Screams from the sidewalk echoed through the coffee shop. Patrons began to crowd the windows while others backed away, leaving Rivas as one of the few by the windows. If anyone was concerned about the solitary man in the wheelchair amidst the chaos of a street shooting, they hid it well.
The chaotic scene he watched through the window told him something had happened. People had been killed. Knowing Tali as well as he did, he estimated the number to be at least three because he had heard only three shots. “One Shot, One Kill” had always been her motto.
He hoped she’d gotten away. He wished he’d been there to back her up. He wished he could go to her now and report back to Jason what had happened, but he couldn’t do that.
He watched the chaos unfold on the street. People dashing back and forth away from the scene. His wheelchair would either knock people over or, worse, the panicked crowd would knock over his chair and trample him to death. All the training in the world couldn’t help him survive a stampede.
He’d seen it happen enough times in various places around the world. Major cities, small towns, capitals of the world, and third-world villages. People always responded the same way to danger. Run. Flee. Worry about where you were running to and what you were running from later.
The wheelchair had taken that instinct away from Rivas. He had no choice but to stick where he was. The Beretta in the side pocket of his wheelchair and M4 tucked in the pouch under his chair offered cold comfort. The street was too chaotic for him to leave.
He was trapped.
He reached for his handheld when it began to buzz. He looked at the screen and saw it was Jason. He tapped the screen and gave his all-clear cover name. “This is Professor Narvaez.”
“Tali is a block away and not moving,” Jason told him.
Rivas looked around to see if anyone might be listening, but the other patrons were too busy deciding to panic to pay attention to the cripple by the window. He didn’t know if Jason spoke Spanish, but replied in Spanish. “Three shots fired. Lots of people running back and forth. Sirens inbound.”
Jason seemed to understand, but responded in English. “Any idea about Tali?”
“Not from here.”
Jason swore. “She’s not moving and I can’t get a live satellite image of the scene.”
Rivas leaned forward in his wheelchair. “Does she still have the laptop on her?”
“I don’t know yet. OMNI’s reach in Europe is weak.”
“Damn it!” Rivas slammed his fist down onto the table. None of the other patrons seemed to notice. “We need to know if they took the bait or not.”
“The upload to OMNI is continuing,” Jason said. “Past fifty percent. That’s all I know. If they took the laptop from her, they haven’t stopped the upload.”
He ignored his aching left hand. “Christ, Jason. If she died for nothing…”
“We don’t know if she’s dead, and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway,” Jason said. “Besides, there’s been a change of plans. Demerest has people in the immediate area. They’re ready to pick up the Vanguard laptop from you right now. I suggest you tell them where it is. It’s already cost us so much. It’s their problem now.”
Rivas looked up when a woman with long reddish hair and pale skin stood in front of him on the other side of the window. She was bright-eyed and pleasant, looking more like a flight attendant than someone who might be working for Charles Demerest at the CIA. She pointed at his phone, then at her face. She even managed a smile.
“I think one of them is here,” Rivas said. “She’s telling me to scan her face. Hold on.”
He took the woman’s photo with his handheld and watched OMNI run it through every database in its considerable reach. The response would have been nearly immediate in the United States, but they were in Berlin. It took about thirty seconds before the match came back with three positive identities on one Patricia Levin. Her driver’s license said she lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The other window showed her State Department identification file. The third showed her true employer—the Central Intelligence Agency.
“She checks out,” Jason told him. “That’s the same person Demerest said would come for the laptop. Give it to her, then get the hell out of there. I’ll send you a fallback position when you’re far enough away.”
He beckoned her to come in as he pocketed the handheld. As she made her way in, he dropped his hand into the side pouch of the wheelchair. He wrapped his hand around the .45 and aimed it at her through the pouch. She sat in the same seat Tali had occupied before she’d left.
She looked down at the pouch of his wheelchair before she sat. “Is that a gun in your wheelchair or are you just happy to see me?”
Rivas wasn’t in the mood for games. “What happened to my partner?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said. “I just got here, so your guess is as good as mine. All I care about is the laptop.”
“Glad to see they still teach compassion at the Barnyard.”
Her bland expression didn’t change. “The laptop, please.”
Rivas felt himself redden. He hated giving up like this, especially after the price they had paid to get it, but he had no choice.
He pulled the Vanguard laptop from the pocket on the left side of his wheelchair and handed it to her. “I’d watch my ass if I were you. One look at the laptop my partner had and they’ll know we were using it to upload information from the real device. They’ll lock on to your location pretty quick.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.” He watched her slip the laptop into her knapsack. It wasn’t just a knapsack. It was a lead-lined sleeve within a lead-lined case. It would be enough to block any tracking signal from the laptop. Enough to block the upload to OMNI, too. Rivas knew OMNI had access to Langley’s systems, but that had been before they knew about the University. Now that they were aware, they would probably be vigilant.
Levin zipped up the knapsack. “If you had simply brought this to us when you got it, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Yeah,” Rivas said, “because you people have such a stellar history of being able to keep secrets.”
