Kira looked impressed. “I like it,” she said.
“Colonel?” said Desh.
“Me to,” said Connelly. “I recommend we split up once we’re there.”
“Agreed,” said Desh. He turned to Kira. “If you can get us on I-95 north, the mall is just off a main exit.”
She nodded. “Will do.”
The wide gravel road soon ended in a skinny paved one that wound its way through the heart of the woods for a half mile before hitting an arrow-straight main artery. Kira pulled onto the main road and accelerated as rapidly as the rental would allow.
Desh turned in his seat to face Connelly. “Colonel, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” said Connelly stoically, but blood was still slowly seeping through his bandages and he looked pale.
“Matt?” said Desh. “How about you? Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he said. “But it’s hard to complain when I’m sitting next to someone with a bullet wound who isn’t,” he said dryly.
Desh was encouraged that Griffin had recovered his sense of humor. “When we get to the mall, we’ll split up into two groups,” said Desh. “I’ll go with Kira. Matt, can I count on you to look after the colonel?”
“Look after him?”
Desh nodded. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not doing as well as he’s pretending.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his thick stack of hundreds; passing about forty of them to Griffin in the back seat. “A little spending money,” he said. “I need you to see to it that he gets to a doctor.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Griffin solemnly.
“Colonel, any good military doctors you trust with your life?” asked Desh.
Connelly considered. “Yes. Don Menken. He’s retired but still lives near Bragg. I can trust him to patch me up and not ask any questions.”
Kira opened the SUV’s center console and pulled out a cell phone. She passed it back to Griffin. “Use this phone to reach us,” she instructed. “I have its mate. Hit Autodial 1 and it will speed-dial my number. The phone is completely secure.”
“No cell phone is secure,” said Connelly wearily, the vitality of his voice beginning to wane as his blood loss began to catch up with him.
“The signal can be intercepted easily enough, but the phone can’t be connected to me. Even if it could, the audio is sent scrambled. These two phones can unscramble each other’s signals, but even top cryptographic experts won’t be able to decipher the conversation.”
Connelly doubted her code was nearly as tight as she thought it was, but he didn’t argue the point.
“Let’s come up with a game plan we can use when we get to the mall,” suggested Desh.
“Agreed,” rasped Connelly. “But first give me the shorthand version of why we’re joining forces with enemy number one here.”
Kira glanced at Desh with interest, as though curious as to what he would say.
Desh sighed. Connelly was the least well informed of any of them. “We both know there’s far more going on here than we understand,” he began. “Smith’s men crashed the party at the motel. And Smith had a cell phone that responded to the number you gave me and told me you were taking orders from him. But we know that was a lie. Kira claims she’s innocent and not involved in any terror plots. She warned me that you were in danger from Smith, and she was right.” He raised his eyebrows. “And she did risk herself to rescue us,” he added pointedly.
“You’ve seen her file,” responded Connelly. “She’s a brilliant manipulator and liar. This could all have been staged.”
“This is true. And believe me, I haven’t lost sight of that. But she claims she can prove her innocence and explain what’s going on, and I’m going to give her that chance. I can assure you that I’ll bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the table.”
Desh looked at his watch and calculated how long it would take them to reach their destination. “We need to be sure we know what we’ll be doing at the mall and think it through so we don’t make any obvious mistakes,” he said. “But that shouldn’t take long. With the time remaining I’ll try to give you a 30,000-foot view of what I know. Matt can fill in more of the details when he has the chance.”
“Fair enough,” said Connelly.
“Before I begin, I need to warn you: without the details you’re going to find most of this hard to believe.”
Matt Griffin smiled slyly and rolled his eyes. “You can say that again,” he muttered from the back of the SUV.
26
The Manor Hill Mall was a hive of activity. Between them, Petersburg and Richmond had a population of over a million people, and it wasn’t hard to believe that half of them were shopping at Manor Hill. The mall was four stories high, with all four stories under a vaulted atrium ceiling, and encompassed a total square footage of retail space that was hard to comprehend. Connelly had donned Desh’s windbreaker to hide his blood soaked bandages. Desh and Kira had dropped Griffin and the colonel at one end of the mall before driving almost half a mile to enter the mall at its opposite end.
As they had planned during the drive, Griffin and Connelly entered a crowded clothing store and made themselves over from head to toe in an ensemble chosen to help them blend in. They then bought scissors and shaving gear and emerged from a restroom ten minutes later without any facial hair. When Griffin had been told this would be necessary he had almost mutinied; but in the end he had agreed that this was a better alternative than being discovered and shot to death—barely. Connelly was also pained to part with his prized mustache, but he took the loss with military stoicism.
After altering their appearance, the two men ordered a cab under an assumed name and took it to a side entrance of a nearby Hilton hotel. They then passed through the lobby to the front of the hotel and convinced another cabbie to take them all the way to Connelly’s doctor friend. The cabbie had adamantly refused to drive this far until he was handed a stack of hundred dollar bills, after which he decided that the customer was always king, and he’d be happy to take them where they wanted to go.
