by David Wood
She was not so sheltered when the second shot rang out.
The bullet creased the air next to her ear, but the amplified report blasted her off her feet and sent her reeling through the doorway to the Oracle Room.
Kellogg, who had been stunned by the noise of the first shot, managed to stay on his feet and dragged her onward, out of the line of fire.
More shots sounded, accompanied by the noise of bullets slamming into the limestone walls. Dust and rock chips filled the air but none of the rounds found their target, and as soon as the pair was out of the bell-shaped chamber, the decibel level dropped like a stone.
Jade stumbled along behind Kellogg, her wits still jumbled, part of her brain still trying to process what she had seen during her out-of-body excursion. Was it just something that had arisen randomly from her unconscious mind? A dream? All she knew for certain was that she had woken up to a nightmare.
How did they find us here? I didn’t tell anyone….
A sliver of doubt wormed into the fractured jigsaw puzzle of her awareness. She had made a critical mistake.
The realization brought her fully back to the moment. Her quest for the vault, whatever it really was, would have to wait until she wasn’t being chased by a gang of killers. She pulled free of Kellogg’s grasp and sprinted out ahead of him, following the metal floor back to the stairs, bounding up them three at a time. A few seconds later, she was threading her way through the museum building, following the dim glow of overhead exit signs.
It was déjà vu all over again. Her enemies had tracked her down—again—trapped her underground—again—and now she was running for her life. Again. The only consolation was that the men trying to kill her seemed incapable of learning from their failures.
The thought had barely formed when a man stepped out of the shadows, directly between her and the doorway. Jade’s eyes were drawn, not to his face, but to the dark and all too familiar shape of the pistol braced in his outstretched hands and aimed right at her.
Because her gaze was fixed on the gun, she did not see a third arm appear above the gunman’s right shoulder and snake around his neck. It was only when his head tilted back sharply and then twisted halfway around with a sickening crack, the unfired gun falling from nerveless fingers, that she realized there was someone else there.
As the gunman crumpled into a heap, the face of her savior was revealed. Though still cloaked in shadow, Jade immediately recognized the person standing there. Her surprise at the appearance of the gunman was nothing to what she now experienced.
“Professor?”
His grim expression transformed into a smile as he briskly advanced, arms thrown wide invitingly. Jade ran forward, not interested in escape as much as she was in being in his arms. The same arms that had just broken a man’s neck enfolded her in a tight embrace which she returned with matching vigor. Then his lips found hers.
The kiss was so unexpected that, for a moment, she didn’t know how to respond. Not until this moment did she realize how long she had been waiting for him to do this, how much she wanted it.
Kellogg’s voice intruded on the moment. “There are more of them behind us. We have to go.”
Professor pulled away, taking Jade’s hand and pulling her, gently but urgently, along behind him. They emerged onto the warm but still breezy streets and Professor headed toward an SUV parked across the street. There were no other cars, but Jade remained wary. There had been at least half-a-dozen attackers at the museum in Syracuse which meant several were unaccounted for.
A tumult arose from behind them as the gunmen from the Oracle Room spilled out of the entrance to the Hypogeum. Their shouts were not a warning to the escaping prey but rather an internal communication between the pursuers. A moment later, the shots started.
Jade ducked involuntarily as the bullets began hammering into the fenders of the vehicle to which they ran. Professor however whirled around, drawing a semi-automatic pistol from his waistband, and squeezed off several shots. His return fire shattered the attack and sent the men—all but one of them who now lay sprawled out on the sidewalk, clutching a bloody chest wound—scrambling back into the museum.
Without putting the gun away, Professor wrenched the SUV’s door open. “Inside. Hurry.”
Jade didn’t need to be told twice. She and Kellogg piled into the vehicle—she took the passenger seat, Kellogg got in back—while Professor slid behind the steering wheel. A few seconds later, they were racing away down the quiet backstreets of Paola.
Jade’s heart rate and breathing gradually returned to normal, but her mind refused to slow down. Part of her was still out in the cosmos, racing above the earth like a guided missile, homing in on the vault, even though she now felt she knew less about it than she had half an hour before. Part of her was still reliving this latest attack, which had come closer than any of the others to ending her search forever.
Part of her could not stop thinking about the kiss. About his lips pressing against hers, firm, assertive but not overly intrusive. It was almost everything she could have hoped for.
Which made it so much harder for her to admit what she knew to be true.
The man that had just saved her… just kissed her… was not Professor.
He looked like Professor, sounded like him…even smelled like him. But something about him was wrong. The kiss and the emotion behind were so out of character that there could be no doubt.
Professor had been replaced by a Changeling.
NINETEEN
Unknown location
As the hours stretched into days, it became increasingly harder for Professor not to second guess his decision to allow himself to be recaptured. His reasons were still valid. His escape had been a carefully orchestrated fiction, a test to see what he would do if given the chance. He was certain of that, just as he was certain that First Officer Carrera, or the woman claiming to be her, was working with his captors.