Levin looked disappointed, the way a soccer mom might look if her kid told her he’d just failed algebra. “I hope your friend is alright. I really do. But if she’s not, just remember we’re not the ones who played games on this one. That’s on you.”
Rivas looked in her eyes. “Fuck. You.”
He watched her stand and walk out of the café. The street had become more crowded now as people’s fear gave way to curiosity. He lost sight of her as soon as she stepped outside.
He decided maybe that was for the best.
He watched the crowd on the street grow thicker as he heard himself beginning to pray for Tali.
HICKS PUNCHED the elevator door to The Penthouse as he waited for it to come back down. He didn’t know if any of the hotel workers had heard him. He didn’t care either. He’d spent the better part of the past three hours trying to get answers about what had happened to Tali and Rivas at the coffee shop. Was Tali safe? Was their baby safe? Had Rivas gotten away? Had the Vanguard recaptured the laptop? Did Demerest have it now?
For a man accustomed to instant answers, the lack of information was frustrating. The lack of information about the woman he loved and the baby she carried made it unbearable.
Jason’s reply had been frustratingly constant. “Return to the Penthouse immediately. We can coordinate better from there.”
Rivas had left the coffee shop by the time Hicks had gotten there. The street was already thick with civilians craning their necks to see what happened. The police had done a poor job of securing the area and the scene was surrounded. None of the spectators would move and there was no way Hicks could force his way to the front of the group without causing a riot. He had asked ten different people what had happened and gotten ten different responses. The most common denominator in all their stories was that some people had gotten shot and so
me people had died. After that, their reports varied to the point of being useless.
He had tried reaching Tali on her handheld, but she didn’t answer. He had tried tracking her handheld, but OMNI couldn’t find it. He had asked Jason and Scott for updates. Both told him the situation was dangerous and fluid and he needed to get back to the Penthouse as soon as possible.
Neither of them knew what had happened to Tali.
Or so they had said.
He even tried to listen in on the Berlin first-responder chatter about the incident. All he heard was that shots had been fired and there were multiple injuries. Ambulances were inbound. The chatter was vague, meaning they didn’t know what they were dealing with. The fact they were chattering at all meant the German Federal Security Services had not clamped down on the investigation yet. He hoped Tali was still alive. He hoped their baby had survived as well. But hoping had never been good enough for James Hicks. He had to know.
Unable to see anything from the street, Hicks had tried to access a satellite to get an overhead view. But OMNI had been unable to find any available satellites to hack. The rest were either too secure or didn’t have powerful enough cameras.
He thought about trying to gain access to a rooftop so he could watch what was happening from above. But the helicopters circling overhead meant the police were looking for someone. Popping out on the rooftop in the middle of a manhunt might lead to a bullet in the brain.
He had decided maybe Jason and Scott were right. Maybe he should head back to the Penthouse.
But before he gave up entirely, he grabbed a cab and took it to the fallback position where Jason had told Tali to go. Zentraler Omnibusbahnhof was Berlin’s central bus station, and an ideal place for someone to blend in while they waited to be picked up. Or, in Tali’s case, extracted from a dangerous situation.
He’d walked through the bus station, looking for her. He’d seen many women who looked like her—slender, olive-skinned, jet-black hair—but none of them were her. He spent the better part of an hour waiting inside then outside to see if she had made it. To see if they had made it.
His eyes never stopped moving over the seemingly endless stream of people going into and coming from the bus station. Many of them resembled Tali, but none of them were her. None of them moved like her or gave him that same warmth he got whenever he saw her. He checked his handheld constantly. Still no sign of her on OMNI.
Reluctantly, he returned to the Penthouse.
When the elevator doors opened, Hicks stepped in and keyed the elevator to go back upstairs. He checked his handheld one last time in case maybe Tali had made it to the fallback position at the bus station. In case she had tried to reach him.
But the handheld offered no answers. Still no contact.
His knees almost buckled as he began to accept that something had gone horribly wrong. He shook it off and straightened himself out as the elevator reached the Penthouse. There was no point in letting the others see him like this.
When the elevator doors opened, Hicks saw Roger rush at him with something in his right hand. Instinct kicked in and Hicks tried to knock Roger’s hand away.
But Roger dodged the blow, thrust his left hand under Hicks’s chin, and injected him in the neck with a pneumatic syringe.
The gentle hiss of the injection died away and Hicks felt himself falling, stopping in midair. He felt like he was floating, the way he’d felt all those years ago in jump school, in those precious seconds before his chute opened as he plummeted to earth, only to stop as he was jolted to a halt and glided down to the landing area.
Hicks’s vision was blurred, his hearing muffled, and he couldn’t feel any part of his body, not even his face. It was as though he was in a coffin, buried alive within his own body. He may have even panicked if he could have generated enough feeling to do so.
But he did not panic. His mind wouldn’t let him. He felt a certain power in his powerlessness, a strength in his numbness. He had been forced to let go of all his troubles, all his worries. The Carousel of Concern that spun constantly in his mind had drifted away in the darkness and was nowhere to be seen. It hadn’t been blown to bits as it had back in New York City. It had simply ceased to matter. He soon forgot how he’d come to feel this way, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, James Hicks felt nothing at all. And he had no complaints.
