by Ian Hocking
Klutikov? He had large, good hands.
The traffic thickened. The car slowed into the human speed band, and its braking tipped Proctor forward. He widened his eyes, stretched his eyebrows, noted Ego still on watch.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Professor.’
‘I told you to call me David. Where are we?’
‘Crossing into Nebraska.’
‘We’ve made good time.’
‘I’ve ordered another rental car to rendezvous with us at the truckstop in six miles. Our current car will follow us for a few miles.’ She looked at his white stubble. ‘As a double bluff.’
‘All this expertise comes with your new chip, does it?’
‘You’re talking to the chip right now. It’s not something separate.’
David looked as though he had said something rude. ‘What did you do with the guard’s uniform?’
‘It’s in the boot. Safer if I wear my suit instead. It fits.’
‘Saskia, I’m sorry.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘As soon as I find my daughter, you will be free to leave. I promise.’
She batted his hand away. ‘Do you want me to feel grateful? You give me up to a future where I will be hunted like you. To fail my first assignment is to die. My employer told me so.’
‘I’m doing what I’m doing for the best reasons.’
‘As they seem to you.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t even know where you’re heading.’
‘The plane ticket said Las Vegas, so that’s where. For now.’ David touched his forehead. ‘Of course. The paper from locker J371. It said, “Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest.” What do you make of that? It could be phrased like a cryptic crossword clue. They often have part of the answer in the question. One of the words may be an anagram of the answer.’
Saskia closed her eyes and pictured the letters. She thought, What are the anagrams? An instant later, she knew that ‘attendant’ had no rearrangements that made sense, while ‘finest’ could make ‘feints’ or ‘infest’.
‘I cannot find any likely anagrams.’
‘Wait. What’s another word for a car-parking attendant?’
‘You are the English speaker, not me.’
‘Ah, but you fake it so well. Another word…would be “traffic warden”, or “attendant”. No, we have that. Come on, Saskia.’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘It could be an American word. We’re in America. Valet.’
‘What’s a valet?’
‘Somebody who parks your car for you. Could it mean the best example of a valet, like a super-valet?’
‘What’s a super-valet?’
‘Like Superman, only cleaner.’
‘What?’
David sighed. ‘Never mind.’
‘Let’s stay with ‘valet’,’ said Saskia. ‘As for finest, in some online indexes of English word usage, it refers to a city’s emergency services. Usually the police, but sometimes the fire service.’ She felt his interest. ‘My chip can connect to the telecommunications network.’
‘Wow. Consciously, unconsciously? Can you see a webspace right now?’
Saskia closed her eyes. Her thoughts fluttered, trapped. She knew that the chip was background processing the relationships between ‘valet’, ‘fire service’ and Las Vegas, just as the semantic parser of the UK police had tracked Proctor’s emails.
She opened her eyes.
‘The clue must refer to the Valley of Fire National Park, on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Your daughter is there.’
Proctor laughed. ‘Well done that woman.’
‘This is the truckstop,’ she said coldly. ‘We have to change cars. Pull in.’
‘Computer, give me control.’
The car said, ‘You have control in five seconds, four, three, two, one. You have control.’
~
Saskia waited beneath a sign that warned of the dangers of hydrogen. She watched David enter the glass-fronted store and lost him in the reflected scrubland. Carefully, she lifted the handset and dialled. The British ringing tone made her think of Simon. Somewhere, perhaps in a zinc tray, a phone played ‘Scotland the Brave’.
‘Hello?’ asked a woman.
Saskia tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘May I please speak to Detective Jago?’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ she said. Her accent was British. Not Scottish, but English.
Saskia almost hung up. Then she said, ‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘I’m his daughter.’
Jago had only one child and he was called Jeremy. Saskia swapped ears.
‘My name is Sabrina,’ Saskia said. ‘I heard that your father had been taken ill. Could you please tell me how he is?’
‘He’s under observation.’
‘I see,’ said Saskia. She pursed her lips.
‘Are you still there?’
‘When he wakes up, tell him I’m sorry. Can you do that?’
‘…Wait.’
Saskia listened as the phone was handled.
‘There is something else,’ continued the woman. ‘Dad said that Saskia might call. He had a message for her. Is that you?’
Saskia considered the isolation of the gas station and the anonymity of the phone. The surrounding land was flat and empty. She looked into the heights of sky, and thought about the cold stare of a satellite, and the colder eyes of Beckmann.
‘Yes.’
‘He told me that your former boss has sent a man to find you. Dad was visited by him last night.’
‘I see.’
‘Saskia? All’s well.’
She frowned at the horizon and her reply was spoken before she could think. ‘That ends well.’
Shakespeare.
‘Wait,’ said Saskia, but the woman hung up. Saskia called back but the phone rang without answer. She lowered the handset gently, though she wanted to smash it. The muscles in her face gathered like a fist. Someone whistled and she looked up. David was sitting at a picnic table on the opposite side of the lot. She collected her tear-diluted mascara on a knuckle and walked the windy gap between them and felt like a gargoyle as she perched on the furthest edge of the bench, waiting for the next rental car.