Desh and Kira changed outfits as well. Desh was now wearing a pair of pre-faded jeans and a hooded, burgundy-and-gold Washington Redskins sweatshirt with oversized pockets. Kira replaced the tan jacket she had been wearing with a blue one of a different style, and her hair was now tucked up inside a Redskins ball cap. Both wore tennis shoes for comfort and mobility.
Whoever tracked them to the mall would expect their stay to be brief, just long enough so they could lose themselves among the crowd before racing off by cab or stolen car. The last thing anyone would expect them to do would be to loiter at the mall for several hours in plain sight, which is exactly why they planned to do so, leaving on a bus that wasn’t scheduled to depart for several hours yet.
Manor Hill had fourteen restaurants and a Food Court. They found an information booth and asked for a restaurant with a romantic ambiance; shorthand for one that was so poorly lighted they couldn’t be easily seen while inside. At the same time such lighting would allow them to readily see anyone entering the restaurant from the mall.
Twenty minutes later they were in a booth in the back of Montag’s Gourmet Pizza, a restaurant whose dusk-like level of lighting was unexpected in a pizza place, gourmet or otherwise, but was perfect for their needs.
The waiter noticed their matching Redskins attire from a distance and assumed they were on a date, but as he got a closer look at the grime and dense shadow of stubble on Desh’s face, he changed his mind. They must be married, he thought. No one on a date would have such little regard for personal hygiene.
Desh ordered a soda, Kira iced-tea, and they ordered a large pizza to split. Although Desh knew he had far more important things to worry about, sharing a pizza seemed too much like breaking bread with the devil for his taste; albeit a devil who had probably saved Connelly’s life. He remained determined to keep as much emotional distance from the woman across from him as he could manage.
Whe
n the waiter left, Desh stealthily drew his gun and hid it on his lap, under his oversized sweatshirt, with his finger on the trigger. He situated himself at an awkward angle in the booth so he could watch both Kira and the entrance to the restaurant as they spoke.
After the waiter returned with their drinks and then left again, Kira got right to the point. “I assume you remember where we were last night before we were, ah … interrupted?” Desh nodded. It was hard to believe their discussion had taken place just the night before. “You can make yourself smarter, but when you do you turn into a psychopath.” As he spoke he continued to anxiously watch the entrance, scrutinizing anyone who approached the hostess podium and scanning all human mall traffic in his view.
“Who knew you had such a way with words,” said Kira. She smiled warmly. “That may be the most succinct summation in history.”
“We can’t be sure when we’ll be interrupted again,” said Desh icily, subconsciously trying to counter her warmth. “Since you’re so eager to convince me you’re not working with terrorists, let’s not waste any time.”
“Agreed,” said Kira soberly. She quickly gathered her thoughts. “I left off about two-and-a-half years after I joined NeuroCure,” she said. “When I had achieved my breakthrough. Do you have any questions about the treatment before I move on?”
Desh thought about this as he watched a group of teenaged girls stroll by the restaurant, wearing clothing that was several years too old for them along with a colorful assortment of flashy costume jewelry. “How long does the transformation last?” he asked.
“Only about an hour. I was afraid to make it last any longer. Not without better understanding the treatment and what it was doing to me.”
“Including your newfound admiration for the work of Nietzsche?”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised the effect is so short.”
“It seems longer when you’re experiencing it. And at this level of intelligence, the number of insights you can have in a single hour is staggering. To make the effect permanent, I would need to make other modifications to the body. Even in an hour your body becomes depleted of the molecular precursors for neurotransmitters and you get a craving for glucose like you wouldn’t believe. After a transformation, I wouldn’t feel completely normal for days. I decided not to try it more than once a week, at most.”
Desh wondered if anything Smith had told him in the car was true. Since Kira had listened in to this entire conversation there was no reason to be coy. “So where did you decide to focus this towering IQ of yours?” he asked. “Smith said you were working on extending human life and eventually conquering mortality itself.”
“He was right,” she said. “I’ll go into that in more detail later, but this was one of three major goals I set for myself.”
Desh considered pressing her to talk more about longevity, but decided to be patient and let her continue in her own way. “What were the other two?”
“One was to achieve another jump in intelligence. In my transformed state it was clear that a level substantially higher than what I had achieved was possible.” She took a sip of her iced-tea and set it back down. “My last goal was to um—” She paused and looked slightly embarrassed. “Accumulate massive wealth.”
“And here I was beginning to think you were Mother Teresa.”
Kira nodded. “I had a feeling that would be your reaction,” she said. “In my defense, I didn’t want the money for luxuries. I just wanted to be sure that money would never be an issue if I needed equipment or supplies for my other projects, wherever my enhanced intelligence would lead me.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that immortals would need to have a pretty big nest egg,” he allowed. He fished a breadstick from a small wicker basket on the table filled with an assortment of rolls. “Becoming wealthy is the one goal I’m fairly certain you achieved. That is, if I can be certain of anything these days,” he added in frustration. “But I’m eager to learn just how it is you were able to accomplish this so quickly,” he finished accusingly.
“You think I sold my soul to terrorists?”
