The Prisoner

by Carlos J. Cortes

  Floyd swallowed. “Look, Har—”

  “In your shoes, the thought would have probably crossed my mind. After all, the DHS supposedly knows nothing about us.” He glanced at Antonio. “If things got hairy, we could always throw you in the digester. Expensive meat, though.” Then he looked straight into Floyd’s eyes. “But it would have been a fleeting thought I would have discarded at once.”

  “Why?” Laurel blurted.

  “I’m a better judge of character than either of you.” “I didn’t—” Floyd felt heat creeping up his neck. “Of course you did.” Antonio smiled. “For months we planned how to spring Russo, knowing what the stakes were, not only for you but for the lot of us. Things have turned sour, but we’re still alive and kicking, and the difference between them and us stands.”

  Floyd waited.

  “I don’t think the doctor understands,” Tyler said.

  “I do. Antonio is talking about honor … and I apologize.”

  Antonio’s smile widened. “See, there’s still hope.”

  “How many animals do you have here?” Laurel intervened, her voice weak.

  “Four-legged, about fifty thousand.” Tyler slapped Antonio and Floyd’s shoulders. “And lots of the two-legged variety.”

  “Christ.” Floyd ran a hand over his face. “I’m falling apart.”

  “Some call it shell shock.” Tyler walked along the lane hemmed by barns and stores. “But the enemy must move soon, and until then we can only wait.”

  “This must have cost a fortune,” Laurel said.

  Antonio nodded. “It did, but most of it came from estate and federal government grants and supports. We’ve pioneered many renewable-energy production technologies. We also get money from universities. They run a few projects here, in a building lab on the farthest edge of the farm. Normally you would see a gaggle of guys and gals with lab coats puttering about, taking samples and the like, but we’ve declared the place off limits while you’re here. Special cleaning and maintenance for a couple of weeks. They will leave us in peace for a while.”

  “So you’ve built this on grants?” she asked.

  Tyler shrugged. “You can say that.”

  Over the rooftops of the farm buildings, Floyd spotted occasional flashes of heat lightning and wondered if there would be a storm. “What happens to the final wastes from your digestion?”

  “There is none. The liquid can be used as a fertilizer. The solid, fibrous part we use as a soil conditioner or sell it to make low-grade building products such as fiberboard. The final output is water.”

  “How autosufficient are you?”

  “If you discount stationery, pharmaceuticals, and a few cleaning chemicals, totally. We have orchards and vegetable plots, chickens, rabbits, and a few cattle to feed us all. The crops in the fields are for the pigs.”

  “You mean all these fields are to feed the pigs?”

  Tyler raised an eyebrow at Antonio, who grinned and waved to a concrete slab fifty yards away with two dark-green vehicles with four wheels on each side and without cabins.

  “Not only the fields.” Antonio chuckled. “Come over.”

  As they neared, Floyd assessed the contraptions to discover they were amphibious vehicles.

  “What on earth is that?” Laurel asked.

  “Transport. Argo Raptors.” Tyler leaned to grip his knee and grimaced. “The weather is about to change again.”

  “Can’t you get it fixed?” Floyd thought there had to be a good medical reason why Tyler endured so much discomfort.

  Antonio had already climbed behind the wheel of the nearest Argo, and Tyler slumped on a bare wire seat by him. “Only by chopping off the whole thing and grafting on one of these.” He patted Antonio’s knee.

  Floyd pretended to help Laurel climb onto the vehicle, his hands on her waist. She cocked her head as if she was taking a measure of his feelings and blinked to accept his ruse.

  “It would mean years of surgery and rehab. So far, I’m managing,” Tyler explained as Antonio maneuvered the Argo into a dirt track between fields of hay. They were headed toward a cottage nestled by the woods between the farm buildings and the fields they could see from Tyler’s house.

  “So far, he’s going through hell,” Antonio grumbled over the whine of the vehicle’s electric engine.