David studied her.
‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.
‘I’m debating if I should tell you something.’
‘Let me know whether the motion is passed.’
‘On board the aeroplane, when my computer brought the presence of your chip to my attention, I took a gamble and claimed that I could deactivate it. The truth is that I can’t. My computer doesn’t even recognise the communication protocol. It’s encrypted. You’re perfectly safe.’
Saskia turned to face him. ‘But you knew my name, my badge number.’
‘Just a skin of metadata wrapped around the unencrypted hellos and goodbyes your chip sends all the time.’
‘Sends where?’
‘The Internet.’
‘Maybe it’s my location. Did you think of that?’
‘I did, but consider the possibilities. If compressed, it could send the data of your senses across the Internet.’
Saskia took his coffee and sipped. ‘What is the taste of coffee, expressed as a number?’
‘Now you’re getting it.’
‘David, do you think I’m even here? Am I lying in a coma in a hospital in Berlin, or London, or Rio—relaying my soul chip-to-chip like…’ she looked across the forecourt ‘…a conversation?’
‘Easy to find out. We’ll get you a foil hat and see if you drop dead.’
She remembered the man in the foil hat from Heathrow. ‘No, thanks.’
‘I note that you aren’t calling for help.’
‘Perhaps I just did,’ she said, indicating the gas station.
‘The phone call? Yes, I noticed that. But Ego doesn’t think it’s something I need to worry about. He heard the whole thing. Sorry about your partner.’
He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘Did she sound British, Saskia?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jennifer Proctor had worked late the night before. She woke at eleven, made coffee, swallowed her norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and checked her inbox. Then she took the elevator to the car park of her apartment building. The traffic was heavy, but manageable if she avoided the Strip. She read some paperwork while the car turned north, then east, then joined I-15 heading north-west. Twenty minutes later, she turned onto Route 169 at Crystal.
The road surface worsened as she entered the Valley of Fire State Park. Sunlight struck the red sandstone formations and they did indeed ignite, but Jennifer did not look up from her notes until she had reached Met Four, a weather station in the north of the park. The car dropped her at the base of a huge rocky column and, as she approached the iron steps, it parked nearby.
She stopped.
‘Good afternoon,’ said a tall man. Nothing about him moved but for the tail of his coat. ‘Dr Jennifer Proctor?’
‘Who are you?’
His irises flared with sun. ‘Detektiv Lev Klutikov. I’m with the European FIB. Here’s my badge and a number you can call to confirm its validity.’
‘I believe you. What do you want?’
‘One of our agents, going by the alias Saskia Brandt, has turned rogue. We think she’s targeted you. I’ve been assigned to provide you with personal security, should Brandt attempt to make contact.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Not at all. There’s a high likelihood she will make contact in the next hour or so.’
‘Well, there’s no need to worry about me.’ Jennifer nodded to the rocky column ahead. ‘She can’t follow me in there without an army. Neither can you, for that matter.’
‘A renegade agent from the FIB is treated seriously.’ He waved a blue ID badge. ‘I have a level one pass and full co-operation from Met Four Base.’
‘Man.’ Jennifer had never seen such a clearance. Klutikov had the keys to the kingdom.
‘We should proceed immediately, Dr Proctor. We -’
‘What?’ asked Jennifer. She followed his stare to the road, but she could not see or hear anything.
‘Get your car. You’re in danger.’
‘Danger?’ she said. Her fear was turning to pique.
Jennifer gasped as he put his hand into the pocket of her jeans. He pressed her key fob. In the corner of the lot, her car started. ‘When it comes to pick you up, get inside and lock the door. Understand? Wait for me.’
‘Is she here?’
‘Brandt. Yes. She’s watching us.’
‘But I could hide inside the installation.’
Klutikov turned to the zigzag of iron steps that ran the full height of the column. ‘You wouldn’t make it.’
Jennifer’s car stopped at her sneakers. She settled inside and threw the locks. She looked from Klutikov to the unreachable castle of Met Four Base. Would its cameras be trained on the car park? Certainly. But there were no human eyes behind those cameras, and a computer would only summon help if presented with overtly suspicious behaviour.
Jennifer sank behind the driver’s wheel and planned. If something happened to Klutikov, she would run from the car. Her running would alert the computer, which would alert guards, who would come to her rescue. Perhaps she could make the iron steps before the agent reached her. They had told her, in the early days, that something like this might happen. She hadn’t believed them.
Through the arch of the steering wheel, she saw Klutikov walk away. He flexed his right hand.
~
Saskia stood in front of her car. Her hair was redrawn gust by gust. She watched Klutikov’s eyes. Somehow, she knew that he had hacked his sight to detect electromagnetic radiation above and below the thresholds of mammalian vision. He could taste her heat. Sense the tell-tale metals at the heart of her ceramic revolver. She waited for him to scan her body and the car. Satisfied, he nodded and held up his golden FIB badge. His free hand rested on the butt of his holstered gun.
