. “Yes.”
There were several major and minor routes traversing the Rocky Mountains from east to west, along with smaller tributary roads that joined them from points north and south. The landscape of the country was covered by a web of pavement stretching from coast to coast.
“The odds that we’re within five miles of a road in use are favorable,” he told her.
“How favorable?”
Simon stopped. And so did Emily, but not because he had. She stopped because she heard what he did—traffic.
“I was going to say there was a seventy-three-point-eight percent chance,” Simon said. “I may have to increase that.”
Emily smiled. More importantly, so did Simon Lynch. He might have been reacting to her, or to his own words, which she suspected were unintentionally humorous, but it didn’t matter. Not right then.
“Let’s see what’s up ahead,” Emily said.
They began moving again, a bit quicker now, the sound growing with each bend in the road they followed, and with each rise they crossed, until they could finally see the source of the traffic noise.
“A highway,” Emily said.
It was two lanes, and beyond it lay a river. Before that, though, some feature was present where the snowy road they were on met up with the narrow highway. There were a few buildings, but many flat, long spaces arrayed between trees.
“It’s a campground,” Emily said.
Simon, though, was more fixated on the larger landscape. The water. The road. The orientation of it all.
“That’s Route Fifty,” Simon said. “And that’s the Gunnison River.” He looked left from the vantage point they held. “Gunnison is that way.”
Gunnison…
Emily had taken a short amount of time to familiarize herself with the state she knew they’d be traveling through, and to. Gunnison was a smallish town west of Pueblo, their destination on this leg of the journey. All that was helpful, even vital, to know.
If it was right.
“You’re sure, Simon?”
He nodded. “I loved puzzles. Maps were puzzles to me, too. How far from Sacramento to Savannah by the shortest route. The longest route. The longest route through the most states. The fewest states.”
“So you liked maps,” Emily said.
“My mother let me look at atlases,” he explained. “She would bring them home from the library for me. I looked at all the maps. I…”
He hesitated, stumbling over some recollection. Emily could have pressed him, but didn’t.
“I fit them all together in my head,” Simon said, marveling at the fact which, until recently, had been too mundane to even register in his psyche. “Like a puzzle. I can still see it all. Every river and every road. Every city.”
His emergence from the prison of autism which had held him for so long was revealing truths he hadn’t anticipated, Emily realized. But she could only allow so many of those revelations to slow them. The truth in this moment was that they were nowhere near far enough away from the downed Blackhawk. They had to get moving again.
“Simon, we have to go.”
He pulled himself from the oddly piercing recollection and looked to Emily, nodding.
“Okay.”
Twenty minutes later, with the snow thinning as the road crossed a slope that opened to a wide field, they neared the campground, which had appeared deserted from a distance. It wasn’t.
A pickup truck with a plow attachment sat next to a small, cabin-like building. A caretaker’s home, Emily thought. Someone to watch over the facility and keep the single lane that looped through the campsites cleared of snow. None were occupied, she could see, each long site, large enough for full-size trailers and RVs, empty. Winter was not prime season, it seemed.
“There’s no one there,” Simon said.
She’d stopped them to observe the way forward from thirty yards distance. He had to be seeing what she was. Unless he was seeing more.
“Why do you say that, Simon?”
“The road inside the campground is plowed,” he said. “But there’s no smoke coming from the chimney.”
Emily looked. He was right.
“The truck is parked in the open, but over on the side there’s a spot with less snow than the area surrounding it.”
Once again, she saw that he was right. A roughly rectangular patch of earth only had the thinnest skim of snow on it. Exactly the shape and size of a car.
“The caretaker plowed the roads, then drove into town,” Simon said. “Probably. I don’t really know where he went, but the town seems logical.”
She allowed herself a moment to marvel at him. She might have noticed all that he had, but not innately. Despite what had been done to him with the NB protocol that Leah Poole had described, Simon Lynch had retained much of his ability to process the minutia of the world before him and analyze it.
“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” Emily asked jokingly. When Simon seemed ready to reply, she waved off his answer. “I know, there’s some statistical correlation between caretaker jobs and gender.”
“There probably is,” Simon said. “But I was going off the sign at the entrance that says ‘Mike’s Riverside Campground’.”
“So you were,” Emily said.