“Why not? Even if you aren’t sociopathic normally, you admit you are in your enhanced state. Why let a little thing like the deaths of millions slow you down?”
“Come on, David,” she snapped in annoyance. “Think it through. Even if I acted on my sociopathic tendencies—which I didn’t—I would only be a raving sociopath, not stupid. I had achieved immeasurable intelligence. Creativity that would put Thomas Edison to shame. An intellect that would make Stephen Hawking look slow. With capabilities like these, do you really think I’m going to spend years working on a bioterror agent to sell to people who would happily kill me for not covering my face?” She shook her head in exasperation. “I could make millions just selling the cryptographic software that I thought up in ten minutes, or any number of other inventions that could be marketed immediately. What do you think the government would pay for a material that completely shields heat signatures?”
Desh frowned. “When you put it that way, working with terrorists does sound pretty stupid.”
“Thank you,” she said emphatically. She paused as the waiter came over to check on them.
“Not that it matters,” she continued as soon as the waiter was out of earshot, “but I made my fortune in the stock market.”
Desh raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t have been my first guess. How?”
“I analyzed the market while at an elevated level of intelligence,” she replied. “When you’re in the transformed state you have absolute access to your memory. All of your memory. The human brain stores every single input it ever receives: everything you think, read, see, touch or experience. In our normal, un-optimized mode, we’re unable to access all but the tiniest tip of that iceberg. But in my enhanced state I can make correlations and logical connections between bits of information I didn’t even know I had. Treacherously complex patterns become obvious. Market insights quickly present themselves.”
“Did you understand your analysis when you returned to normal?”
Kira smiled. “Not even a little,” she admitted. “All I know is that I was right about eighty percent of the time, more than enough to make me very rich, very fast. I underwent my treatment four different times with the sole purpose of analyzing the stock market. And I only placed the riskiest of bets. Currency fluctuations, options, futures—that sort of thing. Over a three-month period I increased my wealth a thousand-fold. The stock market is legalized gambling and I had transformed myself into the ultimate Rain Man.”
As usual, she made the most fantastic claims seem eminently plausible. “So why the false identities and Swiss bank accounts?”
“I started to get paranoid, so I began taking precautions.”
“Is paranoia another side effect of the enhanced intelligence?”
“No,” she replied solemnly. “It’s a side effect of getting robbed.”
Desh’s eyes narrowed. “Is this where the arch nemesis you wrote about in your E-mail comes in? Your Moriarty?”
“I like that,” said Kira, smiling. “Gives me hope that you aren’t still convinced that I’m Moriarty. If you had said, ‘Your arch nemesis, Sherlock Holmes,’ I’d really be depressed right now.”
Desh couldn’t help but return her smile.
“One of the things that popped out when I was studying you was how wonderfully well read you are,” said Kira earnestly.
“Moriarty isn’t exactly an obscure reference. The majority of ten-year-olds know who he is.”
She smiled and her eyes sparkled playfully. “That doesn’t make what I said any less true. Besides, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I’m not convinced the majority of adults even know the name of our Speaker of the House.”
A slight smile played across Desh’s face. “So tell me about the robbery?”
Desh tensed as a fit man in this thirties with a serious look on his face approached the hostess station and began scanning the r
estaurant carefully, his eyes moving in an arc that would soon include their booth. “Duck!” whispered Desh as he slipped the gun out from under his sweatshirt and braced himself for action. Kira slid down in the booth as if she had dropped a coin on the floor.
Seconds later the man’s eyes stopped shifting as his gaze settled on a booth two over from where they were seated. An attractive woman who was seated with two preschool children waved at him happily. He raised his hand in acknowledgment, his face becoming relaxed, and he hurriedly joined his family.
Desh let out the breath he had been holding. “False alarm,” he whispered. “Sorry.”
Kira returned to a fully upright position. “Don’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “Better to err on the side of caution. Besides, I’m sure my pulse will return to normal in an hour or so,” she added with a grin.
“You were going to tell me about the robbery,” prompted Desh.
“Right,” said Kira. “I came home from work one night and my place had been broken into. I had a bottle with twenty-three gellcaps and my lab notebook stored in the false bottom of a dresser drawer. Both were missing.”
“You had a dresser with a false-bottomed drawer?”
“I thought putting valuables in a safe would be too obvious. I measured the drawer and had someone at a hardware store cut a platform to my exact specifications. I wallpapered it to match the bottoms of the other drawers and stacked some sweaters on top.”
Desh raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Did they take anything else?” he asked, chewing absently on the breadstick he had taken and continuing to watch the entrance.
“Nothing. They knew exactly what they were after.”
“Any ideas who it was?”
“Not when it happened, no. I was stunned. I had been careful not to leave a trail. I routinely disposed of the rodents I was using and I never let my lab notebook out of my sight. Until then, I wouldn’t have believed it possible that anyone could have known what I was doing. On a hunch, the next day I hired someone at an executive protection agency, like yours, to look for listening devices.” She frowned deeply. “He found several in both my office and home. That’s the day I truly began to get paranoid.”
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