  They passed a cottage surrounded by a white fence, its windows lined with boxes filled to bursting with rows of crimson geraniums. A small woman was bent next to a row of wooden tubs fronting the porch. Red and yellow marigolds crowded the containers. She must have heard the gravel crunch, because she turned, waved a hand, smiled, and carried on.

  “My house. My wife,” Antonio announced.

  Laurel gripped Floyd’s hand harder. There was pride in Antonio’s words. A vast garage with more than a passing likeness to a barn was attached to a side of the cottage, and Floyd spotted a man there—tall, preppy, and black—with a powerful athletic frame. Antonio followed his gaze and nodded. “Lester, one of my sons.”

  Both Antonio and his wife were Hispanic, but Floyd didn’t comment, reveling in the texture of Laurel’s hand. They were all silent for a while, Floyd’s mind spilling out into the deep blue air as he considered that Tyler and Antonio had crafted a small miracle.

  Antonio veered the Argo away from the track and into the woods, zigzagging between the trees. The light dimmed. Then the scene changed to a swamp worthy of the Everglades.

  The smile faded from Laurel’s face. “Holy—”

  Antonio threw the Argo down an incline toward what looked like ground carpeted with grass around clumps of tall plants. Then the ground cover parted to reveal black water climbing to within inches of the vehicle’s sill.

  “It’s a lagoon!” she said, drawing closer to Floyd and darting glances at the black water, as if she expected an alligator to raise its snout.

  “A two-cell lagoon with a four-million-gallon capacity; all of five acres,” Tyler explained. “This is the separated water after the digestion process. We use it for irrigation or flushing and other needs on the farm.”

  The Argo progressed slowly to enter a mass of vegetation. Floyd reached over to let a long leaf slide through his fingers. “And these are …?”

  “Typha, phragmites, and Eichhornia crassipes—water hyacinth,” Antonio said.

  “But where did you get all this water from?” Laurel asked.

  “The river.”

  “You buy water?”

  “On the contrary; they pay us.” Tyler chuckled. “We return most of the water we use, but much cleaner—almost drinking water.”

  “The plants?”

  A nod from Antonio. “These absorb most of the nasty stuff from the effluent water—metals and the like. Every so often we run a floating reaper to keep the plants under control.”

  Floyd grinned. “Don’t tell me, and you feed the plants to the pigs.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea. These plants are fibrous. After drying, we shred them. A company buys the product to make insulation panels for buildings.”

  Tyler turned around as Antonio edged the Argo toward another incline on the pond’s opposite side. “This is his baby.” He patted Antonio’s shoulder. “He dreamed it up and built it.”

  Once on dry land, Antonio maneuvered once more between tall trees to a clearing.

  “Wow!” Floyd pointed to a row of huge hangarlike buildings covered in blinding white polymer.

  “We pump the water from the lagoon into these greenhouses,” Antonio said, glancing at Tyler and winking an eye.

  Inside, the building looked like the hold of a gigantic space station but for the floor, which was carpeted in green. Overhead, a line of pipes held hundreds of arms capped with what seemed like lawn sprinklers spanning the width of the construction.

  “Duckweed,” Antonio said. “These plants further purify the water before pouring it back into the river, and, yes, these plants we feed to the pigs, with other proteins and feed-grain crops from the farmland.”


  Floyd frowned. “Proteins? I thought you only had pigs.” A few yards away, the carpet of greenery rippled. Floyd looked attentively to discover that it rippled in multiple points. “What the fuck are you growing here?”

  Tyler laughed. “Fish by the ton; also in the lagoons.”

  “And other things too,” Antonio said.

  “Go on.” Laurel shook her head in wonder.

  “When we dredge the ponds, we use the sludge, mixed with compost and some of the fibers from the water hyacinth, to raise worms. We also grow mushrooms, but those we sell.”