They rose and approached the truck, then the cabin. Emily crept up to the building as Simon stayed by the vehicle. She peered in a pair of windows before withdrawing.
“No one there,” she said. She went to the driver’s door and pulled. It opened. “Thank God for trusting people. Let’s see how trusting.”
She climbed in as Simon watched, searching the interior for only a few seconds before locating the keys in a compartment in the center console. She inserted the key in the ignition and started the truck, the engine rumbling and chugging in the cold.
“Help me,” Emily said as she hopped out, going to the front of the truck. She pointed to the left side of the plow attachment as she positioned herself at the right. “There are two pins. Do you see the one on your side?”
Simon reached the side of the plow attachment and looked. There was a pin there, with a small chain holding it to the plow frame.
“I see it.”
“Stand to the side and pull that,” Emily instructed. “Then lift the lever below it.”
Simon followed her instructions, and the plow disengaged from a bracket on the vehicle’s stout bumper. Emily followed, releasing her side.
“Step back,” she said, and Simon did, watching as Emily gripped the heavy steel implement and pulled, sliding it off its mounting hardware. It dropped to the ground and rolled forward onto its blade.
“How do you know to do that?” Simon asked, puzzling at her proficiency in the skill.
“It’s not that interesting a story,” Emily said. “I’ll explain later. Get in.”
Simon climbed into the passenger seat as Emily took her place behind the wheel. She backed the pickup away from the discarded blade and steered around it, following the campground road down to the highway. A minute later she turned left, heading east toward Pueblo.
* * *
“Something happened,” Porter said.
Ezekiel Sanders had both dreaded and expected this moment. The instant that the fears which had built over the previous twenty-four hours were realized.
“Where?”
“Someplace in Utah,” Porter told the leader of their group.
He stood with the man in the chill on the mall in Washington, reflecting pool stretching toward the Capitol skimmed with brittle wisps of ice.
“I don’t have an accurate location yet,” the CIA officer added. “But the NSA is in a frenzy. Enough that they’re bringing the FBI in.”
That, in itself, was enough confirmation that the situation with Simon Lynch had gone from extreme to critical.
“She took him,” Sanders said.
“Maybe,” Porter said. “But I think there’s more to it.”
“How so?”
“Two hours ago the NSA invoked a top secret agreement that exists between it and the CIA,” Porter explained.
Sanders held his breath for a moment waiting for the man to continue.
“It’s called Loss Watch,” Porter explained. “If an asset of either agency is lost, both organizations put into effect monitoring protocols to detect mentions of those involved.”
“Lost as in killed,” Sanders said.
Porter nodded.
“So she killed someone in the process of snatching Simon Lynch,” Sanders said.
Porter, though, shook his head now, a grim reality surfacing. “It was a bloodbath. The NSA fed more than twenty names into the system.”
“Twenty dead?” Sanders pressed, understanding what that meant. Or might mean. “Traeger.”
“Very possible,” Porter said.
Sanders had briefed the group on the information Lane had uncovered about their possible adversary. That qualifier could now be shifted to certain adversary, he knew.
“He may have Lynch,” Sanders said. “Not her.”
“If that’s true…”
Sanders knew there was a completion to what Porter had begun to suggest, but it was difficult to summon the words. Words that he’d never wanted to contemplate, much less speak.
“If that’s true,” Sanders began, “then we failed Simon Lynch.”
* * *
For now, he was Lawrence Oberlin. That was name on his passport, and the photo matched his smooth and somewhat odd appearance. Severe alopecia, he was prepared to explain should anyone ask. But who would ask?
No one, Damian Traeger knew.
The aircraft was a Gulfstream G650ER, one of three owned by a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Traeger Industries. Tens of millions of pounds it had cost, though he knew no exact price. It was a thing, and things cost money, but, in the grander scheme of it all, things did not matter. Not as much as power.
And knowledge.
The savant would give him both, Traeger believed. One through the other. His brilliance would afford a bartering of power. Nations would cede to him what he sought so as not to suffer the wrath of the device Venn had conceived, and which Simon Lynch would allow him to reproduce at will.
Knowledge, too, would bring the savant to him, Traeger believed. The knowledge of another.
“Who are you?”
He asked the question of himself in the empty cabin. No bodyguards had accompanied him on this trip, as who would expect the chief engineer of a mining company to require such security when traveling to the United States for a conference?