HICKS DIDN’T know how long he had felt this way when he realized his vision was beginning to clear, and so was his mind. Time had been a burden he no longer carried or cared about. He felt too peaceful to care about seconds and minutes and hours and limits.
He realized he was sitting upright. With his peripheral vision, he saw his arms resting atop the plush arms of an easy chair. He eventually found the strength to move his head from left to right. A cord was tied around his chest, keeping him in the chair. He couldn’t feel anything else of his body. The paralysis should have made him panic, but gave him a sense of calm instead. Maybe his troubles were finally over. The burdens he had carried for so long would belong to someone else. What those burdens had been were lost to him for now, but the impression they had left in his mind was still there.
His hearing began to return and he heard a familiar voice saying, “James.” He recognized the word and the voice. Roger Cobb was saying his name.
Roger spoke again. “I know you can’t speak yet, but I need you to look at me if you can hear me.”
With more effort than he thought he could muster, Hicks lifted his head and saw Roger just at the edge of his field of vision.
Roger smiled. “That’s good. That’s very good. Now look around and try to remember where you are.”
Hicks felt his vision begin to clear even more as he looked around. He realized the room seemed familiar to him. It was his bedroom. In the Penthouse. He remembered.
He realized Roger was sitting on the edge of a bed, his bed, while Hicks was sitting in the plush white chair in the corner. He had never sat in that chair before, using it instead as a place to dump his clothes when he got undressed each night. He still couldn’t feel enough of his body to know if it was comfortable. He couldn’t feel anything other than his head. He still couldn’t move a muscle or wiggle a toe. He didn’t even want to try. He’d prefer not to be able to move his head, either, if he could manage it. The cocoon he’d been in had been warm and dull and perfect. He wanted to go back.
Roger shifted himself so he was in Hicks’s view and Hicks remembered he was there. Roger tucked a finger beneath Hicks’s chin and held his head upright. “I gave you something to make you calm. It’s harmless, and the fact that you’re regaining a range of motion in your neck shows the medicine is already beginning to wear off.”
But he didn’t want it to wear off. The term itself had meant something temporary, something with defined edges and boundaries. He had grown to enjoy the weightlessness of unimportance. The freedom of insignificance. Why was Roger pulling him away from all of that? They were friends, weren’t they?
Then he remembered all the way back to when he had begun to feel like this. To a time when Roger had stabbed him in the neck with something. Why had he done that then? Why was he threatening to take away such a wonderful gift?
Hicks realized his head was beginning to feel heavier. He pulled his head away from Roger’s finger. Shadows of questions began to form in his mind, but the link between his brain and his mouth had not been reestablished. A question would begin to form, only to evaporate in the ether of his bliss. But enough questions burned away to leave enough ash behind for him to understand what they all meant. He looked at the ash and read what he saw. His own voice echoed in the chambers of his mind as he heard himself ask, “Why?”
“Because I have some unpleasant things to tell you. Things I needed to tell you in a certain setting. I needed to make sure you couldn’t hurt yourself or anyone else when I told you Tali Saddon is dead.”
Tali Saddon. That was a name, too, just like Roger Cobb. A name that had meant somethi
ng important to him at some point not too long ago. The mist in his mind drifted away as the full memory of who she was and the meaning of Roger’s words hit home. The words struck him at the very core of his being.
Tali was dead. Their baby was dead.
He still could not feel his arms or legs, but an ache somewhere deep within him began to spread throughout his entire body.
He felt a single tear run down his cheek. Only one word made sense to him. “No.”
“She was killed a block away from the coffee shop, long before you got there. Thirty minutes at least, probably more based on how we tracked your location. She died well, James. She drew the Vanguard men away from Rivas with the laptop we were using to upload the information to OMNI. She was a hero.”
Hicks heard what Roger was saying, every word dulling the numbness and bringing him out of the warm fog he had enjoyed for so long. He felt more tears on his cheeks as he struggled to form another word. “How?”
“She killed three of her attackers before a fourth one stabbed her from behind. He stabbed her in the heart. It was a clean wound, probably a dagger. I doubt she felt any pain. It was a good death.”
Most of the feeling had returned to his face, allowing him to feel the coolness left on his skin by evaporating tears. Tears at the memory of who Tali Saddon was and what she had meant to him. Tears for what had been so special about her. “The baby?”
Roger looked away.
“No.” Hicks shut his eyes, shut them hard until he saw bright sparks through the darkness. “No. Not that. Please.”
Roger drew his thumbs across Hicks’s cheeks, removing the tears. “That’s the reason I gave you the injection, my old friend. I needed you to hear the truth and not what you wanted to believe. What she wanted you to believe. I needed you to understand that she lied to you, James. She wasn’t pregnant. There was no baby because there never could have been a baby.”
Hicks found enough strength to lurch forward in the chair, trying to launch himself at the man who was lying to him now. This man who was supposed to be his friend. Maybe it wasn’t Roger Cobb after all. He remembered being drugged. Maybe this was all just an elaborate setup by Tessmer to break him of his will. To get him to talk. Maybe…
A Conspiracy of Ravens Page 19