  After a sharp beep, Tyler slapped his hand to his shirt pocket and produced a pager. He toggled it, then pivoted on his heel toward the green house’s entrance. “Russo is awake, and he’s hungry.”

  chapter 38

  17:12

  After a long day punctuated by the absence of news of the breakout and an impromptu press conference convened without warning by Odelle Marino, Genia Warren left the office early and returned to her house for a sinful bath of piping hot water laced with half a jar of salts. Just before meeting the press, she’d joined Odelle outside the DHS conference room for a barrage of clipped instructions. Make that orders, Genia thought. After the farce, where Odelle had dangled her poisoned bait before the cameras, she’d marched past Genia, her head high as a galleon’s figurehead, without so much as a glance.

  On her way to the bathroom, Genia picked up a dish of crudités and a small bowl of the chocolate dip that Herminia, her resident housekeeper, had left in the fridge before adjourning to her cottage at the far edge of the backyard. Thus prepared, she abandoned herself to the caress of fragrant water up to her neck, while happily munching celery, cucumber, and carrot sticks covered in the dark sauce.

  Thirty minutes later, Genia padded to her office, nursing a glass of Riesling. She tucked behind her desk and initiated her computer by staring at a dimple over its screen until its IR laser locked in and identified her iris’s signature. On the rugged slate mantelpiece to one side of the room, a compact grandmother clock chimed six-fifteen. Unless something drastic developed, she should be able to clear her work backlog by nine o’clock and catch up on her sleep. She glanced at the plasma screen on the wall and decided against switching it on to watch Odelle’s performance—and her own—before the cameras, scheduled for prime time.

  Instead, Genia reached inside her bathrobe to a thin composite cord circling her waist and unscrewed the halves of its hazelnut-size clasp. Then she ran a hand over the smooth edge of her desktop communications pad, sliding the nail-size stick she’d pulled from the locket—an encryption and voice-synthesizer board, one of a matched pair—into a slot. The other was plugged into a similar machine atop Senator Palmer’s desk. The encrypting algorithm driving the device was secure; the equivalent of a single-use pad, it changed every time both boards synchronized. Whenever she was in her house, Genia had the chip in its slot and returned it to its container around her waist when leaving.

  Genia recalled vividly one evening at a Russian embassy gala dinner, almost three years before, when a stocky though distinguished Senator Palmer in an impeccable tuxedo had requested they dance. A little tipsy after two glasses of champagne and gliding over the polished timbers of the ballroom nestled in expert arms, she’d instinctively nodded when he’d whispered in her ear, “Would you change the way the DHS rules this nation?”

  Two days later, after a routine appearance before a congressional select committee, she’d found a small box with a strange piece of lustrous black jewelry in her overcoat pocket. At first she took it to be a necklace, but printed on a flimsy paper folded inside the box were the instructions. Genia adjusted her bathrobe belt and smiled. She didn’t believe in coincidences. Senator Palmer, besides having a brilliant mind, had an unerring sense of proportion. The waist cord fit her perfectly.

  It was ironic that Odelle Marino had been responsible for their choice of code names. Years before, Odelle had boasted she had the perfect headhunter and enforcer: Onuris. It had taken Genia more than a year to put Nikola Masek’s name to the moniker.

  During their first communication via their ultrasecure line, Palmer had suggested they use suitable code names. When Genia warned about Onuris, Odelle’s freelance enforcer, Palmer had deadpanned, “I see. Then I’ll be Ra.” And, after a few seconds of silence, “And you are Horus, since Odelle is obviously Seth.”

  In the process of deciphering the meaning behind Palmer’s words, she’d discovered his almost obsessive fascination with Egyptian mythology, and, from that instant, her respect for the aging senator’s phenomenal intellect had climbed to new heights.

  Seth, the Egyptian god of chaos, embodied the principle of evil. His war with Horus lasted eighty years, during which Seth tore out his rival’s left eye. When Horus was pronounced the victor by a council of the gods and thus became the rightful ruler of Egypt, Seth was forced to return the eye of Horus and was killed.

  On a first reading, the legend wasn’t too insightful and not awe-inspiring, except for how the council of gods settled the winner.