Who are you, American Bob?
He challenged himself with the question. The source who’d guided him toward Simon Lynch, without guiding him to the savant, was key, Traeger thought. Because the source likely could offer the location of his prize.
Or would have been able to.
The liaison had turned out to be a formidable adversary. More so than Jefferson, even. She had accomplished a nearly impossible task, and she had done so alone.
“Not quite alone,” Traeger said, voicing that belief with full confidence in its certitude.
But that was a secondary consideration now. He needed to focus on the source. Needed to identify the source.
You are a man…
Damian Traeger began ticking off all he knew, or strongly suspected, about the enigmatic purveyor of intelligence regarding Simon Lynch.
But it really wasn’t about Lynch…
“You didn’t offer Lynch,” Traeger said as the engines whined softly through the insulated fuselage. He leaned forward, cocking his head toward the empty aisle as he thought. As he remembered. As he connected. “You offered Jefferson.”
In fact, the source had insisted that Art Jefferson was the key to getting to Simon Lynch. All possibilities flowed through Jefferson, American Bob had assured.
“Why?” Traeger wondered aloud. Just ahead, beyond the cockpit door, the pilots were busy with their duties, unconcerned with their passenger’s activities. That, though, was not the case between the source and the nearly crippled former FBI agent. “Why did you send me to Jefferson?”
The answer, as were many in life, was not hard to discern.
“It was personal,” Traeger said, sitting back again, his newly smooth head pressed against the supple leather seat. “You knew him.”
It was more than that, though.
You despised him…
Damian Traeger nodded to himself, pieces tumbling into place. He’d done his homework on Jefferson when the man’s importance was first presented to them. Access to much of his history had been obtained. The highs of his life.
And the lows.
The lows…
Traeger’s gaze suddenly was alight.
“Oh, you cannot be so sly,” he said, a realization bringing with it a sense of wry pleasure. “American Bob, is it?”
Damian Traeger smiled. The man had actually hinted at his true identity in the simplest, most inane way. There were ways he could be wrong. Off base by a factor of ten. But he did not believe so.
Traeger lifted the phone handset from its cradle next to his seat and pressed three numbers. The satellite connection was completed in just three seconds.
“Yes?”
“You know who this is,” Traeger said.
The team leader did. His main point of contact had been Wyland, but he’d taken orders from Damian Traeger long before that. And shared any and all information about operations with him.
“I do,” the team leader said.
“Do you still have assets assigned to our late friend’s associates?”
Before moving on Jefferson, an array of surveillance had been initiated on the man, as well as on those connected to him.
“Some.”
“I’m particularly interested in
his Pennsylvania friend,” Traeger said.
“We can move on him,” the team leader said.
“Please do,” Traeger said, then ended the call.
Jefferson had been spending time with the old hacker. A great deal of time. The man had gone to prison for his role in framing the FBI agent two decades earlier. He might know as much about the location of Simon Lynch as the man he had reason to loathe. Many things pointed to him as the source.
But he was not.
“American Bob,” Traeger said once more. He’d be paying that man a visit. What he knew, and what the old hacker might share, could be enough to lead him to the savant.
First, though, he would have to make some mark which would indelibly influence the source as to his willingness to wield a terrible power. And his ability to do so.
He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a smart phone, eyeing the simple device which came to life as his thumb brushed the screen. The date and time were displayed. He tapped the small phone icon and a keypad appeared. He entered three numbers—an 8, then a 3, then a 6. His finger hovered over the keypad for a second more as he smiled, then deleted what he had entered and put the phone away.
Venn might have been foolish. But he was no fool. He understood the value of his theory, both in its theoretical form, and, Traeger believed, in the practical. When news of the successful failure at Novosibirsk reached him, he acted, dispatching his Russian bodyguards to where the physicist had first met him. To where he’d shown him what he believed was a working prototype.
The prototype Damian Traeger now possessed.
Traeger had actually chuckled at the Russian then. Even as Venn explained the intricacies of the device, he was more than skeptical. The cocksure nature the physicist exhibited, warning his benefactor that the device as it was could not be reverse engineered, had, then, seemed like false bravado. An attempt to keep Traeger and the security men who’d accompanied him from simply taking the prize. Venn made it clear that what the innocuous looking device contained still had to be confirmed as workable.
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