A true escape under those circumstances was impossible for the simple reason that he had no idea who or what he was escaping from. He did not know who was really behind his abduction, or the hijacking of the airliner. He did not even know for certain where he was. Sitting in the cockpit of the derelict aircraft, he had decided that learning the answers to those questions took higher priority than trying to get away.
The “escape” had been a fiction in more ways than one.
They had come for him in force, a force of eight men… scratch that, eight persons. Their genders had been concealed, along with their faces and any easily identifiable features, behind shapeless gray coveralls and mesh head coverings. They carried Taser X26C stun guns, which was interesting but not particularly illuminating. Their movement through the plane had been orderly but not exactly tactical. His sense was that they were not trained operators, not even soldiers, or if they had received formal training, it was from a playbook of their own devising. Without uttering a single word, they closed on him, tased him senseless, and then tranquilized him with another injection.
When he came to again, he was back in the squalid little cabin, no closer to answers than he had been before making his run into the woods.
He remained there for what felt like several hours, silently daring his captors to send Carrera or someone else in to check on him, but no one came knocking. Finally, he cleared his throat and addressed the ceiling. “I’m sure you guys are watching… listening at least, so why don’t we cut to the chase. If you want something from me, just ask.”
No reply.
He counted his heartbeats, trying to gauge the passage of time. After what felt like about half an hour, he tried again. “If you don’t tell me what you want, I can’t very well give it to you.”
Silence.
It was an answer though.
His thoughts kept drifting back to that old television series. He remembered the intro word for word, could still hear the defiant voice of the captive secret agent.
What do you want?
And the rep
ly, a different voice each week, but always the same words.
Information.
Information about what? Ongoing espionage missions? The names of highly placed NOC agents? Moles in the politburo?
It didn’t matter. Information was just a MacGuffin, a symbol of the man’s defiance in the face of Byzantine plots to break his spirit.
You won’t get it, the secret agent had replied, week after week, and always the reply was the same.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Information.
He swung his legs onto the floor, stood up and went outside. The sun was overhead, which meant he’d been under for a full day. A few minutes later, he spotted Carrera walking toward him. There was something different about her. Her bearing had changed, her posture and gait were more assertive. She was the same person, but no longer playing the same role.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I thought you were going to wait until after sundown,” she remarked, undisguisedly sardonic.
He shrugged. “That’s what I told you. It was never my plan.”
She got within a few yards of him, stopped and put her hands on her hips. “When did you know?”
“Know what?”
She gazed back at him as if trying to judge his sincerity. “I know you’re not stupid,” she said after a long pause.
“Flattery now?”
“Look, just answer the question. When did you know?”
Interesting, he thought. She repeated the question, but didn’t specify. Didn’t give anything away. She’s fishing. Two can play that game. “I was a Boy Scout. One look at the sun told me that we weren’t in the Northern Hemisphere. So I knew you were lying. Either about where we were, or about being a pilot.”
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t know if I could trust you. I thought it might be some kind of test.”
“A test?”
“You know, to see if I’d go along with you or turn you in. They like to play games like that.”
“Who? Obviously not the North Koreans.”
She shook her head. “Obviously. But I wasn’t lying when I told you that they never show themselves.”
As before, she spoke without any noticeable tells. Either she was the most convincing liar on earth, or she was actually telling the truth. He shook his head, trying to resist the seductive urge to believe her.
She’s trying to play me, trying to get me to reveal something. What?
Information.
There was something his captors wanted and if they wouldn’t tell him what, wouldn’t even ask the question, then it could only mean that they expected to learn it simply by observing him.
He had been wrong about this being a cat and mouse game. There was no cat. Just a maze through which he was being forced to run so that his captors could learn... what?
Information.
The only way to beat them, to figure out who they really were and what they really wanted, was to change the game. Instead of information, he would give them disinformation. He would have to become someone that he was not.
“Well, if you’re satisfied that I’m not a plant, maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a better plan for getting out of here.”
“Seriously? After what happened last night?”
“I’m not going to stay here,” he said, and that wasn’t a lie. “I will get out of here, or die trying.” He took a breath. “I have to get back to Jade.”
“Jade?”
“Jade Ihara. My girlfriend.”
Her response was almost too perfect. “We’ve all got people waiting for us back home.”
“Jade needs me. I need her. I’d go through hell itself to be with her again.” He tried to inject the appropriate amount of emotion into his voice so that they would believe this, the first of many lies he planned to tell. He was a little surprised by his own sincerity.
That had been two days ago, and he felt no closer to understanding what was really going on. He was beginning to question his underlying premise; had he given his enemy too much credit for cleverness?
I should have kept going that first night.
But no, he knew better. He was right about everything. It was all a game, a test. He had confused them at the plane. They had been waiting for him to try something… to reveal the extent of his knowledge and abilities. Would he try to fly the plane out? Call someone on the radio?