  Seth was homosexual and had tried to prove his dominance by seducing Horus. But Horus placed a hand between his thighs to catch Seth’s semen before casting it stealthily into the river. Horus then spread his own seed on a lettuce leaf, Seth’s favorite food. After Seth ate the lettuce, they appeared before the gods to settle their feud. The gods first listened to Seth’s claim of dominance over Horus and called his semen forth, but it answered from the river. Then the gods listened to Horus’s claim of dominance over Seth and called his semen forth. When it answered from inside Seth, Horus was declared the ruler of Egypt and Seth’s fate was sealed.

  After selecting a number residing in the tiny stick, the pad went through a flurry of beeps and pauses, until the boards synchronized when the receiver at the other end engaged the connection. Two letters, RA, scrolled across the pad’s screen to stop on its edge, a cursor slowly blinking. Sometimes Genia would simply type a short message instead of engaging a voice link, but today they had too much to discuss. “The leak to The Post certainly stirred up a frenzy.”

  “And?”

  “It’s Seth’s move. My guess is Onuris will lead the charge and …” She bit her lower lip, unsure if her emotions had altered her capacity for perception.

  “Yes?”

  “I may be mistaken, but I fear Seth thinks Ritter knows more than he does,” she said.

  “And how much is that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You reckon she’ll send her goons after him?”

  “Could be.”

  “Good.”

  Her stomach clenched. Somehow she’d guessed Palmer’s reaction, a logical one.

  “Can’t be bad to have the enemy busy chasing illusions.”

  Silence.

  “Unless …”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Unless the possibility disturbs you.”

  “He’s a fine man, and an excellent professional.”

  Ra’s metallic voice was preceded by a sound that could have been a sigh. “It does matter. I’m sorry, but if he’s the professional you think he is, he’ll know how to take care of himself.”

  Genia doubted it. If Odelle sent her shadier operatives to gauge the extent of Lawrence Ritter’s knowledge, they would damage the man, perhaps irreparably. She was about to sever the connection when she remembered. “Thank you for the warning about The Post.“

  Silence.

  “What warning?”

  The task light over her desk seemed to flicker and dim as the atmosphere suddenly thickened. Genia stared at the tiny sliver of polymer protruding from her communications pad’s edge: the foolproof security device that no hacker could bypass and no cryptologist could unravel. Their communications were secure; it was a byword in the business that paired boards could not be broken into. Only the NSA held the codes, supposedly guarded under far safer measures than nuclear weapons. Not safe enough. She drew in a long breath
to calm her racing heart and had an insane urge to sever communications as the logic crashed in on her. Someone other than Ra had sent the message.

  “Tell me about it.”

  When she finished, the line remained silent for a long time before the metallic voice echoed again. “What an interesting development.”

  “Interesting is not the adjective I would use. Forgive me, but you don’t seem concerned. Your boards aren’t as foolproof as we thought.”

  “Oh, they are. Whoever has managed to send the message is undoubtedly listening to our exchange now. Very clever. An old English aphorism is most fitting. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s simple. Our friend has found out who we are from the government-issue signatures of these boards; otherwise, he couldn’t hack into our setup to beat the system. To do that, he must have access to the highest reaches of the NSA. Yet that in itself wouldn’t explain how he could be listening. I suppose he’s obtained one or several of these boards and tinkered with them to slip a line of code to join in. Now our conversations are three-way.”

  “You mean he can listen to all government-encrypted traffic?”

  “I don’t think so. He must have obtained the code signatures of our boards from the NSA. These he can track, listen to traffic, and, if he chooses, join in the conversation.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the question. Someone with resources, access to NSA software, who’s a computer genius and willing to help, no doubt for his or her own agenda.”

  “Help us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. Otherwise, we’d both be a foot under thick liquid, attached to a tube.”

  “And now?”

  “A riddle. We could stop using our little setup, but I fear it would be like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Our friend out there knows who we are and what we’re after. On the other hand, we could continue as if nothing had happened and insure that our silent partner knows exactly what we’re doing.”