In rapid German, he said, ‘Frau Kommissarin Saskia Brandt, you are arrested by Detektiv Lyova Klutikov of the Federal Office of Investigation, Russian section, badge number 012-919-001, on the internal charge of desertion. This charge will be pursued under the Russian constitution. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be recorded at the discretion of your arresting officer and reproduced in a court of law as evidence against you. These data are the property of the FIB.’
Saskia said nothing. Waited. Her hair licked her eyes.
‘Did you hear me, Saskia?’
‘Yes. Why German?’
‘I don’t want the surveillance computer to eavesdrop. Things might get more complicated.’
He walked towards her, closing his badge with an easy flick. ‘Are you armed?’
‘Airport security confiscated my gun.’
Klutikov drew her hair through his gloved fingers. Her scalp shivered. ‘Hello, Angel.’
‘Hello.’
‘Our boss made a serious mistake with you.’ He lifted the hair to his nose and sighed. ‘After all, what qualifications do you have, apart from getting caught?’ He put an arm around her shoulders and suddenly his gun was at the soft meat below her sternum. She growled a breath and he pushed harder. His pupils were wide and black. ‘Now, tell me again where you put your gun, and don’t be,’ he blew across her throat, ‘clever.’
‘Under the passenger seat.’ She indicated with her chin. ‘Let me get it.’
‘No, I think I will.’
With his free hand, Klutikov opened the door. He put one knee on the driver’s seat and reached across. Saskia, heaving a breath, hooked his back leg with her own and tipped him inside. At the same time, she shut the door on his forearm. His hand splayed and his gun dropped to the desert. Saskia tucked his arm inside and slammed the door. The locks clicked. Before Klutikov could sit, the car accelerated out of the car park and was gone, its dust thinned by the breeze.
David stepped from behind a van. ‘Good work, Saskia.’
‘Is the car still under your control?’
David listened to Ego. ‘Yes. He’s broken a window, but the car is travelling too fast for him to bail out.’
‘How long do we have?’
‘The car will be out of Ego’s range in twenty minutes. Maybe Klutikov can overcome the car’s computer. I don’t know.’
Saskia nodded and crouched to take Klutikov’s gun. Despite the satisfaction of besting him, she was uneasy about the questions that his appearance raised. Why had he been improperly briefed? He should have been told to expect two people, not one. If Beckmann had wanted to recapture Proctor, why would he limit Klutikov’s effectiveness by restricting his information? Klutikov was eminently capable of retrieving Proctor. He was, perhaps, more capable than Saskia.
She pulled at her lip. No. Her reasoning was not correct. There was nothing to suggest that Beckmann had abandoned Proctor. Beckmann had simply tried to remove Saskia from the case.
She studied Met Four. The ghostly traffic of sand rushed about her.
Beckmann had changed his mind. If he did not want Proctor to be captured, that meant he wanted Proctor to reach his destination.
And his destination was his daughter.
‘Come on, David.’
~
Jennifer’s fingers trembled. She felt for the door handle and gripped it hard. She would make a run for Met Four.
No, she thought. Just drive away. Play it safe.
She touched a button on the dashboard. The engine started.
‘Car, take me home.’
But the rogue agent called Brandt was in front of the car, looking at her through the windscreen. The car switched to reverse, then stopped immediately. There was a man at the trunk. It was not Klutikov. This was a man she had last seen in Ne
w York.
‘Park here. Unlock the doors.’
His face was older now, an extrapolation of the man who had cried with her on the steps of Wayne’s College long years before. He was trying not to laugh. Jennifer stepped into his arms.
~
In the car, sealed from the airs, slow minutes passed. Jennifer’s attention shifted from her father to the rogue agent, and back again. The two sat on the rear seat. They were waiting for Jennifer to speak. Jennifer pointed at the woman. ‘Why would Klutikov lie about you?’
‘He told you what you needed to hear. His larger aim was to return me to Beckmann, our mutual employer, for execution.’
‘That doesn’t explain his blue Met Four Base clearance.’
The woman nodded. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘And you,’ Jennifer said to her father.
‘And me.’ The lines on his face, which had recorded all his smiles and frowns, were deeper and browner than ever.
‘What happened after I spoke to you, Dad?’
He sighed. ‘It’s a very long story, but I’m afraid that…Jenny, I killed a man. I’m on the run.’ He indicated Brandt with his head. ‘From her, actually.’
‘Dr Proctor,’ Saskia interrupted, ‘let me explain our position in brief. I was dispatched to apprehend your father. I did so, but he managed to exploit the situation and brought me here against my will. David had received a cryptic clue, from an anonymous benefactor, which directed us to this location. Does this mean anything to you?’
Jennifer looked through the windscreen at an expanse across which the devils spun. She turned back.
‘I’m a physicist. But there are many technologies being developed in our research centre. One of them, Dad, looks like a recreation of your old lab from the West Lothian centre. The project manager has a crush on me and I got the royal tour. He told me that they’re trying to reverse engineer some of what you and Bruce Shimoda did twenty years ago, before your technology went up in smoke. I…met a person inside the computer.’