But why? That was the question that still nagged at him. Why? What did they want?
Information.
Okay, Professor. You’ve always prided yourself on being the smartest guy in the room. Figure this one out. Start back at the beginning.
The plane. Flight 815. Why had they taken the plane?
It occurred to him only then that he had lost track of that particular thread. He had only gotten mixed up in the investigation because Roche’s publisher had been on the missing plane. And it had only been after he had tipped his hand, in a very roundabout way, that Sousa had hit him with the tranquilizer and then arranged his abduction.
Hypothesis: Roche was close to exposing their operation. His obsession with Changelings had unwittingly uncovered something else. An ongoing intelligence operation. A highly placed mole in a government agency. A changeling of a different sort….
He shot to his feet, ran outside the little cabin, but stopped after only a few steps, looking around at the other huts, the handful of people roaming between the rows, idling away the days of their captivity.
Carrera’s voice reached out to him. “Pete? Everything okay?”
He stared at her for a moment, but then he started forward again without answering.
“Pete!” He heard her footsteps pounding the earth as she raced to catch up, then quieting as she fell in beside him. “Pete… Sorry, Professor, what’s up?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, my God, you’re going for it aren’t you?”
He continued to ignore her, striding purposefully past the huts, passing into the woods without hesitation. Carrera did not repeat the question, but maintained a curious silence as she kept pace with him.
He reached the runway a few minutes later but instead of following it to the idle plane as he had before, he crossed to the other side and kept going, pushing deep into the crowded evergreens. Though he tried not to show it, he was wary now. He was being unpredictable—that was his intent at least—and the response to his actions would be equally hard to anticipate. They might continue watching as they had before, or they might send out the goon squad and zap him into submission again. His gut told him they were more interested in seeing what he would do, but he was going to be ready if and when the guys with tasers showed up again.
Halfway down the far side of a wooded hill, the forest opened up to reveal more signs of human habitation—not an ad hoc containment area like the camp where he had been held, but an actual neighborhood with houses and paved streets that branched and looped, and sometimes dead-ended in cul de sacs. It looked exactly like a suburban housing development, with at least two hundred separate homes, perhaps more. There were small parks, a few large buildings that might have been auditoriums or churches, though strangely, there were no cars on the streets, and no roads leading away from the community. Like the camp of huts, the neighborhood was an island in the middle of a sea of trees.
He risked a glance over at Carrera and found her staring, not at the suburb, but at him. He pointed down the hill. “You don’t look very surprised to see that?”
She said nothing.
“Should I keep going?” he asked.
She spread her hands in a noncommittal gesture. “You seem to have it all figured out.”
“Vinnytsia.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Early in the Cold War, the Soviets built a mock American town in Vinnytsia, Ukraine to train deep cover agents in how to behave like Americans. They spoke only English—American dialect. Drove American cars, ate American food, listened to Amer
ican music and read American magazines. All so that their sleeper agents would be able to blend in seamlessly with the American population.”
“You think the Soviets are behind all this?”
“Why don’t you tell me who’s behind it? You took that plane. God only knows how many other people you’ve taken over the years. Brought them here to populate this little farce so that your agents would be able to insert themselves into the real world. Who will I find down there? The real Jeanne Carrera? Maybe the people who were really on that plane?”
“You think I’m—”
“Don’t bother denying it. We’re way past that. Gerald Roche got too close with his Changeling conspiracy. If enough people believed him, started questioning whether their elected leaders had been replaced by doubles, there was a chance—remote, but there all the same—that something would come out, and then the dominoes would start to fall.
“I’ll admit. I’m still not clear on why you took that plane. If all you wanted was to shut Roche up, it seems like there were easier ways to accomplish that with less risk and a lot less collateral damage. Did you just need live bodies? Shanghaied extras to make the training scenario more believable? Or is there something else you needed? Someone else on that plane? Something you needed Parrott to tell you?”
He took her silence for a tacit admission of guilt. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’ve been doubling people, probably for a while now. You start with someone who’s a close physical match, do the rest with stage make-up. Mission Impossible stuff. Maybe even cosmetic surgery if there’s time for it. But looks aren’t everything. Your imposter wouldn’t last ten seconds in a conversation with someone the subject actually know—close friends, relatives, lovers. You could learn a lot about someone from discreet surveillance, but what you really need is an immersive environment. A place to both train your agents and observe your subjects. Your own little Vinnytsia.
“You kidnap them, bring them here and then watch what they do. Learn everything about them. Mannerisms. Tastes. Am I in the ballpark? You doubled me, right? When I showed up asking the wrong questions, you were worried that it might all start to unravel, so you brought me here to pump me for information, while you got my double ready to head back to the real world and make sure the investigation goes nowhere. Is that about right?” He turned and scanned the woods at their back. “Is he out there? The guy you got to double me? Hey. Come on out. Let’s talk.”